Finding justice among the pre-colonial Ayt Ḥdiddu (Central Morocco)

Abstract

Based on narrations about the ways of finding justice among the Ayt Ḥdiddu in the decades preceding the establishment of French Protectorate rule, this article attempts to reconstruct the principles of tribal customary law under the conditions of tribal autonomy in the period of ssiba before 1933. The ethnographic material I collected in the mid-1990s represents an idealised retrospective view of the practices involved in conflict resolution. In this view they appear more orderly than they must have been in social reality, which I assume was much more flexible. Nevertheless, the accounts provide us with an understanding of the main characteristics of pre-colonial customary law: the complete absence of executive power, the importance of the threat or actual practice of violence, and the plurality of alternative courses towards conflict resolution based on different logic. Thus, the material discussed provides insights into the principles of finding justice under conditions of tribal autonomy as well as some hints concerning their historical transformations.