Chleuhs

The Chleuhs (“ Acelḥi” , plural “ Icelḥiyen” ) are Berber people living the High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas and the valley of the Under, in the south-west of the Morocco. They speak the Chleuh (Tachelhit), one of the three principal Dialecte S Berbère S Morrocans.

At a few minutes, as the crow flies, crowd of Marrakech, Ouarzazate and Agadir, Chleuhs lives folded up in the valleys of the High Atlas. These high valleys with the very difficult access are however inhabited, between 2 000 and 3 000 meters of altitude, by Chleuhs, of hard mountain dwellers who live since centuries in quasi-autarky. Austere but tolerant, these forgotten pastors are, for the Western pilgrim, the guards of the Islamic faith.

According to a work of Auguste Mouliéras, their name, of Arab origin, would come from Berber the acluḥ (plural icelḥen ), which means “plait in Jonc, in Alfa or Palmier”, which one wove the tents.

Anecdote

The singer Pierre Dac employed the word Chleuh to indicate the German during the Second world war, in his Chanson I will be made Chleuh! the word was then synonymous with Boches .

Pierre Dac took again a use of the French Army which, after the installation of the Protectorat French in Morocco in 1912, had had to face a sharp resistance of the Moroccan combatants (this pacification , near by certain aspects to a colonial war, was truly completed only in 1934). Among the most savage combatants, the warriors chleuhs had apparently left a memory cooking with the French soldiers, since during two world wars, their principal adversaries, the Germans, became “Chleuhs”.

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