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Title: People of the veil
being an account of the habits, organisation and history of the wandering Tuareg tribes which inhabit the mountains of Air or Asben in the central Sahara
Author: Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd
Release date: November 21, 2024 [eBook #74774]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Macmillan and co, 1926
Credits: Galo Flordelis (This file was produced from images generously made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library/University of California)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEOPLE OF THE VEIL ***
PEOPLE OF THE VEIL
[Decoration]
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
PLATE 1
[Illustration: AGELLAL VILLAGE AND MOUNTAINS]
[_Frontispiece._
PEOPLE OF THE VEIL
_Being an Account of the Habits, Organisation
and History of the Wandering Tuareg Tribes
which inhabit the Mountains of Air or Asben
in the Central Sahara_
BY
FRANCIS RENNELL RODD
ⵍⵆⵔⵗⵙ
“NAUGHT BUT GOOD”
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1926
COPYRIGHT
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
This book was originally intended to be an account of the people and
mountains of Air in the Central Sahara, where I made a journey during
most of 1922 with Angus Buchanan and T. A. Glover. The former had
visited the area on a previous occasion and had described the people
and places he had seen in his book, _Out of the World—North of
Nigeria_. It therefore seemed more profitable to inquire into some
of the problems surrounding the inhabitants of the Sahara whom we
encountered, and thus deal with Air and its Tuareg population rather
less objectively than had my fellow-traveller. In the course of the
succeeding years, as I became more and more immersed in considering
various scientific aspects of the Sahara, I came to the conclusion
that neither had the Tuareg people nor had this vast area of the
earth’s surface been at all adequately examined. Most studies had
been objective and, as is unhappily the case with this book, confined
to one area. A comprehensive account of the history and ethnology of
the Sahara still requires to be written.
As a consequence of these investigations, the present work assumed
a form for which one journey of nine months in the countries
concerned scarcely seems enough justification. That the book was
not completed sooner has been due to the impossibility of spending
any time continuously either in research or on writing during the
three years which have elapsed since I returned. The fact that this
book has been the occupation only of such spare time as I have had
available accounts for its many conscious deficiencies, which are
unfortunately not the more excusable in a volume of the type which it
purports to be. If I can feel that it will have served to stimulate
the curiosity of students or have assisted them to find their way
about the literature on the subject, I shall consider that as a reward
calculated to enhance the pleasure which I have derived from writing
and reading about this—to me—fascinating topic.
It will be one of my lasting regrets that I was unable to complete
with Angus Buchanan his journey across the Sahara from Nigeria to
Algiers. The delays which we encountered in Air obliged me to return
to resume my duties in that branch of H.M.’s Service in which I was
then serving. This is not the place to mention the many things which
I owe to Angus Buchanan; perhaps the greatest advantage I derived
was the promise we gave one another to travel again together if an
occasion should come to him and leisure from another profession
to me, whereby we might be enabled to renew our companionship of
the road. I am grateful to him for permission to use several of his
photographs in the present volume as well as certain information which
he collected when we were separately engaged on our different work.
To T. A. Glover, the Cinematographer, whose services Angus Buchanan
secured to accompany him, I owe many pleasant memories of days spent
together and his excellent advice in taking most of the photographs
which are included in this book.
The French officers whom I encountered in the course of my wanderings
were as charming and as friendly as perhaps, of all foreign nations,
only Frenchmen know how to be. Were the relations between our
respective countries always even remotely similar to those which
subsisted between us, there would be no room for the suspicion and
pettiness which so often mar diplomatic and political intercourse. The
mutual confidence in which we lived is illustrated by two events.
On a certain occasion in Air when news was received of a raid
being about to fall on the country, I was honoured by receiving a
communication from the French officer commanding the Fort at Agades,
indicating the locality in his general scheme of defence whither I
might lead on a reconnaissance an armed band of local Tuareg from the
village in which I was then living by myself. On another occasion,
after travelling for some hundreds of miles with a French Camel Corps
patrol, the men were paraded and in their presence I was nominated an
honorary serjeant of the “Peloton Méhariste de Guré,” a type
of compliment which those associated with the French Army will best
realise. It is to the officer commanding this unit, Henri Gramain of
the French Colonial Army, that I owe the most perfect companionship
I have ever had the fortune to experience. I know that when we meet
again we shall resume conversation where we left off at Teshkar in
the bushland of Elakkos, one evening in the summer of 1922. He and my
other friends, Tuareg, British, French, Arab and Fulani contributed
to make that year the happiest I have ever spent.
No reader of the works of that great traveller, Dr. Heinrich Barth,
will need to be told how much of the data collected in the succeeding
pages has been culled from the monumental account of his _Travels
in Central Africa_. This German, who most loyally served the British
Crown in those far countries, is perhaps the greatest traveller there
has ever been in Africa. His exploits were never advertised, so his
fame has not been suffered to compete with the more sensational and
journalistic enterprises accomplished since his day down to modern
times. But no student will require to have his praises sung by any
disciple.
I have to thank the Royal Geographical Society for permission to use
the map which was prepared for a paper I had the honour to read in
1923 before a meeting of the Fellows. More especially do I wish to
thank E. A. Reeves, their Keeper of Maps, both for the instruction in
surveying which he gave me before my journey and for the assistance
afforded after my return in checking and working up my results. My
cartographic material in the form of road traverses, sketch maps based
on astronomical positions, and theodolite computations are all in the
Society’s library and available to students. A small collection of
ethnographic material which I brought back is at Oxford in the Pitt
Rivers Museum, to whose Curator, Henry Balfour, I am indebted both
for advice and for plates Nos. 24-26, 37 and 42.
H. R. Palmer, now H.M. Lieutenant-Governor of Northern Nigeria, and
Messrs. Macmillan & Co. have given me permission to use a table of
the Kings of Agades incorporated as Appendix VI. The list originally
appeared _in extenso_, with the names somewhat differently spelled, in
an article which he published in the _Journal of the African Society_
in July 1910. The great learning and sympathetic help which he was
good enough to put at my disposal have made me, in common with many
others in Nigeria, in whose friendship my journey so richly rewarded
me, hope that he may be induced to render more accessible to the
public the immense fund of historical and other material which he has
accumulated during his long career as a distinguished Colonial servant.
The then Governor of Nigeria, Sir H. Clifford, and the French Ministry
of Colonies earned the gratitude of Angus Buchanan and myself
by their assistance on the road and in facilitating our journey.
My brother-in-law, T. A. Emmet, was good enough to execute several
drawings from rough sketches I had made on the spot. Two of these
drawings are reproduced as plates Nos. 38 and 39.
To three persons it is difficult for me to express my gratitude at all
suitably. D. G. Hogarth read my manuscript and offered his invaluable
advice regarding the final form of the book as it now appears. Many
years’ association with him has led others beside myself to regard
him in his wisdom as our spiritual godfather in things appertaining
to the world of Islam. My father devoted many days and nights to
correcting the final draft and proofs of this book. My brother Peter,
when his versatile mind perceived certain improvements, rewrote Chapter
XII after I had become so tired of the sight of my manuscript that
I was on the verge of destroying the offensive object. I owe more to
both these two than I can explain.
F. R. R.
_New York,
31st December, 1925._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. THE SOUTHLANDS 36
III. THE CITY OF AGADES 80
IV. THE ORGANISATION OF THE AIR TUAREG 119
V. SOCIAL CONDITIONS 154
VI. THE MODE OF LIFE OF THE NOMADS 183
VII. TRADE AND OCCUPATIONS 213
VIII. ARCHITECTURE AND ART 238
IX. RELIGION AND BELIEFS 273
X. NORTHERN AIR AND THE KEL OWI 298
XI. THE ANCESTRY OF THE TUAREG OF AIR 330
XII. THE HISTORY OF AIR. PART I. THE MIGRATIONS OF THE
TUAREG TO AIR 360
XIII. THE HISTORY OF AIR. PART II. THE VICISSITUDES OF THE
TUAREG IN AIR 401
XIV. VALEDICTORY 417
* * * * *
APPENDIX PAGE
I. A LIST OF THE ASTRONOMICALLY DETERMINED POINTS IN AIR 422
II. THE TRIBAL ORGANISATION OF THE TUAREG OF AIR 426
III. ELAKKOS AND TERMIT 442
IV. IBN BATUTAH’S JOURNEY 452
V. ON THE ROOT “MZGH” IN VARIOUS LIBYAN NAMES 457
VI. THE KINGS OF THE TUAREG OF AIR 463
VII. SOME BIBLIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL USED IN THIS BOOK 466
INDEX 469
PLATES
PLATE _Facing page_
1. AGELLAL VILLAGE AND MOUNTAINS _Frontispiece_
2. ELATTU 14
3. DESERT AND HILLS FROM TERMIT PEAK 32
4. DIOM IN ELAKKOS 42
PUNCH AND JUDY SHOW 42
5. GAMRAM 49
6. RIVER OF AGADES: CLIFFS AT AKARAQ 76
SHRINE AT AKARAQ 76
7. RIVER OF AGADES LOOKING SOUTH FROM TEBEHIC IN THE
EGHALGAWEN MASSIF 79
EGHALGAWEN MASSIF FROM AZAWAGH 79
8. TIN WANA POOL 83
ROCK OF THE TWO SLAVES, AT THE JUNCTION OF THE TIN WANA
AND EGHALGAWEN VALLEYS 83
9. AGADES 86
10. GATHERING AT SIDI HAMADA 95
PRAYERS AT SIDI HAMADA 95
11. PRAYERS AT SIDI HAMADA 97
12. OMAR: AMENOKAL OF AIR 108
13. AUDERAS VALLEY LOOKING WEST 120
AUDERAS VALLEY: AERWAN TIDRAK 120
14. MT. TODRA FROM AUDERAS 126
15. GRAIN POTS, IFERUAN 133
GARDEN WELLS 133
16. AUDERAS: HUTS 154
AUDERAS: TENT-HUT AND SHELTER 154
17. THE AUTHOR DRESSING A WOUND AT AUDERAS 163
18. TEKHMEDIN AND THE AUTHOR 178
19. BAGEZAN MOUNTAINS AND TOWAR VILLAGE 182
20. HUTS AT TOWAR SHOWING METHOD OF CONSTRUCTION 184
TIMIA HUTS 184
21. CAMEL BRANDS 195
22. SHIELD ORNAMENTATION AND UTENSILS 209
23. TIMIA GORGE 216
TIMIA GORGE: BASALT AND GRANITE FORMATIONS 216
24. TUAREG PERSONAL EQUIPMENT 227
25. TUAREG CAMEL EQUIPMENT 230
26. TUAREG WEAPONS 236
27. HOUSE TYPES 240
28. HOUSE TYPES 241
29. TIMIA: “A” AND “B” TYPE HOUSES AND HUT CIRCLES 244
TABELLO: INTERIOR OF “A” TYPE HOUSE 244
30. HOUSE INTERIORS 248
31. MOSQUES 256
32. MOSQUES 257
33. TIFINAGH ALPHABET 267
34. ROCK INSCRIPTIONS IN TIFINAGH 269
35. MT. ABATTUL AND VILLAGE 275
36. THE CROSS IN ORNAMENT 277
37. TUAREG PERSONAL ORNAMENTS 285
38. MT. ARWA 295
39. MT. AGGATA 300
40. ROCK DRAWINGS 305
41. ROCK DRAWINGS 306
42. ORNAMENTED BAGGAGE RESTS 310
43. T’INTELLUST 312
44. BARTH’S CAMP AT T’INTELLUST 313
BARTH’S CAMP AT T’INTELLUST (ANOTHER VIEW) 313
45. ASSARARA 326
46. FUGDA, CHIEF OF TIMIA, AND HIS WAKIL 352
ATAGOOM 352
47. SIDI 366
48. EGHALGAWEN POOL 400
TIZRAET POOL 400
49. EGHALGAWEN VALLEY AND THE LAST HILLS OF AIR 414
50. MT. BILA AT SUNSET 419
_Additional { TYPICAL TEBU 442
Plate_ {
{ TERMIT PEAK AND WELL 442
MAPS AND DIAGRAMS
PAGE
MAP SHOWING THE TRADE ROADS OF NORTH AFRICA 5
DIAGRAMMATIC MAP SHOWING THE DRAINAGE OF THE CENTRAL SAHARA 29
MAP OF DAMERGU AND NEIGHBOURING PARTS: 1/2,000,000 _facing p._ 36
SKETCH MAP OF AIR AND THE DIVISIONS OF THE SOUTHLAND 40
DIAGRAM SHOWING TRIBAL DESCENT AMONG THE TUAREG 130
DIAGRAM SHOWING THE GOVERNMENT OF THE AIR TUAREG 144
MAP SHOWING LEO’S SAHARAN AREAS 331
DIAGRAM SHOWING IBN KHALDUN’S BERBER TRIBES 341
DIAGRAM SHOWING THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREG 388
GENEALOGY OF CERTAIN KINGS OF AIR 465
MAP OF AIR AND ADJACENT PARTS: 1/2,000,000 _At end_
* * * * *
NOTE
The general map at the end of the volume was prepared by the Royal
Geographical Society from data collected by the author supplementing
existing maps published in France and described in the text of the
book. The two drawings (Plates 38 and 39) were executed in England
by T. A. Emmet from sketches made in Air. Plates Nos. 2, 15 (lower),
34 are from photographs taken by Angus Buchanan. All the other maps,
diagrams, pictures, and photographs were prepared by the author from
material collected in 1922.
NOTE
The name “Air” is a dissyllable word: the vowels are pronounced
as in Italian according to the general system of transliteration,
which follows, wherever possible, the rules laid down by the Committee
of the Royal Geographical Society on the Spelling of Proper Names. In
the Tuareg form of Berber, _t_ before _i_ or similar vowel, especially
in the feminine possessive particle “tin,” very often assumes a
sound varying between a hard explosive _tch_ and a soft liquid dental,
such as is found in the English word “tune.” This modification of
the sound _t_ is written _t’_, wherever it is by usage sufficiently
pronounced to be noticeable. The pronunciation of Tuareg words follows
the Air dialect, which often differs from the northern speech. Letters
are only accented where it is important to avoid mispronunciation,
as in Fadé and Emilía: a final _e_, as in Assode, which is a
trisyllable, should always be pronounced even if not accented.
The nasal _n_ occurring in such words as Añastafidet is written _ñ_.
The _gh_ (or Arabic غ, _ghen_) sound is, as in other Berber languages,
very common in the speech of the Tuareg. The letter is so strongly
_grasseyé_ as to be indistinguishable, in many cases, from _r_. The
French with greater logic write this sound _r_ or _r’_. Doubtless
many names which have been spelled with _r_ in the succeeding pages
should more correctly have been spelled with _gh_: such mistakes are
due to the difficulties both of distinguishing the sound in speech,
and of transcribing French transliterations.
No attempt has been made to indicate the occurrence of the third _g_
which exists in the Tuareg alphabet, in addition to the hard _g_
and the soft _g_ (written _j_).
The Arabic letter ع (_’ain_) does not exist in the speech of the
Tuareg; where they use an Arabic word containing this letter, they
substitute for it the sound _gh_.
No signs have been used to distinguish between the hard and soft
varieties of the letters _d_, _t_ and _z_. The “kef” (Iek) and
“qaf” (Iaq) sounds are written _k_ and _q_.
=PEOPLE OF THE VEIL=
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Sahara is the name given in modern geography to the whole of the
interior of North Africa between the Nile Valley and the Atlantic
littoral, south of the Mediterranean coastlands and north of the
Equatorial belt. The word “Sahara” is derived from the Arabic, and
its meaning refers to a certain type of stony desert in one particular
area. There is no native name for the whole of this vast land surface:
it is far too large to fall wholly within the cognisance of any one
group of its diverse inhabitants. The fact that it is a Moslem area and
sharply distinguished from the rest of Africa has made it desirable
to find a better name than “Sahara” to include both the interior
and the littoral, for even “Sahara,” unsatisfactory as it is,
can only be used of the former. “Africa Minor” has been proposed,
but the reception accorded to this name has not been so cordial as to
warrant its use. The clumsy term “North Africa” must therefore
serve in the following pages to describe all the northern part of
the continent; specifically it refers to the parts west of the Nile
Valley and north of the Sudan.[1] It is an area which is now no longer
permanently inhabited by negro races, and which is not covered by
the dense vegetation of Equatoria.
To the general public the name Sahara denotes “Desert,” and the
latter connotes sand and thirst and camels and picturesque men and
veiled women. The Sahara in reality is very different. Its surface
and races are varied. Almost every type of physical feature, except
permanent glaciation, can be found. The greater part is capable of
supporting animal and vegetable life in some degree. Absolute desert
where no living thing can exist does not on the whole form a very
large proportion of the surface. It has become usual nowadays to
differentiate between the cultivated or cultivable areas, the steppe
desert and the true desert. The latter alone is devoid of organic life,
and is the exception rather than the rule. The mountain groups of the
Sahara fall, as an intermediate category, between the cultivated and
the desert lands. Generally speaking, animal and vegetable life exist
in the valleys, where some tillage is often possible. The density of
population, however, is never comparable with that of the cultivated
districts, which, except where they fringe the coast, are usually
included in the term “oases.”
The mountain groups of the Sahara are numerous and comparatively
high. There are summits in the more important massifs exceeding
10,000 feet above the sea. The three most important groups in the
Central Sahara are the Tibesti, Air and Ahaggar mountains. In such
a generalisation, reference to the Atlas and other mountain masses
in Algeria and Morocco may be omitted, since they do not properly
speaking belong to the Sahara. The three Saharan massifs are probably
of volcanic origin. They have only become known in recent years, and
even now have not been fully explored. This is especially the case
in regard to Tibesti, an area believed to be orographically connected
with Air by the almost unknown plateau of the Southern Fezzan.
The Central Sahara with these three groups of mountains differs
materially from the Eastern Sahara. Although our data for the latter
are more limited by lack of knowledge, the structure of the surface
immediately west of the Nile Valley appears characteristically to be
a series of closed basins. The area is covered with depressions into
which insignificant channels flow, and from which there appear to be
no outlets. Compared with the river systems of the west, the stream
beds are small and ill-defined. One valley of some magnitude, the Bahr
Bela Ma which Rohlfs tried to find on his famous journeys in the Libyan
desert, has been identified either as a dry channel of the Nile running
roughly parallel to it, or alternatively as a valley which starts from
N.E. Tibesti and terminates near or in the Wadi Natrun depression just
west of the Nile and level with the apex of the Delta. The upper part
which drains Tibesti has been called the W. Fardi; elsewhere it is
the W. Fareg; the shallow depression crossed by Hassanein Bey on his
journey from Jalo to Kufra seems to be part of this system. Examples of
closed basins separated from one another by steppe or desert are the
oases of Kufra, the Jaghbub-Siwa, Jalo and Lake Chad depressions. In
these areas cultivation is frequently intense; salt and fresh water
are abundant; and the vegetation sometimes develops luxuriantly into
veritable forests of date palms such as exist at Kufra. Between these
hollows the intervening Libyan desert is probably the largest and
most sterile area of its sort in the world.
The Western Sahara, on the other hand, is essentially an area of
well-defined river systems with watersheds and dry beds fashioned on
a vast scale. The valleys which extend from the mountains of Ahaggar
and the Fezzan to the present River Niger have corresponding channels
on the other side of the water-parting running through Southern
Algeria or Tunisia towards the Mediterranean. There are good reasons
for believing that the original course of the Niger terminated in a
swamp or marsh north of Timbuctoo, probably the same collecting basin
as that west of Ahaggar into which certain rivers from the Atlas also
used to flow. The lower Niger from the eastern side of the great bend
where the river now turns south-east and south drained the Central
Sahara by a great channel which had its head-waters in Ahaggar and
the Fezzan, and ran west of Air.
These Saharan rivers have not contained perennial surface water
for long ages. In places they have been covered by more recent
sand-dune formations of great extension, but they date from the present
geological period. Associated with the desiccation of these valleys is
the characteristic of extreme dryness which is one of the few features
more or less in accord with popular conceptions of the Sahara. The
barrenness of the Sahara is less due to the inherent sterility of the
ground than to climatic conditions; desiccation has been intensified in
the course of centuries by the purely mechanical processes attendant
upon an extremely continental climate and excessively high day
temperatures. The latter combined with the extraordinary dryness of
the air have contributed to the decay of vegetable, and consequently
of animal, life wherever man has not been sufficiently powerful, in
numbers or energy, to stay the process. Sterility and desiccation are
interacting causes and effects. There is no reason to believe that
any sudden change of climate has taken place in the Sahara since the
neolithic period, or that it is very much drier now than two thousand
years ago. Maximum and minimum temperatures, both average and absolute,
have a very wide range seasonally and within the period of twenty-four
hours. Temperatures of over 100° F. in the shade are common at all
seasons of the year during the day: the thermometer frequently falls
to freezing point at night during the winter. Ice is not unknown in
the mountains of Tibesti, Air and Ahaggar. The rainfall is irregular
except within the belt of summer rains which are so characteristic of
Equatorial Africa. In Tibesti the cycle of good rains seems to recur
once in thirteen years: in many years both here and elsewhere in the
Sahara no rain falls at all. But with these adverse climatic conditions
the surprising fact remains, not that the Sahara is so barren, but
that it is so relatively well-favoured and capable of supporting
different races of people in such comparatively large numbers.[2]
The Air mountains, like the Desert steppes, are only sparsely
inhabited. The hill-sides are too wind-swept and rocky to support
forests or pastures of any value. Many of the valleys are capable
of being cultivated, but in practice are only gardened here and
there. In certain districts there are groves of date palms which have
been imported from the north. Air is in reality a great Saharan oasis
divided from the Equatorial belt by a zone of desert and steppe. It
differs from the south in its flora and general conditions, though
by its position within the belt of tropical summer rains it belongs
climatically to the Sudan.
[Illustration: TRADE ROADS
F. R. del.
Emery Walker Ltd. sc.]
The oases of the desert, like the Sahara generally, have been
the subject of much popular misconception. The origin of the word
“oasis,” which has reached us in its present form through the
classics, may perhaps be found in ancient Egyptian. It seems to be
connected with the name of the Wawat People of the West referred to
in the Harris Papyrus,[3] and occurs in the names of Wau el Kebir and
Wau el Seghir or el Namus, which are oases in the Eastern Fezzan.[4]
The term El Wahat,[5] given to one or several of the oases west of
the Nile Valley, contains the same root. An oasis is not necessarily
a patch of ground with two or three palm trees and a well in the
desert. It is simply an indefinite area of fertility in a barren land;
it may or may not happen to have a well. There are oases in Southern
Algeria and the Fezzan with hundreds of thousands of palm trees,
containing many villages and a permanent population. There are others
where the pasture is good but where there is neither population nor
water. “Oasis” is a term with no strict denotation, it connotes
attributes which render animal life possible.
In this sense Air, as a whole, is an oasis situated on a great caravan
road from the Mediterranean to Central Africa. The mountains so lie
in respect of the desert to the north and to the south that caravan
journeys may be broken in their valleys, and camels can stay to
recuperate. The mountains mark a stage on the road, the importance of
which it is difficult to over-estimate. In the history of North Africa,
the principal routes across the Sahara from the Mediterranean to the
Sudan have seemingly not changed at all. Since the earliest times
they have followed the shortest tracks from north to south whenever
there was sufficient water. If the Nile Valley and the routes in the
desert adjacent thereto are left out of account as being _suorum
generum_, there are four main caravan roads across North Africa
from north to south. The easternmost runs from Cyrenaica by Kufra to
Wadai and Tibesti; only within the last century has it been rendered
practicable for caravans by the provision of wells along the southern
part, which was opened to heavy traffic by the Senussiya sect. The
two central routes run respectively from Tripolitania by the Fezzan,
Murzuk and Kawar to Lake Chad, and by Ghadames, Ghat and Air to the
Central Sudan. The western route runs from Algeria and Morocco across
the desert to Timbuctoo. In addition there is the Moroccan road,
which roughly follows the curve of the coast to the Western Sudan
and Senegal. Of all these the best known in modern times,[6] and
culturally perhaps the most important, has been the Air road. It is
noteworthy that all three central routes have been or are within the
control of the Tuareg race. As the Tuareg were the caravan drivers
of the Central Sahara, so were they also responsible for bringing a
certain degree of civilisation from the Mediterranean to Equatorial
Africa. That has been their greatest rôle in history.
The object of this book is to describe a part of the Tuareg race,
namely, those tribes which live in Air and in the country immediately
to the south. It will not be possible to examine in any detail the
theories surrounding the origin of the race, but certain definitions
are necessary if the succeeding chapters are to be understood. The
Berbers of North Africa, among whom are usually included the Tuareg,
have very disputed origins; for many reasons it is perhaps best to
follow the example of Herodotus and use the geographical term Libyans
for them. Less controversy surrounds this name than “Berber,”
which implies a number of wholly imaginary anthropological
connections. Moreover, it is even open to doubt whether the Tuareg
are Berbers at all, like the other people so called in Algeria and
Morocco. In all this confusion it will be enough to grasp that the
Tuareg are a Libyan people with marked individual peculiarities
and that they were in North Africa long before the Arabs came. They
have been there ever since the earliest times of which we have any
historical record, though in more northern areas than those which
they now occupy. The population of the Sahara is very diverse and the
affinities of the various elements afford many interesting problems
for study; but in the present work we shall be concerned with the
one race alone.
The Tuareg country may roughly be described as extending from
the eastern edge of the Central Sahara, which is bounded by the
Fezzan-Murzuk-Kawar-Lake Chad caravan road, to the far edge of the
western deserts of North Africa before the Atlantic zone begins, and
from Southern Algeria in the north to the Niger and the Equatorial belt
between the river and Lake Chad in the south. The Tuareg are so little
known even to-day that their very existence is almost legendary. It
is with something of a thrill that the tourist in Tunis or Algiers
learns from a mendacious guide that a poor Arab half-caste sitting
muffled in a cloak is one of the fabled People of the Veil. It is long,
in fact, since any of them have visited the Mediterranean coast, for
they do not care for Europeans very much. Before the Italo-Turkish
War, occasional Tuareg used to reach the coast at Tripoli at the end
of the long caravan road from Central Africa; even then they more
usually stopped at Ghadames or Murzuk. With the Italian occupation of
Tripolitania in 1913 they became apprehensive of intrusion on their
last unconquered area; but despite the Italian failure to occupy and
administer the interior they have only lately ventured a certain way
north once more on raids or for commerce.
Though the Hornemann, Lyons and the Denham, Oudney and Clapperton
expeditions in the first half of the last century touched the fringe
of the Tuareg country, the first Europeans in modern times to come
into contact with the Azger group in the Fezzan were Richardson in
1847 and Barth with Richardson in 1849 and subsequent years. Barth,
more particularly mentioned in the story of the penetration of Air,
is in some respects even now the most valuable authority for all
the Tuareg except the Ahaggaren. The first detailed work of value
dedicated to the latter was that of Duveyrier, _Les Touareg du Nord_,
published in 1864 after a journey through the Ahaggar and Azger
country and the Fezzan. His systematic study of the ethnology of the
Tuareg, his geographical work and his researches into the fauna,
flora and ancient history of the lands he visited, were presented
to the world in a form which has since been taken in France as the
model of what a scientific book should be. Ill health was the tragedy
of his life, for it prevented his return, and rendered him, as he
remarked in later years, “an arm-chair explorer of the Sahara.”
After visiting the Wad Righ and Shott countries in Southern Tunisia,
he went to El Golea on the road to Tuat and thence turned towards
Ghadames and Tripolitania. He eventually reached Ghat, and returned to
the Mediterranean coast by Murzuk and Sokna, taking a more easterly
road than Barth’s in 1850. Beurmann in 1862, and Dickson ten years
previously, had reached the edge of the same Tuareg country, but
what Barth had done for the Tuareg of Air and the south, Duveyrier
did for the Ahaggaren and Azger.
In 1881, twenty years after the expedition of Burin to Tuat, the French
determined to penetrate the countries of this fabled race. A column
under Colonel Flatters, who had already gained a certain reputation in
France as a Saharan explorer, marched almost due south from Wargla and
Tuggurt in the eastern part of Southern Algeria up the Ighaghar basin
and so reached the north-eastern corner of the Ahaggar country. This
valley is the drainage system of the north central Sahara towards the
Mediterranean; it virtually divides the old Azger country from that of
the Ahaggaren. Near the Aghelashem Wells at the intersection of the
valley with the Ghat-Insalah road, Flatters turned S.E., intending
apparently to follow the Ghat-Air caravan road to the Sudan. This
track he proposed joining at or near the wells of Issala, and then to
proceed by much the same route as that which Barth and his companions
had selected in 1850. But at Bir Gharama in the Tin Tarabin valley,
a few days before it was due to reach Issala, disaster overtook the
column. The European officers, who assumed that their penetration
of the Tuareg country was welcome to the inhabitants, had taken none
of the military precautions necessary in hostile country. The vital
part of the expedition, the officer commanding and his staff, left
camp to reconnoitre a well and became separated from their troops,
consisting of about eighty Algerian tirailleurs. The officers were
attacked by the Tuareg and killed. After the death of Colonel Flatters
and Captain Masson, the remainder of the column under Captain Dianous
made an attempt to escape north. After an unsuccessful effort by the
Tuareg to destroy the party by selling the men dates poisoned with the
Alfalehle plant (_Hyoscyamus Falezlez_),[7] the column reached the
Ighaghar once more at the wells of Amjid. But they found the wells
occupied by the enemy, and in the ensuing fight Captain Dianous and
nearly all his men were killed.
The circumstances of the disaster, so vividly recounted by Duveyrier
to the Paris Geographical Society on 22nd April, 1881, had followed
the publication of his account of a people whom he had described
picturesquely, but with some exaggeration, as the “Knights of the
Desert.” The massacre created a profound impression in France. The
Tuareg came to be regarded as an insurmountable obstacle to the French
penetration of North Africa, and expeditions into their country were
discontinued. The disaster of Bir Gharama remained unavenged until
1902, when a detachment of Camel Corps under Lieut. Cottonest met
the pick of the Ahaggar Tuareg in battle at Tit within their own
mountains and killed 93 men out of 299 present, the French patrol
losing only 4 killed and 2 wounded out of 120 native soldiers
and Arab scouts. Despite the small numbers involved, the fight at
Tit broke the resistance of Ahaggar, for it proved the vanity of
matching a few old flintlocks and spears and swords against magazine
rifles.[8] But if it demonstrated the futility of overt resistance,
it also established for all time the courage of the camel riders of
the desert, who hurled themselves against a barrier of rifle fire,
unprotected by primeval forest or sheltering jungle, in order to
maintain their age-long defiance of the mastery of foreign people.
Considering the magnitude of the results they achieve, Saharan,
like Arabian, battles involve surprisingly small numbers. The size
of armed bodies moving over the desert is limited by the capacity
of the wells; the output of water not only regulates the mass of
raiding bands, but also determines their strategy, as well as the
routes of trading caravans, which are compelled to move in large
bodies in order to ensure even a small measure of protection. Only
the realisation of this rather self-evident fact enabled the French
in the course of years to deal with raiders in Southern Algeria by
organising Camel Corps patrols of relatively small size and great
mobility. The privations which these raiders are willing to endure
made it impossible to fight them with a European establishment.
The necessity of imitating the nomad in his mode of life and warfare
became obvious to Laperrine from his first sojourn in Southern
Algeria, where he made his career as the greatest European desert
leader in history with one solitary exception. The encounter of
Tit was followed by a number of “Tournées d’Apprivoisement,”
patrols to “tame” the desert folk, initiated by Laperrine, and
culminating in 1904 in a protracted reconnaissance through Ahaggar,
which brought about a final pacification. Charles de Foucauld,
soldier, traveller and monk, had accompanied the patrol. He remained
on after it was over as a hermit and student among the Ahaggaren
until his death in 1916. He had been Laperrine’s brother officer
at St. Cyr. Extravagant, reckless and endowed with all the good
things of the world, a member of the old French aristocracy in a
smart cavalry regiment, the Marquis de Foucauld is one of the most
picturesque figures of modern times. After a memorable reconnaissance
of Morocco in 1883-4, disguised as a Jew, he became a Trappist monk,
and eventually entered a retreat at Beni Abbes, in the desert that he
loved too well to leave in all his life. During his years in Ahaggar
as a teacher of the Word of God he made no converts to Christianity,
but sought by his example alone to lead the people along the way of
Truth. It is to be hoped that, in spite of a modesty which precluded
it during his lifetime, the knowledge and lore of the Tuareg which he
collected in the form of notes will eventually be given to the world
in order to supplement his dictionary of the Ahaggar dialect, to-day
the standard work on their language, which is called Temajegh.[9]
To implement the Laperrine policy of long reconnaissances, a post
was built near Tamanghasset in Ahaggar called Fort Motylinski, after
an officer interpreter who was one of the first practical students
of Temajegh. Lately the post has been moved to Tamanghasset itself,
where Father de Foucauld had built his hermitage, and it is now called
Fort Laperrine, in memory of the great soldier who was killed flying
across the desert to Timbuctoo in 1919.
Another post was built at Janet not far from Ghat, to watch the Azger
Tuareg. Its capture during the late war by the Arabs and Tuareg of
Ghat, and the killing of Father de Foucauld by a raiding party from
the Fezzan, are incidents in that same series of intrigues which were
instigated in North Africa by the Central Empires and carried on with
such success in the Western Desert of Egypt, Cyrenaica, Tripolitania,
Southern Algeria and as far afield as Air. If the Senussi leaders
have not been responsible for as many intrigues as it has been the
fashion to ascribe to this puritanical and perhaps fanatical sect,
the Germans at least discovered what others are still learning, that
the latent force of nationalism in North Africa among the ancient
Libyan and Arab-Libyan peoples is powerful still to-day. The spirit
of the Circumcelliones and of the opponents of Islam in the eighth
century was exploited by the Turks and Germans through the Senussiya,
which provided the only organisation available during the Great War,
though in fact only few Tuareg and Arabs at Ghat or in the Fezzan
were members of, or even friendly to, the sect. These people used the
opportunity afforded by the war to procure arms and material through
the Senussiya for the consummation of their own ambitions. The new
spirit which is abroad in Islam, in Africa as well as in Asia, is an
interesting subject of study for the practical politician. There is
no occasion to enlarge upon it here.
In consequence of these agitations, a raid came out of the east
and fell upon Father de Foucauld’s hermitage on the 1st December,
1916. The hermit was killed, but the raiders were not of the Ahaggaren
among whom he had lived, and to whom he had devoted his life; they
came from Ghat and the Fezzan. They probably started without intent
to murder, but because Charles de Foucauld was the greatest European
influence in the desert at that time, they desired to remove him
and perhaps to hold him as a hostage. In justice it must be admitted
that no one had any illusions regarding the political views of the
people of the Fezzan; they were in a state of open warfare with
the French posts in Southern Algeria. De Foucauld had played a
very great part against them in preventing the Ahaggaren rising
_en masse_ against the French; he was an important intelligence
centre for the neighbouring Fort Motilynski; he was apparently, well
provided with rifles in his hermitage. When surprised by the raid,
he disdained to fight, preferring to fall a martyr to his religion
and his country. My excuse, if any is needed, for touching on a
subject tending to be controversial is the appearance of a number
of mis-statements concerning the barbarity of his murder and the
treachery of the people to whom Father de Foucauld had devoted the
latter part of his life. It is well to remember, in the first place,
that the circumstances of his life and his prestige made the attack a
justifiable act of war, for he played a definitely political rôle;
secondly, that there was no treachery or betrayal; and lastly, that
his aggressors were a mixed band of Arabs and of Tuareg from another
part of the Sahara which had, for generations past, been on terms of
raid and counter-raid with the people of Ahaggar.
When all has been said of the European penetration of the Tuareg
country, it is not very much. The world outside the society of those
white men who, during the last fifty years, have spent their lives in
the Sahara, can know but little of this race or of their country. The
modern literature on the subject is small, even in French; in English
it is almost non-existent. On the Tuareg of Air there are only two
works of any value: the one by a French officer is recent in date
and sadly superficial;[10] the other is incorporated in H. Barth’s
account of the British expedition of 1849 and subsequent years to
Central Africa.[11] There are a few other works in French about the
Tuareg of the north and south-west, but I am not aware that anyone has
attempted a general study of the whole people, who have been rather
neglected by science. The principal object of this volume will have
been achieved if it in any measure fills a want in English records
or if it arouses sufficient controversy to induce others to undertake
a thorough investigation of the race.
The Tuareg are not a tribe but a people. The name “Tuareg” is
not their own: it is a term of opprobrium applied to them by their
enemies, and connotes certain peculiarities possessed by a number
of tribal confederations which have no common name for themselves
as a race. The men of this people, after reaching a certain age,
wear a strip of thin cloth wound around their heads in such a manner
as to form a hood over the eyes and a covering over the mouth and
nostrils. Only a narrow slit is left open for the eyes, and no other
part of the face is visible. From this practice they became known
to the Arabs as the “Muleththemin” or “Veiled People,”[12]
while they themselves, in default of a national name, are in the habit
of using the same locution in their own tongue to describe the whole
society of different castes which compose their community. Whatever
the social position of the men, the Veil is invariably worn by day and
by night,[13] while the women go unveiled. Few races are more rigidly
observant of social distinction between noble and servile tribes;
none holds to a tradition of dress with more ritual conservatism.
PLATE 2
[Illustration: ELATTU]
The larger divisions of Tuareg have names by which they are known
to themselves and to their neighbours: these names designate the
historical or geographical groupings of tribes. In each group of
tribes the existence of nobles and serfs is recognised; there are
appropriate terms to describe these social distinctions. The nobles
are called Imajeghan;[14] the servile people, Imghad. But no name
other than Kel Tagilmus,[15] the “People of the Veil,” exists to
describe the society of nobles and serfs alike, irrespective of group
or caste. These details will require fuller examination in due course,
but it is important to realise immediately that the name Tuareg[16]
is unknown in their own language and is only used of them by Arabs
and other foreigners. It has, however, been so universally adopted
by everyone who has had to do with them or who has written of them
that, although not strictly accurate, it would be pedantic not to
continue using it. The Tuareg all speak the same language, called
Temajegh, which varies only dialectically from group to group. They
have a peculiar form of script, known as T’ifinagh, which also
is practically identical in all the divisions of the Tuareg, but is
apparently not used by other peoples. Lastly, the Tuareg are nomads
by instinct and, save where much intermarriage has taken place, of
the same racial type. The conquest of foreign elements in war and
their assimilation into servile tribes have, in the course of time,
led to some modification of physique and a growth of sedentarism
in certain areas. As a whole, however, the nation has survived in
a fairly pure state which is readily distinguishable. There is,
I think, no justification for considering the People of the Veil a
large tribal group of Berbers in North Africa; they are a separate
race with marked peculiarities, distinct from other sections of the
latter, and, as I believe, of a different origin.
They formerly extended further west almost to the sea-board of the
Atlantic; their northern and eastern extension can also be deduced
from what is known of their migrations. Their neighbours to the south
are the negroid Kanuri, Hausa-speaking peoples,[17] and the Fulani;
to the east are the Tebu, and in the west the Arab and Moorish tribes;
finally, in the north the nomadic and sedentary Arabs and sedentary
Libyans of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania. The N.E. corner of Tuareg
territory, the Fezzan, is ethnically of such mixed population as to
admit of no summary classification; Arab, Libyan, Tebu and negroid
peoples are all inextricably mingled together. The Tuareg wander as
nomads over the country generally, the negroes and sedentary Libyans
till the ground, and, in addition to a proportion of all those already
enumerated, the towns are inhabited by yet another people of noble
origin, whose connection with the ancient Garamantes of classical
authors may be assumed if it cannot be proved. With the exception of
the Fezzan the Tuareg are now predominant within their own country. It
includes two great groups of mountains, Air and Ahaggar, together
with certain smaller adjacent massifs.
It is unfortunately not possible to deal with Air in history nor with
the Tuareg of Air, by considering the mountains and their inhabitants
alone. The migrations of the Tuareg of Air have been so intimately
connected with that part of the Sudan which we now call Nigeria that
the northern fringe of the area and the country intervening between it
and Air must receive attention. This intervening steppe and desert,
largely overrun by Tuareg, lie on the way which I followed to reach
the mountains. The neglect to which these areas have been subjected
justifies me in devoting a chapter to them before coming to Air
itself. Again, the concluding chapters of this volume will deal as
much with the Southland as they do with Air, for the history of the
latter cannot be divorced from that of the former.
Since mention will be continually made of the various Tuareg groups
as they exist to-day, and of the tribes which they contain, it will
be as well to explain that there are to-day four principal divisions
of the people, all of whom possess characteristics common and peculiar
to the whole race.
The main groups are:—
1. The People of Ahaggar, called Ahaggaren, or Kel Ahaggar.
2. The Azjer, or Azger Tuareg; this name is also spelt Askar, Adjeur,
etc.
3. The People of Air called the Kel Air, or, in the Hausa language
which is current in that country, Asbenawa or Absenawa, from Asben,
Azbin or Absen, the Sudanese name for Air.
4. The Tuareg of the south-west.
The first group is held for convenience to include the Tuareg in
the Ahnet mountains, the Taitoq, and those north-west of the Ahaggar
mountains. The second group is comparatively compact. The third group
is the one with which this volume deals in detail, and includes
the Kel Geres and other Tuareg generally of the Southland, in and
on the fringes of Nigeria. The fourth group should more properly be
divided, as it comprises the distinct aggregations of the Aulimmiden,
the Ifoghas of the Mountain (Ifoghas n’Adghar),[18] and the Tuareg
of Timbuctoo and the Niger.
The country of the Ahaggaren proper is confined to the Ahaggar
massif, but there are certain outlying districts to the north and
north-west. The confused mass of hills east of Ahaggar towards the
Fezzan was, at the beginning of the century, essentially the country of
the Azger. In recent years they have tended to move eastwards towards
their original homes and away from the influence of the French military
posts. The majority of this group now ranges over the country between
Ghat and Murzuk. They are the Tuareg who have come least into contact
with Europeans. Although there is considerable affinity between them
and the Ahaggaren, the Tuareg generally recognise that the Azger do not
belong to, or are under the rule of, the Ahaggar chieftains despite the
fact that they are all collectively known in Air as Ahaggaren. Those
travellers who have known them are at one in considering them to-day
an independent division. From the historical point of view the Azger
are the most important of all the Tuareg, since from this group,
reduced in numbers as it now is, most of the migrations of the race
to the Southlands seem to have taken place. They are also probably
to-day the purest of the Tuareg stock in existence.
The first description of Air and its people in any detail was
brought back to Europe by Barth after his memorable journey from
the Mediterranean to the Sudan, on which he set out in 1849 with
Richardson and Overweg, but from which he alone returned alive
more than five years later. Prior to this journey there are certain
references in Ibn Batutah and Leo Africanus, but they do not give
us much information either of the country or of the people. From Ibn
Batutah’s description, the country he traversed is recognisable, but
the information is meagre. The account of Leo Africanus written in the
sixteenth century is little better. His principal contribution, in the
English and original Italian versions, is a bad pun: “Likewise Hair
(Air), albeit a desert, yet so called for the goodness and temperature
of the aire. . . .”[19] It is an observation, in fact, of great
truth, but hardly more useful than his other statement, which records
that the “soyle aboundeth with all kinds of herbes,” in apparent
contradiction with the previous remark. He adds that “a great store
of manna” is found not far from Agades which the people “gather in
certaine little vessels, carrying it, when it is new, into the market
of the town to be mingled with water as a refreshing drink”—an
allusion probably to the “pura” or “ghussub” water made of
millet meal, water and milk or cheese. He states that the country
is inhabited by the “Targa” people, and as he mentions Agades,
it had evidently by then been founded, but beyond these facts his
description is wholly inadequate. He unfortunately even forgets to
mention that Air is mountainous.
Although the European penetration of the Western Sahara may date
from the Middle Ages, the same cannot be said of Air. Caillé in
1828 was, in fact, not the first European to visit and describe
Timbuctoo, nor was Rohlfs in 1864 the first European in Tuat. There
are some very interesting earlier accounts which are gradually being
unearthed[20] dealing with these countries. It is regrettable that
there are apparently no similar accounts of Air.[21] The first
information of any value is found only in comparatively recent
times. Hornemann[22] in 1798 travelled from Egypt along the Haj
Road which runs from Timbuctoo to Cairo. He turned back at Murzuk,
but had he continued he would have come to Ghat and eventually to
Air. He nevertheless brought back the first modern account of the
Tuareg of this country, or rather of a section of them, the Kel Owi,
whom he calls the Kolouvey. His information about the Ahaggaren and
about the divisions of the Tebu, who lived east and north-east beyond
the limits of the country which they now occupy, is worth examining
in connection with their ethnological history. After Hornemann’s
journey Denham, Oudney and Clapperton[23] collected some further
details about Air and its people in the course of an expedition to
Chad and Nigeria at the beginning of the last century, and in 1845
Richardson began a systematic study of the Azger and Air Tuareg during
a preliminary journey to the Fezzan. But none of these travellers
had the first-hand personal experience which, five years afterwards,
Barth, Richardson and Overweg obtained on their expedition.
The part played by Great Britain in the exploration of the Central
Sahara, testified to by the graves of many Englishmen or foreigners in
the service of the British Crown, is little known in this country. Our
efforts to abolish the slave trade in Africa and our paramount position
in Tripolitania early in the last century led to that initiative being
taken, to which the world even to-day owes most of its knowledge of the
Fezzan, and which opened the Sudan to commerce and colonisation. While
Richardson was apparently the first and only Englishman to visit
Air until my travelling companion, Angus Buchanan, went there from
Nigeria in 1919, the graves of explorers in neighbouring lands show
that we stand second to none in geographical work in the Central
Sahara. It was only when, in the partition of North Africa, this
vast area fell to the French, that there was any falling off in the
numbers of Englishmen who in each successive decade travelled and died
there. Their work deserves to be better known: Henry Warrington died
of dysentery at the desert well of Dibbela, south of Bilma in Kawar,
on his way to Lake Chad with a German, Dr. Vogel. Dr. Oudney died on
5th January, 1824, at Murmur near Hadeija (Northern Nigeria), after
accompanying Clapperton and Denham from Tripoli by way of Bilma and
Chad to explore Bornu. Tyrwhit, who went out to join them, died at Kuka
on Lake Chad, on 22nd October, 1824. Barth’s companion Richardson
died in the early part of 1851 at N’Gurutawa in Manga, S. of Zinder,
and their companion Overweg succumbed near Lake Chad. Both Barth and
Overweg were Germans who had volunteered and were appointed to serve
on an expedition sent by Her Majesty’s Government to explore Central
Africa and to report on the abolition of the slave trade. Dr. Vogel,
another German, who had been sent by Her Majesty’s Government to join
Barth and complete his work, died near Lake Chad after his return,
while an assistant, Corporal MacGuire, was killed on his way home at
Beduaram, N. of Bilma, in the same year. Of those who had opened the
way for the Clapperton expeditions, Ritchie had died of disease in
1819 at Murzuk and Lyon had been obliged to turn back before reaching
Bornu. Clapperton himself on a second journey lost his life at Sokoto
on 13th April, 1827. North Africa has claimed her British victims no
less than the swamps and jungles of Equatoria, only they are not so
well known, for they never sought to advertise their achievements.
Few people in this country or abroad realise how great was the
influence of Great Britain in the Sahara during the lifetime and
after the death of that remarkable man, Colonel Hamer Warrington,
H.M. Consul at Tripoli from 1814 to 1846. Apart from the fact that
he virtually governed Tripoli, our influence and interests may be
gauged by the existence of Vice-Consulates and Consulates, not only
along the coast at Khoms and Misurata, but far in the interior at
Ghadames and Murzuk. The peregrinations of numerous travellers
and efforts to suppress the African slave trade had obliged Her
Majesty’s Government to play a part in local tribal politics,
for it had early become clear that if this abominable traffic was
to be abolished the sources of supply would have to be controlled,
since it proved useless only to make representations on the coast
where caravans discharged their human cargo. At one moment it even
seemed as if Tripolitania would be added to the British Empire, and as
lately as 1870 travellers were still talking of the French and British
factions among the Fezzanian tribes. But Free Trade and other political
controversies in England half-way through the century brought about
a pause, and the arrest was enough to withdraw public interest from
North Africa and to give France her chance. The controversies were
the object of much bitter criticism by the idealist Richardson, who
saw political dialectics obscuring a crusade on behalf of humanity
for which he was destined to give his life. He seems to have been
profoundly affected and to have suffered himself to become warped,
as Barth on more than one occasion discovered.[24] The inevitable
consequence of a British occupation of Tripolitania would have been
the active penetration of the Air and Chad roads and a junction with
the explorers and merchants who were working north from the Bight of
Benin. But French interest in North Africa as a consequence of their
occupation of Algeria grew progressively stronger as it declined in
this country, while to the same waning appetite must be ascribed the
fact that for seventy years no Englishman visited Air. Regrettable
as this may appear to geographers, it is even more tragic to realise
how few have heard of the German, Dr. Heinrich Barth, than whom it
may be said there never has been a more courageous or meticulously
accurate explorer. After several notable journeys further north he
accompanied Richardson as a volunteer, and on the latter’s death
continued the exploration of Africa for another four years on behalf
of Her Majesty’s Government, which he most loyally served. If in
this volume he is repeatedly mentioned, it is without misgiving or
apology; it may help in some little measure to rescue his name from
unmerited oblivion in these days of sensational and superficial books
of travel. The account of his journey and of the lore and history of
the countries of Central Africa which he visited from Timbuctoo to
Lake Chad is still a standard work.
Barth and his companions entered Air in August 1850, and left the
country for the south in the closing days of the same year. Reaching
Asiu from Ghat, they traversed the northern mountains of Air, which
are known to the Tuareg as Fadé.[25] After passing by the wells
in the T’iyut valley and the “agilman” (pool) of Taghazit,
they camped eight days later on the northern outskirts of Air
proper. During this period their caravan was subjected to constant
threats of brigandage from parties of northern Tuareg, and on the
day before reaching the first permanent habitations of Air in the
Ighazar near Seliufet village, they again narrowly escaped aggression
from the local inhabitants. An attack was eventually made on them at
T’intaghoda, a little further on, and they only just escaped with
their lives after losing a good deal of property. The same experience
was repeated near T’intellust, where the expedition had established
its head-quarters in the great valley which drains the N.E. side
of the Air mountains. When, however, they had once made friends
with that remarkable personality, Annur, chief of the Kel Owi tribal
confederation, and paramount chief of Air, they were free from further
molestation, and thanks to him eventually they reached the Sudan in
safety. From T’intellust Barth made a journey alone to Agades by a
road running west of the central Bagezan mountains. After his return
the whole party moved to the Southland along the great Tripoli-Sudan
trade route which passes east of the Central massifs. Crossing the
southern part of Air known as Tegama they entered Damergu, which
geographically belongs to the Sudan, about New Year’s Day, 1851. In
the course of his stay in Air Barth made the first sketch map of the
country, catalogued the principal tribes and compiled a summary of
their history which is still the most valuable contribution which we
possess on the subject.
Some twenty-seven years later, another German, Erwin von Bary,
reached Air from the north by much the same road as that which
Barth and his companions had followed. He left Ghat in January 1897
and reached the villages of Northern Air a month later. Thence he
journeyed to the village of Ajiru, a village on the eastern slopes of
the central mountains, and awaited the return from a raid of Belkho,
the chieftain who had succeeded Barth’s friend Annur as paramount
lord of the country. The unfortunate von Bary was subjected to every
form of extortion, and though Belkho, when he returned, compelled
his people to restore what they had stolen, the chief himself made
life unpleasant for the traveller by taking all his presents and
doing nothing for him in return so long as he showed any desire to
proceed on his journey southwards. Belkho pleaded such poverty that the
explorer nearly died of starvation, but von Bary admittedly had laid
himself open to every form of abuse. He had arrived almost penniless,
did not understand the courtesies of desert travelling, and seems
to have placed undue reliance on his skill as a doctor to achieve
his objects. But when he eventually gave up the idea of going on to
the Sudan, Belkho treated him well. Although von Bary’s opinion of
the Tuareg of Air is not favourable, in reality he owed them a great
debt of gratitude. No other people who dislike foreigners so much
as they do would have protected him and helped him as they finally
did. His quarrels with Belkho seem to have been in part due to his own
tactlessness and discourtesy, and in part to his inability to realise
that the chief, for political reasons, did not desire him to go to the
Sudan. Von Bary returned to Ghat, meaning to try once more to reach
Nigeria as soon as he had picked up his stores and some more money,
but his diary ends abruptly with the remark that he would be ready
to start south again from there in fifteen to twenty days. He died
within twenty-four hours of reaching Ghat, on 3rd October, 1877. He
had spent a cheerful evening with Kaimakam,[26] and had gone to bed;
at 6 a.m. he was breathing peacefully asleep; by ten o’clock he was
dead. His death does not seem to have been quite natural. It remains
one of the mysteries of the Sahara. Von Bary’s account of Air[27]
is very incomplete and his observations are coloured by the hardships
which he suffered. With the exception of certain botanical information
and notes on one or two ethnological points, his descriptions contain
little that had not already been made known by Barth.
Then began that competition among European Powers for African
colonies which was soon to reach a critical stage. The Anglo-German
Convention of 1890 had proposed to divide Africa finally, but before
that date the French had seen one desirable part after the other fall
to our lot. They determined before it was too late to take as much
as possible of what still remained unallocated. Central Africa, east
of Lake Chad, certain tracts of indifferent country on the western
coast and the greater part of the Sahara were still unclaimed by any
European Power. And so it was that in France the magnificent scheme
was conceived of sending three columns from north, west and south to
converge on Lake Chad, and formally to take possession of the lands
through which they passed in accordance with the stipulations of
the Congress of Berlin, where it had been laid down that territorial
claims were only valid if substantiated by effective occupation. It was
not till 1899, however, that the French plans reached maturity. Three
expeditions duly set out from the Congo, the Western Sudan and Algeria
to cross Africa and meet on Lake Chad. Their adventures constitute one
of the most romantic chapters in Colonial history. The western column,
at first under Captain Voulet, who was accompanied by Lieut. Chanoine
and others, marched from the Niger along the northern edge of the
Nigerian Emirates. Mutiny and murder among the European personnel were
experienced. French politics at home, where the Jewish question had
become acute, were responsible for all manner of delays; the command
changed hands repeatedly. But the northern column and the Congo party
were equally delayed; not until a year after the date fixed for the
rendezvous on the lake did the three expeditions meet. The military
escorts were united under Commandant Lamy, and gave battle to the
forces of Rabah, one of the Khalif’s generals, who had crossed half
Africa to carve out for himself a kingdom in Bornu and Bagirmi after
the _débâcle_ of the Mahdia on the Upper Nile. Lamy defeated him
and annexed French Equatorial Africa.
Of these three expeditions, the northern column, known as the
Foureau-Lamy Mission, had passed through Air on its way south. The
Europeans who accompanied it were in 1899 the first Frenchmen to
enter the country and to carry out the plan originally contemplated
by Flatters in 1881. The annexation of Air by France may be counted
from this date.
The Foureau-Lamy Mission[28] entered the borders of Air from Algeria
at the wells of In Azawa; their heavy losses in camels obliged
them to abandon large quantities of material, but they eventually
reached Iferuan in the Ighazar, not far from T’intaghoda. Here
the camp of the expedition was attacked in force by the Tuareg,
who were only driven off with great difficulty. The situation was
critical. The whole country was hostile to the French; they were so
short of camels that on the stage south of Iferuan to Agellal they
had to move their baggage in small lots, marching their transport
forwards and backwards. Their destiny hung in the balance when friendly
overtures were made to them near Auderas by a Tuareg of considerable
note, Ahodu of the Kel Tadek tribe, whose fathers and forefathers
for five generations had been keepers of the mosque of Tefgun near
Iferuan. Ahodu’s political sense has rarely been at fault, either
then or since; he saw that the only end possible for his people from
protracted hostilities with the Europeans was disaster. He promised
the French peace while the column remained in Air. It reached Agades
in safety, and the Sultan was obliged to hoist the French flag and
provide transport animals and guides. No attack was made near the
town, thanks to the efficacy of Ahodu’s presence, but his powers
of persuasion were insufficient when the column marched out into the
barren area further south. The guide purposely misled the expedition
and it nearly perished of thirst, succeeding only with great difficulty
in returning to Agades. It eventually started once more and reached
the south, where its story ceases to concern the exploration of Air.
Since 1899, then, the fate of Air has been settled in so far as Europe
was concerned, for it was recognised as lying within the French sphere;
but the country was not effectually occupied until 1904, when a camel
patrol under Lieut. C. Jean established a post at Agades. The post
was evacuated for a short time and then reoccupied. The exploration
of the mountains has proceeded slowly since that date. Sketch maps
were gradually compiled in the course of camel corps patrols, and
in 1910 the Cortier geographical mission published a very creditable
map of the mountains,[29] other than the northern Fadé group, based
on thirty-three astronomically determined co-ordinates supplementing
the five secured by the Foureau-Lamy Mission. Chudeau in 1905 made
a brief geological survey and published some notes on the flora,
which remain uncatalogued to this day;[30] very complete collections
of the fauna have been made by Buchanan[31] and examined in England
by the British Museum (South Kensington) and by Lord Rothschild’s
museum at Tring. The ethnology of the country is very superficially
discussed in a book published by Jean; Barth’s account remains the
one of value. The complete exploration of the mountains and detailed
mapping still remain to be done as well as other scientific work of
every description.
“Air” as a geographical term for the mountainous plateau does
not signify exactly the same thing to the inhabitants of the country
themselves as it does to us; properly speaking, it is applied by them
only to one part of the plateau, for the whole of which the more usual
name of Asben or Absen is used. The latter is probably the original
name given to the area by the people of the Sudan before the advent of
the Tuareg. It is now very generally used even by them: it is universal
further south. Barth has speculated at some length upon the origin of
the name Air or Ahir, to take its Arabic form, and concluded that the
letter “h” had been deliberately added out of modesty to guard
against the word acquiring a copronymous signification. But early
Arabic geographers give the form as Akir and not as Ahir, so the
laborious explanation of the learned traveller is probably unnecessary.
The boundaries of Air may be defined either as running along the line
where the rocks of the area dip below the sands of the desert, or as
following certain well-marked basins and watercourses of material size,
where disintegrated rock or alluvium has covered the lower slopes of
the hills. The mountainous area is some 300 miles long by 200 miles
broad. It lies wholly within the tropics and is surrounded by desert
or by arid steppe. Owing to the general elevation of the country the
climate is quite pleasant.
[Illustration: Drainage of the CENTRAL SAHARA
F. R. del.
Emery Walker Ltd. sc.]
In remote ages the rainfall of the Central Sahara was sufficient to
create the deep and important river beds which compose the hydrographic
system of this part of North Africa. Among these watercourses is
one of great size, flowing from the Ahaggar massif towards Algeria,
called the Ighaghar. Duveyrier has tried to prove that it was the
Niger of Pliny, largely on the grounds that the root “Ig” or
“Igh” occurs in both words and in Temajegh means “to run.”
The effect of this identification, which is hard to accept, would be
to make the classical ethnology of the Sahara less easy to follow, but
it has little significance in considering Air, except in so far as it
would tend to show that the geographical knowledge of the Romans did
not extend as far south as the plateau. Complementary to the Ighaghar
but flowing south from the Ahaggar massif is another equally great
river,[32] which early in its course is joined by a large tributary
from the Western Fezzan. At a certain point this valley is crossed by
the roads from Air to Ahaggar and Ghat, branching respectively at the
wells of In Azawa or Asiu. The eastern branch is the caravan road to
Ghat from the Sudan, the western one finds its way to In Salah in Tuat
and to Algeria. This bed runs south and south-west towards the Niger,
which it must have reached at some point between Gao and Timbuctoo
in the neighbourhood of the N.E. corner of the Great Bend which the
French call “La Boucle du Niger.” This river of remote times must
have been one of the great watercourses of Africa, extending from
the head-waters in 26° N. Lat. to its mouth in the Bight of Benin
on the Equator. It is not possible to say whether the interesting
terrestrial changes which diverted the Upper Niger at the lagoons above
Timbuctoo into the present Lower Niger, and which brought about the
desiccation of the upper reaches, took place suddenly or gradually,
but the latter is more probable, for a similar diversion seems to be
going on in the Chad area. The lake, in reality an immense marsh and
lagoon, is much smaller than when it perhaps included the depression
noted by Tilho as extending most of the way to Tibesti; some of the
waters of the Chad feeders are already believed to be finding their way
in flood-time into the Benue, and it is possible that in the course
of time a similar process to that manifested in the Niger area will
take place; then Lake Chad will dry up into salt-pans like those at
Taodenit. The Saharan river, which flows southward to the west of Air,
bears various names. Its course has never been accurately determined,
but its general direction is known. From Ahaggar to a point level with
the northernmost parts of Air it is called Tafassasset. The T’in
Tarabin channel from Ahaggar more probably drained into the Belly of
the Desert than into this system, but the Alfalehle (Wadi Falezlez)
from the Western Fezzan most certainly seems to be a tributary;
there are various reasons why it ought not to flow towards Kawar,
as used at one time to be thought. West of Air the main bed spreads
out into a vast plain-like basin under the name of T’immersoi;
further south it is called Azawak. In general I prefer to use the
name T’immersoi for the whole until a better one is suggested.[33]
The T’immersoi forms a collector in the west of Air for nearly all
the water from this group of mountains. Nowadays only a comparatively
small amount ever reaches the basin, as much is absorbed by the
intervening plain land of Talak[34] and the Assawas swamp west of
Agades. The latter are local basins or sumps covered with dense
vegetation where some of the most nomadic tribes in Air pasture
their herds. Talak is visited by Tuareg from Ahaggar and from the
west for the same purpose. It plays an important part in the economy
of the country, for water is always to be found in the alluvial soil
however dry the season in the mountains has been. Many of the wells
have now fallen into disuse, but the output of those which remain is
still plentiful. The last rocks of Air on the west disappear below
the alluvium of T’immersoi and in the subsidiary basins of Talak
and Assawas. The T’immersoi system therefore forms the western
boundary of Air.
The upper part of the T’immersoi, where it is called the Tafassasset,
is also the northern boundary of Air. The wells of In Azawa[35] and
Asiu in this valley may be regarded as the point where the main roads
from the north enter the extreme limits of the country. Further east
on another road between Air and Ghat, von Bary fixed the boundary at
the Wadi Immidir, which is in the same latitude as In Azawa.[36]
The eastern boundary of Air runs along the line where the last rocks
of the group disappear below the sand of the steppe and desert, which
extends from north to south between the mountains of the Fezzan and
the fringe of Equatorial Africa, and from west to east between the
mountains of Air and those of Tibesti with its adjacent massifs. This
vast area is crossed by a few roads only, the most important ones being
(_a_) the road from Murzuk along the Kawar depression to Agadem and
Lake Chad, (_b_) and (_c_), the two principal tracks from Air eastwards
to Bilma by Ashegur and Fashi respectively, and (_d_) the road from
Zinder by Termit to Fashi and Kawar. Watering-points are very few,
and the habitable oases can be numbered on the fingers of two hands;
pasturage is everywhere scarce. This great waste is one of the most
unknown parts of North Africa; its eastern portion along the Tibesti
mountains as far north as the Fezzan may be said to be absolutely
unknown except for two tracks to the mountains whither occasional
camel patrols have passed.
Kawar and the other oases along the Chad road appear to be closed
basins of the Eastern Saharan type. They seem to have no outlet
towards the south either into the Chad or into the Niger systems. The
desert east of Air, therefore, contains the eastern watershed of the
T’immersoi basin, for the valleys of Eastern Air do not run into the
desert as Chudeau has suggested,[37] but turn southwards on leaving the
hills, in ill-defined depressions or folds which join the Tagedufat
valley or one of the other channels flowing westwards in Tegama or
Damergu. One valley to the south of Air, probably the Tagedufat itself,
is stated to run all the way from Fashi across the desert.
The southern limits of Air may be placed along the Tagedufat basin,
where the rocks of Air disappear below the sand dunes and downs of
Tegama and Azawagh steppe desert. The valley is of some size and flows
roughly N.E. and S.W. towards T’immersoi, but whether it actually
joins this system or the Gulbi n’Kaba, which finds its way into
Sokoto Emirate under the name of the Gulbi n’Maradi and thence into
the Niger, is not certain. The former hypothesis seems more probable,
but I was unable to follow the Tagedufat sufficiently far west to
verify it, nor could I discover any data on the French maps;[38]
local reports substantiate my supposition. Both systems in any case
are in the Niger basin. Air is not on the watershed between Niger and
Chad. The choice of the Tagedufat valley as the southern boundary of
Air is made on geographical grounds. What may be termed the political
boundary is rather further north along the line of the River of Agades.
PLATE 3
[Illustration: DESERT AND HILLS FROM TERMIT PEAK
Commencing within 50 km. of the In Azawa wells, Air is a low plateau
of Silurian formation with islands of Archean rock. Through the
plateau-plain a number of separate formations have been extruded by, in
many cases, apparently quite recent volcanic action. The northernmost
massifs of Taghazit and Zelim lie in about latitude 20°. The volcanic
period was of considerable duration, but all the recognisable volcanoes
and derived phenomena are post-Eocene.[39] Some of the basalt flows,
more especially those from Mount Dogam near Auderas in Central Air,
are not old, while the Teginjir lava flow appeared to me so fresh as
probably to have come into existence during the historical period. The
volcanic phenomena take the form of cinder cones with steep sides as
at Teginjir (Mount Gheshwa), cumulo-volcanoes, as in the T’imia and
probably Bagezan massifs, domes as in the case of Mount Dogam, and
basalt flows in various parts, notably in the T’imia valleys.[40]
Aggata[40] appears to be another volcanic peak, but the serrated crest
of Ighzan is a phenomenon of the rapid cooling of an igneous extrusion
rather than an example of erosion. There are numerous volcanic massifs
distinct from each other all over Air, more especially in the centre
and north; they are nearly all granitic and very rugged. The Auderas
basin is of basalt and cinerite.[41] The plateau, which is in the
main horizontal, rises in the centre to a step some few hundred feet
higher than the north and south and forms a pedestal for the Bagezan
and other massifs some 1500 to 3000 feet higher again. The peaks
are as much as 4500 feet[42] above the plateau, which varies from
1500 feet above sea level in the south along the River of Agades,
to 2000 feet in the Ighazar in North Air. Round Auderas the plateau
may be taken as about 2500 feet above the sea, while to the east of
the Bagezan massif the plateau is about 3000 feet, sloping gradually
away to the south and east. Between Agades and Auderas there is an
abrupt ascent on to the central step of the plateau of some 2000 feet;
a corresponding descent of about 150 feet takes place near Assada.
The effect of these massifs rising sharply out of the plateau is
curious. The Archean or Silurian plain and the volcanic mountain groups
are phenomena which have not yet had time to become correlated. The
result is that the broad and very gentle valleys of the plateau-plain
wander in and out among the disconnected massifs and are fed by deep
torrents draining the slopes of impermeable rock. Water erosion has
not yet had time to widen or deepen the ravines, while the broad
valleys have wide sandy bottoms, where pebbles only rarely occur;
their sides are well wooded with pasture on the plains between the
beds, except where masses of round basalt boulders, the product of
the volcanic disturbances, cover the surface. The massifs have hardly
been affected by erosion. The broad valleys between them are the
corridors of communication in the country. “Cette superimposition à
une vieille pénéplaine usée,” says Chudeau,[43] “de massifs
éruptifs jeunes, donne a l’Air un aspect surprenant, presque
paradoxal.” And this is the charm of the country that has been
called by travellers the Saharan Alps. There is contrast everywhere,
but nothing is perhaps more striking than the black patina which the
red rocks have assumed. The wind-borne sand has polished them till
they shine with a dark metallic gleam, while the sheltered rifts and
ravines retain their pink and red surfaces. It is a land of lurid
colour, except at midday, when the African sun dominates everything
in one blinding glare.
[Footnote 1: The name “Sudan” is used throughout to indicate
the country referred to by the Arab and early European geographers
under this name, that is to say, the country inhabited by negroid
people north of the purely negro zone and south of the Saharan
deserts. The “Anglo-Egyptian Sudan” is more correctly described
as the “Nilotic Sudan.”]
[Footnote 2: The geography of the Sahara as a whole is briefly
treated in _Le Sahara_, by E. F. Gautier, Collection Payot, Paris,
1923, and with greater detail in _Le Sahara_, by H. Schirmer, Paris,
1893, but much recent work is not included in the latter.]
[Footnote 3: O. Bates: _The Eastern Libyans_ (Macmillan), pp. 48-9.]
[Footnote 4: Cf. Rohlfs, _Kufra_, Chap. VIII.]
[Footnote 5: “Alguechet” in Leo Africanus, Vol. III. pp. 802,
818, etc. (For particulars see beginning of Chap. IX.)]
[Footnote 6: Until motor-cars began to cross the Sahara further west.]
[Footnote 7: Bissuel, _Les Touareg de l’Ouest_, p. 63, says: “A
plant called locally ‘Bettina’ and not the Alfalehle (Arabic:
Falezlez) was used.”]
[Footnote 8: Gautier: _La conquête du Sahara_, Paris, 1922.]
[Footnote 9: See _Life of Charles de Foucauld_, by R. Bazin, translated
by P. Keelan, and De Foucauld, _Dictionnaire abrégé Touareg
Français_ (Dialecte Ahaggar), publié par R. Basset, Alger, 1918-20.]
[Footnote 10: Jean: _Les Touareg du Sud-Est_, Paris, Larose, 1909.]
[Footnote 11: Barth: _Travels and Discoveries in Central Africa_,
London, Longmans, 1857-8, 5 vols.]
[Footnote 12: From “Litham,” لثام (root لثم), a veil.]
[Footnote 13: The slaves which they possess do not wear the veil. The
slave is not a man but a chattel. As soon as a slave is freed and
becomes a serf he wears the veil like the noble Tuareg.]
[Footnote 14: In the Air dialect this word is so pronounced. Variations
in other dialects are referred to elsewhere. Imajeghan is the plural
form of Imajegh. Temajegh is a feminine form of Imajegh.]
[Footnote 15: “Kel” means “People of,” “Tagilmus” is the
name of the Veil in Temajegh, the language of the Tuareg.]
[Footnote 16: For an explanation of this term see Chap. IX.]
[Footnote 17: The term “Hausa” throughout this volume is not used
in an ethnological sense. It is primarily a linguistic division which
may or may not also have an ethnic significance.]
[Footnote 18: “Adghar” or “adrar” = mountain in Temajegh. This
mountain group between Air and the Niger and south of Ahaggar has
no name. It is called the “Mountain of the Ifoghas” (Adghar
n’Ifoghas), while the people who live in it are known as the
“Ifoghas of the Mountain,” to distinguish them from the Ifoghas
tribe in Damergu and the Ifoghas tribe of the Azger.]
[Footnote 19: Leo Africanus: Hakluyt Society edition, Vol. I. p. 127,
and Vol. III. pp. 798-9.]
