Oral Knowledge in Berber Women's Expressions
of the Sacred

Fatima Sadiki

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Orality came to play a significant role in Morocco’s struggle for independence (Sadiqi et al, 2009). Work on the evaluation of the theoretical assertions about the constructed nature of the nation-state in the concrete historical context of Morocco is still lacking. Women’s oral texts in this regard bring new analytical methods from social movement theory to the study of colonialism, anti-colonial protest, and nation-building, which clarifies the process by which history, culture, religion, and oral tradition were integrated in the construction of modern Moroccan national identities. This method contextualizes the Moroccan case vis-à-vis concurrent anti-colonial struggles in other parts of Africa. It also analyzes the roles played by subaltern groups (Berbers, Jews, and women) at the inception of an Arab-Islamic nationalist discourse that subsequently contributed to a political order marginalizing them. Women’s oral sources in this respect are primary sources. The colonizers themselves were aware of the importance of such texts as the collections of Berber poetry gathered by Arsene Roux and his collaborators during the 1930s and 1940s show.

The spoken and chanted words of poets like Tawgrat Walt Issa N’ait Sokhman are indeed a site of historical exploration. Not only were her poems instrumental in exhorting young men to fight under colonization but many of them have been transmitted throughout the decades that followed the independence of Morocco and immortalized in popular songs and testimonies that today’s social historians use. Such texts are crucial for the rewriting of the history of Morocco as they highlight armed and non-armed resistance in the country. The best-known resistances are associated with male leaders like Mohamed Abdelkrim Khattabi and Allal Al-Fassi, but almost nothing is known of women’s resistance to colonization apart from oral texts and testimonies that have been largely marginalized from mainstream resistance literature (Chafik 1982).

Berber women also use orality to invest the powerful field of spirituality and religious authority. Beverly Mack (2004) argues that even those Muslim women who acquire knowledge through the written word often tend to favor oral means of imparting and (re)constructing knowledge. This is certainly true in the case of some Berber women who managed to impose their authority in zawiyas (religious brotherhoods) and mosques (Elboudrari 1993; Rausch 2006). A residue of a rich repertoire of women’s Sufi didactic poetry is a type of oral texts that women still sing in the south of Morocco. Other women in the region achieved social power through the ability to heal physical and mental illness.

Berber Women’s Oral Genres

Although powerful in its immediate location and the deep psyche of the inhabitants of Morocco, Berber female orality should be understood within the overall Arab-Muslim patriarchy where women’s voices pertain to the realm of the private (as opposed to the public). Throughout the history of Morocco, political and social power has been constructed mainly on the basis of written culture, and Islam as Scripture was zealously guarded by those who administered political and social power. In this context, orality became reduced to “listening“ and “obeying“ and reading and writing became the exclusive prerogative of the ruling elite, as opposed to the masses, especially women. Consequently, orality in Muslim culture has systematically been relegated to the footnotes of official history. Serious endeavors have recently been made in the fields of women’s studies and social history to valorize women’s voices (Sadiqi et al 2009) and various authors have questioned the public/private dichotomy in Berber communities (Schaffer 1985). These and similar endeavors are in highlighting Berber women’s oral knowledge and problematizing the whole concept of knowledge, making it also female, creative and innovative.

Berber women’s oral knowledge is ancestral, versatile and omnipresent. It is stored in poetry, songs, folktales, and public oratory; it is hidden in Arabophone and Francophone Moroccan literature; it is part and parcel of Moroccan identity. Of the various Berber female genres, four are presented below: poems/songs, folktales, public oratory, and family/cultural oratory.

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Oral Knowledge in Berber Women’s Expressions of the Sacred

by Fatima Sadiki