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Warriors, Tributaries, Blood Money and Political Transformation in Nineteenth-Century Mauritania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Raymond M. Taylor
Raymond M. Taylor
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Extract

The middle of the nineteenth century witnessed the demise of a System of political power that had existed in the southern Mauritanian region of Brakna since the eighteenth century. Until the 1840s, tolls levied on the Senegal River gum trade had sustained the hegemony in southern Brakna of the Awlad al-Siyyid, an Arabic-speaking warrior group. Unlike more mobile warriors of the Saharan interior who depended for their livelihood on tribute extracted from nomadic pastoralists, the Awlad al-Siyyid had specialized in the control over a small area near the Senegal River, and over seasonal trading posts, known as escales, through which gum arabic was exported to the Atlantic economy. However, their increasing dependence on this trade allowed French administrators to manipulate relations among Awlad al-Siyyid chiefs by recognizing the taxing privileges of some while withholding recognition from others in a way that led, from the early 1840s on, to a bitter factional struggle within the group. The resulting conflict weakened the control of warriors over tributaries, harratin (freed slaves) and others, and caused a crisis within the political and social hierarchy of Brakna. An increasingly desperate struggle developed among Brakna warriors over a diminishing number of tributaries. This paper examines that struggle through the lens of an affair of diyya, or blood money, that emerged during the late 1840s and came to preoccupy all of the warrior groups and factions in the Brakna conflict. By competing for portions of the diyya owed to a small pastoral group as compensation for homicides, Brakna warriors, chiefs from neighboring regions and powerful tributaries in the process of repudiating their tributary status engaged in a symbolic duel that revolved around the increasingly unstable role of the warrior as a consumer of tribute and dispenser of ‘protection’.

Type
Political Transformation on the Desert-Edge
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , November 1995 , pp. 419 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 The term ‘south-west Sahara’ as used here refers to a cultural rather than geographic region. It designates those areas of Saharan and Sahelian West Africa in which the Hassaniyya dialect of Arabic is widely spoken, and in which a majority of the population practiced, until recently, a nomadic lifestyle. It includes Mauritania and the western Sahara, as well as parts of Morocco, Algeria and Mali. While the focus of this study is Brakna in southern Mauritania, many of the generalizations about culture and ideology presented here have wider application within the region.

2 I have followed the usage standard in literature on Bedouin societies in Africa and the Near East in employing the word ‘tribe’ to refer to the autonomous groups that comprised the basic political and social units of the pre-colonial Sahara. These groups generally expressed their collective identity in genealogical terms, as the presumptive descendants of an eponymous ancestor whose name the tribe bore. In Arabic such a group was referred to as a qabīla (pl. qabā'il or qabīlāt), of which ‘tribe’ is the usual translation. I would like to thank Waïl Hassan of the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Illinois, and Abu Bakr ‘Abd al-Ghani, formerly of the Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois, for assistance with translations from the Arabic.