[Footnote 20: Notably by M. Ch. de la Roncière: _Revue des Deux
Mondes_, 1st February, 1923: “Tombuctou au temps de Louis XI.”]
[Footnote 21: M. de la Roncière in a private letter of July 1923 to
the author.]
[Footnote 22: The edition I have used is a French one: Hornemann,
_Voyage dans l’Afrique Septentrionale_, edited by my ancestor
Rennell. Paris: Dentu, 1803.]
[Footnote 23: Denham and Clapperton: “Discoveries in North and
Central Africa, 1822-4,” Murray, 1826.]
[Footnote 24: See Introduction to Richardson’s _Travels in the
Great Desert of the Sahara_, London, 1847, and Barth, _op. cit._,
Vol. II. pp. 219-20.]
[Footnote 25: Barth calls this area Fadeangh, a name not known to-day.]
[Footnote 26: The Governor appointed by the Turks.]
[Footnote 27: Von Bary’s Diary, “La dernier rapport . . . sur
. . . les Touaregs de l’Air.” Edited by Schirmer; Paris,
Fischbacher, 1898.]
[Footnote 28: _Documents Scientifiques de la Mission
Foureau-Lamy_. Various fascicules.]
[Footnote 29: Carte de l’Air: Mission Cortier (2 feuilles),
1/500,000. Service Géogr. du Min. des Colonies.]
[Footnote 30: Chudeau and Gautier: _Missions au Sahara_, Paris,
Armand Colin, 1909 (Vol. II., _Le Sahara Soudanais_, by Chudeau).]
[Footnote 31: Buchanan: _Out of the World North of Nigeria_, Murray.]
[Footnote 32: Where the words “rivers” or “watercourse” are
used they must be understood to mean drainage channels which are dry
most of the year.]
[Footnote 33: Gautier on his sketch map in _Le Sahara_ uses the name
Tafassasset, which, however, is even more of a local name in the
north than T’immersoi is in the south.]
[Footnote 34: In Temajegh “Talak” means “clay.” Cf. Chudeau:
_Le Sahara Soudanais_, p. 63, etc.]
[Footnote 35: Meaning in Temajegh “of the Tamarisk.”]
[Footnote 36: Von Bary’s Diary, pp. 108-9. He joined the main road
followed by Barth in the T’iyut valley.]
[Footnote 37: In the case of the Tafidet and other eastern valleys of
Air, Chudeau, _op. cit._, p. 62. He supposed, as I think erroneously,
that the Air group itself and not the desert was the eastern watershed
of the T’immersoi basin.]
[Footnote 38: The country south of Air and north of the limit included
in the maps published by the Mission Tilho of the area each side
of the Franco-British boundary between Nigeria and the Territoires
Militaires du Niger is hardly mapped at all.]
[Footnote 39: Chudeau, _op. cit._, pp. 263-4.]
[Footnote 40: _Vide_ Plates 23 and 39.]
[Footnote 41: _Vide_ Plates 13 and 14.]
[Footnote 42: In the case of Tamgak.]
[Footnote 43: Chudeau, _op. cit._, p. 57.]
CHAPTER II
THE SOUTHLANDS
Until about twenty years ago it was easier to reach the Western
Sudan and Central Africa around Lake Chad from the north than from
the Gulf of Guinea, notwithstanding a journey of many months across
the Sahara, involving all the considerable hardships and dangers of
desert travelling. The objectives which Barth, Foureau, Lamy and their
predecessors all had in view were not the exploration of the Sahara,
but the penetration of the Sudan. By following the trade routes
along which slave caravans used to reach the Mediterranean coast,
the explorers of the nineteenth century reached the wealthy Niger
lands more easily than they would have done had they attempted to
pass through the tropical forests of the West Coast. On the sea-board
European penetration at that time was confined to the neighbourhood of
a few factories on the shore or the estuaries of certain rivers. Only
at the end of the nineteenth century did this country, first among the
nations of Europe, realise that the potential markets and supplies of
raw material which the Sudan afforded were on a scale far surpassing
those which had been dreamt of by the early pioneers on the coast. It
was about thirty years ago that communication was eventually opened
up between the coast and the Moslem interior, but there is no doubt
that the accounts of the Sudan in 1850 brought back by Barth after his
memorable journey were directly responsible for the British penetration
from the coast of those countries which are now called Sierra Leone,
the Gold Coast and Nigeria. The movement reached its culmination in the
opening years of the twentieth century, when the northern provinces
of Nigeria were occupied under the guidance of Sir F. Lugard, while
at about the same time the three French columns had met near Lake
Chad. With these years the expansionist period closed and a phase
of development, which still continues, commenced. British expansion
into Northern Nigeria, coming as it did during the South African war,
passed comparatively unnoticed in this country except in official
circles, where the campaigns of Sir F. Lugard’s small columns
aroused considerable anxiety. But because the policy was successful
the public heard little of the operations which formally annexed the
outlying Emirates of Kano, Katsina and Sokoto. The new countries which
we then acquired were of colossal wealth, and contained a population
of many millions of people living as thickly in certain parts as the
Egyptians in the Nile Delta. The closing years of last and the first
few years of this century involved the addition to the British Empire
of some of the greatest of the Sudanese cities, which are the terminal
points and therefore the _raisons d’être_ of the two central Saharan
trade roads which come from the Mediterranean by way of Kawar and Air.
[Illustration: F. R. del.
Emery Walker Ltd. sc.]
[_To face p._ 36.
The Sudan, though geographically in Central Africa, belongs to the
Mediterranean civilisation. The great empires of the Niger, Melle
and Songhai, the Fulani Empire of Sokoto, the Emirates of Kano and
Katsina, and the Empire of Bornu, were all products of contact with
the north. Commercially and culturally, the Sudan faced north with
its back against an impenetrable belt of tropical forest inhabited
by savage negro tribes, through whose dripping and steaming jungles
there was little or no access to the sea. This orientation explains
the high degree of civilisation which Barth found already past its
“floruit” in 1850. It is obviously also the reason why the early
explorers came from the north rather than from the nearer coast of
the Atlantic between Sierra Leone and the mouths of the Niger.
With the arrival of the Europeans, ways down to the coast were
gradually opened up, until finally in Nigeria seven hundred miles
of railway were built from Lagos to Kano. As a consequence trade has
left the trans-Saharan roads where the Tuareg were masters. It is now
carried to Europe and even to the Mediterranean by steamers sailing
from Lagos and Liverpool. In more ways than one the advent of the white
man in Central Africa has been disastrous for the Tuareg. Camel-borne
trade on a large scale is doomed; caravan broking and long-distance
desert transport are gone, never to return; even a trans-Saharan
railway, whose commercial value must be as unreal as the dream of
its advocates among French Colonial authorities, can never hope to
compete with sea-borne traffic. Aircraft alone may one day revive the
old camel roads, for they provide lines of watering-points along the
shortest north and south routes.
If one may judge by the numbers and size of the market cities, which
are the termini of the trans-Saharan routes in the Sudan, the Air road
was by far the most important of the two in the centre. In Kano and
in Katsina and in Sokoto the commercial genius of the Hausa people
developed centres for the exchange of the European goods with the
products, and more especially the raw materials, of Central Africa. To
these cities also came the negro people of the south, to buy and sell
or be sold as slaves. In a thickly populated and extremely fertile
country the cities grew to immense size. Though in no sense properly
a Tuareg country, Northern Nigeria and the neighbouring lands are
visited and lived in by the People of the Veil. Every year it is the
habit of many of this people to come from Air to Nigeria during the dry
season. They earn a prosperous livelihood on transport work between the
cities of Hausaland. They feed their camels on the richer pastures of
the south when those in the north grow dry. But before the rains begin
they move north again to the steppe and desert, for flooded rivers and
excessive damp are conditions which the camels of the Veiled People
do not relish. Quite large colonies of Tuareg have settled in some
of these cities and have adopted a semi-sedentary life, maintaining
their characteristics in inverse measure as intermarriage with the
negroid peoples has become more frequent. The influx of Tuareg into
Nigeria after the 1917 revolution in Air added considerably to the
numbers living permanently under British rule. This migration was not
as strange a phenomenon or so entirely the product of the Great War
as at first sight it appears to be. The various waves of Tuareg which
in succession entered Air have each in turn had the effect of driving
the earlier populations further south. The trend of migration in North
Africa from the earliest days, when the zone of permanent habitation of
the negroid races extended as far as the Mediterranean, has always been
southward. It has continued in modern times. The temptation of richer
lands in Central Africa has always proved irresistible when local
political or economic conditions altered in consequence of growing
ethnic pressure to the extent of providing just that impetus necessary
to overcome the human disinclination to leave homes which have been
occupied for generations. The Kel Geres Tuareg left Air to settle in
the country north of Sokoto when the mountains became over-populated;
masses of Air Tuareg generally took up their habitation in Katsina
and Kano after the unsuccessful revolution against the French during
the late war. The motives were not strictly similar, but the effects
were identical, and have been observable throughout the ages.
[Illustration: AIR and the SOUTHLAND
F. R. del.
Emery Walker Ltd. sc.]
To-day at Kano, a village of some size named Faji, almost entirely
Tuareg in population, has sprung up a few hundred yards from the
walls of the city. Here the People of the Veil live like the Hausa
in mud houses. They are engaged in retail trade or act as agents
and brokers for their relations in Air when the latter come down in
the dry season. In Katsina a quarter of the town and the country
immediately north are thickly populated with Tuareg, for whom the
Emir has a marked partiality, largely on account of his commercial
propensities, which are powerfully stimulated by the ownership of
several fine herds of camels. The Tuareg of Katsina, drawn from
almost every tribe in Air, have formed a new tribal unit known as
the Kel Katchena,[44] and are rapidly forgetting their older tribal
allegiances. The results of these movements have always been much
the same. Progressive mixing with the negroid people of the Sudan,
the gradual acquisition of sedentary habits, and the cultivation of
fat lands where life is easy, are combining to make these People of
the Veil lose their characteristics as a northern race; their language
cannot compete with Hausa, which is the _lingua franca_ of the Sudan,
as Arabic is that of North Africa. The retention of the Veil is the
only exception: in fact many southerners associated with them have
adopted it, although the rigorous proscription against revealing the
mouth and face is being less strictly observed.
North of the country surrounding the great walled cities of red
earth, and more or less coterminous with the northern frontiers of
the Emirates of Katsina, Daura, Kano and Hadeija, there is a deep
belt of country which marks the beginning of the transition between
the Saharan and the Equatorial zones.[45] North of the open country
around Kano, with its large trees that for a height of some feet
from the ground, like those in English parks, have been stripped of
leaves by the grazing flocks and herds, the rock outcrops become less
frequent and eventually disappear entirely. They give place to scrub,
bush and clearings through which the Anglo-French boundary runs. The
frontier from Lake Chad to the Niger was delimited in 1907 and 1908 by
an international expedition whose work has been described by Colonel
Tilho with a wealth of detail which makes one regret that his labours
did not extend a little further north, as far as the edge of the desert
where the Saharan zone proper commences. The area mapped by Colonel
Tilho hardly extends beyond the northern limit of the Hausa-speaking
people. Along the roads leading to Air, or in other words along the
great trade route, no work was done beyond the southern fringe of
the area called Damergu, and there is consequently to the south of
Air a considerable depth of unsurveyed country for which no maps
are available.
The area between the international boundary and the somewhat arbitrary
limits of Algeria and Tripolitania constitutes the French colony known
as the “Territoires du Niger,”[46] the southern part of which
is divided into provinces or “cercles,” roughly corresponding
to the old native Emirates. French colonial policy in this part of
Africa, in contrast with the system so successfully instituted by Sir
F. Lugard in Nigeria, has been directed towards the removal of the more
important native rulers. They have been replaced by a form of direct
administration which is only now in process of being organised under
French civilian officials. North of Katsina the Emirates of Maradi and
Tessawa[47] have been combined into one province, and here almost the
last Sultan of the “Territoires” survives, exercising authority
only in the immediate vicinity of Tessawa itself. West of this is the
province of Tahua; to the east is the old Emirate of Damagarim with
its capital at Zinder, and east again is Gure, the northern part of
which is known as Elakkos and Kuttus.
Once the belt of thick bush near the frontier is crossed the country
resembles Northern Nigeria again, with park bush and broad open spaces,
both cultivated and grass-grown. The villages are of the usual Central
African type; the groups of conical huts are surrounded by millet
stores, raised on legs like gigantic bee-hives, to contain the grain
cultivated in the clearings around the settlements. The inhabitants
are Hausa and Kanuri, though of late years a number of lower-caste
Tuareg from Air have settled there as well. There is a considerable
amount of rock outcrop in the form, round Zinder, of low peaks with
great boulders, or, near Gure, of hills which terminate abruptly in
a cliff of red rock, north of which is the district called Elakkos.
Through this belt of park bush runs east and west the road recently
levelled and rendered passable for light cars in the dry season
between Lake Chad and the Niger. The nomadic cattle-breeding Fulani
come into this zone from the bush to the north and south; Maradi is
a Fulani centre of some importance. A certain number of this people
also come to Tessawa, but the Hausa population here have been at
feud with them for many generations, and only the advent of European
control has put an end to continual wars between the two Emirates.
PLATE 4
[Illustration: DIOM IN ELAKKOS]
[Illustration: PUNCH AND JUDY SHOW]
Tessawa lies in a shallow depression which, like others further north
on the way to Damergu, drain into the Gulbi n’Kaba, an affluent
of the Niger containing running water only in its lower reaches
in the neighbourhood of Sokoto. North of Tessawa and Damagarim
the land becomes more sparsely populated and the bush thickens,
except in the immediate vicinity of the villages, which now begin
to be tenanted in increasing numbers by Kanuri. The bush contains
herds of Fulani cattle and a certain amount of game; there are two
or three varieties of gazelle, some bustard, guinea-fowl, ostriches
and occasionally giraffes. The vegetation becomes more stunted as
progress is made northward and large trees are rarer; the soil is
sandy; rock outcrop is almost completely absent. The configuration
of the ground is difficult to follow in the thick bush; the gentle
slopes and valleys appear generally to drain westwards, but shallow
closed basins are numerous. Plenty of water is obtainable in any of
these depressions a few feet below the ground; the larger groups of
wells, usually near the two or three hamlets of straw huts which form
a village, are the resort of the Fulani with their cattle during the
dry season. The vegetation and the general aspect of the country,
however, are still those of the Sudan.
Damagarim differs but little from the Tessawa landscape except that
the bush is thicker and there are fewer open spaces. East of the
boulder-strewn hills of Zinder the more ambitious elevations of
Gure are visible. Zinder itself consists of two contiguous towns;
like Tessawa and the Hausa cities further south, they are built of
red mud. Zinder is smaller than the analogous Nigerian cities. Since
1921 it has had no Sultan. The French headquarters of the Niger
Territories till recently were situated here. In the past Zinder was
of some importance; although the main caravan track from the north
appears in the early days to have run direct to Katsina, a branch from
Damergu went by way of Zinder as soon as Kano grew in importance. But
in spite of the number and influence of the Tuareg who used to make
Zinder their headquarters, neither Damagarim nor Gure has changed
its essentially Sudanese character.
Within a few days’ march of Tessawa on the road north to Gangara
in Damergu, several interesting features were observable. At Urufan
village the Magazawa Hausa and Kanuri women were wearing the ornament
known as the “Agades Cross,” peculiar to the Air Tuareg, in
a simple as well as in a conventionalised form. Many of the women
exhibited almost Mongolian traits in their eyes and cheek-bones. Their
hair was done in what I believe to be a Kanuri fashion, that is
to say, in a low crest along the top of the head, tightly matted
and well greased, with a parting, or very often a shaved strip on
each side, running the length of the skull; over the ears the hair
was again tightly plaited and greased. Their dancing was different
from the practice in Nigeria: the women dance with bent knees and a
crouching body, so that the back is nearly horizontal. They shuffle
up to the drum band one behind the other, the woman at the head of
the line turning away at the end of each movement to take her place
behind. The absence of sedentary Fulani influence is obvious as soon
as music starts; the rattles and cymbals made of segments of calabash
on a stick, peculiar to the Fulani in Nigeria, are not used.
Ethnically it is a very mixed area. In most cases each hamlet in a
village group is inhabited by a different people. Magazawa Hausa,
Kanuri from Damergu, and more recent Kanuri from Bornu predominate,
but there are also nomadic Fulani and semi-nomadic Tuareg.
This is the edge of the country called Damergu, which, on the direct
road from Tessawa, may be said to begin at the village group of
Garari in a small valley, tributary of the Gulbi n’Kaba. Just
before reaching the southern edge of the valley the thorn bush
suddenly ceases. In the hollow are two or three hamlets of Kanuri,
Bornuwi, sedentary Tuareg and Hausa with common wells in the valley
bottom. Instead of interminable thorn scrub just so high that nothing
can be seen above it, an open wind-swept plain of rolling downland
covered with yellow-gold grass appears in front. On the sharp African
horizon to the N. and N.E. are the blue peaks of Damergu, quite small
and humble, but clear cut against the sky-line with all the dignity
of isolation in a sea of waving sun-washed prairie.
Damergu begins and ends abruptly: as soon as the belt of bush
which surrounds it on all sides is crossed, the ground lies open to
the sky and visibility becomes good. There is no more suffocating
feeling in the world than marching through Central African bush. The
discomforts and disabilities of travelling are not compensated for by
any advantage except a ready supply of firewood. The bushland around
Damergu is particularly unpleasant. It is never so tall that one may
not hope to see over the top of the ugly stunted trees at the next
low rise, and never in reality low enough to allow one to satisfy
one’s passionate longing. Visibility is limited to a few yards
and one’s sense of direction is confounded. It is infernally hot,
because the undergrowth effectively shelters one from any breeze. The
country is uniformly rolling and unbeautiful. A high proportion of
the trees are of the virulently thorny variety which arch over the
rare paths and make life on camel or horseback intolerable. Walking
is equally distasteful, as the ground is strewn with burr grass
which enters every fold of clothing and mortifies the flesh like hot
needles. Camels get lost pasturing, game appears in vast quantities and
disappears before a shot can be fired. There are scorpions, snakes,
centipedes and tarantulas, not to speak of bush folk who have an
uncanny sense of their own whereabouts, and of yours as well. They
are armed with poisoned arrows, and though I did not suffer from their
unkind attentions, the bush through which I passed north of Daura has
a bad reputation. There are vast areas with no accessible water in
the dry season, but when it rains the trees drip their moisture down
your neck. I know the particular and private hell which is in store
for me one day for the many misdemeanours I have committed. It will
be to wander eternally through Sudan bush in search of the desert,
where one may see what will bring happiness or oblivion at a distance
and where one may at least face Destiny in the open.
On each separate occasion when I entered Damergu, in the east returning
from Termit, in the west going north from Tessawa, and in the north
returning home by way of Nigeria, I experienced such a sense of relief
and pleasure at emerging from the bush as to dull my perception of the
really somewhat monotonous nature of the country. The winding hollows
flow more or less aimlessly east or west, except in the Gangara area,
where the drainage is definitely westwards into the Gulbi n’Kaba
basin. The general level of the country is about 1700 feet above
the sea. Except in the hollows around the rain pools the country is
devoid of trees or scrub. Every here and there small groups of hills
rise 300-400 feet above the surrounding country. They are so far apart
that the next system only appears on the horizon. The black ferruginous
outcrop forms conical peaks or stretches of pebbly surface, which break
the round contours of the prairie. These little hills, set on a rolling
golden prairie of very wide prospect, are the great characteristics
of Damergu. The land is vast and generous in its proportions.
The hills of Gangara in the west mark the site of a group of four
villages called Zungu and Gangara close under the principal peak, Malam
Chidam to the east and Karawa to the south. The hills are a series
of cones rising a few hundred feet from the plain and are connected
at their bases; a series of gullies or ravines clothed with little
bushes descends from them; there are no cliffs or great masses of
bare rock; the slopes are covered with low scrub. The Gangara hills
divide the Gulbi n’Kaba basin from a wide depression on the east
which sweeps south towards the cone of Zawzawa near the large village
of Kallilua, with Dambida and Mazia not far to the north. North and
east of Gangara are the low hills of Dambansa, Birjintoro and Ollelua,
while further east again in a confused medley of aimless valleys are
Mount Ginea and the triple peaks of Akri. The Akritan[48] hills are a
landmark for the towns of Jajiduna, Tanut and Gamram. These various
groups are the signposts of Damergu; even a raw traveller can learn
them in a short time. Between the more important villages and towns
the scattered hamlets are of such frequent occurrence that, once the
general lie of the land has been observed, travelling is easy.
It is a country of considerable potential wealth. It was known in
the past as the granary of Air; even now great quantities of grain
are exported to the north and to the more densely populated Hausa
countries of the south. The long, broad downs, usually well fed by
the summer rains, are admirably suited for growing millet and guinea
corn. The surrounding margin of bush, especially on the northern
side within reasonable distances of the plentiful water holes in
open places, is full of the cattle of nomad Fulani and the camels of
the Damergu Tuareg. The cultivable area to-day is limited only by
the scarcity of population and some lack of enthusiasm for work. A
periodic cycle of dry years with the inevitable sequels of drought
and famine can only be guarded against by administrative measures,
which have not been enforced since the fall of the Central African
Empires. One after another they dominated this part of the world,
but whether Melle, Songhai, Bornu or Sokoto was pre-eminent in the
Central Sudan, Damergu remained an appanage of Air, whose destinies
it followed and of which it is economically a part. After the first
arrival of the Tuareg from the east, a progressive descent of other
tribes from the north led to the establishment of a reigning class in
the country, recruited among the People of Air. To them the sedentary
Kanuri people, who then and since have constituted the majority of
the population, were subjected. The Tuareg Sultans of Damergu in the
early period of modern history ruled in Jajiduna, Gamram, Tademari and
Demmili. Even when they fell under the political influence of Tessawa
or of Damagarim or were conquered by Melle, Songhai or Sokoto in turn,
they remained in close touch with their relations in the north. The
economic necessity of keeping open the great caravan road to Tripoli,
which was a source of wealth to the Tuareg and to the south alike,
was realised by everyone.
The more intense cultivation and thicker population of earlier days
are proved by the profusion of deserted sites all over the country,
where the passing of the villages has left no more tangible, if
unmistakable, evidence than acres of cleared and levelled ground
strewn with potsherds and heaps of stones. The greater population
of those days and the administrative ability of the empires of the
Sudan combined to counteract the effects of dry years by creating
proportionately larger reserves of grain, which were so conspicuously
absent just before the late war that a severe drought brought about
wholesale emigration to the Southland.
The present-day villages in Damergu are all of the grass hut variety
of the usual African type. In the past a few towns appear to have
been built of mud. The ruins of old Dambiri show a walled mud-built
town, although Demmili, once the seat of a Sultan who probably moved
to Gangara when his village fell into decay, must have been wholly
built of grass, for it has entirely disappeared. A lonely tree on a
barren patch of ground marks its passing. The Gangara villages are all
straw built, as are, among the larger settlements which have survived,
Mazia and Kallilua. There are mud buildings, I believe, at Tademari
and Jajiduna, and certainly at Tanut. The latter is the French centre
of the country. It has an important grain market and a fort containing
a small garrison of Senegalese troops. The principal native place was
Jajiduna, where the first French post was established; but the town
has rather declined since the move of the official capital to Tanut,
where the water supply for caravans is better. At Jajiduna there is
a Senussi “zawia,” one of the few points where the influence of
this sect has taken root in Tuareg countries. The principal Senussi
“zawia” in the Southland is at Kano, with another smaller one
reported at Zinder.
PLATE 5
[Illustration: GAMRAM]
North of Jajiduna and north-east of Tanut is Gamram,[49] a town of
some importance in the past for the Tuareg, and the seat of one
of their rulers of Damergu. Now a small collection of straw huts
is surrounded by the ruins of mud walls like any of the towns of
Hausaland. Gamram was the Warden of the South on the marches of the
desert. As the most northerly permanent settlement of the Sudan on
the Tripoli road it became a point of vital strategic importance for
the caravan traffic. The town has occupied many sites on the edge of
a basin that becomes a lake in the rainy season. The present site is
on the north side, but the most important settlement was probably to
the south-west. The beauty of Gamram struck Barth very forcibly. It
was the first definitely Sudanese settlement to which he had come
after the inhospitable deserts and the mountains of the Sahara. He had
suffered intense discomfort in the waste called Azawagh, intervening
between Damergu and the Sudan, but when he came to Gamram, the rains
had filled the lake which laps the feet of some immense acacias that
are perpetually green. Their roots live in water, and when the pool
dries up, wells only a few feet deep are dug under their shade. The
trees are filled with the song of many birds and the sound of running
lizards. The gardens around the edge of the basin produce vegetables
and luxuries rarely encountered in the Sahara. There are eggs and
chickens and milk and cheese in the market. All these things are
found at Gamram, not in plenty but in just sufficient quantities to
delight the traveller in barren lands. I came to Gamram a day after
leaving the impenetrable bush of Elakkos and found it as good as
Barth had described.
The town has lost its Tuareg character. It is now a small settlement
of a few hundred Kanuri and mixed inhabitants. The Tuareg element
in the immediate neighbourhood is accounted for by some sedentary
serfs or slaves living in other hamlets near by. The noble Tuareg
of the Isherifan tribe who used to possess Gamram wander in the
district between this place and the bush of Guliski. They have not
counted for very much since they were decimated in a raid by Belkho,
the great leader of the Air Tuareg during the latter years of last
century. Belkho had complained that the Isherifan at Gamram were
interfering with the caravans which crossed Damergu, and as his
people were especially interested in the traffic, he demanded an
assurance that the annoyance should cease, failing which he would
have to take measures. The Isherifan returned an insolent reply and
Belkho warned them again. He offered to accept a fine in camels for
their misbehaviour, but when this was refused, collected a body of
some two hundred to three hundred men and came swiftly down the
road from Tergulawen with hostile intent. He reached the town at
nightfall. Next morning he fell on the Isherifan, who had prepared
for the attack, defeated them, and carried off so many camels that
each of the victorious participants, as one explained to me, secured
five female beasts for his share. Since then, my informant remarked,
“the Isherifan are not.”
Damergu has been the scene of many bloody raids in recent times. At
Farak, one day from Gamram, a great assemblage of men and camels
from the Southland, bound for Ghat, was caught by the Imuzurak
under Danda. Merchandise and camels were looted and the personnel
was massacred.
During the four years which elapsed after the journey of the
Foureau-Lamy Mission took place in 1900, a series of important events
occurred in Damergu which ultimately led to the occupation of Air. In
July 1900 the French military territory of Zinder-Chad had come into
official existence, with a base of operations under Colonel Peroz at
Say, and subsequently at Sorbo Hausa, on the Niger.[50] In February
1901 Colonel Peroz set out towards Lake Chad. Sergeant Bouthel,
left in command at Zinder by Lieut. Joalland of the Voulet Mission,
entered Damergu, defeated the Imuzuraq tribe of Tuareg at Tademari
or Tanamari and killed their chief, Musa. His place was taken by his
brother, Danda, who became ruler of the country, while a third brother,
afterwards killed at Bir Alali (Fort Pradie) east of Lake Chad,
in January 1902, with the assistance of the Senussi organised Kanem
against the French. Of all the Air Tuareg, the Kel Owi confederation of
tribes alone, on account of their commercial relations with the Hausa
countries and with the north, adopted a pacific attitude. The rest of
the Air and the local Tuareg in Damergu set about fortifying Tademari,
Jajiduna and Gamram and raided as far afield as Zinder. Their defeat
by Sergeant Bouthel had so little effect that they soon plundered a
Kel Owi caravan at Fall near Mount Ginea. The French in consequence
were forced to occupy Gidjigawa near Kallilua in southern Damergu,
and finally, when the Farak massacre occurred, Jajiduna itself, where
a fort was built and a nucleus of camel corps established. The latter,
however, was restricted in its action to a small area north of the
post; operations did not even extend to Farak, only thirty odd miles
away. The effect of this French expansion was nevertheless to make many
of the prouder Tuareg, who would not submit but foresaw the inevitable,
move eastwards. Some of them migrated as far afield as Kanem and Wadai,
others only to Elakkos. It was the continuation of a movement which had
begun after the advent of the Foureau-Lamy Mission. But even east of
Chad the ubiquitous white men arrived; the migrants fought the French
with conspicuous success at Bir Alali on two occasions, though they
were finally defeated. Of these Tuareg of the Exodus, some returned
to Air, but the rest moved yet further east to the strange land of
Darfur, where they still live in voluntary exile near El Fasher.
The repeated attacks on the north- and south-bound caravans in Damergu
induced the French to escort the larger convoys of 1902 and 1903 as
far as Turayet on the borders of the Air mountains. The departure of
the irreconcilables towards the east, whence only a part was to return
after the third encounter of Bir Alali, and the gradual penetration
of the Southland, with the consequent pacification of the population,
left the Imuzurak alone in Damergu in open defiance of the French. But
in the meanwhile a second pillage had taken place at Farak, and,
moreover, in Air itself the situation from every point of view was most
unsatisfactory. The Sultan of the Air Tuareg was tossed about between
the important Kel Owi confederation and their pacific policy on the one
hand, and the irreconcilables of Damergu and Air on the other. In Gall
in the south-east of Air had become a head-quarters of the raiders,
and the Sultan began to find his position intolerable. He concluded by
inviting the French to enter and take over. The occupation of Agades
took place in the autumn of 1904 by a camel patrol under Lieut. Jean,
when the modern history of Air and Damergu commenced.
Osman Mikitan, the Sultan of this critical period, lies buried in
a square tomb of mud bricks in the Zungu hamlet of Gangara. He had
changed places three times with Brahim as Sultan of the Air people,
and died unregretted because he had sold his country to the foreigner.
The Tuareg of Damergu number among their tribes factions of many
of the most famous Air clans. The Ikazkazan are represented by the
section known generically as the Kel Ulli, the People of the Goats;
these tribes include the Isherifan of Gamram and the Kel Tamat,
in addition, of course, to many others in Air. The Imuzurak round
Tanamari, with the Imaqoaran, Ibandeghan, Izagaran and Imarsutan
are tribes which seem to represent the earliest Tuareg stock in the
neighbourhood; some of them certainly belong to groups which, when
the first migration into the plateau from the east occurred, never
reached Air at all. The omnipresent Ifoghas reappear in Damergu near
Tanut and roam northward; they are apparently cousins of the great
division of the Ifoghas n’Adrar (Ifoghas of the Mountains), whose
centre is around Kidal, north-east of Gao on the Niger. These Ifoghas
of Damergu also I believe to have been left here in the course of the
westward migration of the first wave of Tuareg, though some of them
may have returned east after the initial movement. The Tamizgidda of
Air apparently also had a section in Damergu in Barth’s day:[51]
their name connects them with “the mosque,” and they are said
by this explorer to have been regarded by the Arabs in his day[52]
as “greatly Arabicised, having apparently been settled somewhere
near a town.” A tribe of the same name occurs in the west; they
also may be remnants, powerful as they were in Barth’s days, of a
westward migration from the Chad area, or possibly of a returning
wave which is known to have reached Air. The Tegama in Damergu,
says Barth,[53] “form at present a very small tribe able to muster,
at the utmost, three hundred spears; but most of them are mounted on
horseback. Formerly, however, they were far more numerous, till Ibram,
the father of the present chief, undertook, with the assistance of
the Kel Geres, the unfortunate expedition against Sokoto. . . .”
But this fighting certainly occurred at a more recent date than 1759,
when, according to the Agades Chronicle, they were at war with the
Kel Geres. Barth adds that they were said originally to have come
from Janet, near Ghat, that they were already settled in the south
long before the Kel Owi came to Air, and that they are found on the
borders of Negroland in very ancient times. Ptolemy speaks of a Tegama
people beyond Air towards Timbuctoo and the middle Sudan. Hornemann,
from what he heard of them, “believed them to be Christians,” says
Barth; though the only reference I can find in this authority is to the
fact that they were probably idolatrous. I think Barth’s reference is
to a generic group, now called the Kel Tegama, a collective name for
the people living in the southern part of the area known as Tegama,
which is on the west side of the northern borders of Damergu. Among
the Kel Tegama to-day would be classed the Damergu Ifoghas and other
tribes already mentioned. I fancy Barth has used a generic local and
geographical name as a tribal name.
The belief that they were Christians is, however, particularly
interesting. It is possible that these Tegama were not Tuareg at
all, and that Barth’s informants may have been referring to the
nomadic Fulani who pasture their cattle in the area where he met them,
round In Asamed and Farak, though his description of the time spent
in their company certainly points to their having in reality been
Tuareg. Their “customs showed that they had fallen off much from
ancient usages,” for not only did the women make advances to the
eminent explorer, but even the men urged him to make free with their
wives. He adds that the women had very regular features and fair
skins and that the men were both taller and fairer than the Kel Owi,
many of them dressing their hair in long tresses as a token of their
being Inisilman or holy men (“despite their dissolute manners”),
a peculiarity which connects them with the Ifoghas of Azger, who also
are a tribe of “marabouts.”[54] His general description of the
Tegama, taken in conjunction with their hunting and cattle-herding
habits, corresponds so closely with the appearance of the Ifoghas of
Damergu to-day that there is little doubt that Barth is referring to
them, and that he should consequently more accurately have written,
not “the Tegama” but the “Kel Tegama.” He distinctly states
that they acknowledged the supremacy of the Sultan of Agades rather
than that of the Kel Owi leaders, which will be seen to point to
their early origin in the country. Normally resident in Northern
Damergu, they move to Tegama and Azawagh after the rains to feed
their cattle, goats and camels. The conquests of the later Tuareg
immigrants reduced them to a low stage of poverty and degradation,
though they have retained their nobility of caste, race and feature
to a remarkable degree.
The history of Damergu shows clearly the predominant rôle which the
Tuareg played among the lower-caste Kanuri sedentaries and the nomadic
Fulani. The prepotency of a noble race among people of inferior class
is one of the most interesting phenomena of history. The Kanuri in
Damergu are, and probably have always been, numerically the stronger;
they are armed with bows and arrows, the weapon _par excellence_
for bush fighting. The Tuareg was less numerous at all times, but
everywhere, except in the west, where he has been so long associated
with the Sudan as to lose his nobility, disdained any weapon but
the sword, knife or spear. Like the knight in medieval Europe, the
Tuareg has always held that the _armes blanches_ were the only weapons
of a gentleman, yet with all these disadvantages his prestige was
sufficient to ensure an ascendancy which would have continued but for
the advent of the gun and gunpowder. In Damergu this prestige ensured
the maintenance of the Tuareg Sultanates until the advent of the
French. In the Southland all legends continue to magnify his prowess.
In Hausaland, at Dan Kaba in Katsina Emirate, a strolling player
came one day to give a Punch and Judy show for the delectation of
the village people, who were in part Hausa, in part sedentary Fulani,
and in part nomadic cattle-owning Fulani. The old traditional play had
been modernised, and although it was full of topical allusions to the
Nigeria of 1922, enough of the past remained to show the reputation
and moral ascendancy which the Tuareg enjoyed in the Southland. The
showman’s apparatus was simple: divesting himself of his indigo
robe, he arranged it on the ground over three sticks and crouched
hidden beneath its folds. He had four dolls in all and worked them
like those in our Punch and Judy shows in England. In the place of
the squeaky voice of the Anglo-Saxon artist he used a bird whistle
to conceal his words; the modulations of tone and inflexion in the
dialogues and conversations between the puppets were remarkable. The
Tuareg doll is the villain of the piece: his body is of blue rags,
most unorthodoxly crowned with a white turban and armed with a huge
sword and shield. Divested of the latter and crowned with a red turban,
the same doll in the course of the play becomes the “dogari,” or
native policeman of the Hausaland Emirs. The King of the Bush is a
Fulani man, impersonated by a puppet made largely of orange cretonne
with huge hair crest and bow and arrow. He suspects his wife, made of
the same material but ornamented with cowries before and behind, of
having relations with the Tuareg. She soothes and pets and sings to her
suspicious husband, playing music on drums and calabash cymbals. Her
mellifluous tones finally persuade him to go out a-hunting in the
bush. Needless to say, in Act II she flirts outrageously with the
attractive Man of the Open Lands, but is surprised by her husband
_in flagrante delicto_, most realistically performed, whereupon,
in the next act, a tremendous fight ensues. The King of the Bush,
discarding his bow and arrow, fights with an axe, the Tuareg with his
sword. The latter is victorious and kills the King of the Bush. The
wife calls in the “dogari” to avenge her husband and to please her
Southland audience. In Act V the Tuareg is haled off before the British
Political Officer, presented in khaki cloth with a black basin-shaped
hat like a Chinese coolie and the face of a complete idiot. In the
ensuing dialogue the fettered Tuareg scores off the unfortunate white
man continuously, but, as all plays must end happily, he is condemned
to death. The execution of the plot is good, the technique admirable,
although the performance was unduly protracted for our tastes. The
one I witnessed lasted nearly four hours. The predominant rôle is
that of the envied and handsome villain, the noble Tuareg. He is
glorious in life and fearless in death.
It is unfortunately impossible for lack of space to discuss the
Kanuri or Fulani of Damergu. The latter affect the political life
of the country but little. They shift continually to fresh tracts of
bush or better water for the sake of their great black cattle, which
used to be sold in the far north as well as in Hausaland. They do not
mix with the Tuareg, though they are recognised by them, as anyone
must recognise them, to be of a noble race. Slender, fine-featured,
but dark-skinned, with the profiles of Assyrian statues, the Damergu
Fulani are of the Bororoji section of this interesting people which,
in the course of its sojourn and gradual movement along the fringe
of the Sudan from west to east, has provided the ruling class in
most of the Hausa States. The recent history of Sokoto, of Katsina
and of Kano is their history. Their conquest of power in Hausaland
is but another instance of the ascendancy of nobility and a glaring
contradiction of the Socialist theory of equal birth. When they came
to power they were illiterate and pagan and had no political virtues;
their success was due to breeding and caste.
The Bororoji are a darker section of the Fulani than many of the
purer divisions in the south. In Northern Damergu they can be seen
stalking through the bush with their herds of black kine, naked except
for a loin skin and a peaked cap of liberty of embroidered cloth,
but patently conscious of their birth. They come and go as they
please, and no one interferes with them. Some may settle in towns
or villages, living for a time on the produce of sales of cattle,
in which they are rich. Most of them have no permanent habitation. A
few can be seen in villages like Gangara, where they come to sell
an occasional bull and buy a few ornaments or some such luxury as
grain. Their women are slender, tall and straight, with fine oval
faces and straight, jet-black hair. The triangular form of face
from the cheek-bones to the chin is noticeable among the Bororoji
as among the Rahazawa Fulani of the Katsina area, but the face is
somewhat longer in proportion to the breadth than further south. Their
appearance is Semitic, though the nose is never heavy but straight,
and this is the case even more among the women than the men. Both
sexes wear bead necklaces; the peaked cloth cap is the ornament of
the men. The women have anklets and bracelets of copper and as many as
six large copper curtain rings in their ears, the only disfigurement
of their handsome faces. Of the customs, religion and organisation of
the Bororoji little is known. Like their cousins in the south, they
anoint the wide-branching horns of their cattle, and when they drink
milk, though none must be spilled, a little is left in the bottom of
the calabash as an offering to the Eternal Spirit. The Fulani believe
that one day they will return to the East, whence their tradition
says that they came, but how or why or when they left this unknown
home has not been explained. Obedient to tradition, numbers of them
are settling year by year in the Nilotic Sudan.
The last belt of bush between the Sahara and Sudan is reached a day’s
march from Tanut. The Elakkos bush further east ceases completely in
about Lat. 15° 20′ N.; on the road to Termit the vegetation becomes
very scanty some way south of a belt of white sand dunes in Lat. 15°
30′ N.: north of them the country is pure steppe desert. The Damergu
bush, however, extends as far north as Lat. 15° 50′ to the Taberghit
valley on the eastern road to Air, and to Tembellaga on the western
road. Damergu forms a salient in the line of the Sudan vegetation.
The belt of sand dunes on the way to Termit is said to run eastward
even beyond the Bilma-Chad road south of Agadem well, and gradually
to broaden all the way; in the west it hardly reaches the edge of
Damergu. Some fifty miles north of Talras in Elakkos the same zone of
acacia trees, which occur in the hollows of the dunes on the Termit
road, follows a depression called the Tegama valley.[55] The surface,
like that of the steppe desert, is of heavy buff-coloured sand in
long whale-back dunes.
The Northern Damergu bush is different to the belt which runs along the
southern side of the country. The trees and shrubs are principally
of the acacia variety. The larger vegetation which is typical
of the Sudan has disappeared, but the grasses and ground plants
are still characteristic of the south. The burr grass which makes
life burdensome to the traveller reigns supreme. The “Karengia”
(_Pennisetum distichium_) grows in clumps or small tufts some fifteen
inches in height. In Northern Damergu the ground is densely carpeted
with this grass. As soon as the summer rains are over it sheds a
little seed with a crown of small sharp spikes. Leather and the bare
human skin alone afford the burrs no hold; any other material seems
to attract them irresistibly. In the presence of this pest the bush
natives have found the only solution, which is to go almost naked;
the clothed but unhappy European blasphemes until he is too weary
to speak. Water is the only remedy; it softens the little burr and
makes it possible to remove it without disintegrating entirely the
mesh of one’s apparel, but water in this belt of land is scarce.
The next watering-points after leaving Gamram are Farak, and Hannekar
on the Menzaffer valley. The latter is now on the most direct road
to Air, since the slightly more eastern track from the former point
by In Asamed well to Tergulawen became impossible when the latter
well was filled in during the late war. At Hannekar there is a large
depression covered with thick undergrowth and small trees standing in
a pool of water which lasts for some months after the rains. As the
pool dries up, shallow wells are dug in the bed. The water supply at
Farak is all contained in shallow wells, but as watering from them
is a much slower process than sending cattle and camels to drink at
a pool, it is customary for the local Tuareg and Fulani to stay in
the Hannekar area as long as they can. After the rains and until
the wells are re-dug at Farak there is consequently a period when
there is practically no water there at all, as Barth found early in
1851. Nevertheless, since the permanent supply at Farak below the
ground is greater than anywhere else in Northern Damergu, it has
come to be considered the real starting-point of the eastern road to
Air. Its importance as a rendezvous for pasturing tribes as well as
for north-bound caravans explains the numerous disasters which have
occurred there at the hands of Tuareg and Tebu raiders.
North of Farak is a long hill falling away steeply on the side towards
the wells. It gave Barth[56] the impression of forming a sharply
defined southern border to the desert plateau between Damergu and
Air. The existence of so marked an edge is, however, not borne out in
fact, for no similar escarpment exists west of it on the road north
of Hannekar, nor yet, as Foureau[57] points out, on the western road
to Air, by Abellama. The hill of Farak, like another smaller one at
Kidigi north of Hannekar, is an isolated elevation.
Permanent habitation used to extend about one day’s march north of
Farak, to the neighbourhood of In Asamed well, but after the latter
was filled in, which I understand occurred during the 1917 revolt, when
Tamatut well, further east, and Tergulawen on the borders of Air were
also destroyed, Farak became the last village of the Sudan. Neither
in recent years nor of old, however, did it ever possess the same
permanency or importance as Gamram. Farak was always liable to be
deserted at a moment’s notice in times of danger. To-day the skin and
straw huts of the Ifadeyen and Kel Tamat tribes are scattered about
in the dense bush all over the district. The camps change from year
to year. When I passed this way there were Isherifan near Guliski
and Ighelaf south-east of Gamram, Ifadeyen at Farak, and Ifadeyen
and Kel Tamat at Hannekar.
Since the more direct road from Farak by In Asamed to Tergulawen has
been abandoned, there is now no water for caravans between that place
or Hannekar and the Air plateau except at Milen,[58] which is one day
south of the mountains. The present track from Farak, after crossing
the Tekursat valley at a point near the site of In Asamed well,
inclines slightly west and joins the direct track from Hannekar to
Milen, running almost due north and south. The apparent angle made by
the Farak-Milen track at In Asamed puzzled me when I came to plot it
on paper from a compass traverse, for the extraordinary straightness
of these old roads between important points, even in the rough hill
country of Air, is very remarkable. I eventually realised that a line
from Farak produced through In Asamed was on the direct bearing of the
old well of Tergulawen. This disused track is the original southern
end of what is called the “Tarei tan Kel Owi,” or Kel Owi road,
in other words, of the main caravan track from Tripoli to Nigeria. The
road in Air and in the south is usually called among the Tuareg after
the confederation of tribes in control of the way. Down this eastern
track came Barth and his companions in 1850-1.
In Asamed, meaning in Temajegh “(The Well) of Cold Water,” was
just over 100 feet deep; its existence shows that Damergu has been
left behind and Azawagh has begun, for the former is a land of rain
pools and shallow and seasonal wells, while the latter, north of the
last Sudan bush, is a desert country with occasional very deep wells
and no surface water. It is called Azawagh, a Temajegh name applied
to several semi- or totally desert areas in the Sahara. The fact
that it is not confined to the country south of Air must be borne
in mind in seeking to identify the various areas referred to under
this name by the Arab geographers. There is, for instance, an Azawad,
a name corrupted in Arabic for Azawagh, north of Timbuctoo.
North of the broad Tekursat valley, with scarcely any marked channel
and sparsely covered slopes, is a low plateau with three small
valleys, rejoicing in the uncouth name of Teworshekaken. Beyond is
the Inafagak valley, and finally the smaller and probably tributary
valley of Keta. From here to the Taberghit valley the bush thins
out more and more; patches of bare sand become frequent, and the
trees are considerably smaller. In none of these valleys has the
rain-water left a definite bed of flow, though dry pool bottoms and
short sections of channel may be seen here and there. The valleys
are sometimes several miles from side to side; they were probably in
the first instance longitudinal depressions between heavy sand dunes
formed along the direction of the prevalent wind; the sides are even
now of too recent formation and too permeable to spill the rain-water
into definite beds along the bottoms.
At the southern edge of the immense Taberghit valley the character of
the country changes quite definitely. The surface becomes dotted with
little hummocks where the sand has been washed against a small bush or
piece of scrub; otherwise the ground is bare. The few trees are grouped
in scattered clumps. The ground vegetation is no longer predominantly
“Karengia,” but one of several kinds of less offensive and more
useful desert grasses impregnated with salt. The best camel fodder,
curiously enough, is the true desert vegetation. The animals eat it
avidly on account of the salt it contains, and even long periods of
drought do not conquer its obstinate greenness. Its nutritive power is
greater and it is more wholesome than the luxuriant Southland fodder.
At Taberghit a track runs direct to Agades by way of Ihrayen
spring. When both the eastern roads were in use, the Hannekar track
was used by people going to Agades, while the more eastern Farak-In
Asamed route by way of Tergulawen was frequented by caravans bound
for Northern Air.
A day before reaching Milen well you feel very strongly that the Sudan
lies behind. The last bush has been left near Taberghit. In front is an
open depression perhaps five miles wide and not more than fifty feet
deep: it contains no stream bed, but here and there patches of dry
cracked mud indicate the formation of short-lived rain pools. East
and west the same stark valley runs as far as eye can see. Its
course is clearly defined and it is without intersecting basins or
tributaries or curves. On the far crest are loose buff-coloured sand
dunes and then a few small acacias. The levels gradually rise in a
series of folds, one of which contains the closed basin and disused
Anu n’Banka[59]; another forms a valley called Kaffardá, which
is like Taberghit but on a smaller scale. The folds lie parallel to
one another along the line of the prevalent E.N.E. wind which always
blows in Azawagh. This wind is one of the peculiarities for which the
country is notorious. Both times I crossed this region it was blowing
with great violence. In June it was suffocatingly hot; I camped one
noonday to rest out of sheer exhaustion in a group of trees on the
northern side of Taberghit. There was practically no shade: the leaves
of the stunted trees were too thin to shelter even three persons. The
temperature was over 110° F. in the shade, and visibility did not
exceed a quarter of a mile, owing to the blowing sand and dust. Six
months later I returned the same way. The same wind was blowing, but
it was so cold at midday that I was unable to keep warm, even walking,
with two woollen shirts, a drill coat, a leather jerkin and a blanket
over my shoulders. Where a bush or sand dune offered shelter from
the wind the sun was quite hot, but that night the thermometer fell
to 31° F., after having registered 92° F. at 3 p.m. in a sheltered
spot in the shade. It was very unpleasant. Barth’s experience of
the wind and cold of Azawagh was much the same as mine. He writes:
“The wind which came down with a cold blast from the N.N.E. was
so strong that we had difficulty in pitching our tent;”[60] it
was responsible for the most “miserable Christmas” he had ever
spent. I was there a few days before Christmas in 1922 and can vouch
for the accuracy of his verdict. Even the blinding glare and heat of
June were preferable to the bleak cold of the winter nights.
One effect of the constant wind is that the longitudinal dunes
in Azawagh have retained their characteristic form more generally
than further south. Their gentle rounded contours, which the wind
tends to restore whenever the rain happens to have modified them,
are characteristic. There is, of course, less precipitation here than
further south, though it has been sufficient in Tagedufat to produce
a considerable growth of desert vegetation along the bottom of the
valley, where there are a number of small trees and an abundance of
every conceivable type of salt bush and grass. It is said at certain
seasons of the year to produce the finest camel fodder in this part
of Africa.
All over Azawagh are numerous deserted sites where millet used to
be grown on the sandy slopes. The people who cultivated this arid
country lived in temporary tents and huts except further north between
Tagedufat and Milen, and consequently no trace of their dwellings
remains. The evidence, however, of cleared and levelled patches and of
broken earthenware is as unmistakable here as in Damergu. Between Keta
and Tagedufat there is a succession of such clearings. It is borne in
upon one that this heavy buff-coloured sand country where only desert
vegetation now appears to thrive is in reality quite fertile so long
as it receives any rain at all. The climate has probably not altered
enough in recent times to account for the desertion of Azawagh; it
seems rather to have been due to a decrease of the population. The
Kel Azawagh, according to tradition, were numerous at a time when
Damergu was thickly peopled, and there was not enough land available
there or in Air to satisfy the needs of a people squeezed between
the south and the north, whence the population was constantly being
driven into the Sudan. It is clear that the Kel Azawagh who made
these millet cultivations in a zone of desert steppe must have been
of a fairly sedentary disposition, for a nomad people would have
contented itself, as the modern Tuareg inhabitants of Azawagh do,
with grazing herds and flocks on the excellent pastures.
In referring to the Kel Tegama a plea was advanced that the name was
primarily a geographical one, and one not properly appertaining to a
single tribe. The name Kel Azawagh, to which the same considerations
certainly apply, is found to some extent interchangeable with Kel
Tegama. Now it will be shown later that the Tuareg of Air and Damergu
only reached these lands comparatively late in history; consequently
an allusion in Ptolemy to a Tegama people appears to refer to a
non-Tuareg folk in this or some other area of the same name. I see
no reason to doubt that it was these Tegama and Azawagh areas which
were meant by Ptolemy, and therefore conclude that before the Tuareg
arrived they were possessed by a people to whom the millet clearings
and village sites are probably due. The later Tuareg Tegama, or Kel
Tegama, as we should more properly say, as well as the Kel Azawagh,
were merely a section of People of the Veil who later lived in the
areas, and in the course of time were named after them, though it is
possible that the name Azawagh was one given by the Tuareg to an area
previously called Tegama by its former inhabitants.
We shall see[61] that among the ancient divisions of the People of the
Veil in the Hawara group is a Kel Azawagh. The peculiarities of the
Hawara clans would not connote any sedentary instinct in this tribe,
whether it lived in this or in another area called Azawagh; but when
we find in the Tetmokarak tribe of the Kel Geres group now living near
Sokoto (whither they migrated from Air through this Azawagh area)
a subsection called Tegama, and when we have learnt[62] that the
Kel Geres are almost certainly a Hawara people, we can be even more
inclined to the view just suggested regarding the use of the names
Azawagh and Tegama and the origin of the people at various times
living there. As a tribal name Kel Azawagh has now disappeared. The
French 1/2,000,000 map displays it in the valley between Agades and
the Tiggedi cliff, but out of place, for when still in use it was
applicable to an area rather further east. Although it is no longer
a proper name, it serves the Ifadeyen who now live in Azawagh for a
descriptive term of themselves in accordance with the usual practice
regarding local tribal nomenclature.
In the periods between the rains the village sites in the Taberghit
or Tagedufat valleys watered at the deep wells of Tagedufat, Anu
n’Banka, Aghmat, Taberghit and presumably Tateus, though I know
nothing of the last named. All these wells have now become silted
up by wind-borne sand, but could easily be cleared if the population
returned, as the water has not disappeared.
The whole area between Taberghit and Tagedufat is covered with
small mobile dunes; the two valleys themselves are, however, free
of them. There is no loose sand at all in the Tagedufat valley,
a curious phenomenon probably connected with the eddies formed by
the prevalent wind in the channel of a depression between the higher
banks. If this were true, the existence of dunes at Kaffarda would
conversely point to its being an isolated basin, and this indeed is
probably the case. Anu n’Banka is in a little hollow, the sides of
which are also covered with small dunes. The bottom itself is clayey
and free from blown sand, showing traces of having been a rain-pool
at certain seasons. Surrounding the depression are millet clearings
and a little rock outcrop. It is the most southerly point in Azawagh
where stone occurs, and the outpost of the more conspicuous rock
formations of the Tagedufat valley.
Although the first part of the descent into Tagedufat is imperceptible,
the appearance of the ground has changed considerably on account of
the small crescentic dunes of very fine white sand which overlie
the heavier buff-coloured sand of the surface. The crescentic
type is characteristic of young dunes in process of formation,[63]
their last stage being the long whale-back down of heavy particles
which tend to settle or become cemented and eventually to support
some vegetation. The Azawagh valleys present a series of interesting
examples of the youngest type of dunes, which are still moving rapidly,
superimposed upon the oldest fixed dune formations oriented along
the line of the prevalent wind. It is curious that at no point has
the fine and very mobile sand which is continually being carried in
from the great Eastern Desert collected in large masses: the small
crescentic bodies, the horns of which, of course, lie down wind, or,
in other words, point west to south-west, are neither continuous nor
contiguous. The underlying buff-coloured surface is covered with
a number of small trees and scattered scrub or grass in isolated
clumps. This vegetation becomes covered by the crescent dunes and in
time uncovered as the white sand moves westward. Where this vegetation
can be seen emerging from the crescentic formations on the windward
side it is still alive, pointing to a fairly rapid motion of the body
of sand. It is true that some of this desert scrub is sufficiently
hardy to withstand a period of, it is said, as much as four years
without any rain, and even then it only requires very little moisture
in the air or some dew; the numerous small acacias, however, if wholly
engulfed for any length of time, would die. Yet at no point is there
either a wake of dead vegetation behind the larger crescentic dunes
or even an unduly large proportion of dead trees. The progress of the
small dunes is therefore undoubtedly rapid, and is due to the constant
wind, which should, however, have tended to create larger masses. The
crescentic dunes are rarely more than twelve feet high at the most;
their individual area is, of course, relatively large owing to the
very flat slipping angle of the fine grains. Barth records dunes as
far as Tergulawen; but there is no evidence regarding the country
east of this point,[64] which is probably too far north of the dune
belt on the Termit road to be connected with that zone.
The Tagedufat valley bottom, unlike the Milen and Taberghit valleys,
is marked by a more continuous stream bed along which water flows
every year for a short time during the rains. The most remarkable
feature of the valley is a series of flat bare patches formed by
the pools of rain-water; they are of no great size, but the surface
is stained bluish-white by chemical incrustation. The Milen and
Taberghit valleys, while possessing a few similar rain-pools, none
of which survives for more than the briefest period, do not exhibit
this complexion. The point is of particular interest in connection
with a report given to me by my guide, Sidi, who was with me on the
way south. He is a widely travelled and knowledgable man. He stated
that the Tagedufat depression extended eastwards across the desert all
the way to Fashi, and was marked along the whole of its course by such
patches of chemical incrustation. My travelling companion, Buchanan,
observed that the ground shortly before reaching Fashi was stained in
the manner described. In the open desert, where in the immensity of
space it is difficult to determine the direction of a very slightly
accentuated valley, such noticeable features are valuable evidence.
Considering the size of the Tagedufat basin south of Milen, the
valley shown as extending towards Termit on the French 1/2,000,000
map and called Tegemi (Téguémi), is perhaps a confluent, or even
an inaccurate representation, of the main valley itself. A recent
Camel Corps[65] reconnaissance from Talras to Eghalgawen possibly
followed up one such affluent in the east bank of the main channel of
Tagedufat. The importance of the Tagedufat valley from the hydrographic
point of view cannot be over-stated.
Directly the Tagedufat valley is crossed the rock outcrop on the
north bank becomes a striking feature. Increasing in size towards
the west, it falls away below the surface to the east. Crescentic
dunes reappear between the outcrops and continue almost all the way
to Milen. On the north side of Tagedufat, near the track, for which
it serves as a landmark, is a prominent mass of black rock called the
Kashwar (Stone) n’Tawa or Tawar. Far away to the N.N.E. the relief
becomes bolder, rising to a group of small summits clothed with loose
sand, called the Rocks of Oghum. The remains of some stone houses,
at one time the southernmost permanent settlement of Air, appear in
the loose sand near the hills. North of Oghum in a little depression
filled with acacias is Gharus n’Zurru.[66] After a further stretch
of dunes a small valley running northwards diversifies the general lie
of the ground. It is called Maisumo, and contains another deep well
which is still in use. This valley after a short distance runs into
the Milen depression, with the conical hill of Tergulawen visible to
the east and the little massif of Teskokrit to the west. The northern
part of the latter group extends eastwards from the main summits as
a steep ridge forming the northern bank of the Milen valley itself.
East of Tergulawen again is a small and almost unknown group of hills
called Masalet, where in recent years Kaossen, afterwards leader of
the Air revolt in 1917, dug a well. It only yielded brackish water,
which, though good enough for camels, proved too medicinal for
the Tuareg, who filled it in again. It had been dug for political
purposes largely in order to facilitate parties from and for the
Southland participating in the yearly caravans which fetch salt from
Bilma. Masalet was designed to obviate these parties making a detour
along the River of Agades or via Eghalgawen: it provided an easterly
watering-point in Azawagh corresponding with Tazizilet further north
in Air itself. The unsatisfactory nature of the supply, especially
for caravans engaged in crossing the eastern desert, did not, however,
justify the risk of leaving so remote a watering-point available for
Tebu raiding parties. The fact that Masalet was constructed in recent
years is interesting, as showing that the Tuareg have not lost the
art of locating deep water.
The western road from Tanut to Agades via Aderbissinat and Abellama
runs over much the same sort of country as that which I have just
described between Farak and Milen. Aderbissinat well, seventy-five
miles from Tanut and ninety-three miles from Agades, is a point of such
strategic importance that the French from Zinder built a fort there
during the war in order to secure their communications with Air. It
has not been garrisoned of late, but proved of paramount importance
during the operations of the column which marched from the south to
relieve Agades during the rebellion of 1917. With the exception of
the deep but copious well of Abellama, there is no useful permanent
watering-place between western Damergu and Agades, as the spring of
Ihrayen in the Tiggedi cliffs has too small an output to provide
for many animals. Nineteen miles north of Aderbissinat the bush
ceases. As at Taberghit further east, the country rises some 200 feet
to an average level of 1700-1800 feet above the sea. Beyond Timbulaga
sand dunes appear on the level buff-coloured steppe, which is covered
with the usual scanty vegetation of desert grass in tussocks.[67]
The ground then slopes gradually down to the deep well of Abellama
in Lat. 16° 16′ 30″ N. and Long. 7° 47′ 20″ E. G. Abellama
as a stage corresponds with Milen on the other road.
On the easternmost or Tergulawen road Barth[68] shows that the country
is again substantially the same. South of the “spacious” well,
which is in a depression “ranging east and west,” with sand-hills
on the south side bearing a sprinkling of desert herbage, the country
is covered with small dunes on a “flat expanse of sand, mostly bare
and clothed with trees only in favoured spots.” To the north is a
great sandy plain running as far as the Ridge of Abadarjan, where the
level descends to the upper basin of the River of Agades. The area
is covered with “hád,” the most nutritious of desert plants
and the most characteristic of the desert steppe of Africa. In all
parts of the Sahara the distribution of the plant marks the division
between the Desert and the Sown. This “hád” of the border line
advances or recedes, sometimes from year to year, according to the
rainfall. It is the tidal mark of the desert.
The northern part of Azawagh is geographically important, as it
contains the transverse valleys which collect the southern rainfall
of Air and carry it westwards into the Niger basin. The course of the
Beughqot (Beurkot) and Azelik[69] valleys is wrongly shown on the
French maps. They do not unite until they have reached a far more
southerly point than where they are shown to do so on the Cortier
map. Furthermore, when they have joined, they turn S.W. and not S.E. A
recent reconnaissance as far as Masalet proved that after these two
valleys meet they turn west into a large depression which is probably
the same one as that in which the well of Milen is situated, though it
might, on the other hand, be the Tagedufat basin; this is a point which
must for the moment remain undecided. On a solution of this problem
depends the answer to the question as to whether Milen or Tagedufat
is the principal basin into which the Air valleys east of Beughqot as
far as Tazizilet drain. All that is clear is that they turn southwards
and then westwards to join one of the two systems in question, and
do not peter out in the desert as Cortier’s map suggests.
West of Milen well the valley in which it is situated eventually
joins the lower Tagedufat, which runs on S.W. or W. towards the Gulbi
n’Kaba or the Tafassasset-T’immersoi basin. That the Tagedufat
system does not enter the River of Agades over the Tiggedi cliff at
some point near Ihrayen is probable owing to the fact that all this
country has been subjected to a slight southerly tilt. The Tiggedi
cliff, the Eghalgawen-T’in Wana massif, the cliff east of Akaraq
and its continuation along the great valley, finally represented by
the ridge of Abadarjan, as Barth rightly judged, are the northern
boundary of this area, which slopes gently from north to south. The
River of Agades receives hardly any left-bank tributaries.
Milen well could never be found without a guide. The wide valley,
with sand dunes on the south side and a steep north bank where the
now omnipresent rock of Air appears, is bare, dry and stony. It
shimmers in the heat. Teskokrit appears as a black mass in the west
on a bank of milk-white mirage set round a group of trees. The bottom
of the valley is a gravel plain with a small patch of bare rock in it
which an unwitting traveller would most probably pass unheeding. In
this patch of rock is a small hole with a large circular stone near
by. The hole, barely three feet across, is the mouth of a well driven
through hard sandstone all the way down to the water-bearing stratum,
seventy feet below the ground. The mouth can scarcely be seen fifty
yards away. The rounded stone is several inches thick and was said
to have been used to cover up the mouth of the well to prevent its
becoming silted up with driving sand.
I came there in June, after more than forty hours’ march from
Hannekar with four tired camels and two men, an Ifadeyen guide and
an Arab of Ghat in the Fezzan. We had very little water left, so
little, in fact, that it was all used in one pot to cook some rice
for us three. The place was deserted and very lonely. The wind was
driving the sand so hard that it stung the naked calves of my legs
as I stood at the well with Ishnegga the guide, drawing water for the
thirsty camels. Camels in hot weather drink a great deal, and hauling
water in a two-gallon leather bucket from a seventy-foot well is hard
work in a temperature of over 150° F. in the sun. The camels drank
interminably. The last and best camel was still thirsty and remained
to be watered. The beast was rather weak. It had a bad saddle sore,
a hole about the size of a large man’s hand, in its back, and it was
festering and full of maggots. We had all just done a journey of over
500 miles from Tanut to Termit and back, in thirty-five days, including
nine days of halts, averaging, in other words, nearly twenty miles per
marching day for twenty-six days. The camel had begun to drink. Then
as we were drawing a full bucket the well rope broke six feet from
my hand and fell to the bottom of the well with a splash. A vain hour
was spent, while the rice cooked and got more and more full of sand,
trying to fish up the rope and bucket with an iron hook made of the
nose-piece of a camel bridle fastened to a knotted baggage rope. This
too was lost after hooking the tangle, which it joined at the bottom
of the well. Prospects looked gloomy as our thirst increased. I have
distinct recollections of the sky and valley getting whiter and more
metallic and the heat more intolerable. Finally, just enough rope
was found by untying all the baggage to ladle up water a half-gallon
at a time in a small canvas bucket. But the poor camel had to wait a
long time to finish its drink, for the first of the supply to reach
the top was used to refill the tanks.
As I was leaving the well two men with three camels came in from the
south. They had started to return to their own country in the hills,
after an enforced sojourn in the neighbourhood of the fort at Tanut
on account of their rebellious propensities in 1917 and 1918. They
had no possessions but three young camels, and had started with only
enough water in one small skin for half their journey. The two men
reached Milen, having drunk nothing for twenty-four hours. They were
rather exhausted, but had fully expected to have to do another ten or
twelve hours’ march the same night to the nearest water at T’in
Wana, as they had only a calabash bottle and no rope with which to
draw any more water. They had risked death sooner than stay a moment
longer than was necessary in the south, even to collect enough well
rope or equipment for a journey which most Europeans would consider
difficult. It was very pleasant to give these two men, an old noble and
his serf, some especially good cold water from a small canvas cooler
which I had prepared. When the serf carried away a pan of icy water,
he first offered it to his master, who drank it.
The second time I came to Milen was in December. There was such a
crowd of people and of flocks belonging to the Ifadeyen watering
that the supply was practically exhausted, and it took me five hours
to get enough water for the return journey to Hannekar. But in June
the camping grounds were deserted, for there was hardly any pasture
during those last few days before the rains.
The deep wells of Azawagh fall into two categories. The narrow wells,
like Milen, Aouror, higher up the Milen valley, and Maisumo, are
intended primarily for watering flocks. Their output is copious but
slow, and not unlimited. Not more than two buckets can draw water
comfortably at the same time: for watering flocks where time is not
important and the animals can be brought in from pasture in small
batches, these wells are adequate. Tagedufat, like Tergulawen, on the
other hand, was a caravan well; it was broad and capable of watering
a whole caravan rapidly. It became silted up with drifting sand, like
the pasture wells, Anu n’Banka and Gharus n’Zurru. Of Aghmat,
Tateus and Taberghit I have no details, but when Barth passed this
way no stop was made at either of the first two, which were on his
road. The supposition is that unless these wells were dug since his
day, which is not likely, as the population of Azawagh had by then
already decreased, they also were intended for pastoral purposes. They
are now all silted up.
The theory that the wells of Azawagh were made by the Ifadeyen,
who have only recently come into this area for winter pasturage, was
advanced to me, but my informant, who joined my caravan as an unbidden
but welcome guest at Milen on my way south, was himself a member of
this tribe, so the information is prejudiced. The wells are certainly
very old and are probably the handiwork of the denser population which
cultivated millet and had its permanent villages in the Taberghit and
Tagedufat valleys. The pasture wells were regarded as the property of
the tribe in the area, and now, therefore, of the Ifadeyen. The big
caravan wells were under the tutelage of the keepers of the great
highway to the south, the Kel Owi confederation, and before them,
therefore, of their predecessors in Eastern Air. These big wells
were always considered to be free for passing caravans to use without
let or hindrance at any time, except in the event of a feud being in
progress between the Kel Owi and the owners of the caravan. Caravans,
on the other hand, using pasture wells, could only do so with the
permission of the tribe pasturing in the area. The latter, conversely,
had no rights over the great wells. The maintenance of these rights
is the origin of confederations like the Kel Owi, for the freedom of
the great wells is a vital necessity to a society of caravaneers,
and has to be retained by force if necessary. It accounts for such
raids as those conducted by Belkho on Gamram, where the Isherifan
had interfered with passing caravans just once too often.
One of the Azawagh wells, Aouror, has been the object of much
dispute among the Tuareg: there are inscriptions on a neighbouring
rock recording the ownership and, to some extent, the history of
the well. It would be attractive to think that “Aouror” meant
the “Well of the Dawn.” It is not impossible, since Arorá
or Aghorá[70] means “dawn” in Temajegh, and Aouror is almost
the easternmost well of Azawagh. Like Milen, it is driven through
the rock, but is only some four fathoms deep. Like Milen, too, its
sides are scored by rope-marks which in places have cut deep into
the hard sandstone. Wet ropes covered with sand of course cut into
rock quite rapidly, but even so the antiquity of these wells must be
considerable. The rock cutting, which no Tuareg to-day is capable
of executing, is perfect; the walls are perpendicular and smooth;
the plan is a perfect circle.
Abellama and Aderbissinat in the west of Azawagh are deep caravan
wells with good water; the former is in friable soil, and has a
tendency to fall in.[71] These two, with Aouror, Maisumo and Milen,
are the only live wells in Azawagh to-day.
After a short gentle slope up, the ground descends from the ridge
on the north side of the Milen valley in a series of long terraces
to a basin, the lower part of which is known as the Eghalgawen
valley. It joins either the River of Agades at the south-west corner
of the T’in Wana massif, or turns south-west towards the Milen
and Tagedufat basin; my own impression, based on native sources
which are not wholly reliable, inclines to the first view. East of
the watering-point of Eghalgawen, the valley runs in a fold, into
which flows one of the Southern Air valleys. The actual stream bed
is wide and well marked by the heavy annual flood which it carries
away from the hills of Eghalgawen and T’in Wana. In character the
lower part of the valley along the foot of the hills, with its short
tributaries from this little massif, belongs to the Air plateau, and
not to Azawagh. The vegetation in the bed is dense and heavy. Dûm
palms (_Cucifera thebaica_) and large trees appear. Geographically
and geologically the Air plateau has already commenced at the rocks
of Tagedufat: actually, however, it is not reached till the River of
Agades is crossed, for Eghalgawen is still held to be in Azawagh.
PLATE 6
[Illustration: RIVER OF AGADES: CLIFFS AT AKARAQ]
[Illustration: SHRINE AT AKARAQ]
The cliff of Tiggedi, with its continuation eastward for some way
beyond the Eghalgawen hills, is the southern shore of a wide valley
which serves as a catchment for all the waters of Southern Air that do
not escape by the south-east corner of the plateau into the Azawagh
valleys previously described. The cliff is a geological phenomenon
of great interest. At the point where the Abellama road descends into
the valley some forty miles south of Agades the cliff is sheer for a
height of over 200 feet. The path down from the general level of the
desert to the dry alluvial plain, which forms the bottom of the River
of Agades, is steep and rough. Standing at the top and looking east
and west, it seems like a cliff on the sea-shore broken by capes and
small inlets; the illusion of maritime action is remarkable. Westwards
at Marandet, though still a definite feature of the area, it is less
abrupt; erosion has broken down the precipice, while the Marandet
torrent has eaten away a ravine leading even more gradually up to the
level of the desert. Eastwards, on the other hand, the cliff continues
unbroken as far as the Eghalgawen and T’in Wana massif, where higher
hills above the desert level take the place of the cliff itself. Though
they form a salient in the line, their abrupt northern slopes continue
the eastward trend until they come to an end near Akaraq, where the
cliff reappears. Here again it is absolutely sheer, if somewhat less
elevated; it is broken by a narrow inlet where the Akaraq valley,
the only tributary[72] of any size on the south bank of the River of
Agades, enters the main basin. At this point the cliff assumes the most
fantastic form. The sandstone has been shaped by erosion into pinnacles
and blocks of the strangest shapes. The Akaraq valley itself runs back
like a cove in a cliffbound sea-coast; both banks are nearly vertical,
decreasing in height as the level of the bottom gradually rises to the
desert, where the bare rock has been deeply cut into by the water,
lying in a semi-permanent pool in a very narrow gully. The bottom
of the inlet is covered with luxuriant pasture and some fair-sized
trees, while at the mouth, in the main valley, stands an island of
rock with vertical sides to complete the illusion of a sea-coast.[73]
From the top of the cliff you may look across the great broad valley
toward the mountains of Air that are scarcely visible in the north. No
defined bank appears to limit the far slope of the basin. There is deep
green Alwat pasture[74] in the nearer distance, merging imperceptibly
into yellow grass and bare sand further away. The blazing glare and
shimmering heat wash the feet of the cliff where a shelving beach of
loose white sand has been thrown up against the rocks. The plateau
at the top of the cliff is quite flat, and covered with a layer of
small hard gravel over the rock. It is without any vegetation.
