From the Sphinx of ancient Greece to riddles told during evening gatherings in Europe or Africa, human societies everywhere have delighted in concealing a familiar reality behind a few mysterious words. The Amazigh world is no exception. Yet enigmas and riddles are not merely games for passing the time: they teach people to observe, to use language skilfully and to see the world around them differently.

Riddle and enigma: two different forms of wordplay

A distinction can be drawn between the two terms. Moroccan linguist and philologist Abdellah Bounfour, in his study of Tamazight poetic genres included in the Encyclopédie berbère, distinguishes the riddle from the enigma according to three criteria: the function of the game, those who practise it, and its literary form.

The riddle is primarily a game of encoding and decoding: a familiar reality is described indirectly, and the listener must discover what lies behind the image. In Bounfour’s classification, it belongs mainly to the world of children and generally takes a prose form.

The enigma, by contrast, gives greater importance to the aesthetic quality and complexity of its formulation. It is an adult game, sometimes practised by accomplished poets, and takes a verse form. Bounfour sums up this final criterion unequivocally:

This distinction is by no means absolute throughout the Amazigh world: terminology varies from region to region, and authors themselves have not always used the terms in exactly the same way. It does, however, show that we are dealing with several forms of verbal play rather than a single genre. A recent anthology of Berber poetry also points out that the genre of tiɣuniwin — the enigma — remains poorly documented and that classifications of Amazigh poetic genres are not always agreed upon.

The riddle: hiding what everyone knows

Among the Ayt Merghad of South-Eastern Morocco, Ahmed Skounti, professor of anthropology, collected a body of tineẓẓra — riddles transmitted in Tamazight — in the early 1990s.

One of them simply says:

The image refers to the nomadic tent: the two upright poles supporting it become two young girls, while the long ridge pole takes on the features of the old man. Skounti himself uses this riddle again when describing the architecture of the tent.

The entire mechanism of the riddle is contained in these few words. Someone familiar with the tent sees its components every day; yet language transforms them until, for a moment, they become strange.

What is already known must suddenly be looked at differently.

The Encyclopédie berbère emphasises this close relationship between riddles and everyday life: the home, the human body, water, the sun, animals and familiar objects provide much of their imagery. The evening gathering thus becomes both a form of entertainment and a way of testing a child’s ability to recognise their own environment when it is presented indirectly.

The enigma: when language becomes a knot

With the enigma in the strict sense, the game moves into another register.

Émile Laoust had already recorded, in his Cours de berbère marocain, a formula used among the Ayt Ndhir: qqenx-ac, “I close it for you”, to introduce more complex enigmas using veiled expressions. His book in fact devotes several pages to these forms of wordplay.

The expression would later acquire particular significance in the study of Amazigh oral literature. Abdellah Bounfour links qqenx-ac with tiɣuniwin, the plural of taɣuni, “the act of knotting, of closing”. The image is striking: posing an enigma means closing or knotting language so that someone else may try to open it again.

Laoust also collected forms closer to the riddle. One begins:

The answer is a letter.

Another says:

The answer is a shadow.

These two examples still belong to the riddle: a familiar reality is concealed behind an image that has to be deciphered. With the versified enigma, however, the game becomes more elaborate.

These few examples also show why the boundary between genres must be handled with care. Laoust was primarily recording living forms of language and oral literature; later analysis gradually drew a clearer distinction between the prose riddle and the more elaborate, versified enigma practised by adults.

In the latter, it is no longer simply a matter of hiding an object behind an ingenious comparison. The composition itself matters: language becomes part of the game. The riddle primarily asks us to find; the enigma also invites us to admire the way in which the answer has been concealed.

Learning to think through play

There is nothing exclusively Amazigh about these games.

In many societies with strong oral traditions, riddles combine entertainment, learning and knowledge of the surrounding world. An ethnographic study among the Guji of Ethiopia, for example, shows children using riddles both to play together and to learn how to observe their social and natural environment.

The references vary from one culture to another. Here it may be a tent; elsewhere a plant, an animal, a tool or a natural phenomenon. Yet the mechanism is remarkably universal: take something everyone knows, conceal it behind another image, and challenge someone else’s intelligence to recognise it.

This is already what the riddle of the Sphinx does when it transforms the stages of human life into a creature that walks successively on four, two and then three legs.

Amazigh tradition adds a particularly evocative metaphor: the knot.

Language knots reality. It is for the listener to untie it.

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More fragments from the Berber world

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Tikirt: an Amazigh fortified city between splendour and oblivion

In the 1960s, as a child in Ouarzazate, Driss Boukili El Hassani would set out with his companions towards the caves of Tazakhte, then surrounded by stories, fears and mysteries. Here he recalls those walks, those explorations and a place that became one of the inner landscapes of his childhood.

I remember the happy days of my childhood in Ouarzazate, with the companions of those years, whom I can still see as though the past had suddenly come back to life.

It was the 1960s.

To the north, the hill where the offices of the governor of Ouarzazate then stood, still known as “the Redoubt”, as it had been during the French Protectorate, overlooked a few small neighbourhoods clustered together like a village. This was the centre of Ouarzazate, crossed by a single avenue.

Further south, the Drâa Valley fascinated us with its splendour, its banks covered with date palms and green gardens. The avenue and the valley formed two parallel axes running across the hills and rocky ridges of Ouarzazate.

Beside the emerging town centre, a vast plateau served as a take-off and landing ground for small aircraft. It was the airport. As children, we felt a certain pride at seeing, so close to us, real aeroplanes that had come from elsewhere to our own place.

Far away on the horizon, an imposing hill could be seen. It appeared so blurred that it might have been mistaken for a mirage. This was Tazakhte, with its cavities cut into its arid walls, to which our imagination gave an almost ageless antiquity and the story of inhabitants who had disappeared long ago.

Tazakhte left a mythical imprint on our collective memory. It was a place around which fantastic stories and fabulous beliefs were woven.

The origin of its name is unknown. A source of endless unanswered questions, the mere mention of it filled us with both fear and wonder, and its deep caverns were naturally a place of adventure for minds hungry for mystery.

We were children then. Ramadan was not, for us, a month of religious rituals, fasting and prayer. It was the precious time for discovering these strange and unknown places.

