Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-13T00:41:25.281Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Saharan migrant camel herders: Znāga social status and the global age*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2014

Francisco Freire*
Affiliation:
CRIA (Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia) – FCSH/NOVA (Faculdade Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract

In the late 20th century, 300 Mauritanian shepherds travelled to the United Arab Emirates in order to tend the herds of some of that country's most prominent leaders. These low-tech subjects of global migration flows were particularly valued and sought after by their Emirati employers for their expertise in raising camels. I analyse the forms and consequences of this migration, focusing on the reintegration of these shepherds into Mauritanian stratified tribal spheres following their return to the Sahara. The possibility of a change in their social status (after a financially rewarding experience in the Gulf) will be a central theme of this article. This issue arises from the pervasive designation of these shepherds as a ‘tributary’ (znāga) group, through the application of the tripartite social model that, to a large extent, still defines Mauritania's arabophone population.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This study was funded by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (BPD/47681/2008), which I would like to thank for its support. In Mauritania, my work was much facilitated by my friends Elemin ould Mohamed Baba, Mohamed Hmayada, Yahya ould al-Bara, Mahmuden ould Hally and Mohamed ould Sidi.

References

REFERENCES

Adriansen, H.K. 2008. ‘Understanding pastoral mobility: the case of Senegalese Fulani’, Geographical Journal 174, 3: 207–22.Google Scholar
Al-Chennafi, M. 1981. ‘How the Ḥassāniyya vernacular of Mauritania supplanted Zenaga’, Maghreb Review 6: 77–8.Google Scholar
Austen, R.A. 2010. Trans-Saharan Africa in World History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Azarya, V. 1996. ‘Pastoralism and the state in Africa: marginality or incorporation?’, Nomadic Peoples 38: 1136.Google Scholar
Baroja, J.C. 2008 [1955]. Estudios saharianos. Madrid: Calamar.Google Scholar
Barth, F. 1986 [1961]. Nomads of South Persia: The Basseri tribe of the Khamseh confederacy. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Ben Hounet, Y. 2008. ‘Gérer la tribu?’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines 191: 487512.Google Scholar
Bollig, M. & Schulte, A.. 1999. ‘Environmental change and pastoral perceptions: degradation and indigenous knowledge in two African pastoral communities’, Human Ecology 27, 3: 493514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonte, P. 1987. ‘Donneurs de femmes ou preneurs d'hommes? Les Awlad Qaylan, tribu de l'Adrar Mauritanien’, l'Homme 27, 102: 5479.Google Scholar
Bonte, P. 1990. ‘L’‘ordre’ de la tradition. Evolution des hiérarchies statutaires dans la société maure contemporaine’, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée 54: 118–29.Google Scholar
Bonte, P. 2000. ‘Faire fortune au Sahara: permanences et ruptures’, Autrepart 16: 4965.Google Scholar
Bourgey, A. 1991. ‘Les travailleurs étrangers dans les pays arabes du Golfe’, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée 62: 130135.Google Scholar
Brauer, R.W. 1993. ‘The camel and its role in shaping mideastern nomad societies’, Comparative Civilizations Review 28: 106–51.Google Scholar
Brenner, L. 2001. Controlling Knowledge: religion, power and schooling in a West African Muslim society. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Bruijn, M. de & van Dijk, H.. 2003. ‘Changing population mobility in West Africa: Fulbe pastoralists in Central and South Mali’, African Affairs 102, 407: 285307.Google Scholar
Bullard, A. 2005. ‘From colonization to globalization: the vicissitudes of slavery in Mauritania’, Cahiers d’études Africaines 45, 179/180: 751–69.Google Scholar