The great valley bears several names. At the Akaraq inlet it is called
Tezorigi. Opposite the Eghalgawen massif it is the T’in Dawin, and
further west the Araten valley. West again it has no name, but where
it finally leaves the mountains of Air for the Assawas swamp on the way
to the T’immersoi basin, the natives call it the Ighazar n’Agades,
or River of Agades, from the city which stands on its northern shore,
and this is the name I have adopted for the whole. How far the cliffs
extend eastward I do not know. A great fork in the valley is visible
from Akaraq, the channel is divided by a bluff promontory, but the
cliff continues along the southern bank of the southern branch until
it is lost from sight. The ridge of Abadarjan which Barth crossed
north of Tergulawen, I expect, is part of the same formation.
PLATE 7
[Illustration: RIVER OF AGADES LOOKING SOUTH FROM TEBEHIC IN THE
EGHALGAWEN MASSIF]
[Illustration: EGHALGAWEN MASSIF FROM AZAWAGH]
Maritime action is highly improbable as the origin of the cliff. No
traces of shells or beaches at different levels, to be accounted
for by a receding sea, have been noticed. The supposition that
all the Sahara was once a sea-bed is untenable, and in any case
maritime action would hardly be limited to a few small areas such
as this one. It seems easier to look for another explanation. The
cliff and the Eghalgawen massif are a sandstone formation, but the
Taruaji mountains of Air opposite the little Eghalgawen-T’in Wana
massif are granitic. The cliff represents, I hazard, a fault north of
which the igneous formation of the Air plateau has been extruded. The
ground to the south slopes gradually away from the edge of the cliff,
accounting for the virtual absence of any tributaries on the left
bank of the River of Agades. There is apparently no igneous rock south
of the basin, there is very little else to the north of it, with the
exception of some Archean and very early rock. The fault, occasioned by
the volcanic action which formed the massif of Central Air, erected a
barrier to the southward drainage of the mountains, and the waters of
Southern Air were diverted westward. A larger rainfall than now caused
the gradual silting up of the area between the bottom of the fault
and the southern part of the mountains. As the ground level rose and
became an alluvial plain from which practically only Mount Gadé and
the island off Akaraq emerge, the rain floods began to wash along the
cliff and eroded the sandstone into the fantastic forms which are now
seen. Wind-borne sand from the eastern desert completed the process
of shaping the rocks. The accretion of alluvium diminished with a
decreasing rainfall in Air, and the surface deposit of wind-borne
sand formed what is now in dry weather a hard gravel-covered plain
which, in the rainy season, turns into mud-flats and becomes almost
impassable. The water flows aimlessly in the alluvium along deep-cut
gullies with vertical sides that constantly change their course. The
alluvial origin of the plain of the River of Agades is unmistakable.
[Footnote 44: That is, “The People of Katsina.”]
[Footnote 45: Chudeau has called this transitional area the Sahel Zone,
but the name is borrowed from the north and does not seem to be used
in the latitudes under discussion: cf. _Le Sahara Soudanais_, passim.]
[Footnote 46: Now called the “Colonie du Niger-Tchad.”]
[Footnote 47: The natives pronounce the name Tasawa, but “Tessawa”
is consecrated by European usage since Barth’s day.]
[Footnote 48: The plural of “Akri” in Temajegh.]
[Footnote 49: Wrongly spelt Gum_rek_ by Barth, _op. cit._,
Vol. I. chap. xxi.]
[Footnote 50: Jean: _Les Touareg du Sud-Est_, p. 15.]
[Footnote 51: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 36.]
[Footnote 52: _Ibid._, Vol. V. p. 554.]
[Footnote 53: _Ibid._, Vol. I. p. 529.]
[Footnote 54: _Vide_ Duveyrier, _op. cit._, pp. 328 and 359, _et
infra_, Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 55: On the French 1/1,000,000 map. Cf. Appendix VII.]
[Footnote 56: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 521-2.]
[Footnote 57: _Documents de la Mission Foureau-Lamy_,
Fasc. II. p. 206.]
[Footnote 58: There are other small wells in the immediate vicinity
of Milen: cf. _infra_.]
[Footnote 59: Anu (plural Unan) means “well” in Temajegh.]
[Footnote 60: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 523.]
[Footnote 61: _Infra_, Chap. X.]
[Footnote 62: _Infra_, Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 63: Cf. V. Cornish: _Waves of Sand and Snow_ (Unwin).]
[Footnote 64: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 523.]
[Footnote 65: _Vide_ Appendix III.]
[Footnote 66: “Gharus” means “deep” in Temajegh, and when
thus used of places always signifies a “deep well.” This one,
however, was silted up.]
[Footnote 67: Buchanan’s _Out of the World_, pp. 128-30.]
[Footnote 68: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 523.]
[Footnote 69: The indications on the Cortier map that the south-eastern
and eastern valleys of the Air massif peter out into the desert in
the direction of Termit are certainly inaccurate. Cf. 1/500,000 Carte
de l’Air, 2 sheets, Service Géogr. des Col., 1912.]
[Footnote 70: This word is believed to have been borrowed by the
Tuareg from the Latin. _Vide infra_, Chap. IX.]
[Footnote 71: The French are lining it with concrete.]
[Footnote 72: Unless, as has been mentioned, the Eghalgawen valley
also joins the River of Agades, S.W. of T’in Wana.]
[Footnote 73: A similar island, but considerably larger, has been
left isolated in the plain by the erosion of the water in the River
of Agades; it is a low conical hill, rather similar in shape to the
Tergulawen peak, called Mount Gadé, lying between the T’in Wana
hills and Agades.]
[Footnote 74: A fleshy plant, growing about two feet high rather like
a veitch, and containing as much moisture.]
CHAPTER III
THE CITY OF AGADES
The Eghalgawen massif contains a number of watering-points. The
pool of Eghalgawen is near the junction of a valley sloping down
from the hills, the main valley here assuming the name of the
watering-point. Abundant water exists all the year round under the sand
in the bed near a low rock on the left bank. It has rather taken the
place of Tergulawen well as a _point de passage_ for caravans on the
Great South Road, and used in the past to be a favourite resort for
caravan raiders. The neighbouring hill, like the one at Tergulawen,
is a well-known watch-tower in times of trouble, since both of
them command the approaches to a strategic point.[75] T’in Wana,
Tarrajerat, Tebehic and some pools in the Isagelmas valley on the
southern periphery of the Eghalgawen massif, are watering-points for
the camels and flocks of the tribes which range over Azawagh, to-day
the Ifadeyen. Their winter camping grounds can be seen all the way from
Tagedufat to the River of Agades; they are readily distinguishable
from the older permanent settlements of the original Kel Azawagh who
grew millet in this area. Besides the Ifadeyen, the Kel Giga section
of the Kel Tadek use the Eghalgawen hills and Azawagh pastures very
considerably after the rains. The Ifoghas of Damergu rarely come
so far north, since, having few camels, they lack incentive to seek
these superlative desert pastures. Those members of this tribe whom
I saw in Azawagh were typical in possessing only donkeys and goats,
which of course will eat almost anything.
After a 560-mile excursion to Termit and Elakkos, I rejoined my
travelling companions, whom I had forsaken at Tanut, in the little
massif on the south side of the River of Agades. They were camped a
short day’s march from Milen, at the famous permanent pool in the
T’in Wana valley. Of all pools in Africa it is of T’in Wana that I
shall keep the pleasantest recollections. I was greeted by a fusillade
of welcome and immediately went for a swim in the deep pool that had
recently been filled by the rains. The channel cut by the water in
the rock was in places fifteen feet deep. The pool had a sandy bottom,
with a rock four feet high at one end for a diving platform. A length
of twenty yards was clear to swim in, and then came a succession of
smaller pools beneath the arches and overhanging sides of red and
black rock. The erosion of the sandstone was most remarkable. There
were witches’ cauldrons and buttresses and enchanted caves, with
deep crannies in the tall vertical sides. In the wide valley above,
masses of green bushes and branching palms seemed to make the place
a heaven-sent garden of rest in a hot land. We were all very happy,
and the camels were improving fast. Our men were delighted to see the
mountains of Air again. My guide from the south, Ishnegga, who was of
the Ifadeyen, found relations in a neighbouring valley. There were
acquaintances on the road to gossip with and discuss. Poor Ishnegga
shot himself accidentally some months later, as I heard from his
beautiful old mother, whom I had met at Hannekar and saw for a second
time on my way home.
The sides of the T’in Wana ravine were covered with T’ifinagh
inscriptions relating to the tribes that had pastured here in their
time; they recorded the names of people, messages to and from their
friends, and the professions of love of their men and women. The
low hills behind were rough and without vegetation or soil; but
some mountain sheep, gazelle and sand-grouse subsisted on the coarse
grass in the ravines. The sandstone of the massif seemed to have been
subjected to volcanic heat. A deposit of fossil trees among the rocks
and boulders was found: a specimen piece picked up near Akaraq a few
miles north-east had probably been brought from this deposit near
T’in Wana. It was identified on my return as a Tertiary conifer,
but the siliceous replacement had been too complete to permit of more
detailed examination, except by microscope.
A very pleasant camp was eventually broken, and Tebehic, on the
north-west side of the hills, with two watering-places, was reached
after crossing the Isagelmas valley, a collector for several small
rivulets draining the western side of the hills. In spite of an attack
of malaria, which overcame me, Tebehic proved most interesting, for I
made friends with a family of Ifadeyen who were camping there during
the rains. The man had some cows and supplied me with fresh milk,
a great luxury after camel’s milk and the condensed sort out of a
tin. He was a widower with several children, and quite charming. One
of the children was suffering from a severe abscess in the right
ear. It had been “treated” by blocking the orifice with a paste
made of fresh camel dung and wood ash mixed with pounded leaf of the
pungent Abisgi (_Capparis sodata_) bush. I suppose the mixture was
intended to act like a mustard poultice, but the discharge from the
abscess being unable to escape had been causing the child acute pain,
which it was easy to relieve by clearing out the mess and washing the
ear. The abscess having previously opened of its own accord, the pain
ceased almost as soon as the “remedy” had been removed. It was
the first of my “cures” as a doctor among the Tuareg, and laid
the foundations of a great reputation!
PLATE 8
[Illustration: TIN WANA POOL]
[Illustration: ROCK OF THE TWO SLAVES, AT THE JUNCTION OF THE TIN
WANA AND EGHALGAWEN VALLEYS]
After a few days at Tebehic we proceeded to cross the broad plain
of the River of Agades, whither one of my companions had preceded
me. Memories of that plain are unpleasant. A day’s march from
the shelter of the Tebehic valley we were overtaken by a violent
thunderstorm right out in the open just south of T’in Taboraq. As
a convalescent cure for malaria, designed to make any reputable
European doctor shudder, I recommend getting up after three days in
bed, marching six hours on a camel in the sun, and then spending
two more holding up a tent in company with four other men in an
eighty-mile-an-hour storm with a rainfall of three-quarters of
an inch in about half an hour. The exertions of five of us were
successful in keeping the tent up and the baggage dry, but proved
tiring. As soon as the wind was over the five human tentpoles were
turned on to canalisation, which soon became necessary to drain away
the deluge. When this passed, a search over the countryside had to be
instituted for articles of equipment carried away by the storm. The
camp stove, an unwieldy cube of sheet-iron some fifteen inches each
way, and weighing nine pounds, was found 3000 yards from the camp. But
the storm had been magnificent. It had commenced at about 3 p.m. as
a black cloud hanging over the Air mountains in the north. The wind,
before it acquired full force, bore along a cloud of orange sand
gleaming in the sun, which was still uncovered by the blue-black storm
above. Suddenly everything seemed to be going on at once, sunshine,
sand-storm, wind, purple squalls and a white uniformity of tearing,
sweeping rain. By six o’clock it was all over. The sun set in a
pale yellow sky behind the T’in Wana range. The northern hills grew
slate-coloured and then black, and the storm went rolling on into
Damergu, illuminating the night with lightning. Hitherto my worst
experience of rain had been at Guliski in Damergu, when myself,
three natives and our baggage lay in a hut nine feet in diameter;
it rained all night, and slowly flooded us out. One felt the water
rising among the blankets in an atmosphere of damp clamminess and
native humanity. Then had come a hopeless dawn, but the air soon dried
everything. Yet I had still to learn what storms in the mountains
could be like.
The north side of the River of Agades opposite Tebehic has no definite
bank. The mountains of Air slope gradually down to the valley; they
are intersected by larger and smaller valleys, forming a series of
roughly parallel right bank tributaries all in close proximity to
one another. The widest of them are the Azanzara, Tureyet, Amidera,
Teghazar and Telwa, most of which start north of the Taruaji
mountains—the Tureyet and Telwa, in fact, have their head-waters
in the Bagezan and Todra groups in Central Air. Some small villages
lie among the foothills by these valleys, but it is dull country. A
few small ill-grown trees and a little grass are all the vegetation
on the succession of gravel patches which constitute the plain. The
sight of the mountains of Air in front makes one want to hurry on.
South of one of these villages the opening tragedy of the 1917
revolution took place. A platoon of French Camel Corps, after
completing their duties as escort to the Bilma salt caravan, had
supervised the dispersal of the camels in their various tribal
groups at Tabello, east of Bagezan, and were returning to Agades
for a rest. They had been away perhaps a month and now were within a
day’s march of the city. They knew nought of what had happened in
Air, suspected absolutely nothing of the unfriendly disposition of
the Tuareg. Near T’in Taboraq a large force of Tuareg, which had
been lying in ambush behind a little hill on the northern edge of the
plain, fell on the column as it was beginning its last day’s march
into Agades post. A running fight ensued, in the course of which nearly
the whole platoon of Camel Corps were destroyed. One officer, who was
returning to France on leave, escaped southward, and a few wounded
Senegalese “tirailleurs” found their way with difficulty into the
fort at Agades, which had been attacked early one morning a day or two
before while the garrison was out on parade. The revolution had been
prepared for some time, with the connivance of the Sultan of Agades,
by a Tuareg noble named Kaossen, an inveterate enemy of the French
since 1900. The outbreak had been proposed by Kaossen and aided by the
Senussiya and hostile elements in the Fezzan and Tripolitania as part
of the anti-French and -British activities which continued in North
Africa throughout the European war. The development in Air, however,
came as a surprise to the French. All the Tuareg in the plateau rose,
and although the garrison at Agades held out for over three months in
doubt and in complete isolation, the revolt spread into Damergu and
fears were even entertained for the safety of Northern Nigeria. The
defence of Agades and the arrival of a column from Zinder, acting in
conjunction with another column from the Niger, eventually saved the
situation. The heroic resistance of the garrison at Agades and the
magnificent work of the military organisation of French West Africa,
over these huge expanses of country at the end of 1917 and early in
1918, have probably never even been heard of, still less recognised,
in England, where events nearer home at a most critical period
of the war obscured the issue of “another minor incident in the
Sahara.” The column from Zinder, in spite of a severe check on the
way, was the largest single body of men ever successfully sent over
a desert against a nomadic people. It is my privilege to record in
England, I think for the first time, the courage of those gallant
French soldiers who indirectly defended Nigeria. Their efforts in
Air saved a British colony from facing a situation which might have
become serious owing to the general depletion of forces there, as
elsewhere during those tragic months of the Great War. I am happy
to make this acknowledgment, both as tribute to the French soldiers
whom I had the pleasure of meeting during the Great War and in 1922,
and particularly because even in Nigeria the gravity of the 1917
revolution has never been sufficiently recognised.
My route over the plain of the River of Agades lay in sight of Mount
Gadé, a flat-topped hill standing alone to the south. The track used
by parties from Sokoto passes this conspicuous landmark after crossing
the Azawagh on the way to the rendezvous of the annual salt caravan
at Tabello, under the eastern slopes of Bagezan in Central Air. After
cutting this track we joined the Agades-Tabello road somewhat west
of T’in Taboraq. East of this village the road passes through the
other settlements which lie on the southern spurs of the Taruaji
massif before it turns north to Tabello.
The track now entered and wound along a valley called the Teghazar.[76]
The small torrent bed was very sodden after the rain of the previous
day. On either side were low hills of bare gravel with some rock
outcrop beginning to appear here and there. On the low scarps or
patches of loose stones a few ragged acacias had secured an existence,
marking the foot of the Air hills along the River of Agades. Eventually
the track rose up to the level of the highest undulations and we
came in sight of Agades. Almost simultaneously two Tuareg on camels
appeared on the road. They had been sent out from Agades with an
accumulation of letters, months overdue, and a message to say that
we were the guests of the French officers in the fort, about a mile
north of the city. As the last fold of ground was crossed, by a steep
bluff where Kaossen had constructed a military work during the siege
of the French garrison in 1917, the whole length of the city came
in sight on a low ridge to the south-west. The far end was marked
by the stately tower of the Great Mosque, unchanged since Barth saw
it more than seventy years ago. Straight ahead lay the French post,
surrounded by a defensive wall flanked by blockhouses and containing
the tall masts of a wireless station, near the wells of T’in Shaman
in a diminutive plain where the Foureau-Lamy Expedition had camped over
twenty years earlier. In 1917 there was no W/T station and scarcely
any fort; the buildings were all disconnected and scarcely defensible.
PLATE 9
[Illustration: AGADES]
The city of Agades used to be surrounded by mud walls, intended to
baffle raiders rather than to withstand a siege. The distance along
the line of their elliptical circumference, so far as it can still
be traced, is a matter of three and a half to four miles. The wall
has been much broken down and in some places is hard to find; its
perimeter and plan seem to have varied from time to time according
to the number of inhabitants. The best preserved parts are to the
north-west beyond the Great Mosque, and to the north, where gates
may be seen; there has evidently been considerable decay even since
1850.[77] At a distance the whole ridge on which the city stands
appears covered with low, earth-coloured houses, for the most part
without an upper storey. The regular sky-line is scarcely broken save
by a few dûm palms and tenuous trees rising above the uniform level
of the roofs. Only the tower of the mosque, like a finger pointing
up to heaven, soars over the drab habitations. Their dull uniformity
seems to enhance its dignity.
Agades is not a Tuareg city. Its foreign aspect is at once
apparent. Although it also struck Barth immediately, he was, curiously
enough, not so much concerned with what is really the most obvious
feature of the alien atmosphere as he was with the foreign language
and origin of most of the people he met there. His wanderings perhaps
brought him less into contact with the permanent settlements of the
Tuareg in Air than my good fortune did me; he could not otherwise have
failed to remark that the houses in Agades are those of a Sudanese
town and not those of the People of the Veil.
The most striking characteristic of the towns of the Sudan, of the
immense walled cities of Kano and Zaria, as well as of the smaller
places, is the mode of construction of the dwellings. There are two
types of houses and in neither of them is stone used. The first type is
the circular hut with a low vertical wall carrying a conical roof; the
fashion extends throughout Central Africa. This abode is constructed
of straw, or grass, or boughs, or of whatever material is readiest
to hand. The ground plan is circular unless specific conditions have
exerted a contrary influence, which occurs rather seldom. In the more
advanced settlements of this sort in Northern Nigeria a development of
the primitive form has taken place: it is a much larger structure with
vertical mud walls which support the conical thatched roof, sometimes
as much as twenty feet in diameter, standing within a compound. In
many North Nigerian villages the dwellings consist exclusively of
groups of such huts surrounded by low walls or enclosures.
The second type of house in the large towns of the Sudan is many-roomed
and formless. The whole building, including the roof, is made of mud
and often has one or more stories. The flat roof of mud and laths
is carried on rafters of dûm palm wood which is one of the only
available trees that resists the invasion of the white ant. Houses
of this type often cover a considerable area, rambling aimlessly
hither and thither in rooms, courts and alley-ways, according to
the requirements and fancy of the owner or his descendants. The
mud construction at times displays architectural features of real
distinction. The thick tapering walls are wide and smooth. The doorways
have a pylon-like appearance reminiscent of Egypt. The heavy squat
façades are by no means unimposing: deep cold shadows cast by angles
and buttresses break up the surface of the red walls. The broad panels
around the doors are sometimes elaborated with decorative mouldings
or with free arabesque designs in relief. The larger rooms which
cannot be spanned by one length of rafter are vaulted inside with
a false arch of mud, concealing cantilever timbering; the effect is
that of a series of massive Gothic arches, plain but often of noble
proportions. Technically, mud construction is easy, inexpensive
and adequate in a climate where the rainy season is short and well
defined. Balls of mud are dried in the sun and cemented together
with wet mud. The outer and inner walls are faced with a plaster of
earth and chopped straw. In the hot tropical sun the walls dry as
hard as stone. The houses survive for an unlimited period of time
if the outside surfaces are refaced every year after the torrential
rains have washed away the stucco skin. Roofs, of course, have to
be carefully levelled and drained to prevent the water accumulating
in puddles and, in time, soaking through the ceilings. Gutters are
provided with spouts projecting through the parapets of the roofs to
prevent the water running down the sides.
The rambling mud house and the circular mud or straw and thatch
huts, grouped in compounds, together make up the towns and villages
of Northern Nigeria. The two types may be seen side by side, for
instance in the country between Kano and Katsina, where the Fulani
and Hausa population is mixed. It would be interesting to establish,
as _prima facie_ seems to be the case, whether the circular houses
were those of the sedentary Fulani, who are nearer the semi-nomadic
state, and the more ambitious mud dwellings those of the Hausa. In
neither of these two types of house is stone used, either as ashlar
or as rough masonry. Nor do dry stone walls occur, for mud is more
convenient even when stone is available.[78]
When the Tuareg, on the other hand, builds permanent or semi-permanent
dwellings, he displays characteristics which at once differentiate
him from the people of the south. His straw and matting huts are not
of the Central African type; they have no vertical wall of reeds or
grass and a separate conical roof; they are built in one piece as a
parabolic dome. Another, movable, type of hut or tent consists of a
leather roof arched over four vertical uprights surrounded by matting
walls on a square plan. The appearance of these tents is that of a cube
with a slightly domed top. The permanent houses in Air are regular,
carefully built constructions of stone and cement. In them mud is
not employed except where the fashion of the south has been directly
copied in comparatively recent times. The rambling house plan of
the south is almost unknown. The Tuareg dwelling has a definitely
formal and rectangular character. It rarely consists of more than
two rooms. Even the exceptions to this rule[79] display considerable
differences from the southern type of house.
Both the temporary huts and the permanent dwellings of the People of
the Veil, therefore, are intensely individual. They differentiate
the Tuareg sharply from the southern peoples. But even a casual
glance at the houses of Agades makes it obvious that they belong
to a city of the south. There is plenty of stone all round the city
which might have been used for building, yet nearly all the houses
are rambling mud constructions like those of Kano or of any of the
towns of Nigeria. The number of houses at Agades which reflect the
formal Tuareg fashion of planning is small. The characteristics
which one learns to associate with the truly Tuareg houses of Air
are conspicuously difficult to find. When I was in Agades at the
commencement of the rains before the annual refacing of the walls
had been carried out, it was possible to observe the absence of
stone building. An inspection of the broken walls of the many ruined
houses confirmed this observation of the past. The number of pools
in the town alone was evidence of the prevalence and antiquity of
mud construction; Barth mentions the names of several of them. The
borrow pits in the Sudanese towns, where water accumulates in the
rainy season and rubbish is shot in the dry, are features which no one
can escape, were it only on account of the smells which they exhale;
for in the Sudan, even when stone is available as at Kano, it is not
used. I have vivid recollections of Agades at this season and was
particularly impressed by the efficiency of the spouts designed to
carry the water off the roofs. Progress was necessarily circuitous in
order to avoid drowning in the flooded holes and borrow pits, while
distraction was afforded by a determined but usually unsuccessful
effort to escape a series of shower-baths in the narrow streets.
The ridge on which the city stands is surrounded by several depressions
where are the wells that supply the needs of the population. In
addition to those outside the town there were formerly nine other
wells within the walls, but, like the pools, they were nearly all
adulterated by the saline impregnation of the ground.
I cannot here refrain from quoting Barth, whose capacity for meticulous
observation depended on never missing an opportunity, however strange,
of acquiring information. “The houses of Agades do not possess all
the convenience which one would expect to find in houses in the north
of Europe; but here, as in many Italian towns, the principle of _da
per tutto_, which astonished Goethe so much at Rivoli on the Lago di
Garda, is in full force, being greatly assisted by the many ruined
houses which are to be found in every quarter of the town. But the
free nomadic inhabitant of the wilderness does not like this custom,
and rather chooses to retreat into the open spots outside the town. The
insecurity of the country and the feuds generally raging oblige them
still to congregate, even on such occasions. When they reach some
conspicuous tree the spears are all stuck into the ground, and the
party separates behind the bushes; after which they again meet under
the tree, and return in solemn procession to the town. By making such
little excursions I became acquainted with the shallow depressions
which surround Agades. . . .” He then proceeds to enumerate them.[80]
The plain where the French fort lies is called Tagurast, that to the
S.W., Mermeru; to the S.E. is Ameluli, with Tisak n’Talle somewhat
further away to the S.S.E.; Tara Bere lies to the west.
The city is divided into several quarters, the names of which are
recorded on Barth’s plan. The only two I heard mentioned were
Terjeman and Katanga, the former so called from the interpreters who
used to live in the neighbourhood, the latter from the market where
what Americans would term “dry goods” of the Air fashion are
sold. Little seems to have changed in seventy-five years; necklaces,
stone arm-rings, wooden spoons and cotton cloth can be bought, now as
then. In the larger market near by, called by the Hausa name of Kaswa
n’Rakumi (the Camel Market), live-stock of all sorts is sold. The
vegetable market seems to be as ill furnished now as it was in 1850.
I visited two or three private houses. They were not imposing,
lacking the architectural features of the better-class houses in the
Sudan. The use of white and colour washes in the interiors and on
the outside walls was interesting. This practice is the only feature
in which the houses of Agades differed from those of the Sudan; it
appears to be peculiar in this part of Africa to the Tuareg, the habit
having, no doubt, been copied from the north. The pigment is made of a
chalky substance found near Agades, or of ochreous earths occurring in
various places in Air. One of the houses which I saw was that of the
Añastafidet, the administrative head of the Kel Owi tribes. The rooms
were small and ill-planned; there was no attempt at decoration. The
technique of the south had evidently not flourished in the atmosphere
of the Sahara. The two plans of private houses reproduced by Barth
give an idea of the rambling and haphazard designing.
The most elaborate and well-kept house is the one which belongs to
the Kadhi, near the Great Mosque. It must have been here that Barth
attended several sittings of the Kadhi’s Court, adjudicating
on inter-tribal matters which could not be settled by the tribal
chiefs. It did not seem at all remarkable after the great houses of
the Sudan, but was perhaps rather better kept than most of the other
buildings in Agades. The people call it the House of Kaossen, and his
family still live there. He carried on his intrigues from this place,
and plotted with apparent impunity through 1917, until the time was
ripe for open rebellion. He had returned from the Fezzan full of
ambition to free his country from the white men whom he fought all
his life. He had taken part in the operations against the French
in Equatorial Africa, largely directed by the Senussiya from their
“zawias” in Tibesti and Ennedi. When this period of hostility came
to an end, but not before the French had sustained several severe
reverses, notably during the fighting at Bir Alali (Fort Pradie),
north-east of Lake Chad, Kaossen took refuge with the Azger Tuareg
in the Eastern Fezzan, raiding and fighting with these lawless folk
against their neighbours. Of his own initiative, but aided by the
Senussiya and their Turkish and German advisers, Kaossen returned to
his native country in 1917 with a small band of supporters to drive
out the French, an effort in which he very nearly succeeded.
By far the most considerable monument of the city is the Great
Mosque. I was unable to visit the interior, but from the general
appearance of the building I am sure that I should have agreed with
the description of Barth, who wrote: “The lowness of the structure
had surprised me from without, but I was still more astonished when
I entered the interior and saw that it consisted of low narrow naves
divided by pillars of immense thickness, the reason of which it is not
possible at present to understand, as they have nothing to support but
a roof of dûm-tree boards, mats and a layer of clay.” He goes on to
speculate on the superstructure which these “vaults or cellars” may
have been designed to carry but which was never completed. I do not
think such speculation is necessary. The description fits accurately
every one of the seven or eight other mosques in Air which I saw within
and without. In none of them were the walls ever meant to carry an
upper storey. In all of them the ceiling was low and the roof flat,
with rows of massive pillars and the naves running transversely from
north to south across the buildings, which were usually far broader
than they were deep.
The Great Mosque of Agades as it stands to-day was built in 1844.[81]
It would hardly be remarkable were it not for the minaret, which was
rebuilt by the Sultan Abd el Qader in 1847 to replace the one which
had fallen. From a base thirty feet square resting on four massive
pilasters in the interior of the mosque, this four-sided tower of mud
and dûm-palm rafters rises to a height of between eighty and ninety
feet, tapering from about one-third of its height to a narrow platform
less than eight feet square at the top. Access is obtained by a spiral
way between the solid core and the outer wall, which is pierced with
small windows. From a little distance the foreshortening produced by
the tapering faces gives the impression of immense height without
accentuating the pyramidical form. The four-square, flat sides are
bound together by transverse rafters projecting some three or four
feet. These ends serve the purpose of scaffolding when refacing is
necessary after the rains, an operation without which the tower would
not have stood any length of time. Near the mosque is a heap of mud,
the remains of an older tower called “Sofo,” presumably of the
same type.[82]
The structure is properly speaking a minaret, but was used
as a watch-tower in time of war. It is not now used for either
purpose. The muezzin stands on the roof of the mosque below to call
upon the Faithful at the prescribed hours to forsake their pursuits
and turn to the only God. The Tower of Agades stands like a beacon,
showing far over the monotonous plains. I remember this solitary
pillar towering above a confused mass of low and ruinous buildings
against the blood-red setting sun, which appeared and disappeared in
the black clouds of an evening in the rains. The blue hills and sharp
peaks of Air were distant in the north; to the south lay a drab plain,
unbroken as far as eye could see in the gathering twilight. The Tower
seemed like the lonely monument of a decaying civilisation.
There are said to have been as many as seventy mosques in and near
the city, but only two, I think, are still used. Outside the walls
to the S.W. there is a shrine known as Sidi Hamada, “My Lord of
the Desert,” appropriately named considering the barren nature
of the ground all round. It is an open place of prayer of much
sanctity, and reputed to be the oldest Moslem place of worship in the
neighbourhood. The Qibla is in a low bank, faced with a dry stone wall,
which slopes down to the level of the surrounding ground a few feet on
each side of the niche. On certain occasions prayers are said at Sidi
Hamada, notably on the Feast of the Sheep, known to the Tuareg as Salla
Laja, which I was fortunate enough to witness at Agades in June 1922.
PLATE 10
[Illustration: GATHERING AT SIDI HAMADA]
[Illustration: PRAYERS AT SIDI HAMADA]
It was made the occasion of much festivity. Every available camel
in the vicinity was ridden by a Tuareg in the gayest saddle and
bridle from the city to the shrine. These people do not feel that
they are making the best of themselves unless they are mounted on a
camel. A man and his camel are complementary and reciprocal to one
another. When there is an occasion to celebrate they wear their best
clothes and borrow any ornaments they can find to adorn their sombre
garments. They are vain of their personal appearance and covetous of
those pretty things which are considered in good taste, but their
unselfishness is nevertheless remarkable. I have seen men forgo
the real pleasure of wearing a silver ornament or a new face veil
in order to lend them to a less fortunate companion whose general
appearance was more ragged, or whose means and opportunities did not
allow him to secure anything to smarten his turn-out. I had bought
of the local jeweller-blacksmith in Agades a number of small silver
ornaments of the sort which are affected by the Tuareg. All these,
and even certain articles of clothing from our own scanty wardrobes,
were borrowed for the day. It was curious to see that their sombre
apparel was never lightened by any of the coloured materials so much
in evidence in the Sudan. The best-dressed man is considered to be
the one with the newest indigo-cotton robe and veil of the traditional
plain design. At the most a red cloth is tied round the head over the
face veil, or, in the case of the guides employed by the French, around
the waist and shoulders: the robe must, however, always be plain white
or dark indigo. The Tuareg of our own retinue picked out the best of
our camels to ride. They turned out a very smart patrol, the camel
men Elattu, Alwali and Mokhammed of noble caste, with two or three
buzus or outdoor slaves, and Ali the son of Tama, the Arab from Ghat.
At an early hour the poorer people on foot began to stream over the
tufted plain which lies between the place of prayer and the city. They
were followed by little parties of men on camels, black figures on
great dun-coloured or white riding beasts, girt about with their
cross-hilted swords, and some also carrying a spear and oryx-hide
shield. Finally, a larger group of men, preceded by three or four
horsemen, was seen approaching. They were the Sultan of Agades,
Omar, the Slave King of the Tuareg of Air, with his attendants,
and the Añastafidet, a noble of the Kel Owi tribes, who, from the
purely administrative point of view, is the most important man in the
country. They were accompanied by the chief minister of the Sultan,
the notables of the place, and other dignitaries. Among them was El
Haj Saleh, the father of our camel man Elattu; he had performed the
pilgrimage three times, in the course of which he had acquired the
Arab fashion of dress used in the north. He wore the white woollen
robe that is supposed to be descended from the Roman toga, with his
head covered only by a fold of the cloth. El Haj Saleh has lived so
long in foreign parts that he no longer veils his face and prefers
speaking Arabic, but he is much respected as a learned and holy man;
he is now employed by the French at the fort as Oriental Secretary
and interpreter. With him were the Kadhi and the Imam, a solitary
exception among the veiled Tuareg in the matter of display, for he
had obtained from the south a buff-coloured silk robe embroidered
with green. The Sariki n’Turawa, or chief minister of the Sultan,
came next; near him gathered a number of Arab merchants from Ghat
and Tuat in white robes; with one or two from the extreme west, there
were a dozen or fifteen in all, who have the trade of Agades in their
hands. Among them I perceived one Arab from Mauretania, a little man
with delicate, sensitive features and a brown beard. He came straight
up to where I was standing to repay me a debt of five silver francs
which he had incurred some months before at Gangara in Damergu.
PLATE 11
[Illustration: PRAYERS AT SIDI HAMADA, NEAR AGADES]
When the crowd had collected, the men ranged themselves in rows facing
east before the Qibla; the women stood together on one side. The
Sultan and his party were immediately opposite the niche with the
Imam facing them. He began to read the Quran and the multitude
then prayed. On either side of the Sultan, as he knelt to make his
prostrations, a Tuareg remained standing with his sword drawn, extended
point downwards at arm’s length, in protection and salute. As the
Sultan rose to his feet the guard sloped their swords, repeating the
salute every time he bowed before the name of God. These two men are
distinct from the officials in the local administration;[83] they are
the personal body-guard of the Sultan, chosen among the “courtiers
of the king,” who are young men selected in turn from the tribes
in Air which owe allegiance direct to the Sultan.
After the prayers were over two sheep were slaughtered in the
orthodox manner. Their throats were cut by the Imam, reciting the
invocation of Islam, and the blood was wiped away with holy water to
the accompaniment of suitable prayers.
The Sultan and the people then returned to the city, making a detour
by the N.W. side through the ruined suburb outside the walls and past
the Great Mosque to the present palace, an indifferent building,
both tumbledown and dirty. The reigning Sultan, Omar, like all his
predecessors, is of slave descent. He was chosen in 1920 by the
tribes which have the right to elect him, from a collateral branch
of the ruling family. He is a weak man, and too much in the hands
either of interested advisers or of the French, which does not always
mean the same thing. His predecessor, Tegama, on the other hand,
was a remarkable man. His intrigues with Kaossen were successful in
preparing the revolution in Air so quietly that practically nothing
was suspected of his intentions until the fateful dawn when the black
troops on parade at the post were fired upon from the outskirts of the
city. After the French columns had relieved the besieged garrison,
both Kaossen and Tegama fled east to Kawar, whence the former found
his way to the Fezzan, only to be killed, so it is believed, in obscure
circumstances north of Murzuk by some Arabs. The native accounts of the
story cast some doubt on his actual death on the grounds that his body
was never found among those of his massacred companions. It is further
represented that the very Turks and Senussiya whom he had served put
him to death for his failure in Air, but it appears more probable that
on his way to seek refuge with the Senussiya in Cyrenaica, Kaossen
and his friends had the misfortune to fall in with a band of Arabs
whom he had raided in the olden days, and to have been killed by them.
The Sultan Tegama, on the other hand, betook himself to Tibesti,
hoping to find sanctuary among the Tebu, who, though the hereditary
enemies of the Tuareg of Air, were probably sufficiently hostile to
the French to be counted on to harbour any prominent refugee from
the wrath of the white man. By the influence of the Senussiya in
these parts he expected to reach Kufra and so take up his residence
among the malcontents who live in that remote land. Treacherous as
ever and true to their reputation current all over North Africa,
the Tebu entreated Tegama generously and took the first opportunity
which presented itself to hand him over to a French camel patrol from
Bilma. In the course of time he returned to Agades as a prisoner under
an escort of negro Senegalese soldiers and was thrown into prison
at the fort to await his trial by court-martial. He died suddenly
one night in May 1922, by his own hand it is said, in the prison,
while under the surveillance of the French, and he was buried. But
one chief who was at the funeral told me that he looked under the mat
which covered the alleged corpse and discovered that there was nothing
there. The story spread that Tegama escaped and fled to the north,
where he is still living. Perhaps it is better that this story should
obtain credence than any other. Instead of Tegama, the French officer
in charge of the post was court-martialled for the suicide of the king,
but acquitted. The whole episode is curious, but the truth is perhaps
rather unsavoury. It is another of the fierce tragedies of the Sahara.
Before Tegama, Osman Mikitan and Brahim (Ibrahim Dan Sugi) were
Sultans. Mikitan was Sultan when the post was first established at
the wells of T’in Shaman, but they changed places several times
in the course of the intrigues which took place between the passage
of the Foureau-Lamy Expedition in 1899 and the occupation of Air in
1904. In Barth’s day Abd el Qader, son of the Sultan Bakiri (Bekri),
was on the throne. His tenure of office was as precarious as that of
his successors, for he had been Sultan on a previous occasion before
Barth reached Agades, only to be deposed in favour of Hamed el Rufai
(Ahmed Rufaiyi), whom he again succeeded; they once more changed
places some three years afterwards, Abd el Qader having reigned in
all about thirty-two years, Hamed some twelve. The tenure of office of
the Sultans of Agades during the last century has been as precarious
as it was in Leo’s time, for we read in this authority[84] that the
Tuareg “will sometime expel their king and choose another; so that he
which pleaseth the inhabitants of the desert best is sure to be king of
Agades.” Bello in his history says the same:[85] “whenever a prince
displeased them, they dethroned him and appointed a different one.”
The installation of the Sultan with the customs that obtain is
in the nature of a ceremonial recognition, by the representatives
of the principal tribes of the Tuareg of Air, of his elevation to
office. Taken in connection with the traditional mode of his selection,
it throws an interesting light on relationships of the various groups
of the Tuareg in Air. Barth, who was in Agades on such an occasion,
wrote: “The ceremonial was gone through inside the _fada_ (palace);
but this was the procedure. First of all Abd el Kader (Qader) was
conducted from his private apartments to the public hall: the chiefs
of the Itisan (Itesan) and Kel Geres who were in front begged him to
sit down upon the _gado_, a sort of couch or divan, made of the leaves
of the palm tree . . . similar to the _angarib_ used in Egypt and
the lands of the Upper Nile, and covered with mats and carpets. Upon
this the Sultan sat down, resting his feet on the ground, not being
allowed to put them on the _gado_ and recline in the Oriental style
until the Kel Owi had desired him to do so.[86] Such is the ceremony,
symbolical of the combined participation of these different tribes in
the investiture of their Sultan.”[87] The throne-room in the old
palace seems to have been more imposing than any part of the royal
dwelling of to-day. The present audience chamber is a low, arched room,
with a small daïs or seat at one end near a narrow stairway leading
up to three rooms in an upper storey, which is now not in use. These
rooms are lighted by small windows looking over the outer court. I
wandered at random in and out of the palace except that small part
which is still used by Omar himself and his women-folk. The deserted
rooms were deep in dust and fallen plaster. The courts were infested
with dogs, children and chickens. The palace was far less magnificent
and certainly less well kept than many other houses in the city. Even
the small house of the Añastafidet, with its mats and solitary carpet
of horrid colours on the floor of the guest-chamber, was more cleanly.
The present Sultan enjoys little or no authority; his predecessors,
unless they were backed by the more important chiefs in Air, were
almost equally powerless, for the position of the Sultan, or Amenokal,
as he is called in Temajegh, is curious. It is said in the native
tradition that in the early days there was no authority in the land
other than that of the chiefs of the various groups of tribes, and
these did not in any way acknowledge one another’s authority over
affairs which interested the community at large. The groups and
single tribes were constantly at war with one another, and there
were then 70,000 people in the land, with no common ruler.[88] The
more reasonable chiefs recognised that some figure-head at least
was necessary, but they could not agree that he should be chosen
from any of the principal groups of clans in Air. They therefore
sent a deputation to Istambul or Santambul (Constantinople) to the
Commander of the Faithful, asking him to appoint a Prince to come and
rule over them. The Khalif called together the sons of his wives and
offered them all the country from the land of the Aulimmiden in the
west to Sokoto in the east (_sic_), and from Tadent in the north to
the lands of the Negroes in the south. But Air was so far away that
none of the sons of the Khalif was willing to leave the comforts
of Stambul. The Embassy was kept waiting for three years. Finally
the Commander of the Faithful, weakening before the tears of his
legitimate wives, the mothers of his sons, selected the child of a
concubine to rule over the Tuareg of the south. The candidate returned
with the deputation to Air and from that day to this there are said
to have been one hundred rulers in the land. This figure does not,
of course, represent the exact number; it is only meant figuratively
to indicate a long period of time.
From the original impressions I had received in Air I came to the
conclusion that the installation of the first Sultan could be assigned
to the beginning of the fifteenth century A.D., or, in other words,
to a period prior to the capture of Constantinople by the Moslems. In
the course of some research on the subject I discovered that 1420
A.D. had been suggested by one authority on the evidence of tradition,
while the Agades Chronicle, independently of all this evidence, had
recorded that the first Sultan, Yunis,[89] ascended the throne in 809
A.H., or about 1406 A.D.[90] The important thing in any case is that,
if the story of his choice has any historical foundation whatsoever,
it must be referred to a period when Christian emperors were still
ruling in Constantinople. It is therefore all the more interesting
to learn that the first Sultan was called Yunis, which means John,
and that the wife of the first Sultan, a noble girl said to have been
given to him in marriage by the Kel Ferwan tribe, was called Ibuzahil
or Izubahil, a name bearing a curious resemblance to Isabel. It is a
fitting name for the companion of John, the man from the distant land.
If a deputation went to the Mediterranean at all, it was natural at
this period that it should go to Constantinople, still regarded as
the capital of nations, with which no other city in the fifteenth
century could compare for civilisation or splendour. But we shall
probably never know whether a Byzantine prince came to Air in 1406
A.D. or whether the names and legend of John and Isabel are only
coincidence. Yunis is described as the son of Tahanazeta, and I must
leave for others to discover Byzantine resemblances to this name. For
the name of one of his successors, Aliso, I suggest Louis may have
been our equivalent, and regarding the latter’s brother, Amati,
who followed, comment is hardly necessary.
Yunis reigned twenty years and was succeeded by Akasani,[91] who was
the son of Yunis’s sister. Elsewhere El Haj Ebesan or Abeshan,
a son of Yunis, and his son, El Haj Muhammad ben Ebesan, are said
to have reigned respectively as second and third Sultans, but this
is not substantiated by the Agades Chronicle, which mentions El
Haj Ebesan only as the grandfather of the sixteenth Sultan, Yusif,
who came to the throne about 1594. From this record there appear to
have been some forty rulers, several of whom reigned more than once,
but there are certain gaps in the series.[92]
After the very first ruler the reigning family divided into two
branches, which keep on reappearing, many of the Sultans of one being
deposed by powerful tribes like the Itesan in favour of candidates of
the other line. The family of El Guddala or Ghodala figures prominently
with several notable rulers like Muhammad Hammad, who was known as
the Father of his People. From such records as are available I have
tried to recover the genealogy of this stock; but the Agades Chronicle
is neither accurate nor complete;[93] although it is almost the only
detailed information which we possess for the present. One noteworthy
fact accords well with Ibn Batutah’s observations and with certain
matriarchal survivals which will be referred to in detail hereafter:
there are repeated instances of descent being traced through the
female line. Nevertheless, this was not an essential condition. The
ruler to this day is elected by the same tribes originally responsible
for the elevation of Yunis to the throne: he must be drawn from one of
the two branches of the original family, and his heir, subject to due
and proper election, is normally considered to be his sister’s son.
Being the son of a concubine or slave, the king, according to the
rules of descent of all the Tuareg, was himself of slave caste,
nor could he ever achieve the distinction of being ranked among
the nobles. As it is the law among the People of the Veil that
the child must follow the caste of the mother and not the father,
whatever the latter’s claims, only the offspring of a noble Tuareg
woman can be noble. In all other matrimonial combinations the child
must be a serf or slave. A slight distinction is sometimes drawn
if only the mother is inferior, but it has the effect, at the most,
of creating a mixed caste, without admitting the possibility of the
child becoming a noble. When the problem arose of finding a wife
for the first ruler who had been selected by the Khalif, despite the
pre-eminence of his sponsor, tradition prevailed, that he was to be
given a slave woman for wife. The arrangement had the advantage of
perpetuating the status of the original Amenokal, since his children
perforce had to continue in the inferior caste. For political reasons
certain exceptions seem to have been made, and the Amenokal, though
a serf, was also allowed to marry a noble woman, but in that case
her children were not eligible. The marriage of John and Isabel—if
she came from the noble Kel Ferwan, and not from Constantinople, as
I suspect—may be an instance of such political dispensation. The
restriction of the choice of the Amenokal to one of the two branches
of the original family, and the force of tradition in regard to his
descent, have resulted in the apparent paradox that in order to be
Sultan of Agades the candidate has to be a slave. These considerations
duly influenced the choice of the present Amenokal, Omar.
Insignificant as his power nominally is, and unimportant as the office
may practically be, many of the traditional stories which purport
to explain the circumstances attending the Sultan’s elevation to
the throne are probably fanciful. They may be accepted but still be
fictions in the legal sense. Unless or until Byzantine researches can
come to our assistance, the logical explanation, if there is one, must
be sought. Shorn of romance, what appears most likely to have happened
is that the Tuareg of Air at a certain stage were unable to reach
any agreement regarding the selection of a head of the State. They
were divided up into groups which their piecemeal immigration had
accentuated. But the necessities of trade and caravan traffic made
it essential for the common weal to have some sovereign or head,
even if he were only a nominal ruler, to maintain foreign relations
and transact political business on behalf of the inhabitants of Air
generally with the Emirates and Empires of the Sudan. Since none of
the principal tribes was willing to forgo the privilege of providing
the ruler, the expedient was hit upon of appointing a man whose status
would never conflict with the authority of the tribal chiefs within
the borders of the country, but who could still be delegated to speak
for the whole community with the rulers of the Southland. With all
the jealousy that exists among the tribes on the question of relative
nobility or antiquity, the only people fulfilling the essentials were
of servile caste. The choice of such a man was nevertheless possible
among the Tuareg, for neither “imghad” nor slaves are despised
or regarded as mere animals. This, I think, is the only explanation
of the usage which obtains, that whatever may be the caste of the
Amenokal’s children, only the servile ones are eligible. Although
the family of the Sultan may include noble persons, it is, as a whole,
a servile group in both its branches; it seems that Barth is mistaken
in regarding the group as noble. The family may, as he says, be called
“Sherrifa,” but probably only on account of its reputed origin. It
is not considered any the more noble in the Tuareg sense of the word
for all that.[94]
This does not exclude the possibility of the Constantinople Embassy
being true, but the explanation I have given of the slave kings of Air
seems to be sufficient on its own merits and also reasonable. Every
factor in the situation points to the care which was taken to eliminate
all possible chances of dispute; even the relegation of the choice to
one servile family singled out for the purpose would tend to diminish
friction. On the whole the procedure may be said to provide a rational
if cynical solution of what has always been a difficult problem in all
countries.[95] Inasmuch as the explanation also serves to elucidate
a number of other problems, it may be said to receive confirmation.
Thus, the principal Minister or Vizir of the Amenokal is the Sariki
n’Turawa,[96] a Hausa term meaning the “Chief of the White
People.” The White People are the Arab traders from the north, who
themselves call this official the “Sheikh el Arab.” His functions
are those of Minister for Foreign Affairs:[97] his duties are to
regulate the foreign community of Agades and settle all questions of
trade with the outside world. Though originally appointed to deal
with the Arabs of the north, he came eventually to have more to do
with the Southland. He used to collect the duties on merchandise in
Agades and accompany the salt caravans to Bilma, a service for which
he received an eighth part of an average camel load of salt. After the
salt caravan returned, the Sariki n’Turawa proceeded south with the
camels returning to Sokoto, and then went on to Kano. The latter part
of his journey had already been discontinued in 1850, but he still
accompanies the salt caravan as the representative of the Sultan
and nominal leader of the enterprise. In addition to these duties
involving foreign relations, he is the Amenokal’s chief adviser and
“Master of the Interior of the Palace,” with the Songhai name of
“Kokoi Geregeri.” He is also known as the “Wakili” or Chief
Agent of the king. The reason for the Chief Minister in Agades being
also Minister for Foreign Affairs needs no further comment after what
has been said of the Sultan himself and his _raison d’être_.
Other officials and courtiers round the Amenokal include the Sariki
n’Kaswa, or Chief of the Market Place, who collects the market
dues and supervises the prices of commodities. There are, besides,
police officials or policemen who are also the executioners, and a
number of persons called after the class from whom they are chosen, the
“magadeza.” The word seems to be a corruption of “Emagadezi,”
meaning People of Agades, but has acquired a more restricted meaning,
and is commonly applied to a number of rather fat men who are reputed
to be the posterity of the attendants of the first Yunis who came
from Constantinople.[98]
By virtue of his own position the Amenokal enjoys very little
authority. He is used as an arbitrator and Judge of Appeal. In
cases where the disputants are both from the same group of clans
their quarrel would normally be referred to the head of their
aggregation, except amongst the Kel Owi, over whom the Añastafidet
is the administrative authority, or court of the second instance;
in minor matters the tribal chief can, of course, decide on his own
initiative. But in disputes between persons of different tribes who
cannot agree on the finding of the chief of either of their factions,
the case may be referred to the Sultan, on whose behalf the Kadhi
renders judgment. Such functions as the Sultan performs are executed
with the consent of the governed. Although all serious cases might
be referred to him in theory, in practice his authority has never
run in local tribal affairs. He has a common gaol for criminals,
used in the first instance for those of the city, but also for such
as cannot be satisfactorily punished under the tribal arrangements
of a nomadic and semi-nomadic people. There were cases when chiefs
of tribes might be, and were, imprisoned at Agades, but then it was
because the power behind the throne had so desired it. The Sultan
apparently at one time also had a dungeon with swords and spears fixed
upright in the floor upon which criminal malefactors were thrown;
but already in 1850 it was rarely used.
It cannot be too carefully emphasised that the rule of the Sultan as
the elected head of the State of Agades was founded upon the consent
of the governed. He is the figure-head of the community and performs
the same useful duties which so many heads of more civilised States
undertake. The Tuareg have probably never had occasion to discuss
the social contract, and the works of J. S. Mill or Rousseau are not
current in Air, but nowhere are these theories of government more
meticulously carried into effect or do they assume the practical form
which they have often lacked in Europe. With all their aristocratic
traditions of caste and breeding, the Tuareg have never favoured an
established or hereditary autocracy. The government they prefer seems
to be a democratic monarchy. Their king is a slave elected by the
representatives of certain, at one time doubtless the most important,
tribes; he exists and carries out certain functions because the mass
of the people desire it so. Authority is not inherited, and even men of
inferior caste may become chieftains. The evolution of society has also
inevitably rendered the king dependent for support upon the principal
men of the country, and the latter upon the smaller chieftains. Where
there is much rivalry or where the ruler is weaker than usual the
frequent changes and inconsistency inherent in democratic government
ensue. Equally the ascendancy of one man’s personality independently
of his position may override the voice of the people, but in the
absence of organisation or bureaucracy the conditioning factor is
efficiency and competence. Tribal leaders are selected because they
can lead; when they cease to lead they are deposed.
The unenviable position of the king and his dependence on the influence
of the chiefs seem consequently to have been the same throughout the
ages. Leo[99] refers to the practice of deposing one king and electing
another from the same family who was more acceptable. Bello on the
subject has also already been quoted. We have just seen how often and
why Osman Mikitan and Brahim changed places. Barth recounts how in
his day Abd el Qader was completely in the hands of the Kel Owi, who
were represented by the dominant personality of their paramount chief,
Annur. His own tribe was not even, as a matter of fact, among those
responsible for the selection of the Sultan, but his personality
was such that the Amenokal, at his request, or with his support,
felt himself strong enough to imprison three turbulent chiefs of
the Itesan who were stirring up the people in Agades in favour of
a pretender. Yet the Itesan, a tribe of the southern Kel Geres,
are the foremost of the tribes responsible for the Sultan’s very
election and his maintenance in power. Without Annur’s support,
Abd el Qader was powerless.
[Illustration: OMAR: AMENOKAL OF AIR]
I think that the persistence of tradition shows how essential the
method devised for choosing the head of the community was, and is
still considered to be among the Air Tuareg. Even to-day the Itesan
retain their predominant voice in the election, though they live in the
Sudan and are in part within the border of the country administered by
the British Government, and though their king is in French territory
hundreds of miles away. They were the deciding factor in the election,
after the death of Tegama,[100] of Omar from the collateral branch
which lives with them.
Only in rare cases was the Amenokal a leader in war. Muhammad Hammad is
an instance in point, but it is clear he was an exceptional man. When
raids had taken place or were threatening in such a manner as to affect
the people of Air indiscriminately, or where individual tribes might
not consider themselves sufficiently involved to occasion reprisals,
the Sultan used to lead a counter-raid recruited from several clans
and provisioned according to his direction from those groups most
capable of supplying the needs. In no case could a Sultan lead a
raid against an Air tribe, whether in the north or in the south,
unless he had definitely thrown in his lot with a local intrigue,
which theoretically would, and usually did, entail his eventual
deposition. Within Air the Sultan was neutral, or as we should say
“constitutional.” He could only take the field against people like
the Aulimmiden of the west, or the Tebu of the east, or the Ahaggaren
of the north beyond the borders of his country. As a general rule,
however, leading in war was the task of tribal chieftains and not of
the king.
The Amenokal does not seem to have had a fixed revenue. He lived
principally on the presents given to him by the tribes on the occasion
of his accession, and more especially by those tribes which owe
allegiance directly to himself. He was entitled to collect a tax on
foreign merchandise entering the city and a tithe from certain servile
tribes in the southern parts of Air.[101] In addition he had certain
perquisites in the shape of judicial fines imposed on individuals
and tribes, and a revenue from legitimate trading with Bilma during
the great salt caravans.
In considering the history of Agades one cannot fail to be struck by
the peculiarity of the site.
Elsewhere in North Africa, where any of the great caravan roads
pass through areas of fertility which break up the journeys into
sections, towns and cities, in some cases of considerable magnitude,
have grown up. Where these settlements are near the margin of belts
of permanent sedentary inhabitation, they play the part of termini
or ports for the trans-desert traffic. They have become markets
and the seats of the transport and produce brokers, a development
which has its parallels in Arabia and Central Asia. There are many
instances in Northern Africa of such terminal points becoming large
and important centres: some of the more active of these “ports,”
as they may be called, in the north are Sijilmasa, Wargla, Ghadames,
Tripoli, Orfella and Benghazi. Corresponding with them at the southern
end of the various roads are Timbuctoo, Gao, Sokoto, Katsina and
Kano.[102] In addition to that there are also the true Cities of
the Desert. They have arisen in places where caravans can call a
halt to rest and replenish food supplies, where water is plentiful,
and sometimes also, where these requisites are present, at the
intersection of important routes. These settlements are like island
coaling stations in maritime navigation, but they are not termini;
they are particularly interesting ethnologically, for they often
mark the ends of stages where the transport of merchandise changes
hands. At these points one tribe or race hands over its charge to
another group of people. They are thus entrepôts where goods are
discharged and reshipped—not markets, but broking centres where
the transport contractors and merchants who live at either end of the
routes have their agents. A money market often develops, but the local
trade is small, for it is confined to the requirements of the place
and immediate neighbourhood. At all costs, either by means of a strong
local government or by mutual consent, tribes which elsewhere may be
at war with one another must be compelled to meet in peace to pursue
their lawful occasions. The essentials for the growth of such centres
are invariably the presence of water, pasture and, to a lesser extent,
food. Where these factors can be obtained at one definite point only,
the centre is fixed, whereas if there are several places all more or
less equally convenient for the traffic, the settlement has a tendency
to move under the influence of political changes. In Tuggurt, Laghuat
and Ghat may be found instances where the centre has been unable to
shift on account of geographical conditions; but in the Tuat-Tidikelt
area the most important town of In Salah has had many rivals, which
have prevented it acquiring the same compactness or prominence as,
for instance, the city of Ghat. At the latter place a large permanent
water supply in an arid country practically limited the choice
of sites to one spot. A commercial city of paramount importance,
if of no great size, sprang up in the earliest times and continued
uninfluenced by political vicissitudes. As an entrepôt of commerce
where there was peace at all times among the local population, where
feuds and racial hostility were set aside within its precincts, where
free trade was the oldest tradition and where an efficient municipal
organisation did not seek to extend its influence far beyond the walls,
Ghat developed a government similar to that of an autonomous Hanseatic
town. Ghat is the most interesting of all the cities of the desert,
but the decline of caravan trade has brought ruin to its people and
war among the tribes, which no longer have the material incentive of
trade to refrain from fighting.
On the eastern of the two central roads across the Sahara there is
a stage where one would expect to find a town like Ghat, for to the
south on both these routes there is a tract of desert to be crossed
before reaching Kawar or Air respectively. But in the Eastern Fezzan
the choice of locality was not restricted by geographical and economic
considerations, and Murzuk, as the counterpart in modern times of
Ghat, has consequently not always been the most important centre of
the area. In early classical times Garama, now known as Jerma, some
sixty miles to the north of Murzuk, was the capital of the Garamantian
kingdom. When Jerma was destroyed by the Arabs in the seventh century,
Zuila, probably the Cillala of the Romans, became the capital of the
Eastern Fezzan, maintaining its supremacy even after conquest by the
Beni Khattab in the tenth century. When in the fourteenth century the
Fezzan was overrun by the people of Kanem the capital again moved,
this time to Traghen.
Air is the next stage on the road to the Sudan after crossing the
desert to the south of Ghat. The requisites of water, pasture and
food are found all over this vast oasis; the principal settlement
might therefore be presumed to have changed its site under the
influence of politics, and in a great measure this has happened,
but the largest settlement in the country, the City of Agades, is
comparatively modern and appears to owe its existence to political
rather than to economic reasons.
Standing on the north side of the valley which is named after it,
Agades is in one sense a City of the Desert, since it lies on the edge
of a Saharan oasis. In so far as it is a true desert city at all, it
is the greatest of them, but, as we shall see, it has not quite the
same characteristics as its smaller rivals. Ghat, before the war, was
said to number less than 4000 people, but may have attained double this
figure at one time; the population of Murzuk was variously estimated
at 2800 by Barth and at 6500 by Nachtigal; Ghadames is believed
to have a population of about 7000. But Agades in the days of its
prosperity must have contained not less than 30,000 inhabitants.[103]
By 1850 the population had fallen to about 7000; ten years ago the
number was estimated at 10,000. To-day there are not 3000 people in
the half-ruined city, but the numbers are again increasing since the
efflux of population after the 1917 revolution. These astonishing
variations in population are a normal feature of desert cities,
even as they are of harbours and seaport towns where the places
are entirely dependent on conditions of trade, which is affected by
political change; in the Sahara the mode of life of the surrounding
nomads makes these fluctuations even more conspicuous.
None of the considerations governing the site of other desert cities
applies to Agades. It lies on the southernmost foothills of the Air
mountains, and in the history of the country there has never been any
danger of invasion except from the south. Some of the Tuareg, it is
true, gradually penetrated Air from the north, and pushed south by the
progressive occupation of the northern mountains, which the original
population may not have been sufficiently interested or numerous to
occupy and defend. Small raiding parties can always enter the country,
but it is certain that with even inconspicuous opposing forces the
success of an invading army approaching Air from any direction except
the south is out of the question, owing to the difficulties of moving
large bodies of men over the appalling desert which separates the
plateau from Ahaggar or the Fezzan. The same conditions obtain in
the east, and to a great extent in the west also. On the south only
is the position rather different. The steppe desert between Air and
Damergu is neither so waterless nor so pastureless nor so deep as to
preclude military operations from that direction. In point of fact Air
was invaded on at least one occasion from that side with conspicuous
success.[104] It is therefore anomalous that the capital of the country
should have been located on the fringe of the mountains, where every
road is defensible, in possibly the most vulnerable position which
could have been chosen.
Nor is the explanation to be found in such economic necessity as has
dictated the choice of site in other examples of desert cities. Agades
is some distance from the great north-south road which runs, and always
has run, east of the Central massif of Air, leaving the country on
its way to the Sudan at the water of Eghalgawen or Tergulawen. An
alternative route to the Sokoto area branching off the main road in
Northern Air and descending by the Talak plain and In Gall passes some
distance west of the city. No caravan road suitable for heavily-laden
camels passes through Agades for the north, owing to the barrier of
the Central massifs, through which the tracks are difficult even for
mountain-bred camels. The old pilgrim road from Timbuctoo to Cairo
enters the western side of the Air plateau at In Gall or further north,
and passes to Iferuan and so to Ghat without touching Agades. Ibn
Batutah’s route shows that this was so in his day, as it certainly
has been the case since then. Caravans from the south crossing the
Eastern Desert for Bilma pass across Azawagh to the eastern fringes
of Air without going to Agades, which would involve a detour, as was
explained in referring to the importance of the well of Masalet.[105]
While the trade routes of the country do not, therefore, provide
an adequate justification for the choice of the site, climatic or
geographic conditions have equally little bearing, for there are a
number of points in Air where the pasture is good and where there is
sufficient water to supply the needs of a large settlement. At Agades,
as a matter of fact, the water is indifferent; while the surrounding
gravelly plain, like the rest of the valley, is only covered with
scanty vegetation, the neighbouring Telwa valley contains some
pastures, but they are not abundant, and camels in the service of
the local merchants have to be sent to feed as much as three or four
days distant.
If the conditions which had led to the growth of a city in Air had
been of a purely economic order, it might have been anticipated that
it would have occupied the site of Iferuan, the first point south of
Ghat where a permanent settlement with plentiful water, pasture and
land fit for cultivation was possible. So convenient is the Iferuan
valley that caravans, in fact, usually do rest there for long periods
to allow both men and animals to recuperate after the difficult stage
to the north has been negotiated. Or, again, a city might have stood
at the eastern end of the River of Agades at the north end of the
stage across the Azawagh, although this position would have been less
dictated by necessity than the first alternative, since the steppe
desert of the south cannot be compared for hardship with the northern
waste. It would nevertheless have been convenient, if somewhat exposed
to raiding parties, as a point for the concentration of caravans
crossing the Eastern Desert to Bilma, or in other words at the
branching of the Salt Road and the north-south route. On its present
site, Agades is out of the way for travellers from any direction who
may be bound beyond the city. Some other explanation must then be
found, and it occurred to me only when I had reached the city itself.
The fact of the matter is that Agades is not the capital of Air
at all. As we have seen, the city is not the seat of the central
government because there is no real central government, and the King
who lives there is not really King at all. Agades is only the seat of
an administration set up in the first instance to deal with exterior
affairs, and more especially those connected with the Southland. These
affairs were in the charge of a figure-head ruler unconnected, except
to a very minor degree, with the internal problems of the Tuareg
tribes. When this is once grasped, Agades assumes a different position
in the perspective of history and it becomes apparent that the site is
really suited to the purpose for which it was intended. The place where
the city lies is neutral as far as the tribes of Air are concerned;
it has easy access to the Sudan yet is removed from the main roads,
which are considered the property of certain groups of clans. But it
follows that the character of the city must inevitably partake rather
of the south than of the Sahara.
Finally, there is the most conclusive evidence of all; during the
early part of the Tuareg occupation of Air, there was no city of
Agades at all; it fulfilled no need despite the caravan traffic. It
was presumably not founded when Ibn Batutah travelled through Air, for
he makes no mention of the name; although this is negative evidence,
it is valuable in the case of so observant a traveller. By 1515, when
Askia conquered the Tuareg of Air, Agades, however, was certainly
in existence, since it is on record that he occupied the city for
a year, “sitting down north of the town,” possibly at T’in
Shaman. Marmol, moreover, is quite definite on the subject, saying
that the city was founded 160 years before he wrote, a date which
has been reckoned at 1460 A.D.[106] We know that the first Sultans
of Air did not live at Agades, but by inference it may be supposed
that they soon came to do so, so that the date suggested is probably
correct. With the advent of a figure-head king there sprang up a
figure-head capital. The story of Agades is the story of its kings:
the explanation of both is similar.
What seems to have struck Barth most about Agades was that the people
spoke Songhai and not Temajegh; it was, in fact, one of the few places
left where the language of the greatest Empire of the Niger still
survived. There is reason to believe that most of the Emagadezi are not
of Tuareg race at all. The Songhai element is probably preponderant
even now, four hundred years after the conquest of Agades by the
Songhai king, Muhammad Askia, who planted a colony there. The face
veil has been adopted universally, but the physical type of the
inhabitants is much more akin to that of people of the south than to
that of true Tuareg. The descendants of the Songhai conquerors are
coarse, broad-featured people with dark skins and untidy hair, which
is an abomination among the noble Tuareg. The same characteristics
reappear among the inhabitants of certain points west of Agades on
the south-western outskirts of Air, where the Songhai element is also
known to have become established and to have survived. The people of
Agades are hardly even considered as natives of the country by the
rest of the inhabitants of Air. They are not classed as a group,
like the inhabitants of other settlements in the mountains. It is
rarer to hear the “Kel Agades” mentioned than it is to hear such
exotic compositions as “Kel es Sudan” or “Kel Katchena.” The
people of Agades are more usually spoken of as the “Emagadezi,”
in much the same way as the Kanuri in the Air dialect are called
“Izghan” and the Tebu “Ikaradan.”
The family of the Sultan is foreign in appearance. The physiognomy of
Abd el Qader, who wore the white face veil usually associated in the
north with servile caste, was not, as far as could be seen by Barth,
that of a Tuareg. His corpulence was equally a foreign peculiarity,
despite which Barth considered him “a man of great worth though
devoid of energy.” The personality of the present Sultan, Omar,
has already been described; his dark skin and coarse features betray a
very mixed ancestry. These peculiarities are not unexpected in a family
descended through slave women, who may, of course, be of any race.
The different races and languages of Agades would be interesting to
study in greater detail. The name Terjeman, given to one quarter of the
town, is evidence in the estimation of its inhabitants of the Babel
which has occurred. Temajegh, Hausa, Kanuri, Songhai and Arabic are
spoken; even the more exceptional Fulani, Wolof and Tebu are heard,
while the advent of the French garrison with its negro troops has
introduced further linguistic complications, and will, of course,
in time accentuate the Sudanese element in the racial composition,
for at no time do the morals of the ladies of Agades appear to have
been beyond reproach. The consequences of city life are felt even
here in the Sahara. The forwardness of the ladies so moved Barth
to indignation that he discoursed at considerable length on the
standards of conduct which should be observed by Europeans in these
far countries towards native women. He no doubt owed much of his
success to the respect in which he held the feelings of the people
among whom he travelled. Rather than provoke criticism, he recommends
explorers to take their own wives with them. A few pages further on,
describing his journey through the Azawagh, he is again referring
to advances of the Tuareg women of the Tegama. One appreciates his
resentment at these importunities, but is inclined to speculate on the
true inwardness of his thoughts. On one occasion at least his artistic
feelings rather than his sense of propriety seem to have been offended,
for he writes: “It could scarcely be taken as a joke. Some of the
women were immensely fat, particularly in the hinder regions, for which
the Tawarek have a peculiar and expressive name—‘tebulloden.’”
[Footnote 75: Cf. Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 523.]
[Footnote 76: Literally “a small river or torrent” in Temajegh.]
[Footnote 77: Cf. Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 454.]
[Footnote 78: This generalisation is not intended to cover exceptional
examples of stone construction such as those in Sokoto Province.]
[Footnote 79: For the houses of Air see Chap. VIII, where
characteristic plans are given.]
[Footnote 80: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 477.]
[Footnote 81: According to Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 451; but
the minaret was built in 1847, according to the Agades Chronicle
(_Journal of the African Society_, July 1910).]
[Footnote 82: This is the one to which Chudeau (_Missions au Sahara_,
Vol. II, _Le Sahara Soudanais_, p. 64) refers as 980 years old
according to tradition, presumably basing himself on the same
information as Jean, _op. cit._, p. 86. The date is improbable,
as Agades was not founded at that time.]
[Footnote 83: Cf. Leo Africanus, Vol. III. Bk. VII. p. 829: “The king
of this citie hath alwaies a noble garde about him.” Cf. Plate 11.]
[Footnote 84: Leo Africanus, Vol. III. Bk. VII. p. 829.]
[Footnote 85: Denham and Clapperton, Vol. II. p. 397.]
[Footnote 86: The same procedure is indicated in the Agades Chronicle,
which also states that the Kel Owi give him an ox (_Journal of the
African Society_, _loc. cit._)]
[Footnote 87: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 422.]
[Footnote 88: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 89.]
[Footnote 89: Isuf or Yusuf according to Jean, who is certainly
wrong in this respect. _Op. cit._, p. 89. Chudeau, _op. cit._, p. 70,
gives his name as Yunis, as did my informants in Air.]