3 It is certainly among the best-documented legal disputes ever to have taken place in the pre-colonial south-west Sahara. The reconstruction offered here is based upon several dozen Arabic documents from Boutilimit, Mauritania. I have seen other documents that refer to the case in Nouakchott, Dakar and Timbuktu. The principal documents used below are: Haroun Ould Cheikh Sidiyya Library, Boutilimit (HOCS), copies on microfilm at the Illinois Archives, University of Illinois, # 1010–2, 1015, 1023–4, 1031–2, 1064, 1076–9, 1361, 1363–8, 1370–1, 1554, 1563, 1949 and 1951; and Haroun ould Cheikh Sidia Baba, Catalogue of Correspondence and Literary Works of Shaikh Sidiyya ibn al-Mukhtar ibn al-Haiba (CAT) (photocopies in the possession of C. C. Stewart) # T4, T24–5, 173, 175, 177, 193, 209, 210, 236, 247, 261, 282, 291, 305, 319, 423, 426–34, 462, 505–6, 569. Several scholars have referred to aspects of the Tabiyyat affair. See C. C. Stewart, Islam and Social Order in Mauritania: A Case Study from the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1973), 97–100; Abdel Wedoud Ould Cheikh, ‘Nomadisme, Islam et pouvoir politique dans la société Maure précoloniale (Xlème siècle–XIXème siècle): essai sur quelques aspects du tribalisme’, (Thèse de Doctorat d'état, Université de Paris V, 1985), 481ff.; and ‘La tribu comme volonté et comme representation: le facteur religieux dans l'organisation d'une tribu Maure’, in Bonte, Pierre et al. (eds.), Al-Ansâb, la quête des origines: anthropologie historique et la société tribale Arabe (Paris, 1991), 145–99Google Scholar; Marty, Paul, Études sur l'Islam et les tribus maures: les Brakna (Paris, 1921), 86–7Google Scholar; Amilhat, Pierre, ‘Petit chronique des Id Ou Aich, héritiers guerriers des Almoravides sahariennes’, Revue des Études Islamiques (1937), 81Google Scholar; and Leriche, A., ‘Des châtiments prevues par la loi musulmane et de leur application en Mauritanie’, Bulletin de l'I.F.A.N., sér. B, XIX (1957), 458.Google Scholar

4 This began even earlier in some areas. See Archives Nationales du Sénégal, Dakar (ANS), 13-G-100: 10, 18, 20. It constituted an especially crippling blow to Trarza warriors for whom harvest taxes on Wolof villages were an important source of revenue. On the erosion of Trarza control over nomadic tributaries, see ANS 9G-3: 74–5, 78.

5 The payment of diyya in compensation for homicide is an old practice, with its origins in pre-Islamic Arabian society and its religious sanction in the Qur'an (4: 92). In Bedouin societies such as that of the south-west Sahara, diyya was a collective obligation paid by the kinsmen of a perpetrator of homicide to the kinsmen of a victim. For a legalistic account of its practice in Mauritania, see Leriche, ‘Châtiments’, 446–63.

6 In eighteenth-century Brakna warriors intervened regularly in the dynastic conflicts of Fuuta, often in the company of ‘Ormans’, or nomadic warriors from southern Morocco who made their appearance in European accounts in the late seventeenth century. An early account of these interventions may be found in Le Maire, , Les voyages du Sieur Le Maire aux Isles Canaries, Cap-Verd, Sénégal, et Gambie: sous Monsieur Dancourt, Directeur Général de la Compagnie Roïale d'Afrique (Paris, 1695), 70–1.Google Scholar André Delcourt's classic monograph, La France et les établissements français au Sénégal entre 1713 et 1763 (Dakar, 1952)Google Scholar, 155ff., discusses such interventions in detail. See also Johnson, James Philip, ‘The Almamate of Futa Toro, 1770–1836: a political history’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1974), 59Google Scholar; and Kane, Oumar, ‘Les Maures et le Futa-Toro au XVIIIe siècle’, Cah. Ét. Afr., XIV (1974), 237–52.Google Scholar

7 For example, the Awlad A'li participated in the age-grade associations of Pulaarspeakers of Bossea province in central Fuuta during the nineteenth century. See Robinson, David, Chiefs and Clerics: Abdul Bokar Kan and Futa Toro, 1853–1891 (Oxford, 1975).Google Scholar

8 Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century sources would appear to date Awlad al-Siyyid's control of the escale of Brakna to the decade of the 1760s, or slightly earlier. Prior to that tirne, the escale was controlled by the Idablahssan, a zwāya group that continued to play an important role at the escales of Brakna and Trarza in the nineteenth century. See Dominique Harcourt Lamiral, L'Affrique et le peuple affriquain, considérés sous tous leurs rapports avec notre commerce et nos colonies (Paris, 1789), 88–9, and S. M. X. Golberry, Fragments d'un voyage en Afrique, fait pendant les années 1785, 1786 et 1787 (Strasbourg, 1802), 269–77. Paul Marty reproduces the text of a treaty between Governor Repentigny and Muhammad W. al-Mukhtar, ‘roi des Bracknas’, dated 1785, which he believed to be the earliest extant treaty of its kind. See Marty, Brakna, 348–60.

