Messufa

The Messufa, also recorded as the Masufa, are one of the great nomadic Sanhaja Berber tribes of the western Sahara, together with the Lamtuna and the Godala. Their grazing grounds and oases ran from Touat and Gourara to the salt pans of Taghaza and Taoudenni.

In the 1050s they joined Abdallah ibn Yasin's reformist movement and helped found the Almoravid empire, leading much of its eastward expansion. Like the Lamtuna, they wore black veils and carried black banners in al-Andalus.

After the Almoravids fell to the Almohads in 1147, they remained masters of desert routes linking Sijilmasa with the Niger bend. Their slaves mined salt at Taghaza: in 1352 Ibn Battuta found houses built of salt slabs and Messufa scouts guiding caravans across the waterless desert to Oualata.