Berber Dahir

The Berber Dahir (Arabic: الظهير البربري, French: Dahir berbère, formally: Dahir du 17 hija 1348 (16 mai 1930) réglant le fonctionnement de la justice dans les tribus de coutume berbère non pourvues de mahakmas pour l'application du Chrâa) is a dahir (governmental decree) issued by the French protectorate in Morocco on May 16, 1930. The document changed the legal system in parts of Morocco where Berber languages were primarily spoken, and the legal system in the rest of the country would remain as it had been before the French conquest.[1] Sultan Muhammad V signed this dahir under no duress, though he was only 20 years old at the time.

The new legal system in Berber tribes would be ostensibly based on local and centuries-old local laws that had been inherited and evolved throughout the millennia of the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, rather than the Sharia. According to pan-Arabist activists, the French colonial authorities sought to facilitate their takeover of the Berber tribes' property and to maintain a legal cover.

The Berber Dahir was based on the colonial Kabyle myth and reinforced a dichotomy in popular Moroccan historiography: the division of the country into the Bled el-Makhzen, areas under the direct control of the Sultan and Makhzen (the central state composed of warlords with aristocratic heritage), in particular, urban areas such as Fez and Rabat; and the Bled es-Siba, areas historically and geographically isolated and beyond the direct control of the Makhzen in which Berber languages were primarily spoken, Arab culture and norms were not adopted and dogmatic Sharia was not applied. However, this legislation explicitly characterized the former as "Arab" and the latter as "Berber".

The 'Berber Dahir' gave birth to the pan-Arabist and Islamist Moroccan Nationalist Movement. Protests broke out in Salé, Rabat, Fez, and Tangier, and international figures such as Shakib Arslan took it as evidence of an attempt to "de-Islamize" Morocco.