In groups of friends, we often set out for Tazakhte, and it was clearly a way of asserting our courage, a kind of bravado in the face of the unknown.

The place seemed frozen in time, immersed in an almost unchanging silence. To us, it surely had to be inhabited by djinns, those supernatural beings said to inhabit underground worlds.

Before crossing its threshold, we bowed down in reverence

We would set out on foot to discover Tazakhte, braving the scorching heat to cover the few kilometres that separated us from our destination, wearing makeshift plastic sandals that were nevertheless sturdy, crossing rocks and hills, crushing wild plants such as harmal beneath our feet, overturning stones and sending golden scorpions fleeing from our path.

As soon as we reached the valley of the Oued El-Maleh and Tazakhte drew closer, a terrible anxiety would seize us. Yet we pretended to be brave, trying to overcome our fear and continue on our way with confidence.

The entrance to the cave was a low, horizontal slit. Before crossing its threshold, we bowed down in reverence. Then we crawled inside, entering this frightening world that seemed to swallow us whole. We moved deeper into the bowels of the place, our bodies covered with dust and scraping against the stones.

This journey through the dark maze increased our anxiety. Yet we stubbornly continued to push forward into the darkness. A frightening silence reigned, broken from time to time by the voices and whispers of our companions.

At last, a glimmer of light brought hope to our hearts. That faint glow gradually dispersed the oppressive darkness and guided us further into the depths of the cave. Damp chambers appeared before our eyes. Galleries whose shapes seemed to have been carefully drawn by the rock itself, as though rooted in the earth. Rudimentary rooms had been arranged at the far end, beneath a vast black veil resembling a flock of crows.

This legendary cave brought each of us back to a foetal state. It was as though Mother Earth were giving birth to us anew. She subjected us to the test of adapting and surviving within our surroundings.

Then we climbed back towards the azure-blue sky like the leaves of a fragile plant. We jostled against one another like the buds of a rose, determined and full of enthusiasm, eager to enjoy this moment of joy to the full.

The ritual of returning to the earth

With the innocence of childhood, this pilgrimage to Tazakhte during Ramadan was like a ritual return to the earth. Our bodies covered in its dust and rubbed against its gravel, we experienced it as though the earth were tenderly welcoming us back into its embrace.

This passion for going to Tazakhte in a spirit of almost contemplative devotion freed us forever from the fear of the unknown and of invisible worlds. We entered into communion with this strange and unfathomable space, which revealed to us its own language, made of shapes, scents and colours that we endlessly questioned in wonder. Tazakhte stirred contradictory feelings within us, sharpening in us a romantic temperament and a taste for surrealism.

Tazakhte, this Platonic cave, still defies oblivion today and resists the failings of memory. It still stands there, forever enchanting, with its unexplored secrets preserved in its galleries and tunnels since time immemorial, and still capable of awakening in every visitor a thousand and one questions that will remain unanswered.

My Driss Boukili El Hassani

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Tamegroute: green pottery and the Naciria Library

Once upon a time in the ksar of Aït Ben Haddou, four Christian princesses …

The art of women’s hairstyles among the Aït Atta of southern Morocco

The unimaginable has happened in Morocco, as everywhere else on our planet. Aircraft have been grounded for more than two months, the roads are empty, coaches and grand taxis have stopped criss-crossing the country. The tourists have gone. Hotels are empty, as are guesthouses, cafés and restaurants. Every profession connected with tourism has come to a standstill, caught overnight in a state of complete immobility. The lanes of the medinas, ksour and kasbahs are deserted. The bazaars have closed their doors, the souks have fallen asleep. The tea has gone cold, and bitter.

Everyone knows it. Tourism plays an important role in Morocco’s economy, not only in terms of the official figures — GDP or foreign-currency revenues — but also, and perhaps above all, because of the vast submerged world of the informal economy. In practical terms, tens of thousands of people, and their families, now find themselves without an income.

Tourism has also played a major role in the evolution of Moroccan society, encouraging a culture of hospitality and sustaining a beneficial openness to the world and an encounter between cultures.

What will happen now? Are we about to witness a profound change in the way people travel? Is this the end of cheap journeys across the planet? Is mass tourism destined to disappear? Nobody knows. What does seem likely, however, is that foreign tourists will only return to Morocco gradually, perhaps not for many months, as caution is likely to outweigh the desire to travel elsewhere.

Morocco’s key question, therefore, is what it will make of the period ahead — a period as blank as a new page in the book of its existence.

For the vast majority of Moroccans, rural Morocco remains terra incognita

One thing seems clear, and many other countries struck by the same tourism crisis have already begun preparing for it: domestic tourism must be able to help save the tourism economy, and for that to happen Moroccans must decide to travel within their own country. Calls to do so are multiplying, and the Moroccan National Tourist Office has launched an awareness campaign on public television under the slogan #3lamantla9aw, which can be translated as until we meet again, with the aim of encouraging Moroccans to choose Morocco.

The initiative is commendable, but the challenge appears difficult, given that the relatively weak share of domestic tourism has long been a constant feature of Morocco’s tourism economy. There are obstacles that will have to be faced openly if there is any hope of reducing them.

The first is the attitude of tourism operators in Morocco, who have always regarded the foreign traveller as their preferred customer. In practice, Moroccan travellers often do not feel welcome, particularly when they want to stay in a hotel. They know it, and accommodation providers make them feel it. Accommodation prices are also far too high for many Moroccan tourists, who will instead make their own arrangements and informally rent private accommodation in the places where they wish to stay.

The challenge facing domestic tourism, however, comes up against a much more difficult obstacle: while seaside destinations, from Dakhla to Nador, will always find an audience among Moroccans, the country’s interior — rural Morocco in all its diversity — remains terra incognita for the overwhelming majority of Moroccans, and is very likely to remain so for a long time unless an individual and collective awakening changes the situation.

Rural Morocco should become the honey of a thriving domestic tourism sector

Yet inland Morocco, rural Morocco, lies at the very heart of the country’s identity. Its geographical position has endowed it with a dazzling natural environment whose power lies in its still-preserved authenticity. With its high mountains, valleys, rocky plateaux, green plains, but also its oases and, of course, its vast deserts, Morocco offers an extraordinary range of landscapes to anyone wishing to encounter nature in all its diversity.

