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Original Message:   My Inaccuracy
Only now I figured out - I believe - what Jamey was saying with the links he posted. While I originally thought he was refering to the words "Muraqad" versus "Nourakad", it seems to me now that he wanted to state for the record, what I knew, but had forgotton about. That he, Jamey has obviously been the first researcher in USA - maybe together with Anita Gumpert - to see and hear about this bead type, not the Oppers around 1990, as I had erronously stated in my post.

Only for those who have been to that country can imagine how very difficult it is to hear the difference between the two words - one with an "M" the other with an "N" in front.

Fact is (now) that the correct term for the whole group, for all those beads collectors call "Kiffa Beads", is MURAQAT, "the colorful" in translation, though a direct translation is impossible here. The word is derived from the noun "Arghad" (color[ful]) and is certainly describing all Mauritanian powderglass beads, not just some of them!!

Jean Gabus - the Swiss Ethnologist, who did a lot of research in the country - writes that "Muraqat" were not only made in the technique most of us know about, but also in a furnace. A very confusion statement, though I met a single woman in the Northern town of Atar, who said exactly the same (before I knew about Gabus' findings). My own collection does not seem to confirm that - all beads are made in the known technique. A riddle! Another riddle connected to Muraqat, actually!

The name "Kiffa Beads" - I would like to repeat that - is not a appropiate name in my opinion. It seems to imply the beads were made - or invented - nowhere, but in the little Southern town of some 35.000 folks. That was NOT the case! "Kiffa" beadmaking woman - as far as the old varieties are concerned - were part of nomadic families, without a home or base other than the vast plains of the southern West-Sahara.

Still - Jamey was the first to see and discuss Muraqat/"Kiffa Beads", not the Oppers, as I had stated in my post! Sorry for the mistake - not on purpose!

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