The Aït Atta are a major confederation of central southern Morocco, a five-fifths confederation (Khams Khmas) of mountain and pre-Saharan tribes whose territory extends from the Jebel Saghro and the eastern Anti-Atlas south into the Drâa basin and east into the Tafilalt.
The confederation is traditionally said to descend from a single ancestor, Dadda Atta, with the five fifths — Aït Wahlim, Aït Wallal, Aït Isfoul, Aït Yazza, Aït Unbgi — branching from him through five sons. The political organisation combines a federation-wide assembly that elects a rotating chief (amghar n ufella) with a rich tradition of customary law (ɛurf) governing pasture, water, blood feud, and the resolution of inter-tribal disputes.
Pastoral transhumance between the high pastures of the Saghro in summer and the warm pre-Saharan plains of Tafilalt and the Drâa in winter has shaped Aït Atta society and given the confederation a reach across very different ecologies. The classical ethnography is David Hart's two-volume study of the early 1980s.
The Aït Atta were the last independent population of Morocco to be brought under colonial control, holding out until the Battle of Bougafer of 1933, in which French forces took the Saghro fastness from a small force of Aït Atta defenders. The modern population speaks Central Tamazight and is concentrated around Boumalne Dadès, Tinghir, Errachidia, and Zagora.