Caillié, R. 1996 [1830]. Voyage à Tombouctou. 2 vols. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Casciarri, B. 2009. ‘Between market logic and communal practices: pastoral nomad groups and globalization in contemporary Sudan (case studies from central and western Sudan)’, Nomadic Peoples 13, 1: 6991.Google Scholar
Chatty, D., ed. 2005. Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: entering the 21st century. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Choplin, A. 2008. ‘L'immigré, le migrant, et l'allochtone: circulations migratoires et figures de l’étranger en Mauritanie’, Politique africaine 109: 7390.Google Scholar
Choplin, A. 2009. Nouakchott, au Carrefour de la Mauritanie et du Monde. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Ciavolella, R. 2008. ‘Fantasmer sur les hommes, tracer les frontières: l'histoire des frontières méridionales de Mauritanie’, Studia Africana 19: 6270.Google Scholar
Cleaveland, T. 1998. ‘Islam and the construction of social identity in the nineteenth-century Sahara’, Journal of African History 39: 365–88.Google Scholar
Conte, E. & Walentowitz, S.. 2009. ‘Kinship matters. Tribals, cousins, and citizens in southwest Asia and beyond’, Études Rurales 184: 217–48.Google Scholar
Coon, C.S., von Wissmann, H., Kussamaul, F. & Montgomery Watt, W.. 1986. ‘Badw’, in Gibb, H.A.R., Kramers, J.H., Lévi-Provençal, E. & Schacht, J., eds. Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 872–92.Google Scholar
Curtin, P.D. 1971. ‘Jihad in West Africa: early phases and inter-relations in Mauritania and Senegal’, Journal of African History 12: 1124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darraj, S.M. & Puller, M.. 2009. United Arab Emirates. New York, NY: Chelsea House.Google Scholar
Degen, A. 2011. ‘Transformation of Borana from nomadic pastoralists to agropastoralists and shift of livestock from cattle to include more goats, camels and sheep in Southern Ethiopia’, International Journal of Business and Globalisation 6, 3–4: 292312.Google Scholar
Dresch, P. & Piscatori, J., eds. 2005. Monarchies and Nations: globalization and identity in the Arab states of the Gulf. London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
El Hamel, C. 2012. Black Morocco: a history of slavery, race, and Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ensel, R. 1999. Saints and Servants in Southern Morocco. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Fourchard, L.Goerg, O. & Gomez-Perez, M., eds. 2009, Lieux de Sociabilité Urbaine en Afrique. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Fratkin, E., Galvin, K.A. & Roth, E.A., eds. 1994. African Pastoralist Systems: an integrated approach. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freire, F. 2013. Tribos, Princesas e Demónios. Etnografias do Encontro Pré-Colonial no Sudoeste do Saara. Lisbon: Colibri.Google Scholar
Galvin, K.A. 2009. ‘Transitions: pastoralists living with change’, Annual Review of Anthropology 38: 185–98.Google Scholar
Geschiere, P. & Gugler, J.. 1998. ‘Introduction. The urban-rural connection: changing issues of belonging and identification’, Africa 68, 3: 309–18.Google Scholar
Grégoire, E. 2000, ‘Les chasses du prince Bandar’, Autrepart, 16: 8797.Google Scholar
Haas, H. de. 2006. ‘Migration, remittances and regional development in southern Morocco’, Geoforum: Journal of Physical, Human, and Regional Geosciences, 37: 565–80.Google Scholar
Hall, B.S. 2011. A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hamès, C. 2008. ‘Problématiques de la magie-sorcellerie en Islam et perspectives Africaines’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines XLVIII, 1–2: 8199.Google Scholar
Hart, D.M. 1997. ‘Berber names and substrata in Mauritania and the Western Sahara: linguistic and ethno-historical guidelines for future research on a paradoxical problem’, Journal of North African Studies 2, 1: 5871.Google Scholar
