Imeraguen

The Imraguen (Imragen, Imeraguen; singular Amrig) are the fishing people of the Saharan Atlantic coast of Mauritania, living in a string of small villages in and near the Banc d'Arguin National Park between Nouakchott and Nouadhibou. The name is usually explained as a Berber word for 'fishermen' or 'those who fish walking in the sea'. They are thought to descend partly from the pre-Arab Bafour of the coast, joined over the centuries by families of other origins. In the old Moorish order they were a tributary (znaga) group without arms: warrior and scholarly tribes such as the Oulad Delim and Oulad Bou Sbaa ruled the coast and took tribute (horma) in fish. Ethnographic work by Sophie Boulay shows that 'Imraguen' names a status and way of life more than a lineage: one becomes Imraguen by settling on the coast and fishing with them, and many families also herd and trade by season. They speak Hassaniya Arabic with a Berber vocabulary for fish, nets and the sea; the code once given to an 'Imraguen language' (ime) was withdrawn in 2015.

The Imraguen year turns on the yellow mullet. In late summer and autumn the shoals run along the shore, and men fish on foot at low tide: two stretch a long net across the mudflat while a third drives the fish in by beating the water with a stick. Older men still tell of calling dolphins by striking the waves in a crescent and chanting, so that the dolphins drove the mullet into the nets. Inside the park motors are banned, and the men sail lateen-rigged wooden 'lanches' of Canarian origin, built and repaired at a park boatyard. Women gut and dry the fish, render oil from the mullet heads, dry the roe into botargo (made since the 1930s for a trader in Nouadhibou), sew the sails and tents, and make jewellery from fish bones; by custom they keep off the beach while the men fish. Dried mullet and fish oil were once carried far into the desert, and inland relatives came to the coast in lean seasons for the 'fish cure'. Villages are small clusters of huts, tents and a few cement houses on the dunes, each with its own fishing ground, a primary school and a post of the national fisheries research institute. Hospitality to strangers is a point of pride, though newcomers are questioned before being taken in.

The Imraguen are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school, like the Moors around them, keeping prayer, the Ramadan fast and the two Eids. Charms and amulets written by marabouts are widely worn for protection, especially by men who go to sea, and folk beliefs surround the sea and its creatures: spilling a fish's blood into the water is said to enrich it, women are kept from the shore lest the sea be angered, and certain fish oils are used as medicine. Faith is learned at home and in the Quran school, and fatalism shapes how people speak of failing catches ('what God takes with one hand he gives back with the other').

Hassaniya Arabic, the Imraguen's language, has a New Testament, the JESUS film and Global Recordings audio. No Imraguen believer or church is known. Catholic sisters of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa have visited Teichott since 2011 to teach French in the village school, without open witness, which Mauritanian law forbids.

Imraguen is a status tied to a place and a way of life. Ethnographers found that families of different origins became Imraguen by settling on the Banc d'Arguin and fishing, and that Imraguen who leave the coast and its work blend into the Moors of the cities. Because they speak the majority's Hassaniya and no barrier of acceptance against them is documented today, this group counts the families who live and fish on the park's coast, about 1,500 people, and describes those who have moved away here rather than counting them.