Haratin

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Haratin

Haratin (also transliterated

Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
Haratins, Harratins or Haratine, etc, singular Hartani) is a name for black

Black people

Black people is a term usually referring to a Race of humans with a dark skin color, but the term has also been used to categorise a number of diverse populations into one common group....
oasis

Oasis

In geography, an oasis or cienega is an isolated area of vegetation in a desert, typically surrounding a spring or similar water source. Oases also provide habitat for animals and even humans if the area is big enough....
-dwellers in north western Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
. It is an exonym (a name not used by that people themselves) with negative connotations. The word has an unknown origin and is applied mainly in Mauritania

Mauritania

Mauritania , officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a country in northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, by Senegal on the southwest, by Mali on the east and southeast, by Algeria on the northeast, and by the Morocco-controlled Western Sahara on the northwest....
, southern Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 34 million and an area just under 447,000 km2....
, Western Sahara

Western Sahara

Western Sahara is a territory of North Africa, bordered by Morocco to the north, Algeria in the northeast, Mauritania to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean on the west....
, Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country located in North Africa. It is the largest country of the Mediterranean sea, second largest in the Arab World, and the second largest on the African continent and the eleventh-largest country in the world in terms of land area....
, Senegal

Senegal

Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country south of the S?n?gal River in West Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south....
and Mali

Mali

Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked nation in West Africa. Mali is the seventh largest country in Africa, bordering Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the C?te d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west....
to largely sedentary oasis

Oasis

Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
.

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Encyclopedia

Haratin (also transliterated

Transliteration

Black people

Black people is a term usually referring to a Race of humans with a dark skin color, but the term has also been used to categorise a number of diverse populations into one common group....
oasis

Oasis

Africa

Mauritania

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 34 million and an area just under 447,000 km2....
, Western Sahara

Western Sahara

Western Sahara is a territory of North Africa, bordered by Morocco to the north, Algeria in the northeast, Mauritania to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean on the west....
, Algeria

Algeria

Senegal

Mali

Oasis

Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
. Certain local traditions, ambiguously supported by scholarship, hold that some populations called Haratine are indigenous

Indigenous peoples of Africa

The indigenous peoples of Africa are those peoples of Africa whose List of subsistence techniques, attachment or claims to particular lands, and social and political standing in relation to other more dominant groups have resulted in their substantial marginalisation within modern African states ....
black populations

Bafour

The Bafours were the original inhabitants of Mauritania, and the ancestors to the Imraguen and Soninke people of western Africa. They were primarily agriculturalist and agro-pastoralists, and were relatively stationary....
that became Berberised

Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous ethnic groups of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River....
. The name itself is of obscure origin and has been variously traced

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the roots and history of words; and how their form and meaning have changed over time.In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time....
to Arabic roots

Triliteral

The root of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals" . Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the derivation of actual words by adding the vowels and non-root consonants which go with a particular morphological category around the root consonants, in an appropriate...
meaning cultivator
Cultivator

A cultivator is a farming implement for stirring and pulverizing the soil, either before planting or to remove weeds and to aerate and loosen the soil after the crop has begun to grow....
and Berber

Berber

Berber may refer to:*a member of the Berber people**the Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages**Berberism, a political-cultural supporting a distinct Berber identity....
roots meaning "dark skinned".

Haratin in Mauritania and Western Sahara

In Mauritania

Mauritania

Western Sahara

Ethnic group

An ethnic group is a group of humans whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or presumed.Ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness and the recognition of common culture, linguistic, religion, human behaviour or Race traits, real or presumed, as indic...
s and account for as much as 40% of the population, and are sometimes referred to as "Black Moors

Moors

In the Spanish language, the term for Moors is Moro; in Portuguese language the word is mouro. There seems to have been some confusion about the relationship of the word moro/mouro to the word moreno , both from Greek language ma?ros, i.e....
". The Haratin generally claim a Berber or Arab

Arab

An Arab is a person who Identity as such on linguistic or cultural grounds. The plural form, Arabs , refers to the Ethnocultural group at large....
origin unlike the black populations in southern Mauritania, the Wolof

Wolof people

The Wolof are an ethnic group found in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania.In Senegal, the Wolof form an ethnic plurality with about 40% of the population self-identifying as Wolof....
and the Ful?e

Fula people

Fula or Fulani or Fulbe are an ethnic group of people spread over many countries, predominantly in West Africa, but found also in Central Africa and Sudanese North Africa....
. In Mauritania

Mauritania

Western Sahara

Western Sahara is a territory of North Africa, bordered by Morocco to the north, Algeria in the northeast, Mauritania to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean on the west....
Haratin appear to be descendants of a sedentary population amidst a class of nomads. Although the Mauretanian government has issued emancipation declarations, discrimination against Haratin is still widespread. Amnesty International reported that as of 1994, 90,000 Blacks still lived as "property" of their master.

Haratin in Morocco

In Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 34 million and an area just under 447,000 km2....
, "Haratin" tends to be applied to the dark-skinned agriculturalists

Agriculture

Agriculture refers to the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of civilization, with the animal husbandry of domestication animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more Population density and Social stratification societies....
of the southern oases, who largely identify as Chleuh

Chleuh

The Chleuh people are a Berber people ethnic group. They live mainly in Morocco's Atlas Mountains and Souss Valley. The Chleuh population is estimated to be approximately 10,000,000....
Berbers, although some native Arabic speakers also exist. In some Moroccan oral history

Oral history

Oral history can be defined as the recording, preservation and interpretation of history, based on the personal experiences and opinions of the speaker....
traditions, the Haratin of the south eastern oases were the 'original' inhabitants. The term is used separately from that of Gnawa

Gnawa

Gnawa or Gnaoua refers to an ethnic group and a Sufi religious order in Morocco, in part descended from former slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa or black Africans who migrated in camel trains with the trans-Saharan trade, or a combination of both....
, which tends to refer to a clearly former sub-Saharan slaves and to a somewhat distinct cultural and religious

Religion

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of myth, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendence quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth....
movement composed of sufi

Sufism

Sufi is generally understood to be the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ufi , though some adherents of the tradition reserve this term only for those practitioners who have attained the goals of the Sufi tradition....
?uruq
Tariqah

?ariqah means "way, path, method" and refers to an Islamic religious order; in Sufism, it is conceptually related to Haqiqa "truth", the ineffable ideal that is the pursuit of the tradition....
"orders, brotherhoods" and music

Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
groups that has begun to include different ethnicities. As Moroccan society has modernised

Modernization

The idea of modernization comes from a view of societies as having a standard evolutionary pattern, as described in the social evolutionism theories....
and urbanised

Urbanization

Urbanization is the physical growth of rural or natural land into urban areas as a result of population im-migration to an existing urban area....
, the categories have broken down with intermarriage and rural to urban migration

Human migration

Human migration denotes any movement by humans from one district to another, sometimes over long distances or in large groups.Migration is one of the four evolutionary forces ...
.

Literature

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, 7 November 2002, MAURITANIA, A future free from slavery? The formal abolition of slavery in 1981 has not led to real and effective abolition for various reasons, including a lack of legislation to ensure its implementation.