Habt
The Habt (Arabic: بلاد الهبط, romanized: Bilād al-Habṭ) is a historical and geographical region located in northwest Morocco.
Toponymy
[edit]The place name "Habt" means "descent" and probably dates back to Idrisids.[1]
Geography
[edit]The Habt is characterized by the presence of plains and mountains. It comprises the plains of Rharb and Khlot and part of the Rif, a mountainous region.[2]
Leo Africanus, a diplomat and explorer of North Africa in 15th and 16th centuries, wrote:[3][4]
The region is bounded by the river Ouergha to the south, the ocean to the north, the Azgar marshes to the west and the mountains facing the Pillars of Hercules to the east; it is eighty miles in width and a hundred in length. The region is marvellously fertile, consisting mostly of plains full of rivers.
History
[edit]Because of its proximity to the territory of al-Andalus, the Habt was one of the first Arabized areas in Morocco.[4]
According to Leo Africanus, the province of Habt (‘amalat al-Habt) was founded during the Wattassid dynasty.[1] Two centuries later, under the Alaouites, the region of the Jebala and Faḥṣ (nāḥiyat Jbāla wa al-Faḥṣ) has supplanted administratively.[1]
After the Battle of Sétif in 1153, the victorious Almohads forced some of the defeated Banu Hilal tribes to move to Morocco. During the 17th century, the sultan Ismail Ibn Sharif created a guich army made up of warriors from the Banu Hilal.
Ibn Khaldun, an historian of North Africa, wrote:[5]
Les tribus de Djochem et de Rîah s'étant alors empressées de faire leur soumission, il les déporta dans le Maghreb-el-Acsa où il établit la première dans la province de Temsna, et la seconde dans le canton d'El-Hebet et dans les régions maritimes d'Azghar, province située entre Tanger et Salé.
See also
[edit]- Plains of Rharb (one of the plains of Habt).
- Spanish protectorate in Morocco (Habt part of the protectorate from 1912 to 1956).
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Vignet-Zunz, Jacques (1995). "Djebala". Encyclopédie berbère. Vol. 16. Aix-en-Provence: Édisud. pp. 2398–2408. doi:10.4000/encyclopedieberbere.2176. Retrieved 4 October 2015., § 8
- ^ Michaux-Bellaire 1911, p. 1.
- ^ Africanus, Leo (2023-03-02). The Cosmography and Geography of Africa. Random House. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-14-199882-4.
- ^ a b Lévy, Simon (1998). "Problématique historique du processus d'arabisation au Maroc". In Aguadé, Jordi; Cressier, Patrice; Vicente, Ángeles (eds.). Peuplement et Arabisation au Maghreb occidental (in French). Madrid: Casa de Velázquez. pp. 11–26.
- ^ Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l'Afrique septentrionale, Ibn Khaldûn, p. 97
Sources
[edit]- Michaux-Bellaire, Édouard (1911). Leroux, Ernest (ed.). "Quelques tribus de montagnes de la région du Habt". Archives Marocaines. Publications de la Mission scientifique du Maroc. XVII. Paris: 1–11.
Further reading
[edit]- Zakir, Abdelali; Chalouan, Ahmed; Feinberg, Hugues (July 2004). Société géologique de France (ed.). "Tectono-sedimentary evolution of a fore-chain domain: example of the Habt and Sidi Mrayt basins, northwestern external Moroccan Rif; stratigraphic precisions and tectonic modelling". Bulletin de la Société géologique de France. 175 (4). Paris: 383–397. doi:10.2113/175.4.383.
- André, Albert (1968). Notice de la carte géomorphologique du Tangérois, du Habt et du haut Rharb occidental, Maroc (Thesis) (in French). Rabat: Institut scientifique. OCLC 493214541.
- Ricard, Robert (May 1937). "Une description du Habt en 1648". Hespéris: Archives berbères et Bulletin de l'Institut des hautes études marocaines (in French). XXIV. Paris: Librairie Larose: 193–199.
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Regions falling partly (*) or entirely (**) within the disputed territory of Western Sahara | ||