While many foreigners have travelled, and will continue to travel, thousands of kilometres from their countries of origin to walk across the rocks of the Siroua or M’Goun, or tread the sands of the Sahara, how many Moroccans, how many young Moroccans, how many Moroccan families, have ever crossed one of their country’s oases? How many have spent a night beneath the stars of the Moroccan desert? How many have walked the paths alongside its wadis?

Rural Morocco is also, and above all, the memory of Morocco inscribed in its territories and in the communities of women and men who, since the earliest times, have written the history of the country; and more than that, who have built, stone by stone, gesture by gesture, word by word, the timeless body of its heritage.

From prehistoric traces carved into rock to dinosaur bones; from the ancestral ways of life of Amazigh tribes, Jewish communities and communities from sub-Saharan Africa to the ruins of once-flourishing cities and the kasbahs of former lords; from the arts of dance and song and crafts whose origins reach back into little-known times to customs exchanged between continents along the great camel caravan routes; from the memory of great battles and their heroes, conquerors and resistance fighters alike… all these facets form the pantheon of a rich and abundant Moroccan history that deserves at last to be valued at its true worth, and to become the honey of a thriving domestic tourism sector.

The reality, however, is very different. A Moroccan wishing to discover his or her own history in all its diversity would find almost no organised tourism offer capable of providing a journey that would broaden their general knowledge and, above all, renew their pride in being Moroccan, confronted as they would be with the panorama of such a remarkable history.

South-Eastern Morocco is sitting on a treasure

South-Eastern Morocco illustrates this situation particularly starkly. Providence has made the region one of Morocco’s great natural and historical treasures, yet almost nothing has been done to ensure that travellers can find the structures, tools and environments they need for a memorable encounter with what is nevertheless one of the very hearts of Moroccan heritage — perhaps even its foremost one.

Who knows that South-Eastern Morocco once saw the birth and growth of the medieval city of Sijilmassa, whose influence once radiated across the African continent? How can one follow the traces of the first humans to have walked the lands between Tamgroute, Ouarzazate and Errachidia? What was life like in the great oases of the Drâa? How can one imagine the intensity of the great battles fought around the mountains of Tinghir, such as the Battle of Bougafer, where the Aït Atta tribes and their leader, Amghar Assou Oubaslam, mounted such fierce resistance? How can one recover the echo of the valiant warriors of the Aït Khbach or R’guibat tribes of the Sahara? How can one walk through the Ouarzazate of the French Protectorate, a period that was nevertheless so eventful? How can one immerse oneself in the culture of the Jewish communities that helped build so much of South-Eastern Morocco, with their hands, their minds and, above all, their hearts?

Who still knows that the Alaouite dynasty of King Mohammed VI has its roots in the Tafilalet, and how can its epic journey to Rabat be discovered? Who has felt the coolness of the Valley of Roses in the Dadès and that of the Drâa palm groves? Who can see the bones of the oldest dinosaur ever discovered in Morocco, just a few kilometres from Ouarzazate?

South-Eastern Morocco is sitting on a treasure, on that rich honey capable of drawing countless Moroccans — families, children and young people — into its territories, all of them surely eager to discover their own history and to recognise themselves as the heirs of such a universal heritage.

Towards a new paradigm of territorial development

So how do we prevent this honey from turning into sand?

The key to success lies in a collective mobilisation equal to the scale of the crisis and what is at stake. Nothing less is required than a new paradigm of territorial development, and the Drâa-Tafilalet region could become its laboratory, not only because it is a newly created region, but above all because it carries within it a considerable share of Morocco’s history: a paradigm in which the protection and enhancement of natural, cultural and historical heritage become the structuring and dynamic foundations of public policy.

Tourism professionals will, of course, have to orient their offers more decisively towards the discovery of these pillars of regional identity: nature and history. Local public authorities will also have to invest in the infrastructure needed for museums and ecomuseums finally to emerge, enabling the Moroccan public to encounter all the treasures of the territory: here devoted to dinosaurs or minerals, there to oases or Amazigh crafts, elsewhere to the story of the French presence or the great heroes of the region, further on to the contributions of Jewish communities and peoples from the great South, or to the history of ksour and kasbahs.

Those responsible for tourism will have to move beyond the postcard mentality and understand the value both of territorial marketing and of a cultural calendar.

Moroccans themselves, too, will have to rediscover within themselves that thirst for culture, that desire for memory, that appetite for history. Moroccan media, like schools, could certainly play a stronger role in redirecting the Moroccan gaze towards the country itself, and in teaching people to look upon it with appreciation, grounded in the factual reality of the countless natural and cultural riches with which Morocco is endowed. Yet this may ultimately be the easiest condition to fulfil, because, like every human being, Moroccans instinctively know that their inner balance and the strength of their identity depend upon a continuity of consciousness between their origins and their horizons.

All that is needed, then, is to make available to Moroccans the full richness of their history — in its plurality, in its truths, and in its capacity to form part of our shared humanity. Here in South-Eastern Morocco, as everywhere else across rural Morocco.

The challenge is to awaken Morocco’s memories

Ultimately, this rural Morocco, this magnificent setting of nature and memory, now carries within it an essential dimension of the country’s modernity, at a time when the aspiration towards greater ecological awareness is growing ever stronger throughout the world.

The slogan of the Moroccan National Tourist Office nevertheless seems somewhat naive, because this is not simply a matter of bringing Moroccans and their country back together. It is about responding to a more general slumber of memory in Morocco.

The challenge is nothing less than to awaken our gaze, to force it away from all the superfluities of modern life and rediscover the path back towards ourselves, collectively as well as individually, so that we may encounter our true face: the true face of Morocco — ancestral, natural, rainbow-coloured.

Something like a gaze towards beauty.

Eric Anglade

For more than twenty years, Éric Anglade has lived in a village of South-East Morocco, where he explores and documents the region’s history, heritage, and living traditions. He founded sudestmaroc.com as a space for sharing fieldwork and cultural insight, bridging local knowledge with global perspectives. He also works alongside women carpet-weavers to help sustain their craft and welcomes travellers at Le Jardin de Yuda, his guesthouse envisioned as a meeting place for exchange and transmission.

