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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doug M: [QB] Some more stuff from Morocco: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sahara/sets/1780684/ http://www.nygus.info/westafrica.html [QUOTE] Generally speaking, the Hassaniya populations were (or are) divided into several groups, of different social status. At the peak of society were the aristocratic "warrior" lineages or clans, the Hassane, supposed descendants of the Beni Hassan Arab immigrants. Below them stood the "scholarly" or "clerical" lineages. These were called marabout or zawiya tribes, the latter designation the preferred one in among the Western Sahara-centered tribes, who would also almost invariably claim chorfa status to enhance their religious credibility. The zawiya tribes were protected by Hassane overlords in exchange for their religious services and payment of the horma, a tributary tax in cattle or goods; while they were in a sense exploited, the relationship was often more or less symbiotic. Under both these groups, but still part of the Sahrawi-Moorish society, stood the zenaga tribes - tribal groups labouring in demeaning occupations, such as fishermen and bards, as well as peripheral semi-tribal groups working in the same fields. All these groups were considered to be among the bidan, or whites. Below them ranked servile lineages known as Haratin, formally freed slaves of mainly black African origins and their descendants, who would normally still be linked to their former masters in a dependent role. They lived serving their affiliated bidan families, and as such formed part of the tribe, not tribes of their own. (Note that "Haratin", a term of obscure origin, has a different meaning in the Berber regions of Morocco.) Below them came the slaves themselves, who were owned individually or in family groups, and could hope at best to be freed and rise to the status of Haratin. Rich bidan families would normally own a few slaves at the most, as nomadic societies have less use of slave labour than sedentary societies; however, in some cases, slaves were used to work oasis plantations, farming dates, digging wells etc. Slavery persisted among Hassaniya-speaking populations well into the colonial age, despite that both French and Spanish colonial authorities formally banned the practice. While slavery is thought to be more or less eradicated in Western Sahara, there are credible reports that both outright slavery and, more commonly, different forms of informal bondage are still applied to some Haratin lineages in Mauritania. [/QUOTE] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahrawi The point here is that it is HARD to look at modern arab/berber groups and get a TRUE sense of the ORIGINAL clans and groups that occupied North West Africa. What IS clear is that the Arabs have come to DOMINATE this region and the ORIGINAL black Africans have been largely decimated. While that does NOT diminish the presence of "white" North Africans in antiquity, it does show how ARAB colonialism followed by European colonialism has altered the landscape, politically, ethnically and nationally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghreb [QUOTE] From the end of the Ice Age, when the Sahara Desert dried up, contact between the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa was extremely limited by the difficulty in crossing the desert. This remained the case until after the time of the Arab expansion and the spread of Islam; even then, trans-Saharan trade was restricted to costly (but often profitable) caravan expeditions, trading such goods as salt, gold, ivory, and slaves. Originally, the Maghreb was inhabited by "Caucasoid" Cro-Magnoids (Iberomaurusians) in the north and by "Black" peoples in the Sahara. Later, about 8000 BC, there came from the east "Caucasoid" speakers of northern Afro-Asiatic languages such as Berber at least since the Capsian culture. Many ports along the Maghreb coast were occupied by Phoenicians, particularly Carthaginians; with the defeat of Carthage, many of these ports naturally passed to Rome, and ultimately it took control of the entire Maghreb north of the Atlas Mountains, apart from some of the most mountainous regions like the Moroccan Rif. The Arabs reached the Maghreb in early Umayyad times, but their control over it was quite weak, and various Islamic "heresies" such as the Ibadis and the Shia, adopted by some Berbers, quickly threw off Caliphal control in the name of their interpretations of Islam. The Arabic language became widespread only later, as a result of the invasion of the Banu Hilal (unleashed, ironically, by the Berber Fatimids in punishment for their Zirid clients' defection) in the 1100's. Throughout this period, the Maghreb fluctuated between occasional unity (as under the Almohads, and briefly under the Hafsids) and more commonly division into three states roughly corresponding to modern Morocco, western Algeria, and eastern Algeria and Tunisia. After the Middle Ages, the area east of Morocco was loosely under the control of the Ottoman Empire. After the 19th century, it was colonized by France, Spain and later Italy. Today over two and a half million Maghrebins live in France, especially from Algeria, as well as many more French of Maghrebin origin. [/QUOTE]Note, while they talk about the Sahara being a DIVIDER, between Northern and Southern Africa, they curiously CONTRADICT themselves when they admit that there were always "black" people IN the Sahara. Therefore, there WAS no divider and the use of the Sahara is as much a result of the colonization of North Africa as any FACT of geography, much like the Dutch settlement of South AFrica. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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