Hill, J. 2012. ‘The cosmopolitan Sahara: building a global Islamic village in Mauritania’, City & Society 24, 1: 6283.Google Scholar
Hodges, T. 1983. Western Sahara: the roots of a desert war. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill and Co.Google Scholar
Holt, P.M. 1986. ‘Bakkāra’, in Gibb, H.A.R., Kramers, J.H., Lévi-Provençal, E. & Schacht, J., eds. Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 962.Google Scholar
Hunwick, J. 1997. ‘Sub-Saharan Africa and the wider world of Islam: historical and contemporary perspectives’, in Rosander, E.E. & Westerlund, D., eds. African Islam and Islam in Africa: encounters between sufis and islamists. London: Hurst, 2854.Google Scholar
Insoll, T. 2007. ‘Changing identities in the Arabian Gulf: archaeology, religion, and ethnicity in context’, in Insoll, T., ed. The Archaeology of Identities: a reader. Abingdon: Routledge, 308–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufmann, J.C. 2009. ‘The sediment of nomadism’, History in Africa 36: 235–65.Google Scholar
Khalaf, S. 1999. ‘Camel racing in the Gulf. Notes on the evolution of a traditional cultural sport’, Anthropos 94, 1–3: 85106.Google Scholar
Khalaf, S. 2000. ‘Poetics and politics of newly invented traditions in the Gulf: camel racing in the United Arab Emirates’, Ethnology 39, 3: 243–61.Google Scholar
Khalaf, S. 2010. ‘Dubai camel market transnational workers: an ethnographic portrait’, City & Society 22, 1: 97118.Google Scholar
Khaldûn, Ibn. 1989 [1967]. The Muqaddimah: an introduction to history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, M.A. 2009. ‘Slave descent and social status in Sahara and Sudan’, in Rossi, B., ed. Reconfiguring Slavery: West African trajectories. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2644.Google Scholar
Krätli, G. & Lydon, G., eds. 2011. The Trans-Saharan Book Trade. Manuscript culture, arabic literacy and intellectual history in Muslim Africa. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Kuper, A. 1982. ‘Lineage theory: a critical retrospect’, Annual Review of Anthropology 11: 7195.Google Scholar
Lecocq, B. 2005. ‘The bellah question: slave emancipation, race, and social categories in late twentieth-century northern Mali’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 39, 1: 4268.Google Scholar
Lériche, A. 1955. ‘Notes sur les classes sociales et sur quelques tribus de Mauritanie’, Bulletin de l'IFAN XVII, 1–2: 173203.Google Scholar
Lériche, A. & Ould Hamidoun, M.. 1948. ‘Notes sur le Trârza: essai de géographie historique’, Bulletin de l'IFAN X: 461538.Google Scholar
Leroux, H. 2004. ‘Le statut des serviteurs en tribus nomades, nécessaire évolution (cercle de Gao)’, Mondes et Cultures 64, 1: 326–40.Google Scholar
Lesourd, C. 2009. ‘Mauritanie: une école pour tous, une éducation pour qui?’, in Caratini, S., ed. La question du pouvoir en Afrique du Nord et de l'Ouest, Vol. 1. Paris: L'Harmattan, 153–82.Google Scholar
Lewis, I.M. 1975. ‘The dynamics of nomadism: prospects for sedentarization and social change’, in Monod, T., ed. Pastoralism in Tropical Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 426–42.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, P.E. 2000 [1983]. Transformations in Slavery: a history of slavery in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, P.E. 2012. ‘Islamic scholarship and understanding history in west Africa before 1800’, in Rabasa, J., Sato, M., Tortarolo, E. & Woolf, D., eds. The Oxford History of Historical Writing, 1400–1800, Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 212–32.Google Scholar
Lydon, G. 2009. On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic law, trade networks, and cross-cultural exchange in nineteenth-century Western Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Marfaing, L. & Wippel, S., eds. 2004. Les Relations Transsahariennes à l’Époque Contemporaine: un espace en constante mutation. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Marty, P. 1919. L’Émirat des Trarzas. Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux.Google Scholar
