A woman's land sale: contract on wood from the Atlas Mountains
Manuscript contract (arra) on argan wood.
Inscribed argan wood cylinder, ca. 220 mm in length, 65 mm in diameter. Brown Maghribi script, ink on wood.
€ 950.00
An 18th century 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 a contract for a land purchase: a man by the name of Ibrahim has purchased a plot of land from a woman named Khadija, with the consent of Khadija's husband and legal representative 'Ali. The sale contract was written during Ramadan 1188 H. (1774 CE), on the day of the festival of breaking the fast.
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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