In Morocco, more than forty per cent of land is held collectively by tribal lineage groups ( Benhassine 2007 ); some 85 per cent of these are grazing lands (Directorate of Rural Affairs B s.d.). The recognition of these lands as tribal property – and their administration under customary law – is contrasted with numerous instances of expropriation and exclusion from property recognition in colonial Africa. Nonetheless, legal recognition has not prevented substantial alienation of collective lands from the lineage groups which own them. This paper first examines the historical context through which some collective lands, including those of nomadic pastoralists, became recognised as property in colonial Morocco, while others faced alienation from tribal ownership. It considers two key delimitations of difference used by French Protectorate administrators in determining which tribal land rights were protected – distinctions between people (particularly ‘Arab’ and ‘Berber’ populations, associated with Islamic and customary law, respectively) and between lands (rainfed lands used primarily for herding and grain cultivation, and the those in the ‘irrigated perimeters’ suitable for intensive agriculture). While all ‘Berber’ tribes received de jure recognition of their collective land rights, these rights were nonetheless systematically undercut within irrigated perimeters, with only those collective lands outside of irrigated perimeters receiving de facto recognition and protection against alienation. The adaptation of customary law governance over these lands within a Protectorate administrative apparatus, however, effectively circumscribed tribal collective rights to both land use and governance. The means through which the alienation of use and governance rights occurred is demonstrated though a case study of the Ait Mguild, from the Middle Atlas Mountains, highlighting the inadequacy of legal property recognition in the absence of institutional protections. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ .
Amelia Burke (Sat,) studied this question.