The Bafour, also called Baffor or Abofur, were remembered in Mauritanian traditions as an earlier agricultural population of the Adrar before the arrival of the Lamtūna. They were credited with planting the first palm trees and leaving numerous ruined villages and archaeological sites. The extract tentatively connects them with Berber Zanāta populations and, more speculatively, with the ancient Bavares of western North Africa.
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The Story
The Bafour are presented through local traditions and archaeological remains as an ancient population of the Mauritanian Adrar. They were remembered as agriculturalists who lived in the region before the Lamtūna and who established date plantations. Ruined villages and other archaeological sites were attributed to them across the Adrar landscape.
Traditions differed over the identity of the Bafour. Some described them as white and belonging to the Berber Zanāta group, a view regarded in the extract as the most likely. Other accounts emphasize that the pre-Lamtūna inhabitants of Adrar Tmār were non-Muslim agriculturalists responsible for planting the first palms in the region.
A further hypothesis links the Bafour with the Bavares, a Libyan or Moorish tribe active in western North Africa during the third and fourth centuries CE. The proposed migration of this population toward present-day Mauritania remains speculative. The name nevertheless survived in later geographical usage, since the Adrar was still called the ‘mountain of Baffor’ in an early sixteenth-century account.
The Bafour, also called Baffor or Abofur, were remembered in Mauritanian traditions as an earlier agricultural population of the Adrar before the arrival of the Lamtūna. They were credited with planting the first palm trees and leaving numerous ruined villages and archaeological sites. The extract tentatively connects them with Berber Zanāta populations and, more speculatively, with the ancient Bavares of western North Africa.
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The Story
The Bafour are presented through local traditions and archaeological remains as an ancient population of the Mauritanian Adrar. They were remembered as agriculturalists who lived in the region before the Lamtūna and who established date plantations. Ruined villages and other archaeological sites were attributed to them across the Adrar landscape.
Traditions differed over the identity of the Bafour. Some described them as white and belonging to the Berber Zanāta group, a view regarded in the extract as the most likely. Other accounts emphasize that the pre-Lamtūna inhabitants of Adrar Tmār were non-Muslim agriculturalists responsible for planting the first palms in the region.
A further hypothesis links the Bafour with the Bavares, a Libyan or Moorish tribe active in western North Africa during the third and fourth centuries CE. The proposed migration of this population toward present-day Mauritania remains speculative. The name nevertheless survived in later geographical usage, since the Adrar was still called the ‘mountain of Baffor’ in an early sixteenth-century account.
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