The Chleuh, in their own language Ishelhin, are the southern Tamazight-speaking population of Morocco. They inhabit the western High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas, and the Souss valley, with smaller communities across the Drâa basin and along the Atlantic plain south of Marrakesh.
Tachelhit is the southern Tamazight variety, with around eight million speakers — roughly comparable in number to Kabyle, though less institutionally supported. It carries the longest continuous written tradition of any Berber variety, with manuscripts in Arabic script (so-called Lhuruf) dating from at least the sixteenth century.
The Chleuh sphere has historically been organised around a dense network of agadirs — fortified collective granaries — and around the markets of the Anti-Atlas plateau. The Almohad movement of the twelfth century, founded by Ibn Tumart in Igiliz in the Anti-Atlas and consolidated at Tinmel in the High Atlas, was at its origin a Masmuda-Chleuh political project.
In the contemporary economy Soussi merchants are dominant in Moroccan grocery and foodstuff retail across the country and have built one of the densest internal-migration networks of any Moroccan group.