File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Portret van groep vrouwen TMnr 60047825.jpg
Summary
This mysterious Arabic-speaking yet ethnically distinct tribe, believed to have migrated from Morocco hundreds of years before the French conquest, inhabited the Ouled Nail mountains and by tribal custom sent their young women to the oases to acquire their dowries as dancers at public festivals and in cafés, choosing from among their admirers generous patrons. When their dowries were adequate they returned to their mountain villages and would marry within the tribe.
Even while they practiced their profession in the oases, they fasted Ramadan and patronized the shrines of Muslim awliya (holy men or women) like any other pre-colonial Algerian Muslims, to the bemusement of the French. They were an ancient geisha caste of North Africa in a pre-modern context that could tolerate within the social rituals of tribal sanctity the profane as well as the sacred.
In time the centralizing, rational, bureaucratic modern colonial state would reduce many of the Ouled Nail to prostitutes and register them as such. The destruction of the traditional economy and subsequent impoverishment of that part of the countryside that wasn't grabbed up by the French settlers following the conquest would drive some of the Ouled Nail into the brothels of Algiers and Tunis.
Copyright status:
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Source:
File history
Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.
| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| current | 20:02, 29 August 2020 | | 700 × 532 (222 KB) | Thales (talk | contribs) | This mysterious Arabic-speaking yet ethnically distinct tribe, believed to have migrated from Morocco hundreds of years before the French conquest, inhabited the Ouled Nail mountains and by tribal custom sent their young women to the oases to acquire t... |
- You cannot overwrite this file.
File usage
The following page links to this file:
