The mountain people of northwestern Morocco: tribesmen or peasants?

Abstract

It is frequently suggested that the pre-colonial Moroccan state was composed solely of towns and tribes. Ernest Gellner, for example, writes that 'there was no middle area of oppressed, subdued peasants, intervening between town and tribe. Instead, tribal life extended to the city walls' (Gellner 1972: 18). We contend that this view of pre-colonial rural Morocco is mistaken, as we shall attempt to demonstrate with reference to the Jbala-Arabic-speaking, sedentary agriculturalists in the hills of northwest Morocco. The term Jbala literally means 'mountain people'.