McDougall, E.A. 2010. ‘The politics of slavery in Mauritania: rhetoric, reality and democratic discourse’, Maghreb Review 35, 3: 259–86.Google Scholar
McDougall, J. & Scheele, J.. 2012. ‘Introduction: time and space in the Sahara’, in McDougall, J. & Scheele, J., eds. Saharan Frontiers: space and mobility in Northwest Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 121.Google Scholar
Monod, T. 1967. ‘Notes sur le harnachement chamelier’, Bulletin de l'IFAN 29: 234–74.Google Scholar
Mundy, J. & Zunes, S.. 2010. Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Nawata, H. 2005. ‘Historical socio-economic relationships between the Rashāyda and the Beja in the Eastern Sudan: the production of racing camels and trade networks across the Red Sea’, Senri Ethnological Studies 69: 187213.Google Scholar
Norris, H.T. 1962. ‘Yemenis in the Western Sahara’, Journal of African History 3, 2: 317–22.Google Scholar
Norris, H.T. 1969. ‘Znaga Islam during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 32: 496526.Google Scholar
Norris, H.T. 1986. The Arab Conquest of Western Sahara: studies of the historical events, religious beliefs and social customs which made the remotest Sahara a part of the Arab world. Harlow: Longman; Beirut: Librarie du Liban.Google Scholar
Ong, A. & Collier, S.J., eds. 2007 [2005]. Global Assemblages: technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Österle, M. 2008. ‘From cattle to goats: the transformation of east Pokot pastoralism in Kenya’, Nomadic Peoples 12, 1: 8191.Google Scholar
Otayek, R., ed. 2011. Dimensions Transnationales de l'Islam Africain et Mutations Contemporaines du Sahel. Bordeaux: LAM/CNRS.Google Scholar
Ould Ahmed Salem, Z. 2001. ‘Tcheb-tchib et compagnie: lexique de la survie et figures de la réussite en Mauritanie’, Politique Africaine 82: 78100.Google Scholar
Ould Ahmed Salem, Z. 2007. ‘Islam in Mauritania between political expansion and globalization: elites, institutions, knowledge, and networks’, in Soares, B.F. & Otayek, R., eds. Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2746.Google Scholar
Ould Ahmed Salem, Z. 2009. ‘Bare-foot activists: transformations in the Haratine movement in Mauritania’, in Ellis, S. & van Kessel, I., eds. Movers and Shakers: social movements in Africa. Leiden: Brill, 156–77.Google Scholar
Ould Ahmed Salem, Z. 2013. Prêcher dans le Désert: islam politique et changement social en Mauritanie. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Ould Cheikh, A.W. 1985. ‘Nomadisme, Islam et pouvoir politique dans la société Maure précoloniale (XIes.–XIXes.): Essai sur quelques aspects du tribalisme’. Ph.D., Université de Paris V – René Descartes.Google Scholar
Ould el-Bara, Y. 2007. ‘Morsures de serpent: thérapie et magie chez les Bidân de Mauritanie’, in Hamès, C., ed. Coran et Talismans: textes et pratiques magiques en milieu musulman. Paris: Karthala, 175208.Google Scholar
Ould el-Bara, Y. 2009. al-Majmū'a al-Kubrā al-chāmila li-fatāuā ua-nauazil ua-ahkām ahl gharb ua-janūb gharb al-Sahrā, 12 volumes. Nouakchott: Mawlây al-Hasan.Google Scholar
Ould Sa'ad, M.M. 1989. ‘Emirats et espace émiral maure: Le cas du Trarza aux XVIIIe–XIX siècles’, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée 54: 5382.Google Scholar
Radeny, M.Nkedianye, D., Kristjanson, P. & Herrero, M.. 2007. ‘Livelihood choices and returns among pastoralists: evidence from Southern Kenya’, Nomadic Peoples 11, 2: 3155.Google Scholar
Rebstock, U. 2011. ‘West Africa (tenth twelfth/sixteenth eighteenth centuries)’, in Fierro, M., ed. New Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 480502.Google Scholar