9 The acacia trees that provide gum arabic grow in an east-west band that extends across much of southern Mauritania and adjacent regions of Senegal and Mali and continues east to the Red Sea. See P. Bellouard, ‘La gomme arabique en A.O.F.’, Bois et forêts des tropiques, Comité National des Bois Tropicaux, No. 9 (ter trimestre, 1949), 3–18. In the nineteenth century gum flowed to the escales near Podor from far in the interior as well as from areas closer to the river. A map published by Governor Gaden in 1929 shows local concentrations of acacia north of Podor and southwest of Lac Aleg, in areas that would have been within the zone of influence exerted by the Awlad al-Siyyid; however, the regions of highest density lay to the north-west of Lac Rkiz, in areas controlled by Trarza warriors, and along the right bank across from Saldé in areas controlled by the Awlad A'li and Twabir. Gaden, , ‘La gomme en Mauritanie’, Annales de l'Academie des Sciences Coloniales, IV (1929), 17–18.Google Scholar On the gum trade in the nineteenth century, see Webb, James L. A., ‘The trade in gum arabic: prelude to French conquest in Senegal’, J. Afr. Hist., XXVI (1985), 149–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 In 1835, the Twabir and Awlad ‘Ayd joined a coalition against the Awlad al-Siyyid chief Ahmaddu W. Sidi A'li, ‘roi’ of the Brakna escale, that included the majority of hassani groups in Brakna: ANS 9G-1: 27.

11 The timing of the Awlad al-Siyyid collapse corresponded closely with a period of temporary decline in the volume of the gum trade following the boom of the 1830s. See Webb, , ‘Gum arabic’, and Curtin, Philip D., Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Supplementary Evidence (Madison, 1975), 78–9.Google Scholar In a letter to the governor dated 1840, Ahmaddu W. Sidi A'li, the ‘roi’ of Brakna who was soon to be assassinated, mentioned a falling out with his kinsmen: ANS 9G-4: 11–12.

12 Many letters in the Brakna dossier at ANS (9G-4) show warrior chiefs embarrassed for funds with which to reward their tributary supporters. See, for instance, 9G-4: 93.

13 In a letter to Faidherbe, the leaders of the Twabir expressed their desire for a truce and wrote: ‘We have no quarrel with anyone except those who kill one of our people’: ANS 9G-4: 102. As the Twabir were negotiating a truce with the French their former ‘protectors’ the Awlad Naghmash were at war with the French-supported ‘roi’, Sidi A'li W. Ahmaddu: ANS 9G-4: 98.

14 ANS 9G-4: 103–5, and unnumbered letter dated 27 April 1864.

15 A French report dated 1863 provides a view of the social composition of the raiding economy in Brakna. The report lists the culprits in some 22 raids in the Senegal Valley over a period of just under two years, raids in which some 2,500 head of cattle and various small stock were seized. The worst offenders were the Arralin, followed by harratin of the Awlad al-Siyyid (always accompanied by Awlad al-Siyyid warriors) and the Tanak (a warrior tributary group of harratin origin). Of all these groups, harratin proved the most resistant to efforts by the Awlad al-Siyyid ‘roi’, Sidi A'li W. Ahmaddu, to cornpe restitution for the thefts: ANS 9G-4: 116, 122.

16 For instance, in the mid-1850s, the Awlad Ahmad supported Mhammad W. Sidi, then at war with the French and isolated from Podor. When the war ended in 1858, the French recognized Mhammad W. Sidi as ‘roi’ and the Awlad Ahmad abandoned him in favor of his rival Sidi A'li W. Ahmaddu. After the assassination of Mhammad W. Sidi in November of that year, Sidi A'li achieved recognition and the Awlad Ahmad immediately deserted him. By 1864, the Awlad Ahmad were busy raiding gum caravans in the company of Sidi A'li's rival Muhammad al-Habib W. al-Mukhtar. By 1866, Muhammad al-Habib W. al-Mukhtar had achieved tacit recognition as ‘roi’ and was collecting tolls at Podor. That year, the Awlad Ahmad, his consistent supporters for over four years, abandoned him in favor of Sidi A'li: ANS 9G-4: 90–1, 94, 149, 152, 168–9.

