Nomadisme
The dromedary is always at the side of the man of the desert.
The great tradition of Saharawi pastoralism has been forged over the centuries, in the light of the transmission of knowledge and knowledge, the fruit of the close bond between man and dromedary.
Nomads are in constant search of rain.
They develop a formidable ability to read the territories, to inhabit them, to explore them, while respecting the complex social codes of the Saharawi world. The nomadic tribes of Saharan Morocco intertwine in dense networks of alliances and kinship, and their axes of transhumance are therefore drawn as much by social imperatives as by the virtues of the pastures. The latter are an open herbarium of which the nomad knows, from father to son, the characteristics of each of the plants, those beneficial for him and his herd as much as those poisonous or inedible.
Aquatic plants, on the other hand, are superbly ignored and enjoy no attention from the nomadic shepherd, who calls them all and indiscriminately "hchich elma" (water herbs).
The Talking Footprint
Thanks to oral transmission, the dromedary holds no secrets for the nomad.
His footprints on the sand are signs that the pastor interprets. He can tell from the sheer depth of a beast's footprint whether it is a male or a female.
He can also deduce, from the trace of the claw (horn of the hoof) at the tip of the print, the origin of the animal: a long trace for a sandy ground and a trace of eroded claw for a stony ground .
The nomad can also identify the camel's breed and even the color of its coat by the shape of the footprint.
Indeed, only the white or spotted dromedary has long, fine hair on the hoof, the trace of which can also be read in the imprint left on the ground.
The dromedary, with its exceptional adaptability to the arid environment of the Sahara, is a prodigal animal. The nomad owes him his habitat (wool) and his food (meat, milk). The women owe him their opulent beauty and the craftsmanship of Saharan Morocco in turn owes him its flamboyant leather objects.
He is the mount that allowed the nomad his journeys in the desert, and without which the epic of the trans-Saharan caravan trade would never have existed. Saharan Morocco and its flourishing cities have long been the beating heart of prosperity in both the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa.
The history of Morocco, for its part, knows the role of this desert ship in the construction of the empire Almoravids, great Saharan camel nomads.
Ibn Khaldoun highlighted, with the customary clarity of his thought, this law of history whose central actor is the camel nomad, when he leaves his geographical territory to radiate in a great dynastic impulse.