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Rain rites in Amazigh lands: Anzar, Taghonja and the magic of water

Discovering Morocco as in the days of the caravans of old

Our ancestors, the Berbers…

When a new Amazigh year begins at Yennayer, its year number is 950 years ahead of the Gregorian calendar: 2026 thus becomes 2976. This figure might suggest that Amazigh people have been counting the years in this way for almost three millennia. That is not the case. North Africa’s agricultural calendar is ancient, but the present-day numbering of Amazigh years is a twentieth-century creation.

An agricultural calendar far older than its year numbering

For centuries, rural populations across the Maghreb organised part of their agricultural work according to a solar calendar derived from the Julian calendar. The names of several months still bear traces of this history: Yennayer, for instance, derives from the Latin Ianuarius, January.

This calendar helped mark the time for sowing and harvesting, periods of cold weather, and days regarded as favourable or dangerous for crops. Over time, it became enriched by local traditions, sayings, observations of the stars and practices specific to different regions of North Africa.

But the years were not numbered from some ancient Amazigh ‘year zero’. The practice of writing 2976, 2977 or 2978 today belongs to a much more recent history.

Read more: Yennayer, the Amazigh New Year

Why was 950 BC chosen?

The starting point adopted for the modern system is 950 BC, approximately associated with the accession of Sheshonq I to the throne of Egypt.

Sheshonq came from Libyan populations that had been settled in Egypt for several generations. He became pharaoh and founded the Twenty-second Dynasty. His Libyan origins led the creators of the modern Amazigh calendar to regard him as one of the earliest historically documented figures who could be associated with the Libyco-Berber world.

The date of 950 BC should, however, be understood as a conventional reference point. Current Egyptological chronology generally places the reign of Sheshonq I at around 945 to 924 BC. The intention is therefore not to claim that an ‘Amazigh era’ literally began on a particular day in the year 950 BC.

A system of year numbering created in the twentieth century

The idea of giving the Amazigh calendar its own year numbering emerged within Berber cultural circles in Paris during the second half of the twentieth century.

It is chiefly associated with Ammar Negadi, a Chaoui intellectual and cultural activist. In 1980, he published a calendar bearing the year 2930, calculated by adding 950 years to the Gregorian date.

The principle is simple: 1980 + 950 = 2930. In the same way, 2026 becomes 2976, 2027 becomes 2977, and so on.

This new system gradually spread far beyond the circles in which it had first appeared. Today it is widely used during Yennayer celebrations and in publications devoted to Amazigh culture.

An ancient calendar, a modern era

To say that we are in the year 2976 of the Amazigh calendar does not therefore mean that a continuous count of years has been handed down since the time of Sheshonq.

Two histories meet here.

The first is the much older history of North Africa’s agricultural calendars, its seasons, Yennayer and the rural knowledge associated with the annual cycle.

The second is that of an Amazigh era created in the twentieth century, which chose Sheshonq as its historical and symbolic point of reference.

The distinction matters: the recent origin of the year numbering does nothing to diminish the antiquity of the calendrical practices onto which it was grafted. Rather, it tells us how a culture can take up ancient traditions and, in a new age, give them another framework through which to count time.

Read more: Rites and legends of Yennayer, the Amazigh New Year

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More fragments from the Berber world

Ahwach and Ahidous, the two amazigh dances of the moroccan Atlas

Tasgedlt: the mysterious citadel of the Christian princesses

Bilmawen : the Berber carnival spirit of Morocco

Riddle and enigma: a game of the mind in Amazigh tradition

Ali the Hooded One, fugitive of the rain

The Idols of Taliza, two forgotten divinities of Ashura

Yaz, the Amazigh sign of the free man

Why is the Amazigh year 950 years ahead?

Taghonja, the Berber bride of rain

Among the Tuareg, the facial veil known as the tagelmust traditionally belongs to men. Women, by contrast, leave their faces uncovered. The Saharan climate explains part of this practice, but certainly not its essence. The tagelmust is also a sign of age, restraint, respect and belonging to an Amazigh society whose codes differ markedly from those of the northern Maghreb.

Who are the Tuareg, these Amazigh people of the Sahara?

The Tuareg belong to the wider Amazigh world, but their historic territory lies beyond Morocco, across the central Sahara and the Sahel. They are not a single tribe, but a collection of groups and confederations established notably in the Hoggar and Tassili n’Ajjer, the Aïr, the Adrar des Ifoghas and the Sahelian regions that now extend across Algeria, Libya, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. Their territory, long structured around pastoral routes, confederation territories and caravan trails, was later divided by colonial boundaries and then by the borders of modern states.

In the West, the Tuareg have often been nicknamed the “Blue Men”, a reference to indigo-dyed cloth whose colour could stain the skin. The expression, widely popularised by travel writing and the imagery of the Sahara, is not exclusive to them, however: it has also been applied to other nomadic peoples of the desert.

Their languages — Tamasheq, Tamajaq or Tamahaq depending on the region — belong to the Berber language family. The Tuareg have also preserved the use of Tifinagh in forms particular to their own culture. For centuries, pastoral mobility and participation in trans-Saharan trade shaped a society adapted to movement across immense territories.

Another characteristic has long attracted the attention of ethnologists: among many Tuareg groups, traditional descent is matrilineal. A child belongs to the mother’s lineage, and the tent itself is traditionally a woman’s possession, passed down through the maternal line. This does not mean, however, that Tuareg society is a matriarchy: descent, property, family authority and the exercise of power are not the same thing.

And it is within this Muslim society, with its own distinctive codes, that we encounter an inversion that often surprises outsiders: it is the men who conceal their faces.

Read more: Tifinagh: from stone to digital, the living alphabet of the Amazigh world

The tagelmust, a veil marking entry into the world of men

The tagelmust is both turban and facial veil. Wrapped around the head, it may leave only a narrow opening around the eyes. In ethnographic descriptions of the Hoggar, a young man traditionally begins wearing it as he approaches adulthood: putting on the veil for the first time can itself mark the transition to adult manhood.

