A woman's inheritance: contract on wood from the Atlas Mountains
Manuscript contract (arra) on argan wood.
Inscribed argan wood cylinder, ca. 205 mm in length, 60 mm in diameter. Brown Maghribi script, ink on wood.
€ 850.00
A legal document written in Arabic by a member of the Berber tribes of the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, on a debarked and smoothed piece of a branch of Argania spinosa, a tree endemic to southwest Morocco. Similar pieces are held in the collections of various universities and museums.
This manuscript is an inheritance contract of a woman named Fatima. In the text, Fatima entrusts her brother Ahmad to be her legal representative overseeing her inheritance from her husband Ahmad, including any debts and her husband's possessions in various towns.
Faded French colonial administration stamp "Service des affaires indigènes - Contrôle des actes". A few lines difficult to read, otherwise in good condition and legible.
Cf. H. Elbahraoui / I. Kliakhandler, "Discovery of a vast corpus of Berber arraten documents", Journal of North African Studies 29.6 (2024), pp. 1052-1073.
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