The Hemeila Riddle: Genealogical Reconfigurations of Pre-colonial Encounters in Southwestern Mauritania

ABSTRACT

This article will focus on a seldom-considered aspect of Saharan social contexts: the incorporation of European/Christian characters into tribal sociopolitical frameworks. Supported by data from my fieldwork, I will discuss contemporary portrayals of a mid-seventeenth-century woman, Hemeila, whose mother is recognized as a European Christian of Iberian origin. These two women are presently incorporated in different genealogical narratives from Southwestern Mauritania. The research dealt with in this article also relates to discussions of social hierarchy familiar to Mauritania’s Arabophone populations, with a particular focus on groups holding a “religious” (zwaya) status. Additionally, this article discusses the role of the anthropologist as a producer of social facts, which in this context has led to a direct intervention in the reassessment of Saharan historical traditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropology
• Sahara
• Mauritania
• genealogy
• pre-colonial history

Acknowledgments

This study has benefited from the comments and criticism of José da Silva Horta, Benjamin F. Soares, Sébastien Boulay, Maria Cardeira da Silva, and Juan Octavio Hernandez Cabrera, all of whom I wish to thank. In Mauritania, my work was greatly facilitated by Yahya ould al-Bara, Mahmuden ould Hally, and Mohamed ould Sidi.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCiD

Francisco Freire http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6653-8669

Notes

1. Part of the Saharan community of Hassaniyya speakers, the zwaya, together with the hassan (“warriors”), compose the bidan populations of “noble” or “free” status (Bidan is a plural form of the word for “white”). This society also includes various groups of tributary status, with a clear emphasis on the haratin population (of slave descent), which presently forms a demographic majority. I avoid using the term “Moorish” that usually describes the whole of these populations in English, as it does not in fact exist in Hassaniyya and is of very recent (colonial) use in Mauritania.

2. European presence in Mauritania dates from the mid-fifteenth century, with the construction of the Arguin castle on a small island situated to the southeast of the present-day town of Nouadhibou. This location was uninterruptedly used by the Portuguese from 1445 to 1633 (Freire 2011). For an historical overview of Arguin, see Monod (1983).

3. Associated with the Awlad Mukhtar (Sons of Mukhtar).

4. Al-Yadali was an eighteenth-century author (d. 1753) who established the zwaya version of Saharan history, as opposed to the hassan hegemonic order. His famous Shiam al-Zwaya was later adopted by the French colonial school, creating a partition between the “honest” zwaya and the “irascible” hassan (cf. Ould Babbah 1990, in Arabic).

5. One version of this plan, details of which were collected by James Webb, is very clear on the “mukhtarization” of the Idaw al-Hajj:

   About 400 or 500 years ago the Ulad al-Mokhtar came to this region. The first to come was the father of the Ulad al-Mokhtar, who was named Najib. He settled in the village of Tigumatin. […] The first individual to trade gum to the Europeans was Atfagha Awback Ould Najib, but the responsibility for dealing with the Europeans did not remain in his hands. When his brother Al-Amin had first set off for the Maghrib, Al-Amin’s wife had been pregnant with a son, Al-Mokhtar; and these trade responsibilities passed to his son upon his maturity. The direct descendants of Al-Mokhtar Wuld al-Amin Wuld Najib continued to exercise authority in Trarza gum affairs up until the nineteenth century. (Webb 1995a, 110)

6. Hemeila is in fact a very uncommon name. Etymologically, the connection to the Arabic root “hml” allows a number of possibilities: “the one who was taken”; “the forgotten”; or “freed, like a camel from a herd”, as suggested by the Saharan scholar Muhammad al-Chennafi (personal communication). Focusing on standard Arabic, Hans Wehr’s dictionary contributes other possibilities: “[…] to be bathed in tears”; “to neglect”; “to omit, leave out; to disregard, fail to consider or notice, overlook, forget; to cease to use, disuse […]” (Wehr 1980, 1034).

7. The Awlad Baba Ahmed have been identified as inhabiting Southwestern Mauritania since the mid-seventeenth century. They are presently composed of 3800 individuals, with a traditional aire d’influence extending from the Northern outskirts of the town of Mederdra to the Southwestern periphery of Boutilimit, in the North. They are included in the Tachumcha tribal confederation, and are part of the Awlad Daiman qabila (Marty 1919, 194–195). By the mid-seventeenth century, the Trarza Emirate was formed in present-day Southwestern Mauritania (Curtin 1971; Ould Sa’ad 1989), and it was precisely with the first of its emirs (Ahmad bin Daman, d. circa 1631) that the Awlad Baba Ahmed eponym came into prominence, thus consolidating a genealogy and their present zwaya status (Norris 1969, 499; Freire 2014, 430–433).

