Manuscript contract (arra) on argan wood.
Manuscript contract (arra) on argan wood. - Image 2
Manuscript contract (arra) on argan wood. - Image 3

A Berber land contract

[Berber contract]. Manuscript contract (arra) on argan wood.

Morocco, Atlas Mountains, ca. 19th century.

Inscribed argan wood slip, ca. 210 mm in length, 35 mm in width. Brown Maghribi script, ink on wood.

€ 750.00

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 a contract of a land sale; a man by the name Abdallah ibn Dawud purchased a lot of fallow land on a hillside, with an irrigation ditch.

Condition

Faded French colonial administration stamp "Service des affaires indigènes - Contrôle des actes". A few lines difficult to read, otherwise in good condition and legible.

References

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.

Stock Code: BN#67436 Tags: , , ,

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