Babi: "The current Moroccan dynasty was born in Tafilalet.
We helped the Alaouites to conquer Morocco in the 14th century, and for a long time we were able to live off an income: the monarchy sent Tafilalet donations, gifts and so on. But a few centuries later, the coffers were empty and the population's economic situation had deteriorated. A way had to be found to earn money.
In those days, caravans traded between Mediterranean and African countries. The caravan was made up of three types of participants:
the caravaneer, who provided the animals and logistics;
the guides, who, depending on the season, calculated the route to avoid problem areas, such as flooded rivers in summer or snow-covered passages in winter;
and finally the "protectors", who formed a special escort whose mission was to protect the caravan from any dangers along the way.
In my grandfather's village, at the end of the summer date-picking season, men of working age with nothing left to do would get together with their cousins and buddies to form caravan escorts.
They would then head north into Morocco to pick up a few caravans on the Mediterranean coast and accompany them to the border with Senegal, where a local escort would take over. They would then bivouac at the border, waiting for one or two caravans to come up the other way, and escort them on their way back to the Mediterranean coast. This kept them busy for about three months, and enabled them to earn a little money.
One of my ancestors, Bu Sih'in, only had daughters by his first wife - five or six in all, I'm not sure. Bu Sih'in worked in the autumn as a caravan protector. One year, while stationed on the Senegalese border, waiting for a caravan to arrive, he noticed a "Bamdikain", a young black girl of extreme beauty. He married her and brought her back to the village as his second wife (polygamy was still common practice in those days). She soon became pregnant and gave him the son the whole family had been waiting for. As tradition dictated, they named him "Ma'ati", which means "Gift of God" in Arabic and is a very common name here.
This is the origin of my father's skin color, whose full name was "Jilali, son of Mohammed, son of Ma'ati".
My father, Jill Dahbi, around 1920.