ABSTRACT
The Dawi Mani' had, after some centuries of nomadic drift and military conquest, settled firmly into a territorial and ecological niche. Among the pastoral tribes of southeastern Morocco and Dawi Mani' and the Ait 'Atta played the most prominent parts in the events of 1881–1912. The Dawi Mani' defeated the Hamyan Arabs and forced them to retreat northeastward to the Algerian High Plateaus, where they live today. Like the Ma'qil tribes which were advancing northward over the Atlas in the same era, the Dawi Mani' moved deliberately, assimilating, evicting, or sometimes bypassing other nomadic groups which they encountered. They claim their formula for military success to be their special organizational system known as khams khmas, or 'five fifths.' The fifths represented the highest level of segmentation in the tribe's kinship structure. Each fifth was divided into a varying number of clans, which together constituted the second level of segmentation.