Rosander, E.E. 1997. ‘Introduction: The Islamization of ‘Tradition’ and ‘Modernity’’, in Rosander, E.E. & Westerlund, D., eds. African Islam and Islam in Africa: encounters between Sufis and Islamists. London: Hurst, 127.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, F. 1993. ‘Nasab’, in Bosworth, C.E., van Donzel, E., Heinrichs, W.P. & Pellat, C., eds. Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 7. Leiden: Brill, 967–8.Google Scholar
Rossi, B., ed. 2009. Reconfiguring Slavery: West African trajectories. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Roy, O. 2008. La Sainte Ignorance: le temps de la religion sans culture. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Salzman, P.C. 2004. Pastoralists: equality, hierarchy, and the state. Oxford: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Sanneh, L. 1976. ‘The origins of clericalism in West African Islam’, Journal of African History 17, 1: 4972.Google Scholar
Scheele, J. 2007. ‘Recycling baraka: knowledge, politics, and religion in contemporary Algeria’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, 2: 304–28.Google Scholar
Searing, J. 2003 [1993]. West African Slavery and Atlantic commerce: the Senegal river valley, 1700–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Seesemann, R. 2004. ‘The shurafa and the ‘blacksmith’: the role of the Idaw ‘Ali of Mauritania in the career of the Senegalese Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (1900–1975)’, in Reese, S., ed. The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa. Leiden: Brill, 7298.Google Scholar
Soares, B.F. 2004. ‘Muslim saints in the age of neoliberalism’, in Weiss, B., ed. Producing African Futures: ritual and reproduction in the neoliberal age. Leiden: Brill, 79105.Google Scholar
Stewart, C. 1973. Islam and Social Order in Mauritania: a case study from the nineteenth century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Swift, J. 1977. ‘Sahelian pastoralists: underdevelopment, desertification, and famine’, Annual Review of Anthropology 6: 457–78.Google Scholar
Taylor, R.M. 2002. ‘L’émirat pré-colonial et l'histoire contemporaine en Mauritanie’, Annuaire de l'Afrique du Nord 1999, 37: 5369.Google Scholar
Taylor, R.M. 2007. ‘Les frontières coloniales et leur imposition dans la vallée du Fleuve Sénégal, 1855–1871. Bouleversements des hiérarchies politiques et statutaires’, in Cervello, M.V. ed. Colonisations et Héritages Actuels au Sahara et au Sahel, Vol. 1. Paris: L'Harmattan, 439–56.Google Scholar
Thesiger, W. 2007 [1959]. Arabian Sands. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Turner, M.D. & Hiernaux, P.. 2008. ‘Changing access to labor, pastures, and knowledge: the extensification of grazing management in Sudano-Sahelian West Africa’, Human Ecology 36, 1: 5980.Google Scholar
Vermeer, D.E. 1981. ‘Collision of climate, cattle, and culture in Mauritania during the 1970s’, Geographical Review 71, 3: 281–97.Google Scholar
Villasante-De Beauvais, M. & Acloque, B., eds. 2000. Groupes Serviles au Sahara: approche comparative à partir du cas des arabophones de Mauritanie. Paris: CNRS.Google Scholar
Wabnitz, H.-W. 2007. ‘The code pastoral of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, return to the sources – Revival of traditional nomads’ rights to common property resources’, Recht in Afrika 10: 139–74.Google Scholar
Werbner, P. 1999. ‘Global pathways: working class cosmopolitans and the creation of transnational ethnic worlds’, Social Anthropology 7, 1: 1735.Google Scholar
Wright, J. 2007. The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. London: Routledge.Google Scholar

Interviews

Daddah ould Mohamed Lemin, Ūlād Bāba Ahmad's ‘traditional leader’, Nouakchott, 29.6.2011.

Bachir ould Abdrahman, shepherd (twelve years in the UAE), Mederdra, 13.4.2012.

Ahmedu ould Mahand Baba ould Mazruf, the Nouakchott-based facilitator who helped the znāga community in the Emirates, Nouakchott, 9.4.2012.

Mohamedin ould Umar, shepherd (ten years in the UAE), Nouakchott, 10.4.2012 and 19.4.2012.