Guided tours · 9 steps
A first approach to the society: the tradition of origins, the land, the family, herding, water and markets, protection, religious life, housing and dress.
The Jbel Saghro (2018) — Wikimedia Commons (Wiki Loves Earth 2018), CC BY-SA 4.0
Step 1 · Dossier
A founding figure whose name the confederation bears, not a demonstrated biological ancestor. This dossier separates what the tradition tells, what memory has made of it, and what the documents allow us to establish.
Step 2 · Topic
An arid massif, symbolic and political heart, at the centre of a territory scattered between mountain, oases and pre-Saharan steppes.
Step 3 · Topic
An agnatic kinship system, names that state filiation, weddings celebrated over several days.
Step 4 · Topic
Pastoralists above all, between summer pastures in the north and winter pastures in the south, most Aït Atta were still transhumant in the 1960s.
Step 5 · Topic
Transhumance goes hand in hand with irrigated farming governed by water turns, and with markets held on the fringes of Aït Atta country, never at its heart. This is what Hart observed in the 1960s.
Step 6 · Topic
In the conquered oases, a hierarchical society based on unequal protection agreements.
Step 7 · Topic
Scrupulous piety, dry-stone mosques, a fqih from elsewhere and two lineages of saints, the chief patron of the Aït Atta lying far from their country, near Marrakesh.
Step 8 · Topic
Rammed earth and stone, several storeys, guarded stores: the architecture of permanent homes.
Step 9 · Topic
White turban and beard for men, indigo veils and silver for women, a variety of Tamazight.