[Footnote 90: The date of the founding of Agades is a measure of
confirmation: _vide infra_, Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 91: The second Sultan is given by Chudeau, _op. cit._,
p. 64, as Almubari (El Mubaraki): a ruler of this name succeeded a
Yusif whom he deposed in 1601; some confusion has probably arisen
on account of Jean’s error in supposing that the first Sultan was
called Yusuf instead of Yunis.]
[Footnote 92: See Appendix VI.]
[Footnote 93: See table in Appendix VI.]
[Footnote 94: Cf. Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 468.]
[Footnote 95: See also the remarks made in Chap. XII regarding the
tribes which elected the Sultan.]
[Footnote 96: For the explanation of the sense which these words have
acquired, see second footnote, Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 471.]
[Footnote 97: The Tuareg have forestalled many European Powers in
making their Prime Minister also Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs.]
[Footnote 98: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 89.]
[Footnote 99: Leo Africanus, Vol. III. Bk. VII. p. 829.]
[Footnote 100: The influence of the Emir of Sokoto to which Barth has
referred is exercised through the Itesan by virtue of their domicile
near this city. Cf. Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 468.]
[Footnote 101: Cf. Leo Africanus, Vol. III. p. 829.]
[Footnote 102: Cf. map in Chap II.]
[Footnote 103: My estimate of 30,000 inhabitants was arrived at
locally without any books of reference. On my return I found that
Barth had arrived at the same figure, with a possible maximum of 50,000
(_op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 472).]
[Footnote 104: The French operations of 1918 against Air, the
occupation of the country from the south in 1904 and the passage of
the Foureau-Lamy expedition are not considered, as the superiority
of European weapons makes it impossible to compare these exploits
with native enterprises, though the success of the first two and
the appalling losses in camels and material of the last in a measure
confirm the thesis.]
[Footnote 105: _Vide supra_, Chap. II.]
[Footnote 106: By Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 459, and by Cooley,
_Negroland of the Arabs_, p. 26, as 1438 A.D.]
CHAPTER IV
THE ORGANISATION OF THE AIR TUAREG
On 6th August, soon after noon, I marched out of Agades with twenty-six
camels and eight men for Central Air. My two travelling companions
had left the same morning with ten camels in the opposite direction,
bound for a point called Tanut[107] near Marandet in the cliff of the
River of Agades. Some men of the Kel Ferwan, who were camped under
the cliff south of the river, had brought information concerning a
lion. At Marandet, it appeared, a cow had been killed and the trail
of the offending beast was plainly visible; notwithstanding, Buchanan
was unable to secure this lion or any specimen, or even a skull,
so it proved impossible to classify the animal.
Circumstantial evidence goes to show that the lion still exists
in Air, but is nevertheless very rare. In the Tagharit valley, a
few miles north of Auderas, there is a cave in the side of a gorge
which a large stream has cut through a formation of columnar basalt:
a pink granite shelf makes a fine waterfall in the rainy season with
a pool which survives at its foot all the year round. A lion used to
live in this den until recent years, when it was killed by the men of
Auderas because it had pulled down a camel out of a herd grazing in the
neighbourhood. The carcase had been dragged over boulders and through
scrub and up the side of the ravine into the lair; a feat of strength
which no other animal but a lion could possibly have accomplished. When
I came to the overhanging rock the ground was fœtid and befouled, and
the skeleton of the camel was still there and comparatively fresh. One
of the men of Auderas who had been present at the killing secured a
claw as a valuable charm; another had apparently been severely mauled
in the shoulder. They had surrounded the “king of beasts,” as the
Tuareg also call him, and had attacked with spears and swords. There
was no doubt of the animal having been a lion.
The cave in the Tagharit gorge is a short distance from the point[108]
where Barth[109] saw “numerous footprints of the lion,” which
he conceived to be extremely common in these highlands in 1850,
albeit “not very ferocious.” In 1905 a lioness trying to find
water fell into the well at Tagedufat and was drowned; her two small
cubs were brought into Agades, and one of them was afterwards sent
to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.[110] This lion, however, may not
have been of the same variety as the Air species, for the latter is
said never to have been scientifically examined.
The Air lion has been described as a small maneless animal like the
Atlas species, though von Bary, who, however, never himself saw one,
heard that it had a mane. He confirms the report that the animal
was common, as late as in 1877, especially in the Bagezan massif,
where it used to attack camels and donkeys.[111]
The advent of the rains during the latter part of July made
travelling through Air in many ways very pleasant. But there were also
disadvantages. With the first fall of rain the flies and mosquitoes
came into their own again. The common house-flies were especially
trying during my journey north of Agades. They infested the country
miles from any human habitation or open water.
PLATE 13
[Illustration: AUDERAS VALLEY LOOKING WEST]
[Illustration: AUDERAS VALLEY: AERWAN TIDRAK]
South of Agades the rains proved a terrible burden. The combined
onslaughts of flies, mosquitoes and every other form of winged and
crawling insect made life intolerable for Buchanan’s party; meals had
to be eaten under netting and naked lights were rapidly extinguished
by incinerated corpses. Camels got no rest. Even the hardened natives
had recourse to any device to snatch a little sleep. They went so
far as to make their beds in the thorny arms of small acacia trees in
order to escape the plague. The alluvial plain of the River of Agades
had become so soft as to be almost impossible to cross. Mud engulfed
the camels up to their bellies. The drivers used to unload them and
push them bodily over on to their sides at the risk of breaking their
legs in order to let the brutes kick themselves free. The several
stream beds of the system, even if not too swollen to be completely
unfordable, had such perpendicular banks where the water had cut
its way down several feet below the surface of the ground that they
became formidable obstacles. The constant threat of rain made long
marches impossible, though it was abundantly clear that the longer
the time that was spent in the valley the worse the ground would
become. Buchanan was rewarded for his disappointment at not finding
a lion by securing near Tanut two fine specimens of ostrich and an
ant-bear. He also reported the existence near Marandet of a cemetery
in the bank of a stream bed. It was unfortunate that he had not time
to examine this site, as it seems to be an example of urn burial,
probably of pre-Tuareg date.[112]
Half a day’s march from Agades brought me to the village of Azzal
on the valley of the same name, the lower part of which is called
“Telwa,” the most convenient name for the whole of this important
basin. Azzal and the neighbouring Alarsas[113] are small settlements
with a few date palms and some gardens. They were formerly inhabited
only by serfs engaged in cultivating the gardens which supply Agades
with vegetables. After the 1917 revolution in Air the noble population
of certain villages in the Ighazar, which was evacuated, settled there
temporarily under their chief, Abdulkerim of T’intaghoda. They were
living in straw and reed huts, hoping in the course of time to return
north and resume possession of the more substantial houses in their
own country. During my stay in Air several families did, as a matter
of fact, go back to Iferuan and Seliufet. But the presence of the
remainder of these Kel Ighazar in the south is somewhat anomalous,
as the country from the earliest times has been almost exclusively
inhabited by servile people. The area, extending over the foothills of
the main plateau, is not yet, properly speaking, Air, in the sense in
which the name is used by the Tuareg. Like the desert further south,
it is called Tegama.
After following the Telwa for a short distance the track crosses
to the left bank and winds over low bare hills and torrent beds. A
little before reaching Solom Solom there is a wooded valley which
the road leaves to cross a stretch of higher ground by a small pass
covered with the remains of stone dwellings, the site, I presumed,
of Ir n’Allem. The track is evidently very old at this point,
for in places it has worn deep into the rock. The country is wild
and picturesque, but the earth-brown hills are fashioned on a small
scale. The district used to be infested by brigands who preyed on
the caravans bound to and from Agades.
The southern part of my journey followed the usual route, though
Barth on his expedition from T’intellust to Agades travelled both
there and back by an alternative track rather further east in the
Boghel valley and via Tanut Unghaidan, which is not far from Azzal,
where he rejoined the more habitual way.
At Dabaga my road from Solom Solom rejoined the Telwa valley and
crossed the stream bed after a short descent into a basin covered with
dense thickets of dûm palms and acacias. The trees were filled with
birds. The river was in full flood, over a quarter of a mile wide and
some two feet deep—an imposing stream draining south-western Bagezan
and Todra into the River of Agades. I was luckily able to cross it
with my laden camels, but some travellers only a little behind me
were held up for several days by the floods which followed the heavy
rain in Central Air. Travelling at this season of the year is slow,
as camp must be pitched before the daily rains begin, usually soon
after noon. On the other hand, it is very convenient to be able to
halt anywhere on the road regardless of permanent watering-points;
for every stream bed, even if not actually in flood, contains pools
or water in the sand.
Climatically Air is a Central African country. It is wholly within
the summer rainfall belt, the northern limit of which coincides
fairly accurately with the geographical boundary of the country at
the wells of In Azawa. The rains usually commence in July, and last
for two months, finishing as abruptly as they have begun. Within the
limits of the belt, the further north, the later, on the whole, is
the wet season, though great irregularities are observed. In Nigeria
the rains fall during May and June, at Iferuan they occur in August
and September.[114] They are tropical in their intensity, and in Air
nearly always fall between noon and sunset.
During my stay at Auderas there were a few days when the sky
was overcast for the whole of the twenty-four hours, with little
rainfall; the damp heavy feeling in the air reminded one of England,
as the atmosphere was cold and misty. On one particular day it rained
lightly and fitfully for fourteen hours on end with occasional heavy
showers. Such phenomena, however, are rare. Precipitation follows a
north-easterly wind and usually lasts three or four hours; as soon
as the westerly wind, prevalent at this season, has sprung up, the
nimbus disperses rapidly, leaving only enough clouds in the evening
to produce the most magnificent sunsets that I have ever seen.
In 1922 the rainy season at Auderas was virtually over by the 10th
September, though it continued a little later in the north. The rains
were followed by a period of damp heat, and then by some days when the
ground haze was so thick that visibility was limited to a few hundred
yards. Until recent years there seems to have been a short second
rainy season in the north of Air coinciding with the first part of
the Mediterranean winter precipitation. In November near Iferuan I
experienced several days on which rain appeared to be imminent, but
none fell. Natives told me that up to three or four years previously
they had often had a few days’ rain in December and January. In
1850 the last rain of the summer season, which, exceptionally, had
begun as far north and as early as 26th May at Murzuk, was recorded
on 7th October, but in November and December after a fine period the
sky had again become overcast, and a few drops of rain actually fell
in Damergu on 7th January, 1851. The cycles of precipitation in the
Sahara are constantly varying and data are as yet insufficient to
permit any conclusion. It would be quite incorrect, from the accounts
of the last ten years alone, to suppose that the rainfall had markedly
diminished, or that the second rainy season had disappeared.
During the rains the larger watercourses meandering among the
massifs of the country often become impassable for days on end,
which is inconvenient, for in ordinary times they are the channels
of communication. Owing to the lack of surface soil and vegetation
on the as yet undisintegrated volcanic rock, streams fill with
surprising rapidity during the rains and are very dangerous for the
unwary traveller. The great joy of these weeks was the freshness of
the air after the intolerable heat of June and July, especially in
the plains. With the rain too came the annual rebirth of plant life,
which made one’s outlook very sweet. In European spring-time Nature
awakes from winter sleep, but in Africa a new world, fresh and green
and luxurious, is born after the rains out of a shrivelled corpse of
sun-dried desert.
At Dabaga I was persuaded to forsake the caravan road which continues
up the Telwa and take a riding road by Assa Pool and the T’inien
mountains. Difficulties began at Assa, when I tried to pitch my tent
on rocky ground, with the result that it was almost impossible to
keep it erect in the rain squalls which followed. The evening, after
the rain, was unsatisfactory. I wounded two jackals at which I had
shot, but did not kill either. I missed several guinea-fowl and only
secured a pair of pigeons among the dûm palms of the valley. Also,
there were many flies. However, I made the acquaintance of one of
the greatest guides in Air, Efale, who overtook me on his way north,
and camped near me. He talked volubly that night. Next day, after
dropping sharply into the T’inien valley by a narrow defile, the
road became frankly devilish. At the bottom of the steep sides the
soil is impregnated with salt, which effectually prevents anything
growing. There are a number of circular pits where the sandy salt,
called “ara” or “agha,” is worked. The mixture is dried in
cakes and sold in the south for a few pence. It is only fit for camels,
which require a certain amount of salt every month, more especially
after they have been feeding on fresh grass. “Ara” can only be used
for human food if the sand has been washed out and the brine re-dried.
After leaving Assa the vegetation had almost entirely disappeared. Low
gravel-strewn hills on the right obscured the view to the east. The
T’inien valley soon made a right-angle turn to the north, closing
to a narrow cleft, which became even rougher. The track was a series
of steps between huge granite and quartz boulders, among which the
camels kept on stumbling. Their loads required constant readjustment
and there was no room to kneel them down. The way was really only fit
for unloaded camels or riders on urgent business. There had not been
a tree or bush for hours. We climbed some 600 feet in about a mile,
almost to the very top of the jagged peaks on the left that marked
the summit of the T’inien range. By 11.15 a.m. I was beginning to
despair of finding a camp site before the rain was due, as I foresaw
a similar unpleasant descent on the other side of the col which had
so long been looming ahead. Then as I reached the gates of the pass
a view over the whole of Central Air suddenly burst upon me in such
beauty as I can never forget.
The ground sloped imperceptibly to the east. It fell away only about a
hundred feet to the north, where a row of small crags, the continuation
of the T’inien range, cut off the western horizon. Straight in
front in the distance, piled mass upon mass, the blue mountains of
Central Air rose suddenly out of the uplands, soaring into the African
sky. Between the bold cliffs and peaks of the Bagezan mountains and
the long low Taruaji group to the right, a few little conical hills
of black rock broke the surface of the vast plain which rolled away to
the east. From so great a distance the plain seemed tolerably smooth,
veined like the hand of a man with watercourses winding southwards
from the foot of the mountains. Black basalt boulders covered the flat
spaces between lines of green vegetation and the threads of white
sand, where the stream beds were just visible. Over the whole plain
the new-born grass was like the bloom on a freshly-picked fruit. To
the south-east stood the blue range of Taruaji itself, flat-topped
and low on the horizon. Either side of the hills the curve of the
world fell gently away towards the Nile.
I camped a mile or so north of the pass in a valley below the
precipitous cliffs of a rock called Okluf, which has a castellated
crown several hundred feet high. The rocks shone blue-black, with their
feet in a carpet of green that seemed too vivid to be real. There
were plenty of guinea-fowl and many other birds in the palm woods
and thorn groves, and such grass as I thought only grew in the water
meadows of England. I shall never forget the beauty of Central Air
on that noonday in the rains, though I have it in me to regret the
fiendish temper in which the day’s march had left me. The flies
in the evening and the fast-running things upon the ground at night
only made it worse. I had hurriedly and laboriously pitched a tent,
and it never rained after all.
PLATE 14
[Illustration: MT. TODRA FROM AUDERAS]
On the following day I ascended the T’ilisdak valley which flows
into the Telwa, and reached Auderas village, where some huts had
been prepared for us by the chief Ahodu, a man who soon became my
most particular friend. The T’ilisdak valley is renowned for its
excellent grazing and for some mineral springs where men, camels
and herds go after the rainy season to take a “cure” of the
waters.[115] Near Okluf there are the remains of several hut villages,
and some with stone foundations of a more permanent character. They
belong to a servile tribe of Southern Air called the Kel Nugguru,
who at present are living somewhat further west.
Air proper may be said to begin at the head of the T’ilisdak
valley. The part of the plateau I had traversed was therefore still
in Tegama, which includes the whole area south of Bagezan and Todra
as far as the River of Agades, as well as the Taruaji massif, but not
the country east of the latter and of Bagezan. Most of the villages
in Tegama have gardens, and some have groves of date palms. That they
are inhabited by serfs is, of course, natural, since the cultivation
of the soil, in the estimation of the noble Tuareg, is not a worthy
occupation for a man. When, however, in a nomad society agriculture
is relegated to an inferior caste of people, it is inevitable that
the practice should undermine the older allegiances. It becomes
possible for the settled and therefore originally the servile people
to accumulate wealth even in bad times when the profit from raiding or
caravaning is denied to the upper classes of Air. The social effects
of the disruption caused by the 1917 revolution may be observed in
the village organisations, where people of different tribes are now
tending more and more to live in association under the rule of a
village headman, who for them is displacing the authority of their
own tribal chiefs. The village headmen, it is true, are sometimes
themselves the leaders of the tribes in whose area the village is
situated, but more often they are merely local men acting on the
delegated authority of the tribal chief, who in Tegama is probably the
head of an Imghad or servile tribe dependent in turn upon some noble
tribe living in a different part of Air. But in time the population
of a village may become known collectively as the people of such and
such a place, and so reference to the old tribal allegiance of the
inhabitants disappears.
Tuareg tribal names deserve close investigation. They are of two
categories: those which begin with “Kel” (People of . . .) and
those which begin with “I” or sometimes “A.” This “I”
or “A” may be quite strongly pronounced, but often represents
the so-called “neutral vowel,”[116] which is very difficult
to transliterate. Thus the word “Ahaggar” might as correctly
be written “Ihaggar”; the initial vowel indeed is so little
emphasised that the French have come to write simply “Hoggar” or
“Haggar.” On the other hand, in the name Ikazkazan, an Air tribe,
the “I” is marked; in the Azger tribe, again, the Ihadanaren,
it is so lightly accentuated that Barth writes “Hadanarang.” This
point, however, is of little moment: what matters is the question of
the type of prefix to the name. To simplify reference I propose to
call these two types “Kel name” and “I name” tribes. After
examining the two categories at length, a distinction seemed to me
to stand out clearly; I believe it holds good among other Tuareg as
well as those of Air. The primary tribal divisions have names of the
“I” category, except in certain cases where they are nearly always
known to have been forgotten; the subdivisions of these tribes have
“Kel names.” The former are proper names; the latter are derived
either from the place where the people usually or once lived, or from
some inherent peculiarity. The word “Kel” is also used to cover
generalisations of no ethnic importance: the “I name,” on the other
hand, is scarcely ever geographical or adjectival. The generalisation
will be clearer for a few examples, chosen among the Air tribes. The
noble tribe called Imasrodang has for sub-tribes the Kel Elar, Kel
Seliufet and Kel T’intaghoda, called after the villages where they
lived in Northern Air. Again, the Ikazkazan have one section or group
of sub-tribes called the Kel Ulli—the People of the Goats—who
are themselves subdivided into other factions bearing “Kel names.”
Certain other “Kel names” like Kel Ataram or Kel Innek are often
heard in Air, but are not proper names at all; they were erroneously
regarded by Barth as tribal names, but simply mean the “People of
the West” and the “People of the East” respectively, and have
no inherent ethnic significance. In Air the former term logically
includes, and is meant to include, the Arab as well as the Tuareg
tribes of the west.[117]
So clear is this use of geographical “Kel names” that we shall
find repeated instances later on of tribes who, having migrated
from a certain area, retain their old names, though these are no
longer applicable to their new ranges. Take, for example, the Kel
Ferwan—the People of Iferuan, in North Air; they now live in the
southern parts of the country. Or, again, there are two Kel Baghzen,
called after a mountain group in Central Air; the one group is still
in that area, the other, which once lived there, has since migrated
to the country north of Sokoto.
In certain forms the word “Kel” corresponds to the Arabic word
“ahel,” but the latter seems more usually employed in connection
with wide geographical indications of habitat, without much ethnic
significance, like Kel Innek. The use of this type of “Kel name”
is the exception rather than the rule in Temajegh and has a colloquial
rather than traditional sanction. The more common “Kel names,”
on the other hand, are definitely individual tribal names, and refer
to small areas. They are not by any means restricted to sedentary
tribes.[118]
A third category of names commencing with the “Im” or “Em”
prefix is regarded by Barth[119] as virtually identical with the
“Kel” class, but this is not quite accurate. The “Im” prefix
is used to make an adjectival word form of place names; the “Kel
names” only become adjectival by prefixing “People of . . .” Thus
“Emagadezi” would be more correctly translated as “Agadesian”
than as the “People of Agades,” whose correct designation is Kel
Agades. “I names” partake of neither of these characteristics. For
the most part their significance remains unexplained. It follows
that “Kel names,” although proper to the tribes that bear them,
being descriptive or geographical, are certainly not so old as the
individual and proper “I names.”
There are examples of tribes which have lost their “I names”
and are only referred to by a “Kel name,” though in many cases
this is more apparent than real. When a tribe with an “I name”
increases until the point is reached where it subdivides, one of the
subdivisions retains the original “I name,” the remainder take
other and, usually, geographical appellations. This process might be
shown graphically:—
Original I name tribe.
|
+-----------------+-----------+------------+-----------+
| | | |
I name sub-tribe Kel name Kel name Kel name
(as above) sub-tribe sub-tribe sub-tribe
\__________________________________________________________________/
Collective Kel name often the same as one of the sub-tribe Kel names
if the latter has come to play a preponderating part in the group.
This difference of nomenclature has a definite bearing on the
difficulties of co-ordinating sedentarism and nomadism in one people,
which must have occurred to everyone who has studied the problem in
administration. The exact relations between a village headman, the
tribal chiefs of the persons who are living in his village and the
tribal chief of the area in which the village is situated cannot be
defined. One set of allegiances is breaking down and another has not
yet been completely formed. This was already going on in Air when the
position was complicated by the advent of a European Power demanding
a cut-and-dried devolution of authority, and tending to encourage
sedentary qualities in order to prevent raiding. These problems in
Air to-day are almost insoluble, but they are of an administrative
rather than of an anthropological order.
Auderas at the present time is probably the most important place in
Air after Agades. As an essentially agricultural settlement it is an
excellent example of the village organisation. The valley of Auderas
lies about 2600 feet above the sea. Seven small valleys unite above
the village and two affluents come in below, draining the western
slopes of Mount Todra and a part of the Dogam group. The main stream
eventually finds its way out into the Talak plain[120] under various
names. The sandy bed of the valley near the village contains water
all the year round. Both banks are covered with intense vegetation,
including a date-palm plantation of some thousand trees. Under
the date palms and amongst the branching dûm-palm woods, where the
thickets and small trees have been cleared or burnt off, are a number
of irrigated gardens supplied with water from shallow wells. Some
wheat, millet, guinea corn and vegetables are grown with much labour
and devotion. Onions and tomatoes are the principal vegetables all
the year round, with two sorts of beans in the winter. Occasionally
sweet potatoes and some European vegetables like carrots, turnips
and spinach are grown from seeds which have been supplied by the
French. Pumpkins do well and water melons are common. There is also a
sweet melon. Three different shapes of gourds for making drinking and
household vessels are cultivated. Cotton is found in small quantities,
the plant having probably been imported from the Sudan. Its presence in
Air is interesting, as in 1850 Barth had placed the northern limit of
Sudan cotton in the south of Damergu. The cotton plant does very well
when carefully irrigated and produces a good quality of fibre. Two
samples which I brought home from Air were reported on respectively
as: “good colour, strong, fairly fine 1³⁄₁₆ staple,” and
“generally good colour, staple 1³⁄₁₆-1¼ inches, strong and
fine”; the materials were respectively valued at 20·35 and 21·35
pence per pound when American May Future Cotton stood at 17·35 pence
(May 1924).[121] The Tuareg spin their cotton into a rough yarn for
sewing or making cord, but in Air they do not seem to weave. The
indigo plant grows wild in Air: it is not cultivated, nor is it used
locally for dyeing.
The gardens require much attention and preparation. The ground is
cleared and the scrub burnt off as a top dressing. The soil is then
carefully levelled by dragging a heavy plank or beam forwards and
backwards by hand across the surface. The area is divided up into
small patches about six feet square with a channel along one side
communicating with a leat from an irrigation well. These wells are
usually unlined and shallow, with a wooden platform overhanging
the water on one side; on this a rectangular frame is set up with a
second cross member carrying a pulley over which a rope is passed. An
ox or a donkey pulls up the big leather bucket by the simple process
of walking away from the well, returning on its tracks to lower it
again. The bucket is a tubular contrivance, the bottom of which is
folded up while the water is raised; when it reaches the level of
the irrigation channel, a cord is pulled to open the bottom of the
leather tube and the water allowed to run out. The other end of this
cord is attached to the animal, and the length is so adjusted that the
operation is performed automatically each time the bucket comes to the
top. The pole and bucket with a counterweight and the water wheel are
not known in Air for raising water; nor are any dams constructed either
to make reservoirs in ravines or to maintain a head of water for flow
irrigation in the rainy season. Each little patch in the gardens is
hoed and dressed with animal manure. The seed is planted and carefully
tended every day, for it is very valuable. Barth records seeing at
Auderas a plough drawn by slaves. This was clearly an importation
from the north; the plough is not now used anywhere in the country,
which at heart has never been agricultural.
PLATE 15
[Illustration: GRAIN POTS, IFERUAN]
[Illustration: GARDEN WELL]
As in the south, millet and guinea corn are sown during the rains,
but they usually require irrigation before they reach maturity. In
certain areas rain-grown crops could be raised most years. In the
past a fair amount of cereals seems to have been produced in this way;
to-day the Tuareg are too poor to risk losing their seed in the event
of inadequate or irregular rainfall. Although the wheat grown in the
Ighazar used nearly all to be exported to the Fezzan, where it was
much in demand on account of its excellent quality for making the
Arab food “kus-kus,” Air at no time has produced enough grain for
its own consumption. In the economics of Air necessary grain imports
are paid for by the proceeds of wheat sales or live-stock traffic
with the north, and by the profits of the trade in salt from Bilma;
these provide the means of purchasing the cheaper millet and guinea
corn of Damergu. Any additional surplus, representing annual savings,
is invested in live-stock, especially camels, within the borders of
the country.
The breakdown of the social organisations of the Tuareg in Air
compelled numbers of nobles out of sheer poverty after they had lost
their camels and herds to cultivate the soil; before the war not even
the servile people were very extensively so employed if they could
find enough slaves to do the work.
Neither the advent of a European Power nor the subsequent changes in
the social structure of the country has had very much effect on the
position of slaves in Air. Of these there are two categories,[122]
the household slave and the outdoor slave, and both of them are
chattels in local customary law. The former are called “ikelan,”
the latter “irawellan,”[123] or alternatively “bela,”
“buzu” or “bugadie,” which, however, are not Temajegh words,
but have been borrowed from the south. The term “irawel” is also
used generically to cover both categories of slaves, although it
primarily refers to the latter. In the use of this word Barth[124]
makes one of the few mistakes of which he has been guilty, where he
states that the most noble part of the Kel Owi group of tribes in Air
is the “Irolangh” clan, to which the Amenokal or Sultan of the
Kel Owi belonged. The paramount chief of his day, Annur, belonged to
the Kel Assarara section of the Imaslagha tribe, which is probably
the original and certainly one of the most noble of the Kel Owi,
for it includes the Kel Tafidet, who gave their name to the whole
confederation. The traveller’s mistaken reference to Irawellan or
Irolangh is probably due to his having been informed by a member of
some non-Kel Owi tribe that Annur and all his people were “really
Irawellan,” or servile people. Such abuse of the Kel Owi is common
among the other Air Tuareg. It is certainly not justified in fact,
and is due to the contempt in which an older nobility will always
hold more recent arrivals.[125]
The negro slaves, the Ikelan, are primarily concerned with garden
cultivation, and are consequently sedentary. One half of the
produce of their labour goes to their masters and the other half to
support themselves and their families. Ikelan also perform all the
domestic duties of the Tuareg to whom they belong, and herd their
masters’ goats and sheep if they happen to be living in the same
neighbourhood. A certain proportion of the offspring of the flocks is
also given to the slaves. Since, primarily, they are cultivators of the
ground, they do not move from place to place with their owners. They
consequently often escape domestic work and herding. Despite their
legal status they are in practice permitted to own property, though, if
their masters decided to remove it, they would be within their rights
to do so. In other words, the theoretical status of slavery which makes
it impossible for a chattel to own property has been considerably
modified, and not as a consequence of the altered conditions, or of
the legislation of a European Power, but because slavery among the
Tuareg never did involve great hardship. Their slaves, furthermore,
always had the hope of manumission and consequent change to the status
of Imghad or serfs, a rise in the social scale which, in fact, often
did occur. It was in slave trading and not in slave owning that the
Tuareg sinned against the ethical standards which are usually accepted
in Europe, and obtained so unenviable a reputation last century.
Herding live-stock, and especially camels, is the primary function of
the outdoor slave or Buzu. Though often also a negro, he is considered
to possess a somewhat higher status than the Akel, for he does not
as a rule work in the house or village. The Buzu’s work, if on the
whole less strenuous than that of the tiller of gardens, is felt to
be more manly because he is associated with camels. He travels with
nobles or Imghad, to either of whom he may belong. He does all the hard
menial work on the march. He is responsible especially for herding
the camels at pasture and for loading and unloading them each day on
the road. Such duties as filling water-skins, driving camels down to
water, feeding them on the march and making rope for the loads, all
fall to his lot. The Buzu may even accompany his master’s camels on
raids or act as personal messenger for his lord. When the camels are
resting he spends his days watching the grazing animals, or looking
after any other herds which his master may own in the neighbourhood. On
the whole I have found the Buzu a remarkably hard-working person. He is
almost useless without his master to give him orders and to see that
they are carried out, but ready to undertake any exertion connected
with his work, which he regards as his fate, but not his privilege
to perform without complaint.
It is difficult to determine whether there is any racial difference
between the Buzu class, the tillers of gardens, and the ordinary
household slaves. The first are more respected than the last,
which may mean that they are more closely related in blood to their
masters. The practice of concubinage, though not very widespread,
has probably created the caste, and from them, in time, a certain
proportion of the Imghad. While theoretically the children of a slave
concubine and a Tuareg man ought to be “ikelan” like their mother,
in practice they tend to rise into the superior caste of the Buzu,
and eventually in successive generations to Imghad. In Air at least
the general tendency is for the old-established caste distinctions to
become more elastic and for the ancient order to pass away. Although
the events of the last twenty years have contributed greatly to this
change, the strongest factor has certainly been the increasing wealth
of the Imghad, but another reason is probably that many Imghad tribes
in Air were themselves originally Imajeghan before their capture in war
or their subjugation by some means. Consequently with the dissolution
of tribal allegiances in Air and enhanced prosperity they have tended
to revert to their former status. They cling so tenaciously to nobility
of birth that, rather than accept the logical results of inferiority
consequent upon defeat in war, the people collectively combine to
admit the fiction of servile people possessing dual status.
The presence of more than one racial type among the Imghad has
led certain travellers to make quite unjustifiable generalisations
about this section of Tuareg society. There have also been advanced
numerous and most unnecessarily complicated theories to account for
the division of the race as a whole into these two castes. The problem
is really much simpler. Although by no general rule can it be said
that the Imghad originally belonged to this or to that people, they
are all clearly the descendants of groups or individuals captured in
war and subsequently released from bondage to form a caste enjoying
a certain measure of freedom, and having a separate legal or civil
existence under something more than the mere political suzerainty of
the noble tribe which originally possessed them. In this first stage,
the noble tribe represents the original pure Tuareg race, while the
oldest Imghad are the first extraneous people whom they conquered,
in some cases perhaps as early as in the Neolithic ages. “It
is necessary,” says Bates,[126] with great justice, “to state
emphatically that the division into Imghad and Imajeghan is so ancient
that the Saharan Berbers preserve no knowledge of its origin.” This
antiquity may be held to account for the complete national fusion
which has taken place among the two castes: nearly all Imghad would
utterly fail to grasp a suggestion that they were not to-day as much
Tuareg as their Imajeghan overlords, however they may dislike and
abuse the latter. As time went on more and more Imghad were added to
the race, each group being subject to the noble tribe responsible for
its conquest. The possibility of a group of people becoming the Imghad
of an Imghad tribe was precluded by the relations obtaining between
serfs and nobles, whereby it is the sole prerogative of the latter
to wage war or make peace. Should an Imghad tribe capture slaves in
war they could not be manumitted except by the Imajegh tribe, the
lords of the victorious Imghad; and by the act of manumission the
newly-acquired slaves would then become the equals of their Imghad
conquerors under the dominion of the Imajeghan concerned.
The Imghad of Air may be divided into three categories whose history
is so intimately bound up with the noble tribes that it cannot be
considered separately. There are the Imghad whose association with
their respective Imajeghan dates from before their advent to Air; their
origin must be looked for in the Fezzan or elsewhere at some very early
date. Secondly, there are the Imghad who were the original inhabitants
of Air before the Tuareg came, and who by some agreement at the time,
like the traditional one of Maket n’Ikelan,[127] were not enslaved
but allowed to continue living in the country side by side with
the new arrivals in a state of vassalage or semi-servitude. Lastly,
there are the Imghad who are either Arabs, Tuareg of other divisions,
or negroids from the south captured in the course of raids from Air,
in some cases as recently as a generation ago. With these different
origins it is not surprising to find among the Air Imghad both a
strongly negroid type, a non-negroid and non-Tuareg type, and a
type showing the fine features and complexion characteristic of the
Imajeghan themselves. The first type is the pre-Tuareg population
of Air. It is the most common, if only for the reason that negroid
characteristics always appear to be dominant in the cross-breeding
which ensued. The second type represents the Arab or Berber element
acquired by conquest. The third type represents the subjugated groups
of Imajeghan of other divisions.[128] Of the latter category are,
for instance, the Kel Ahaggar, Imghad of the Kel Gharus, who were
originally nobles from the great northern division of the Tuareg. Many
of the Kel Ferwan Imghad are believed to be Arabs or Tuareg of the
west, captured comparatively recently on raids into the Aulimmiden
territory. The Kel Nugguru are the freed slaves of the Añastafidet,
the administrative head of the Kel Owi confederation: they have become
so prosperous that they are now laying claim to be of noble origin,
a pretension which no right-minded Imajegh in Air will admit for a
moment. But it is almost impossible nowadays to trace the history
of each Imghad tribe in detail. Generally, in the absence of more
precise data, it may be assumed that those Imghad tribes which have
“I names” are the oldest; for here the process of assimilation
to the mass of the Tuareg race is most complete, either on account
of the length of their mutual association or owing to the fact that
they were originally themselves of the same race; the “Kel name”
Imghad, on the other hand, are probably more recent additions.[129]
The confusion reigning on the subject of the “Black” and
“White” Tuareg in the minds of the few people in Europe who
have ever heard of the race is due to the practice in the north
of the servile wearing a white, and the nobles a black, veil. But
a “Black” Tuareg, being a noble, will, in the vast majority of
cases, have a much fairer complexion and more European features than a
“White,” or servile Tuareg. In Air the colour of the veil affords
no means of distinguishing the caste of the wearer. The best veils,
being made in the south, are consequently cheaper in Air than in the
north, and this is probably the reason why Imajeghan and Imghad alike
in Air wear the indigo-black Tagilmus. When a white veil is seen, it
usually means that the wearer is too poor to buy a proper black one and
has had to resort to some makeshift torn from the bottom of his robe.
Slaves, domestic or pastoral, do not wear the face veil at all. This
is the essential outward difference between them and the Imghad. The
latter, whatever their origin, are considered to be a part of the
Tuareg people; the former cannot be so, for they are simply accounted
to belong, as camels do, to the People of the Veil.
The exact status of the Imghad, or “meratha” (merathra) as they are
called by the Arabs in Fezzan, is somewhat difficult to define. There
is no adequate translation in any European language of the word
“amghid.”[130] The process of their original enslavement and
subsequent release to form a category of people who have achieved
partial but not complete freedom has, I think, no parallel in
Europe except in a modified form in the state of vassalage. Yet,
as “servile” conveys too narrow and definite a relationship, so
“vassal” is certainly too broad a term. In the state of servility
or, to coin a word, “imghadage” to which the pre-Tuareg inhabitants
of Air appear to have been reduced, the process of enslavement and
release may be said to have taken place only as a legal fiction, and
not, if the tradition is to be accepted as accurate, in real fact. The
general practice seems to have been that when large groups of people
were subjugated or captured in war they were simultaneously released
into the state of imghadage, but when individuals or a few persons
were acquired by force or by purchase, they were only manumitted in
the course of time, if at all, and incorporated at some later date
into an Imghad tribe or village already in existence.
In contradistinction to slaves, the Imghad are not bound individually,
but collectively, and not to individuals, but to a noble tribe
or group of tribes. They are in no sense considered to be the
property of the latter; but the relationship is closer than that
of suzerain and vassal. It is not within the power of an Imghad
tribe to change its allegiance, since in the first instance its
members were theoretically at least the property of its overlord
tribe; they owe their separate existence to an act of manumission
freely and voluntarily accomplished. A change of allegiance could
occur only if a servile tribe were captured in whole or in part;
it follows that when this has occurred one servile tribe might owe
allegiance in several parts to different noble groups.[131] The bond
between them consists of the right of the responsible noble tribe
alone, and therefore of its chief, to administer justice among the
dependent Imghad, either in small cases by tacitly confirming the
verdict of their own headman, or in more weighty matters by express
reference. The Imghad tribe may be fined or punished collectively by
their lords, and would have no right to appeal to the Amenokal without
permission. For the Amenokal to interfere on behalf of an Imghad
tribe would constitute a breach of tribal custom and ensure a rebuff,
if not worse. A certain proportion of the marriage portions payable
in the Imghad tribes goes to their Imajeghan, who have the right to
give or withhold consent to these contracts. One of the functions of
the Imghad is to take complete charge of and use the camels of their
lords for long periods or to trade with them on their behalf. In such
cases the Imghad act as the agents of the nobles, each one of whom
has a right to ask the servile tribe as a whole to undertake these
duties. But such obligations are imposed collectively on the tribe
and not on any one Imghad. It is the custom to share the offspring
of the camels thus herded in equal shares, though in the event of
any of the animals dying whilst under the charge of the Imghad,
the latter are collectively responsible for making good the loss,
save in extenuating circumstances. Conversely, the nobles are, in
every case,[132] the protectors of their dependents. The relations
between Imghad and Imajeghan are a mixture of those obtaining under
the feudalism of Europe and the “client” system of Rome.
A consequence of the interruption of caravan traffic and the
disappearance of one of the principal sources of revenue of the noble
Tuareg is that the Imghad as camel herders, and generally speaking
as the more laborious members of the community, have gained where
the nobles have lost.
Prosperity is emancipating the Imghad, and is materially assisting
the breakdown of social distinctions which in time will survive only
in the philosophic contemplation of the Imajeghan dreaming idly of the
return of better days. The Imghad tribes used to be the unquestioning
allies of their overlords in war; their numbers contributed greatly to
the strength of any Imajegh tribe. Though they might not make war on
their own initiative, the Imghad carried and still carry weapons.[133]
They used to go on raids with their masters, or, if the Imajeghan
were busy elsewhere, represent them with their masters’ camels and
the weight of their own right arms. But the chiefs of the Imghad were
never more than subordinates, or at the most advisers to the nobles.
To-day this unquestioning subservience has almost disappeared and
we even find Khodi, chief of the Kel Nugguru, disputing with the
noble Ahodu the leadership of the village of Auderas. This issue
was one of great importance in local politics and originally arose
out of the disputed ownership of certain palms which had been given
to Ahodu when he was installed as head of the village as a reward
for service rendered by him to the Foureau-Lamy expedition. The
village is on the edge of the Kel Nugguru country, while Ahodu in
fact comes from a northern tribe, the Kel Tadek, who have no real
concern with this district. The impossibility of reconciling the
tribal and settled organisations was clearly demonstrated in every
aspect of this controversy. Khodi, living as a nomad with his people
and camels at some distance from the village, sought, without success,
to govern the community through various representatives, while Ahodu,
who had given up wandering, was suspended by the French during the
settlement of the legal case, and sat in the village watching mistake
after mistake being made. Under the old system Khodi could never have
pretended to dispute with a noble the position of chief of a large
village: in fact an Imghad tribe without a protecting noble overlord
would have been unlikely to administer a village at all. Similarly
among the Ahaggaren Imghad of the Kel Gharus, a man of servile origin,
Bilalen by name, has come to share with T’iaman the lordship of a
once noble people of the north, a position of such importance that
he is regarded as one of the most influential chiefs in Air. Bilalen
has only become associated with the Ahaggaren by marriage; he could
never have achieved even this, much less could he have attained so
powerful a following in the country, under the old _régime_.
[Illustration: THE GOVERNMENT OF THE AIR TUAREG
_Note._—The scheme is largely theoretical, as the Amenokal has
rarely had much authority over any tribes except the People of the
King. His authority over a part of the Aulimmiden has been even more
nominal and has varied considerably from time to time.]
In addition to the social distinctions between nobles and serfs,
the Tuareg attach great importance to tribal classification. Among
the inhabitants of the mountains a man will describe himself as, say,
“Mokhammad of the Kel Such-and-such of the Kel Owi,” or of the
other category, which is called the “People of the King,” as the
case might be. These two great tribal divisions (there were three
before the departure of the Kel Geres for the Southland) will be
referred to in detail when the history of the migrations of the Air
Tuareg is considered. The divisions are absolute; a tribe either is
of the Kel Owi or is not of the Kel Owi. There is usually never any
doubt; the erroneous attribution of a man’s tribe to the Kel Owi
confederation would provoke the indignant rejoinder that his clan
were “People of the King” and did not “belong (_sic_) to the
Añastafidet.” The distinction means all that the difference between
an ancient landed nobility and a _parvenu_ commercial aristocracy
denotes. Many of the older men of the “People of the King” go so
far as to say that there are no nobles among the Kel Owi at all.[134]
Apart from their slightly different ethnic origin, the principal reason
why the Kel Owi have stood apart from the other tribes is that they
possess an administrative leader of their own who represents the whole
confederation; as they say, “he _speaks_ for them to the Amenokal
at Agades.” He is called the Añastafidet, the Child of Tafidet. The
non-Kel Owi tribes, on the other hand, have no single leader other than
the king; in their case each tribal chieftain transacts the business of
his own tribe with the former independently of the other chiefs. For
them the Amenokal of Air assumes the dual function of nominal ruler
of the whole country and of direct overlord of certain tribes.
In accordance with the democratic traditions of the Tuareg, the
Añastafidet,[135] like the Sultan, is elected. He must be a noble,
but need not always be chosen from the same family. He is elected for
a period of three years, but his tenure of office is really dependent
upon a yearly revision by the Kel Owi tribes when they concentrate
in the autumn to go with the salt caravan to Bilma. The tribal
groups mainly responsible for the choice are the Kel Tafidet and Kel
Azañieres; the Ikazkazan, being the junior group of the confederation,
have little voice. The Añastafidet’s badge of office[136] is a drum;
he retains no authority on leaving office, though it entitles him to a
certain degree of respect, and leads to his being consulted on State
matters. In practice if the Añastafidet is reasonably capable he
is confirmed in power for a succession of three-year periods. During
the last fifty years there have been in all about six Añastafidets;
one, I think the last holder of the office, is at present living at
Zawzawa in Damergu. The Añastafidet’s official place of residence
was at Assode in Central Air, but since the evacuation of the north
he has been living at Agades in direct touch with the Amenokal. His
principal duties are to represent the confederation at the Court of the
Sultan and maintain the freedom of transit through Air and Damergu for
caravans, on which the prosperity of the tribes depends. Trade with the
north and the position of the Kel Owi in Air astride the great caravan
road which passes from north to south, east of the Central massifs,
have in effect combined to place the foreign relations of all the
Air people with Ghat and the Fezzan in the hands of the Añastafidet,
business with the potentates of the south, on the other hand, being,
as has already been stated, in the hands of the Amenokal at Agades. The
breakdown of the trans-desert traffic during the war deprived the
Kel Owi of most of their prosperity and the Añastafidet of his work.
The Añastafidet was assisted in his duties by four agents, two
of whom dealt with local business, while the other two lived in
the Southland to assist the Kel Owi tribes in their transactions
there. Neither the Añastafidet nor his agents ever seem to have
received a salary, and the former at least was expected to give
munificent presents, but no doubt their official positions brought
perquisites which compensated for any outlay. As in the case of
the Sultan, the importance of the Añastafidet’s office depends
entirely on the personality of the holder. When von Bary visited the
country, Belkho, chief of the Igermaden tribe, living at Ajiru in
Eastern Air, thanks to his military prowess and political wisdom,
was the _de facto_ ruler of the whole country. His relations with
the Amenokal were strained, even though he had him more or less under
his influence; the Añastafidet had become of so little moment that
he is only once mentioned by this traveller.[137] In Barth’s day,
when Air was under the domination of Annur, another Kel Owi chief of
the same type, the Añastafidet was a mere shadow in the land.
The Añastafidet doubtless represents the surviving functions of a Kel
Owi Amenokal. The restriction of his duties was probably the result
of a compromise arrived at when the Kel Owi entered Air and found
an Amenokal already established in the country, supported by the Kel
Geres and the various tribes known as the “People of the King.”
The more intimate inter-tribal relations between the various units
of the Kel Owi confederation and the organisation of the “People
of the King” will be referred to hereafter in detail.
The system by which the Kel Owi have an administrative leader who seems
to have practically no warlike or judicial functions has in no way
modified the tribal or social organisation of the confederation. As in
the case of all the Tuareg tribes, other than those which have become
entirely sedentary, the government of each unit, large and small, is
patriarchal and similar to that of Bedawin tribes. The chief of a noble
tribe is the leader in war and the dispenser of justice in peace. The
functions are not necessarily hereditary. In council with the heads of
families he exercises authority over the Imghad tribes associated with
his clan, through the chiefs of these servile groups in the manner
already described. The council of the heads of families is of great
importance, but plays an advisory rather than an executive part. The
heads of families rule their own households, including their slaves.
Within ill-defined limits, certain tribes are grouped together under
a common leader known as the “agoalla” or “agwalla.” This
usually occurs in the case of tribes which are nearly related to
each other. Three groups in the Kel Owi division have already been
mentioned; in two of these, the Kel Tafidet and Kel Azañieres, the
office of “agoalla” is said[138] to be hereditary, but I have
been unable to find any confirmation of this except in so far as the
son of a man who, by his personal ascendancy, has secured control
over more than one tribe, would probably more easily step into his
father’s shoes than another person. The grouping of tribes may also
occur for military reasons, but in such cases it has a tendency to be
of a temporary character. It is best to assume that the tribe is the
unit of Tuareg society and that the tribal chiefs are the elements of
which their Government is constructed. “Agoallas” are an exotic
form principally due to individual personality or temporary conditions
prevailing over long-standing customs.
Tribes sometimes group themselves into temporary or permanent
alliances. The former probably spring from military exigencies,
the latter may be due to common origins in the recent past. Such
aggregations as the Kel Azañieres and Kel Tafidet in the Kel Owi
tribes are so obviously due to common tribal origins that they require
no further examination. But the Kel Owi confederation in Air plays
a far larger rôle than do mere tribal alliances. Here is no mere
question of relationship or community of origin, but a more strict
bond, which, however, cannot be defined. Such groups as these have
been termed confederations, though the term is a little misleading,
as no unity of government is implied. The origin of the confederation,
which carries with it more moral than material obligations, is to be
explained by the entry of the Kel Owi tribes into Air as a mass of
people confronted by an already established hostile or at least jealous
population of the same race as themselves. It followed that the new
arrivals would tend to hold together and act with one another. The
conditions of the confederation nevertheless have been such that the
representative is only an administrative head and not a ruler. He is
there to embody a common policy and to dictate one. Loose as these
bonds have been they have served the Kel Owi in good stead, for their
commerce has gained by co-operation at the expense of their rivals,
the “People of the King,” who in the absence of any organisation
have been forced to rely on the fickle ties of common jealousy. How far
there are groups or confederations like the Kel Owi within the larger
northern division of Azger or Ahaggar I cannot say, but the former
are a confederation as the people of Air generally never have been.
Much has already been said of the status of the Tuareg men and their
tribal organisation, but before it is possible to consider their
family life, the method they follow in tracing their descent must be
described. A man’s status, in Air, as elsewhere among the Tuareg,
is determined by the caste and allegiance of his mother. Survivals
of a matriarchal state of society are numerous among the People of
the Veil. They colour the whole life of the race. A woman, they say,
carries her children before they are born, and so they belong to her
and not to the father. “After all,” as one of them said to me when
we had been discussing this question for some time, “when you buy a
cow camel in calf, the calf is yours and not the property of the man
who sold the camel to you. It is the same with women,” he added;
and he seemed to me to have some show of logic. Our medieval (and
perhaps modern) lawyers would have said instead, “partus sequitur
ventrem,” but he would have meant the same as my Tuareg friend. If
a woman marries a man in her own tribe the children, of course,
belong to that tribe, but if she marries away from her people they
belong to her own, and not to her husband’s clan. In this case,
were the husband to predecease his wife, the children and their
mother would return to live with her tribe. If the father survives,
the children usually go on living with him for a time, but as they
belong to their mother’s tribe in any event, they eventually return
there. Should inter-tribal hostilities break out they must leave their
father and fight for their mother’s tribe, even against their own
parent if need so be. Until this is understood the relationships of
the Tuareg appear very puzzling to the traveller. When I first met
Ahodu he informed me that he was of the Kel Tadek people, who are Kel
Amenokal, but he had a half-brother and a paternal cousin who belonged
to the Añastafidet. It appears that the fathers of Ahodu and Efale,
the famous eastern guide, were brothers of a man in the noble Kel
Fares of the Kel Owi confederation. Ahodu’s father took a wife
from the Kel Tadek, so the son became a member of the latter tribe,
whereas Efale’s father married within the confederation. The maternal
allegiance is so strong that, though proud of his father’s repute
as a holy man and representative of the fifth generation of keepers
of the mosque of Tefgun near Iferuan, Ahodu used to speak of the Kel
Owi in disparaging terms when comparing their recent origin with the
antiquity of the Kel Tadek and the other “People of the Amenokal.”
The following examples of definite cases may assist in understanding
the position:
1. A man of the noble Kel Tadek marries a woman of the noble Kel
Ferwan. The children are Kel Ferwan, but will live with the father
until his death or the divorce of the mother, when they return with
her to her own tribe.
2. A man of the noble Kel Tadek married a woman of the Imghad of the
Kel Ferwan. The children will normally be Imghad of the Kel Ferwan.
3. If a man marries a slave woman of another tribe, this woman has
become the property of the husband’s tribe by his purchase or payment
of the marriage portion, and the children belong to the father. This
occurred in Ahodu’s case. One day the Kel Gharus came over and
stole eight slaves belonging to the Kel Tadek, who proceeded to retake
them. The slaves in question were Kanuri people of Damagerim. The Kel
Gharus appealed to the religious court at Agades, which awarded four
slaves to each tribe. Later two of those allotted to the Kel Gharus
ran away to the Kel Tadek, who were allowed to keep them on the ground
that they had been ill-treated by their former masters. One of these
two women Ahodu married, and his son is considered to belong to his
own clan and not to his wife’s former tribe. In this case Ahodu
nevertheless had to pay some compensation to the former masters of
his wife.
The derivation of tribal allegiance through the female line has
carried in its train the consequence that a man or woman’s social
status is always determined by that of the mother. But the restricted
number of noble women, the deference and respect paid to them,
and the impossibility of taking them as concubines have combined to
diminish the numbers of Imajeghan as compared with the Imghad. The
hard-and-fast rule among all the Tuareg, that nobles can only be born
of a noble mother irrespective of the caste of the father, has done
much to preserve the type and characteristics of the race. In recent
years the custom has tended to break down, for where a noble father,
who has taken unto himself a servile wife, is sufficiently powerful
to assert himself he will often succeed in passing off his sons and
daughters as Imajeghan. Ahodu has done so with his boy; but had this
been impossible the child would have been accounted of the Irejanaten
or mixed people. The old laws of succession are said by von Bary to
have become especially slack among the Kel Owi, but even here the
status of noble women has remained so unassailable that it would
still be impossible to-day for them to marry outside their own class.
The laws of inheritance and succession also show the strength of the
matriarchal tradition. Although hereditary office is rare among the
Tuareg nowadays, it seems to have been more frequent in the past.[139]
Ibn Batutah states that the heir of the Sultan of Tekadda was the
son of the ruler’s sister.[140] Similarly of the Mesufa who were
Tuareg, he records that descent is traced through the maternal uncle,
while inherited property passes from a deceased man to the children
of his sister to the exclusion of his own family.[141] The traveller
adds that nowhere except among the infidel Indians of Malabar did he
observe a similar state of things.[142] Bates thinks that Egyptian
records tend to show that the succession of the chieftainship of the
Meshwesh Libyans passed in the female line. The genealogy of many
of the kings of Agades is recorded by their female parentage. The
Tuareg of Ghat not only treat their women-folk in much the same way as
their brethren further south, but Richardson specifically states that
the succession of the chiefs and Sultans of those parts is similar
to the practice of the Tekadda house and at Agades. It is the son
of the sister of the Sultan who succeeds.[143] It seems clear that
before the advent of Islam, which has tended to modify the system,
the Tuareg had a completely matriarchal organisation. In this earlier
state of society may perhaps be found the explanation of the reputed
Amazons of the west of North Africa, recorded by Diodorus Siculus
in a grossly exaggerated version of some story which he had probably
heard concerning the status of certain Libyan women.[144]
I know of no reason to suppose that these matriarchal customs were
derived from association with the negro people; the reverse is quite
as likely to have occurred, as the culture contacts of North Africa,
following the trend of migration, seem to have taken a course from
north to south and not the opposite direction.[145] The matter is
one of great interest,[146] for the matriarchate is found in a highly
developed state in Ashanti, and it would be of interest in connection
with the origin of this people to learn if the system can be traced
to a common origin.[147] I cannot agree with Barth’s[148] conclusion
that the descent of the Sultan of Tekadda “is certain proof that it
was not a pure Berber State, but rather a Berber dominion ingrafted
upon a negro population, exactly as was the case in Walata,” where he
cites the case of the Mesufa. Moreover, this remark is in contradiction
with his previous assumption,[149] to wit: “With respect to the
custom that the hereditary power does not descend from the father
to the son but to the sister’s son . . . it may be supposed to
have belonged originally to the Berber race; for the Askar (Azger),
who have preserved their original manners tolerably pure, have the
same custom. . . . It may therefore seem doubtful whether . . . this
custom belonged to the black native,” with which statement I am
decidedly inclined to agree. The problem, however, is one which I
prefer on the whole to leave to qualified anthropologists.
[Footnote 107: Not to be confused with Tanut in Damergu. The word
“tanut” means a shallow well; there are consequently many places
of this name.]
[Footnote 108: Just north of Auderas.]
[Footnote 109: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 385.]
[Footnote 110: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 148-9.]
[Footnote 111: Von Bary’s Diary (French edition), p. 183, etc.]
[Footnote 112: The available data are in the hands of the author,
if some more fortunate traveller can check and examine the place.]
[Footnote 113: The “El Hakhsas,” Barth: _op. cit._,
Vol. I. p. 416.]
[Footnote 114: The extremes in variation, for the first rains of
sufficient volume to fill stream beds of a certain size with flood
water, are recorded by von Bary east of Bagezan on 3rd June, 1877,
and by Barth in Northern Air on 1st September, 1850. Both these dates
seem to be exceptional.]
[Footnote 115: This, and not T’efira, is presumably the point south
of Auderas where Barth saw “natron” encrustations on the ground
(see Vol. I. p. 389). Salt or “ara” is collected at T’efira
further east, but Barth would not have described “entering” the
Buddei valley after seeing the “natron,” for the road past Auderas
to T’efira winds down the Buddei valley.]
[Footnote 116: This is the vowel which in English words “oft_e_n,”
“_a_non,” “_u_ntil,” may be written as _o_, _e_, _a_, or _u_.]
[Footnote 117: Cf. Barth, Vol. I. p. 350, and von Bary, p. 169, on
the Kel Ataram of Auderas. The people of this village were simply
“People of the West” for the inhabitants of Ajiru in Eastern Air,
where von Bary was living.]
[Footnote 118: As Barth would have it: _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 339.]
[Footnote 119: Cf. Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 339 and 347.]
[Footnote 120: The Cortier 1/500,000 map shows a large affluent to
the right bank joining the Auderas valley below the village. This
is incorrect: a small affluent called the Mafinet joins at the point
shown, but the valley purporting to be the upper part of the Mafinet
valley is the Tagharit valley, which falls into the Ben Guten, and not
into the Auderas basin. The Cortier map is generally somewhat incorrect
in this area, especially in regard to the position of Mount Dogam.]
[Footnote 121: I am indebted to Sir J. Currie of the Empire
Cotton-growing Corporation for these reports.]
[Footnote 122: For fear of appearing to misinform people who are always
ready to mind other people’s business before looking after their own,
I hasten to add that the legal practice of slavery has, of course,
been abolished in Air since the advent of the French. The psychology
and habit of slavery, nevertheless, still remain as strong as ever,
and master and slave continue to regard each other by _mutual consent_
in the light of their former relationship. I therefore propose to refer
to slaves and the custom of slavery as if they were still sanctioned
by law.]
[Footnote 123: Respectively “Akel” and “Irawel” in the
singular.]
[Footnote 124: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 344 _sq._]
[Footnote 125: Cf. _infra_, Chaps. XI. and XII.]
[Footnote 126: Bates, _op. cit._, p. 115.]
[Footnote 127: _Vide infra_, Chap. XI., _et apud_ Barth, _op. cit._,
Vol. I. pp. 235 and 239.]
[Footnote 128: When von Bary (_op. cit._, p. 184) says that Imajeghan
were never enslaved, he is wrong. Although the Air Tuareg, when they
raided the Aulimmiden, often used to lift their cattle but spare the
men because they were of the same race, some of the latter division
nevertheless, became Imghad of the Air Kel Ferwan, for instance,
in the course of these raids.]
[Footnote 129: This is, of course, not an absolute rule, for the
“I name” might have been forgotten, as previously explained. The
supposition that “Kel names” represent Imghad and the “I names”
Imajeghan is, of course, quite untenable.]
[Footnote 130: The singular form of Imghad.]
[Footnote 131: There are several instances of this among the Northern
Tuareg, as will be seen from the data contained in Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 132: Cf. Schirmer’s note in von Bary, _op. cit._, p. 184.]
[Footnote 133: Barth’s statement, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 237,
that the Imghad are not allowed to carry arms is not substantiated:
he seems at this point to have confused the Imghad with slaves.]
[Footnote 134: Cf. _supra_, p. 134. Von Bary, _op. cit._, p. 181,
notes that the distinction between Imghad and Imajeghan among the
Kel Owi seemed to have broken down. This is perhaps exaggerated,
but interesting, as this division in a sense is the most modern in
development in Air.]
[Footnote 135: Barth erroneously calls him the Astafidet.]
[Footnote 136: Cf. Badges of Office among Libyan rulers given by Bates,
_op. cit._, p. 116.]
[Footnote 137: Von Bary, _op. cit._, pp. 172 and 188-9.]
[Footnote 138: By Jean, _op. cit._, p. 106.]
[Footnote 139: Cf. Bates, _op. cit._, pp. 112, 114-15.]
[Footnote 140: Ibn Batutah (ed. Soc. Asiatique), Vol. IV. pp. 388
and 443. Cf. also Appendix IV.]
[Footnote 141: The Mesufa are a surviving section of the Sanhaja,
and are specifically described by Ibn Batutah and Ibn Khaldun as
a part of the People of the Veil, _i.e._ not negroes or negroids
(_vide infra_, Chap. XI.).]
[Footnote 142: This statement is made in spite of the reference a
little later to the succession of the Sultan of Tekadda, who, though
a Tuareg, does not seem to have been of the Mesufa. This little
inaccuracy is, however, of no importance.]
[Footnote 143: Richardson: _Travels_, etc., Vol. II. pp. 65-6.]
[Footnote 144: Diod. Sic., iii. 53 _sq._ See also Silius Italicus,
ii. 80. Bates, _op. cit._, pp. 112-13 and 148, agrees that the
existence of matriarchal society would be a reasonable explanation
of the Amazon story.]
[Footnote 145: Nevertheless the matriarchate is known to have existed
in classical times as far south as Æthiopia, in the Meroitic kingdom
as well as in early Egypt.]
[Footnote 146: Perry (_The Children of the Sun_) would doubtless
suggest that it came from Egypt.]
[Footnote 147: See Rattray, _Ashanti_, 1924. This authority thinks that
the Ashanti people themselves came from the north. Many of the details
of their matriarchal system accord closely with that of the Tuareg.]
[Footnote 148: Barth, Vol. I. p. 388.]
[Footnote 149: _Ibid._, p. 341. On page 342 he says the Aulimmiden,
who have the same custom, consider the practice shameful, “as
exhibiting only the man’s distrust of his wife’s fidelity; for such
is certainly its foundation.” I don’t agree with this conclusion;
the origins of matriarchy are certainly not as simple as this.]
CHAPTER V
SOCIAL CONDITIONS
By constantly seeing the same people for nearly three months at
Auderas and in the neighbourhood, I was able to dissipate much of
the innate diffidence which the Tuareg display in their relations
with Europeans. Language always remained a source of difficulty. An
interpreter is never satisfactory, more especially if he belongs to a
people whom the Tuareg at heart really despise, while real proficiency
in a language cannot be attained in so short a time as I had at my
disposal. By the end of my stay in Air I had acquired a sufficient
knowledge of Temajegh to be able to travel comfortably with a guide
speaking only that language, and to collect a considerable amount of
vicarious information, but never at any time was I able to discuss
really abstruse questions. At Auderas I was lucky enough to find that
Ahodu, the chief of the village, had a working knowledge of Arabic
which was almost as indifferent as my own; but we both made up for
lack of grammar by volubility. The local “inisilm,” or holy man,
named El Mintaka, was a Ghati who had been settled for fifteen years in
Air, where he had taken a Tuareg wife. He, of course, spoke Arabic in
addition to Temajegh, and acted as scribe to Ahodu, who could neither
read nor write. With these two men in the village, with my servant
Amadu, a Fulani soldier who had served with distinction in the West
African Frontier Force during the war, and had a working knowledge
of English and Hausa, which most of the Air Tuareg speak, and with
my interpreter Ali, a man from Ghat, I found myself quite at my ease.
This Ali ibn Tama el Ghati had lived for some years in Kano and had
travelled all over the Central Sudan. He was small and very black,
but constantly cheerful and as clever as a tribe of monkeys. Somewhat
of a rogue unless watched, he was tireless and devoted, and proved to
be one of only two natives who, after I had been obliged to return
home, completed the whole journey with Buchanan. He was one of the
original race of Ghat, now called the Atara, who were there before
the Tuareg and Berbers came. Ali spoke no English, but was loquacious
in Hausa, Temajegh and Kanuri; he also spoke some Tebu and Fulani,
in addition, of course, to Arabic. His especial joy was to wear many
different combinations of gay clothes for periods of about ten days at
a time. He would then change his apparel and adopt another disguise
until the novelty of appearing as a Tuareg or a Hausa or an Arab in
turn had worn off.
PLATE 16
[Illustration: AUDERAS: HUTS]
[Illustration: AUDERAS: TENT-HUT AND SHELTER]
On reaching Auderas I took up my residence in some huts which Ahodu had
prepared on the edge of a diminutive plateau between the main bed of
the valley and a secondary affluent. The area between the valleys and
ravines which intersected the little plain was bare, but the sides of
the valleys were covered with vegetation. About a hundred yards away
across a steep gully was Teda Inisilman, the House of the Holy Men,
the smallest of the three hamlets which together make up Auderas. On
the other side of the main stream bed, where the water-holes of the
village were dug in the sand, lay the larger hamlet called Karnuka,
containing the house of El Mintaka. The third settlement was a few
hundred yards further down-stream. These hamlets were all built of
reeds and palm fronds, but the little plain was covered with what
proved to be the ruins of stone houses, many of which were inhabited
until 1915. Teda Inisilman is the village of the nobles where Ahodu and
the only other three Imajeghan families of the place lived, together
with their own dependent Irawellan and Ikelan, and the Enad or smith, a
most important person in Tuareg society. Down-stream of Teda Inisilman
and Karnuka lay the date-palm groves and most of the gardens; there
were a few above our camp also, in a side valley and in the main
bed under a huge mass of overhanging rock resembling the keep of a
fortress rising high above the sheer side of the stream. To the south
were only dûm palms and the rugged hills, called Tidrak,[150] which
formed the further edge of the valley. Elsewhere the ground was more
open. Down-stream to the west were the low Mafinet and T’ilimsawin
hills, joining on to the T’inien peaks north of the point where my
road had emerged from among them on the way from Agades. To the north
the ground rose over a low ridge to the Erarar (plain) n’Dendemu,
the Taghist plateau[151] and the distant peak of Dogam.[152] The
glistening black domes of the Abattul and Efaken peaks were rather
nearer, on the far edge of the Auderas valley itself. A few miles
north and north-east, this basin reached to the foot of the mountain
group of Todra, which towers 3000 feet and more above the valley to a
total height of about 5500 feet above the sea. The rounded sides rose
out of a bed of green and yellow to a crest of bare red rock at the
top. The mountain used to change colour all day, a whitish gleam off
the rocks at high noon giving place to blue-black shadows under storm
clouds and in the evening. At sunset it seemed to glow vivid red from
within. It is one of the most beautiful mountains in the world. The
Tuareg regard Todra and Dogam as one group, but separate from the
Bagezan Mountains, and this is certainly the case. They are reckoned
among the five principal massifs of Air, the others being Taruaji
in the south, Bila or Bilet north-west of Todra, and Tamgak which
includes the Azañieres, Tafidet and Taghmeurt ranges in the north.
The advent of Europeans in Auderas caused a certain amount of
excitement, but the novelty soon wore off as the routine of life was
resumed. I was welcomed by Ahodu’s wife and other persons with a
present of fresh dates, which were then ripening,[153] and newly-made
cheese, known as T’ikammar, which is excellent food. The Tuareg
live very simply and take so little trouble about their food that for
Europeans it is almost uneatable. The staple diet is milk and cheese,
but the more sedentary people eat locally grown or imported grain. The
millet is pounded in a mortar as in the south and cooked with water,
making a sort of porridge; but whereas in the Hausa countries this
“pura,” or “fura” as it is called, can be quite palatable
when seasoned or eaten with meat, the Tuareg in Air are too poor and
too lackadaisical to dress it in any way. They often even forget to
add salt, and without it the mess is peculiarly nasty on account of
a certain glutinous consistency which it acquires. The finer flour
obtained from the millet after it is pounded is also mixed with
water and dry powdered cheese and drunk uncooked as very thin gruel;
the dry cheese gives it a sour taste to which in time one gets used,
and then it becomes really rather refreshing if one is thirsty. It
is much better on the march for the stomach than large quantities of
plain water. The drink is called “ghussub” in the south; it is
often the sole means of sustenance of a Tuareg travelling quickly
without baggage or when a scarcity of fuel makes it impossible to
light fires. In the place of millet, guinea corn is also eaten; it
is pounded and baked in embers into a heavy tasteless cake which is
slightly more edible than millet porridge. The best food in Air is
undoubtedly the wheat “kus-kus” of the Arabs and Berbers in the
north: it is made in the same way by grinding wheat into rough flour,
and then steaming and rubbing it until it forms grains about the size
of small barley. It is carried dry and can be prepared by boiling
in water or stock for a short time. It has the great advantage of
requiring very little fuel to cook it. With no other adjunct than
a little salt it is very good indeed. During the latter part of my
stay I lived almost exclusively on kus-kus and rice, with hardly any
meat, but as many vegetables as I could procure. When neither millet,
guinea corn nor wheat is available, the Tuareg collect the seeds of
various grasses and grind them, notably of the grass called Afaza
and of the prickly burr grass. The former is a tall grass with stems
of such strength that they are used when dry with a weft of thin
leather strips for making the stiff mats which are spread upon their
Tuareg beds. The stalks grow as much as five feet high; the grass
is dark grey-green when fresh, or yellow when dry. The burr grass is
fortunately rare in Air. One can only be thankful that Nature has found
some useful purpose in this damnable plant as food for the Tuareg.
Of all the Tuareg food their cheese is best. It is usually made of
equal parts of sheep’s or goat’s and camel’s milk, but any
of them alone will do. The rennet is obtained from the entrails of
the goat; the curds are pressed in matting made of dûm-palm fronds
and formed into cakes about 4 in. × 5 in. × ¾ in. thick. The
fresh cheese is pure white and soft, but nevertheless crisp; it is
delicious with dates or with any other form of food, for it has
no sour or “cheesy” flavour. It dries yellow and hard and is
carried about by all Tuareg as a staple commodity, but in this state
requires soaking or crumbling before use, and acquires rather an
unpleasant sour smell. Butter is made of goat’s or sheep’s milk,
churned in bottle-shaped gourds or in small skins. It is not bad
mixed with kus-kus or rice or in cooking, but indifferent on bread or
biscuits. Meat is very little eaten, for it is a luxury. But even when
an animal is slaughtered and divided up the Tuareg do not seem capable
of turning it into a very edible dish. They neither roast nor fry;
they either stew their meat in a pot with vegetables or with millet
porridge, or on the march broil it in the hot sand under the embers of
a fire until it becomes shredded. If ever there is a surplus supply
of meat, it is preserved by soaking in brine and drying in the sun
strung on cords.
The preparation of food in the villages is done by the women, on
the march by the “buzu,” or, where there is no slave present,
by the youngest member of the party, whatever his caste or status, so
long as he has not reached his majority. When there are no minors or
slaves an Amghid does the work, but where all are of the same caste,
the duty reverts once more to the youngest member of the party. The
most arduous function is preparing the millet flour. Nowadays the
millet is almost invariably pounded in a mortar with a long pestle,
and the meal is then graded and separated from the husk and other
impurities by shaking it with a circular motion on a flat tray. The
mortar and long pestle, which is used by men and women standing up and
working alone or pounding rhythmically with one or more companions,
is certainly a southern invention; the wooden pestle is double-headed
and some 3 feet long; the mortar is cut out of one piece of wood
and stands about 12 inches high. The indigenous and more primitive
fashion is to grind grain on the rudimentary saddle-stone quern, a
form which has been preserved unchanged since prehistoric times. A
large flat stone is placed on the ground, and the person grinding
the wheat or millet kneels by it with a basket under the opposite
lip of the stone to catch the flour as it is made. The wheat or other
grain is poured on to the flat stone and crushed by rubbing it with
a saddle-stone or rounded river pebble about the size of a baby’s
head, held in both hands and worked forwards and backwards. As the
grain is crushed the flour is automatically sorted out and pushed
forward into the basket in front, the heavier meal remaining on the
flat stone. These querns may be seen lying about all over Air on all
the deserted sites; the lower stones can readily be recognised by the
broad channel which is worn along their length. Except for wheat,
which is too hard to be pounded, they have largely been discarded
in favour of the handier mortar and pestle. I do not think a more
widespread use of the quern necessarily indicates that wheat was more
extensively eaten than millet in olden days nor yet that agriculture
was formerly more pursued than nowadays. The explanation of the fact
is merely that pounding grain in a mortar was found a simpler method
in a country where millet was the staple cereal and the consumption
of wheat a luxury. Moreover, the Northern Tuareg when they came to
Air were probably less familiar with millet than with wheat, and only
modified their habits and utensils after they had settled down.
