1. General information

Ḥassāniyya (or klām əl-Bīḏ̣ān ‘language of the Whites’) is the mother tongue of the Arabic-speaking population of the western Sahara, especially the Moors (Bīḏ̣ān) of Mauretania and the former Spanish Sahara (from the Sagya el-Ḥamra and the Rio del Oro). It is difficult to draw the precise geographical limits of this dialect, but its approximate borders are Goulimine in the north, Tindouf in the northeast, Tombouctou in the southeast, and the Senegal River in the sout…