Women may cover their heads with cloth, but their faces remain uncovered.

Its importance is such that some Tuareg have referred to themselves as Kel Tagelmust, “those of the veil”. The garment therefore became far more than protection from the desert: it became a sign of Tuareg male identity itself.

The word belongs to an ancient Berber lexical family. Tagelmust — ⵜⴳⵍⵎⵙⵜ — is related to agelmus, a word used in several Atlas dialects for a hood. From Morocco to the Sahara, the same root, GLMS, thus refers to something that covers or wraps the head.

Sand and sun do not explain everything

The most obvious explanation appears to be the desert itself. The cloth does indeed protect against the sun, wind, sand and drying effects of the desert air. Yet ethnologists have long pointed out the weakness of a purely climatic explanation: why would women living beneath the same sun not cover their faces as well?

Anthropologist Jeremy Keenan, who studied the Kel Ahaggar during the 1960s and 1970s, noted that men might keep their veil on in camp, in the presence of others, and even in situations where protection from sand made little sense. The precise origin of the custom remains uncertain despite its antiquity.

The explanation must therefore be sought elsewhere.

Veiling the face as a sign of restraint

Among the Tuareg, the male veil forms part of a social language of modesty, reserve and respect.

Its position may itself change according to the person being addressed. Geographer Edmond Bernus observed that a young man might leave more of his face visible among companions, then immediately raise his veil in front of someone to whom he owed deference. Other studies have noted this particular restraint in the presence of elders, strangers or relatives by marriage, especially a mother-in-law.

A covered face therefore does not simply say: “I am protecting myself.” It may also say: “I know how to keep the proper distance between myself and another person.”

The Smithsonian Institution summarises this dimension by associating the male veil and women’s head coverings with a broader Tuareg value of reserve, linked to a person’s status and to the different stages of life.

So why do women not veil their faces?

This is perhaps where the subject becomes most interesting.

The answer is not that Tuareg women are subject to fewer rules of modesty. Those rules are simply expressed through different signs. In the traditional system, the facial veil became an attribute of the adult man: it marks his restraint, his status and the way he enters into relationships with others.

The important place occupied by women within Tuareg kinship systems, and their often matrilineal character, makes this reversal particularly striking. It would, however, be unwise to turn this directly into the “cause” of the male veil. Ethnologists themselves have never established a single, certain origin for the custom.

Ultimately, the tagelmust reveals something more interesting than a simple exception in dress. The same idea — modesty — can be inscribed very differently upon bodies and clothing from one society to another. Among the Tuareg, it is traditionally the face of the adult man that the cloth invites to remain partly withdrawn.

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Bilmawen : the Berber carnival spirit of Morocco

An animal bought by several people, portions of meat allocated by lot, and payment sometimes deferred under the responsibility of a guarantor. In Mots et choses berbères, published in 1920, Émile Laoust describes the luzia in exceptionally precise detail. Behind this collective way of obtaining meat emerges an entire system of trust, fairness and obligations between members of the group.

An old practice that has not entirely disappeared

The luzia is not an exclusively Amazigh practice. Comparable forms are documented elsewhere in North Africa. Yet it is both old and widely attested in several Berber societies, to which the account collected by Laoust belongs.

Laoust does not say when or where the luzia first appeared. Nor was he its first witness. In Morocco, Edmond Doutté described an ouzîa among the Rehâmna as early as the beginning of the twentieth century: the inhabitants of the same village bought an animal collectively, each family paid its share, and the portions were allocated by lot. The practice was therefore documented before the publication of Mots et choses berbères, although the sources do not allow us to date its origins.

The highly codified form described by Laoust now largely belongs to the past. The principle of collectively sharing meat, however, has not disappeared. As recently as March 2026, practices known as ouzia were organised in the Rif, notably among the Igzennayen and in Al Hoceima Province, in a context now more closely associated with solidarity and religious festivals.

In a village of South-Eastern Morocco, collective purchases of meat still occasionally take place between several people. The ceremonial described by Laoust — going from house to house, the little sticks and the drawing of lots — has disappeared, but the organisation has not become entirely informal. One man still directs the sharing, acts as guarantor for the operation and then collects the money from the participants. It would be excessive to claim that this is the luzia of 1920 surviving unchanged; the functional continuity is nevertheless striking.

On the mat, the portions of meat are ready. Each person has brought a small recognisable marker, a little stick or a stone. A man mixes them with his eyes closed, then places them one by one on the portions. Soon each family will be able to carry its meat home.

Yet it may not necessarily have paid for it yet.

This scene appears in the chapter of Mots et choses berbères devoted to food. Laoust reproduces an Amazigh text accompanied by his French translation and follows almost the entire operation he calls luzia, also transcribed as ouzâ in the translation: purchase of the animal, participation of the households, cutting up the meat, drawing lots, selling the hide and, finally, settling the money owed.

Everything begins with a question of trust.

One man answers for everyone’s payment

The participants look for an owner willing to sell a bull or a cow that is not in calf. But the seller is not satisfied with a collective agreement. He requires one man to take personal responsibility for payment.

The seller chooses from among the buyers the man who seems to offer the strongest guarantees. He agrees:

The damen now occupies a central position. Several people buy together, but the seller knows whom to turn to if the money does not come in.

In the example reported by Laoust, the agreed price is twenty reals — in other words, twenty rials, the old Moroccan monetary unit then in use. This was not a fixed price for a luzia, merely the amount agreed in this particular transaction.

The Hassani rial was a Moroccan silver currency introduced under Moulay Hassan I. Its reference value was five French francs before the severe monetary disruption of the First World War and its disappearance in 1920.

A messenger is then sent to fetch the animal from pasture. The shepherd points it out among the herd; a rope is passed around its horns and the animal is led back to the buyers.

The agreement has been made. But the group of participants has not yet been definitively established.

Going from house to house

After lunch, one of the men goes to gather those who are to take part in the operation. Those who are absent are informed, and everyone must be able to give a clear answer.

Some agree:

Others decline:

Participation is therefore not automatic.

The messenger goes from house to house, and Laoust reports a remarkable detail: widows too are explicitly consulted.

