Mauritania’s slavery produced a hereditary caste system of White Moors and Haratin

Evidence

Over the course of centuries, Berbers from North Africa and Arabs came to inhabit what is now Mauritania. They took black African slaves, creating an entrenched racial hierarchy. Over time, the bloodlines of the masters and the slaves mixed and they came to share a language—Arabic or an Arabic dialect—and cultural practices: As the masters imposed their traditions, the slaves lost their own. As a result, and disturbingly, slave owners often referred to their slaves as family. In modern Mauritania, people speak of the mingled Arab-Berbers as White Moors and the slaves as Haratin. — Alexis Okeowo, A Moonless, Starless Sky, 98

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the White Moors/Haratin caste distinction and how masters called slaves family after mixing bloodlines.
• XREF: Echoes how slavery in the Americas created similar ‘family’ rhetoric after forced mixing. — connects to: Mauritania ethnic-cleansed Afro-Mauritanians using Haratin soldiers — Alexis Okeowo, A Moonless, Starless Sky, 354; Slavery formed the demographic and economic backbone of precolonial West African states; Islamic slavery differed markedly from Western Christian slavery.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alexis Okeowo, A Moonless, Starless Sky, 98

Broader Connections

• Mauritania ethnic-cleansed Afro-Mauritanians using Haratin soldiers #expands (0.75) — Alexis Okeowo, A Moonless, Starless Sky, 354
• Islamic slavery differed markedly from Western Christian slavery. #complicates (0.45)