Jma'a

The traditional village assembly. In the customary governance of southern Moroccan and Algerian ksour and igherm settlements, the jma'a is the principal collective decision-making body — managing common land, resolving disputes, organising the construction and maintenance of communal infrastructure, and appointing custodians for collective granaries.

Composition and authority vary by region. In the Anti-Atlas the jma'a of inflas (council of elders) elects an amghar and a specialised amin for each major collective concern — water, mosque, granary, pasture — and operates under a written or memorised customary law (izref) recorded in many cases on inscribed wooden tablets preserved at the village mosque or igherm. In the lower Drâa and the Tafilalt the assembly is more often dominated by the heads of the dominant lineages of a ksar; in the Mauritanian Saharan ksour the analogous institution is the jamāʿa of the major lineages of the founding tribes. The institution coexists, sometimes uneasily, with the post-1912 administrative hierarchy of caid, pasha, and mqaddam, and the contemporary balance between customary and administrative authority varies considerably across the region.