Image: COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Portret van groep vrouwen TMnr 60047825
Description: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.
Title: Portret van groep vrouwen
Credit: Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License: CC BY-SA 3.0
License Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
Attribution Required?: Yes
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