Though certain wild herbs are employed for medicinal purposes, I know
of none which is used in cooking. Besides Afaza and the burr grass,
several other seeds or berries are used by the more nomadic Tuareg
for food; there are said to be some twenty odd varieties in Air which
ripen at various times of the year. The Abisgi (_Capparis sodata_)
leaf has a biting taste and is sometimes used as a condiment; the
tamarind does not grow so far north; limes are found only in Bagezan,
and are rare. Dates are eaten fresh, or are preserved by soaking them
for a short time in boiling water, and pressing them into air-tight
leather receptacles, which are then sewn up. The practice of drying
dates and threading them on a string is resorted to in Fashi and
Bilma but not in Air.
Food is cooked in pear-shaped earthenware pots of red clay. The
vessels are only half baked when they are manufactured, principally
in the Agades neighbourhood, and have to be fired before they can be
used. They are plain and unornamented, with a lip or rim round the
mouth, which is bound with a cord to prevent cracking. More elaborate
pitchers with a blue design are used for liquids, since the universal
calabash of the south is comparatively rare in Air.[154] These pots are
also made near Agades. The designs appear to be of local origin. The
Sudanese jars and pots with bands of geometric design in straw-coloured
slip and blue pigment are not used in Air. Many small pots for inks,
spices and condiments are found in the houses of Northern Air: black
and red pottery is used for such vessels and for saucers and little
bowls. With the exception of what may be termed the “grape design”
(Plate 22), none of the pottery is very remarkable. The pots used
in the urn cemetery at Marandet seem to have been shaped like the
common cooking-pot or with a slightly more round appearance: they
are reported to have stood in saucers or plates. None of the pottery
is wheel-turned.
Auderas being essentially a sedentary and servile community, did
not contain many characteristic noble Tuareg. Neither Ahodu nor his
wife represents the fine physical type of the race, for he is of
somewhat mixed parentage, having, according to his own tradition,
some Arab blood in his veins, while she is a Kanuri woman. Among
the Tuareg, as in all races, it is hard to find the absolutely pure
type. I came across one or two examples, and must count myself lucky
to have seen so many. I was never able to confirm the story one had
so often heard of Tuareg with blue eyes, but such accurate observers
have recorded this feature that its occurrence must be admitted. In
Air it must certainly be most uncommon; nowhere is it the rule; light
brown and grey eyes, however, are not unusual, nor is it rare to see
hair which is not so much black as dark brown and wavy; it is never
crinkled or “fuzzy” unless there has been an obvious infusion of
negro blood. Very fair skins, as fair as among the people of Southern
Europe, are comparatively frequent, but the transparent white skin
of the North is not known: no deduction can be drawn from this, as
skin pigmentation is notoriously unreliable. Fair skins are held by
the Tuareg to represent the purest type: a range of every shade to
the black of the negro occurs. The Tuareg of Air differentiate the
colouring of people somewhat arbitrarily: they call the pure negro
“blue,”[155] but the dark-brown Hausa, “black”; the Arab
is always “white,” whatever shade of bronze he happens to be;
the Tuareg himself is “red,”[156] which is the most complimentary
epithet he can apply to others. Fairness of complexion is much prized
and is a social distinction, though when carried to such extremes as
among Europeans it is apt to be regarded as strange and odd. Certain
tribes in Air are reputed, even among the Tuareg, to be more than
usually fair. When von Bary was in Air his acquaintances seem to
have chaffed him about his celibacy; they offered to find him a
woman of the Iwarwaren tribe, for, they said, she would match his
own complexion.[157] Once on a time in Auderas I dressed completely
as a Tuareg, a disguise which was not difficult, for I had grown
a full dark beard and was very deeply sunburnt all up my arms and
legs from wearing a sleeveless tunic, diminutive shorts and no shoes
or stockings—the ideal garb for hot weather and an active life. I
rode into the village on a great white camel by a circuitous path:
the people were puzzled about my identity, and some, as I was later
told, decided from the colour of my limbs that I came from the Igdalen
tribe. It was typical of the Tuareg that they eventually recognised
not me, but my camel, and so guessed who I was.
PLATE 17
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR DRESSING A WOUND AT AUDERAS]
In spite of the occurrence of many fair-skinned people, it must
be admitted that the vast majority of Imajeghan and Imghad in Air
are comparatively dark, yet these Tuareg are among the purest of
their race. Their skin pigment seems to have changed before other
characteristics. The darkness of their complexion in Air is accentuated
by the prize set upon indigo clothing, which is so impregnated with
dye that it wears off on the skin of the proud owner, whose ablutions
are conspicuously infrequent. The Tuareg does not believe in washing
unless it is absolutely necessary, and he avers that an indigo-stained
skin is good protection against strong sunlight, which may or may not
be true. In justice to my friends, I must admit that they washed their
clothing, especially their white trousers, very frequently, and when
they washed their person, they did so very thoroughly from head to
foot, with much rubbing and a prodigious splashing of volumes of water.
The beauty and grace of their bodies are the principal characteristics
of the Tuareg. They are tall, more commonly in the neighbourhood of
six feet than shorter. They look much taller owing to their flowing
robes. When at rest they have little superficial muscular development;
their bodies are not corrugated and knobbly like the powerfully built
Latin: they are more like Nordic folk in that their limbs and backs are
smooth until exerted, when the muscles stand up hard and tough. Their
arms and legs are long and shapely and exceedingly graceful; they never
have flaccid or cylindrical limbs like Abyssinians or certain Indian
races. Their bones are small. They have wrists and ankles as slender
as a woman’s; it is noteworthy that whatever the degree of negro
admixture this sign of high breeding is the last to disappear. It is
a most infallible mark of pure Tuareg parentage. With it, of course,
go slenderness and refinement of hands and fingers. The men never
grow fat: they are hard and fit and dry like the nerve of a bow,
or a spring in tension. Of all their characteristics the one I have
most vividly in mind is their grace of carriage. The men are born
to walk and move as kings, they stride along swiftly and easily,
like Princes of the Earth, fearing no man, cringing before none,
and consciously superior to other people.
Grace and mystery are added to their appearance by the veil over the
face and by their long black robes, which are called “takatkat.”
They are of plain indigo black cotton stuff, and though some are
embroidered on the breast, the old-fashioned men shun such ornament
as ostentatious. More rarely their robes are white. Their dress,
to be in good taste, must above all be simple. Silk is hardly known
and not in great demand: plain native cloth made up of many narrow
slips sewn together to the desired width is esteemed superior to the
European sorts. Buchanan had brought for presents an indigo stuff
of excellent quality, made in Lancashire and better than anything
of the sort that could be bought in Kano. It was much appreciated,
but as it had a thin white stripe in it, not a single man would wear
it for a dress. They gave it to their women for skirts.
Broad Moslem trousers called “takirbai” are worn beneath the robe;
they are always of white cotton. Sometimes a tanned goat or sheep
skin is worn around the loins below the trousers, more especially in
bush country where burr grass is very prevalent.[158]
The best sandals used to be made in Agades only, but since the
emigration of so many craftsmen from Air they can now also be procured
in Kano, and more cheaply. They are of a shape peculiar to the Tuareg
and are much in demand all over the Sahara. The form is pleasing:
it is wide and round under the toes, slender under the instep,
and at the heel, and just broad enough to carry the weight of the
body. They are made of two thicknesses sewn together with neat white
raw-hide stitching; the top piece is of red leather with a stained
black border: the lower piece is of raw hide. Two red straps from
the sides level with the instep join a thong, which passes under the
top leather and is fastened between the two thicknesses of the sole
in order to protect the sewing from wear on the ground. The thong is
slipped between the big and second toes; the red straps pass over the
breadth of the foot to the sides of the sandal. The heel is free. It
is the ideal footwear in sandy country, as nothing can collect on the
surface and rub the foot. I wore nothing else for nine months and can
vouch for the comfort of these sandals. They are usually made in two
sizes[159]; the correct pattern for all those who can afford them is
12 inches long and 6 inches broad across the toes. This great surface,
leaving several inches all round the breadth of the foot, gives much
support on loose sand, on which it rests like a platform. Many other
forms of improvised sandals are made, covering the sole and sometimes
the sides of the foot, but the most ingenious home-made type I saw
was woven in a few minutes of green dûm-palm fronds. These sandals
were really a sole of palm matting under the foot: they have the
advantage of costing nothing and, when the fronds are still green, of
being supple and springy in any weather, whereas the leather sandals
become flaccid on wet ground. They are, however, not proof against
long acacia thorns, as I learnt to my cost. During the rains I used
to have a new pair made for me every day by Ahodu’s son, aged nine,
at the grossly excessive rate of about 6_d._ a dozen. The best leather
sandals cost as much as 6_s._ a pair at Agades nowadays.
Walking barefoot over loose sand in time produces severe cracks in
the sole of the foot. The ball of the big toe and the inside part of
the foot are particularly liable to be affected. In cold dry weather
it is common to see men rubbing fat into the callous skin of their
feet and warming them in front of a fire to soften the leather,
for when a crack has begun to appear it is very difficult to induce
healing. The skin of their feet is so insensible and thick that men
often take a needle and thread and sew up their sole as one would mend
a sandal. Some form of foot-wear is likewise desirable when there are
many thorns about, and in the bush, where burrs find their way into
the tender skin between the toes. As I often wore no foot-covering at
all my feet became very hard, but I contrived on several occasions
to pick up thorns, which went as much as three-quarters of an inch
into the sole of my foot. I well remember how the extraction of these
spikes used to cause a most peculiar form of pain; it produced almost
physical sickness. Curiously enough, these wounds never seemed to get
septic, and I have always wondered why. For several months I did have
septic sores on my feet and legs whenever a rub or scratch occurred,
but they were principally due to being run down after malaria and the
rainy season. Acacia thorns or burrs in my feet never became infected.
With a veil, robe, trousers and sandals, the wardrobe of the Tuareg is
complete. Some carry a white blanket of heavy native cotton stuff known
in Nigeria as “Kano cloth,” woven in six-inch strips sewn together,
with a blue border and fringe. But the article is a product of the
Southland and almost seems to be considered a luxury in Air, where few
men have any additional clothing or covering in cold weather. Some
wear the conical hats of Kano basket-ware associated with the Hausa
countries, but the practice is regarded as an affectation and is not
very common.[160]
The scantiness of the clothing of the Tuareg in Air is very
remarkable. Their robe is admirably suited for hot weather, since any
covering which hangs in loose folds over the back is good protection
against the sun. The garment consists of two large squares of stuff,
forming the front and back, the height of a man’s shoulder, or say
about 5 feet × 5 feet. The two lower corners of the squares are sewn
together, the bottom and sides are left open. The top is sewn up except
for a space of about 18 inches where the head is put through, and a
slit with a pocket is cut on the breast. The sides of the upper part
either fall down the arms or can be looped up over the shoulders to
leave them clear. As the sides are open, the circulation of air under
the robe is quite free. In cold weather the ample volume of the robe
enables it to be wrapped well around the body, nevertheless it is very
inadequate protection when the thermometer falls to freezing point. It
speaks highly of the hardihood of these people that they wear this
garment only throughout the year in spite of variations in temperature,
such as in December I encountered on my way south through Azawagh,
of as much as 60° F. in twenty-four hours. The three Tuareg with me
had no sort of extra covering for the night until I gave them a ground
sheet in which to wrap themselves near the fire. But they discarded
it, because the canvas, as they said, “attracted the cold” more
than did the sand. The dying embers of a fire warmed the soles of
their feet, but the rest of their bodies must have been frozen.
The Tuareg woman wears a long piece of indigo cloth rolled round her
body as a skirt and tucked in at the waist. Over her shoulders is
a garment which resembles a sleeveless coat, but is really a small
square of light indigo or black stuff with a hole for the head. The
ends hang down in front and behind to the level of the waist, the sides
are open. She never veils her face; the upper garment, or a dark cloth
worn over the head like a nun’s hood, may be drawn across the face,
but more often in coquetry, I think, than in prudery. This upper
garment is sometimes embroidered with a simple cross-stitch pattern
around the neck; usually it is a piece of plain native cloth made,
like the robes of the men, of narrow bands sewn together. Women who
can only afford one piece of stuff wear it wound round their bodies
close under the armpits, though, as a general rule, it may be said
that there is no feeling of immodesty involved in exposing the body
above the waist.[161]
This ease of garb among the women and their unveiled countenances are
in keeping with the perfect freedom which they enjoy. Irrespective
of caste or circumstance, whether they be noble or slave, rich or
poor, the women of the People of the Veil are respected by their men
in a manner which has no parallel in my experience. It is the more
significant in a Moslem people, inasmuch as Islam has not hitherto
taught the men of the Eastern world to treat their women-folk as their
equals, still less as their betters. In saying this much I write in
no depreciatory spirit, for the Western world has happily long ceased
to regard the followers of Muhammad’s teaching of the Faith of the
One God as heathen or pagan. But the morals and ethical code of Islam
differ most essentially from those of the north of Europe and America
precisely in regard to women; and in this respect Islam has lagged
behind. But even in European countries the complete emancipation of
women is only a modern development which may perhaps have just begun
in Islam. Yet judged by our Northern standards the Tuareg have much
in common with ourselves. So strange in Africa seems their conduct
to women, that early travellers called them the Knights-Errant of
the Desert Roads. The extent to which they have earned this name is
their justifiable pride.
Their women have position and prerogatives not yet achieved by their
sisters in many of those countries which we term “civilised.” The
Tuareg women are strong-minded, gifted and intelligent. They have
their share in public life; their advice is proffered and sought
in tribal councils. Contrary to Moslem practice and to that of many
European societies, a Tuareg woman may own property in her own name,
and, more than that, may continue to own and administer it after
her marriage without interference by her husband, who has no rights
over it whatsoever. At death a woman’s property, unless otherwise
disposed of in satisfaction of her expressed wish, is divided in
accordance with the Moslem laws of inheritance, but if her family
has been provided for as custom demands, she may bequeath what is
over as she pleases. There are many instances of Tuareg women of
noble birth being heiresses or receiving a share of property which
has become available, by conquest or the extinction of some group,
for distribution generally among the community. Sometimes, if a tribe
moves away from an old area, the community goes so far as to divide up
and settle the free land on the chief women, who become, as Duveyrier
has called them,[162] the “femmes douairières” of the Tuareg.
Their bravery is famous in Africa. Instances are not lacking where
they have played great parts in war. In one engagement in Air the Kel
Fadé women led their men into battle, covering them with their own
bodies and those of their children to prevent the French firing.[163]
When Musa ag Mastan, the Amenokal of Ahaggar, went to France in
1910 his sister ruled the people in his stead. Though no instances
are recorded in Air itself of women becoming chiefs of tribes they
rule several villages among the Kel Geres. By usage and by right
their functions are more consultative than executive. They do not
seek election to tribal councils. They enter them as of right and
not in competition, but not even then do they order men about. Their
function is to counsel and to charm. They make poetry and have their
own way. In recent years there seems to have been only one example
in Air of a woman playing a definitely masculine rôle. Barkasho,
of the Ikazkazan, was already an old woman when, as a small boy,
Musa, of the same tribe, who was with me at one time as a camel-man,
knew her. Soon after she married, Barkasho told her husband that
she was going about a man’s work and proceeded to don the robe,
veil and sword of the other sex. She set off on a raid to the east
to avenge some depredations on her people. As her courage grew and
became famous she turned her attention to the west and led a raid,
it is said, as far afield as the Tademekkat country. On one of these
expeditions she lifted, single-handed, seven camels from a party of
three men who were guarding them. The curious side of Barkasho’s
personality was that when she returned from these excursions, she put
off her male attire and quietly resumed her place and occupations
in the household. Evidently, however, her husband must have become
restive, for in the end she advised him to get rid of her, or at
least to marry another woman as well, since she was useless to him
as a wife. But history does not relate what the husband did. Musa
last saw her as an old, old woman, sitting in front of her hut,
looking into the sunset over the country where she used to raid,
and dreaming. I failed in my endeavours to obtain other stories of
women leaders. I found, therefore, nothing to bear out the Amazonian
legend,[164] except the survival of the matriarchal system generally.
Kahena lives on among the Tuareg only as a memory and as a proper
name. They do not claim as one of their race the Berber queen who
defended Ifrikiya against the Arabs in the seventh century. Ahodu
had heard of her as a woman of the Imajeghan who were in the north
when the Arabs came. “She led these noble people and defeated the
Arabs, it is true, and those Imajeghan were great people, of course,
but she was not one of our people: our people are older than they;
and the Arabs—why, the Arabs have only just come to the land,”
said Ahodu, who, where his own Kel Tadek were concerned, was always
an intolerable snob.
Under Moslem law a man may take unto himself four legitimate wives
in addition to a number of slave concubines. The rules laid down
by the Prophet for the governance of the marital relations of good
Moslems are theoretically, at least, in force among the Tuareg of
Air. In practice, however, monogamy is more frequent than polygamy. I
am not clear whether an explanation of this phenomenon is to be
looked for in a survival of a matriarchal state of society where
one would indeed be led to expect polyandry rather than polygamy, or
whether the reason is rather to be sought in the economic condition
of a people whose poverty does not allow them to keep more than one
wife. I have no hesitation in disagreeing with Jean when he says[165]
that monogamy is rare and even anomalous in Air. It does not accord
with my personal observations, nor is it consistent with what I heard
of those traditions and conditions which I was unable to verify. How
often has it not been said to me that “the Imajeghan respect their
women, and _therefore_ have only one wife, not like the negroes, and
heathen”? It does not accord with the conditions governing the status
of women as described by Jean himself, nor yet with the remarks which
he makes on the subject of the matrimonial relations of the Tuareg. It
is, finally, in contradiction with the accounts given by Duveyrier[166]
and others of the Northern Tuareg, concerning whom his enthusiasm even
led him into the exaggeration of asserting that polygamy was unknown.
After considering the question carefully, I have come to the
conclusion that monogamy is probably an old tradition dependent upon
and consistent with the status of Tuareg women, and not a consequence
of economic conditions which have, however, served to perpetuate
the custom. It is certainly connected with the matriarchate. The
practice of concubinage is restricted, and where it does occur, is
usually confined to women of the slave caste. A noble woman is not,
and never could be, a concubine so long as the status of noble and of
serf continues to exist; but if the maintenance of only one wife were
due to economic necessity alone, the same conditions would not obtain
in regard to concubinage in a community where every additional slave,
male or female, is an asset as a productive unit. The position of
women among the Tuareg has no real parallel in any other Oriental
country. Even in Ashanti, where there are analogies for some of
the matriarchal survivals found among the Tuareg, the exceptional
positions of some of the royal women seem to be less favourable than
that of any of the noble and most other women in Air, where all the
sex is held in honour.
At Auderas I played the rôle of doctor to the best of my ability. I
found a great ally in Ahodu’s wife, who, though not a Tuareg by race,
had acquired all their traditions and manners. Her appearance was
not in the least characteristic; her negroid features were frankly
ugly from the European point of view. But she made up for these
physical disadvantages by her unfailing sense of humour and constant
cheerfulness, which are very valuable qualities in Africa. In general
the young Tuareg women are handsome and possessed of considerable
charm. They are smaller in build than the men, but when their
parentage is reasonably pure, they possess the same aristocratic
features and proportions. Their demeanour is modest and dignified. In
this Ahodu’s wife resembled them. She was perfectly natural and
had great quickness of mind. She was what might be called “une
femme du monde.” Ahodu had divorced at least two previous wives
for their uncouth or unrestrained behaviour. He was devoted to his
present one. He always used to speak with pride of her capability,
which he averred was second to no man’s: one could place complete
reliance in her. I made a point of taking her with me when visiting
sick women and children in the hamlets, and through her tact and
presence of mind gradually came to understand their perfect ease and
bearing. In their tents or huts they would sit and listen without
fear or shyness. After the inevitable diffidence had worn off they
talked and were free from awkwardness, but never familiar like the
negro or negroid women. They are gay but not infantile. They never
lose their dignity. Their dress is staid and sombre like that of
their men, with a few ornaments of beads and silver.[167] As they
grow older the women of good family and wealth become fat, especially,
as Barth remarks, in “the hinder parts,” for fatness is a sign of
affluence, since it implies a sufficiency of the good things of life,
like slaves and food, to obviate having to do much manual work. But
among the unmarried women I saw no large-proportioned ladies: indeed
few enough even of the married ones at Auderas were fat, indicating,
I am sorry to say, the poverty of most of them. When the women do
not run to fat, they age with great beauty; nearly all the old women
looked typical aristocrats and conscious of their breeding.
The women use henna, which grows in Air, on their finger and toe nails,
and “kohl” (antimony) for their eyes. On festive occasions they
have a curious habit of daubing their cheeks and foreheads with paint,
prepared either from a whitish earth found especially near Agades,
or with red or yellow ochres which occur in several places. The
effect of these colours on different shades of skin is uniformly
ghastly, especially when the more usual yellow pigment is used, but
they apparently like the habit. A possible explanation is that in the
first instance the custom was intended as a symbolic or conventional
method of expressing the respect felt for the fairer complexions of
their original ancestors. The negro is despised in Air, the “red”
man is respected; painting the face was perhaps at first intended to
create an illusion of purer blood. Although the practice is supposed
to be restricted to festive occasions, where the women have little
work to do, they remain daubed most of the time: this seemed to be
the case at T’imia, for instance, where the women were noble and
had plenty of slaves. Tuareg men do not so adorn themselves.[168]
Before marriage, which for Oriental women occurs comparatively late
in life, Tuareg girls enjoy a measure of freedom which would shock
even the modern respectable folk of Southern Europe. They do no
work, but dance and sing and make poetry, and in the olden days they
learned to read and write. The art of literature is unfortunately
dying out, but the women still are, as they always were in the past,
the repositories of tradition and learning. Where the script of the
Tuareg is still known and freely used, it is the women who are more
versed in it than the men. It is they who teach the children. When
families have slaves, the noble woman does as little work as she can:
her occupation among the poorer people is confined to the household
work or to herding goats and sheep. They make cheese and butter and
sort dates, but they do not as a rule work in the gardens. They are
never beasts of burden. They have never learnt to weave or spin, but
they plait mats and make articles of leather. The leather-working
industry at Agades is exclusively in their hands. Their knowledge
of needlework is limited; the men on the whole are more skilled than
the women at cutting out and sewing clothes.
The household duties are simple but laborious. The children for the
first few years of their lives are washed frequently, but when they are
able to look after themselves in any way the practice is abandoned. The
hut or tent is cleaned out several times a day and food has to be
prepared. This entails pounding millet in a mortar and stewing the
porridge, or steaming wheat to make kus-kus. The women eat their
food with the men, a privilege often denied their sex among other
Moslems. Among the Kel Ferwan[169] the women eat their food before
the men do so, and the latter have to be content with what is left,
which is often not very much. A man once said to me, to emphasise the
good manners required by usage to be observed before women, that in
the olden days if anyone had dared to break wind in their presence,
the insult was punishable by death alone.
Half the poetry of the Tuareg deals with the loves and adventures of
young men and women. Marriages are not arranged as among the Arabs. It
often happens that a girl has two or more suitors, when her free
choice alone is the deciding factor. It is common for a girl who is
in love with a man to take a camel and ride all night to see him and
then return to her own place, or for a suitor to make expeditions
of superhuman endurance to see his lady.[170] Fights between rivals
are not uncommon. Illicit love affairs inevitably occur: if they
have unfortunate consequences, the man is called upon to marry the
woman, but infanticide is not unknown. Once married the woman is
expected to behave with decorum and modesty. Public opinion on these
matters is strong. The married state, however, does not prevent a
woman admitting men friends to an intimacy similar to that existing,
perhaps, only among the Anglo-Saxon peoples. In a passage in which
Ibn Batutah describes the Mesufa, who before becoming debased were
of the Western Sanhaja Tuareg, but had in part settled south of Air,
he comments on the status of women in these charming terms:[171]
“The women of the Mesufa feel no shame in the presence of men; nor
do they veil their faces. Despite this, they do not omit to perform
their prayers punctually. Anyone who wishes to marry them can do so
without difficulty. . . . In this country the women have friends and
companions among men who are strangers. The men for their part have
companions among women not in their own families. It often happens for
a man to enter his own house to find his wife with a friend. He will
neither disapprove nor make trouble. I (that is, Ibn Batutah himself)
once went into the house of a judge at Walata after he had given me
permission, and found quite a young and very beautiful woman with
him. As I stopped, doubting, and hesitated, wanting to return on my
steps, she began to laugh at my embarrassment instead of blushing
with shame.” The great traveller is evidently very much shocked,
for he goes on: “And yet this man was a lawyer and a pilgrim. I
even heard that he had asked the Sultan for permission to perform the
pilgrimage that year to Mecca, in the company of this friend. Was it
this one or another? I do not know. . . .” Again, he goes on to
describe how he visited the house of one of his companions of the
road and found him sitting on a carpet, “while in the middle of
the house on a couch . . . was his wife in conversation with a man
seated by her side. I asked Abu Muhammad: ‘Who is that woman?’
‘It’s my wife,’ he replied. ‘And who is the individual with
her?’ ‘It’s her friend.’ ‘But are you, who have lived in
our countries, quite satisfied with such a state of affairs—you who
know the precepts of the Holy Writ?’ He replied: ‘The relations
of women with men in this country bring good and are correct, they
are right and honourable. They give rise to no suspicion. Our women,
as a matter of fact, are not like those in your country.’”
And that is the whole truth. The Tuareg men and women are not like
the other inhabitants of North Africa. But Ibn Batutah must have been
none the less shocked, because, though Abu Muhammad invited him to
visit him again, he did not go.
Conditions have not changed since those days among the People of the
Veil, but habits which would be considered natural in America or in
England admittedly seem strange in Africa. They are all summed up in
the Tuareg proverb which says: “Men and women towards each other
are for the eyes and for the heart, and not only for the bed,” as
among the Arabs. The consequence of such a frame of mind is that the
men and women of the People of the Veil are often blessed, or cursed,
with love so lasting, so sincere and so devoted that, like in our
own society, it makes or mars a life.
Bates has discussed the marriage customs of the Libyan tribes mentioned
in the classics. While some of these groups of people may represent
the ancestors of the Tuareg, there is no evidence of the outrageous
performances mentioned, for instance, by Herodotus, having persisted
into modern times in Air. Divorce among the Tuareg is fairly frequent
and is carried out in accordance with Moslem prescription, but adultery
is not very common. Prostitution exists, but perhaps, on the whole,
is less common than in more favoured parts of the world. It is,
of course, more frequent in Agades than in the villages, and in the
latter than among the tribes. The harlot is not respected, and her
marriage with a decent man is reprobated.
The husband is required to purchase his wife, the money or equivalent
being paid to her parents. The sum varies from a few silver francs to
several camels. Marriage portions in cattle, sheep or goats, according
to the circumstances of the parents, are frequently given to women;
the “dot” remains the property of the bride.
The children of the Tuareg, and especially the little girls, are
adorable persons. They are fairer than their parents, largely,
I think, because they wash more often than their elders, but even
discounting this factor they appear to turn darker as they grow
up. Up to the age of seven or eight the children wear no clothes at
all, summer or winter, indoors or out of doors, except perhaps a rag
to keep off the flies when they are asleep. After that, their first
clothes are white cotton shifts. Small boys have their hair cropped
close, except for a crest along the top of the head; in some tribes,
notably in the west of Air, a lock on either side of the head and a
patch on top are sometimes left. Little girls are allowed long hair
until they first put on a smock or cloth about their waists. At the
age of puberty both sexes dress their hair in one of the several
fashions current in Air, usually in small plaits all over the head;
thereafter the boys continue to wear white shirts, but the girls
put on the indigo skirt cloth. The children are so well brought up
that European parents might be envious of them. I have never met
small boys with such perfect manners and so free from selfishness
as I experienced in Air. As soon as they are old enough to take an
interest in things, the boys accompany their fathers on journeys,
to which they are thus gradually broken from an early age. They are
made to work and do all the domestic duties that their powers allow in
camp or on the march. They feed the camels on the road with grass or
plants picked by the way; they carry water to their elders to drink;
they bring in stray camels at loading-up time and hobble them when
turned out to graze. The slaves, who prepare the food, are assisted
by the boys and send them out to do all the hundred and one little
jobs that are required. So the boys grow up to be useful men before
they are mature, and in the process learn the respect which is due
to their elders, and their elders show them such devotion as these
pleasant little people deserve. The training is evidently successful,
for nowhere else have I seen children so thoughtful or so kindly to all
and to each other. It had never been my lot until I met the Tuareg to
see a right-minded boy, for instance, who had been given a sweet or
a penny or some equally valuable object, run off and offer it first
to his father and then to his companions, who refused it. And this
I saw not in an isolated instance, but as an universal practice.
In the primitive conditions of life in Air, infant mortality is
high. The happiest and some of the most successful days I spent in
Air were doctoring people, and especially children, at Auderas. There
are not many diseases in the clean dry mountain air, but under-feeding
and malaria, which comes after the rains, take their annual toll. The
almost miraculous effect of quinine on the fevers is a very saving
grace. One can never have enough quinine, but fortunately small doses
at frequent intervals will keep fever in check during bad attacks
and prevent collapse. Thus can a great deal be achieved. But it was
the good sense of the women, who had some faith in my elementary
remedies, that did most to save several children of Auderas in the
autumn of 1922.
I was interested to find how long women went on suckling their
children. I saw children of three and four years still feeding at the
breast, though they were already eating solid food. A woman will go
on suckling an older child for many years so long as her younger ones
do not suffer; she is especially prone to do so if her last baby has
died. In company with most races living under primitive conditions,
even advanced pregnancy does not interfere with a woman’s activities,
nor do mothers suffer much from the effects of childbirth. The
processes of nature take place unassisted: there are neither local
medicine men nor midwives. Women in labour are attended by their
older relations or intimate friends, whose assistance is limited
to massaging the body with hands steeped in butter or fat. Death
in childbirth appears to be rare. Newly-born children are wrapped
in some ragged garment, but receive no especial care. Cradles or
swaddling clothes are unknown; but perhaps a cushion of grass or
leaves for the infant is prepared on the family sleeping mat or
bed. Babies are carried on their mother’s back or by a slave woman,
slung with one tiny leg each side of the woman’s waist, in a fold
of the cloth which constitutes her skirt. The cloth is firmly rolled
round the baby and the woman’s body, and tucked in over the breast;
only the child’s head emerges from this pouch on her back. So the
child sleeps or cries or sucks its finger, and the mother goes about
her daily occupations, pounding millet or plaiting mats.
PLATE 18
[Illustration: TEKHMEDIN AND THE AUTHOR]
Neither at birth nor later is any form of bodily deformation
practised. Such horrors as flattened skulls or filed teeth are
unknown. The only eunuchs in Air are negroes purchased in the south. As
in the case of all good Moslems, the boys are circumcised at the age
of a few months. The diseases which I myself observed in Air, I must
admit, seemed few. Syphilis, malaria, certain digestive troubles,
dysentery, a few minor skin diseases and eye troubles were the most
serious. Syphilis is common, but apparently not very virulent: its
method of propagation and origin are well known to the natives: in
the Northern Sahara it is called the Great Disease. Von Bary thought
that it, like malarial fevers, came from the Sudan, but there is no
reason to believe this, for it is very evenly distributed all over
North Africa. The juice of the colocynth as a purge is believed to do
good in cases of venereal disease. Guinea-worm is fairly common; the
milky juice of the Asclepias, known as _Calotropis Procera_,[172]
which grows all over Air, is said to have a curative effect,
in addition to the usual method of extraction known to everyone
who has travelled in Africa. I saw one case of tuberculosis of
the lungs at Auderas, accompanied by hæmorrhage. It was rather
an interesting case of a woman whose family for three generations
was said to have died of the disease. I was too honest, I suppose,
to profess to be able to cure her, but I need hardly say that my
servant, Amadu, took over the case. He claimed to have established
a complete cure in a few days with some herb which he had found. My
reputation suffered, but my advice to Ahodu to move her hut to the
outskirts of the village was nevertheless admitted to be reasonable,
and was followed. Duveyrier[173] mentions a form of ulcer in the nose,
said to be due to constant sand irritation. He describes hernia from
long-distance camel riding as being frequent: to prevent abdominal
strains from this cause the Tuareg bind a long strip of cotton stuff
tightly about their waists. Von Bary[174] records having seen,
in addition to the above diseases, epilepsy, atrophied children,
skin eruptions, small-pox, hypochondria and madness. He remarks
that the Kel Owi seemed to suffer more from disease than the other
tribes, that their women were very fat, and that they appeared to
have irregular periods. My investigations into local medicine were
unproductive. I brought home some drugs which were used locally as
purges, lotions and astringents, but they were without value. The
empiric knowledge of the Tuareg may yet be worth investigating,
but has so far disclosed nothing of any value.
Festivals connected with social life are not interesting. Births
occur without unusual or curious celebrations. The naming of the
child is supposed to be in the hands of the local holy man, but
the mother brings her influence to bear in his choice by suitable
payments. Marriages are celebrated with feast and rejoicing after the
bridegroom has wooed his bride and paid the stipulated portion. Burials
equally follow the Moslem practice. The body is laid in the ground
on its back, the head to the north and the feet to the south, with
the face turned towards Mecca. The rope by which the body is lowered
into the grave is left lying to rot away on the tomb. The grave is
marked by one or two standing stones according as the deceased is
male or female. The graves in Air are intimately connected with the
architecture and dwellings of the Tuareg, and are dealt with in a later
chapter. There are cemeteries all over Air: the little one now in use
at Auderas lies on the south side of the valley under the hills of
Tidrak, opposite the site of our camp. In the rains, malaria claimed
several victims. They were mournful little processions which I used
to see from my hut. One such occasion particularly impressed itself
upon me. I was returning from South Bagezan one evening, climbing
down on a rough path in a ravine with three camels and three men,
when Ahodu, El Mintaka and a few more appeared, carrying a man to
his grave. They were walking quickly so as to have done as soon as
possible, proclaiming as they went that there was no God but God. They
did that which there was to be done in haste, and returned at their
leisure near sundown when the sky and the mountains of Todra were on
fire. It had been raining and the black clouds were still in sight,
covering the place of sunset. Above, everything was as red as the
light of a blast furnace shining on Todra. Already the darkness had
gathered in the north-east and the stars were coming out, and the deep
valley with its white, sandy bottom was scarcely seen for the many
trees in it. A chilly wind blew down the valley, waving the palms and
troubling the gardens. As I reached my hut, Ahodu and his men joined
me, and night fell, leaving purple and then dark red and then a yellow
glow in the west. Last of all came the pale zodiacal light climbing
up nearly to the zenith of the night, and the wind died down. Ahodu
did not speak of death because it was unlucky, but he sat on the sand
and told me many things. Ultimately came the information that a raid
of Ahaggaren had plundered some villages in Kawar. He was afraid they
would come on to Air, and that the village would have to be abandoned,
and that his people would have to retreat into the mountain which
towered as a black shadow in the east. He had left this subject to
the last, because there was nothing in the matter to discuss. The
raiders either would or they would not come. There was a proverb:
“Reasoning is the shackle of the coward.”
PLATE 19
[Illustration: BAGEZAN MOUNTAINS AND TOWAR VILLAGE]
[Footnote 150: Cf. Barth, Vol. I. p. 387. The village of Aerwan wan
Tidrak is presumably to be placed in these hills, where there are
numerous remains of hamlets. The “village” of “Ifarghan” at
Auderas is presumably a mistake, for “Ifargan” means “gardens”
in Temajegh. Several of the Auderas gardens are at the point where
Barth placed this so-called village.]
[Footnote 151: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I., p. 385.]
[Footnote 152: Mount Dogam is not west of the Ighaghrar (Arharkhar)
valley as shown in the Cortier map, but to the east at the head of
three tributary streams and adjoining the Todra massif. The latter
on the map is not named and is erroneously given as a south-western
spur of Bagezan, from which it is really quite distinct.]
[Footnote 153: First half of August, 1922.]
[Footnote 154: Three sorts of gourds do exist, but they are valuable.]
[Footnote 155: As does the Arab, and with some reason, for real
negroes in the sunlight have, in fact, a blue-black appearance.]
[Footnote 156: Izagarnen or Ihagarnen—the red ones, possibly the
etymology of “Ihaggaren.”]
[Footnote 157: Von Bary, _op. cit._, p. 166.]
[Footnote 158: Among the Tuareg I have never seen or heard of the
“penistasche,” which Bates regards as so typical of the Libyans.]
[Footnote 159: Sandals are called Irratemat.]
[Footnote 160: The hats illustrated by Bates, _op. cit._, Fig. 32,
are typically Sudanese.]
[Footnote 161: I believe this is not so in the north, where Arab
influence contrasts with the more negroid customs of Air.]
[Footnote 162: Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 401.]
[Footnote 163: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 192-3.]
[Footnote 164: _Vide supra_, Chap. IV.]
[Footnote 165: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 195.]
[Footnote 166: Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 429.]
[Footnote 167: See Plates 36 and 37.]
[Footnote 168: The practice is alluded to in Gsell’s _Histoire
de l’Afrique du Nord_, Vol. I. Chap. IV, and a connection with
the mysterious term Leucæthiopians is suggested, but I think
mistakenly. It is an insult to the classical geographers to suggest
that any people were so called because some negroes whitened their
faces with paint.]
[Footnote 169: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 193.]
[Footnote 170: I cannot agree with Jean, p. 193, that until their
marriage girls never leave their mothers. They are not taken on
journeys like boys, but they walk about the villages or encampments in
a remarkably free way. Their romances are a proof of their freedom,
which is the topic of discussion and the object of remark of anyone
who first comes into contact with this race.]
[Footnote 171: Ibn Batutah (French edition), Vol. IV. pp. 388-90.]
[Footnote 172: Known by various native names. In Air the usual
name is the Hausa form Tunfafia. Barth refers to it as _Asclepias
gigantica_. It is called Turha or Toreha or Tirza in Temajegh, Turdja
in Mauretania, Ushr in Egyptian and Korunka in Algerian Arabic.]
[Footnote 173: Cf. Duveyrier, _op. cit._, pp. 433-5.]
[Footnote 174: Von Bary, _op. cit._, p. 185.]
CHAPTER VI
THE MODE OF LIFE OF THE NOMADS
One of my first trips from Auderas was to the village of Towar,[175]
which lies under the south-western spurs of Bagezan on the edge of
the plain between this massif and Todra. Leaving Auderas by a very
rough path over the hills on the south side of the valley, a narrow
track with difficulty climbs up to the watershed of the basin where
the central plain is reached. The northern part of the plain skirting
Todra and Bagezan is covered with black basalt boulders all the way
to Towar. The boulders are polished and range in size from a large
water-melon to an orange. They were probably thrown out from Bagezan
by some volcanic activity, which, in conjunction with later eruptions
at Mount Dogam, also produced the basalt and cinerite formations
in the Auderas valley. The plain is intersected by several valleys,
the head-waters of the Buddei-Telwa system which drains the southern
slopes of Todra. Further east is the Ara valley, which comes down from
the south-east face of Mount Dogam between Todra and Bagezan. Several
valleys descend from the south-western parts of Bagezan as tributaries
to the Ara and Towar, which both flow into the Etaras, whose waters
eventually find their way east of Taruaji into the River of Agades
opposite Akaraq by the Turayet valley. The Ara valley is particularly
important, for it divides Todra from Bagezan, which are distinct
groups and not a single massif as the Cortier map implies.
The plain between Bagezan and Taruaji is dotted with small conical
hills. There is no vegetation except along the watercourses: between
the boulders a little grass finds a precarious existence. But there
are many gazelle always roaming about. Of the two roads from Auderas
to Towar village, I first tried the northern one, which is also the
shortest. At the point where it crosses a col over a spur of Todra
it proved precipitous and dangerous, but the alternative road, on the
other hand, is more than half as long again, running south-east from
Auderas and then turning north-east to rejoin the first track at the
domed peak of Tegbeshi, some six miles east of Towar. At Tegbeshi the
road to Towar crosses a track from Agades to Northern Air, running over
the pass of the Upper Ara valley not far from the village of Dogam,
which lies on the south slope of the peak. A branch leads up into
the Bagezan mountains by a precipitous ravine north of Towar village.
After crossing several more tributaries of the Ara and Towar
valleys the village itself is reached, on the east side of the
stream bed. There are two older deserted stone-built settlements,
respectively south and east of the present site, which consist of a
group of straw huts. The dwellings are typical of the Tuareg mode
of hut construction. The frame is made of palm-frond ribs planted
in the ground and tied together at the top; the section of the huts
is consequently nearly parabolic. This framework is covered with
thatch of coarse grass on top and mats round the lower part. The
dwelling is built in one piece; it does not, as in the Southland,
consist of two separate portions, namely, the conical roof and the
vertical wall.[176] The stone houses of the two older villages point
to the former settlements having been more extensive than the present
one. There are small palm groves and a group of gardens on the banks
of the valley, which contains plenty of water in the sand. The site
was deserted during the war and has only recently been occupied. The
population is mixed, but principally servile, derived from several
tribes. The present inhabitants owe allegiance to the Kel Bagezan (Kel
Owi) but the plain all round belongs to the Kel Nugguru of the chief
Khodi, whose camels were pasturing in the little watercourses of the
plain. One of the first people I met on camping near the village on
the east bank was a man from Ghat, Muhammad, who had left his native
town many years ago in the course of a feud between the leading Tuareg
of the city and some neighbouring villages. He had become completely
Tuareg and had almost forgotten his Arabic. The man, however, I had
come to see was working on his garden, and I sent a friend whom I had
brought from Auderas, one Atagoom, of Ahodu’s group of Kel Tadek,
to find him. Eventually the man returned, and I became aware that I
had found the purest Tuareg type in Air.
PLATE 20
[Illustration: HUTS AT TOWAR SHOWING METHOD OF CONSTRUCTION]
[Illustration: HUTS AT TIMIA]
I went forward with the intention of greeting T’ekhmedin, but was
met with a look of disdainful inquiry which said more clearly and
forcibly than words could express, “Who the hell are you and what
the devil do you want?” He is one of the most remarkable men in Air,
and the greatest of all the guides to Ghat on the northern roads of
Air. Now barely forty years old, he has done the journey from Iferuan
to Ghat, which is some four hundred miles in a straight line on the
map, more than eighty times. He knows every stone and mark on all the
alternative tracks over this terrible desert, as well as one may know
the way from Hyde Park Corner to Piccadilly Circus. He is famous all
over the Central Sahara, among the hardest travellers of the world,
as the surest and toughest guide alive. His birth is noble, his spirit
uncompromising. He has fought against the French on many occasions: his
activities at Ghat in connection with the capture of the French post
of Janet are known to all who followed events in North Africa during
the war. He continued to fight against the French when Kaossen came
to Air, and was imprisoned after the termination of that revolution;
the fetter-marks round his ankles will endure until he dies. He had
lost all his property; the rags on his back were pitiful to see, but
his leather tobacco bottle and sheath knife, though almost falling to
pieces, were of a quality which betokened affluence in the past. When
I saw him he had nothing in the world but a small garden at Towar,
which he had been reduced from high estate to cultivate like a mere
slave. He seemed to be half starved. He was certainly over-worked,
trying to grow enough food to keep life in his wife and small boy. The
French at Agades have offered him pay to join their Camel Corps as
a guide, but T’ekhmedin would have none of them. I wanted him to
come with me as a guide, for his knowledge of the Central Sahara
would have been invaluable to me in my researches, but he refused to
come for pay. After I had broken the ice and explained my purpose
in desiring to see him, T’ekhmedin began to thaw, and eventually
became more affable. In time I learned to know him well, but in all
our relations he never modified his independent attitude. He said:
“I will come with you when my wife is provided for out of the
harvest from my garden, and when I have placed her in the hands of my
relations in T’imia. Then I will come with you for a month or for
a year, but only because I want to come, and not for pay: if I come,
I will go anywhere you want, but I will not come as your servant. You
may give me a present if you like; you must feed me because I am poor,
and give me a camel to ride, but I will not be paid for any service. I
will come only as your friend because I, _I_ myself, want to come.”
On a second trip to Towar I had occasion to nurse him when he had
fever. He was thus one of the few men I ever saw without the veil, and
as he is so typical of the pure Tuareg, I will copy the description
of his appearance which I recorded in my diary at the time. “On
reaching Towar I found the whole village laid low with malaria due
to the proximity of stagnant wells in the gardens on the edge of the
settlement. So I delivered a lecture on the desirability of moving the
huts further away, and set to work to dose T’ekhmedin with quinine,
the only drug I had with me. He was very bad, and had been ill ever
since he left me at Auderas ten days before. I persuaded him to come
away with me again; he came, but had a rotten time riding in the
heat of the sun, and arrived rather done up. Thanks to good food and
quinine he is better now. He is a handsome man, say six feet tall,
of slight build, with a small beard and clipped moustache which,
like his hair, is just steeled with grey. His domed forehead joins
a retreating skull running back to a point behind. He has heavy
eyebrow bones and the characteristic Libyan indentation between the
forehead and root of the nose, which from that point is straight
to the flat extremity. The nostrils are moderately flat and wide,
but thin. The lips are not at all everted, rather the reverse. The
upper lip is of the type which is very short, but in his case is not
unduly so. There is an indentation between the lower lip and chin,
which is very firm, very fine and very pointed. The cheek-bones are
prominent but not high, and from here, accentuating their prominence,
the outline of the face runs straight down to the chin. The ears are
small, thin and flat. The profile is somewhat prorhinous; it is not
at all prognathous. His hands and ankles are as slender as those of
a woman; his body and waist are also slender; as is the case among
all Tuareg, there is no superficial muscular development.”
T’ekhmedin’s colleagues on the north roads, Kelama, who is nearly
blind, and Sattaf, together with Efale, in the Eastern Desert, enjoy
enormous respect in Air and indeed among all Tuareg. As a race the
People of the Veil are all born to travel, but anyone among them who
has a specialist’s knowledge is as important as a great scientist
is in Europe. In general the topographical knowledge of Air and the
surrounding countries has declined since raiding ceased, for this
pastime was as much a sport as anything else. It is now confined to
the people of those areas which are not under European control, that
is, most of Tibesti, all the Fezzan and southern parts of Tripolitania
and the interior of the Spanish colony of the Rio de Oro. Some of the
exploits of the raiding bands from these areas sound so fantastic that
they would hardly be credited were they not established facts. The
Arab and Moorish tribes from Southern Morocco and from the Rio
de Oro, for instance, when they have finished cultivating their
scanty fields, turn out nearly every year for the especial purpose of
lifting camels from the salt caravans between Timbuctoo and Taodenit,
but the parties do not confine their operations to this area if they
miss their objective. They have, on several occasions, gone on until
they have found elsewhere a sufficient number of camels to make their
journey profitable. Thus they have come as far as Damergu and Tegama,
south of Agades, a journey from the Atlantic half-way across North
Africa and back. Once, with consummate humour, a band stole all
the camels of a French Camel Corps patrol in the Tahua area north
of Sokoto. These people usually start out in as large a body of men
as they reckon can water at the wells by the way, and break up into
small parties as soon as they have looted some camels, returning
home by different routes. Although they often lose a part of their
booty and suffer casualties at the hands of the French Camel Corps,
their tactics make them very hard to catch.
The Tebu and Tuareg from the Fezzan raid Kawar and Air. Their procedure
varies considerably, and it is impossible to know which way they
will come or return. One year a party from the north-east entered
Air by the western side and left in an E.S.E. direction. The raiding
season begins as soon as the rains have fallen, when there is plenty
of water all over the Southern Sahara even in the most inaccessible
places. Outlying watering-points which can rarely be visited are
their favourite haunts. The wireless stations at Agades and Bilma are
a serious handicap, for intercommunication enables the French Camel
patrols of different areas to obtain a start, and very often some idea
of the possible roads which the raiders are following. Yet even so
the two Camel Corps platoons in Air have let many bands slip through
their fingers. It is generally recognised as impossible to prevent a
raid reaching its objective; at the most the raiders can be followed
up and brought to action or forced to abandon their loot on the way
home. The latter politically is the end kept in view, for it exposes
the raiders to the ridicule of failure rather than the sympathy of
defeat. One of the great difficulties of defensive operations in the
deserts of the Territoires du Niger is the use of the Tirailleurs
Sénégalais as Camel Mounted Troops. The negro of the coast is not,
and never will be, a good camel-man, and his efficiency cannot compare
with that of the natives used by the French authorities in Southern
Algeria, where tribesmen who have been born and bred in the saddle
are enlisted as volunteers. Here, there is nothing to choose between
the capacity of the raider and his opponent.
The technique of raids is interesting. The size of the bodies
attacking Air must always be limited by the capacity of the outlying
watering-points, which, except in Damergu and Azawagh, are small. Bands
of as few as ten men sometimes operate; a raid of one hundred men is
considered large. They travel astonishing distances on practically
no food or water: a few dates and a little water serve them for
several days. If I were to record the periods of time for which
men have lived without water in the lands of the People of the
Veil, I would be accused of such mendacity that I will refrain
from risking my good name. I will only say that seventy-two hours
without water is an occurrence just sufficiently common not to pass
as unduly remarkable. Similarly the distances ridden by raiders are
fantastic. A hundred miles in the day have been covered by a band of
a few hard-pressed men. Individual performances are even better. A
messenger quite recently rode from Agades to In Gall in one day
and back the next on the same camel, which therefore covered not
less than one hundred and forty miles as the crow flies in forty
hours, and probably one hundred and sixty by road. Another man, on
a famous camel it is true, rode from the River of Agades near Akaraq
to Iferuan, a distance of not less than one hundred and sixty miles,
in just over twenty-four hours. The two messengers who brought the
news to Zinder in 1917, that the post of Agades was besieged, covered
over four hundred kilometres in under four days. And such instances
could be multiplied. A raiding party, however, will not usually
average more than thirty-five miles a day, and even so the hardship
is considerable if this rate has to be kept up for many days. The
bands are often made up of more men than camels, some of them in
turn having to walk until they can loot more mounts. The Tuareg on
raids are generally well-behaved towards each other. They do not
kill unless the looted tribe or village puts up a fight, for it is
an unwritten law among them that on ordinary raids, as opposed to
real warfare, only live-stock is taken. Houses are not destroyed and
villages are not burnt. This forbearance is, of course, largely due
to the fact that there is nothing of any weight worth removing, such
wealth as the Tuareg possess being principally in flocks and herds,
of which only the camels can readily be driven off. But secrecy is
essential, and when, therefore, a stray wanderer is met on the road
who might give warning of the arrival of a raiding party, he may be
made to accompany the robbers, or, if his presence is inconvenient,
he may have to be killed. The Tuareg do not capture each other as
slaves unless they are at war, though to steal someone’s slaves
is, of course, as legitimate as to steal his camels. Descents on
French patrols, posts, and tribes known to be engaged in assisting
them are considered legitimate, but they generally have had serious
consequences. For here more than raiding is involved—it is war. At
the end of last century raiding from Air was frequent: lifting camels
from the Aulimmiden had, in fact, become so common a pastime that
it was proscribed by the Holy Men, who decided that even though no
killing of Tuareg was taking place, the People of the Veil should leave
the People of the Veil alone and turn their attentions to the Tebu,
who were legitimate enemies. With the latter the Air Tuareg neither
give nor expect to receive mercy. Raiding eastward at the end of last
century became popular, but fraught with more serious consequences. On
one such occasion the expedition turned out so badly that Belkho’s
own people, the Igermadan, after successfully lifting camels and
taking many prisoners in Kawar, were virtually exterminated. They
were surprised at night in their over-confidence and massacred,
a reverse from which the tribe to this day has never recovered.
In his youth Ahodu accomplished some very successful raids in the
east. His greatest adventure was when he captured a big Arab caravan
bound from Murzuk to Bornu, some thirty years ago. He told the story
as follows, with Ali of Ghat sitting near him on the floor of my
hut. Now when a Tuareg tells a story he always draws on the sand
with his fingers to show the numbers of his camels and men and the
direction of his march, and when he counts in that way he marks the
units by little lines drawn with two or three fingers at a time till
he has reached ten, and then marks up a group of ten with a single
line to one side.
“That was nearly thirty years ago,” he said, and drew:
II II II II II +-------+
| I I |
II II III III | |
| I |
II III IIII +-------+
“I was one leader and Ula with the Ifadeyen people was the
other. There were” (rubbing out the first marks with a sweep of
the hand):
III III I
II I I I
II II II II II
III
(that is) “twenty-five of us and about I I I thirty of the Ifadeyen.
“First we found a group of camels, the ones we came for, half a day
on the Fashi side of Bilma. And some of the men went back with them
from here. They were afraid, but we went on. As I was the leader I
went too.
“Then we had news of a caravan of Arabs coming down the road from
Murzuk, but my men were afraid, for all the Arabs were supposed to have
rifles—they were only old stone guns [flint-locks]—and horses to
pursue us. We took counsel, and I agreed to go in and stampede the
horses, when my men would rush the caravan, which was camped in the
open under a dune. The dune had a little grass on it. [He then drew a
rough map of the battle-field on the sand.] So we hid for the night
behind another dune, and I crept in on the sleeping caravan and lay
still till dawn, behaving like a Tebu. In the cold before dawn my
men came up, but the Arabs saw them a little too soon and the alarm
spread. My men rushed the caravan all right, but one Arab got away on
his horse, barebacked, with a rifle, and nearly created a panic among
my men when he sat down to shoot at us from a hill. He only fired two
shots and they did no harm, but my men ran away till I showed them that
we had picked up the only other two guns of the caravan. Then my men
regained courage. We took two hundred laden camels with ‘malti’
[cotton stuff], tea and sugar, and we emptied even our waterskins to
fill them with sugar, and still so had to leave much on the ground.”
SELF. “What happened to the Arabs?”
AHODU. “A few were able to run away—the rest died.”
ALI. “Was that the caravan of Rufai el Ghati?”
AHODU. “Yes; why?”
ALI. “I knew the man: he was my friend: and were Muhammad el Seghir
and El Tunsi and Sheikh el Latif there?”[177]
AHODU. “Yes. I killed them myself, but there was a child . . .”
ALI. “. . . who was not killed but was found with his head all
covered with blood. He was sitting on the ground playing when someone
found him.”
AHODU. “Yes, it is so.”
ALI. “I was in Bornu then, waiting for that caravan. Ai! There was
dismay in Ghat when the news came there. It was you who did that! I
did not know till now. The boy was my sister’s son. His father was
her husband.”
AHODU. “Yes (relapsing into silence); and we also got another
caravan that time.”
SELF. “Will you come on a raid with me one day?”
AHODU (quite seriously). “Wallahi, anywhere; and my people will
come too, and many more, if you want.”
SELF. “But where shall we go?—there are no caravans now.”
AHODU. “Never mind, there are some fine female camels in Tibesti.”
It was their great sport and had its recognised rules. It kept their
men virile, but is finished now.
The essence of rapid travel by camel is lightness of equipment. It is
a mistake to suppose that the actual rate of progression on camels is
anything but very slow. It may come as a surprise to many to learn
that even riding camels rarely move out of a walk. They say in the
Sahara that it is bad for the camel to run. The riding camels of the
Tuareg are selected and tried beasts, but they are never, in fact,
trotted except for quite brief periods. The French camel patrols,
after many years of experience, are by regulation forbidden to move
out of a walk: the weight of equipment which they have to carry may
be a reason, but there must be more in it than that, for even raiding
parties follow the same practice. It is held that the fatigue of
man and beast consequent upon trotting is disproportionate to the
results achieved. But the walk of a camel is slow at any time; to
average 3·5 miles an hour over long distances is very good going,
while 2·5 with a baggage caravan is all that can be managed.
Where the raider has the advantage over any organised military body
engaged in chasing him is in the lightness of his load. The Tuareg
camel saddle weighs a few pounds only; the head-rope or bridle is
a simple cord without trappings: a small skin of water, a skin of
dates, a rifle and perhaps twenty to thirty rounds of ammunition
are the only serious additions to the rider’s own weight. But long
marches under these conditions are tiring, and scarcely anyone not
born to the saddle can survive ten to fourteen hours’ riding day
after day for hundreds of miles on a minimum diet. It is the habit
of the Tuareg, in Air and elsewhere as well, when they start on
such expeditions to procure a long length of stuff woven in the
Sudan and tie it round their bodies as support for the abdomen,
on which the motion of the camel imposes great strain. In Air the
stuff they use is rather like a bandage some four inches wide,
of unbleached and undyed cotton tissue; the material is similar to
that used for making up robes, for which purpose numerous strips are
sewn together and then dyed. These strips of cotton stuff are wound
several times tightly round the waist and then over the shoulders,
crossing on the breast and back.[178] The practice is particularly
interesting, because many of the Egyptian pictures of Libyans show the
belt and cross strapping. In referring to the dress of the Libyans,
who are often described as “cross-belted,” Bates[179] has made
a peculiarly apposite remark: “As seen on the Egyptian monuments,
the Libyan girdles were like some modern polo belts cut broader in the
back than in the front.” And the Tuareg bandages serve identically
the same purpose in similar circumstances, namely, during periods of
great physical strain on the stomach muscles. On the analogy of the
Tuareg practice, Bates is right in supposing that the Libyan method of
wearing the “belt” was to pass it several times round the body:
the end was then pushed “down between the body and the girdle,
and afterwards again brought up and tucked in.”
To own camels, and yet more camels, is the ultimate ambition of
every Tuareg. A man may be rich in donkeys, goats or sheep, or he
may have houses, gardens and slaves, but camels are the coveted
possessions. Therein the nomadic instinct obtrudes. When I found
T’ekhmedin at Towar, he possessed the few rags on his back, and a
garden which just kept him alive. He had no prospects of becoming
richer; there were no caravans to Ghat, by guiding which he might
earn his fees: the French he would not serve: his surplus garden
produce had no market. After I had known him a little while I gave
him a white cotton robe embroidered on the breast, of the fashion worn
by the Hausa, but not favoured in Air. One day not long afterwards I
met him and noticed that he was in his old rags once more. He became
confused and avoided me. He eventually begged my excuses and hoped
that I would not be hurt; he had sold the robe I had given him to
the Sultan of Agades, who had found the Southland fashion more to
his taste than a true Imajegh would have done. With the proceeds
of this deal, T’ekhmedin had bought a half-share in a young camel
which had gone to Bilma in charge of a friend with the great caravan
to fetch a load of salt. He became more cheerful as he explained. In
a few weeks if all went well he expected to have enough money to buy
a small camel of his own, and so build up his fortune once more. He
nearly wept with gratitude when he had done telling his story. It
seemed, I had been the means of rehabilitating him in the world of
men, a prospect which appeared only a short time before to be beyond
the range of possibility.
PLATE 21
[Illustration: CAMEL-BRANDS SEEN IN AIR.]
To a European all camels at first look much the same, but a few
weeks’ association with them enables one rapidly to differentiate
between the different breeds. They vary as much in build as they do
in colour. Camels of almost every African and some Arabian varieties
may, sooner or later, be seen in Air, but only two varieties properly
belong to the country or to the Tuareg of these parts. The tall,
sandy-fawn-coloured Tibesti camel, standing an immense height at the
shoulder, is much prized; the Ghati camel, reddish-fawn in colour,
is fairly common. The latter is short-legged with heavy stubby bones
and big foot-pads; he has a straight back, holds his head low, and
is capable of carrying immense loads over sandy country, but at a
slower pace than the Tebu animal, which is generally more of the riding
build. The western camel of Timbuctoo is represented by an animal with
a well-arched back, generally lighter-limbed and more graceful than
the Ghati sort. The Ahaggar camel is recognisable by his great height
and strength, and above all by his very shaggy coat with a long beard
and fluffy shoulders: he is usually dark in colour. The Maghrabi camel
also has very hairy shoulders, the colour varying from red-fawn to
very dark brown. The two types of camels belonging to the Air Tuareg
are both very distinctive. There is a great white camel and a smaller
grey or piebald animal. The white camel is said originally to have
belonged to the Kel Geres, to have been specially bred and brought by
them originally to the Southland. He has long flat withers and a round
hump; but either because the Kel Geres in recent years have lived in
the Southland, or for some other reason connected with their original
habitat, the white camel is a plain land animal and is almost useless
on rocky ground. He is consequently not very highly valued in Air.
The true Air camel is very peculiar. The species may be divided into
two categories, the grey and the piebald, the latter being perhaps
derived from a cross between the former and some other breed. The
Air grey is a sturdy and straight-backed animal with sloping quarters
and a long neck, which he holds rather low. He can carry a fair load
and negotiate any sort of ground. The colour varies from iron-grey
to brown-ash and is quite distinctive; the coat is either uniform
or speckled. Although the Tuareg say that the original stock is the
piebald, the pure-bred animal apparently has a uniform coat. The
“type animal” is called the Tegama camel, the iron-grey colour is
known as “ifurfurzan.” In the parti-coloured animal the markings
take the form of large patches of dark grey and white with sharp
edges, as if the skin had been painted, or of small patches giving a
dappled appearance, or of a combination of the two, or, more rarely, of
undefined patches merging into one another. Inter-breeding has produced
the red-fawn and white, and the brown and white animals. Though
very sturdy, they are light-boned and small-footed, but their short
legs and short sloping withers give them an agility which is quite
unbelievable in what the world has always regarded as an ungainly
animal. The eyes of these camels are sometimes pale blue and white,
a peculiarity which makes them look very strange. The breed is much
prized as a curiosity or freak outside Air.
Temajegh, like Arabic, has innumerable names for various types of
camels. The most valuable animal is the cow-camel which has calved
once; they are not used more than can be helped for long or very
strenuous work, because they are, on the whole, not so strong as
the males. They are rested as much as possible prior to, and after,
calving. If a cow-camel has calved on the road it is common to see
the small calf carried on the mother’s back until it is fit to run
alongside, which is within two or three days. Stud fees are unknown:
attempts are made as far as possible to avoid cross-breeding. A certain
Ahmadu of the Kel Tagei is known throughout Air as the possessor of
the finest herd of pure Tegama cow-camels in the mountains: they are
maintained exclusively for breeding purposes. These are some of the
commonest Temajegh names used in Air:
_Temajegh name._ _Meaning._
[180]Tefurfuz Grey and white piebald camel.
Adignas White.
Aberoq Dark grey.
Kadigi Thin.
Alletat “White belly.”
Banghi “One eye.”
Awina Blue (or black) and white-eyed camel.
Korurimi “The earless one.”
Tabzau White (but not very white) camel.
Tāurak Fawn.
Imusha White-mouthed.
Izarf Light grey.
Buzak White-footed.
Ajmellel Spotted white.
Kelbadu “Big belly.”
Agoiyam Tebu camel.
Camels are curiously delicate animals, as anyone who has had
anything to do with them will know to his cost. They lose condition
very quickly and mysteriously, and do not regain it easily. Camel
travelling implies a perpetual fruitless attempt to maintain their
condition by seeking to reconcile progress and pasturing. The ideal
is to give the beasts at least four hours’ grazing, which must not
be at night or in the heat of the day, when the camel is prone to
rest in the shade of a tree instead of feeding. At the same time,
when it is very hot it is neither good for man nor beast to march;
nor should the camel march all night either, when four hours’ rest
are very desirable. Lastly, it must be remembered that it is tiring
for camels to be on and off loaded more than once a day, since every
time they kneel or get up with a heavy burden they are subjected to a
considerable strain; it is consequently inadvisable to divide a march
into two parts. To reach a satisfactory compromise is difficult. So
long as not more than about twenty miles a day are being covered,
any system works well enough, but where long marches are necessary
there is no really satisfactory solution. The Tuareg himself usually
starts late in the morning and marches till dusk, when he off-loads;
he then drives his camels to pasture, leaving them out all night;
they are slowly collected after dawn, when they have again begun to
feed. The disadvantage from the European point of view is that there
is always some delay in finding the camels in the morning, as one or
two are sure to have strayed, nor is it always safe to leave camels
wandering about unguarded at night. The French Camel Corps patrols
and other Europeans usually prefer to start in the night and march
until high noon or the early afternoon. I have myself tried every
course, and with all its disadvantages finally adopted the Tuareg
system. To these complications must be added the consideration that
if a camel is watered it should be at noon, when the sun is hot,
in order to make him drink well. If there is no reason to anticipate
long waterless journeys, camels are watered every third day, but if
they are required to cross difficult tracts of desert, the intervals
must gradually be increased beforehand. Above all, the camel must
be made really thirsty prior to his final drink before the longest
waterless portion of the journey is attempted. The camel must start
almost bursting with the water in his belly.
It is generally more important for a camel not to miss a day’s
pasture than a day’s water. When the rains have fallen and
green vegetation is abundant, camels need not be watered for long
intervals. If they are not being worked they can go for weeks without
drinking. Camels will eat anything if put to it, from hard grass with
a straw like wire to any kind of tree or shrub; acacia thorns three and
four inches long appear to make no difference to his digestion. Pasture
is the most important factor on the march, for the animal is really
a fastidious feeder and requires plenty of variety.
The woes which afflict the camel are numerous. First and worst are
saddle sores, which rapidly become stinking and gangrenous. They
develop quickly from a slight rub or gall under the saddle, and often
end by infecting the bones of the spine or ribs. They discharge a
thick offensive pus either through the sore or under the skin. In
treating them the first thing to do is to open the wound and let
the pus escape, after which the best cure, I found as others have
discovered, is to wash the wound with a strong solution of permanganate
of potash. Thereafter an iodoform dressing is almost miraculous in its
quick-healing properties, as it keeps away the flies, and consequently
obviates maggots and re-infection. The great black crows in Air have
an odious habit of sitting on the backs of camels and pecking at these
sores. They do terrible damage with their long powerful beaks. The
only way to keep them off is to tie a pair of crow’s wings to the
hair on the hump of the camel. The remedy is sovereign, as I learnt
by experience, but I am at a loss to explain the psychological process
governing the action of the live crows which are thus scared away.
Apart from deaths due to eating poisonous plants, which are far more
numerous in the Southland than in Air, the highest mortality among
camels in Air comes from a disease known locally as “blood in the
head.” It is a form of pernicious apoplexy or congestion of blood in
the head. The early symptoms are hard to observe unless one happens to
be born a Tuareg. As the attack develops the camel becomes dazed and
lies in the sun with rather a glassy stare, instead of feeding. Later
it runs about, hitting its head against trees, and finally falls to the
ground in contortions, dying very rapidly of a stroke. The disease is
especially common after the rains, when the pasture is rich or when
the animals are idle, recovering condition. If they are left in the
Southland for the whole year, the rich feeding there aggravates the
incidence of the disease. An attack may be staved off by the remedy,
which is also used for dealing with refractory animals, namely, of
putting tobacco snuff in their eyes. This apparently cruel treatment is
singularly efficacious, and I can only suppose that the irritation or
smarting has the effect of a stimulant which draws or dispels the blood
pressure. When the disease is more advanced, resort has to be had to
blood-letting; the jugular artery is cut a span below the left ear and
blood is drawn to an amount which will fill three cup-shaped hollows
in the ground made by removing a double handful of sand or earth
from each. The blood is seen at first to flow very dark in colour;
as it gradually resumes its normal hue, the hæmorrhage is stopped
by taking a tuft of hair, dipping it into the coagulated blood and
inserting it in the cut. As soon as a clot is formed the incision
is covered with sand. The whole proceeding sounds a fantastically
imprudent and septic way of dealing with an arterial hæmorrhage,
but it works most successfully. If camels are sickening for disease,
and especially for “blood in the head,” which may sometimes be
recognised by the premonitory symptom of very hard, dry droppings,
they are dosed with a mixture made of tobacco leaf, onion, and the
seed of grain called “Araruf,” containing a pungent oil apparently
of the mustard variety. These ingredients are pounded up, mixed with
about a gallon of water and poured down the camel’s throat.
Firing is resorted to for various ills, especially around bad sores
to prevent them from spreading and to induce healing. A cow is very
often fired across the flanks after calving, when she is also given
a goatskin-full of millet and water “to fill up the empty space
in her belly.” Firing round the breast pad is carried out when
the animal is suffering from the disease which causes the pad to
split. Mange is fairly frequent, and is treated with a mixture of oil
and ashes. The worst disease of all is called “Tara,” for which
there is said to be no cure: the symptoms are a wasting of the legs,
and eventual death from debility and breakage of the bones: luckily
I had no experience of the malady, which is said to be infectious or
contagious. The Tuareg say that there is no reason for its coming,
but that Allah sometimes unaccountably sends it.
The Tuareg empiric remedies, other than those described, are not
interesting except in their treatment of gangrenous wounds. When they
have washed the wound with a lotion of female camel urine or brewed
from one of several plants which seem to have remarkably little effect,
they cover the exposed flesh with a powder of crumbled donkey droppings
dried in the sun. I was appalled at the danger of septic infection
when I first saw the practice, but soon discovered that the powder,
which had, I supposed, become sterilised in the sun, was a really
effectual method of preventing the great harm caused by flies settling
on the wound. I can now confidently recommend this practice.
Camels, of course, are branded with tribal marks, a complete study
of which would be worth making. Each mark has its own name, and many
of them are derived from certain known symbols or perhaps letters,
all of which call for investigation in connection with marks from
other parts of Africa. Some of the principal brands in Air are given
in Plate 21, the most interesting being the mark of the Ghati Tuareg
(Azger); it is called the Hatita, after the name of the famous leader
of Barth’s day.
This necessarily brief note on the animal which is so intimately
bound up with the life of the People of the Veil, not to say their
very existence, may be supplemented by some mention of the other
domestic animals of Air.
In Nigeria the best horses are described as Asben horses; yet in Air
there is hardly a horse to be seen. The explanation is presumably
that the Tuareg bring, or used to bring, the best horses for sale in
Hausaland; but they were not necessarily bred in Air. The supposition
is reasonable, for the Tuareg north of Sokoto, and especially the
Aulimmiden, west of Air, possess a number of horses which are renowned
for their hardiness, and of course all Tuareg in the Southland are
called Asbenawa. In Air the best of the few horses are, with an
even lesser show of logic, described as Bagezan horses; but there
are no horses in the mountains. The tracks are far too rough for
there ever at any time to have been a considerable number of horses
in the hills. I can offer no explanation of the name. Air is not a
horse-breeding country. The pasture is too rough even after the rains,
while during the dry season the only green stuff is on the trees,
which, even if it were good fodder for horses, could only be reached
by animals of the build of camels. The few horses which I saw in Air
belonged to the Sultan at Agades and to the Añastafidet. They were
small and wiry but rather nondescript, a variable cross of Arab and
Sudanese blood; in no case could they be said to represent an “Air
breed.” The Tuareg say the horse came to Air from the north, and
in point of fact all those I saw bore a certain resemblance to the
little animals of Tripolitania. There are probably not more than 100
horses in Air altogether to-day. Water is far too scarce a commodity
for horses to be much used for travelling. Those in the mountains
are never watered more than once a day, and can easily do three days
between drinking without undue fatigue.
The other domestic animals are donkeys, cattle, sheep, goats, dogs and
a few Hausa cats. Falconry is not a pastime in Air. The cattle come
from the south; they are of the humped and ordinary varieties. The
bulls are used for drawing water from the garden irrigation wells;
cows are more scarce. Before the war the Tuareg used to carry on an
active trade in cattle, buying from the Fulani in Damergu and selling
to the people of Ghat and the Fezzan. Incredible as it may seem,
cattle used to be driven over the roads to Ghat after the rains, and
do as much as four and five days without water. The mortality must have
been considerable, but their cheapness in the Southland made the trade
profitable. It is curious how all the animals in Air, including man,
seem to get used to going without water for long periods. Oxen are
used to a certain extent as pack animals both in Air and Damergu;
Barth started his journey from Northern Air to Agades on an ox;
he considered this mount indifferent as a means of transport, for
he fell off and nearly broke his compass. The association of cattle
with a well-watered country where they can drink every day must be
dismissed in the Sahara, and this disposes of one of the difficulties
surrounding the problem of the ox-drawn chariots of the Garamantes
which so exercised Duveyrier;[181] loaded oxen can march comfortably
with water only every third day.