The widows are therefore fully consulted as possible participants in the purchase. Before anything can be shared, it must first be known who is committing themselves.

Going from house to house serves an essential purpose: participation is made known to everyone, preventing any household from later saying that it had been forgotten.

Counting people before preparing the portions

Once the participants are known, the animal is led beneath a fig tree, slaughtered and prepared.

Laoust dwells on the butcher’s work: skinning, cutting up, gutting and then preparing the portions. He even describes how the hide is loosened by blowing air through an incision made in one of the legs.

But the essential moment comes with the sharing.

Households are not treated as identical units. Some contain eight or ten people; others only a couple. Laoust specifies that the reckoning is made “by households, or better still by heads”.

The number of people to be fed therefore enters into the preparation of the portions.

The pieces are laid out on a mat. The entrails are prepared separately. Laoust does not give details of how the quantities are calculated; what he does emphasise is the care taken to prepare the portions before they are allocated.

When his work is finished, the butcher announces:

A little stick so that no one chooses their portion

Each participant has a marker he will be able to recognise: a piece of wood, long or short, or a small or large stone.

One man has remained apart. He returns with his eyes closed, receives the markers and mixes them in his hand.

Then the drawing begins.

One marker on the first portion. Another on the next. And so on until each portion bears its sign.

Each person then recognises his little stick or stone and takes away the portion that has fallen to him. The same procedure is repeated for the entrails.

Laoust himself gives the reason for the procedure: “all dispute is avoided”.

The butcher prepares the portions, but no one chooses directly which piece he will receive. Chance intervenes precisely where personal choice might give rise to suspicion.

The portion is not chosen. It is assigned.

The hide escapes the drawing of lots

Once the meat and offal have been distributed, something remains that cannot be shared in the same way: the hide.

It is sold at auction.

The dellal stands in the middle of the group and calls for bids. In the account, one person offers three reals, another four. The bidding continues until no one offers more. The sale is then closed.

The formula recorded by Laoust wonderfully captures the atmosphere:

The highest bidder receives the hide with a wish:

Laoust does not specify what subsequently becomes of the proceeds from the auction.

Taking the meat home does not mean it has been paid for

It is perhaps at this point that the luzia described by Laoust becomes most interesting.

The meat is already in the houses. Yet the money has not necessarily been paid. A deadline has been agreed. When it arrives, it is the damen who once again makes his rounds to collect the contributions.

Those who have the money pay. Those experiencing temporary difficulty may ask him to wait until the next market:

Laoust thus distinguishes temporary hardship from refusal to pay. In the first case, additional time may be granted. In the second, the debtor may be summoned before the justice of the amghar, the local authority.

Sharing therefore does not erase the debt.

Trust has made it possible to buy before payment has been completed; but that trust rests upon a commitment for which someone — the damen — has agreed to answer.

Buying meat, but also organising trust

Reduced to its basic principle, the luzia seems very simple: several people buy an animal which none of them necessarily wishes or is able to purchase alone, and divide its meat among themselves.

The account preserved by Laoust reveals a much more elaborate mechanism.

A seller must accept the arrangement and a guarantor must pledge his word. Households must be informed and it must be established who is participating. The number of people to be fed must be taken into account, portions considered equitable must be prepared, and chance must intervene to prevent anyone from choosing his own piece. What cannot be divided must be sold. And then the money still has to be collected.

• Trust makes the purchase possible.
• Consultation determines who takes part.
• Calculation establishes the portions.
• Chance allocates them.
• The auction decides the fate of the hide.
• The guarantor carries the debt until payment.

Each stage therefore answers a different risk: the seller might not be paid, some households might be forgotten, the portions might be considered unequal, or the choice of pieces might be disputed. The luzia does not eliminate these risks: one after another, it gives each of them a rule.

This is perhaps what makes Laoust’s text so valuable. It does not merely preserve the memory of an old way of obtaining meat. Through a few hours in the life of a group, it reveals an economy in which a person’s word, personal reputation and responsibility towards others count almost as much as money.

When the dishes have left the mat, the luzia is not over.

The guarantor still has his rounds to make.

Read also: Rites and legends of Yennayer, the Berber New Year

Read also: The Harvest King: rites and legends of Berber wheat

Eric Anglade

For more than twenty years, Éric Anglade has lived in a village of South-East Morocco, where he explores and documents the region’s history, heritage, and living traditions. He founded sudestmaroc.com as a space for sharing fieldwork and cultural insight, bridging local knowledge with global perspectives. He also works alongside women carpet-weavers to help sustain their craft and welcomes travellers at Le Jardin de Yuda, his guesthouse envisioned as a meeting place for exchange and transmission.

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The Tifinagh, the Berber singularity engraved in time

Once upon a time in South-East Morocco…

Fint Oasis, as told by its elders

In Kourkouda, near Taznakhte, Fadma Aït Hmam spent much of her life weaving, tending to domestic tasks and living a pastoral life before discovering painting later in life. With no artistic training, she began to set down on canvas the colours, landscapes and figures of her everyday world. Abdeljalil Didi recounts the unexpected blossoming of a vocation.

Talent has no age. It requires neither a certain level of education nor a particular social background. It is a gift. A seed that germinates deep within each of us before growing and emerging into the light. Fadma Ait Hmam has the talent of a painter.

She discovered this hidden treasure within herself at the age of fifty-five. Just as time was beginning to trace a few lines across her face, Fadma moved against the current and gave free rein to her imagination, painting life and colouring it in her own way. She has roots in the Iznaguen tribe, certainly, but also the wings of a self-taught artist learning to master the brush.

A life far from the easel

Today, Fadma is a grandmother. She cradles her nephews and nieces. She also cradles the memories of a life lived across the plains, mountains and fields of Iznaguen, her native village.

She looks back on her former life: a Berber girl whose world seemed confined to the boundaries of her own homeland. She wove beautiful carpets, tended a small herd nearby, fetched water from the river or the wells…

The years follow one another and merge together. Fadma reaches the age of married life. A hurried maturity. She leaves her village to live with her husband in Kourkouda, a small village 25 kilometres from Taznakhte. It is her destiny. She does not complain. Her duty as a faithful wife and responsible mother is fulfilled.

