Collard Greens (Brassica oleracea var. viridis) in the Moroccan Oasis

Abstract

Collards (Brassica oleracea var. viridis) are a widely grown, and highly valued, traditional vegetable in the date palm oases of the Draa and Ziz valleys in southern Morocco, but are not found in other regions of Morocco. Given the shared importance of collards by both the African diaspora in the United States of America and the African diaspora in Morocco (descendants of enslaved people brought across the Sahara), we sought to better understand the history and origins of collards in Moroccan oases. Nomenclature, and comparison of current use and recipes to those in historical documents, suggests that collards may have arrived in the south of Morocco with the early Muslim traders coming from Arabia, possibly the Kharijites who founded the great city of Sijilmasa and managed the early trans-Saharan trade routes. The traditional use of collards in Moroccan oases, often cooked using a recipe that looks more similar to those from the Southern USA than West African leafy vegetable recipes, cannot solve the riddle of how collards arrived in the Americas, but it does provide another potential piece in the puzzle. Abstracts in the Arabic and Amazigh languages are available as Electronic Supplementary Material.