17 ANS 9G-4: 46, 78.

18 W., which stands for ‘wuld’ (‘son of’ in Hassaniyya) is the equivalent of ‘ibn’ in classical Arabic. The Idaw ‘Ish, fundamentally different in structure from the small, specialized warrior groups of Trarza or Brakna, emerged in the eighteenth century from a social movement that deserves to be termed a pastoral revolution. Bakkar W. Swayd Ahmad, who dominated a faction of the Idaw ‘Ish from the mid-1830s until his death in 1905, would attempt during the 1850s and 1860s to extend his control to other escales such as Matam in the late 1850s (ANS 9G-5: 17–20, 25–6), Tébékout (a.k.a. Saldé) in the early 1860s (9G-5: 23–4, 29–32), Medine in the mid-1860s (9G-5: 64–7) and Dagana in the late 1860s (9G-5: 66–7). Nevertheless his power remained rooted in the nomadic economy, as he emphasized in a letter to Governor Faidherbe in 1857 (with disdainful allusion to the Awlad al-Siyyid): ‘It is not coutumes that are my wealth; our riches consist of our camel herds and our thoroughbred horses, because we are nomads. Tichit, Chinguetti, the Oued-Noun and still other countries furnish our needs. I am not like those who have nothing but their coutumes by which to live’ (ANS 9G-5: 8–11). On the history of the Idaw ‘Ish, see Paul Marty, ‘Les chroniques de Oualata et de Néma (Soudan Français)', Revue des Études Islamiques, 1 (1927), 355–575Google Scholar; Amilhat, ‘Petit chronique’, and Ahmad Mahmoud ould Brahim, ‘L'Emirat du Tagant: La crise de succession du début du XIX siècle (1821–1836/1236–1251)’ (Mémoire de Maîtrise, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Université de Nouakchott, Mauritania, 1989–90).

19 See for example ANS 9G-4: 155–6 (Letter from Sidi A'li to Governor, Jan. 1865).

20 Much has been written about the carab or ‘hassani’ warrior, usually in contradistinction to its opposite cultural type, the zwāya or ‘marabout’. Like any such construction, the cultural type represented by the hassani or ‘noble’ warrior of Arab descent was as much prescriptive as descriptive. It represented a model for behavior, ethics and values that marked the specialized warrior as worthy of the status he enjoyed. Ould Cheikh's ‘Nomadisme’ advances the best explication of these categories to date.

21 The Jayjiba, a zwāya group with close relations to the Awlad al-Siyyid whose members included distinguished scholars and religious shaykhs, suffered heavy losses of livestock in the late 1840s at the hands of the Awlad Ahmad as well as Trarza groups such as the Awlad Daman and Awlad Ahmad min Daman. Over the course of a single season, the Jayjiba and Tabiyyat lost more than 1,000 cattle and several thousand sheep, as well as tents, horses, camp supplies, guns and slaves (CAT: T24, 305; HOCS: 1364–65).

22 Details of these earlier killings are murky. They are documented by only one manuscript, CAT: 426, dated 1845. It is the only one in the corpus of Boutilimit documents referring to Awlad Abyayri–Tabiyyat relations that bears a date. The symmetry of these killings led Stewart to conclude that the document refers to the later killings discussed here, and thus to mis-date the affair by several years. See Stewart, , Social Order, 97Google Scholar, n. 1. Although a puzzling document, it clearly refers to diyya paid by the Tabiyyat to the Awlad Abyayri. In all the documents referring to the case discussed here the reverse is true.