What remains of a life that was hers? The storm of time has swept everything away.

At fifty-five, painting becomes a spring

Her childhood and youth are now only images in her memory, rising into the light of remembrance before disappearing again into the opacity of oblivion, as though into an abyss. Without ever having foreseen it, or even thought of it once in her life, Fadma found her spring: painting. With her brush, she paints the words of her pain, revives her childhood memories and softens moments of bitterness.

At sixty-two, Fadma’s life has become a fountain. Her fertile imagination flows abundantly onto the canvas in the form of flowers, gardens, mountains and kasbahs. Much of what she has lived through, and much of the world around her, rises again to the surface, stirred by the desire to tell her life and her thoughts. In her home, one room serves at once as a guest room, a painting studio and an exhibition space for her work.

When literacy classes reveal an artist

Her discovery of painting is a recent story. In 2007, she was attending literacy classes at the school in her douar.

One day, the teacher asked his pupils, all of them women, to copy letters and words into their notebooks. Using coloured pencils, Fadma, still a novice at writing, scribbled something onto the page. Impressed by the drawing of a pupil more than twenty-seven years his senior, the teacher brought to light a talent that had until then remained hidden. He gave Fadma brushes, paints and canvases.

Since then, painting has become both a passion and a habit. Once finished, her paintings are hung in her guest room. Very shy by nature, she never dares to travel alone to take part in exhibitions.

In June 2012, the Professional Federation of Handicrafts paid tribute to her during the second handicrafts gathering held in Ouarzazate, in the presence of Mr Saleh Benyettou, Governor of Ouarzazate Province.

There is something striking about meeting a Berber woman who has become a painter at the age of sixty-two. Usually, women from the villages of the South are the favoured backdrop of postcards and photographs. Fadma chose instead to stand before the easel and draw her own world. Neither age nor time has diminished her talent.

Read also: The story of the women of Taznakhte woven into their looms

Crédit Photographie : Abdellah Azizi
www.azifoto.com

Abdeljalil Didi

A native of Ouarzazate, Abdeljalil Didi has been actively involved in community life for more than twenty years, with a particular focus on local development. He contributes to the web magazine sudestmaroc.com, sharing stories about the life of South-East Morocco’s territories and their collective memory. He also supports young people in their education through a dedicated space offering guidance, encouragement and opportunities for personal development.

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In Gueddara, a potters’ village in the Skoura palm grove, Izza learnt as a child to work the earth in her father’s workshop. What began as a game gradually became the craft on which her family depends. Abdeljalil Didi recounts the daily life of a woman potter, between physical labour and gestures of creation.

In Gueddara, near Skoura, earth has long been a working material. Potters shape simple objects intended for everyday life: water jars, bowls, braziers and other earthenware vessels. Far removed from the glazed ceramics of Morocco’s great cities, this pottery remains closely tied to local resources, domestic uses and gestures passed down within families.

Izza was born in Gueddara, the potters’ village of Skoura. Illiterate, because in those days only boys were allowed to attend school, Izza spent her childhood in her native village. With few distractions, she went every day to her potter father’s workshop. At first, she tried to make herself useful to her father and brother. She amused herself by sieving the earth and kneading it. Above all, it was a game for her, filling her time by making small clay jugs and little bowls… as though she were building sandcastles by the sea.

When play becomes a trade

The years passed, and through habit Izza gradually acquired the skills of a potter. Her father, weakened by age and illness, no longer had the strength to work. As the eldest child, it fell to her to earn the family’s bread. Her fate was sealed: she would become a woman potter. It is a responsibility she has borne for more than seven years. Now aged thirty-six, she practises a trade that demands considerable physical strength every day.

Izza no longer lives in a world ruled by fragility, whether physical or emotional. Behind her slight frame lies a strength one would scarcely suspect. She digs into the wadi in search of the layer of earth she needs, a pit that the waters of Oued Elhejjaj soon cover again whenever the floods return. But Izza simply begins once more. Around three kilometres from her home, another long and difficult journey awaits her, accompanied by her brother.

Heaps of different kinds of earth are piled up in the corners of Izza’s workshop. She takes a long dried tamarisk branch, cut at one end, and uses it to pound the earth. At first sight, there is something almost ironic in seeing such a slender body attempting to crush dry clods of earth into powder, a task that by its very nature requires great physical strength. Yet Izza knows how to handle her tool. She swings it through the air before bringing it down on the pile of earth, pulverising it blow after blow.

From earth to water jar

From extracting the clay to firing the finished pieces, almost every stage takes place on site. The pottery is thus born from the very earth surrounding the village, through a succession of gestures in which physical strength counts for as much as skill.

Digging, carrying the earth on a donkey’s back, sieving it, kneading it with the feet, shaping it, gathering dry grasses nearby, lighting the kiln, firing the jars… A whole series of exhausting tasks to which Izza devotes herself without showing any sign of fatigue.

Courageous and patient she may be, but her rough hands, her breathlessness and her premature lines say much about the weight she carries.

Read also: Fadma Ait Hmam, a Berber woman with a talent for painting

A note of candour runs through Izza’s words. Habit has perhaps made the burden of her life seem ordinary. With a revealing remark, Izza lets slip something of the hardship she has endured:

The time to create

Once the jar reaches its final stage, a feminine touch adds a note of beauty. Izza takes a feather, dips it into a bowl of fine earth mixed with water and uses it to colour her jar. She draws palm trees with a naïve hand, forms born from her imagination. Her body, exhausted by a succession of gruelling tasks, at last finds an outlet for its fatigue: a moment of rest and gentle creation.

At sunrise on another day, Izza gathers herself once more, cuts into the ground, carries the earth, sieves it, shapes it, making water jars, earthen braziers and bowls. Simple objects that whisper of the hardship, courage and candour of the woman who made them.

This is the story of Izza, artisan of the earth, quietly marked out by time on the banks of Oued Elhejjaj, in the potters’ village of Gueddara.

Read also: The story of the women of Taznakhte woven into their looms

Abdeljalil Didi

A native of Ouarzazate, Abdeljalil Didi has been actively involved in community life for more than twenty years, with a particular focus on local development. He contributes to the web magazine sudestmaroc.com, sharing stories about the life of South-East Morocco’s territories and their collective memory. He also supports young people in their education through a dedicated space offering guidance, encouragement and opportunities for personal development.