The donkey is very nearly as good a performer in the desert as the
camel. In austerity of diet he is better, being less fastidious
about pasture and quite as capable of doing four and five days in
cold weather, between wells. But his pace is even slower than that of
the camel, and his maximum load should not exceed 100 lbs. Curiously
enough, donkeys suffer from the same disease as camels after the rains:
they get “blood in the head,” but in their case a treatment of
snuff in the eyes is said to be useless. They have to be bled by
making an incision with a curious bent iron instrument in the roof
of the mouth above the lower molars. The operation looks ridiculous,
but the donkey is always a humorous beast. The ones in Air and nearly
all those in the Southland are small grey animals, standing not more
than four feet from the ground, with straight knife-edged backs. I
saw none of the large white donkeys of Egypt. Near T’imia and in
the north-eastern parts of Air there are a number of wild donkeys,
roaming unbroken and unherded. They are the descendants of domestic
donkeys driven out to propagate and find their own livelihood by
certain tribes who claim them when captured in their own areas. These
animals, like the gazelle of the country, exist on pasture alone, for
they often encounter no open water to drink for ten months of the year.
The commonest domestic animals are the sheep and goats. Every village
and tribe has large herds. After the camels they constitute the
principal wealth of the people and do exceedingly well. The sheep
are all of the gaunt wire-haired variety without woollen fleeces,
resembling goats. The latter provide most of the milk in the villages,
and vary in colour from white to black, with every intermediate shade
of brown and type of marking. Curiously enough, none of the Tuareg
of Air, and, I believe, none of the other groups, either spin the
hair of goats or the wool of their own camels. A good sheep in 1922
could be bought for six to seven and a goat for four to five silver
francs. Camels ranged between £5 and £12 a head.
The number of domestic animals in Air, hard and barren as the country
seems to be, is surprisingly large. In a rough classifying census of
the Tuareg of Air, including only a few tribes in the Southland and
not counting either the Kel Geres or Aulimmiden, Jean[182] in 1904
estimated (Column I) the numbers as follows:
I. II. III. IV.
Camels 20,150 20,000 60,000 25,000
Horses 554 600 — 100
Cattle 2,491 2,600 — 1,000
Donkeys 2,840 3,000 — 2,500
Sheep and Goats 51,300 45,000 400,000 450,000
The figures in Column II are Chudeau’s[183] estimate of 1909,
while those in Column III were compiled by another authority: those
in Column IV are my present estimate. There is little doubt that the
number of camels in Air before the war was grossly under-estimated
by the early authorities. From fear of taxation and requisition the
Tuareg will resort to every device to conceal their possessions,
and especially the number of their camels. The same applies to their
sheep and goats. In 1913 the number of camels in Air was put down at
60,000, which then was probably a reasonable figure. The herds were
seriously depleted by the requisitions made for the expeditions of
1913-14 to Tibesti, when not less than 23,000 camels were taken,
few of which ever returned to the country. This was certainly one
of the principal grievances which led to the 1917 revolution. During
the operations of 1917-18 the herds were further diminished, and have
only recently again begun to increase at a rate which is bound to be
slow when it is realised that a camel cannot be worked at all till it
is over three years old, and ought not to be worked till it is five,
while from seven years onward it is at its prime for only about five
years. Nowadays there are probably not more than about 25,000 camels
in Air; the sheep and goats, however, have once more reached their
pre-war figure, which must have been nearly half a million.[184]
The last domestic animals worth mentioning are the dogs, of a type
usually resembling inferior Arabian gazelle hounds, with short hair,
often brown in colour, or with the brown or liver-and-white markings
like foxhounds. The “pi” dog, which is so common in the north of
Africa, I never saw in Air. Dogs are interesting owing to the friendly
way in which they are treated by the Tuareg; they are much more
the companions of man than is usual among Moslems, a characteristic
which has probably survived from pre-Moslem days. Duveyrier refers
to three types of dog among the Tuareg: a greyhound (_lévrier_),
a long-haired Arab dog which is very rare, and a short-haired cross
from these two. The latter appears to be the domestic dog in Air.[185]
Chickens are common and are eaten. In this the southern Tuareg differ
from the Tuareg of the north, among whom Duveyrier specifically states
that chickens, other birds and eggs are prohibited as food.[186]
But all domestic animals sink into insignificance in comparison with
the camel, whose rôle is so outstanding in the nomadic life of the
Tuareg that one wonders how the inhabitants of the Sahara can have
lived before the advent of this animal, which is usually supposed to
have come from the East at a comparatively late date in history.
The camel in Africa offers a most interesting historical problem around
which there has been much inconclusive scientific dispute. The camel
does not appear on Egyptian monuments before the Saitic period, and is
not mentioned as living in Africa either by Herodotus or by Sallust,
when the horse and probably the donkey were the ordinary means of
transport of the nomads. It is fairly clear that the Carthaginians
did not use camels, or we should certainly have found some reference
to the animal in the accounts of the Punic or Jugurthine wars. It is
said by so eminent an authority as Basset[187] that none of the Berber
dialects contain any names for the camel which cannot be traced to
Arabic origins, but this generalisation is also disputed. Sallust[188]
says the Romans first saw a camel when they fought Mithridates at
Rhyndacus, but Plutarch says it was at the battle of Magnesia in _c._
190 B.C. The first text mentioning camels in Africa is in the account
of the fighting with Juba, when Cæsar[189] captured twenty-two on
the Zeta. A camel figures on a coin attributed either to L. Lollius
Palicanus, a prefect of Cyrenaica under Augustus, or alternatively
to L. Lollius, a lieutenant of Pompey,[190] but the first mention of
camels in any large numbers is during the Empire, when in the late
fourth century A.D. the general Romanus requisitioned 4000 animals
for transport purposes from the inhabitants of Leptis Magna.[191]
Other sources, including sculptures and texts of this period from now
on, confirm their frequency, and by the time Corippus was writing the
camel was the normal means of transport in the interior. The silence of
Pliny[192] the Elder is valuable, if negative, evidence for Africa, as
he mentions camels in Bactria and Arabia, and speaks of the East as the
home of this animal. He knows nothing of them apparently in Africa. It
is on such evidence that it has been supposed that camels were first
introduced into Cyrenaica[193] from Sinai and Arabia. The conclusion
would be more readily acceptable were it not for the unfortunate
discoveries of camel skeletons associated with evidence of human
industry of the Pleistocene period in more than one palæolithic site
in North Africa.[194] In rock drawings the camel, of course, figures
largely; these glyphs may not be of extreme antiquity, but they are
quite possibly prior to the earliest classical references. It has been
said that in really early rock drawings the camel is not represented,
but neither has any complete catalogue of the drawings yet been made,
nor has any conclusive scheme of dating been compiled. The question
remains undecided, for although the camel was rare on the coast in
early historical times, there is no evidence that it was not used more
extensively in the interior. It is difficult consequently to discuss
the question of early transport methods in the Sahara, of which I
would only say that conditions of water supply have apparently for
several thousand years been much as they certainly were throughout
historical and modern times. An interesting theory has lately been
advanced that there is an African and an Eastern species of camel
distinguished by the peculiarity that some camels have one and some
two canine teeth on each side of the upper jaw.
In the absence of any conclusive evidence it is safest to assume,
as do most authorities, that the camel was not common in North Africa
till as late as the second century A.D.
Gsell[195] makes an interesting suggestion that “La prospérité
de la Tripolitaine prit certainement un grand essor sous la dynastie
des Sévères, dont le chef était originaire de Leptis Magna. Ce fut
à cette époque que Rome mit des garnisons dans les oases situées
sur les routes du Soudan, ce qui favorisa évidemment le commerce des
caravanes. Peut-être le développement du trafic trans-saharien fit
alors adopter définitivement l’usage du chameau.” The problem of
what transport was used before this period is only in part answered
by Herodotus,[196] who tells us that the Garamantes harnessed
oxen to carts, a statement which is confirmed from other sources,
which add that cattle were used as beasts of burden as well. Whether
wheeled vehicles ever reached Air is doubtful,[197] but the use of the
pack-ox there continues as it does in the south. Whatever the means of
transport which they favoured in their original northern homes, the
Tuareg were already using camels when they reached Air. Dissociation
of the Tuareg from his camel is difficult to conceive, since his life
to-day as a nomad is so intimately bound up with the animal, which
in turn has served so strongly to maintain his nomadic instinct. Of
all animals it alone enables the Tuareg to remain to a great extent
independent of his physical surroundings. Neither oxen nor donkeys
could do so to the same extent.
The historical and anthropological aspect of the introduction of the
ox and camel into Africa, and the identification of the races with
which these animals were associated, are questions which concern
the general story of North Africa rather than that of the Tuareg in
particular. Fundamentally the Tuareg remains the pure nomad even when
his habitat has changed and circumstances have obliged him to settle
in villages or on the land. In Air all the truest nomads inhabit the
Talak plain and the N.W. of the plateau, with the one great exception
of the Ifadyen tribe, which during the last generation has moved
south to Azawagh and Tegama. The true nomads have no fixed centres
of permanent habitation whatsoever, thereby differing considerably
from many of the purest Arabian nomads. But, unlike the latter again,
they do not migrate very far afield; their winter and summer pastures
are usually not very distant from each other. The only exception that
I know to this rule is the case of some of the Ahaggaren, who send
their herds to graze as far afield as the Adghar n’Ifoghas[198]
and at times Damergu.[199]
PLATE 22
[Illustration: 1. Ornamentation on shields.
2. Clay cooking pot.
3. Clay water pot.
4. Axe.
5. Adze.
6. Drum: calabash in a bowl.
7. Drum: millet mortar.]
For many months of the year after the rains the true nomads do not even
trouble to cluster round a group of wells; living on the milk of their
camels and goats, they dispense with water for weeks on end. So long
as their camels are only pasturing and the fodder is green they do not
require to be watered. They are therefore able to live many days from
the nearest wells. In such conditions water is a luxury, for it entails
long marches and is not essential to man or beast. In South-eastern
Air I came across a small party of Kel Takrizat, who had wandered some
distance away from their usual grounds in North-western Air, to an area
which had been uninhabited since the war. I was riding out from Tabello
on the upper Beughqot valley to look for an old village site of which
I had heard. Neither my companion, Alwali, nor I had any baggage,
and we were short of water, as the skin I carried was leaky. For a
mere two days’ journey Alwali had not thought it worth while to
bring any food for himself except a small skin of millet meal milk,
which he had finished early the first afternoon. In the evening we
entered a wide valley known as Tsabba,[200] where we saw a number of
camels pasturing. We discovered that they belonged to a charming man
called Ahmadu ag Musa. The valley was about miles broad from lip to
lip, very green and full of a veitch-like plant called “Alwat,”
which contains much moisture. The bottom under the steep sides lay
some 100 feet below the level of the plain, which was covered with
round basalt boulders wherever there were not hillocks of bare rock
rising above it. It is a very arid country looking out towards the
Eastern Desert, where the last rocks of Air are swallowed up in sand
some thirty miles further on. Ahmadu’s camp consisted of a few mats
spread under two or three little trees. As we reached it he came out
to meet us. When he found out who we were, he asked me to spend the
night with him; and this, having at the time intermittent fever which
was due that evening, I willingly agreed to do, provided he could let
me have some water. He regretted that he had no water, as he had not
been near a well for three weeks, but his men went to fetch milk. I
had barely dismounted and agreed to stay when a man ran up with a mat
for me to sit on and a bowl of sour milk to drink. Among the Tuareg,
if a man comes as a guest his host is personally responsible for
his guest’s life, camels and property, so a slave unsaddled my two
camels and hobbled them in the usual way by tying the two fore fetlocks
together with the short hobble rope which everyone carries. My animals
were driven off to feed with Ahmadu’s herd of piebald cow camels. I
thought at first it was part of the famous Tegama herd of Ahmadu of
the Kel Tagei, but it turned out to be another Ahmadu.
I met him only that once, and for a few moments two days later
at Tabello. I have the pleasantest recollections of a great
gentleman. We sat talking of the impending departure of the salt
caravan for Bilma. The sun set slowly, and, as the light grew less,
the cruel gleam left the basalt and granite of the plateau beyond
the eastern lip of the valley. The rocks ceased to look metallic
in the dance of the hot air, and became soft red and purple in the
green-blue sky. Here and there white sand from the outer desert had
been washed up against the hillocks. Mount Gorset, with one slope
inundated by the sand flood, lay just north of the valley where
we sat surrounded by acacia bushes and “Alwat.” The wind had
fallen. More and more food was brought for us to eat, all of it of
the sort on which the true nomad lives. Cheese, sweet and sour milk,
curdled milk, whey water, some cakes of baked burr-grass seed and
a very little millet. We sat down to eat; they thought I wanted to
eat alone at first, but became more friendly when they saw that some
white men were only human like themselves. A pot of cooked millet
meal was set down in the middle; luckily they had added salt to
the porridge. Each man in turn ate a mouthful from the big wooden
spoon and handed it on to his neighbour. I ate little, having fever,
but drank much milk, both sweet and sour. The former arrived during
the meal, warm and fresh from the camel. It is best quite fresh;
when it gets cold in the night it is good too, but becomes rather
salt and thin to the taste. We went on eating slowly in the evening,
and suddenly night came with a greenish light in the west behind our
backs. Milk was left for me to drink during the night; a slave was
told to fill my skin with millet meal and milk for the next day. We
went on talking, and then the snuff-box was passed round. The Tuareg
in Air do not smoke: their only vice, in the austere life they lead,
is to take snuff, when they can get it, or to chew green tobacco mixed
with a little saltpetre to bring out the taste. The tobacco and snuff
are traded from the Southland: the saltpetre is found in Air, and is
also used in cooking, for they say that a pinch in the stew-pot makes
the meat cook in half the usual time. Presently I turned over to go
to sleep on Ahmadu’s mat, in a blanket which I had brought. He and
Alwali went on talking far into the night, for they were old friends:
Alwali had travelled with him when he was a boy many years ago.
I thought of how very happy these nomads were. They have no possessions
to speak of: a few mats, the clothes they wear, some water-skins, some
camel trappings, a few weapons, some gourds and bowls, a cooking-pot
or two and their camels. They have no routine of life, and no
cares except to wonder if a raiding party will or will not happen on
them. Even in their normal centres where their tribes are living more
or less permanently they often have neither tents nor covering. At
the best their tent is a leather roof made of two or three ox skins
carried on a few poles, with brushwood laid across so that the top is
dome-shaped. The sides are enclosed with vertical mats, and inside,
if they are rich, they have a bed—two poles supported on four forked
sticks stuck in the ground, with six transverse poles overlaid with
stiff mats, woven of “Afaza” grass and strips of leather. On
this bed, which is perhaps eight feet square, the whole family sleeps
during the rains. At other times they sleep anywhere, on a mat on the
ground. Their smaller possessions are carried in a leather sack of
tanned goatskins, dyed and ornamented with fringes. All the belongings
of a rich family could be loaded on one, certainly on two camels. So
they move about looking for pasture. They are independent of water;
their camels and goats provide both food and drink, the grasses of the
field a change of diet; a slaughtered sheep or millet porridge is their
luxury. When they want a fire they kindle it by rubbing a small green
stick cut about the size of, and sharpened like, a pencil on a dry
stick; the dust and fibre rubbed off the dry wood collect at one end
of the channel which has been rubbed, and when the friction is enough,
ignites. They do not even require flint and steel. I am sure they
must be very happy, for they want so little and could have so much
when the value of their herds often runs into thousands of pounds,
but they prefer the freedom of the open world. They are even envied
by the village dwellers, whose sole ambition is to make enough money
to buy camels and live in the same way as their wandering kinsmen.
[Footnote 175: This name would perhaps be more correctly written Teouar
for the “o” is pronounced as if with a London Cockney accent.]
[Footnote 176: Plate 20.]
[Footnote 177: For certain reasons the names are fictitious.]
[Footnote 178: See rock drawing at T’imia, Plate 40.]
[Footnote 179: Bates, _op. cit._, p. 126, and Figs. 17, 20 and 24,
where the belt and cross are plainly shown.]
[Footnote 180: The initial “T” represents a feminine form.]
[Footnote 181: _Vide infra_, Chap. X.]
[Footnote 182: Jean, _op. cit._, Chap. XIII.]
[Footnote 183: Chudeau, _op. cit._, _Sahara Soudanais_, pp. 71-2.]
[Footnote 184: It must be remembered that since the evacuation of
1918 many of these animals are with their owners in Southern Air,
Damergu, and the south, pending a return to normal conditions.]
[Footnote 185: Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 234.]
[Footnote 186: _Ibid._, p. 401, _et infra_, Chap. XVIII.]
[Footnote 187: Basset, in the _Actes du XIVme Congrès des
Orientalistes_, II. p. 69 _et seq._]
[Footnote 188: _Apud_ Plutarchus, _Lucullus_, XI. 10.]
[Footnote 189: _De Bello Africano_, LXVIII. 4.]
[Footnote 190: Tissot, _Géographie Comparée de la Province Romaine
d’Afrique_. Paris, 1884-8. Vol. I. p. 350.]
[Footnote 191: _Ammianus Marcellinus_ XXVIII. 6. 5, and others.]
[Footnote 192: _Pliny_, VIII. 67.Cf. _Strabo_, XVII. 1. 45.]
[Footnote 193: Cf. _Strabo_, XVII. 1. 45.]
[Footnote 194: References in Gsell, _op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 102
and 105.]
[Footnote 195: Gsell, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 60, note 8.]
[Footnote 196: Herodotus, IV. 183.]
[Footnote 197: _Vide infra_, Chap. X.]
[Footnote 198: Mission Cortier, _D’une rive à l’autre du Sahara_,
p. 355.]
[Footnote 199: Observation of the author in Damergu in December 1922.]
[Footnote 200: The Tesabba valley of the Cortier map. It runs into
the Afasas valley, which joins the Beughqot valley further down.]
CHAPTER VII
TRADE AND OCCUPATIONS
The Auderas country, still almost in Tegama, is far less interesting
ethnically than the north or east. The old permanent habitations in
the area are less characteristic of the Tuareg; there are hardly any
inscriptions or rock drawings, with the exception of the large group
at T’in Wana, and a few scattered about elsewhere. Owing to the many
pools and “eresan”[201] there are no deep wells. At Auderas itself
there are some ruined stone-built dwellings of the later type, but a
few earlier examples may be seen both there and at Abattul, a village
about two miles to the N.E. in the same basin of valleys. A famous
mosque was founded there by Muhammad Abd el Kerim el Baghdadi. Abattul
village lies between the domed peaks of Faken[202] and Mt. Abattul,
which is itself a spur of Mount Todra. Behind, and between them, a
valley and rough track run north to Mount Dogam. Just south of the
village are the valleys which converge from Todra and Faken on the
main Auderas basin. From Auderas Mount Faken is a prominent object on
the northern horizon with a rounded top and vertical black sides which
look unscalable. Almost at the foot of Faken on the Abattul side is
a pool in a deep gorge, usually containing water enough to swim in
most of the year. The path from Auderas to Abattul is very rough,
as it crosses and re-crosses several small valleys where gazelle,
some wild pig, and occasionally monkeys are to be found. Abattul
village lies just under a low white cliff in which there are a few
caves and many smaller holes inhabited by owls and night birds. It
was the first settlement in the basin and was only gradually abandoned
as the country became less subject to raids and war. The inhabitants
had settled in this place so that they could easily take refuge in
the inaccessible crags of Mount Todra just behind their village, in
time of raids. Even nowadays the folk from Auderas have to resort to
the mountain from time to time, but not so often as to prevent them
from living further away. The stone mosque at Abattul is one of the
few in Air which is still used for prayer.[203]
The main road from Auderas to Northern Air runs over very rocky
ground to a plain west of Faken, bordered by two valleys on the
east and by low hills on the west side. The latter continue for some
distance along the valley of Auderas until it eventually reaches the
foothills of Air on the Talak plain. The different groups of hills are
known by names which the Itesan sub-tribes adopted and retained.[204]
The plain north of Agades is the Erarar n’Dendemu of Barth:[205] it
contains El Baghdadi’s place of prayer mentioned by the traveller,
lying under a small hill. Turning left here into more broken country
by a small tributary the track enters the Ighaghrar valley, which
descends from the Gissat and T’Sidderak hills.[206]
At the head of the basin a steep drop leads into a valley flowing north
between Mount Bila to the west and Mount Dogam to the east. This drop,
the descent of Inzerak, is equivalent to the ascent south of Auderas
at T’inien on to the central platform of the plateau. It leads into
one of the most beautiful valleys in Air, called Assada, the head
of which, at right angles to its main direction, is formed by small
ravines draining Mount Dogam. It runs along the eastern foot of Bila
and falls into Anu Maqaran, the central basin of Air. When we came
into Assada there were two or three pools near the foot of Inzerak;
further up the T’ighummar tributary lay a small village of stone
houses with a deep well and mosque on an alternative loop road from
Auderas branching off at the place of prayer of El Baghdadi. This
alternative track was the one taken by Barth in 1850; it debouches
into the Tegidda valley, a tributary of the Assada from the north,
at Aureran well.
I camped in Assada three times in all, twice near the foot of
the descent and once a mile or so further down at the wells
of Tamenzaret,[207] which are temporary and require to be dug
again every year. The deep narrow valley with its sandy bed and
immense trees growing in the thick vegetation on both banks was
magnificent. Towering up on either side the red mountains framed,
in a cleft towards the east, the cone of Dogam seated on a pedestal
of black lava and basalt. Most of the Dogam massif is so rough as to
be impassable. It seems to be a volcanic intrusion in the Todra group,
to which it really belongs. I suspect that the basalt boulders covering
the plain north and south of Auderas, and perhaps certain features
of Todra itself, owe their origin to the Dogam activity. But Bila
is hardly less imposing: on the Assada side it presents a wall of
vivid red rock. The fine clean colours of dawn on the first morning
I saw the mountains against a cold blue sky offered the most lovely
spectacle I saw in all Air.
The Assada and T’ighummar valleys are inhabited by a northern section
of the Kel Nugguru, who pasture their goats and camels there, and owe
allegiance to Ahodu of Auderas. There are a few ruined stone houses
below Tamenzaret and the remains of a mosque at the old deep well of
Aureran, where the main road divides. From here one branch proceeds
north past another ruined settlement to the Arwa Mellen valley and
mountain, the other turns east towards the upper part of the Anu
Maqaran basin. I took the latter road to T’imia. It crossed several
broad valley beds flowing northwards from Dogam, notably the Bacos,
where there is a village and palm grove, and the Elazzas not far from
where they fall into Anu Maqaran. The road I have had occasion to
mention as running from Agades by the Ara valley over the shoulder
of Dogam descends from the Central massif by Bacos or Elazzas. The
latter corresponds to the Ara on the other side of the Dogam pass. By
these two the Todra-Dogam group is divided from Bagezan.
Near its junction with the main Anu Maqaran valley, the Elazzas is
a broad bed between low rocky banks. At a certain point where it
crosses a ridge of rock large quantities of water are held up in the
sand. The remains of a recent village with a few date palms appear on
the site. The rocks in the neighbourhood bear a few rude pictures, but
the ruins, a few round pedestal foundations of loose stones some 15-20
feet in diameter and 2-3 feet high, on which reed huts used to stand,
are uninteresting. Bila from here has the appearance of a long flat
ridge, in pleasant contrast to the isolated peaks of Aggata and Arwa in
the north, or the confused mass of Bagezan to the south and south-east.
The upper part of the Anu Maqaran valley where the Bagezan and the
Agalak mountains at the western side of the T’imia massif approach
one another is called Abarakan. The road passes a large cemetery and
the valley narrows between high hills with bare sides until a big fork
is reached: one valley goes north to T’imia village, the other south,
emerging on the central plateau east of the Bagezan mountains.
T’imia village is a veritable mountain fastness. The Agalak-T’imia
massif was evidently highly volcanic, for a great flow of basalt
overlying pink granite boulders has taken place along the valley
towards Abarakan. The track climbs steadily over the broken lava
stream. The going is rough. Then suddenly the track seems to end
altogether below an overhanging cliff of lava some 30 feet high lying
right across the bed of the ravine. We reached this point and found
the men of T’imia had come down to meet us in order to help our
camels to negotiate the path which follows a narrow crevasse in one
side of the cliff. The cleft is so narrow that a camel with a bulky
load cannot pass at all; it is so steep that the poor animals were
forced to proceed in a series of ungainly lurches or jumps. Above
the cliff the valley broadens out again, and where two small side
valleys enter it lies the modern village of T’imia.
PLATE 23
[Illustration: TIMIA GORGE]
[Illustration: TIMIA GORGE: PINK GRANITE TO LEFT, BLACK BASALT
TO RIGHT]
This settlement of Kel Owi nobles is very different from the servile
Auderas. The parentage of these Kel Owi may be obscure and mixed, but
their physique, the general cleanliness of the place and the neatness
of their domed huts stamp them as nobles. The dwellings stand grouped
in compounds, or sometimes as single huts, scattered between a row of
gardens with irrigation wells, and the slope of a hill covered with
huge boulders. In one of the smaller side valleys is a large grove
of date palms with most of the gardens, near the site of the older
village, a collection of rectangular masonry houses in ruins, and round
hut sites marked by a ring of stones and a hearth. The little mosque
of stone and mud construction lies between the old and new villages,
but it was desecrated by the French soldiers and is no longer used. A
matting shelter and compound in the new settlement serve to-day both
for a place of prayer and a school, presided over by the ’alim
’Umbellu. Though over sixty he still works daily in his garden
in the intervals of teaching the children of the village. Fugda,
chief of T’imia, is one of the cleverest men in Air. Under the
guidance of these two men the community has prospered. The villagers
are enterprising. In the changing conditions of things they are
an exception to the usual rule, for the men combine caravaning and
trading on a large scale with gardening and date cultivation, without
the help of any Imghad. When we came this way some of their camels were
fattening in Abarakan ready to go to Bilma with the annual salt caravan
in charge of a selected party of men. Another herd of some 100 head
was going to Damergu to fetch millet for sale to the French post at
Agades, and later I met yet another drove in Assada going south from
Iferuan by way of Auderas to fetch more grain for sale in Northern
Air after working on transport duties in Nigeria for the winter.
The life of the camel-owning Tuareg may be said to centre round
the autumn salt caravan, which all the best camels accompany. It
usually leaves in October, starting from Tabello[208] in the upper
Beughqot valley, where parties from all over Air, Damergu and the
Southland rendezvous in order to start together. Since the war these
caravans have been comparatively small, but even during the last few
years they have numbered 5000 camels. Ever since the occupation of
Agades by the French, the Camel Corps has been turned out to guard
the concentration and escort the caravan across the desert, for so
valuable a congregation of camels might any year, as it sometimes
did in the past, prove an irresistible temptation for raiders. The
largest caravan ever escorted reached the fantastic total of over
30,000 camels. The caravan marches for five days to the oasis of
Fashi, where it is joined by a smaller caravan from Damagarim via
Termit. There, a halt is made for a short time to water and feed on
whatever scanty pasture is available, and in some three more days Bilma
is reached. The animals go out empty except for a little grain or live
meat in the form of goats and sheep, and some trade goods for the Tebu
and Kanuri inhabitants of Fashi and Kawar and Tibesti. They bring back
salt and dates both from Fashi and Bilma. The latter place has perhaps
the finest salt deposits in Africa. It costs nothing to get except the
labour at the pans of making it up into loaves and loading it wrapped
in matting bales. The outlay may be threepence to fivepence a load, in
addition to an export tax of two francs per camel levied by the French
authorities. The salt is sold in Hausaland for anything up to 7_s._
or more a loaf according to the time of year. As a fully-grown camel
can carry four to six loaves of salt, the trade is extremely lucrative.
Both Fashi, or Agram as the place is also called, and Kawar have
practically no pasture, and the few camels which live permanently
there eat dates. The desert for five and a half days between Tabello
and Fashi and three days between Fashi and Bilma is not only waterless
but also nearly pastureless as well. The camels start out loaded with
a sufficient supply of fodder for the outward and return journeys;
the huge bales of grass are dropped _en route_ at the end of each
day’s march to provide for the equivalent return stage. Since
the practice of escorting caravans has been instituted the French
authorities quite rightly forbid isolated parties crossing the desert
and attracting raiders to the neighbourhood. The route now chosen
for the caravan runs from Tabello to Tazizilet on the edge of the
Air mountains, and then straight across to Fashi in an almost due
easterly direction. Formerly another road, which was more convenient
for the northern tribes of Air, was also in use. It left the mountains
at Agamgam pool in North-east Air and went to Ashegur well, north of
Fashi; this way the distances between watering-points was shortened,
and there was also rather more pasture.
This annual salt caravan is the largest enterprise of its sort in the
world at the present time. It is called in Air the “Taghalam,” a
word derived from “aghelam,” meaning a “prize camel,” but the
French call it the “Azalai,” which means the “Parting” or the
“Separation,” the name given to a similar caravan which annually
leaves Timbuctoo to collect salt at Taodenit for sale along the Niger.
With the advent of European salt in Nigeria the trade has become
somewhat less remunerative, as the Air “Taghalam” no longer enjoys
its ancient monopoly in the Central Sudan, but the infinitesimal cost
of production and the cheap transport in the hands of nomads will
always enable it to compete with the imported European trade product
to some extent. Bilma salt is of good quality; it is comparatively
free from sand or medicinal chemicals and is preferred by the natives
of the south to the purer European product. The loaves are made up
in conical form and are pink in colour, standing some 18-24″ high
by 9-12″ at the base.
The return journey of the “Taghalam” follows the same course as
the outward one. The whole trip, which is extremely strenuous for
men and camels alike, takes some three weeks. There are always a
number of casualties among the camels from exhaustion, but so large
are the profits that every Tuareg is ready to take the risk and send
as many of his herd as he can possibly spare at least once a year,
either in the autumn or on the smaller “Taghalam” which goes
in the spring. After returning from Bilma the camels are rested and
then proceed to Damergu and the south to sell their salt and their
services. They are joined by any other camels fit to go, and when they
have disposed of their merchandise engage in transport work between the
cities of the Southland until about March or April. Then they begin to
move north again before the rains set in in the Sudan. The proceeds
of this work and of the sale of Bilma salt, or dates from Fashi and
Air, are invested in grain and such trade goods as cotton cloth, tea,
sugar, snuff and hardware, which are the only luxuries of Air. By the
time they reach the mountains the summer rains have probably begun,
and they have some three months in which to recuperate on the fresh
pasture of the hills in preparation for the next year’s routine.
Transactions in salt and grain are measured by the camel load,
which varies considerably from place to place. Metrology is not
an exact science in Air, but recognised standards nevertheless
exist. The actual measures are kept by the tribal chiefs, and it is,
of course, common gossip to hear it said that a certain chief gives
unduly short weight. The only truly Tuareg measure is a unit of
capacity; in the first instance it is the handful, whether of grain
or salt or other commodity. But the measure has been standardised
by establishing that a handful shall be as much millet grain as an
ordinary man can pick up in his hand with the fingers _closed_ palm
upwards.[209] Six such handfuls nominally make one “tefakint,”
which is measured by heaping the grain in a small circular basket
with sloping sides 1¾″ deep × 3⅝″ in diameter at the mouth
× 2″ at the bottom. The next larger measure is the “muda,” a
cylindrical wooden cup with a hemispherical bottom in a U section. As
the handful and the “tefakint” are too small to measure bulky
wares like dates, the “muda” has become the effectual standard
in the country, but it varies in certain areas. At Auderas it is of
five “tefakint,” but in Agades of ten. The T’imia and Kel Owi or
Ighazar “muda” is different again, three of them being the same
as two Auderas or one Agades “muda.” The three “mudas” are,
however, generally recognised and are not the subject of bargaining in
each transaction. The measure corresponding to the Air “tefakint”
basket in Damergu is a round section cut from a large calabash; this
slightly convex plate is held by a loop for the fingers fixed to the
underside. All these grain measures are considered to be full when
the grain is heaped up so that it runs over the edge.
For small weights the silver five-franc piece, or “sinko” as it is
called, is now also used, especially in measuring the value of silver
ornaments. The rate of exchange current in 1922 in Air at Agades
was four silver shillings or five silver francs to the “sinko”;
a general rate of five obtained elsewhere in Air, as silver francs and
shillings were not distinguished from each other. The people of Air
have the nomads’ dislike for paper currency in any form. Various
coins, including the Maria Teresa dollar, are still in circulation,
but French coinage is gradually replacing all others. Cowrie shells
are no longer used and gold is now unknown. The mithkal of Agades
dates from the time when the gold trade was still flourishing, and
its form here is peculiar to this city. It seems to have been a unit
of weight and not of currency; as a recognised amount of gold it was
used as the basis for striking bargains, but the metal probably did
not pass from hand to hand owing to the inconvenience of handling
dust. With the decline of the gold trade the mithkal survived as a
unit of weight, but its theoretical value changed considerably in
the course of centuries. We find in Barth’s day the exchange was
reckoned at 1 mithkal = 1000 cowries, and 2500 cowries = 1 Maria Teresa
dollar; but whereas the Agades mithkal was only worth two-fifths of
a dollar, the Timbuctoo mithkal was worth one-third of a dollar. It
is interesting to arrive by a round-about method at a rough estimate
of the change in value of the unit.
The mithkal as a simple unit of weight was a part of a larger unit
in the following equation:[210] 100 mithkal = 3 small karruwe =
1 large karruwe = 6½ Arab rottls. The Arab rottl weight varies
between 225 grammes in Persia and about 160 grammes in Cairo, several
slightly different standard rottls being used in other parts of
Egypt. Taking 160 grammes as the equivalent of 1 rottl, and assuming
Barth’s equation to be correct, we get 10·4 grammes for the Agades
mithkal. The unit of 10·4 grammes of gold dust in the fifteenth
century A.D. was in the nineteenth century equal to two-fifths of
a Maria Teresa dollar weighing 28·0668 grammes silver 0·833 fine,
or in other words, 13·5 grammes of silver.
The only measures of length in Air are the “aghil” (plural
“ighillan”)[211] and the “tedi” or “teddi.” The former is
the universal dra’, ell or cubit measured from the inner elbow-point
to the first joint of the middle finger on an average man, say 5 ft. 10
in. tall. Ten “ighillan” make one “amitral,” the two measures
being only used for cloth, etc. The “tedi” is the fathom and is
used for measuring the depth of wells or the length of rope, etc. There
is no measure in Air for distance, which is invariably calculated by
the parts of a day or the number of days taken to cover the ground.
The pack-saddle of Air is peculiar to the country. It is very simple,
consisting of two sheaves of grass or straw, two semi-circular pieces
of matting made of plaited dûm palm fronds, a skin filled with grain
or stuffed with dry camel dung and a wooden arch terminating in flat
boards. A bundle of grass, with the butt ends even and trimmed, is
laid on the semi-circular mat, which is then rolled around it and
sewn up with ribbands of palm frond by a long wooden or iron bodkin;
the flowery ends of the grass project beyond the matting. One of these
mat cylinders or cushions is fitted each side of the camel’s hump
with the butts nearly touching one another over the withers. Over
these pads is placed the arch of wood, the ends of which terminate
in boards some 9″ × 3″ at the ends, resting on the pads, which
are tied on with twisted dûm palm rope. A stuffed goatskin thrown
transversely over the back of the camel behind the hump forms a rear
pad. Its corners are tied to the two ends of the arch with adjustable
cords to regulate the distance between them. The loads, which must be
carefully balanced, are slung over the pack-saddle; two loops on each
load are hitched to the other two on the other load with two short
sticks. The weight of the load rests on the side pads and the ends
of the back pad; the load cords bear on the latter and on the side
pads just in front of the wooden arch, which prevents them slipping
backwards. The load ropes rest on, and are not tied to, the saddle. No
girths, crupper or breastband are used unless the loads are very bulky
or need special steadying. Unloading is extraordinarily simple, for
as soon as the camel has been knelt down the loops are disconnected
by pulling out the short sticks and the loads fall down on either side.
The pack-saddle is simple and cheap, but is not efficient on steep
slopes where the camel may stumble or lurch awkwardly. As these
conditions prevail all over Air, the arrangement is really far from
ideal, though in the plain land it is practical enough. The principal
advantages are that every part of the saddle is easily adjustable
to suit any particular camel, while the whole equipment weighs next
to nothing. The goatskin used as the back pad on long journeys is
filled with a provision of grain, saving an additional receptacle on
each camel of the caravan. The resultant economy of space and bulk
is unequalled in any other system.
The rest of the camel’s equipment consists of a head rope, a hobbling
rope and the load ropes. In Air all rope is made of split dûm palm
fronds soaked in water till they have fermented, or, if no time is
available, from fresh material. The strips are twisted like ordinary
two or three strand “cable laid” rope. It is a strong, serviceable
material costing nothing and available everywhere where the dûm palm
grows, which is all over Air and the Sudan. The scarcity of date palms
precludes the use of the brown fibre which grows below the fronds,
known to camel travellers in the north. The dûm palm rope does
not wear so well as the latter but is easier to manufacture. Every
camel-man in Air spends a certain part of the day making rope,
twisting the fronds from split ribbands about ¼-½″ broad,
bundles of which he carries about; he sits on the ground talking and
twisting, using his big toe to hold the end of the rope he has made,
and weaving in strand after strand with incredible speed. The rope
is nearly all two-stranded cable, but the tightness of twist and the
finish vary with the use. Load ropes are very closely twisted cable,
passed twice round the package at each end and terminating in a loop
adjusted by a running half-hitch to raise or lower the load on the
side of the camel. Lashing rope and rough nets are made of loosely
twisted strands. The camel head rope is a long piece with a slip
knot at one end passed over the lower jaw of the camel and pulled
tight behind its front teeth. Hobble ropes are stout lengths passed
round one foreleg, then twisted and passed round the other, leaving
about 18″ of movement between the limbs: the ends are secured by
passing a knot through a small loop. Carefully made rope is beaten
with a stone to make the strands pack tightly.
Loading camels is hard work and can only properly be done by two
men. The pack-saddle is put on the kneeling camel, which is prevented
from rising by slipping one of his knees through a looped hobble rope,
which, when not in use, is carried round the animal’s neck. The
camel protests vigorously in season and out of season and pretends
to bite the men. They work stripped to the waist, wearing only their
trousers tucked up to the thigh, and the inevitable veil. They stagger
under 150 to 200 lbs. loads, swinging them on to the camel’s back,
slipping the loops through one another and securing them with the
two sticks. The camel is then released, gets up with a jerky movement
resembling a deck chair being opened, and probably throws its burden
to the ground immediately, when the operation recommences. If this
does not happen at once the head rope is secured to the next camel
in front with a half-hitch that can be released by pulling the free
end. By the time fifty camels have been loaded, at least five in
an endeavour to graze on the same bush have bumped into one another
and their loads have fallen off. The operation of loading may take
place in the early morning when it is cool, or before dawn when it
is always cold, or at noon when the temperature is like a furnace;
it is always tedious and tiresome and bad for the temper, which the
incessant complaining of the camels aggravates.
Eventually the caravan moves off. The camel-men walk along, watching
their loads if they are conscientious, and when everything is going
well they climb up on their camels and sit on the loads. They jump
up on to the neck of the camel after pulling its head down and so
reach the top, but they never kneel a camel after it has started
on the march until the day’s journey is over, unless the load
has been thrown or has slipped very badly. The guide takes the
head of the caravan and the march starts. The Tuareg of Air know
their mountains as well as the average Londoner knows London: they
can find their way along the more important tracks. For the less
known ways a special guide must be found: in the outer deserts the
reliable guides can be counted on the fingers of both hands. Efale,
the leader of the “Taghalam” and veteran of the Eastern Desert,
T’ekhmedin and Kalama on the northern routes—are all resourceful,
patient and observant men when travelling, but complete autocrats whose
orders cannot be questioned. Their knowledge of the roads depends on
estimation of time and memory and not on any supernatural powers. They
know the stars[212] and have some sense of direction, but especially
do they know every fold of ground and almost every bush. Their powers
are remarkable but not inexplicable; their observation and memory
rarely fail them, but for obvious reasons they do not care to travel
by night. Once started the march goes on hour after hour. The heat
grows more intense. The narrow path winds down the bed of a valley or
among the trees on the banks, or over rocky plains or amid sand dunes.
In Air the vegetation exists principally along the valleys. In the
south the dûm palm grows in veritable forests or in low thickets,
when it resembles the dwarf palm. The _Acacia Adansonii_, _Acacia
Arabica_ (“Tamat” in Temajegh), _Acacia Tortilis_ (the “Talha”
of the Arabs and “Abesagh” or “Tiggeur” in Temajegh), as
well as two or three other varieties, are common. They occasionally
grow to very large dimensions. The Aborak (_Balanites Ægyptiaca_)
also does very well; trees with trunks up to 2 feet in diameter are
common in the larger valleys, and in North-eastern Air I have seen
some up to 3½ feet across. The bushes and grasses are innumerable,
but flowers are rare, except for the yellow and white mimosa blossom
on the trees. Nearly all the trees and bushes are thorned, some with
recurving barbs which are dangerous for the careless rider. If burr
grass is less frequent than in the south, spear grass abounds and is
almost as painful. Vegetation in Air defends itself against pasturing
animals vigorously but vainly, for the animals in the country seem
to thrive on a diet of thorns, and man ends up by being the worst
sufferer from these useless provisions of Nature. Thorns are not
the only minor horror of life. How often after a long march has some
delicious glade appeared at hand, cool and inviting. After angrily
dismissing the suggestion to choose a camp site in the middle of an
open river-bed where the sun on the sand will cook an egg in a few
minutes, you throw yourself down to rest in deep green shade fanned
by the breeze. The unwary traveller soon learns the consequences
of disregarding native advice, for he will quickly arise from a bed
of thorns with his clothes full of burrs, and his mouth full of bad
words, while his whole attention will probably be directed towards
dodging a large tarantula or scorpion or, happily less often, a little
yellow-crested sand viper, than which there is hardly anything more
deadly in all Africa.
PLATE 24
[Illustration: ABOVE: NECK WALLETS, POUCH, “STAR” GAME TRAP
CENTRE: AMULET BAG, WOODEN LADLE, WOODEN SPOON, AMULET POUCHES
BELOW: STRIP OF MATTING, LEATHER BOTTLE, HOUSEHOLD POTS OF CLAY AND
HIDE, SKIN FOR CHURNING BUTTER]
Apart from trades directly connected with camels the Tuareg have
practically no industries. They neither dye nor spin anything, except
a rough sewing thread of local cotton; nor do they weave in wool or
cotton. Mats of two sorts are made; the one of palm fronds plaited
in bands some two to three inches broad and sewn together spirally
to form rectangles or ovals worked in varying degrees of fineness,
the other made of stiff grass and thin strips of black leather. The
technique of the latter is good: deep borders with an intricate
geometric ornament are woven in the leather warp. Mat-making and
leather-working are carried on by the women. They attain great
skill, but although leather-working is usual all over the country,
it is at Agades that the craft is especially well developed. Fine
designs in coloured strips of leather are made on cushions, bags
and pouches like a sort of embroidery. The industry is in the hands
of a few women and is probably of Manding origin, brought to Air
by the Songhai conquerors or even before. Decorated camel riding
saddles, leather head ropes and travelling wallets or pouches of
various shapes are made. The leather used is the goatskin locally
tanned with the seed pod of the “Tamat” acacia, and dyed with
red maize leaf or indigo. A certain amount of prepared leather is
also imported from the south. In these articles the foundation is
usually of black leather, which is ornamented with coloured strips
or bands and metal studs. Camel head ropes are made of twisted or
plaited leather strands with coloured tassels; the more elaborate,
the finer are the strands used; the tassels are bound with coloured
leather threads woven in patterns. The technique of these head ropes
is the best of its sort I have ever seen. Cutting leather in strands
to the thickness of coarse sewing thread is a highly skilled art,
and all the more remarkable in that only knives are used, for scissors
are unknown except in the blacksmiths’ equipment. I have seen cords
for carrying amulets or pouches made of ten or a dozen threads, each
less than ¹⁄₃₂″ thick, bound at intervals and at the ends.
A most characteristic article is a flat rectangular envelope of
leather some 6″ long × 3″ broad. It is only open at the bottom
and slides up and down the two cords, by which a sort of portfolio
is hung from the neck; this consists of four to six leather flaps in
which amulets, trinkets, needles and papers are preserved. The black
cover is ornamented with some stamped rectilinear pattern and has small
tassels at the bottom. A similar object is the small leather amulet
case about 3″ broad × 2″ long × 1″ deep, also slung round
the neck, and provided with a lid like a box. A larger semi-circular
pouch with a design in strips of coloured leather suspended over the
shoulder by a long cord is typical Agades work. Triangular travelling
bags of all sizes are made of soft leather, closed at the neck with
a running cord; they vary in size from those 5 inches long for snuff
to others 2 feet or more for clothing and food. Both these bags and
ornamented goatskins for packing personal belongings have polychrome
patterns on the surface, which is roughed and rubbed with moist
dyes. The plaited head ropes and the surface dyeing of leather seem
to be a more indigenous technique than the “Agades work” proper,
in which the design is procured by appliqué strips.
Carpentry is rudimentary and the craft akin to iron-working. The
artisan, known as the “Enad” or smith, whatever his caste, is
a person of standing in the community: he is a man whose advice is
sought in council though he rarely becomes a leader. In the olden
days the “Enad” is said even to have had a peculiar form of grave
to distinguish his resting-place from that of other men, but however
this may have been, there is nothing now to show that the smith of
Air ever belonged to a separate race or caste. To-day the smith is
only respected for his skill. The position is usually hereditary
and includes the duties of the blacksmith, jeweller, carpenter and
farrier, with the same set of tools for all these trades. His adze is
an acute-angled crook of wood with a socketed iron cutting edge bound
on to the point of the short limb; the form dates back at least to
the Neolithic period of civilisation. The axe is equally primitive:
the cutting edge, instead of having a socket, ends in a point
which is fitted into a hole bored through the club head of a wooden
haft. With these two tools, a few hammers, usually of European shape,
tin-shears, pincers, files and chisels, the “Enad” contrives to
turn out some remarkably fine work. Using only his adze he will cut
spoons with a pointed bowl at a slight angle to the flat handle, or
round ladles, from a solid block of “Aborak” wood. They are then
ornamented with geometric patterns burnt on the handles around the
edge. The Air “Enad” does not smelt iron, for all the presence
of ironstone in the hills and magnetite sand in the river-beds. The
only iron-working done is quite simple bending, beating or tempering
on an anvil shaped like a huge horseshoe nail planted in the ground. A
goatskin bellows closed by two wooden slats and a clay nozzle are used
as in the Southland. The iron is heated in a hearth in the sand filled
with charcoal. A certain number of inferior iron knives are forged,
but the Tuareg of Air must be regarded as having hardly yet reached
the iron-working age of evolution.
The Agades blacksmith-jewellers melt down silver coins heated in small
clay crucibles. They lose a lot of silver by oxidation, but the work
is remarkably well finished, considering the primitive nature of their
tools and the heavy hammers employed. The wooden household furniture
will be described later; so far as there is any at all, it is well
made, but rough. The principal skill of the smiths is displayed
in making and decorating camel riding saddles and certain U-shaped
luggage rests, to which particular reference will be made hereafter.
The Tuareg riding saddle, or “tirik” (“t’iriken” in the
plural) in Temajegh, or “rahla” in Arabic, is a highly efficient
production, combining comfort with extreme lightness. It consists
of a circular seat over an inverted V frame which fits across the
withers of the camel. High above the seat are a broad, tall cantle
shaped like a Gothic arch and large cross pommel. The whole saddle
weighs perhaps 10 lbs. at the most. Its equipment includes a quilted
saddle cloth over the withers and a single plaited leather girth two
inches broad. No iron is used in the saddle, except for two rings
which pull by diagonal straps from the underside of the seat over the
flat Ʌ shaped frame of the saddle. The girth is permanently attached
to these straps at one end, the other end is lashed to the ring on
the off-side straps by a leather thong. The seat, cantle and pommel
are made of separate pieces of wood held together by raw hide, which
is pulled over them wet and dried in place; the violent contraction
of the hide holds the component parts together as firmly as if they
were screwed or dovetailed. The broad Ʌ sides which fit over the
withers are of soft tanned leather stretched over a rectangular frame:
the upper part is covered with leather over hide and wood. The common
saddle has dark red leather over the seat and cantle and black leather
over the cross pommel and along the edges of the cantle. The elaborate
decoration of the more ornate patterns is invariably the same. In this
variety the seat and edging are of red and black leather as previously
described, but the back of the cantle and the front of the cross pommel
are covered with pale green leather, on which is applied a geometric
decoration of horizontal and diagonal strips of stamped and fretted
silver or white metal, with red cloth showing through the holes. Every
example I saw had the same green leather background on the front of
the pommel and back of the cantle. I observed no instance where the
ornament was on a different background or where green leather without
the silver metal design had been used. Where the design comes from
I have no idea; it is remarkably well executed and dignified without
being so barbaric in splendour as the horse saddles of the Sudan. Every
element of the construction and ornament is traditional and rigidly
adhered to. I can offer no suggestions regarding its origin, but can
only note its presence. Some symbolism is probably involved.
PLATE 25
[Illustration: LEFT: BRIDLE STAND AND SEAT
CENTRE: CAMEL RIDING SADDLE WITH PLAITED GIRTH AND THONG
ABOVE: PLAITED LEATHER CAMEL BRIDLE AND LEATHER HOBBLE
RIGHT: WOODEN ARCH OF CAMEL PACK SADDLE]
Where a man can afford to have a leather bridle he usually dispenses
with the running noose which, when rope is used, is slipped over the
camel’s lower jaw behind the front teeth. The leather bridle is
fitted to a head collar consisting of an arched iron nose-piece with
a curved iron jowl-piece attached to one side by a brass or copper
link ring. The bridle is fastened to the other end of the jowl-piece
and runs through a ring on the nose-piece itself, so that any pull on
the bridle closes the former on to the latter, compressing the jaws
of the camel. The nose-piece is kept in position by a horizontal band
of plaited leather attached to the ends and passing round the back of
the camel’s head below the ears. The top of the arched nose-piece
is usually shaped into a loop on to which a crest of black ostrich
feathers may be attached.[213] As an alternative or in addition to
this equipment the riding camel often also has a nose-ring in the
left nostril for a light rope or leather bridle. The nose-ring is
the mark of a good riding camel, but is sometimes not employed for
guiding the animal, as its use necessitates light hands to avoid
injuring the beast.
In addition to its lightness the Tuareg riding saddle has the
inestimable merit of bringing the weight of the rider over the
shoulders of the camel, or in other words over the part where the
animal is strongest. The hinder parts of the camel are sloping and
can carry no weight; all the heavy work is done by the fore-legs. The
rider, sitting in the saddle, which must be arranged with padding
if necessary over the front part of the withers to bring the seat
horizontal, rests one foot against the vertical part of the camel’s
neck just above its curve, holding on to the neck with a prehensile
big toe. The other leg is crooked below and falls over the opposite
shoulder of the camel at the base of the neck. Bare feet are essential
for good riding, as, in addition to enabling some grip to be obtained,
they are used to guide the camel with recognised “aids.” With
a broad cantle and a high pommel between the legs a far better grip
can be obtained than on the Arabian saddle, on which a good seat is
entirely a question of balance. Provided the saddle cloth under the
Tuareg saddle is properly adjusted there is practically no galling of
the withers or sides. If provisions or water-skins are carried they are
slung under the seat of the riding saddle, their front ends attached
to the girth rings, their rear ends tied together behind the hump,
resting on a small pad to prevent rubbing over the backbone.
The large goatskins for water and small ones for meal do not differ
from those used throughout the East. The goat is skinned without
cutting the hide except around the neck and limbs: the skin is peeled
off the carcass and well greased. The legs are sewn up and roped
for slinging: rents or holes are skilfully sewn up or patched with
leather and cotton thread so that they do not leak. A new skin recently
greased with goat or sheep fat is abominable, as the water becomes
strongly impregnated with the reek of goat. But water from a good
old skin can be almost tasteless, though such skins are hard to come
by. Some of the water one has drunk from goatskins beggars description;
it is nearly always grey or black, and smelly beyond belief. The
one compensation is that the wet outside of the skin keeps the water
deliciously cool owing to constant evaporation. With a riding saddle,
a skin of water and a skin of meal or grain as his sole equipment,
the Tuareg reduces the complications of travelling to a minimum.
His weapons are few but characteristic. First and foremost he wears
a sword, called “takuba,” as soon as he reaches man’s estate,
and before even he dons the veil. His sword has been romantically
associated with the Crusaders and I know not who else. It is a
straight, flat, double-edged cutting sword of the old cross-hilted type
up to 3 ft. 6 ins. long by 2-3½ ins. broad below the hilt, tapering
slightly to a rounded point. The guard is square and broad and the
hilt is short, for the Tuareg have small hands. The pommel is flattened
and ornamented. The hilt and guard form a Latin cross. The type never
varies, though of course the blades differ greatly in quality and form,
ranging from old Toledo steels with the mark “Carlos V” on them
to an iron object called a “Masri” blade made in the north. Some
are elaborately ornamented, but the most prized are plain with two
or three slight canellations down the middle; they are probably of
European manufacture. The commonest Masri blades bear two opposed
crescent “men in the moon” faces as their mark; another cheap
variety has a small couchant lion. The Tuareg prizes his sword as
his most valued possession and many, like Ahodu, speak with pride of
a blade handed down in their families for generations. His particular
sword was reputed to have magical properties, for it had been lost in a
fight at Assode, where the owner, rather than allow it to be captured,
had thrown it from him into the air, only, through the instrumentality
of a slave, to find it again many years afterwards, buried deep in the
rocky ground on a hillock near the site of the battle. The sword is
worn in a red leather scabbard slung from two rings by a cotton band
over the shoulder. The edges of the blades are kept very sharp. As a
weapon these swords are quite effective. Ahodu in a raid received a
sword wound from a blow which had glanced off his shield; it ran from
the left shoulder to the left knee, and had cut deep into his arm and
side. It would have killed most Europeans; he not only recovered but
had to ride four days from the scene of the fight back to Air.
Two sorts of spears are used, the wooden-hafted with a narrow
willow-leaf socketed blade and an iron socketed butt, and one made
throughout of metal. The latter, called “allagh,” is a slender and
beautiful weapon up to six feet long.[214] The head is very narrow,
not above an inch broad: the greatest breadth is half-way down the
blade, which projects on either side of a pronounced midrib. Below the
head are one or more pairs of barbs in the plane of the blade. The
haft is round and about half an inch in diameter, inlaid with brass
rings. Two-thirds of the way along the haft is a leather grip; below
that is an annular excrescence, and then the haft is splayed out,
terminating in a chisel-shaped butt 1½″-2″ broad. These spears
are used as lances or as throwing weapons. They are graceful and
well-balanced, but are not made locally. Wherever they appear the
influence of the Tuareg can seemingly be traced. It was from this
people also that the cross-hilted sword probably came to be adopted
in the Sudan, while they themselves certainly learnt its use in the
Mediterranean lands, perhaps even from the Romans.
Sheath knives some 6″ long, with fretted or inlaid brass hilts and
red leather or leather and brass sheaths, are worn at the waist. The
arm dagger is the most typical of all Tuareg weapons. They seem to be
the only people to use it: it has a small wooden cross hilt and a long,
narrow, flat blade. This weapon is worn along the forearm, the point
to the elbow, the hilt ready for use under the hand: the sheath has a
leather ring which is slipped over the wrist. The hilt is held in the
hand, knuckles upward and two fingers each side of the long member
of the cross. It is, in fact, a short stabbing sword, the handiest
and most redoubtable of all the weapons of the People of the Veil.
For defence they have large shields[215] roughly rectangular in
shape and as large as 5 ft. × 3 ft., of sun-dried hide from which
the hair has been removed. The best are made in Elakkos and some
parts of Damergu of oryx hide. The edges are bound in leather, but
the shield remains stiff yet fairly flexible, as it consists of only
one thickness of hide. The corners are rounded and the sides somewhat
incurved, the bottom being usually a few inches broader than the top. A
loop in the centre of the top side is used to hang the shield from the
camel saddle. In use it is held in the left hand by a handle attached
behind about a third of its length from the top rim. There are no
arm loops, as the shield is too ungainly to move rapidly in parry,
though its size effectually protects the whole body. The hide of
the white oryx is extremely tough and is said to turn any sword-cut
and most spear-thrusts. The shield is especially remarkable for
its ornamentation. Some of the more elaborate have metal studs with
roundels of red stuff near the edges, but an uncoloured cruciform
design worked on the surface by a series of small cuts always appears
in the upper part of the shield on the centre line. The design in
all examples I have seen, and probably in most cases, is much the
same and is certainly symbolic, for we hear of the shield and cross
ornament being engraved on rocks. The design seems to be derived
from a Latin cross, the lower and longer arm of which terminates
in a group of diagonal members, usually three on each side, forming
a radial pattern. In this form it resembles nothing so much as the
Christian cross standing on a radiating mass representing light or
glory, but certain examples have the radiating marks at the top as
well as at the bottom of the cross.
The Tuareg does not usually use either bows and arrows or the throwing
iron with its many projecting knife-blades. Instances are not wanting
in which these weapons have been used, but they are neither typical
of the equipment of the Tuareg nor natural to his temperament. Where
they have been used they have been consciously borrowed from some
neighbouring or associated people, such as the Tebu, who use the
throwing iron extensively. The People of the Veil have one most
especial vaunt, which is that they fight with the _armes blanches_
and disdain insidious weapons like arrows. The advent of civilisation
has brought them the rifle, which they are as proud to possess as
any fighting man must be, but they have never been seduced from the
sword, spear and knife which are their old allegiances. It is common
to hear a Tuareg say that he would be ashamed to stoop to the infamy
of the Tebu: he will explain that whatever happens the Tuareg will
never creep up to a camp at night and cut his enemy’s throat in the
dark. He will fight fair and clean, attacking with spear and sword,
preferably by day. He prides himself on the distinction which he
draws between murder by stealth and killing in a fight or raid. He
may be a liar and not live up to his vaunt; but to have the ideal at
all is remarkable; it must be said to his honour that on the whole he
has proved that he can live up to his self-set standard. In all the
bitter fighting with the French during the last two generations I am
only aware of one instance in which the Tuareg have stooped to what in
their own view was treachery, and that was when they tried to poison
the survivors of the Flatters Mission after the attack at Bir Gharama.
Their tactics in war are the usual ones of desert fighting. Guerilla
warfare, ambushes, surprise attacks and harassing descents on
stragglers are all known. On one occasion in an attack on a French
patrol, which had exacted a fine of camels from a tribe, the men came
up in the dark on the opposite side of the square to that on which
the animals were lying and called to them, whereupon the animals,
recognising the voices of their masters, rose and swept through the
sleeping camp, which was over-run and decimated. In the desert men
neither give nor get quarter, for prisoners and slaves are encumbrances
to free movement. In ordinary raids the losing side is either destroyed
or dispersed.
PLATE 26
[Illustration: TUAREG SWORD AND SHEATH, SHIELD, ARM-SWORD AND SHEATH
AND TWO KNIVES]
As far as possible the Tuareg fight according to their code, which in a
less cynical age would be called chivalrous. They obey the injunctions
of Islam neither to destroy palm trees nor to poison wells. They
will give water in the desert to their worst enemy. They will lie and
deceive their opponent whenever possible, but they will not infringe
the laws of hospitality. When they have given the “Amán” or peace,
they do not break their word. They are faithful to the tribes which
they take under their protection and to those who have received their
“A’ada” or “right of passage,” confirmed with the “Timmi”
or oath suitable to the occasion. Their reputation as base fighters
has little real foundation. Every case of which I have heard, when
such an accusation was brought against them, has resolved itself into
some surprise attack by a raiding party, the essence of whose success
depended upon an unexpected descent upon an unsuspecting enemy. Of
their courage I will write nothing, for it is too easy to exaggerate;
but their proverb says: “Hell itself abhors dishonour.”
[Footnote 201: Singular: Ers. Water-scrapes in the sand of
valley-beds.]
[Footnote 202: Or Efaken.]
[Footnote 203: See Plate 35.]
[Footnote 204: See the Kel Geres group in Appendix II.]
[Footnote 205: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 385.]
[Footnote 206: Misnamed the Dogam Mountains on the Cortier map. Dogam
is to the east. The Ighaghrar valley runs south and then, assuming
the name of Tagharit, west, and then on to the Talak plain. This
valley does not run into the Auderas valley as the Cortier map shows.]
[Footnote 207: The “Assada well” of the Cortier map.]
[Footnote 208: Quite close to the Nabarro of Barth. The name is not
given on the Cortier map.]
[Footnote 209: Specifically it is not as much as a man can heap on
his open or hold in his half-closed hand.]
[Footnote 210: Cf. Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 467 and 479.]
[Footnote 211: In Masquerey’s Temajegh dictionary as “iril”
and “irillan” respectively.]
[Footnote 212: The Great Bear is called “Talimt,” the Cow Camel;
the Pleiades are the “Chickens.”]
[Footnote 213: See Plate 36.]
[Footnote 214: In Plate 47 Sidi is carrying such a spear flying the
author’s pennant.]
[Footnote 215: The round shields mentioned by Duveyrier as in use
among the Northern Tuareg are unknown in Air. See Plates 22 and 26.]
CHAPTER VIII
ARCHITECTURE AND ART
The Bagezan group looms large in Central Air, but even its general
features are unknown. The mountains have neither been reconnoitred nor
mapped. The area they occupy figures as a blank on the Cortier map. I
travelled around Bagezan and climbed up into one broad valley in the
heart of the massif, but my own additions to the cartography hereabouts
are confined to a few details along the towering sides. Buchanan in
1919-20 crossed the western side, from Towar to a valley which runs
into the Anu Maqaran basin, where it is called Abarakan. A detachment
of Jean’s first patrol to Air visited the southern valleys. But
no European has ever entered the eastern or north-eastern part of
the group. The reason for this apparent lack of enterprise is due to
few of the mountain tracks being fit for camels; many of them are not
even suitable for donkeys, and the complications of travelling in this
sort of country, where none of the inhabitants will act as porters,
thus become considerable.
The massif rises some 2000 feet above the general level of the central
plateau, except in the north-east, where the latter at 3500 feet above
the sea is itself over 500 feet higher than in the north and west. The
principal peaks must be well over 6000 feet, the bottoms of the upland
valleys perhaps 3500 to 4000 feet above the sea. Many of the latter
contain perennial streams, and rumours reached me of a small lake
somewhere in the unexplored north-eastern part; but this may only be
a fairy tale. The southern sides of Bagezan fall almost vertically on
to the central plain between Towar and Arakieta on the upper Beughqot
valley. Several small villages are hidden in the folds of the mountains
above, wherever there is a permanent supply of water. In some cases
the streams are sufficient to irrigate a few gardens; at one or two
points there are some date palms and the only lime trees in Air. The
climate is cooler and everything ripens some four to six weeks later
than on the plateau below. Frost is common in the winter.
A few of the villages, notably those like Tasessat and Tadesa, near the
southern edge of the massif, have been visited by French patrols. In
addition settlements known as Atkaki, Emululi, Owari, Agaragar and
Ighelablaban have been reported to exist, but generally speaking,
owing to the difficulties of intercommunication, the villages are
almost unknown. They are said to consist of stone houses apparently
of the earliest period associated with the Itesan tribes, in whose
country the mountains lay. Some of the houses, however, differ from
any of those encountered in other districts of Air.
In order to see the type of country and visit some of the people
of the mountains I climbed from Towar up to the Telezu valley,
where there were some Kel Bagezan, to-day a composite tribe made up
of portions of Kel Tadek imghad and various Kel Owi elements. They
are under the chief Minéru or El Minir, who owes allegiance to the
Añastafidet. My way from Towar led past the ruined town of Agejir
to the Tokede valley, which soon turned east and disappeared into the
mountain. I subsequently found that the Tokede was the same valley as
the one called Telesu higher up and Towar further down. The path turned
west along the foot of Bagezan, past a scree of enormous boulders,
ranging from five to twenty-five feet across, on which numerous
families of red monkeys were playing. There we turned, T’ekhmedin,
Atagoom and myself, and wound up the side of the mountain by a path
so steep and rough that a self-respecting mule would have walked
warily. The camels went up and up over loose stones. The left side
dropped away precipitately into the deep valley which divides massifs
of Bagezan and Todra. A stream roared in a gorge hundreds of feet
below at the foot of a cliff of gleaming rock. Still we climbed over
stones and boulders by a two-foot path gradually turning north and
then north-east and then east. We followed up a narrowing tributary
bed of the stream in the gorge until we came to a pass between bare
earth-coloured hills, the tops of which were only a few hundred feet
above us, and at last dropped gently down the other side past some
grazing camels which seemed interested in our arrival and followed
us inquisitively into Telezu. An enclosed plain opened out full of
big green trees and grass with wonderful pasture and plenty of water
in the sand. It ran from west to east before turning and narrowing
southwards to fall over the edge into the Tokede below. The valley was
shut in all round by low peaks and rough crags along the sky-line. One
had no impression of being so far above the plateau of Air on a higher
table-land. The great summits of Bagezan had become small hills.
There was no other way out of Telesu except on foot, either over the
hills or down the ravine made by the stream falling towards Tokede,
so we returned as we had come, after drinking milk with the Kel
Bagezan who were living there. The descent was terrific; the camels
had to be led and we only made Towar by nightfall. After reaching the
bottom of the scree we cut off a corner instead of going by Agejir,
and marched towards the standing rock of Takazuzat (or Takazanzat),
which looks like the spire of a cathedral, on the edge of the Ara
valley near the isolated peak of In Bodinam.
All the ways up to the Bagezan villages are similar, if not
harder. The agility of the camels that have to negotiate these paths
is unbelievable until it has been experienced.
The only account which I can give of the houses of Bagezan is
second-hand, and this is the more unfortunate, because Jean’s
description[216] of them as the first houses in Air does not
correspond with the character of the earliest ones I saw. I will
quote his exact words, as the point is important: “Les premières
constructions édifiées furent Afassaz et Elnoulli; maisons à dôme
central recouvrant une grande pièce sombre entourée de nombreuses
dépendances; l’étage aujourd’hui effondré avait été solidement
étayé par des piliers de maçonnerie à large et forte structure.”
To Afassaz, a large group of villages in a valley east of Bagezan,
we will turn later; Barth erroneously supposed it lay near Towar,
having apparently confused it with Agejir. “Elnoulli” I was
entirely unable to trace under this name, and concluded that Emululi,
which is one of the Bagezan villages, was intended.
PLATE 27
[Illustration: HOUSE TYPES.]
PLATE 28
[Illustration: HOUSE TYPES.]
My interest in Tuareg architecture was first aroused near Tabello,
east of Bagezan, a point reached while I was circumnavigating
the massif. From Auderas we had been to visit T’imia, whence we
returned to the Abarakan valley. We then climbed laboriously up the
bed of the Teghazar[217] tributary, and so reached the plateau east
of the Central massif. We camped at about 3500 feet, by the spring of
Teginjir. The water here is strongly mineralised, and comes out of
the ground at about 90° F. charged with carbonic acid gas. Within
a short distance of the spring is the volcanic crater and cone of
Gheshwa,[218] the only recent vent which I came across in Air. It was
visited and described by Von Bary, but curiously enough is neither
referred to in other works nor shown on the Cortier map. The cinder
cone is small and rather broken down on the west side, but the sides
are still exceedingly steep and covered with loose scoriæ. The lava
flow which came out of the vent extends from the foot of the cone,
for some five miles to the south-east; it appears to have originated
in the course of a single eruption. The lava stratum is level and
about 20 feet thick, overlying the Teginjir plain, which consists of
a surface alluvium from the neighbouring mountains, and, at one point,
a disintegrating crystalline outcrop. The lava is acid and vesicular,
resembling in appearance recent flows from Vesuvius or at Casamicciola
on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples. The surface of the
Teginjir flow proved indescribably rough and devoid of vegetation;
it has as yet had no time to disintegrate and is undoubtedly still
in the same twisted and cracked form which it had assumed during the
cooling process. E.S.E. of Mount Gheshwa are two small black hillocks
which appear to be minor cinder cones, not connected with any lava
flows. The eruption which formed the Gheshwa cone and neighbouring lava
flow is certainly posterior to the general configuration of the plateau
and is a most recent geological phenomenon, but I found no tradition
among the natives of any volcanic activity within living memory.
The ground drains eastward from Teginjir along the southern side of the
T’imia massif to the Anfissak valley, named after the buttress hills
which form the south-east corner of this group. East of Anfissak the
plain extends towards and beyond Mount Mari in the north; a number
of hillocks litter the plain to the south. The caravan road from
Tripoli to the Sudan runs down this plain by the Adoral valley past
Mari well, which is now filled in, by Anfissak well, and by Adaudu
and the Tebernit water-holes to Beughqot. Thence it goes due south
to Tergulawen and over the Azawagh to Damergu and Nigeria.
A short distance to the south the Anfissak valley changes its name
to Tamanet, so called after a watering-place which we reached in
one day’s march from Teginjir. At least it was meant to be a
watering-point, but we found that insufficient rain had fallen that
year in Eastern Air and there was no water in the sand of the valley
bed. We camped and left next day on a short ration of water over one
of the most difficult parts of Air which I encountered in the whole
of my journey. The plain is not boldly accidentated, but the valleys
have cut deep into the disintegrating plateau. Their sides are steep
and the flat places between them are so thickly covered with boulders
that the area is almost impossible to cross. We eventually reached the
Tebernit[219] valley just above Adaudu and sent camels up the valley
to find water at a point called Emilía on the way to Ajiru. Our
supply had completely run out. It was thirsty work waiting for the
watering party to return, and one’s worst apprehensions were of
course aroused. I prowled about to relieve the tedium, and found a
place where a ridge of rock crossed the bed or channel of the valley. I
began digging in the sand to find water, for it seemed a likely place
for an “Ers,” as there was an old village site near by. Sure
enough I found water about two feet down, and everyone cheered up,
as the Emilía party was not due back for several hours. The place
became known to the expedition as “Rodd’s Ers.”
Marching from here to Tabello was light work; we camped in the valley
where the Arakieta tributary comes down from Bagezan near a small
hut village, and then made an easy stage to the rendezvous of the
salt caravan. The valley known as Tabello we discovered to be the
upper part of the Beughqot: it was another example of the confusing
habit of giving a multitude of names to a single system. Each section
bears a different name to which a traveller, according to where he
happens to be, may refer. The Ajiru, Tellia, Tebernit and Afasas are
really the same valley; similarly the Telezu, Tokede, Towar, Tessuma
and Etaras are another, while the Abarakan, T’imilen, Agerzan,
Bilasicat, Azar and Anu Maqaran are also one and the same watercourse.
