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The Tashelhit term ayt is equivalent to the Arabic bani or bni, and could be translated "children of." It is, however, also used in nongenealogical contexts, where it simply indicates affiliation with an institution or an action. In the case of the Four Fourths, the names of the Harar fourths are fictionally genealogical (children of 'Abdallah, of Driss), while those of the Haratin fourths elude the genealogical register altogether: Ayt l-Bali (the people of the old side) and Ayt j-Jdid (the people of the new side).

Harar is Arabic, sing. hurr, "free person." The term hurr has a connotation of freedom - the condition of being autonomous, indepedent, and untied (as in English), but also one of purity and authenticity. A product in its "free" state is authentic, nonmixed, natural, wild, as opposed to something artificial, synthetic, or cultivated (e.g., za'afran l-hurr is real saffron, l-meska l-hurra is natural chewing gum, l-'asel l-hurr is wild honey, l-harir l-hurr is real silk, as opposed to fake silk, etc.).

Hurr is also a legal category: every Muslim adult, man or woman, who can be considered responsible for his or her actions is "free," that is, submitted to the Law for his or her rights and duties. Slaves ('abid) were not part of this category until the abolition of slavery, but they could be "freed" and legally granted the status of free Muslims. In Berber the term amazigh (pl. imazighen) has the same range of meaning as hurr (harar). In the qsar both terms are used.

The term harar as a social and ethnic demonination is specific to the Wad Dra' region and to a few other areas and oases of southern Morocco, such as the Tafilelt, whose social organization resembles that of the Wad Dra' in many respects. (In Fes, Rabat, and the plains of central Morocco, the term harar would not be understood in its social specificity.) Harar as a term and as a social category is historically constituted in a dialogical opposition to the category of haratin, to which it is opposed as free to dependent, white to black, etc. Yet both harar and haratin convey the sense of a sedentary lifestyle, of the agricultural and "urban" mode of life of the qsur, centers of craftsmanship and often of learning. Together, they are therefore set in opposition to the category of "nomad" (rahhala; in this region currently referred to as Shleuh or Znaga, locally understood as Ayt 'Atta, Tamazight (Berber) - speaking tribe members, and l-'arab, referring to the Awlad Yahya Arabic-speaking tribe members. Even though these former semi-nomadic groups are today sedentary for the most part, and have been in some cases sedentary for a long time, they are categorically nomad in the perception of the (categorically) sedentary inhabitants of the qsur.

In their conceptual, and formerly political and sometimes armed, opposition to the "nomadic" (Berber or Arab) groups, the qsur dwellers - Harar and Haratin - are associated by their common interests, their sedentary "urban" lifestyle, and their larger identification with the qsar community, the qbila. For while the term qbila in the context of the formerly nomadic Arabic- and Berber-speaking groups is usually understood as meaning "tribal" association, structure by a genealogical ideology, in the context of the sedentary organization of the qsur it simply indicates the qsar community as a whole (ahl l-qsar, "the people of the qsar"), defined territorially.

For a comparative historical account of the social organization of the qsur society in another area of southern Morocco, see Mezzine, Le Tafilalt.

Haratin (sing. hartani) is a word of disputed filiation and meaning. Even the language within which it is supposed to have a sense is in question. By some, hartani is interpreted as an Arabic word, a vernacular version of hurr-thani, "second-free," that is, semi-free, hierarchically inferior (the term of reference is, of course, "free," hurr). By others it is treated as a Tashelhit word, related to the adjective ahrdan, which means "dark brown."

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The image of the ethnographer in the field who observes his or her subjects from a distance while copiously taking notes has given way in recent years to a more critical and engaged form of anthropology. Composed as a polyphonic dialogue of texts, Stefania Pandolfo's Impasse of the Angels takes this engagement to its limit by presenting the relationship between observer and observed as one of interacting equals and mutually constituting interlocuters. Impasse of the Angels explores what it means to be a subject in the historical and poetic imagination of a southern Moroccan society. Passionate and lyrical, ironic and tragic, the book listens to dissonant, often idiosyncratic voices--poetic texts, legends, social spaces, folktales, conversations--which elaborate in their own ways the fractures, wounds, and contradictions of the Maghribic; postcolonial present. Moving from concrete details in a traditional ethnographic sense to a creative, experiential literary style, Impasse of the Angels is a tale of life and death compellingly addressing readers from anthropology, literature, philosophy, postcolonial criticism, and Middle Eastern studies.