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The Tifinagh, the Berber singularity engraved in time

In the small village of Tisselday, at the edge of the Atlas Mountains and the desert, Ahmed Agouni has created far more than a guesthouse. From Irocha, he has woven, over the past twenty years, a singular hospitality where travellers enter into dialogue with nature, cultures, traditions—and silence.

There are lands, scattered across our earth—like here in Morocco—from which energy emanates, compelling one to pause awhile, to let oneself be traversed by these elusive yet potent emanations, with an inexhaustible capacity to restore and invigorate weary bodies and souls.

There are people who radiate an energy that leaves no one untouched. They possess a passion for welcoming, a deftness in offering well-being, and an insatiable desire to share the riches of life gathered along their journey.

There are places where an invisible hearth glows, inviting us to gather—a little removed from the world and its noise, sanctuaries where, for the span of a pause, we are offered a setting to rest and rediscover ourselves.

And sometimes, land, place, and person converge—and in their union, the magic of renewal emerges.

Here, in the village of Tisselday, nestled in the Imini Valley on the southern slopes of the Atlas, Ahmed Agouni and his guesthouse Irocha invite us to such an experience.

Tisselday, the root place

Tisselday is an Amazigh word for the tool once used by local women to stretch their weaving between a loom’s vertical posts. Born here, Ahmed grew up roaming the surrounding mountains, so enchanted by the multicoloured stones that he later went on to study geology at university. In 1994, he discovered a passion for traditional crafts—creating musical instruments and goatskin furniture.

While living in Essaouira, where he opened a small bazaar, he met his partner Catherine, and together they decided to embark on the emerging tourism sector in this remote corner of South-Eastern Morocco.

It was only natural that in 2000 he returned to his native land to lay the first stones of a hospitality project. He built a house of stone and earth, perched atop a rock overlooking the valley. Today, the place has reached its maturity: the warm patina of time is felt from the moment you enter.

Nature has unfolded around it, and the house now offers around ten guest rooms, a pool, dining areas, and a terrace opening onto the sky and the imposing Atlas Mountains—giving every visitor the thrilling sense of being like an eagle poised to take flight towards vast horizons.

Read also: The shepherd, the forgotten pearl of Moroccan cultural heritage

A few months ago, Irocha added a space dedicated to body care, with the opening of a hammam and massage room. More recently, a large hall has been fitted out in warm, soothing woodwork and stained glass, to host cultural discovery, movement, and meditation activities.

Over the years, Ahmed has seen how much travellers enjoy staying in his guesthouse, accompanying him on walks along the mountain slopes or across the dunes of the vast Sahara. They have come to appreciate hearing him recount the region’s rich history, as well as discovering, through him, its many natural treasures and the ancestral know-how of local artisans.

The desire to welcome differently

Yet, despite this satisfaction, Ahmed feels within himself the need to evolve his approach to hospitality, drawing on a double experience patiently built up over the years.

He now understands more deeply than before what the traveller seeks in coming here, and conversely, discerns more clearly what his village, his guesthouse Irocha, and the entire region of South-Eastern Morocco, with all the facets of its cultures and the traditions of its communities, can offer these travellers.

Of course, these travellers are here on holiday; having left behind, for a time, the hectic world and the exhausting lives they lead, their first need is for rest, leisure, and a sense of well-being restored. All this, Ahmed knows how to offer them from the moment they arrive at Irocha.

But he has come to understand that some travellers are searching for something more; something new that will send them home changed—enriched by discovery, learning, or understanding, or else soothed, relieved of a burden, a pressure, or a sorrow.

And it is to these travellers that Ahmed now wishes to devote himself.

The universal alphabet of life’s essential virtues

He wishes to offer them more than a simple stay, but truly a sensitive encounter at the very heart of his region’s natural and cultural identity.

Here in the South-East, as nowhere else in Morocco, the landscapes unfold in all their beauty and diversity. From the peaks and slopes of the Atlas Mountains to the enchanting sands of the Sahara, lush valleys—the Drâa, the Dadès, and the Ziz—offer a succession of date-palm oases and gardens of olives, almonds, and figs.

Across the serene expanse of stone and endless plateaus, everything here is, for the traveller, a source of peace and wonder.

Urban life barely makes itself felt here, as if humbled by the majesty of Nature. That is why people have settled so discreetly, gathering in small villages with their characteristic houses of earth and stone.

Here is rural Morocco—the historic cradle of the royal dynasty, one of the age-old expressions of its Amazigh identity, and the fertile ground of many of its traditional crafts. It is a world where the oldest traditions are still carried on through simple, everyday gestures, or in communal gatherings where time itself seems to stand still—a world where families truly delight in coming together at the weekly souks.

Life here, however, is harsh—just like the climate. In the face of adversity, the people of South-Eastern Morocco have developed a keen sense of resilience, born of sobriety and simplicity, with smiles on their lips and hands extended in welcome, their eyes turned to the sky from which, inevitably, mercy and providence will come.

Time is never a rival; patience comes naturally, humility prevails before the unfathomable mystery of life, and whatever little one has is always shared with the guest who is welcomed in.

All this, Ahmed knows as intimately as he knows his own heart, and he has understood how, here in South-Eastern Morocco, a singular alchemy between humanity, Nature, and time makes the universal alphabet of life’s essential virtues resound.

From Irocha, Ahmed now offers his guests far more than hospitality alone; he invites them to set out to encounter these life-giving virtues, to savour their benefits.

An invitation to take time to reconnect with what is essential, with others, and thus with oneself.

Crédit Photographie : Abdellah Azizi
www.azifoto.com

Eric Anglade

For more than twenty years, Éric Anglade has lived in a village of South-East Morocco, where he explores and documents the region’s history, heritage, and living traditions. He founded sudestmaroc.com as a space for sharing fieldwork and cultural insight, bridging local knowledge with global perspectives. He also works alongside women carpet-weavers to help sustain their craft and welcomes travellers at Le Jardin de Yuda, his guesthouse envisioned as a meeting place for exchange and transmission.

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