23 The career of Shaykh Sidiyya is the subject of Stewart's detailed study, Social Order.Ould Cheikh, ‘Nomadisme’, includes a sophisticated analysis of the fusion of tribal and religious rhetoric in the writing of Shaykh Sidiyya. Stewart regarded the Tabiyyat affair as a turning point in the rise to prominence of Shaykh Sidiyya, and wrote: ‘[Sidiyya's] generous and efficient settlement of the matter made out of it, for nineteenth-century Mauritania, an example of justice and equity in the application of the shari'a’ (Social Order, 98).

24 CAT: 305, Sidiyya to the Awlad Ahmad and Mhammad Wuld Sidi; CAT: 173, Sidiyya to the Jayjiba and Tabiyyat. In the latter, Sidiyya attests that the two Awlad Abyayri men, Sidi Wuld Husayn and Sidina Wuld al-Talib (probably of the sub-group Awlad Ahmad Wuld al-Fall), to whom he refers as ‘fools’ or ‘reckless ones’ (sufahā’) were unarmed and did not take part in any violence. Their involvement in a raiding party is somewhat at odds with the reputation of the ‘zviaya’ as peaceable marabouts, but was far from exceptional. CAT: T24, Sidiyya to the Tabiyyat, reports success in negotiating the return of slaves and some 3,000 sheep seized by the Awlad Ahmad, and apologizes for the fact that the Awlad Daman and other Trarza groups have already disposed of (literally, ‘eaten’ – akala) their plunder.

25 In a letter to the Tabiyyat, Sidiyya explained: ‘We were collecting the two diyya when Bakkar heard news of them and sent to us demanding them. We refused, saying: “We will not pay unless permission comes from the Tabiyyat.” Then Bakkar despaired of collecting them, until one of your delegates came to us, followed by a second confirming what he said. They told us to pay Bakkar’ (CAT: T24). HOCS: 1076, places the amount of livestock seized from the Awlad Abyayri by the Idaw ‘Ish at 200 cattle, 100 camels, several asses and a large number of sheep (much of this livestock was subsequently returned; see note 36 below). CAT: 175 specifies the number of diyya claimed by Bakkar. CAT: 193, 210A, 247, 423, 427–33,436–7, 439 and HOCS: 1023 refer to the often painful negotiations necessary to produce contributions from the talāmīdh and Awlad Abyayri sub-groups.

26 The Indian cotton cloth known as ‘guinée’ (in Hassaniyya, khant) was the most important good exchanged for gum arabic at the river escales. By the mid-nineteenth century a measure of guinée cloth called the ‘pièce’ (baysa) was a standard unit of currency throughout south-west Mauritania. Its use in matters of symbolic importance such as diyya (for which classical legal authorities specified camels; see Leriche, ‘Châtiments’) is indicative of the impact of river trade on the economic lives of nineteenth-century Saharan pastoralists.

27 According to a report dated 1857, the French considered the Awlad ‘Ayd to be tributaries of the Awlad Naghmash (ANS 9G-4: 70), but this seems unlikely and is not mentioned in subsequent reports (ANS Q-20: 43). By that date the Awlad Naghmash had been so weakened by the Brakna conflict that it is doubtful they could have enforced tributary obligations in any case (see ANS 9G-4: unnumbered report by Perraud, dated 1862).

28 CAT: 438.

29 ANS 9G-4: 17–20.

30 CAT: 462. Sidiyya also appealed to the Jayjiba to exert their influence over the Awlad ‘Ayd (CAT: 291).

31 Given the circumstances, Sidiyya's letter of reproach to the Awlad Mansur appears amusingly reticent: ‘Your behavior was, legally speaking, not nice…ghayr ḥasan sharc(an)’: HOCS: 1367–8.