The country east of Bagezan now belongs to the Kel Owi
confederation. The northern part of the plain is the country of the
Kel Azañieres, but before their advent the Immikitan came as far
south as Tamanet. The Kel Anfissak, living presumably at Barth’s
well of Albes, are a Kel Azañieres sub-tribe. Ajiru was the home of
Belkho and the head-quarters of the Igermaden; but Tabello belonged
to the Igademawen. It was at Ajiru that Von Bary was detained as a
virtual prisoner by Belkho until he decided to abandon his projected
journey to the Sudan.
The countryside had evidently at one time been quite thickly
inhabited, but presumably before the immigration of the Kel Owi,
for nearly all the ruined villages contained a characteristic type
of house, which every Tuareg agreed was built by the Itesan, who of
course came to Air long before the Kel Owi. In the Beughqot valley
where it is called Tabello a great deal of water is available all the
year round in the sand, and consequently several villages sprang up
on both banks. The largest group, which will be described in detail,
is the northernmost on the west bank, called Tasawat. The houses here
are all of the characteristic “old type,” which is culturally far
the most advanced dwelling in Air. Many of the buildings here are very
well preserved except for the roof, which in almost every instance
has collapsed. In the Tabello houses the walls are for the most part
well preserved, but elsewhere in Air the constructional material was
less good, for little remains of the oldest type dwellings but the
ground plan.
The oldest houses, which I will call the “A type,” are rectangular
in plan and have two rooms, a larger one with two or three outer doors,
and an inner one with one door in the partition wall and no outer
doors. All the houses of this type and most of the later houses in
Air are oriented in the same direction, namely, within a few degrees
of north and south, with the smaller room at the northern end. There
were a few exceptions in the fourth group which I examined at Tabello;
they were houses on a N.N.W.-S.S.E. line, or oriented E.-W. with
the small room at the west end. The latter is an interesting point,
because although the Air dialect of Temajegh contains a proper word
for north (“tasalgi”), the word for west (“ataram”), which
in some other dialects of the language has acquired the significance
of north, is also sometimes used for this cardinal point.
PLATE 29
[Illustration: TIMIA: “A” AND “B” TYPE HOUSES AND HUT CIRCLES]
[Illustration: TABELLO: INTERIOR OF “A” TYPE HOUSE]
The big rooms of these “A type” houses in all the village groups
examined varied but little in size, the largest one I measured being
29 ft. × 14 ft. inside. The small rooms varied rather more, ranging
between 9 ft. and 12 ft. in length, the breadth being the same as for
the big room. The head room was in all cases remarkable, one house I
measured being as much as 12 ft. from the floor to the underside of
the dûm palm rafters of the roof. In every instance the height was
more than sufficient for a man to stand upright, a feature which does
not obtain in the later houses. The large room was usually provided
with three doors, the east and west ones being of similar dimensions,
the south door rather smaller. In two cases in one group at Tabello
and in other instances in the north I noticed that the east doors of
the old houses had small buttresses outside as if to enhance their
importance, though in one house the east door had been reduced to a
small aperture; but this was exceptional. Buttresses were not observed
on any of the west doors. In two cases I noticed here there was no
south door, an omission which also occurred elsewhere among the later
houses. The east and west doors, varying slightly according to the
size of the house, were 4 ft. or more in height by 3 ft. 6 in. to
4 ft. in breadth. In all the Tabello houses the door openings were
recessed on the inner side to take a removable wooden door some ten
inches broader and taller than the opening itself. The recess was
continued for a sufficient space laterally to allow the frame to
be pushed to one side without taking up room space. One side of the
recess was provided with an elbow-hole in the outer wall of the house
about 2 ft. from the ground for access to a latch for securing the door
frame. In the later houses, but not at Tabello, the sliding frame door
gave place to one swinging from stone sockets in the threshold and
lintel; these doors are in some cases over 3 ft. broad and cut out
of one piece of wood: they also were provided with a latch or bolt
fitting into a catch in the inner part of the elbow-hole by which
the door was secured and sometimes locked with a rough padlock of
Tripolitan or Algerian manufacture. No doubt the door frames of the
earlier houses were provided with a similar latch and lock, but none
of the woodwork has survived. The neatness of design of the sliding
door recess was particularly striking in these dwellings.
The threshold of the doors in the older houses was on the floor level,
which was a few inches above the outside level. The larger rooms had
quadrangular niches of different dimensions at odd points in the walls,
as well as certain peculiar and characteristic niches in the partition
walls. The inner rooms were provided with small niches made of pots
built into the walls; in many cases there were four shelves across the
corners some 3-4 ft. from the ground made of heavy beams, evidently
intended to carry considerable weights. The surfaces of these shelves,
like all the inner walls of both rooms, were carefully plastered with
mud mortar whitened or coloured with earths similar to those used in
the washes on houses at Agades. In one case a dado or wainscot of a
different colour had been applied with a finger-drawn zigzag border
of another shade. The stucco surfaces were brown, earthy crimson,
ochre, yellow or white.
One characteristic feature was observed in all the “old type”
houses which still had walls standing of sufficient height for
something more than the mere ground plan to be seen. On either side
of the doorway in the partition or north wall of the large room there
was a niche of very peculiar shape. The top was rather like a Gothic
arch, and a recess was cut out in the base. The niches and the door
in some cases were ornamented with an elaborate border, in other
cases they were entirely unadorned. The shape of the niche, however,
was constant and the size generally uniform. The style of decoration
will be seen in Plates 29 and 30.
The later houses in Air are clearly an adaptation of the earlier type,
for they have many common characteristics. These houses I have called
the “B type” to distinguish them from the “A” or “Itesan
type.” The “B houses” also are rectangular but single-roomed; for
the most part they too are oriented north and south. An Imajegh whom
I questioned on this point at Iferuan said he did not know why this
was so, but that all the correct houses of nobles were built in this
manner, including the one in which his own family had always lived. He
added that the three usual outside doors were called Imi n’Innek,
the Door of the East, the Imi n’Aghil, the Door of the South, but
the west door, instead of being called the Imi n’Ataram, was called
the Imi n’Tasalgi, which properly means the Door of the North. When I
asked him to explain this curious fact, he told me that it was because
the Tuareg came from there, a statement which seemed inadequate, albeit
significant. The confusion of west and north is especially curious;
and the explanation of the house oriented E. and W. at Tabello is
probably due to a misunderstanding on this point in the mind of the
early builder. The problem is not unconnected with the varying sense
of the word Ataram. Analogies between the “A” and “B” types of
house are not, however, confined to those peculiarities of orientation
and doors. A door in the north wall of the “B type” houses is very
rare; on the other hand, in the majority of examples of this type
I noticed that there was a long, very low niche on that side of the
room. These recesses were not more than four or five inches high by
eighteen to twenty-four inches long; they were used for keeping the
Holy Books in and for no other purpose. The position of these niches,
it is true, was not absolutely constant, nor was the type of niche
for the Holy Books in the north walls always that shape, but the
conclusion I reached from their frequent occurrence was that they in
some way correspond to the ogive niches of the earlier houses, which
I conceive had an indisputably ritual or religious significance. In
a “B type” house at Assarara in Northern Air I came across two
rectangular niches in a west wall which were obviously developments of
the ornamented ogive niches of the “A type” house, and may also
have been used for Holy Books, but this example of displacement with
the varying and fortuitous practices adopted in the later dwellings
convinced me that the use which had prescribed the earlier fashion was
in process of being forgotten as modern times were approached, and that
no explanation was therefore likely to be obtained by consulting local
learned men. In the “B type” houses, as in the earlier dwellings,
there was usually a profusion of other niches in the walls serving
different household purposes.
The niches and the style of ornamentation of the “A type” houses
of Air occur in the Sudan, but the formality of planning, the constant
orientation and the ritualistic properties of the recesses, so far
as I know, have no analogies outside Tuareg lands. I am not aware
that attention has hitherto been drawn to these points either in the
accounts of Air prepared by the French or in descriptions of dwellings
in other parts of Africa, with the exception of one reference in
Richardson’s account of his travels in 1845-6 in the Fezzan. He
describes the houses at Ghat as having niches, and, from sketches he
made, some of them are evidently of the same type as those in the Air
houses of the first period.[220] They afford a problem which requires
elucidation and which might throw much light on the cultural contacts
of the Tuareg, among whom they seem to be traditional.
PLATE 30
[Illustration: HOUSE INTERIORS.]
The constant type of the houses, despite their disparity of date, is
so marked that it cannot be fortuitous. I examined in the course of
my stay in Air the villages and towns of Auderas, Towar, Agejir, the
Tabello and Afassaz-Tebernit groups, T’imia, Assode, T’in Wansa,
Igululof, Anu Samed, T’intaghoda, Tanutmolet, Iferuan, Seliufet,
Agellal, Tefis and Anu Wisheran, and found the “A” and “B
types” or their derivatives predominant to an extent which made
it quite clear that some fundamental principle was involved in their
construction. The earlier houses betray so highly developed a technique
of building that we are clearly concerned with the remnants of a
far higher cultural state than that which the Tuareg now possess. I
say “remnants” advisedly, for since the date of the “A type”
dwellings there has been a progressive deterioration in the art of
construction. Technically, in Air, what is best is earliest. The
first houses of the Tuareg were obviously planned and executed with
care. The walls, where still standing, measured about 2 ft. 9 in. to
3 ft. at the base, tapering 9 to 12 in. to the top. The inside faces
were perpendicular, all the taper being on the outside, where it
is clearly visible in the profiles of the corners. The outsides of
the walls were roughly faced with mud stucco; the insides were more
carefully plastered to produce a very smooth surface, which in the
best houses appears to have been procured with a board; hand marks
on the plaster surface seemed rare. The dûm palm rafters of the
roofs, door lintels and tops of recesses were carefully placed so
that any curve of the wood was upward in order to give as much height
as possible. The most noticeable feature in the construction of the
“A type” houses was certainly the squareness and accuracy of the
corners, which were sharp and cleanly finished. The later houses were
less carefully executed and the corners, instead of being square, were
rounded both within and without. The walls were less perpendicular
and straight, the rectangular planning was sometimes out of true,
the stucco-work, while better conserved on the outer walls owing
to their more recent date, was manifestly rougher; there was often,
nay usually, hardly room to stand upright inside the dwelling.[221]
The constructional material of both types of house was observed
to vary very much according to the supplies available on the
spot. Small stones up to six inches long set in mud mortar are
generally used. The coursing of the stones was carefully levelled,
and in the “A type” very regular; a deterioration was seen in the
later dwellings. The influence of the Sudanese style of construction
is reflected in one or two houses at Tabello, where dried mud cakes
have been used instead of stones; but even in these cases the mud
cakes have been used like stones, set in mud mortar, levelled and
regularly coursed, and contrasting with the more irregular methods
of the Southland. Generally speaking the numbers of “A” and “B
type” houses in Air built only of mud seemed exceedingly small. In
the stone, as in the mud constructions, some re-surfacing every year
after the rains must have been inevitable.
The roofs are made of palm fronds, brushwood and mud mortar with a low
parapet around the edge, and often with six pinnacles, respectively
at the four corners and half-way along the longest sides.
The ruins of the “A type” houses at Tabello and Afasas were nearly
always surrounded by other derelict buildings within an enclosure
of large stones marking a sort of compound. The enclosures were not
formal; they sometimes surrounded the whole house, sometimes only
one side. The outhouses in the compound had no particular character:
they were storehouses or the dwellings of the slaves. The buildings
were as formless as the main houses were formal: they were either
one-roomed or many-chambered with or without inter-communicating
doors. They rarely adjoined the “A type” buildings, and were
invariably more roughly constructed, many more of them being built
of mud. In the “B type” settlements one was struck with the
greater absence of outhouses and enclosing walls. Where subsidiary
dwellings existed there had been a tendency to build them on to the
main dwelling. A large number of both “A” and “B” houses in
the Ighazar had wooden porches or shelters outside the east door,
and were surrounded by a sort of wooden fence or stockade.
Such are the two most characteristic types of house in Air. Other forms
of dwellings I will refer to as the “C,” “D” and “E types.”
The last-named “E type” can be disposed of immediately, for it
is of no particular interest in connection with the Tuareg. Plate 28
gives the plan of one such a house formerly inhabited by Fugda, chief
of T’imia, before the inhabitants moved to the present village and
lived in huts. It is characteristic of the Southland both in design
and construction, and, like all the recent “E type” houses,
was built of mud.
The “D type” is a many-roomed dwelling, apparently occupied by
several families. The largest example I saw was at Tabello. The plan
is given on Plate 28. In this case the construction was of stone and
mud, but principally of the former. The technique was very inferior;
several periods of construction were observable. The individual
dwellings in this group were apparently at least four, consisting of
areas numbered in the plan 1 to 7, 8 to 10, 13 to 17, and 20 to 26,
respectively. Areas numbered 4, 9, 21, 22 and 24 were courtyards,
the entrance to 21 having holes in the wall for wooden bars, and
being apparently designed as a cattle-pen. The group had at least
one well in area 16, and possibly another one in 12, though the
latter might only have been a grain-pit. Another example of the “D
type” house situated in the Afassaz valley group is given on Plate
28. It lay at the foot of a rock, beneath which there is a permanent
water-hole in the sand. A few hundred yards away was a village of “A
type” houses. Along the valley in the same vicinity were enclosures
of dry stone walls on the tops of the hills bordering the valley. I
hazard a conclusion that these “D type” dwellings were used by the
inhabitants of the area when the larger settlements were abandoned by
the Itesan and Kel Geres in their move westward as a result of raiding
from the east.[222] The “D type” dwelling is a semi-fortified
work, or at least a defensible building where several families who
had remained in a dangerous area might congregate for safety in times
of trouble. These dwellings with the hill-top enclosures along the
Afassaz valley are the nearest approach to fortifications which I
discovered in Air.
The last type of house to be described represents a later development
of the “A type.” The “C type” houses retain many of the
characteristics of the earlier buildings, and although it is not always
easy to date them, their preservation indicates that they are more
recent. The rectangular formality of the earlier type survived but
the orientation has been lost. The technique in many cases is better
than in the “B type”; but the ogive niches are absent and the
interior stucco-work was often very rough. The various forms which
the plan may take are given in Plates 29 and 30. Some of the “C
type” houses belong to the Itesan period and are descended from the
“A type” building, while some of them are certainly late Kel Owi
houses. The town of Agejir, north of Towar, from which the plans on
Plate 27 are taken was an Itesan settlement, probably founded when
these tribes moved away from the plain east of Bagezan. Here I found
only one true “A type” house, but as there must be over 300 ruined
houses, I may well have missed many more. The state of the buildings
here was very bad owing to the lack of good mud mortar, which has
preserved those at Tabello. The better houses at Agejir seemed to
fall into two categories: the one a single-roomed structure of about
20 ft. × 10 ft. internal dimensions, having usually two doors in the
centre of the longest or east and west sides; the other a two-roomed
structure. In the latter, the larger room was about the same size as
in the single-roomed dwellings, the smaller room being about 10 ft. ×
7 ft.; the common wall was not pierced, which may have been due to the
use of inferior building materials. All the other buildings at Agejir
were formless quadrangular structures, but the two types described
are clearly descended directly from the “A type” house.
Of the three villages at Towar, the modern one is a collection of mud
huts; the older site on the same bank is a group of single-roomed
“B type” houses, while the oldest of the three settlements is
on the west bank and is called the Itesan village. Among the twenty
ruined houses which I examined there I found three very good examples
of the “A type,” correctly oriented north and south, in addition
to several others of the single-roomed variety, the better ones being
similar to those at Agejir. The 100 odd houses on this site were in
too ruinous a condition to be readily identifiable.
The houses in Northern and North-eastern Air will be described in
a succeeding chapter, but the subject cannot here be left without
reference to certain dwellings which I encountered at Faodet at the
head of the Ighazar basin. Here, side by side with some ordinary “B
type” dwellings, were a few straw and thatch huts of about the same
size constructed on a rectangular plan in obvious imitation of the
neighbouring masonry dwellings. They were correctly oriented and had
flat thatched roofs. Their inhabitants, though using an unsuitable
material, had evidently tried to construct that type of dwelling which
they felt was more correct for permanent occupation than the temporary
round huts, a more suitable shape, of course, for brushwood, grass
and matting construction. This example of innate sense of formality
is most significant.
It is possible to draw certain conclusions on the style of Tuareg house
construction in Air, even without the material evidence necessary
for a more detailed study or comparative dating. Could excavation
be undertaken, information would not be lacking, for pottery and
stratified débris abound, only, unfortunately, time was not available
for such investigations in the course of my journey.
The “A type” houses, according to the unanimous tradition of
the present inhabitants, were built by the Itesan. Their vicarious
distribution in Air suggests that all the Tuareg of the first wave
used this style of dwelling. That fewer have survived in areas
from which they were dispossessed by the Kel Geres and Kel Owi is
natural. It is not, therefore, fortuitous that the present Tuareg
call the houses Itesan rather than Kel Geres, despite the later
association of the two groups of people; whatever claim has been
put forward on behalf of the latter for a share in the earlier
architectural development I am inclined to regard as simply due
to their comparatively recent historical association. The later
immigrants do not appear to have been so troubled by traditions of
the formality which imbued their predecessors. In the essentially
Kel Geres areas west of the Iferuan-Auderas-Agades road, other than
the part which the Itesan occupied astride the line in the Auderas
area, the “A type” houses occur, but are rare. The “B” and
transitional “C types,” predominate. Nevertheless these Kel Geres
“B type” houses are larger and better in technical execution than
the late “B type,” which are known to have been made and used
by the Kel Owi. The latter in their dwellings display a more formal
conception than the Kel Geres; many of the old characteristics, like
orientation, arrangements of the doors, ritual niches and proportion
come out more strongly in North-eastern Air than, for instance, in
the Agellal and Sidawet areas. The formless quadrangular buildings
of Assode with very few of the old peculiarities are apparently Kel
Geres work. The influence of the first or Itesan immigrants was,
however, still sufficiently powerful to render their technique of
construction in many respects superior to that of the Kel Owi.
The persistence of the characteristics of the Itesan period among
the later Kel Owi, in fact its existence till quite recently among
all the Air Tuareg in one form or another, is proof that we are not
concerned with any fortuitous manifestation. Both the sentiments held
by the people to-day and the occurrence of rectangular straw huts on
the “B type” plan at Faodet, substantiate this conclusion. But
if I am right in my feeling that the characteristics in question
were more strongly present among the first Itesan or Kel Innek wave
and among the third or Kel Owi wave than among the Kel Geres, then
the explanation is tenable that the features are derived from the
civilisation of the Lemta or Fezzanian branch of the Tuareg, who,
we shall see, are the original stock from which the first and last
wave of immigrants into Air were probably derived, the former by way
of the Chad countries, the latter also from the north or north-west,
but perhaps by way of the Adghar of the Ifoghas and Tademekka.[223]
This line of reasoning, which is put forward very tentatively,
indicates that the Fezzan requires to be examined in some detail
before an advance in the solution of the problem surrounding the
cultural origin of the Air house can be made. Even if the evidence
of their houses were all, I should be satisfied that the culture of
the Air Tuareg was a shadowy memory of some higher civilisation. I
will hazard no guess regarding its first cradle, but only suggest
that some clues may be found in the Fezzan.
Another aspect of Tuareg architecture in Air remains to be examined. It
concerns the style of their mosques. These buildings are comparatively
numerous and all on much the same plan. The simplest form is a long,
narrow construction running north and south with a “Qibla”
in the centre of the east side. It is noteworthy that in several
cases the “Qibla” gives the impression of having been added to
the building, after the main walls had been erected, but this may
only be an illusion due to defective workmanship. The larger mosques
have one or more “aisles,” the wall or walls between them being
pierced at many points to give the illusion of columns supporting
the low roof. With the exception of one at Agejir, the head room of
all the mosques I examined never exceeded 6 feet. Even the mosque at
Assode, which was the largest in Air, had so low a ceiling that it
was scarcely possible to stand upright anywhere inside. In one or two
examples which I saw there was a separate construction, consisting
of a single or double “aisle,” standing some feet away, west of
the mosque proper. These buildings were of the same dimensions from
north to south as the latter and served as alms-houses or “khans”
for the distribution of food to the poor, who were also allowed to
sleep there when travelling from village to village. In the mosque of
Assode and in that of Tasawat in the Tabello group of villages certain
portions of the sacred building were reserved for the worship of women,
or as schools. In the Tasawat mosque the windows of the “harim”
enclosure looked into the main part of the mosque, but had lattice
gratings of split palm fronds crossing one another diagonally. This
mosque was certainly later than any of the “A type” houses in
the vicinity. Its construction was indifferent, but noteworthy for
the elaboration of the holes pierced in the partition walls, every
alternate one being shaped like the ogive niches in the partition
walls of the “A type” houses with the same recess cut out of
the base. Neither in these openings nor in the niches of the houses
has the principle of the true arch been applied: the ogives were
built up by a wooden cantilever framing set in the thickness of the
walls. With the exception of the great mosque at Agades, which is
of the same type as the other holy buildings in Air, Assode is the
only example which possessed a minaret. It is curious that the early
houses of the Tuareg should be so noteworthy for the height of the
roof, while the mosques should be equally remarkable for the lowness;
the feature is one associated with a late period of building.
It is very difficult to date any of the mosques, or indeed any of
the other buildings or graves in Air, absolutely, in the absence of
archæological field evidence. Jean[224] has collected a tradition
to the effect that the mosque of Tefis is the oldest in Air, and this
accords with my information. He dates it, however, at 1150 years ago,
and states that it was built by the Kel Geres, who, according to
him, were the first Tuareg to reach Air. Though I cannot agree with
the last part of this conclusion, I concur in finding that the Kel
Geres were the first Tuareg to enter Air by the north, and that they
were, therefore, perhaps responsible for the introduction of Islam
into the country. If this should prove to be the case, it is indeed
probable that they built the first mosques. But Jean’s acceptance
of the traditional dating of the mosques is closely connected with
the dates which he assigns to the advent of the Tuareg, namely, the
eighth century A.D., a period which for reasons given elsewhere I am
inclined to consider too early.
The traditional date for the founding of the mosque at Tefis in
the eighth century A.D. is hardly admissible, for it is more than
doubtful whether Islam had spread so far south by that time. It is
alternatively uncertain whether a Christian Church then existed in the
land. By the year 800 A.D. Islam had only penetrated Tripolitania and
Tunisia to a limited extent and in the face of much opposition which
persisted for long. Jean’s dates must be regarded, not as absolute,
but only as indicating a chronological sequence. The second mosque
according to him was founded at T’intaghoda fifty years after the
one at Tefis. The building, he states, was made by the Kel Owi, but if
they were responsible for its construction the date must be set down
as much later. My information agrees with its having been the second
mosque in Air to be built; and this much of Jean’s information I
accept, but discard its Kel Owi origin.[225] The third mosque was
built at Assode about 100 years later than Tefis. The one at Agades
followed after an interval of 40 years, 980 years ago, and is said to
have been offered to the second Sultan of Agades as a present from
the tribes. Chudeau adds to this information the additional detail
that the minaret of the mosque of Assode, which, according to him,
was 1000 years old, fell four centuries ago, but as the débris has
not been cleared away to this day, the accuracy of the statement
seems doubtful. Both Chudeau’s and Jean’s dates are all too
remote. Undue importance must not be attached to the round figures
in which the Tuareg are prone to reckon their traditional history.
PLATE 31
[Illustration: MOSQUES.]
PLATE 32
[Illustration: MOSQUES.]
The etymology given by the Arabs to the word “tarki” or
“tawarek,” even if not strictly accurate, indicates that the
People of the Veil adopted the Faith of Islam long after the other
inhabitants of North Africa. When they did so, they appear to have been
lukewarm converts and to have retained many practices which the Prophet
directed good Moslems to abhor. At Ghat, which was ever under their
influence and where numbers of them have always lived, the tradition
of their recent conversion may be found in the two parts of the town,
known as the Quarter of Yes and the Quarter of No, from the people
who accepted or refused Islam. At so late a period as when the Kel
Owi arrived at the end of the seventeenth century A.D. the Kel Ferwan
whom they drove out of the Iferuan valley in Northern Air were still
“heathen,” though we are not told what their religion was. A very
early date for the mosques of Air is therefore inherently improbable
even if the Kel Geres did found Tefis as the first permanent place of
worship for the new Faith. Assuming that the Kel Geres came to Air in
the eleventh or twelfth century, the foundation of T’intaghoda mosque
some 400 years later is not improbable; and it is not wholly impossible
to reconcile such a date with the implications involved in the story
of the gift of the mosque of Agades to the second Sultan of Air, who,
we believe, reigned half-way through the fifteenth century. I prefer to
consider that the mosques as a whole are not very old. Their style of
construction demonstrates them to be more recent than the “A type”
houses, though admittedly this view might have to be altered in the
event of excavations providing additional or contradictory evidence.
Apart from the numerous places of prayer marked by a “Qibla” of
a few stones laid on the surface of the ground or by a quadrilateral
enclosure of small stones, I only came across one site which might
have been a pre-Moslem place of worship adapted to the later Faith. In
the upper part of the River of Agades, on the south shore below the
cliffs, at the entrance of the gulf where the Akaraq valley joins it,
there is a square enclosure marked by what looks like the remains of
a wall of which only the foundations on the ground level survive. The
walls may never at any time have been more than a few inches high;
what remains is of stones set in mud cement. At each of the four
corners of the square there was a large stone. The four sides, each of
some 15 ft. long, were true and square and oriented on the cardinal
points. The enclosure was obviously not that of a hut, nor like the
ground-plan of any of the houses in Air. In the centre of the eastern
side at a later period two standing stones had been set up. The stones
were fossil trees, some other fragments of which were lying loose on
the top of the neighbouring cliff. They had obviously been brought by
human agency, as curious or interesting stones, from another place
at no very remote period.[226] The two standing stones were about 2
ft. 6 in. apart. They were intended to mark the east, but were quite
clearly later additions to the place, for they were merely standing,
and not built into, the foundation of the enclosure. They were not even
symmetrical or exactly in the centre of the side. The enclosure may,
I think, be regarded as a pre-Moslem place of worship and not merely as
a dwelling-house, because the “Qibla” pillars of an Islamic place
of prayer could as readily have been set up elsewhere, had there not
been a deliberate design to convert a site from one religious use to
another. Its form does not resemble that of any of the usual buildings
of Air. In the vicinity was a group of graves, some of which were
circular enclosures, while others, obviously more recent in date,
were oblong and correctly oriented from the Moslem point of view.
The graves and tombs of Air might well form the object of interesting
archæological excavation. Many of them display an indubitably
non-Moslem appearance. The most common type which continues throughout
the period of Tuareg occupation in one form or another is a ring
of stones set on edge around a raised area covered with small white
pebbles. The grave is too low to be termed a tumulus or mound, it is
convex or shaped like an inverted saucer, but the centre rises only
a few inches above the surrounding ground. The ring of stones may
be roughly circular, oval or elliptical. In the Moslem period the
graves are definitely oblong, the major axis being directed north
and south, in order that the body may be placed in the grave with
the head turned towards the east. The older graves were the round,
or elliptical enclosures, the latter with no fixed orientation; the
earlier they are the more nearly circular they seem to be. This is
especially noticeable in the case of the graves near, and probably
contemporary with, the “A type” houses at Tabello. A large central
circular grave is often surrounded by smaller oval ones lying in any
direction, clustering about a more important burial.
The later Moslem graves are smaller, but the practice of covering the
surface with white pebbles or chips of quartz continues. The shape
becomes narrower, less circular and more inclined to turn into a
rectangle. The appearance of head-stones or head and feet stones,
which the Arabs call “The Witnesses,” coincides with correct
Moslem orientation, but even in modern times it is rare to find any
inscription. The few I saw were rough scratchings in Arabic script and
sometimes, in T’ifinagh, of some simple name like “Muhammad”
or “Ahmed.” I only saw one instance, at Afis, of an inscription
of any length; it recorded the interment of a notable sheikh, and
was scored with a pointed tool on a potsherd. Neither in the houses
nor in the graves of Air is there any evidence of the Tuareg having
attempted to cut stone. Even the petroglyphs are hammered and scratched
but not chiselled.
A great deal has been written about the funerary monuments of North
Africa known as the “argem.”[227] They are found in many parts of
the Northern Sahara, in the Ahnet mountains and the Adghar n’Ifoghas,
and in the Nigerian Sudan, but not in Tuat. They have been reported
in the Azger Tassili, at In Azawa on the north road from Air and at
several points in Air. Bates reports them in the Gulf of Bomba and
in the Nubian cemeteries of Upper Egypt.[228]
They are enclosures of piled stones varying in shape from round to
square, but generally the former; or they take the form of tumuli
containing a cist or tomb. In certain cases the graves are described
as surrounded by concentric circles of stones. The distribution of
these “argem” recalls immediately the geographical situation of
the Tuareg. It would be easy to assume that their existence was due
to this people, were it not for the difficulty that the monuments all
appear quite late in date. To quote Gautier[229]: “En résumé la
question des monuments rupestres du Sahara, funéraires et religieux,
semble élucidée, au moins dans ses grandes lignes. Le problème
d’ailleurs, tel qu’il se pose actuellement, et sous réserve de
découvertes ultérieures, est remarquablement simple. En autres pays,
en particulier dans les provinces voisines d’Algérie et du Soudan,
le passé préhistorique se présente sous des aspects multiples. En
Algérie les redjems abondent, mais on trouve à côté d’eux
des dolmens, quelques sépultures sous roche, pour rien dire des
Puniques et Romaines. Au Soudan, comme on peut s’y attendre, en un
pays où tant de races sont juxtaposées, le livre de M. Desplagnes
énumère des tombeaux de types divers et multiples, poterie, grottes
sépulcrales, cases funéraires, tumulus.[230] Rien de pareil au
Sahara. On distingue bien des types différents de redjem, les caveaux
sous tumulus du nord qui sont peut-être influencés par les dolmens et
sépultures romaines, les redjems à soutaches du Tassili des Azguers,
les chouchets du Hogar qui semblent nous raconter l’itinéraire
et l’expansion des nobles Touaregs actuels. . . . Parmi tant de
pierres sahariennes entassées ou agencées par l’homme, on n’en
connaît pas une seule qu’on peut soupçonner de l’avoir été par
une autre main que Berbère.” But here the difficulty appears, for
“ceci nous conduirait à conclure que les Berbères ont habité le
Sahara dans toute l’étendue du passé historique et préhistorique
si d’autre part tous ces redjems ne paraissaient récents. . . . Les
mobiliers funéraires contiennent du fer, et on n’en connaît pas un
seul qui soit purement et authentiquement néolithique. Cette énorme
lacune est naturellement de nature à nous inspirer la plus grande
prudence dans nos conclusions. D’autant plus que, après tout,
les monuments similaires algériens, dans l’état actuel de nos
connaissances, ne paraissent pas plus anciens.”
While the distribution of “argem” seems then to coincide with,
and be due to the Tuareg, the “Berbères” to whom Gautier refers
arrived in North Africa and spread into the interior before the
advent of the metal ages. The last word has certainly not been said
regarding the age of these monuments, and in spite of this difficulty
of dates I have little hesitation in finding in them evidence of
the individuality and racial detachment of the Tuareg stock from
that of the other Libyans, who do not seem to have used this funerary
apparatus. After all, the late neolithic and early metal ages in inner
Libya were hardly separate from one another, and in the south, where
we know the Tuareg are only fairly recent arrivals, the lateness of
the “argem” is readily understandable. But if we believe them to
be due to the Tuareg, the earliest remains in the north must be far
older than Gautier supposes.
Although certain remains of a presumed funerary or religious nature
in Air have been described as “argem,” it has apparently escaped
notice that both the pre-Moslem as well as the later graves of the
country are all linear descendants of the older and more pretentious
monuments. Yet if the term has any significance at all, there has
been a tendency perhaps to describe rather too many enclosures as
“argem.” Certain examples illustrated by Gautier are probably
devoid of any spiritual significance. There are in Air, for instance,
especially in the north of the country near Agwau, a number of groups
of concentric stone circles, which were simply enclosures round
temporary huts or tents. The old hut circles of the T’imia village
(Plate 29) show clearly how an isolated example might be assumed to
have been a prayer or religious enclosure. Again, the circular heaps of
stones at Elazzas resemble the “argem” illustrated by Bates[231]
so much that one might be tempted to conclude that they were such,
if it did not happen to be known that they were the raised plinths
on which huts used to be constructed. A deduction drawn from the
occurrence of the latter might indicate that the origin of the true
“argem” was derived from a desire to commemorate in death the only
permanent part of a man’s hut dwelling in life. Such an explanation
is not only permissible but even probable; it is even possible that
in some cases tombs were actually made in the very floor of the hut
or side of the pedestal where the deceased had lived.
In the lower Turayet valley in Southern Air I passed a number of
graves which seemed to suggest an intermediate type between the large
prehistoric “rigm” and the later small enclosure of stones covered
with white pebbles. The Turayet graves were small circular platforms
like the hut foundations at Elazzas, but not more than 10 ft. in
diameter with vertical sides a few inches above the ground level and
flat tops covered with white stones. The occurrence of these tombs
on the Turayet valley, not far from the mouth of the Akaraq valley,
where also is perhaps a pre-Moslem place of worship, and the existence
of what may prove a pre-Moslem urn burial cemetery at Marandet, all
of which places are in the extreme south of Air, are interesting
points when it is remembered that the first Tuareg inhabitants of
Air came to the country from the south. It may nevertheless be pure
coincidence that there seemed to be fewer obviously ancient monuments
in Northern Air than in the southern part.
The absence of funerary inscriptions is in marked contrast with the
profusion of rock writings in Air. Written literature is, however,
almost non-existent, but traditional poetry takes its place. The
esteem in which poetry is held and the popularity which it enjoys
are proof of the intellectual capacity which is present in this people.
When it is realised that, alone among the ancient people of
North Africa, the Tuareg have kept an individual script, it seems
extraordinary that drawing, painting and sculpture should have remained
in so primitive a state. Even if we are to admit that the earliest and
therefore the best of the rock drawings of North Africa are the work of
the ancestors of the Tuareg, it is hardly possible to qualify them as
more than interesting or curious. Few of them are beautiful. Some of
the “Early Period”[232] drawings were executed with precision and
care, but even if full allowance is made for the possibility of their
having been coloured there are hardly any artistic achievements of
merit. They do not bear comparison with the bushman drawings of South
Africa, still less with the magnificent cave paintings of the Reindeer
Age in Europe. But while some doubt exists regarding the authorship of
the early drawings, the later North African pictures can be ascribed
to the Tuareg without any fear of controversy. The Tuareg are still
engaged in making them, but this modern work is even more crude. The
drawings have become conventionalised; the symbols do not necessarily
bear any likeness to the objects which they purport to represent.
The rock drawings in Air display continuity from bad examples in
the style of the early period down to the modern conventionalised
glyphs. In most cases both the early and the late work is accompanied
by T’ifinagh inscriptions. The earlier drawings represent animals
which exist, or used to exist, in Air. The most carefully executed I
saw were in the valley leading up from Agaragar to the pass into the
Ighazar basin above Faodet. The place was near some watering-point,
used by the northern Salt Caravan from Air to Bilma. The pictures were
somewhat difficult to see as they had in part been covered by later
drawings. The execution was rough, consisting of little more than an
outline with a few markings on the bodies of some of the animals. As
in the late petroglyphs there was no chiselling or cutting: the lines
were made by hammering with a more or less suitable instrument and then
by rubbing with a stone and sand. Among the animals thus represented,
the giraffe and the ostrich in a wild state survive south of Air. An
antelope with sloping quarters and large lyre-shaped horns, the ox,
the camel, the donkey, a horse, a large bird, and the human figure,
both male and female, could also be traced. The large antelope I
cannot identify for certain, but the large bird is probably the
Greater Arab Bustard.
In the later work the conventionalised symbols remain fairly
constant. The ox is shown as a straight line with four vertical lines
representing legs, a clear indication of the hump, and two short
horns. The rectangular camel symbol had become so debased that for
a long time I was at a loss to interpret it. The representations of
the human figure are only curious inasmuch as they emphasise the long
robe worn by the Tuareg and sometimes the cross bands over the breast,
so typical of the Libyans in the Egyptian paintings. An interesting
point in these rudimentary examples of the pictorial art is that even
in the early period they portray a similar fauna and habit of life
to those of to-day. A faint Egyptian influence may be detected in
the human figures. I know of no drawings in Air to compare with the
ones found by Barth at Telizzarhen, nor any which appeared to have
a religious significance. The most interesting example is certainly
that of the ox and cart referred to in the following chapter.
The necessity of pictorial expression was evidently less felt
than that of poetry, a condition to which nomadism has undoubtedly
contributed. Yet even in ornament and draughtsmanship the Tuareg
seem once to have reached a higher plane of civilisation in the past
than that which they now possess and which their life has led them
progressively to abandon.
They have little knowledge of history outside their own tribal or group
lore with the exception of that modicum of knowledge derived from a
superficial study of the Quran. At the same time, men like Ahodu have
heard and remembered stories of the past such as those of Kahena, Queen
of the Aures, and of her fighting against the Arabs. Their knowledge
of local geography is enormous, of the general form or shape of North
Africa small. They know of the Mediterranean and their language has
a word for the sea. They have heard of the Nile, of Egypt, of the
Niger and of Lake Chad, but they have only very vague inklings of
the existence of Arabia or of the whereabouts of Istambul, where the
Defender of the Faith lived. They can draw rough maps of local features
on the sand and understand perfectly the conception of European maps on
a wider scale. When I showed them an atlas with a map of the world and
laboriously explained that it was a flat representation of a spherical
object, Ahodu and Sidi surprised me by saying that they knew that the
world was round, and that if you went in by a hole you would eventually
come out on the other side. Duveyrier and others have been surprised
at the knowledge of European countries and politics which they have
found in the Sahara. The communication of news between distant parts
of Africa is highly developed and at times astounding.
PLATE 33
[Illustration: TIFINAGH ALPHABET]
If only on account of their script the Tuareg have deserved more
attention in this country than they have received. I have no intention
at this juncture of examining either T’ifinagh or Temajegh in detail,
as they require study in a volume dedicated to them alone; but, as
an ancient non-Arabic script which has survived in Africa, I cannot
refrain from a brief description of the former. T’ifinagh is an
alphabetic and not a syllabic script, but owing to the abbreviations
practised in writing and the absence of all vowels except an A
which resembles the Hamza or Alif, it has come to resemble a sort
of shorthand. It is usually necessary to know the general meaning of
any writing before it can be read. The T’ifinagh alphabet consists
of between thirty and forty symbols varying somewhat from place to
place. Duveyrier[233] collected an alphabet of twenty-three letters
used in the north: Hanoteau,[234] who wrote the best grammar of
Temajegh yet published, gives twenty-four letters: Masquerey[235]
gives twenty-three letters for the Taitoq dialect and script: Freeman
found twenty-five in the Ghadamsi Tuareg dialects. In addition to these
letter symbols there are about twelve ligatures of two or sometimes
three letters. All these signs are used in Air, but there are also
certain additional symbols which may be alternative forms. Of the
twenty-three to twenty-five letters in T’ifinagh, some ten only
have been derived from the classical Libyan script as exemplified by
the bilingual Thugga inscription now in the British Museum. Of these
ten letters perhaps five have Punic parallels, while for the thirty
known Libyan letters six Phœnician parallels have been found. It has
hitherto been assumed[236] that the T’ifinagh alphabet was descended
from the Libyan, which, it may be noted, has not yet been found in
any inscription proved to be earlier than the fourth century B.C. Many
theories have been advanced for the origin of the Libyan script, but
Halévy is usually accepted as the most reliable authority on the
subject. He supposed that the Libyan alphabet was derived from the
Phœnician with the addition of certain non-Semitic symbols current
nearly all over the Mediterranean. If this were universally admitted
as the correct view it would still not be possible to explain why the
T’ifinagh alphabet contains so many symbols which are not common
to either the Libyan or Punic systems. On evidence which cannot here
be examined in detail, it seems easier to believe that the ancestors
of the Tuareg brought to Africa, or copied from a people with whom
they had been in contact before reaching the Sahara, an alphabet
replenished by borrowing certain symbols from a Libyan system partly
founded on the Phœnician one. A consideration of this problem, like
the one which concerns the Temajegh language itself, must be left
to experts to resolve. As much false analogy and loose reasoning
have been used on this question as on the subject of the origin of
the Libyan races. One thing only seems to me to stand out, namely,
that the T’ifinagh alphabet and Temajegh language were not evolved
in Africa but came from without, probably from the east or north-east,
into the continent, where they developed independently. To postulate an
Arabian origin, for instance, for T’ifinagh and Temajegh could not be
construed as evidence in support of any theory regarding the origin of
the Tuareg themselves. Linguistic evidence is notoriously unreliable
from the anthropological point of view, since more often than not it
only indicates some cultural contact. The most interesting aspect of
the linguistic question is the evidence which it may afford regarding
the cultural development of the older Tuareg. In their present stage
of development there is no reason for them to have retained, still less
for them to have evolved by themselves, any form of script. Their mode
of life does not necessitate the use of writing: they are for the most
part illiterate or are in process of becoming so. To have had and in
so far as they still use T’ifinagh, to have retained an individual
script, is to my mind the most powerful evidence in favour of the
conclusion to which I have already on several occasions referred,
namely, their far higher degree of civilisation in the past.
In Air, T’ifinagh is dying out. One tribal group is famous for
having retained it in current use more than any other section of
the Southern Tuareg. The Ifadeyen men and women still read and write
Temajegh correctly if somewhat laboriously. They use it for sending
messages to each other or for putting up notices on trees or rocks,
saying how one or other of them visited the place. Among most of the
other tribes a knowledge of T’ifinagh is confined to the older women
and a few men. The younger generation can neither read nor write either
in T’ifinagh or in Arabic: the scribes and holy men usually only
write in Arabic script. In the olden days all the Tuareg women knew
how to write and it was part of their duties to teach the children.
The rocks of Air are covered with inscriptions which have neither
been recorded nor translated. Owing to the changing linguistic forms
of Temajegh and the absence of any very fixed rules for writing it,
it is difficult to decipher any but the modern writings. Words are not
separated, vowels are not written, and where one word ends with the
same consonant with which the following one begins, a single symbol
is usually written for the two.
PLATE 34
[Illustration: ROCK INSCRIPTIONS IN TIFINAGH]
T’ifinagh script may be written from left to right or from right
to left, or up and down or down and up, or in a spiral or in the
boustrophedon manner. The European authors who have written of Temajegh
have variously reproduced T’ifinagh running from right to left
and from left to right, but the two best authorities, Hanoteau and
de Foucauld,[237] have adopted the former direction. It ill becomes
me to differ from such learned authorities, but the existence of
certain inscriptions in Air leads me to believe that the left to
right manner was, there at least, perhaps the most usual system. On
Plate 40 is reproduced an _Arabic_ inscription written by a Tuareg in
Arabic characters running in the wrong direction, namely, from left to
right, nor do I think the writer would have made this mistake unless he
had been accustomed so to write in the only other script of which he
could have had any knowledge, namely, T’ifinagh. The inscription,
of course, records the common “La illa ilallah Muhammed rasul
Allah.” I came across two or three other instances of the same sort.
The T’ifinagh inscriptions in Air, like the pictures with which
they are so often associated, belong to all periods. Some of them
certainly date back to the first Tuareg invasion.
There is a tradition that the Quran was translated into Temajegh
and written out in T’ifinagh, a most improper proceeding from the
Moslem point of view. But no European has seen this interesting book,
which is said to have been destroyed. It may possibly have survived in
some place, for Ahodu told me he had once seen a book in Air written in
T’ifinagh, though all the documents which I found in the mosques were
in Arabic calligraphy. Until a “Corpus” of T’ifinagh inscriptions
has been compiled it will be very difficult to make much progress.
Such a collection would assist in the study of Temajegh itself,
for the language is in a somewhat fluid state, tending to vary
dialectically from place to place and period to period. It is one
of the languages termed “Berber,” the only connection in which I
am prepared to admit the use of this word. By many it is considered
the purest of the Berber forms of speech. Although related to such
dialects as Siwi and Ghadamsi, and to western forms like Shillugh or
the Atlas languages, Temajegh is distinct; it was not derived from
them but developed independently, and probably preserved more of the
original characteristics.
The relationship of the original tongue to the Semitic groups of
languages has not yet been defined. The two linguistic families
have certain direct analogies, including the formation of words from
triliteral verbal roots, verbal inflections, derived verbal formations,
the genders of the second and third persons, the pronominal suffixes
and the aoristic style of tense. Nevertheless there are also certain
very notable differences, like the absence of any trace of more than
two genders, the absence of the dual form, and verbs of two or three
or four radicals with primary forms in the aorist and imperative
only. Berber does not appear to be a Semitic language. But the two
are probably derived from a common ancestor.
The Air and Ahaggar dialects of Temajegh differ somewhat from each
other. They are mutually quite intelligible, and so far as I could
judge not more diverse than English and American. Barth stated that,
unlike the rest of the Air Tuareg, the Kel Owi spoke the Auraghiye
dialect, which is the name often given to the Ahaggar language. The
name is, of course, derived from the Auriga or Hawara ethnic group,
which, as we shall see, is the name of the parent stock of most of
the Ahaggaren tribes. I have it on the best authority, however, of
Ahodu, ’Umbellu and Sidi, that the Kel Owi language does not differ
materially from the dialect of the rest of Air and am therefore at
a loss to be able to explain Barth’s statement.
The absence of the Arabic ع (_’ain_) in Temajegh necessitates its
transcription by the letter غ (_ghen_) which is so characteristic
of Berber. In all words, therefore, adopted from the Arabic, and
especially in proper names like ’Osman, ’Abdallah, ’Abdeddin,
etc., the forms Ghosman, Ghibdillah, Ghabidin are used. The Temajegh
letter (_yegh_) ⵗ or _ghen_ is common and so strongly _grasseyé_
that it becomes very similar to an R. The difficulty of transcription
of the T’ifinagh into European languages is therefore very
considerable,[238] for the R and Gh sounds are very confusing. In
some T’ifinagh inscriptions the Arabic letter ع is frankly used
when Arabic words occur.
The great feature of the Temajegh language and of the Tuareg is the
diffusion of poetry. It is unfortunately impossible to give any
examples in this volume, but the collections made by Duveyrier,
Hanoteau, Masquerey, Haardt,[239] and de Foucauld[240] show the
natural beauty and simplicity of this art among the People of the
Veil. Their prosody is not strict, but nevertheless displays certain
formality. Iambic verses of nine, ten and eleven syllables are the
most usual forms of scansion, with a regular cæsura and rhymed or
assonated terminations. In the matter of rhymes there is considerable
freedom: the use of similarly sounding words is allowed. Terminations
like “pen,” “mountain” and “waiting” would, for instance,
all be permissible as rhymes. Poetry is sung, chanted or recited with
or without music. The themes cover the whole field of humanity, from
songs of love or thanksgiving to long ballads of war and travel. The
Tuareg are in some measure all poets, but the women are most famous
among them. They make verses impromptu or recite the traditional
poems of their race which are so old that their origin has been
forgotten. One hears of women famous throughout the Sahara as the
greatest poets of their time.
Their way of life is attractive. These famous ladies hold what is
called a “diffa,” which is a reception or “salon.” In the
evening in front of their fires under an African night they play their
one-stringed “amzad” or mandoline and recite their verses. Men
from all over the country come to listen or take part. They seem to
live and love and think in much the same manner as in Europe those of
us do who retain our natural feelings. Only perhaps there are fewer
_grandes dames_ in Europe now than in the Sahara.
Poetry, music and dancing are all to a great extent branches of a
single art in so far as they all depend on rhythm and seek to express
the emotions. In Air the syncopated music of the negro has had more
influence than in the north, so the “amzad” is less common. Their
other instruments are drums, but the lilt of their dance is rather
different from that of the south. Their improvised drums are most
ingenious. There is the hemispherical calabash floating in a bowl
of milk, the note of which varies according to the depth to which
the gourd is sunk, and the millet mortar with a wet skin stretched
over the mouth by two parallel poles weighed down with large stones
lying across their ends. The other various drums of the Southland
are also known and used by those who can afford them. The dances of
the Tuareg men are done to a quick step on a syncopated beat. The
most effective one is a sword dance by a single man running up to
the drum and executing a series of rapid steps, with the sword held
by both hands at arms’ length above the head. I have never seen
any women dancing among the Air Tuareg and it is said not to be their
practice. This may be so, for even among the men dancing is relatively
uncommon and has probably been borrowed from the south. It seems
hardly to be consistent with their grave and dignified demeanour,
of which poetry is the more natural counterpart.
[Footnote 216: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 82 and 176.]
[Footnote 217: Called Assingerma on the Cortier map. Teghazar is the
diminutive of Ighazar, and means a small river or torrent.]
[Footnote 218: Also spelt Reshwa. Von Bary calls the cone Teginjir,
which is inaccurate.]
[Footnote 219: Which is also called Tellia, as Barth refers to it.]
[Footnote 220: Richardson, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 71.]
[Footnote 221: Naturally many more of the “B” houses than of the
“A” class still have the roof on them.]
[Footnote 222: Cf. Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 223: The evidence for these movements is in Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 224: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 86.]
[Footnote 225: Jean throughout regards the Kel Owi as very ancient
inhabitants of Air, but if due allowance is made for (as I think)
this error and his traditions are not taken to refer to an earlier
period than the one with which this group is associated, they are
still valuable, from the comparative point of view.]
[Footnote 226: Fossil trees exist in the sandstone hills of Eghalgawen
and T’in Wana, a few miles away.]
[Footnote 227: Or “rigm” or “rigem” in the singular.]
[Footnote 228: Bates, _op. cit._, App. I.]
[Footnote 229: Gautier, _op. cit._, p. 86.]
[Footnote 230: Desplagnes: _Le plateau Central Nigérien_.]
[Footnote 231: Bates, _op. cit._, App. I., Figs. 90, 93 and 94.]
[Footnote 232: According to the classification of Pomel and
Flamand. Cf. Frobenius: _Hadshra Maktuba_, and Flamand, _Les Pierres
Ecrites_.]
[Footnote 233: Duveyrier, _op. cit._]
[Footnote 234: Hanoteau, _Grammaire de la Langue Tamachek_, Algiers,
1896.]
[Footnote 235: Masquerey, _Dictionnaire et Grammaire Touaregs_
(Dialect des Taitoq).]
[Footnote 236: As, for instance, by Bates, _op. cit._, p. 88,
following Halévy.]
[Footnote 237: De Foucauld, _Dictionnaire Touareg-Français_, 2
Vols., Alger.]
[Footnote 238: Hence the difficulty surrounding the writing of Ghat,
or Rat or Rhat. I have used “gh” through this volume, but the
French usually use “r.”]
[Footnote 239: See especially MM. Haardt and Dubreuil’s account of
the Citroën Motor Expedition across the Sahara.]
[Footnote 240: In R. Bazin’s life of Père de Foucauld.]
CHAPTER IX
RELIGION AND BELIEFS
Nominally at least all the Tuareg of Air are now Moslems with the
possible exception of some of the Imghad of the Ikazkazan, who were
described to me as Kufara (heathens). Nevertheless, even to-day the
Tuareg are not good Moslems, and though, as a general rule, they
say their prayers with regularity, they are remiss in such matters
as ablutions. These they never perform except with sand or dust,
which the Prophet enjoined were only to be resorted to on journeys
or where water was scarce.
As was explained at the beginning of this volume, the word “Tuareg”
is not used by the people themselves. It is used in the first
place by the Arabs, in a somewhat derogatory sense. Barth makes no
doubt about the etymology of the word Tuareg, or, as he spells it,
Tawarek. “. . . if the reader inquires who gave them the other
name (_i.e._ Tuareg), I answer in full confidence, the Arabs; and
the reason why they called them so was probably from their having
left or abandoned their religion, from the word ترك (as in),
‘tereku dinihum’; for from other evidence which I have collected
elsewhere it seems clear that a great part of the Berbers of the
desert were once Christians . . . and that they afterwards changed
their religion. . . .”[241] The name is written either with a ك
or a ق, but according to the learned traveller more often with the
former letter. The form “Terga” or “Targa” would, however,
if the word is identical radically with “Tuareg,” point to ق
being correct in a country where this letter so often becomes a
hard ج in the local Arabic. The singular form of “Tuareg” is
“Tarki” or “Tarqi,” with both forms of plural, توارك
and تاركيون. Duveyrier[242] and nearly all other authorities
agree in accepting this etymology, though some have suggested
that it meant “The People of the Sand.”[243] Others add, as
an alternative explanation for the ترك derivation, that it was
not so much Christianity from which they fell away but Islam after
their conversion, and in support of this their laxity in ritual is
quoted. Duveyrier says that they were the “Abandoned of God” on
account of the delay in their conversion to Islam and the numerous
apostasies which occurred, or else because of their evil and violent
habits of life. There is no doubt of the reproach attaching to the
word, but the etymology is unsatisfactory. In its original usage it
seems to have referred rather to a section of the Muleththemin than
to the whole race[244]: if this observation is correct the religious
flavour attaching to the word is misleading, and it becomes simply a
proper name belonging to a section analogous to that of the Sanhaja
and Hawara.
The Tuareg of Air observe the usual religious feasts, but their fasting
during Ramadhan, which they call Salla Shawal, like their ablutions,
is usually excused on the grounds that they are travelling. On the
first day of Ramadhan it is customary to visit the graves of ancestors
and friends. The feast of Salla Laja or Laya is held on the tenth day
of the moon of Zu’lhajja;[245] it is known in Turkey and Egypt as
Bairam. On this occasion sheep are slaughtered and the people feast
for three days. The feast of Bianu on the 20th of Muharrem is a sort
of Saturnalia, and very similar to certain festivities described as
occurring in Ashanti. The feast lasts for a day and a half and is
marked by scenes of joy and happiness, for it commemorates God’s
forgiveness of humanity after the Flood. There is much dancing and
love-making and laughter, and the old people, the children and the
unmarried persons of the villages and camps are sent out of the
settlements while the revelries are in progress. The feasts of the
Birthday of the Prophet and of the Beginning of the Year are also
celebrated. It is customary when a journey is successfully completed
to give a sheep to be sacrificed for the poor, and when there is much
sickness among men or camels the same habit obtains. When three of
our camels had died in rapid succession at Auderas we were urged to
make sacrifice, and did so with three sheep.
PLATE 35
[Illustration: MT. ABATTUL AND VILLAGE]
I regret that I was never sufficiently fluent in Temajegh to learn much
of the superstitions of the Tuareg of Air. Such information can only
be obtained after prolonged residence among a people, and superficial
conclusions are worse than useless. There is no doubt that underlying
all their Islamic practices they hold fundamental beliefs dating
from their earlier religious practices, regarding which only very
few indications are available. The existence of certain apparently
Christian survivals led Duveyrier and other authorities to assert
that the Tuareg were Christians before they were converted to Islam,
and I am prepared to accept this view in spite of the denials which
have been expressed by so eminent a writer as Bates. De Foucauld,
I understand, was also doubtful of their having been Christians,
for among the earlier beliefs which he found to be retained by
the Tuareg of Ahaggar he detected the remains of a polytheistic
rather than a monotheistic system. Bates has laboriously collected
all the references to religious beliefs among the Eastern Libyans,
and any reader interested in the subject cannot do better than refer
to his work, for even as far as Air is concerned I can add nothing
thereto.[246]
There are certain incontrovertible facts which demonstrate
the influence, at least, of Christianity among the People of the
Veil. Much has been written of their use of the cross in ornament,
nor can its so frequent occurrence be entirely fortuitous. I am
aware that the cross is a simple and effective form of decoration
which any primitive people is likely, unless formally prohibited,
to have used; but I find it hard to believe that the Tuareg, who,
after all, are not so very primitive in their culture, however
much of it they may have lost, had no other inducement than a lack
of imagination to drag in at every turn this symbol which their
religion expressly forbids them to use. Their cross-hilted sword,
which has been likened to a Crusader’s, may be a chance example of
the use of a design which is as convenient as it is simple, but the
tenacity with which they cling to the form, and only to this form,
is none the less curious. The cross in T’ifinagh script for the
letter “Iet” (T) is doubtless a pure accident occasioned by the
rectilinear character of the alphabet. But in that case the absence of
the equally convenient diagonal or St. Andrew’s cross is strange. In
other instances the appearance of the cross can be even less lightly
dismissed. The traditional form of ornamentation on the Tuareg shield
is purely and simply the Latin cross rising out of what in design,
apparently, is a traditional representation of glory or light, depicted
as a radiating mass. Bates argues that the occurrence of a drawing of
a shield with a cruciform design thereon upon a rock in Tibesti is an
argument against the view which I have adopted, and that the use of
this symbol is probably due to a former practice of sun worship which
he finds widespread in Libya. But when it is realised how much the
Tuareg of Air, to consider only one group, raided in that direction,
and how natural it would be for them to commemorate a success by
drawing their shield and cross, which they regard as characteristic
of themselves, on a rock, his explanation seems rather lame. In the
curved top of the iron camel head-piece of Air I am inclined to see
another survival of the cross, such as also is probably the square top
of their spoons. The pommel of their camel saddle, a design which is
always strictly maintained, is another convincing example, especially
if the whole equipment is compared with the Tebu sort. In construction
the Tuareg and Tebu saddles are very similar, though the cantle of
the latter is generally low. The pommel of the Tebu saddle takes the
form of a short upright member without any crosspiece or cruciform
tendency; it rarely rises much above the level of the rider’s
legs. It may be said, on the contrary, that the cross pommel of the
Tuareg saddle is the most prominent part of their whole gear. It is
of no practical value whatsoever, for the grip of the rider’s legs
never reaches as high as the projecting arms of the cross-top, and it
is extremely inconvenient for rapid mounting or dismounting in their
flowing robes. The cross is also extensively used in ornamenting the
leather-work of the saddle, and it plays a considerable part in the
traditional metal-work of the more expensive quality.
PLATE 36
[Illustration: ORNAMENT.
1. “Agades Cross,” ornate form.
2, 3 and 4. “Agades Crosses,” debased forms from Damergu.
5. Necklaces.
6. Bridle Stand.
7. Ornamental strip around door at Agades made of tin plate.
8. Finial to border on riding saddles.
9. Wooden spoon.
10. Iron head-piece of camel-bridle.]
In the course of my wanderings I saw two examples of sticks which
are planted in the ground when camp is pitched; they have a crook
on one side and are surmounted by a small cross of the same shape
as the one on the camel saddle. On these sticks are hung the bridles
and ropes when the camels are unsaddled. They are planted outside a
man’s tent, and sometimes indicate his high position or prosperity.
At Agades I saw a house door ornamented with a border of tin plate in
which was cut the cross and ball design shown in Plate 36. A similar
example of the cross in design is in the characteristic Agades cross
which will be described later.
In addition to this evidence of the use of the cross, certain words
in Temajegh seem to be so closely associated with Christianity as to
require more explanation than the suggestion that they were borrowed
from the north in the course of contact with the Romans or other
Mediterranean influence. The commonest of these words are given in
the following list:[247]
_Word in Temajegh._ _Meaning._ _Suggested derivation._
“Mesi” God. Messiah.
With “Mesina,” { My God,
“Mesinak.” { Thy God.
“Amanai.” God. Adonai (suggested by
Duveyrier).[248]
“Amerkid.” Religious From the Latin: merces, mercedis.
merit.
“Abekkad.” Sin. „ „ „ peccatum.
“Tafaski.” Feast day. „ „ „ Pasca, or
from some later form of the
word meaning Easter.
“Andjelous,” or Angel. From the Latin: Angelus.
“Angelous.”
“Aghora,” or “Arora.” Dawn. „ „ „ Aurora.
In Air, God is referred to either as Mesi or as Ialla, which, of
course, comes from Allah. But there seems to be a slight difference in
the use of the two words, for when Ahodu and others talked of praying
they spoke of Ialla, but when he said to me that they were aware
there was only one God, who was mine as well as theirs, Mesi was used.
The cumulative effect of all this evidence is to my thinking too
great for Bates’ view that the occurrence of the cross among the
Tuareg is merely due to the survival of certain practices connected
with the worship of the sun.
The Tuareg believe in Heaven and in Hell and in the Devil, but the
latter seems to be a somewhat vague personage in their cosmos. Much
more present are the good and evil spirits with which their world,
as that of all Moslems, is peopled. Belief in these spirits among the
Tuareg, however, is probably older than Islam, for they also assert
the existence of angels who are indistinguishable from those of various
Christian Faiths. Unfortunately the angels are less active in Air than
the many other sorts of spirits who haunt the country. Among the latter
are the Jinns or Elijinen,[249] as they call them, which are ghosts
living in certain places or the spirits which attack people and send
them mad. Certain country-sides are known to be haunted by the sounds
of drumming, and curious things happen to people who visit these
parts after dark. The spirits have to be fed, and bowls of porridge
and water are left out for them at night; they are invariably found
empty next morning. Occasionally the spirits make merry: then they can
be heard to play the drum and dance and sing. Elijinen speak Temajegh
and sometimes Arabic: people have spoken with them. The spirits are
rarely harmful, though they occasionally play practical jokes like
deceiving travellers or frightening sheep or goats. From time to time,
however, they do torture unfortunate people who displease them.
The most powerful spirits in Air are identified with the mountains just
north of Iferuan, called Ihrsan, opposite which are the mountains of
Adesnu. In the olden time they fought against one another, the one
armed with a spear and the other with a sword. In the equal combat
Adesnu was transfixed and remains split to this day, while the crest of
Ihrsan was battered with the sword and retains a serrated poll. They
do not fight any more, but they often talk to one another. Aggata
in Central Air is also the home of a spirit population, and so is
Tebehic in the south.
Spirits are part of the every-day life of the universe. No one doubts
their existence. They may be found anywhere, even in the open desert,
where their drums are often heard. Evidence of such noises is so
circumstantial; although I have never experienced them myself, I cannot
fail to believe that they are heard. Some physical explanation on the
lines suggested by the late Lord Curzon in an essay must certainly
be accepted.[250]
The spirits which obsess men and women are more serious. I was
able to observe a case at Auderas, where Atagoom’s sister became
possessed—an affliction to which she had been liable for a long time
at irregular intervals. Her fits lasted from one to seven days. She
used to lie crouched and huddled all day, sometimes in uncomfortable
postures, but not apparently suffering from muscular contraction or
fits or spasms. At night she used to wander about oblivious of her
surroundings, waking up the children or treading on the goats. Then
she would seize a sword and wave it about, thinking she was a man and
dancing like a man. It was said that if she could only get some sleep,
the spirit would go away, so I provided a sleeping draught which her
relations joyfully promised to administer. But they failed in their
endeavours because the spirit, of course, knew what the medicine
was and made the patient refuse to take it! The treatment for these
possessions is both kind and sensible. Atagoom’s relations sat
around her trying to attract her attention, calling on her by name,
and saying familiar things to her. All the while they beat a drum
to distract the spirit’s attention, and she was constantly called
or given things to hold or shown a child whom she knew. As soon as
the glassy stare leaves the patient’s eye, and the attention can be
caught, even for a moment, a cure is certain. Persons afflicted in this
way are usually women; it will happen to them at the time they first
become aware of men, which is not necessarily when they first marry,
but this rule also has many exceptions. Atagoom’s small brother,
aged about twelve years, was shortly afterwards afflicted in the same
way, but his access only lasted one day.
The difficulty of exorcising spirits, at which the Holy Men of Ghat,
for instance, are said to be very proficient, is, as Ali explained,
that most of the people in Air who can read the Quran do not understand
it sufficiently well to do any good. Of course it was useless, he
added, to make charms unintelligently against the “jenun.” In
Air there was only one man who is really proficient. El Mintaka, the
scribe of Auderas, the man from Ghat, was said to know the method,
but it was not his speciality and he had not been very successful.
The consensus of opinion is that, unlike many of the spirits at Ghat,
where they take the form of objects like pumpkins rolling down the
road in front of people who happen to be walking about at night,
those in Air do not assume visible shape. The spirit which attacks
women, nevertheless, is stated to have been seen by some people and
to have the aspect of a dragon; it is called “Tanghot.” Ghosts,
more especially the ones who live near tombs and deserted villages,
are called “Allelthrap.”
A famous legend in Air is that of the column of raiders which by
the mercy of Allah was swallowed up suddenly as a result of the
prayers of the Holy Man Bayazid. They were on the point of capturing
Agades when the ground opened before them, and in proof thereof the
Hole of Bayazid is shown to this day. The famous event lives on in
memory because at that place the water, which we have already seen
is naturally somewhat saline and foul in the immediate vicinity
of the city, is said to have been poisoned by the corpses of the
band. There is another story, too vague to record, of a legendary
hero or religious leader called Awa whose tomb in the Talak area is
an object of devotion. The rumour may repay investigation, for the
tomb was mentioned to me in connection with the religious practices
of the Air Tuareg before they became Moslems.
Divination is resorted to by means of the Quran, and also by playing
that curious game resembling draughts which is so widespread all
over the world. In Air the game takes the form of a “board” of
thirty-six holes[251] marked in the sand. Each player has thirteen
counters made of date stones, or bits of wood, or pebbles, or camel
droppings. The object of the game is to surround a pawn belonging
to one’s adversary, somewhat on the principle of “Noughts and
Crosses.” The game is called “Alkarhat” and when a Holy Man
presides, the winner of three successive games carries the alternative
submitted for divine decision. Another form of divination is resorted
to by women who desire to obtain news of their absent husbands or
lovers; they sleep on certain well-known tombs, and thus are favoured
with a vision of their desire. The women of Ghadames and of the Azger
Tuareg do the same. The practice appears to be identical with that
described by Herodotus as current among the Nasamonians. It is also
reported by Mela of the people of Augila.[252]
The consequence of these beliefs in spirits is that amulets are much
in demand. They are especially in request to ward off the direct
influence of particular evils, which are, of course, more especially
potent when the local Holy Men have not been sufficiently regaled with
presents. There is no man in Air who does not wear an amulet—usually
a verse of the Quran in a leather envelope—somewhere on his
person. The more modest may confine themselves to a little leather
pouch tied in the white rag which is worn around the head to keep
the veil in place. On the other hand, Atagoom, whose wealth permitted
him the luxury, had little leather pouches sewn on to every part of
his clothing in addition to some twenty-five strung on a cord round
his neck. The manufacture of these amulets is the principal source of
revenue to the Holy Men of Air. Besides verses written out on paper
or skin other objects are also used. Lion claws are very efficacious,
and in some cases fragments of bone of certain animals are good. I
saw one bag containing the head of a hawk, and another filled with
pieces of paper covered with magic squares. These leather amulet
pouches are the principal ornament worn by men, with the exception
of the “talhakim,” a most interesting object, the distribution
of which in Africa still remains to be ascertained.
The “talhakim” is an ornament shaped like a triangle surmounted by
a ring with three little bosses on its circumference. The material used
for making these objects is red agate or white soap-stone or turquoise
blue glass. They are so prized in the Sahara and Sudan that cheaper
varieties of red and white china or glass were made in Austria before
the Great War for trade purposes. The stone “talhakim” are not
made in Air. They come from the north. I have it on the authority
of Ali that they are not made at Ghat or in the Fezzan either,
I have, however, still to learn where they actually are made. The
stone “talhakim” are beautifully cut and invariably of the same
design. The upper part of the triangle is sometimes slightly thicker
than the point, and in all cases is divided from the ring part by a
ridge and one or two parallel lines with the addition, in some cases,
of little indentations. I can neither find nor suggest any explanation
of the significance of the design. It may be the prototype of the
Agades cross, but I do not think it likely. The bosses on the ring
are essential to the design, and somewhat similar, therefore, are
agate rings which I used to see worn in the same way as ornaments
strung on leather cords around the neck; they seemed too small to be
worn on the finger. Most of them had on one side three little bosses
analogous to those on the upper portion of the “talhakim.” These
rings also came to Air from the north.
The flat tablet or plate of stone or wood hung around the neck,
which is so widespread throughout the East, occurs in Air, but is not
common. The finest example I saw was worn by a man at Towar; it was
made of white soap-stone without any inscription on either surface,
but was very thin and finely cut.
The women but not men wear necklaces of beads, or beads and small stone
ornaments, resembling small “talhakim.” It has been suggested
that these little objects were similar to those which are known,
as far afield as Syria, to have been derived from stone arrow-heads
conventionalised as trinkets after they had ceased to be used for
weapons. In Air, however, I am convinced the necklace ornaments are
intended as small “talhakim,” and I am loth to believe that
the latter are conventionalised arrow-heads both on account of
the difficulty presented by their large size and also on account
of the essential upper ring portion, which points to a different
origin. Circular bangles and bracelets with an opening between two
knobs such as are worn in the north are affected by the Tuareg women;
they are made of brass and copper and in some cases of silver. The
workmanship of the latter, considering that they are made by the
local blacksmith with his ordinary tools, is remarkably good. On
these bracelets the knobs are surprisingly accurate cubes with the
eight corners hammered flat, forming a figure having six square and
eight triangular facets.
Of all the Air ornaments the so-called Agades cross is the most
interesting. The lower part is shaped like the cross on the pommel of
the camel saddle; its three points terminate in balls or cones. The
fourth or upper arm of the cross fits on to a very large ring similar
to that on the “talhakim,” and curiously enough also provided
with three excrescences, though in this case all near one another at
the top of the circle. An elaborate form worn by Ahodu’s wife had
a pierced centre, but this was not generally a part of the design. A
conventionalised form was seen among the Fulani and Kanuri of Damergu,
where in one case the shape had been so lost that it had become a
simple lozenge suspended from a small ring. In all the examples which
I saw in Air the large ring of the ornament was obviously, as in the
“talhakim,” an essential part of the whole; all the rings also had
the three protuberances on the circumference. The cross is worn by men
and women alike; it is referred to as the Ornament of the Nobles. They
regard it as characteristic of themselves. The stone “talhakim”
is worn in the Sudan, but the Agades cross is only known in Damergu,
where it has been borrowed as a result of contact with the Tuareg,
and in a debased form. In Air it seems as characteristic of the race
as the face veil, and like the latter it is never put off, as are
the amulet pouches and garments when heavy work necessitates stripping.
PLATE 37
[Illustration: ABOVE: FLAT SILVER ORNAMENTS, “TALHAKIM” OF RED
STONE, BLUE AND WHITE PASTE, AND SILVER, SILVER HEAD ORNAMENT FOR WOMEN
BELOW: UNFINISHED AND FINISHED ARM RINGS, SILVER “AGADES CROSS,”
RED STONE SIGNET RING]
The origin of both “talhakim” and cross must remain matters of
conjecture. The former may or may not be, but the latter certainly
is, peculiar to the People of the Veil; its occurrence is yet another
example of the deep-rooted habit of mind which inculcates the use of
the cross among the race. The ideal explanation, in view of the common
characteristics of the ring and three excrescences thereon, would be
that the “talhakim” and cross had an identical origin. But the
cross suggests association with Christianity, while the large ring
points rather to some derivation from the Egyptian Ankh: the latter
in my own opinion is more probable.
