In the late twentieth century 300 Mauritanian shepherds travelled to the United Arab Emirates in order to tend the herds of some of this country's most prominent leaders. These low-tech subjects of global migration flows were particularly valued and sought after by their Emirati employers for their expertise in raising camels. I will here present some of the agents involved in this transit, focusing on the reintegration of these shepherds in Mauritanian stratified tribal spheres, following their widespread return to the Sahara. The possibility of a statutory reconversion (after a financially rewarding experience in the Gulf) will be central to the discussions essayed in this article, given the pervasive designation of these shepherds as a 'tributary' (znāga) group, through the application of the tripartite model which, to a large extent, still defines Mauritania's arabophone population.

This article discusses the processes leading to an almost complete exclusion of some populations native to the western Sahara from oral tradition and historical writing. I will consider the Arabization of this context and its implications in the formation of contemporary identities, when evidence suggests precisely their complexity and non-linearity. In order to assess this argument I will look attentively at a mid-sixteenth-century letter sent to Lisbon from the Arguin castle, off the Saharan coast. This document should prove particularly important as the population depicted there as the main interlocutors of the Portuguese in the region—the “Narziguas”—is nowadays excluded from most historical accounts. The reading I propose of this letter explores the possibility of a Narziguas leadership in the coastal western Sahara prior to the seventeenth century; in this manner, questioning some of the well-established Arab-centered historiography and oral tradition. It is also argued that Islam has been ideologically and genealogically used as a privileged instrument in the reconfiguration of the region’s social landscape.

This article will focus on a seldom-considered aspect of Saharan social contexts: the incorporation of European / Christian characters into tribal sociopolitical frameworks. Supported by data from my fieldwork, I will discuss the contemporary arguments portraying a mid-seventeenth-century woman, Hemeila, whose mother is locally recognized as a European, most probably of Iberian origin. These two women are presently incorporated in different genealogical narratives from southwestern Mauritania. The research dealt with in this article also relates to discussions of social hierarchy discussions familiar to Mauritania's Arabophone populations, with a particular focus on groups holding a "religious" (zwaya) status. Additionally, this article also discusses the role of the anthropologist as a producer of social facts, which, in this context, has led to a direct intervention in the reassessment of Saharan historical traditions.