A widow's sale of land in the Atlas Mountains
Manuscript contract (arra) on argan wood.
Inscribed argan wood cylinder, ca. 240 mm in length, 35 mm in diameter. Brown Maghribi script, ink on wood.
€ 950.00
An early 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 comprises a contract for a land purchase. While the buyer is unidentified, the seller is a woman who is handling land sales and contracts after the death of her husband.
Faded French colonial administration stamp "Service des affaires indigènes - Contrôle des actes". Small section of text soiled, 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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