Marriage ceremonies in Morocco (1914) by Edward Westermarck

Download Marriage ceremonies in Morocco (1914) by Edward Westermarck

Marriage ceremonies in Morocco

This illustration of Moroccan Berber. not from the book 

Excerpt from the author's preface:

This book is meant to be a kind of apology for a serious omission of which I was guilty when I wrote my History of Human Marriage, over twenty years ago.

 In that book, I devoted only a very short chapter to the wedding ceremonies, and in my brief treatment of them, I almost entirely failed to recognize their magical significance. 

This was afterwards strongly emphasized by Mr. Ernest Crawley in his theory that the ceremonies of marriage are intended to neutralize the dangers supposed to be connected with all contact between man and woman and with the state of marriage itself, as also to make the union safe, prosperous, and happy a theory which, as he himself acknowledged in the Preface to The Mystic Rose, was founded on Dr. Frazer's discovery of the primitive conception of danger attaching to the sexual act. 

For my own part, I shall not here make an attempt to lay down any general theory as to the origin of marriage ceremonies but shall restrict myself to the wedding customs of a single people, namely, the Muhammedan natives of Morocco, among whom I have spent some six years engaged in sociological research. 

These natives are chiefly of the Berber race, although the Berber language, which before the arrival of the Arabs undoubtedly was spread over the whole country, is nowadays mostly restricted to mountain districts. The Berber-speaking tribes, to whom alone the term " Berbers " is popularly applied, may be divided into several groups. 

There are the Berbers of the Rif, called Ruafa, whose country extends along the Mediterranean coast from the neighbourhood of Tetuan to the Algerian frontier; the Briber, who inhabit the mountain regions of Central Morocco and the eastern portion of the Great Atlas range; the Shiloh, who inhabit the western part of the Great Atlas and the province of Sus, situated to the south of it a territory the eastern frontier of which may be roughly indicated by a line drawn from Demnat in a south-easterly direction, and the northern frontier by a slightly curved line uniting Demnat with Mogador on the Atlantic coast and following the foot of the mountains, or, in some places, intercepting a strip of the plain; and the Drawa, who inhabit the valley of the Wad Dra in the extreme south of Morocco. 

As a fifth group must, from a linguistic point of view, be counted various tribes living in the neighbourhood of Ujda, in the north-east of the country (At Buzeggu, At Zihri, At 'Amar, At Shbgl, At Lmdi, At Yiznasgn, At Ya'la, and At Ubahti). 

The Arabic-speaking people of Morocco consist of the 'Arab (" Arabs "), who inhabit most of the plains; the Jbala, who inhabit the mountains of Northern Morocco, north-west, west, and south-west of the Rlf, towards the neighbourhood of Fez a group of tribes in whose veins, in spite of their language, there can hardly be a drop of Arab blood; and the Arabic- speaking inhabitants of the towns, who are often referred to as " Moors," although this name may be more conveniently applied to the Muhammedan population of Morocco in general. I have, during my sixteen journeys to Morocco, been anxious to study the customs and beliefs of these various groups of people, and for this reason chosen representatives for all of them, with the exception of the Drawa, as regards whom I have been unable to procure any reliable information. 

In this book the Ruafa are represented by the Ait Waryagal, better known under their Arabic name Beni Waryagal; the Berbers in the neighbourhood of Ujda by the At Ubahti (Arab. Bhat s a) ; the Braber by the Ait (Arab. Beni) Sadden, Ait Yusi, Ait (Arab. Beni) Warain, and Ait Nder (Arab. Beni Mter) ; the Shiloh by the people of Aglu on the coast of Sns, the Ait Tame'ldu on the southern slopes of the Great Atlas range, the Igliwa inhabiting the district of Glawi in the same mountains, and the inhabitants of Amzmuz; must not be supposed that the customs are quite uniform even within the same tribe.

  
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