Zawaya

The Zawaya are the scholarly and religious tribes of Moorish society in Mauritania and the western Sahara, mostly of Sanhaja Berber origin. Unlike the Hassani warrior tribes, they devoted themselves to Islamic learning, teaching, trade and herding. Their defeat by the Hassani in the Char Bouba war of the 1670s fixed a social order in which they paid tribute to warrior emirs while keeping great religious prestige.