De la constitution d'un territoire à sa division : l'adaptation des Ahl Bârikalla aux évolutions sociopolitiques de l'Ouest saharien (XVIIe–XXIe siècles)

Abstract

Born of a politico-military conflict at the end of the seventeenth century in the south west of present-day Mauritania, the Ahl Bârikalla tribal group established itself further north. Their new territory, more arid, drove them into changing their way of life. Having become great camel-herders, they specialised in the digging of wells. The only important religious group in this vast area, they established complex relations with the surrounding warrior groups. The colonial period saw their territory shared between the French and the Spanish but, after the conquest, their travels were little affected. Decolonisation, particularly that of the Spanish Sahara in 1975, and the great drought disrupted both the ecological and the political conditions. The partition of their area by the Moroccan Wall and by urbanisation, which shifted the principal sources of income, seemed to signal the end of nomadism. However, attachment to the desert, which is anchored in discourse and the incessant comings-and-goings, remains the prop of collective identity.