Islam as lived: mosques, fqih and saints

Against the view, widespread among the French, that the Berber tribes of the Middle Atlas were not very devout, Hart holds the piety of the Aït Atta to be beyond doubt. In 1965 they were still scrupulously observing four of the five pillars of Islam; the pilgrimage to Mecca remained rare, with only eight pilgrims identified during his fieldwork. A fighter who died defending his country against the French was called shahid, “witness”, and buried where he fell, without a shroud.

Aït Atta mosques are most often msalla: open-air circles of stones no more than a metre and a half high, sometimes mud-and-stone buildings, with the qibla facing south. They stand near the shrine of the local saint and its inviolable precinct (hurm), as does the cemetery, divided into plots corresponding to the lineages. Unlike some Middle Atlas tribes, the Aït Atta have no tent-mosque that follows transhumance. Women fast, but prayer at the mosque is a male affair.

The fqih, who directs the community's religious life, always comes from outside, most often from the south; at Usikis in 1961-62 he came from the neighbouring Ait Siddrat. Hired by word of mouth for a year, he teaches the Qur'an to the boys, leads the Friday prayer and acts as scribe: it was he who wrote the qanun in Arabic at the dictation of the amghar and the council, translating from Tamazight. He is paid in kind: a share of the tithe (ʿashur) on barley, butter, an egg or a small sum every Wednesday from each pupil, and his supper, provided each evening by the families in turn. The tithe is divided into three equal parts, for the fqih, for the poor and for the giver's own poor relations; the zakat on livestock, at the end of May, is divided the same way. Until Independence there was no teaching but his, and only for boys; since 1963 he has coexisted with the schoolteacher.

The Ramadan fast is the best-observed pillar, and no collective oath was ever sworn during it: it was put off until later. According to Hart, the fighters of the “pacification” almost always refused the dispensation from fasting granted to them. At ʿAshura, in the central High Atlas, everyone has icy water from the Asif n-Uhansal poured over him, held to come that day from the well of Zamzam. Hart explains the rarity of the pilgrimage to Mecca by a legend of the central High Atlas: the Prophet was almost buried in the cliff of Mount Azurki, where people go for the night of ʿArafa. He reports it as a belief, not as a fact.

As everywhere in rural Morocco, each tribe had its saints (igurramen), who represent Islam in the eyes of the lay tribes. For the Aït Atta they are Mulay ʿAbdallah bin Hsain, who died between 1568 and 1573 and is buried at Tamslouht near Marrakesh, the true patron of the confederation, and Sidi Saʿid Ahansal, founder of Zawiya Ahansal, whose descendants serve only some groups north of Boumalne; both are held to have been contemporaries of Dadda Atta. The Ait Atta n-Umalu, the Ait Unir of Birnat and the Ait Ouallal of the Dades turn rather to local saints. Gellner, quoted by Hart, regards the Idrisid genealogy of the Ihansalen as false; this matters little, Hart adds, since one is a saint because one acts as a saint and the tribes hold one to be so.

The saints' first role is to arbitrate conflicts and preside over the election of chiefs. But the descendants of Mulay ʿAbdallah could settle only conflicts among Aït Atta, not wars with the Ait Yafelman or the Ait Siddrat, who had their own saints. Every year, at the end of winter or in early spring, the Aït Atta take their gifts (the ʿada) to the mother zawiya at Tamslouht, but do not attend its summer moussem, a distinction they claim for themselves.

In their own country Hart mentions other pilgrimage-fairs (agdud): at Igherm Amazdar in June, among the local descendants of Mulay ʿAbdallah, and six days after the Mouloud in honour of Mulay ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani; that of Kuya Brahim, on the night of 27 Ramadan, 4 km from the Bougafer, where people make a wish by pulling the saint's stick; that of the Ilemchan, two days at the tomb of Kuya Lahsin near Ikniouen, on 10 September of the Julian calendar; that of the Ait Yazza of Alnif, three days (formerly eight) at the tomb of Sidi Mhand n-Ifrutant, around 15 March, just before transhumance. Finally, Hart notes that the two great saintly lineages of the Aït Atta claim Idrisid descent, and that Aït Atta political relations with the Alawite dynasty, which came from the Tafilalt, were at best made up of intermittent hostilities and uneasy truces.

A more recent study, by Marie-Luce Gélard among the Ait Khebbach, gives an example of this role and its limits. According to the account she recorded, a saint, Sidi Lmadani, had tried to appease the family of a man executed by the tribe under the Protectorate, accused of spying for the French, in order to avoid vengeance; his mediation having been refused, he left the region with the maraboutic families, and the spring dried up. In 1971 the men of the tribe went as a group to ask his forgiveness, so that his blessing would make the climate more favourable; the spring, the account says, flowed again.