32 HOCS: 1365, 1064 document various aspects of the Awlad al-Siyyid role in the affair. The crisis within the eastern Awlad Abyayri is the subject of several letters exchanged by Sidiyya and their leaders: CAT: 434, 438–9, and HOCS: 1363, 1371, 1554 and 1951. The atmosphere of intimidation surrounding the affair is vividly documented in a number of letters. HOCS: 1076, cited earlier, lists Awlad Abyayri property seized by the Idaw ‘Ish. HOCS: 1363, 1371 refer to the homicide committed by the Awlad Mansur. CAT: 434, 438 complain of raids and threats by the Awlad Mansur. HOCS: 1554 complains of threats by the Awlad Naghmash.

33 HOCS: 1076.

34 HOCS: 1077, CAT: 209.

35 CAT: 177, Sidiyya to Muhammad Mahmud Wuld Lmarabit Habib Allah. ‘Banu Hassan’ refers here to hassani warriors.

36 It should be mentioned that Bakkar, with a view to maneuvering Sidiyya into supporting his cause, had eventually waived his claim to a third diyya in compensation for some of the livestock that the Idaw ‘Ish had seized from the Awlad Abyayri in the first months of the affair. Since the Tabiyyat had given this third diyya to Bakkar, who had subsequently agreed to forgo its collection as compensation to the Awlad Abyayri, Sidiyya regarded the diyya as no longer owed to the Tabiyyat. Logically, however, the legality of this compensation was contingent upon the legality of the gift to Bakkar. Likewise with the two diyya actually paid to Bakkar; if Sidiyya conceded the illegality of the Tabiyyat's gift, then he was still legally liable to the Tabiyyat for property already paid to Bakkar (CAT: 175). Bakkar's ruthlessness as displayed in this affair, combined with his extraordinary astuteness in exploiting the contradictory interests of his adversaries, does much to account for the length and success of his career as a warrior chief.

37 An example is HOCS: 1366 (identical to CAT: 191). Among the 15 chiefs addressed in this letter are: Mhammad W. Sidi, Sidi A'li W. Ahmaddu and Bubakar W. Khaddish (rival Awlad al-Siyyid chiefs); Sidi Ahmad W. Ahmayyad (Awlad Naghmash); Mhammad W. Hayba (Awlad A'li); Muhammad Fall W. al-Amin Fall (Bassin); al-Mawlud W. Bazid, A'li W. Mhaymadut and al-Ratili (Tabiyyat); and al-Mukhtar W. ‘Amar Abdalla (Twabir).

38 A fascinating French report dated 1862 describes the effect on Brakna hassanis of nearly twenty years of conflict. The Awlad Naghmash had been weakened to the point where they were forced to abandon, at least temporarily, their old territory in the interior of Brakna, and instead to pass most of the year near the river. This would necessarily have implied loss of control over former tributaries such as the Twabir (other sources confirm this; see note 13 above) as well as over nomadic pastoral tribes of the Agan and Tezaguert. The Awlad Mansur suffered even more and were reduced to a handful of warriors who depended upon a few tributaries scattered among the pastoral tribes of Brakna. ANS 9G-4: unnumbered report by Monsieur Perraud dated 1862.

39 The work of anthropologist Pierre Bonte on pre-colonial warrior politics in the Adrar ‘emirate’ offers a more sophisticated version of this paradigm. See Bonte, , ‘Tribus, faction et état: les conflits de succession dans l'émirate de l'Adrar’, Cah. Ét. Afr., XXII (1987–1988), 489–516.Google Scholar

40 As this paper was undergoing final revision, an important new work on the southwest Sahara appeared: jun., James L. A. Webb, Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change along the Western Sahel, 1600–1850 (Madison, 1995).Google Scholar Without dispensing completely with ‘emirates’, Webb introduces a new contextual framework to south-west Saharan studies, one that is based upon the long-term ecological trends that influenced relationships between merchants, warriors, pastoralists and cultivators on the edge of the Sahara. Webb also directly addresses the difficult and sensitive question of the formation of racial identities in the context of historical interactions between ‘Black’ African cultivators and ‘White’ (Arabic and Berber-speaking) warriors and pastoralists.