Amazigh, Atta

The Ait Atta (Ayt Atta) are a great Amazigh tribal confederation of south-eastern Morocco, of Sanhaja origin, whose heartland is the volcanic Jbel Saghro between the High Atlas and the Sahara. They trace their descent to an ancestor, Dadda Atta, whose tomb lies near Tagounite in the Draa valley, and through his forty grandsons to five 'fifths' (khams khmas): the Ait Wahlim, the Ait Wallal (Ait Unir), the Ait Isful and Ait Alwan, the Ait Unibgi (among them the Ait Khebbash of the Merzouga dunes, the Ait Umnast, and the Arabic-speaking Beni Mhamed, an Arab tribe long under Ait Atta authority) and the Ait Aissa Mzim (among them the Ait el Fersi). A European writer first named them, as the 'Ytata', in 1571.

From the 16th century they spread out of the Saghro: north towards the High Atlas, where the rival Ait Yafelman confederation formed to stop them, and south and east into the Draa and Tafilalt oases, where by the 18th and 19th centuries they ruled ksour of Haratin cultivators and sharifian families and raided as far as the Touat. They elected a supreme chief (amghar n-ufilla) each spring by rotation among the fifths, with only the other four voting, and kept their capital and highest court at Igherm Amazdar. They were the last Moroccans to submit to French rule, after the siege of Bougafer in the Saghro ended on 25 March 1933 under Assou Oubasslam; colonial and later Moroccan policy then pushed the herders to settle.

Their speech is a Central Atlas Tamazight dialect, though they call it Tashelhit. Counts of the confederation have grown from 38,000 (1936) and 125,000-135,000 (1960) to an estimate of 400,000 people of Ait Atta descent (2008), many of whom now live in the cities and abroad. During the expansion, contingents settled across the High Atlas, near Zawiya Ahansal and at Msemrir.

The Ait Atta were tent-dwelling sheep and goat herders who prized pasture and war above farming; after their expansion most settled in rammed-earth ksour and fortified family houses, farming dates, barley and almonds with methods learned from the Haratin, while some Ait Khebbash and Saghro families still move their flocks between seasonal pastures. The ahidus, a dance and sung poetry in which men and women face each other in two lines, marks weddings, naming feasts and moonlit evenings and is a common way for young people to meet. A wedding lasts three days (six for the wealthy); the groom's family brings a gift (tutra) of sugar, henna and kohl. Men wear the white wool cloak (asilham) and white turban (tikarzit), whose wearing once marked a free tribesman; women wear indigo cloth that stains their skin, a triangular headdress (tabugst), amber beads and silver, among them the insersin ornament made at Tazzarine. Each person is known as the son or daughter of their father and by the lineage of a grandfather or great-grandfather. Customary law (azerf) was settled by family heads in council (ajmu). Among the Ait Khebbash of Rissani and Tafraoute, fossil and mineral work is now a lineage trade.

The Ait Atta are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school. Their religion has always run alongside tribal custom: a sharif of the Ouled Moulay Abdallah bin l-Hsain lineage (zawiya of Tameslouht) presided over the election of the supreme chief, handing him a bowl of milk and dates, and sharifian and saintly families acted as mediators between warring lineages. The tomb of Dadda Atta near Tagounite and other saints' shrines are visited for blessing (baraka), and annual festivals (moussems) gather lineages. Belief in jinn, protection against the evil eye and Quranic amulets are widespread. Customary law long governed land, water, marriage and blood-money beside sharia.

Bible portions exist in Central Atlas Tamazight and a translation is under way; Global Recordings Network has audio recordings in Tamazight, and the complete Bible in Moroccan Arabic, which most Ait Atta men also speak, is available in print, audio and apps. No fellowship of Ait Atta believers is known. Morocco's Penal Code (Article 220) punishes 'shaking the faith' of a Muslim, and converts face rejection by family and lineage.

In early 1933 French forces besieged Ait Atta fighters and their families on the Bougafer heights of the Jbel Saghro. Led by Assou Oubasslam, they held out for weeks before negotiating surrender on 25 March 1933, the last organised resistance to the French conquest of Morocco. The French then broke up the confederation's institutions and pushed its herders to settle in villages for recruitment, mine labour and taxation, a policy independent Morocco continued.

The seven villages of Imider, east of Tinghir, belong to the Ait Atta. In August 2011 villagers shut a valve on the pipeline that fed the Imider silver mine, run by a subsidiary of the Managem group, saying it drew about twelve times the villages' own water use and dried their wells and khettara. They set up a protest camp on Mount Alebban, the longest sit-in in Morocco's recent history, governed by a weekly assembly revived from the old village council; earlier protests in 1986, 1996 and 2004 had met with arrests and repression, and the movement takes its name, 'on the Road 96', from the imprisonment and death of Mustafa Ousbdan, an activist of the 1996 protests.