8. On the amplitude of genealogical discourses and its long-term objectives, see Ho (2001).

9. One element which has been the focus of considerable debate in anthropological theory is the separation of economic and social spheres in “primitive societies” (Sahlins [1974] 2004, 181). The Idaw al-Hajj leadership seems to make such a claim about separate spheres. As I show below, this position nevertheless helps to reinforce the effective presence of a “generalized order” “where a clear differentiation of spheres into social and economic does not appear” (Sahlins [1974] 2004, 182). The fact that Maham—a trader who worked with Europeans—is currently denied a noble genealogy by the Idaw al-Hajj tribal leadership does not bring into question his role in the economic development of the qabila, but, instead, suggests a pronounced effort to redefine the political, economic, and social spheres of the Idaw al-Hajj, as well as the character of their regional (and in fact, transnational) alliances.

10. All translations from the Portuguese are mine.

11. It should also be noted that the descendants of Ibrahim (al-Kuri’s son in his second marriage) value above all the paternal role that ensured that all of his children had the same kind of education, with no distinction being made regarding the more or less “noble” origin of their mothers. Gender issues in Mauritania, and particularly the public role of women, have been a topic of interest in this region at least since Ibn Batuta’s Saharan journey (mid-fourteenth century). Regarding contemporary approaches to this debates see, e.g. Fortier (2012, 2003, 2001) and Tauzin (1981).

12. This three-decade war continues today to mark the partition between zwaya status populations and their hassan (political) “masters”. Both the Awlad Daiman as well as the Idaw al-Hajj were committed with the zwaya (defeated) party in this war (Leriche and Ould Hamidoun 1948, 525).

13. The form that representations of Hemeila and ‘Agiga take in the Southwestern Mauritanian context can be tentatively linked with other related propositions, notably from the Adrar region of Northern Mauritania. Nevertheless, the research that I have conducted in this region does not allow me to effectively present a structured debate over this matter, as the inclusion of European female characters in Adrarian genealogies—if acknowledged—was a research topic which was resolutely avoided by my interlocutors in the Adrar. More generally, narratives of this type can also be linked with the Berber figures of Zaynab (the wife of Marrakesh’s Almoravid leaders Abu Bakr ben ‘Umar and Yusuf ben Tashfin), or the much more famous Kahina, the Berber woman who resisted the early Arab expansion in North Africa during the remote seventh century (see Norris 1982, 51–53).

14. Supporting the Saharan “marked switch from semi-matrilineal kinship nomenclature to that of patrilineal eponyms” which Norris (1986, 44) dates back to the fifteenth century. See also Freire (2011 58–59); and Ould Cheikh (2001, 158).

15. Past or present examples of other Idaw al-Hajj women marrying outside the tribe continue to be very rare (Webb 1995b, 462).

16. This statement is particularly surprising, as the genealogies presently liable to be publicized are overwhelmingly associated with masculine filiation. In Mauritania, genealogies are today a strongly gendered construct, where female characters are rarely incorporated, and much more often omitted (see footnote 15). Most times the mothers of important male figures are not mentioned, with special attention being clearly devoted to the preservation of the names of male ascendants (see Whitcomb 1975, 403).

17. Located in Southwestern Mauritania, 25 km to the North of the town of Rosso.

18. He was, according to the local historian Ahmad ould Sidi Muhammad, cited above, the first Idaw al-Hajj to be buried in Tindallah. On the extended readings associated with funerary rites and tomb inscriptions, see Fortier (2010), Schöller (2004), and de Moraes Farias’ seminal Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali (2003).

19. According to Idaw al-Hajj traditions, Hemeila and Maham were among the oldest people buried in Tindalah, he told me, but the first man to have been buried there “was a certain Dallah, from an old group known by the name of Guaishid”. This is in agreement with Leriche and Ould Hamidoun’s (1948, 472) pioneer work: “Tindalha.—Du Zén. ‘tin Dhalhen’ = celui (puits) des Dhallen”.

20. While preparing for my return to Nouakchott, I was informed that visits to Hemeila’s grave were already being prepared, and that the sole person responsible for this re-enactment of the qabila’s history was the anthropologist, or, in fact, Hemeila’s “maternal uncle”.