Two other adornments there are in Air, both restricted to men: a flat
plaque and stone arm rings. The former is a flat rectangular piece of
tin or silver, usually 2½ to 3 inches long by 1 inch broad, with some
slight embossed design on the surface. It is often worn on the head,
tied by two little thongs or threads to the band of stuff which is
used to secure the veil around the forehead. The ornament may simply
be a metal form of amulet pouch, but it certainly bears a striking
resemblance to a fibula, which in the course of time for the sake of
easier manufacture is turned out without a pin. The plaque is also
worn on the shoulder, like certain classical brooches were on the
Roman togæ, from which the white robes of North Africa are said to
be descended.[253]
No man among the Tuareg will be seen who does not wear one or more arm
rings, usually above the elbow and upon either or both arms. The rings
are of two main types, a cylindrical ring some ¾ to 1 inch deep by
⅛ to ¼ inch thick, and of the circumference of a man’s forearm,
with two or three ridges on the outer surface, and a flat ring some
¼ inch thick, of the same inner circumference, and ¾ to 1 inch
broad. The second type is the most important and appears to be the
traditional sort. Deep significance is to be attached to the custom
of wearing these rings, and there are differences attributed to the
numbers and position of the rings on the arms. But whilst I was well
aware of the importance of these usages, I was unable to ascertain
their precise interpretation. Only it is clear that boys do not wear
the rings, that a ring is worn when the sword is girt on, that in the
first place only one ring is worn, and that once a ring has been put
on it is not again put off. The rings of all types should be made of
stone. In Air a soft argillaceous stone of a greenish-grey hue found
in the eastern hills is used. The rings are cut by hand without a
lathe from a lump of stone about one inch thick. The rough ring is
smoothed and fined down with rasps and files and finally cleaned
with sand and water. The traditional flat rings tend to taper from
the inner to the outer circumference. When the cutting and shaping of
the rings have been finished, they are dipped in fat and then baked,
to give the slightly porous stone a deep black colour and a polished
surface. The flat rings seem to be very important, for they are passed
on from father to son. They are often mended with riveted brass plates
if they happen to have been broken, and sometimes bear inscriptions,
for the most part only names, in T’ifinagh. Of late, rings appear
to have been made of a hard baked clay which is also dipped in fat,
but they break too readily.
Elaborate and fanciful explanations have been suggested for the
practice, which has a sacred or at least mystic association. One
author, who shall be nameless, has suggested that the rings were
worn—and presumably he saw a Tuareg with many rings on both
arms—to enable a man to crush his enemy’s skull when they closed
in battle. I myself cannot offer any explanation worthy of much
consideration. I must, however, note that such rings, especially when
worn, as some always are, above the elbow, and also at the wrist,
afford a valuable protection to the vulnerable arm muscles against
sword-cuts. Nevertheless, if such was the reason for their first use
they have become traditional with the lapse of time.
The last of these matters to which I propose to allude is the use of
the Veil, a practice which has certainly assumed a ritual form. No
self-respecting Tuareg of noble or servile caste will allow himself
to be seen even by his most intimate friends without a veil over his
face. The habit has no analogy in the practice of the Arabian Arabs,
who sometimes cover their faces with the ends of their head-cloths
to protect the mouth and face against the sun and sand. This is a
hygienic device[254]; the Tuareg veil is more mysterious. Not the
least of the difficulties connected with the veil is, that it is not
mentioned by classical authors in referring to people in North Africa
who seem to be the ancestors of the present Tuareg and otherwise to
correspond to descriptions of the latter. It is only with the advent
of the Arabic writers that these same people are first referred to
by the name of Muleththemin, the Veiled People.
The veil or “Tagilmus” is a long strip of indigo cloth woven and
dyed in the Sudan. The best quality is made of six narrow strips
about one inch wide sewn together, edge to edge. The material and
the open stitching leave plenty of room for the air to pass through,
and even a considerable degree of transparency. The veil is put on
in the following wise: about one-half of the length is folded over
three times into a band only 2½ inches wide. The part where the full
breadth begins is placed over the forehead low enough to cover the
nose; the narrow band is to the right, the broad part to the left. The
latter is then passed round the back of the head and looped up under
the narrow part, which is wound around the head on top of the broad
portion so as to hold the latter in place. The broad part over the
nose is pulled up into a pleat along the forehead and forms the hood
over the eyes, being called “temeder.” There remains a long loop
of the dependent broad portion held by the narrow fastening band:
it hangs loosely from over the right ear, behind which it is passed,
over to the left ear, behind which the end is brought and passed,
under the narrow fastening band running round the head. The lower
part of the veil thus falls below the wearer’s chin in a loop,
both ends being under the narrow band which holds them in place. The
centre of the strip is taken and placed on the bridge of the nose,
and all the slack is pulled in from the two points over the ears. The
lower part of the veil, called “imawal,” should now hang from the
bridge of the nose over the mouth and chin without touching them;
the upper edge from the nose to the lobes of the ears ought to be
nearly horizontal. Thus worn, the veil leaves a slit about ½ to 1
inch wide in front of the eyes, which, with a small part of the nose,
are all that one can ever see of a Tuareg’s face.
In this veil the men live and sleep. They lift the “imawal” up to
eat but in doing so hold their hand before the mouth. When the veil
requires re-fixing, a man will disappear behind a bush to conceal his
features even from his own family. These rigorous prescriptions are
to some extent less strictly observed in the south among the younger
generation, but they belong to the pride of race of the Tuareg. Even
when the French induced some Tuareg to visit Paris, they declined
to allow their photographs to be taken unveiled. They declared that
they had no Moslem prejudices on the subject but firmly refused to
entertain the idea.
What is the explanation of this curious habit? Every unlikely theory
has been advanced, from that of the desire of raiders to conceal their
faces in order to escape recognition, to the one which suggests that
the Tuareg were the Amazons of the classics, and that the habits
adopted by men and women respectively in such a society had become
confused. Of this order of hypotheses the simplest one is that which
explains the veil as a purely hygienic accessory designed to protect
the wearer against the blinding glare and the sand of the desert:
from the first use of the veil for this purpose the habit gradually
became so innate as to acquire a ritual significance.
But none of these theories are really tenable: the Tuareg recognise
each other, and foreigners can do the same in a short time, as easily
in the veil as a man of another race without the veil. The Tuareg are
not the Amazons of the classics, at least in the form in which popular
beliefs have conceived the latter; nor is there, as a matter of fact,
any reason to suppose that the Amazons, either male or female, veiled
themselves. There is no logic in only the men veiling their faces and
the women going unveiled if the veil were really intended for hygienic
purposes; still less is any explanation of this nature reasonable
for the use of the veil at night or in the rainy season. Yet almost
all Tuareg, unless they have become denationalised, would as soon
walk unveiled as an English man would walk down Bond Street with
his trousers falling down. No other race in the world possesses
this peculiar habit, though some among the population of the Fezzan
and the Sudan in contact with them have adopted it. The habit is
essentially characteristic of the Tuareg. It is as typical of them
as the cross-hilted sword, the cross-pommelled saddle, the status of
their women, and their T’ifinagh script.
On attaining the age of puberty, Tuareg youths in Air put on the
large trousers which all Moslems should wear, and soon afterwards they
begin to carry a sword and wear an arm ring. The first event may take
place when they reach sixteen or seventeen; the others, two or three
years later. As soon as they have put on the dress of a man they are
inscribed in the register of the Holy Man of their village or tribe
and they commence their individual existence. The veil, however,
is sometimes not donned until the mature age of twenty-five years;
in no case is it worn until several years have elapsed after the sword
is girt on. The ceremony of putting on the veil for the first time is
accompanied by much rejoicing in the family and feasting and dancing.
Two aspects of this habit strike one. In the first place the ceremonial
significance to which I have already alluded is very apparent, and in
the second place the comparatively late age at which the veil first
begins to be worn is curious in an Eastern people, where physical
development takes place early in life. A parallel may perhaps be
noticed in the late date at which marriages take place in Air. I
questioned Ahodu closely about these practices connected with the veil,
but obtained no satisfactory information: he had nothing to say on
the subject except that a man was not a proper man until he had put
on the veil. And there, for the moment, one must leave the matter.
The veil will be found wherever the Tuareg live, and only when the
riddle of their origin is solved will an explanation probably be
forthcoming. Equally obscure is the absence of any reference to the
veil among them until the time of the Arab authors. But up to the
present no reasonable theory has been advanced.
Mention has been made on several occasions of the Holy Men of
Air. As is natural among superstitious people, they have always been
a powerful part of the community. In mitigation, it must be said that
they have probably had a hard fight to keep the Tuareg in the way of
Islam at all. Where Europeans have been concerned their influence
has been uncompromisingly hostile. It was certainly the Inisilman,
as they are called in Temajegh, of T’intaghoda who tried to have
Barth and his companions killed on more than one occasion. The attack
on the Foureau-Lamy Mission at Iferuan was also due to them. Their
counsel to fall on the French expedition a second time would have
prevailed at Agades had it not been for the advice of Ahodu and the
common-sense of the Sultan, who replied to their promptings that
if the attack failed he would have to face the consequences alone,
while they, in the name of God and the Faith, saved their own skins.
With an effete monarch and lazy Añastafidet at Agades, the most
important men in Air to-day are Inisilman like Haj Musa of Agellal,
Haj Saleh of the Kel Aggata at Agades, Agajida of the Kel Takrizat,
’Umbellu of T’imia, and Abd el Rahman of the Ikazkazan. Their
influence is not exerted through sectarian organisations nor has any
“tariqa” like that of the Senussi taken root in Air. The Tuareg
have repeatedly come under the influence of the Senussiya, especially
during the late war, but in Air at least they never became affiliated
to the sect. They have continued to regard its tenets as heretical
and its policy as selfish.
A certain number of the Air tribes such as the Igdalen, Kel Takrizat,
Isherifan, etc., are reputed to be holy. The Igdalen are said not to
carry or resort to arms, but use only pens and prayer. It is difficult
to ascertain the exact nature of the distinction which they possess
over other noble tribes, but the same differentiation is known among
other sections of the People of the Veil. They cannot and do not
claim descent from the Prophet, nor are their lives any holier or in
the main different from those of their fellows. The Kel T’intaghoda
who are Inisilman are reputed even in Air to be great scoundrels. The
Kel Takrizat are not less warlike than other tribes. Their _raison
d’être_ must be sought in the shadowy past to which all problems
surrounding the early religion of the Tuareg are still relegated. On
this subject too little information is at present available.
The people of Air belong to the Maliki persuasion of Islam, as a result
of the teaching of a great leader who came amongst them in the early
sixteenth century. His name was Muhammad ben Abd el Kerim el Maghili,
surnamed El Baghdadi, and he was the Apostle of Islam in the Central
Sudan. El Maghili belonged to Tilemsan and was born either at that
place or in Tuat, where he was brought up. He was a contemporary
of El Soyuti (A.D. 1445-1505), the Egyptian, whose encyclopædic
works were destined to perpetuate Moslem learning of the fifteenth
century. El Maghili was a man of bold and enterprising character. By
his uncompromising fanaticism he stirred up massacres of the Jews
in Tuat, which he eventually left in order to convert the Sudan. He
preached in Katsina and in Kano, as well as in Air.[255] “Living
in the time when the great Songhai empire began to decline from that
pitch of power which it had reached under the energetic sway of Sunni
Ali and Muhammad el Haj Askia, and stung by the injustice of Askia
Ismail, who refused to punish the murderers of his son, he (El Maghili)
turned his eyes on the country where successful resistance had first
been made against the all-absorbing power of the Asaki, and turned
his steps towards Katsina.” On his way thither he passed through
Air, where he preached and gave to those Tuareg who were already
Moslems a way of salvation, and to the others the first beginnings
of their present Faith. He founded a mosque at Abattul near Auderas,
and one of his sons is said to have been buried there; the tomb at
least is described as his. A short distance away on the road north
from Auderas he knelt to pray in the Erarar n’Dendemu at the point
known as Taghist, and the place was marked by a roughly rectangular
enclosure of stones with a semi-circular bay in the eastern side near
a small tree marking the Qibla. Travellers always stay there to make
their prayers by the road. The place is remembered and far-famed as the
“Makam el Sheikh ben Abd el Kerim,” but others call it the “Msid
Sidi el Baghdadi,” the name by which he is usually known in Air,
where men who have lived long in the East often earn this surname. His
stay in Air was not entirely peaceable, for he was eventually driven
out by these lax Moslems on account of his uncompromising attitude. It
is reported traditionally that he was attacked by a party of Aulimmiden
in Western Air, but was not apparently killed, for thereafter he again
preached in Katsina. He eventually heard that one of his sons had
been murdered in Tuat, probably by the Jews, for motives of revenge,
and he set out for the north once more, but died before reaching the
end of his journey. It is probably to this period that the attack in
the west on his person must be referred. His death occurred between
A.D. 1530 and 1540. El Maghili left behind him the greatest name of
any religious teacher in Air and in the Central Sudan. Twenty volumes
of his works on law and theology, in addition to a correspondence in
verse and prose with El Soyuti,[256] have survived in various places.
Near the “Makam el Sheikh ben Abd el Kerim,” which is only one
of many similar prayer enclosures in Air, are some mounds of loose
stones. On every important road such enclosures and mounds may be
seen. The simplest form of praying-place is a semi-circular line
of stones; the larger places have a rectangular plan like the
mosques. Whenever a standing camp is set up, a place of prayer
is cleared and marked, and once made these hallowed areas are not
disturbed. The mounds of stones by the roadside mark spots where some
holy man has stopped to pray or where some equally important but long
since forgotten incident has befallen. But although oblivion may
have overtaken the event, passing caravans continue to commemorate
the place; each man picks up a stone and throws it on the heap. The
habit is good, for it clears the paths of loose stones. I acquired much
respect by observing the custom scrupulously myself. I made my men do
the same, and so assisted in perpetuating a highly commendable and
utilitarian practice. Thanks to the many prayers which El Baghdadi
must have said all over the neighbourhood, the paths over the
Erarar n’Dendemu have been cleared of loose stones. The heaping of
stones serves the additional purpose of marking tracks in a difficult
country. Where rocks abound or the exact way through a defile is hard
to find, it has also become the habit to indicate the way by placing
different coloured stones in little heaps on the guiding rocks. It is
a superstition that if the traveller does not either add to a mound
or help to mark a path, some evil will befall him by the way.
In spite of the proselytising of El Baghdadi and the Holy Men of Air,
much of the older Faith remained. They were unable to eradicate the use
of the cross. The people are also given at times to using camel bells
despite the injunctions of the Prophet, who denounced it as an object
associated with Christianity. It is also possible to see in the status
of women the practice of monogamy, the ownership of property by women,
and the treatment of the wife as her husband’s equal, survivals of
a state of society which must in many respects have been regarded by
El Baghdadi as heretical and tending towards Christian ideals.
Is there after all any difficulty in accepting the view that the Tuareg
were Christians before Islam in the Near East became victorious over
all that schismatic and heterogeneous Christianity of the Dark Ages
which did so little credit to the religion which we profess? There
was a time when the Bishoprics of North Africa were numbered by the
score. What was more natural than that Christianity should have spread
into the interior? When the Arabs first came into Africa, we are told
by Ibn Khaldun and El Bekri that they found in Tunisia and Algeria a
majority of the population apparently Christian. Certain “Berber”
tribes, however, were Jews, while the Muleththemin, in part, were
heathens. The profession of Judaism by people including the inhabitants
of the Aures hills, who had Kahena the Queen as their leader in the
eighth century A.D., means no more than that they professed some form
of monotheism which is not inconsistent with Aryan Christianity. But
in any case Christianity was quite sufficiently widespread to have
accounted for the survival of certain beliefs among the People of the
Veil. Even so remote a part of Africa as Bornu was known to have been
subjected to the influence of Coptic Christianity from the Nile Valley,
and we have Bello’s testimony that the Gober chiefs were Copts.[257]
Why, then, should not the Tuareg have been Christians too?
Neither to Islam nor to Christianity, however, can be attributed what
is susceptible only of explanation as a survival of totemism. The
Northern Tuareg[258] believe that “they must abstain from eating
birds, fish and lizards, on the score that these animals are their
mothers’ brothers. This reason at once suggests that these taboos
are both totemic and matriarchal in their origin”; but while the
facts have been alluded to by many authors, the possibility that the
taboos may be of recent and therefore of Sudanese, origin has not
been sufficiently taken into account.[259] As against their southern
origin—for birds and fishes are recognised as totemic animals, in
Nigeria, for instance—it may be pointed out that no proscription
against these animals obtains in Air. Instead, however, another taboo
is strongly indicated in the belief which the Tuareg of the latter
country hold, that the harmless and vegetarian jerboa is second
only in uncleanliness to the pig. Any food or grain which the jerboa
has touched must be destroyed, but rats and mice are not abhorred,
and the large rat or bandicoot of the Southland is even eaten. Bates
cites examples of the ceremonial eating of dogs among the Eastern
Libyans, and considers that this may also have been a taboo animal,
but these rites are not found in Air, where the eating of dogs,
pigs, horses, donkeys or mules in any circumstance is regarded as
infamous. Incidentally the prohibition regarding pigs is probably very
old, for Herodotus states that none of the Libyans in North Africa bred
swine in his day, and the women of Barca abstained from eating pork,
as well as in certain cases cow’s flesh, on ritualistic grounds.[260]
PLATE 38
[Illustration: MT. ARWA: DRAWN BY T. A. EMMET FROM A SKETCH BY
THE AUTHOR]
I have a distinct impression of an animistic view of nature among
the Tuareg in Air, but I am unable to base it on any tangible
evidence. Herodotus tells us that the Libyans sacrificed to the sun
and moon,[261] and Ibn Khaldun[262] certainly states that the early
Berbers generally worshipped the sun. Bates deduces that the Eastern
Libyans revered the sun, and connects their rites with bull worship
and the Egyptian deity Amon. The only surviving Libyan name for
the solar deity is preserved by Corippus as Gurzil.[263] A trace of
sun worship survives in Air perhaps in association with the Kel Owi
tribes. When the sun is veiled by white cloud in the early morning
and the temperature is low, it is customary to say that “it is as
cold as the mother of the Kel Owi,” or “the mother of the Kel
Owi is cold.” I asked for an explanation of the remark, and was
told that the sun was the mother of the Kel Owi, and that when the
early morning air was cold the saying was used, for the Kel Owi are
known to be ungenerous and mean.
The weather superstitions of the Tuareg are numerous. The climate
on certain mornings of the year is heavy and still, with a thick
cirro-cumulus cloud in the sky; when this occurs it is held to presage
some evil event. A north-west wind, with the thick haze which so
often accompanies it, indicates the advent of raiders from the north,
probably because in the past some famous raids have occurred in this
weather. Similarly a haze without wind, or a light north-east breeze
and a damp mist, are warnings of Tebu raids. The fall of a thunderbolt
is a very evil omen, as also is the rare form of atmospheric phenomenon
to which the general name of “Tufakoret” is given. It consists
of a slight prismatic halo around the sun in the clear morning sky
when there is no evident sign of rain. The phenomenon is probably
due to the refraction of low sunlight in semicondensed water vapour
derived from heavy dew. A sunset behind a deep bank of cloud causing
a vivid or lurid effect but obscuring the disc of the sun is also
called “Tufakoret” and is equally a bad sign. A morning rainbow
“Tufakoret” was seen in Air shortly before the late European war
broke out. An ordinary rainbow in wet weather is a good omen.
The two most noticeable virtues among the Tuareg, that of patience
and of a sense of honour, have not come to them from Islam. They are
attributable to something older. Their patience is not that of quietism
or of fatalism. It is rather the faculty of being content to seek in
the morrow what has been denied in the present. They take the long
view of life and are not querulous; they are of the optimistic school
of thought. Theirs has seemed to me the patience of the philosopher
and not the sulky resignation of a believer in pre-ordained things.
Their ethical standards of right and wrong, while differing profoundly
from our own, and in no way to be commended or condemned in our shallow
European way, seem to come from some older philosophy, some source
less obvious than their present religion. Not only have they standards
which the Quran does not establish or even approve, but they hold
certain codes of conduct for which there can be no legislation. When
right and wrong, or good and evil, are not obviously in question,
and a Tuareg will still say that a man does not do a thing because
it is dishonourable and an action such as no Imajegh would commit,
it must mean that his forefathers did learn in an ancient school to
seek some goal which is no reward in the present material life.
Such development is only found in societies, whether Christian,
Moslem or otherwise, which have for long been evolving under the
guidance of a few men who have learnt much and taught much. Yet
the feet of the Tuareg are not now kept in this way; their conduct
is unconscious. They are no community of philosophers seeking by
choice to live in primitive conditions for the betterment of their
souls. They hold what they have as an inheritance of grace from bygone
generations. In mind, as in custom, they are very old. Only a slight
glow of the past glory remains to gild the meanness of their perpetual
struggle and the eternal hardship of existence. It is doubtful whether
they could still be caught and moulded afresh. There is too little
left of the now threadbare stuff; it just survives in the clean air
of the desert; it would fall to pieces in the atmosphere of more
luxurious circumstance. And then, nothing would remain but lying
tongues and thieving hands unredeemed by any saving grace.
[Footnote 241: _Op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 227-8.]
[Footnote 242: _Op. cit._, p. 317.]
[Footnote 243: From “Reg” or “Areg,” an Arabic geographical
term for a certain type of sandy desert.]
[Footnote 244: _Vide infra_, Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 245: Not, I think, Zu’lqada, as Jean, _op. cit._, p. 224,
suggests. It is properly the greater Bairam, though sometimes known
as the Lesser. Sale: _Koran Prelim. Dis._, § VII.]
[Footnote 246: Bates, _op. cit._, Chap. VIII.]
[Footnote 247: Cf. Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 414. Cortier: _D’une
rive à l’autre. . . ._, p. 283. Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. V. p. 570.]
[Footnote 248: Perhaps a connection with “Amana,” pardon, etc.,
may be suggested.]
[Footnote 249: From the Arabic “el jenun.”]
[Footnote 250: Curzon: _Tales of Travel_, p. 261. “The Singing
Sands.”]
[Footnote 251: Jean says forty: cf. _op. cit._, p. 215.]
[Footnote 252: Herodotus, IV. 1723. Mela, i. 8. Duveyrier, _op. cit._,
p. 415. Ben Hazera: _Six mois chez les Touareg du Ahaggar_, p. 63.]
[Footnote 253: Worn by Arabs and Berbers but not, normally, by Tuareg.]
[Footnote 254: The illustration of the Persian in Maspero’s _Histoire
Ancienne_, Chap. XIII, is an example of the use of the head-cloth in
early times as a protection in the Arabian manner.]
[Footnote 255: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 386-7; Vol. II. pp. 74
and 76; Vol. IV. p. 606.]
[Footnote 256: C. Huart: _Arabic Literature_, pp. 383-4.]
[Footnote 257: _Vide infra_, Chap. XII.]
[Footnote 258: Cf. especially Ibn Khaldun _ed. cit_., I. 199-209.]
[Footnote 259: Bates, _op. cit._, pp. 176-7.]
[Footnote 260: Herodotus, II. 18 and 47, and IV. 186.]
[Footnote 261: _Ibid._, IV. 188.]
[Footnote 262: Ibn Khaldun, IV. p. 89.]
[Footnote 263: Corippus, Johannis, IV., _passim._]
CHAPTER X
NORTHERN AIR AND THE KEL OWI
When I returned to Auderas from Tabello I found the valley had dried
up very much. The hamlets were already in great part deserted. The
people had moved out of the settlements with their flocks in search
of better pasture than could be found on the parched trees and straw
of the little valleys. Ahodu, temporarily relieved of his authority
pending an adjudication in Agades on a dispute regarding the possession
of certain date palms, was living about two miles down the valley with
a part of our camels and his own goats and sheep. I was now anxious to
stay as short a time as possible in this part of the country, since I
wanted to see the north during the time which remained before I was due
to return to England. Ahodu himself was unable to come with me, but he
provided as guide an Imajegh called Sidi from his own Kel Tadek people
at Auderas. With a few camels, my servant and two other men I set
forth once more on November 3rd by the now familiar road to the Assada
valley. Camping there on the second day out, I met a large caravan
of Kel T’imia bound for Damergu via Agades. They were ostensibly
trading in dates but were in reality destined for the Southland to
undertake transport work in Nigeria during the winter months.
The weather was very pleasant, but in the open country the temporary
watering-places were fast disappearing. The maximum day temperatures
varied between 90° and 95° F. in the shade; the nights were already
fresh with temperatures as low as 42° F.
On the following day after leaving the Assada camp I did a thirty-mile
march along the valley, past the site of Aureran well with a few ruined
stone houses both there and on the way there, and then up a side
valley under Mount Arwa Mellen. At the mouth of the Tegidda valley
my track branched off from the road which I had followed earlier
in the year with Buchanan to T’imia. I proceeded north into the
Anu Maqaran basin over the low pass to which both Barth and Foureau
refer. From the col a long sweep of grassy plain ran gently down to
the great valley of Central Air. It is here called T’imilen after the
mountains which lie on the north bank of the section higher up, where
it is named Abarakan. The T’imilen mountains are a continuation
of the small Agalak massif which was just visible to the north;
its south-west face lying on my right was very imposing with steep
and rugged sides. Straight in front of the pass, beyond the valley,
a gap appeared between the broken mass of the Agalak and a small,
bold mountain called Aggata on the left hand. The gap, wherein were
framed the distant mountains of Northern Air, proved to be a basin
containing the Agalak and Aggata tributaries of the main T’imilen
valley. I camped within an hour of the pass, a few hundred yards
from the north bank of the main bed at the deep well of Aggata,
not far from the mountain which is also called by that name.
When the Bila and Bagezan massifs appear on the southern horizon,
one may be said to have entered Northern Air. While the north-eastern
part is more properly the country of the Kel Owi tribes, the whole
area north of the central massifs, including the western plain and
the towns of Agellal, Sidawet and Zilalet, was largely under their
influence. This part of Air is a rugged plateau crossed by wide
valleys and broken by only relatively small mountain groups. The most
distinctive feature is the number of little peaks which rise abruptly
into sharp points and ridges. But though small they are no mere conical
hillocks, for they are crowned with the pinnacles and towers usually
associated with the Dolomites. T’iriken, for instance, on the way to
Assode, has a triple crest rising out of a crown, like the fangs of a
tooth. T’imuru is a saddle-backed ridge with turrets along the crest
like the spikes on a scaly reptilian back. Asnagho, near Agellal, is
shaped like an axe; the one profile is sharp as a blade set on edge,
the other flat and long. Most beautiful of all are Arwa and Aggata,
soaring out of the plain like dream castles, with battlements and
keeps and curtain walls perched high above the cliffs and screes of
the lower glacis. The landscape is rather less coloured than in the
centre or south, for until the edge of the northern mountains of Air
is reached there are hardly any big trees or green vegetation in the
valleys. But the same red and black of the rocks against a blue sky
and straw-coloured ground prevail.
Aggata well proved copious but somewhat stagnant. Agalak well is
also deep and similar. It is the country of deep wells, and they are
ascribed to the first Tuareg, the Itesan. They are anything up to 100
feet or more deep and 10 to 12 feet broad. The sides are carefully
dry-walled with rough basalt boulders. The well mouths are slightly
raised above the level of the ground and surrounded by great logs
of wood, scored with rope-marks. They are undoubtedly the work of
highly-skilled diggers and may be pre-Tuareg. Many of them require
cleaning out, but none of them seems to have fallen in.
PLATE 39
[Illustration: MT. AGGATA: DRAWN BY T. A. EMMET FROM A SKETCH BY
THE AUTHOR]
I slept quite quietly at Aggata and was disappointed at not hearing
the Drums of the Spirits which haunt the mountain. The next day I
again marched some thirty miles, around Aggata and T’imuru peaks,
where there is an old deep well, now, alas! silted up, and reached
Assode, once the most considerable town in Air after Agades. The
plain was flat and the going good, even over the scattered rock
outcrop. Mirages were showing all the time. The mount of T’in Awak,
north of the point I was making for, shone in the dancing air like
a chalk hill standing in a blue lake. There was no shade and it was
hot. We were all tired and disappointed by the elusive valley which
continually crept away beyond another ridge, so when Assode was finally
reached we were very glad. The Agoras, or “The Valley” by which the
town lies, is not inspiring; and the site is marked by no prominent
feature. The position, however, is otherwise interesting. The Agoras
rises in the Agalak-T’imia massif and joins the basin of Northern
Air not far north of Assode; the low hills on the north bank of the
Agoras surround the town like the rim of a saucer. The position is
not artificially fortified, but could readily have been defended,
were it not that the only well lies some hundreds of yards distant
from the houses in the bed of the valley.
Assode is said by Jean[264] to have been built by the Kel Owi for
the first Añastafidet, but is certainly older than that. It very
possibly dates from the first immigration of Tuareg. The reputed date
of its foundation in A.D. 900 is therefore far more probable than that
which Jean’s statement implies. Nor is there any reason to follow
Barth[265] in setting it down to be of recent origin simply because it
is not mentioned by Arabic authors. The superficial extension of the
place is considerable, but the settlement belongs to various periods,
and not all the 1000 ruined houses were probably ever inhabited
at the same time. Although it is completely abandoned to-day, the
population, even in Barth’s time, had become scanty, for he heard
that only eighty houses were occupied, despite the fact that it was
then, as in former and also more recent times, the official place of
residence of the Añastafidet.[266]
On a small rise in the middle of the little basin is the mosque,
the largest building in Air.[267] The minaret fell many years ago,
but the mosque is still well preserved in spite of the rain which,
since the evacuation of 1918, has gradually been breaking down the
roof. The saucer in which the town lies warrants the construction
of a minaret to serve, like the one at Agades, as a watch-tower. The
general plan of the building may be gathered from Plate 32. The roof
is low, as in all the Air mosques. The various outhouses and separate
portions were used as khans and as schools. It once boasted a large
library, the rotting remains of which I collected. I made up a whole
camel load of these manuscripts[268] and took them to Iferuan, where
I placed them in charge of the local alim, who turned out to be El
Mintaka from Auderas. The books in part proved to be the remains of the
private library of El Haj Suliman of Agellal, who possessed over 1000
volumes; he lived in the last century and belonged to the Qadria sect.
North of the mosque was the quarter where the Añastafidet used
to live. The houses seemed to be mainly of the “A type.” The
dwellings further south were more numerous, and included examples of
all types and periods. The houses for the most part were surrounded
by low compound walls and lay close together along narrow streets and
lanes. No particular details are worth recording except the presence
in many of the houses of grain pits, some of which had been used for
concealing belongings and might repay investigation.[269]
The most interesting feature of Assode, considering its size, was
the absence of all traces of garden or date cultivation. The town was
obviously inhabited only by camel-owners and their domestic slaves. It
was a trading depot and a metropolis, but not a productive centre,
for even the pasture in the neighbourhood is limited. The selection
of the place as the residence of the Añastafidet must have been due
to its convenience as a centre for the tribes of the Confederation of
Kel Owi. It also suited the conditions of their trade, and therefore
probably that of their predecessors in the area, the first Tuareg
to enter Air. As a strategic position it was admirably located, well
within the borders of the plateau, and consequently not liable to be
easily raided from without; tactically, also, it was defensible. It is
interesting to note that of the thirty to forty wars, most of which
were in Air and Tegama, mentioned in the Agades Chronicle, only two
are recorded at Assode, whereas Agades was repeatedly involved. Assode
was, to my mind, unquestionably the first real capital of the country,
before Agades or any town in Tegama assumed an important rôle.
The great Kel Owi tribes in modern times are the Kel Azañieres, the
Kel Tafidet and the Ikazkazan. The major part of the confederation
lived in North and North-eastern Air; the Ikazkazan alone were in the
west with sections ranging as far afield as Damergu and Elakkos. A
little research makes it clear that both the Kel Azañieres and the
Kel Tafidet are “Kel name” sections of older “I name” tribes;
in the course of time they became so powerful and numerous that their
parent stems were obscured. Of the latter three main stocks can still
be traced, in addition to the Ikazkazan, certain unattached Imghad
tribes, and several settled communities. The three parent tribes bear
the names of Imaslagha, Igermaden, and Imasrodang.
The Imaslagha include the important Kel Azañieres tribes of the
Azañieres mountains in the extreme north-west of Air, as well as the
Kel Assarara of the north-eastern plain. When the Kel Owi entered Air,
this stock occupied the area of the Immikitan and Imezegzil tribes
of earlier Tuareg known as the People of the King.[270] It contains
several ancient “I name” sections which might also be considered
as separate stocks, were it not that on the one hand they never split
up into “Kel name” tribes associated with definite localities,
and, on the other, that they continued to be traditionally connected
with the parent Imaslagha stems until to-day. These “I tribes” are
the Izeyyakan, who are also said to be People of the King and may in
fact have been a part of the latter division absorbed by the Kel Owi,
the Imarsutan, and the now almost extinct Igururan, represented by
one surviving section, the Kel Fares, who take their name from Fares
water and pasture in the far north of North-eastern Air on the edge
of the desert. If the Izeyyakan were originally People of the King,
their absorption would afford a precedent for a similar process which
can be observed in progress among the Immikitan who have fallen under
the political influence of the Imaslagha stock of tribes. The Imarsutan
are said to have come from an unidentified place called Arsu, which is
presumed not to be in Air. In popular parlance all these tribes have
collectively come to be known as the Kel Azañieres, but, although of
the same Imaslagha stock, the Kel Assarara are usually not included
under this head. The Kel Assarara with the subdivision, Kel Agwau
and Kel Igululof, were the people of Annur, the paramount chief of
Air in Barth’s day. Their villages are along the great valley of
North-eastern Air, for which the Tuareg have no one name. They call
the valley after the various villages on its banks, and these in turn
are named from the neighbouring tributaries. It is into this basin that
the Assode Agoras flows. The Kel Assarara fall into a somewhat separate
category from the Kel Azañieres because Annur had made them into a
powerful people, his own position being in reality far greater than
either that of the Amenokal or the Añastafidet. It was due to him that
his tribe acquired independent status in genealogical systems. Barth
gives a good picture of the chief, and it is worth reproducing as
the impression of a traveller who had no reason to be prejudiced in
favour of the Air Tuareg, having at that time recently been attacked
and nearly massacred by them.[271] “We saw the old chief on the day
following our arrival. He received us in a straightforward and kindly
manner, observing very simply that even if, as Christians, we had come
to his country stained with guilt, the many dangers and difficulties we
had gone through would have sufficed to wash us clean, and that we had
nothing to fear but the climate and the thieves. The presents we spread
out before him he received graciously, but without saying a single
word. Of hospitality he showed no sign. All this was characteristic. We
soon received further explanations. Some days afterwards he sent us
the simple and unmistakable message that if we wished to proceed to
the Sudan at our own risk, he would place no obstacle in our way;
but if we wanted him to go with us and protect us, we ought to pay
him a considerable sum. In stating these plain terms he made use of
a very expressive simile saying that as the ‘leffa’ (or snake)
killed everything she touched, so his word, when it had once escaped
his lips, had terminated the matter in question—there was nothing
more to be said. . . . Having observed Annur’s dealings to the very
last, and having arrived under his protection safely at Katsena, I must
pronounce him a straightforward and trustworthy man, who stated his
terms plainly and dryly, but stuck to them with scrupulosity (_sic_);
and as he did not treat us, neither did he ask anything from us,
nor allowed his people to do so. I shall never forgive him for his
niggardliness in not offering me so much as a drink of ‘fura’
or ‘ghussub water’ when I visited him, in the heat of the day,
on his little estate near Tasawa, but I cannot withhold from him
my esteem both as a great politician in his curious little empire,
and as a man remarkable for singleness of word and purpose.”
PLATE 40
[Illustration: ROCK DRAWINGS.]
Annur was killed in 1856 by raiders from Bilma, which he had
frequently attacked. As another example of a similar type of chief,
I will copy the entry made in my diary when Ahodu and Sidi described
to me Annur’s successor, Belkho of Ajiru, chief of the Igermaden
during the last years of the nineteenth century. “He was the last
independent ruler of Air. He was small and rather hunched, but with
authority unquestioned from Ghat to the Sudan. His raids were swift,
well planned and executed in a manner which betrayed imagination. He
had a great reputation for generosity, combined with personal magnetism
of such a remarkable nature that his power was believed to be derived
from communing with the spirits. ‘We used,’ said Sidi, ‘to see
him sitting near the fire at night when he was travelling or raiding,
crouched with his back turned on his companions, saying no word,
but looking into the darkness with the firelight flickering on his
small form, casting shadows in the distance, where his friends among
the spirits sat and conferred with him!’”
Belkho’s people, the Igermaden, are the parent stock of the Kel
Tafidet, who not only became the most distinguished tribe in the
Confederation, but also gave their name to the administrative ruler
of the Kel Owi and the Confederation generally. They inherited the
Tafidet mountains in the easternmost parts of Air and include an
old “I name” tribe, the Igademawen. The name Igermaden seems to
associate them with Jerma or Garama in the Fezzan, but I am aware of
no particular reasons for supposing that they came to Air from there,
though it may once have been theirs in the remote past. There are,
incidentally, numerous names of places in Air containing the root
‘Germa’ in their composition.
The third group of the Kel Owi, the Imasrodang, occupied the Ighazar
valley and villages, whence they drove the Kel Ferwan. Certain small
nuclei of People of the King, however, remained in this area, as we
have seen also occurred elsewhere. The Imasrodang deserve no particular
comment except that a section, the Kel T’intaghoda, is reputed to
be “holy.” There is no justification in their conduct for the
description. They are the lords of the servile people of Tamgak,
as well as of the so-called “Wild Men of Air.”
I never succeeded in seeing these curious people. Their origin is
a deep mystery. Buchanan on his first journey ran across a party of
them in Northern Air, but they come down very seldom from Tamgak and
betray the utmost nervousness of any strangers. The Tuareg call them
Immedideran and admit that they are noble, though not of their own
race. They emphatically deny that these people are negroid. They are
said to speak a language which the Tuareg do not understand. When
they meet any Tuareg they are reputed, probably quite untruly, to
hold their noses as if to indicate that they smelled a bad or at
any rate a curious smell. According to Sidi, who has seen them, they
live in Tamgak in a very primitive state, wearing hardly any clothes
except a few rags or skins. They nevertheless all affect the Veil, but
although they possess many sheep and goats, the camel seems strange
and unfamiliar to them when they come down to the valleys to sell
their animals. They live neither in houses nor in huts nor in tents,
but in very low shelters made of three uprights of stone or wood, with
a fire in front and a roof of skins or grass. The Tuareg know nothing
of their origin, but say that they were there before the Veiled People
came. They are apparently as fair as the Tuareg themselves, and not
negroid in type, but who they are it is not possible even to surmise,
unless they are the Leucæthiopians of the classics.
PLATE 41
[Illustration: ROCK DRAWINGS.]
The Ikazkazan group are the junior partners of the Kel Owi, but
probably the most numerous group in the Confederation of the Children
of Tafidet. They range as far south as Elakkos, which sometimes makes
one wonder if they are perhaps a non-Kel Owi tribe which threw in
its lot with these people when they entered Air. Their many tribes
are grouped into two main divisions, the Kel Tamat (the People of the
Acacia) in the north, and the Kel Ulli (the People of the Goats) in
the south, both of which appellations are in the nature of distinctive
nicknames to distinguish the two geographical units. The names may
have a totemic significance, in which case the Kel Tagei (the People
of the Dûm Palm) and Kel Intirza (the People of the Asclepias) could
be cited as other examples of the practice. There is no particular
reason for calling the People of the Goats by this name, since they
own as many camels as do the other Tuareg and are not in any way the
only tribe to keep goats. Their occupation of Elakkos is reputed,
probably rightly, to be fairly recent. The most important tribe of
the northern section is the Kel Gharus (the People of the Deep Well)
in Talak—with their dependent Imghad, the Ahaggaren.
Such, briefly, is the Kel Owi tribal system. From Assode I determined
to examine their country in the great north-eastern basin of Air
contained between the mountain groups of Afis, Taghmeurt, Azañieres
and Tafidet. Somewhere in this area clearly was the village and valley
of T’intellust where Annur lived and where Barth’s expedition
made its head-quarters in Air. The name does not figure on the French
maps, and since such indications as I had received from native sources
seemed to be confused, I was determined to find it for myself.
The country east of Assode was a broken plain, out of which only
one small massif emerged, the Gundai[272] hills, standing isolated
and compact against the background of the eastern mountains. Between
Gundai and T’imia the country is drained by the Unankara valley,
which is crossed by the trans-Saharan caravan road on its way from the
Ighazar to Mount Mari. The watering-point of Unankara lies below Gundai
opposite the Talat Mellen hills: from there a branch off the Tarei tan
Kel Owi runs up to T’imia village by a very difficult road along a
watercourse which is the upper part of the Assode Agoras. Whenever in
the south-eastern plain I crossed the main Kel Owi road and plotted
the point on a map compiled from my compass traverse, I was impressed
by the directness and straightness of its course across country. From
Mount Mari southward the line was almost due north and south; at that
point a change of direction takes place, and a line drawn somewhat
west of north from Mount Mari to Unankara and produced, would, as
the road does, pass within a short distance of Assatartar and enter
the Ighazar between T’intaghoda and Iferuan. The upper part of
the great caravan road in Air is as straight as the southern section
across the Azawagh and Damergu. Great age alone can account for the
directness of the road and the worn tracks on the rocky ground. Its
conquest and tenure by the Kel Owi is only an episode in the history
of one of the oldest roads in the world.
Leaving three men with my baggage at Assode to take care of themselves,
Sidi and I on two camels set out to look for T’intellust, which
he had often visited in his younger days. I passed one or two small
settlements of stone houses, including Assadoragan, near Assode, and
T’in Wansa, and reached Igululof after crossing or ascending a number
of small valleys which flowed from Gundai into the Agoras. Igululof is
a largish village with a date grove and the remains of some gardens;
the houses were nearly all of the “B type” and were still filled
with the household effects of the inhabitants who had evacuated the
country in 1918. Apart from the usual collections of skins for water
and grain, mortars, saddle-stone querns and pottery, the frequent
occurrence of beds and furniture deserves mention as indicating the
prosperity of the communities in the past. One also saw here, as
elsewhere in these northern villages, swinging doors hewn out of one
piece of wood set in stone sockets. The trees from which they were
cut must certainly have been four feet in diameter, a few such were
still to be seen in all the larger valleys. In one house I remarked
a wooden bridle stand with a broadening top like the capital of a
column surmounted by four wooden horns, on which were hung looped
bridle ropes and halters. There were examples of low kidney-shaped or
rectangular seats standing not four inches from the ground cut out
of blocks of wood: they were used by the women when preparing food,
and constituted the nearest approach to a chair in a country where
it is the universal custom to sit on mats on the ground. Many of
the houses had long rectangular racks of palm ribs up to 10 ft. × 5
ft. × 1 ft. deep slung from the roof, with the household effects,
which they were intended to contain, still in their places. The
niches were filled with the pots and skins and trinkets of the former
owners. The spectacle of desolation produced by these pathetic human
remains made one sympathise profoundly with the unfortunate people
who had had no time even to save their few worldly goods.
By far the most important household implement appeared to be the
double luggage rest which was conspicuous in all the houses. It
consists of a pair of U-shaped wooden crutches on a short round pole,
which is planted in the ground. The upper or U-part of these rests,
in the ordinary variety, has plain flat surfaces some four inches
broad by a half-inch thick. The elaborate variety has a broader front
member which spreads gradually from some four inches at the base,
where it joins the round pole or leg, to a breadth of twelve to
fifteen inches. The tops of these members are flat or stepped down
in the centre, so as to make the corners appear like wide projecting
horns. Their front surfaces were very elaborately ornamented with
brass ribs and silver, lead or zinc studs. The brass was nailed on
or hammered into the surface of the wood as an inlay. Brass sheet
fretted in patterns with green leather or red stuff behind it covered
the larger spaces. The designs were geometrical and somewhat analogous
to the ornamentation on the camel saddles, but rather more varied. The
workmanship was excellent and displayed the most finished craft in
Air. These rests were traditionally used in pairs on the march to
keep valuable merchandise and baggage out of the wet. Their great
weight—as they measure up to 5 ft. high and 2 ft. 6 in. between
tops of the arms, and are always cut in one piece from a log of hard
wood—in practice rendered it impossible to use them much on the road,
and they have consequently become articles of household furniture. So
far as I know, both the shape of the objects themselves and the
designs which ornament them are traditional and peculiar to the Tuareg.
PLATE 42
[Illustration: ORNAMENTED BAGGAGE RESTS]
In view of their having been so recently inhabited and being at the
same time so similar to the older “A type” houses, these houses
were very interesting, as they showed the mode of life of the earlier
Tuareg. Within, the floors were neatly sprinkled with sand or small
quartz gravel; two rings of stones containing coarser pebbles marked
the places where personal ablutions were performed or where rubbish was
collected. A group of large stones represented the hearth. The absence
of windows and the lower roofs and doors make the more recent houses
seem rather dark, but otherwise they are quite pleasant dwellings. The
older houses must have been most comfortable. Their cleanliness,
as early travellers remarked, depended on the owners: judging by the
state of their present-day huts they were very well kept.
Crossing to the north of the broad Igululof valley, Sidi and I entered
a very rough plateau covered with large ochreous and brown boulders;
it was intersected by numerous small valleys and gullies flowing north
into the main basin. We climbed laboriously over a steep ravine and
up a pass between two hillocks where there was a way down into the
further valley of Anu Samed.[273] It was already late in the evening
and the sun was setting on our left: in front the whole plain of
the basin of North-eastern Air was spread out with a great green and
white snake of a bed winding through it. In the distance along the
horizon were the fantastic purple mountains which reach from Tamgak
to Tafidet along the edge of the desert. We descended slowly in the
dusk into the Anu Samed ravine, and lay down to sleep where this
tributary enters the stream bed of the nameless basin. Night came on
immediately. I made some cocoa, but we had to put out the fire as soon
as possible, for this is the way by which raiding parties enter Air
from the east. There is no permanent habitation nearer than T’imia
or Iferuan, fifty miles away to the south and west respectively. The
country was impressive and rather frightening.
Next morning I said I wanted to go to T’intellust. We set off up the
main valley in an east to north-easterly direction; it was filled with
big trees and had a series of small villages on either bank. After
riding for some hours Sidi turned to me and asked me if I wanted
to go to T’intellust village or to the House of the Christians. I
supposed the latter was some old French Camel Corps camp, but expressed
mild curiosity about it. I asked him why, particularly, it was so
called. Sidi replied that in the olden days when his father was alive,
he had told him that some Christians had come to the valley and had
lived with the chief Annur. This interesting information decided me to
make for the House of the Christians, which proved to be not so very
far from T’intellust village itself, a settlement of “B type”
stone houses with a few enclosures and brushwood huts. It lay on the
north side of the great bed, which here was several hundred yards broad
and contained many large trees between various flood channels. As we
approached a group of large trees south of the village I saw some
piles of brushwood. They turned out to be the ruins of two thatch
huts. I dismounted, tethered the camels and again questioned Sidi,
who repeated his story, adding that the Christians were three white
men of whom he supposed I knew, for they had not been French. Because
they were great men and friends of Annur their houses had neither been
inhabited nor pulled down since they went away. Their dwellings had
been left slowly to decay, but not before the place had been called
after them, the House of the Christians.
Sidi had vouchsafed this information unsolicited; he had no idea of
what I was coming to seek. There is no doubt that the ruined huts
are the remains of the camp occupied by Barth and his companions in
1850. When they reached T’intellust after narrowly escaping massacre
at T’intaghoda, they had camped on a low hill to the south of the
village where Annur himself was living. Another attack, by robbers
this time, took place there, and for greater safety they moved their
camp rather nearer to his village. It was this second camp which I saw.
PLATE 43
[Illustration: T’INTELLUST]
Little remains to-day of the falling huts. There was a small wooden
drinking-trough and a semicircle of stones to mark the east, to which
their servants knelt in prayer. Three-quarters of a century have
passed and gone, but their camp has never been touched, “because
they were the friends of Annur,” who had given them his word
that they would be safe in Air. Barth’s speculation was fulfilled
when he said: “This spot being once selected the tents were soon
pitched, and in a short time there rose the little encampment of the
English expedition. . . . Doubtless this said hill will ever remain
memorable in the annals of the Asbenawa as the ‘English Hill,’
or the ‘Hill of the Christians.’”[274] And so it has come
to pass. The site induced in me a justifiable glow of pride. Her
Majesty’s Government had sent the first successful expedition to
Air. A German, Heinrich Barth, assisted by another compatriot of
his, had been Richardson’s companions. Their memory survives in
the land as the white men who were not French and who did not come
as conquerors but as the friends of Annur. In the light of history,
the broad-mindedness of the statesman who selected a German to assist
Richardson in his work on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government is only
less worthy of praise than the loyalty with which Barth carried out his
task when lesser men would have considered themselves free to return
to Europe after accomplishing only a fraction of what he achieved.
PLATE 44
[Illustration: BARTH’S CAMP AT T’INTELLUST]
[Illustration: BARTH’S CAMP AT T’INTELLUST]
Neither T’intellust nor Oborassan, a little further up the valley,
deserve any special mention. Annur had houses in both villages, though
his official residence was in the latter. They are small settlements
of a nomadic people, dependent upon camels and goats for sustenance,
and lie near the point where the great valley receives the waters
of Gundai by a large tributary from the south. The west side of the
mountains of Tafidet also drain into the main basin, the upper part
of which eventually turns north-east towards the Taghmeurt n’Afara
hills. These mountains are the last barrier which divide the plateau
of Air from the desert. The plain north of T’intellust and the right
bank of the valley bed are low, rocky and devoid of vegetation. Along
the western side of the plain runs the Agwau valley. Agwau village,
marked by a white hillock, is the principal settlement of the Kel
Agwau section of the Kel Assarara tribe in the Imaslagha group of the
Kel Owi. It boasts a number of houses of the “B type,” a small
mosque, a few “A type” dwellings and many large circles which
were once hut enclosures.
Marching west from Oborassan and T’intellust towards Agwau, there
were few landmarks of any note along the north side of the main
valley. I gradually left the line of the main bed and skirted some low
rocky ground, which reaches for some distance towards the north. Beyond
Agwau I crossed a grassy plain in the direction of a big group of bare
mountains, one side of which is called the Assarara and the other the
Afis massif;[275] it is an isolated southern spur of the great Tamgak
formation just visible behind it in the north-west. The Agwau torrent
flows down between its eastern side and the plain of North-eastern
Air. A road from the great nameless valley runs northwards up its
course and eventually leaves the mountains for the desert by Fares
and T’iwilmas watering-points.
The most important settlement of this north-eastern basin of Air is
Assarara, a small town lying in a cranny between two boulder-strewn
peaks which rise suddenly out of the gentle slope of the northern
bank of the main valley. Here I spent a night after looting a number
of ethnological specimens from deserted houses, mainly of the “B
type.” The dwellings were all well built and were still filled with
abandoned household goods: several had stucco decorations derived
from the older “A type” house decoration which has already been
described. There were also a mosque and khan. Thence I returned to
Assode by Assatartar village, crossing the Tarei tan Kel Owi as it
emerges from the plateau south of the main valley by the little left
bank ravine called Azañieres.[276]
By the next day I had again set forth towards the north, halting after
the first march at Afis village, not far from Assarara, but on the
other side of the Afis massif. There also I saw a number of stone
houses and another mosque. The country in a sense was dangerous,
because the neighbouring watering-point called Agaragar, has often
proved to be the favourite camping-ground for raiders entering
Air from the north. It happened while I was taking an astronomical
observation during the night at about 1 a.m. that a sudden wind arose
in the valley, and the camp woke up with a sense of foreboding. The
air seemed filled with impending danger, of which the camels also
became aware. Almost at once a camel was seen silhouetted on a ridge
against the dark sky. Amadu, my servant, seized a rifle and quickly but
silently woke up Sidi and the camel men. They said that a raid was upon
us, and with difficulty I restrained them from firing indiscriminately
into the night. We took up our positions behind the baggage in the
black shadow of a tree under which we were camped. But the camel on the
sky-line turned out to be one of my own beasts which had strayed, and
calm was restored. We had received a visitation from the great god Pan.
On the following day we crossed the Agaragar valley and wound slowly
up a defile towards the upper part of the Ighazar basin. We climbed
to a pass over a spur of the Tamgak mountains. The rocks all round
were covered with drawings and inscriptions, for the way was very
old. It was the road of the Northern Air salt caravan which went to
Bilma from Iferuan by Faodet, Agwau, Taghmeurt n’Afara and the pool
of Agamgam on the edge of the desert in the far north-eastern corner
of the mountains. From Agamgam the caravan used to march by an easier
route than the southern track which is now followed to Ashegur well,
north of Fashi and from that place to Bilma.
From the pass the road fell steeply to Faodet in an amphitheatre of
great hills, a picturesque place, and important on account of a good,
deep well. Although the houses were few the site proved interesting
by reason of the existence of rectangular grass huts constructed
at great labour to preserve the traditional type of the Tuareg
house. They provided an excellent example of the tenacity of custom,
for the material of which they had been built was totally unsuited
to their shape or plan.
The upper waters of the Ighazar basin collect in three valleys which
unite between T’intaghoda and Seliufet. On the way down the valley
from Faodet, the village and palm grove of Iberkom were passed, whence
a fine valley runs up into the heart of Tamgak and provides some
degree of communication between T’iwilmas or Fares on the desert,
and the villages in the Ighazar. Further on we come to Tanutmolet
village, remarkable for a modern elaboration of the “B type”
house displayed in the strictly rectangular but many-roomed dwelling
shown in Plate 27. T’intaghoda is interesting as possessing an early
mosque and several fine “A” and “B type” houses covered with a
stucco of red earth. Most of the houses had been built on two low hills
standing in the bottom of the valley. There are no gardens near them
nor any palm grove. The importance of the merchants and holy men who
used to live there had made of T’intaghoda the capital of Northern
Air. A little further on begins the palm grove of Seliufet, and from
there date palms and gardens continue all the way to Iferuan, with a
chain of almost contiguous settlements on both sides of the valley bed.
At Iferuan the French established a small fort in 1921 near the site
where the Foureau-Lamy expedition had camped and had been attacked some
twenty years before. The fort is valueless except for the moral support
it may offer to induce the local Tuareg to return to their old villages
from the south. The Senegalese soldiers of the garrison are not mounted
and would be powerless to do anything in the event of a raid. By the
end of 1922 some families, but only a few compared with the numbers
who lived there before the war, had returned to their homes.
Iferuan was a very delightful place. The peak of Tamgak stands pointing
like a finger to heaven on the edge of the massif. The gardens and
the groves of palm trees, some of which, alas! have died through lack
of attention during the years of neglect since 1917, give the area a
distinctly fertile aspect. It is impossible to say how many palm trees
there are in the Ighazar, but they must run into many thousands. There
are said to be 4250 at Iferuan alone. This number exceeds the next
largest single group at In Gall west of Agades, where there are some
4000 trees, and the former are only a part of the total in the Ighazar.
The date palm is a comparatively late arrival in Air, where it was
introduced from the north. The trees are a cross of the Medina and
Fezzan varieties. As elsewhere in North Africa, each tree is an
immovable asset like a house, and often does not belong to the same
man as the ground on which it is grown.
At the foot of the palms were numerous gardens growing vegetables
and grain. The fort had a wonderful kitchen garden with all sorts
of melons, gourds and welcome European green food. The French
officer in command of the post used to declare that Iferuan was the
Switzerland of the Sahara, and the cool climate seemed to justify his
praise. The Tuareg buildings had nothing remarkable about them with
the exception of the large mosque of Tefgun not far away, and the khan
or caravanserai built on the Arab plan. The Sudanese habit of making
large clay amphoræ and baking them _in situ_, for the storage of
wheat and millet grown in the gardens, has been adopted in Iferuan,
and to my knowledge not elsewhere in Air.
Although the open desert on the way to Ghat is not reached much before
In Azawa, several days further north, now, as in the past, Iferuan
is the last permanently inhabited point in Northern Air. Between
these points the mountain mass of Fadé has first to be crossed;
it contains several watering-points and some pastures, and huts
were occasionally built at a pool called Zelim, but they had no
permanence. The mountains and the watering-places have long since
been abandoned by their old owners, the Ifadeyen and Kel Fadé and
now belong to the Ikazkazan and Kel Tadek tribes.
At Iferuan several important roads meet. The road from Air to Tuat
and to Ghat, which is the main north and south caravan track across
the Central Sahara, and the Haj road from Timbuctoo to Cairo, all
three have a stage in common from Iferuan to In Azawa. The Haj road
used to leave the Niger at Gao and enter Air at In Gall, whence it
skirted the western edge of the plateau and then turned into the
mountains to Iferuan: after passing In Azawa and Ghat it ran through
Murzuk, Aujila and Siwa to Cairo. From Iferuan there are also several
roads to the west, while the northern of the two alternative eastern
roads across the desert to Kawar equally started from there, running,
as already stated, by way of Taghmeurt n’Afara, Agamgam and Ashegur.
In seeking to identify Air with the Agisymba Regio of the Roman
geographers, Duveyrier presumed that the Fezzanian Garamantes were in
the habit of visiting the plateau in ox-drawn chariots or wagons. If
they had, in fact, done so, it is logical to suppose the road they used
would have come to Iferuan or one of the Ighazar villages. Indeed he
states that he heard rumours of a direct road from Murzuk or Garama
to Air, a “Garamantian way” which passed through a place called
Anai, where there were rock drawings similar to those found in Algeria
and Tripolitania. This Anai was south-west of Murzuk and must not be
mistaken for the better known Anai of Kawar, which is north of Bilma
on the Murzuk-Chad road.
I was at particular pains to inquire into the existence of this
road from all the most prominent guides and personages in Air whom I
could find. It would have been peculiarly interesting to establish
its existence, for Duveyrier says, “_La voie, avec ses anciennes
ornières_, est encore assez caractérisée pour que les Tebou,
mes informateurs, qui en arrivaient, n’aient laissé dans mon
esprit aucun doute à ce sujet.”[277] Other writers, presumably
on his authority, have added that where this road crossed the sand,
stone flags were laid for the wheels to pass over. Duveyrier’s
informers stated that the petroglyphs at Anai represented ox-drawn
vehicles, and that the road also passed by way of Telizzarhen, where
Barth discovered the famous rock drawings depicting men with animal
heads.[278] While the broad valley at T’intellust would afford easy
passage for a wheeled vehicle, there is no way to the south for any
but pack transport. There are no signs of any road for vehicles ever
having existed either east or west of the Bagezan massif. The great
Kel Owi road is only fit for pack animals; and although many parallel
tracks are visible in the open country there are numerous defiles where
a single path only a few inches broad occurs. I am convinced that
wheeled transport could never have been used anywhere in Central or
Southern Air. But, it may be asked, could chariots have arrived even
as far as T’intellust or Iferuan? There are only three ways into the
plateau from the north-east that are at all suitable even for loaded
camels. They are (_a_) through the Fadé mountains to Iferuan, (_b_)
by Fares water and the Agwau valley to the great north-east basin,
and by Taghmeurt n’Afara to T’intellust. The first two are not
practicable for wheeled traffic, and on hearsay evidence the third
one is equally out of the question. I do not, therefore, think that
wheeled transport could ever even have entered Air from the north or
north-east, though wagons might, of course, have come as far as the
borders of the mountains to points such as Fares or Agamgam, provided
the surface of the desert were hard enough. This cannot be determined
until Anai and the country between it and Air have been visited.
If any direct road between these areas ever existed, it is very
unlikely to have run straight from Anai to T’intellust, as
Duveyrier’s map shows. In my inquiries I heard in all of only four
roads across the Eastern Desert: (_a_) the southernmost from Damagarim
by Termit;[279] (_b_) the direct road to Fashi and Bilma from Southern
Air, starting at Tabello; (_c_) the old Kel Owi Taghalam road from
Agamgam to Ashegur, whence one branch goes north to Jado oasis and
the other south to Fashi; and (_d_) a northern road from Fadé to Jado
direct. Guides like Efale, who know every part of the Eastern Desert,
state that there is no road from Air direct to Murzuk which does not go
either by way of Jado or by way of the usual caravan road between Kawar
and the Fezzan. The northernmost road from Fadé to Jado runs through
two places called Booz and Ghudet, where water is found a short way
below the surface; Efale travelled this way in his youth. He told me
that it was known to and used by Tebu raiders to-day. But there are no
deep wells on this track to be filled up to prevent raiders passing
down the old Garamantian way, as Duveyrier implies was done. From
Jado it, of course, is possible to reach Murzuk either by Anai or by
joining the usual Chad road via Tummo. The existence of this northern
Anai is certainly substantiated, and Jado, a Tebu oasis with a palm
grove, is known to exist. It is called by this name among the Arabs,
but Agewas by the Tuareg of Air and Braun by the Tebu themselves. The
place has been reconnoitred by certain French officers, one of whom,
a commandant of the fort of Bilma, I had the good fortune to meet. He
was aware of the story of a flagged road, but after visiting Jado
several times found no trace of any such track and did not believe
in its existence. That the Garamantes and, indeed, other inhabitants
of the Fezzan at one period in history used chariots drawn by oxen
is quite likely, but it is highly improbable that they ever ventured
so far afield in them as Air.
The existence of a road between Air and the Fezzan may be admitted
as possible, but only on condition that it is not made to run direct
between these countries. South of Anai it would almost certainly
pass through Jado, and thence may have reached the plateau either by
Ghudet and Booz to a water-point called Temed[280] on the eastern
edge of Fadé north of the Tamgak group, or else by Ashegur and
Agamgam north-east of T’intellust. This is not the road of the
Garamantes on Duveyrier’s map; and beyond this his story cannot
be further substantiated. As against this line of argument it must
be observed that Von Bary[281] during this stay in Air collected
information which led him to believe that there was a road from
Air to Jerma by way of Anai. It is implied that it went direct, but
he was never able to learn any details and was probably influenced
by Duveyrier’s statements. He heard that there were some traces
visible, but found no evidence to confirm the report of flagstones,
wheel-marks or sculpture along its course.
There is nevertheless one piece of evidence which militates in some
measure against my belief that chariots never were seen in Air, and
that is a rock drawing which I found in Air on a boulder in the Anu
Maqaran valley just west of Mount Arwa. The drawing is reproduced
in Plate 41. In the conventional manner adopted in these designs it
represents oxen pulling four-wheeled vehicles. The identification
of the ox is confirmed from the many other similar pictures of
this animal on rocks in Air. The object behind it must apparently
be a cart. The whiteness of the marks in the Anu Maqaran drawing
appears to indicate that it is a comparatively recent production,
although the colour and degree of patination of Saharan drawings are
of course no real criteria, for weathering is notoriously uneven in
its action. Near the drawing of the ox and chariot, but on a different
boulder, was the magic square shown in the same figure. Both drawings
were in a very sheltered place and seemed contemporary. The evidence
of this picture of the chariot or wagon is too unreliable and slender
to establish any theory, but it is certainly difficult to understand
where the draughtsman obtained his idea except as a result of seeing
chariots drawn by oxen, a condition which does not, I think, obtain
in the Fezzan to-day. Wheeled vehicles have only been known in the
Sudan since they were imported by Europeans during the last twenty
years, and I am not aware that even those are ox-drawn. Furthermore,
although the most puzzling point about the Anu Maqaran rock drawing
is its apparent modernity, which is paradoxical in view of the disuse
of wheeled vehicles in the Sahara, it is almost certainly older than
this century. Yet the application of an ox to a cart is not likely to
have been imagined by any Tuareg who had not seen an instance of it,
and there seems to be no adequate reason for him to reproduce his
knowledge on a rock in Air even if chance had taken him so far afield
as the Mediterranean littoral, where he might have seen the equipage,
unless it had in some way become associated with Air.
The identification of Air with the Agisymba Regio of the Romans has
been accepted by many authorities other than Duveyrier. It raises the
whole problem of the Roman penetration of the Sahara. They are known
to have administered the Fezzan, and it is even pretended that they
reached the Niger, but evidence on this point is more scanty. Doubtless
as the exploration of the Central Sahara is carried out systematically
further evidence of their penetration will come to light. I am, for
instance, not aware that any remains have actually been found at Ghat,
though the city, which was known to them as Rapsa, was almost certainly
that place and was visited in 19 B.C. by Cornelius Balbus. The Roman
remains discovered by Barth on the road from Mizda over the Hammada
el Homra to Murzuk are better known. This route seems to have been
opened about the time of the Emperor Vespasian, and to have rendered
possible or at least easier the occupation of the Fezzan, which had,
however, already been visited by military expeditions earlier than
that reign. Pliny writes: “Ad Garamantes iter inexplicabile _adhuc_
fuit. Proximo bello, quod cum Œensibus Romani gessere auspiciis
Vespasiani Imperatoris, compendium viæ quatridui deprehensum est. Hoc
iter vocatur ‘Præter caput saxæ.’” Evidently the road was
called by the natives, even in those days, by the same name which it
now possesses, for the Pass over the Red Rock Desert at 1568 feet above
the sea is still known to the Arabs as “Bab Ras el Hammada.”[282]
In about A.D. 100[283] Septimius Flaccus penetrated from the Fezzan
into Æthiopia at the head of a Roman column; Julius Maternus marching
from some point on the coast to Garama had joined forces with the
Garamantes in order to proceed southward together against various
Æthiopian bands. By this date, then, it is probable that an occupation
of the Fezzan had been accomplished, for this alone would justify
a further advance or punitive expeditions on such a scale against
raiders from the south. Indeed, from the account given by Pliny[284]
of Cornelius Balbus’ expedition of 19 B.C. to the Fezzan, it might be
supposed that the occupation of Southern Tripolitania and the Central
Sahara had taken place a century earlier. The identification of the
cities conquered by Balbus has not been satisfactory except in the
case of Cydamus, Cillaba or Cilliba, Tabudium,[285] Rapsa and Jerma,
respectively Ghadames, Zuila,[286] Tabonie, Ghat and Garama; the last
named being the capital of the Garamantes and of the whole Fezzan,
a position which later passed on to other places and finally to Murzuk.
These operations of Septimius Flaccus and Julius Maternus have been
held to concern Air. The latter, ἀπὸ Γαράμης ἅμα τῷ βασιλεῖ τῶν
Γαραμαντίων ἐπερχομένῳ τοῖς Αἰθιόψιν ὁδεύσαντα τὰ πάντα πρὸς μεσημβρίαν
μησὶ τέσσαρσι ἀφικέσθαι εἰς τὴν Ἀγίσυμβα. . . .[287] It is important
to try to identify the area, since it appears to be the most southerly
point to which Roman geographical knowledge is recorded as having
extended. Duveyrier, arguing, on what may in any case be a false
premise, that because Pliny mentions no camels in Africa there were no
camels, concludes with the fantastic statement that the Romans must
have used wheeled transport on their expeditions, and that that is why
the “Iter præter caput saxæ” played such an important part in their
operations; but I have seen no evidence which might lead one to suppose
that this route over the Hammada el Homra was fit for wheeled traffic.
The Garamantes were said by Herodotus to have used wagons drawn by four
horses.[288] From this Duveyrier concludes that at a later date oxen
were substituted for horses, and that in virtue of a perfectly
imaginary road from Murzuk by way of Anai Air must be the Agisymba
Regio. He gives no convincing reason for the identification, but
implies that by a process of elimination it must be so. The name
Agisymba and Bagezan have been connected by displacing the terminal
and initial syllables respectively of the two words, but undoubtedly
it was not this so much as the existence of a Garamantian road which
appealed to the learned author.
One of the principal objectives which I had in mind in visiting Air
was to seek evidence of Roman penetration. In the course of their long
historical knowledge and occupation of the Fezzan, it seemed natural
for the Romans to have explored the Air road. But I found no remains,
nor evidence whatsoever of their penetration, not even at points
which had considerable strategic value. Some more fortunate traveller
than myself may one day chance upon an inscription or a camp. Such a
discovery in so vast and little known a land is quite conceivable,
but up till now the weight of evidence is against the Romans ever
having come to Air. There is a certain historical analogy in the fact
that the Arabs never invaded the country either. Their influence on the
Tuareg of Air was confined to an unenthusiastic conversion to Islam in
comparatively recent times. On the other hand, the Arabs in the first
century of the Hijra, like the Romans, seem to have descended the Chad
road at least as far as Bilma, and again, Arab influence in Central
Africa east of the lake is at least as strong as, and perhaps even
greater than, the Western Arab-Moorish influence on the Upper Niger.
I am, however, much more inclined to regard Tibesti and not Air as
the Agisymba Regio. We find the Arabs in the Fezzan evidently feeling
the same necessity of expansion southwards along the Chad road as did
the Romans. By 46 A.H. the Fezzan had already twice been conquered
by the Arabs, first in 26 A.H., soon after the occupation of Egypt
had been completed and the attention of Islam was turned to North
Africa, and again when the inhabitants had cast off their servitude
to the Arabs. Okba ibn Nafé was induced by this breach of faith[289]
to leave his army, which was on its way to conquer Ifrikiya (Tunisia
and Western Algeria), at Sert in the Great Syrtis, and to lead an
expedition to reconquer the desert. He took Wadan and Jerma, near
Murzuk, and the last strong places of the country, and asking what
lay “beyond,” learnt of the “people of Hawar,”[290] who had
a fortress on the edge of the desert at the top of an escarpment. It
was said to be the capital of a country called Kawar, the name which
is borne even to-day by the depression along which the main caravan
road passes south through Bilma and other small villages, any one of
which may have been their stronghold, which El Bekri[291] also calls
Jawan. After a march of fifteen nights Okba came to this place and
eventually captured it. At one moment his expedition nearly perished
of thirst, but according to the story Okba’s horse found water in
the sand and saved the column, wherefore the place was called Ma el
Fares, the “Water of the Horse.” This point is now spelt Mafaras
on the Murzuk-Kawar road in about Lat. 21° 15′ N.[292]
The Romans seem to have had much the same experience as the Arabs,
though we can identify the movements of the latter with greater
certainty. The expedition of Septimius Flaccus and Julius Maternus
started from Garama. Now an expedition from the Fezzan proper
to Negroland would normally have proceeded along the Chad road,
which runs south, and not in the direction of Air, which lies
south-west. Furthermore, we have already seen that there is no direct
road from the Fezzan to Air save by making a detour via Jado and
crossing the worst part of the desert. Had the Romans intended to use
the Air road to Negroland they would assuredly have started from Rapsa
(Ghat) and not from Garama; alternately had they started from Garama
and proceeded by way of Ghat, it is likely to have been mentioned,
nor would the enterprise have been so directly connected with the
Garamantes. After marching south from Garama the expedition reached the
Agisymba Regio. But if the Air mountains are neither south of Garama
nor on a direct road from that place, both these conditions do apply to
Tibesti. This country lies due south of the eastern Fezzan and there
is a direct road from Garama by way of Tibesti to Negroland, though
it is not so well known as the main Chad road. The latter trade road,
however, and the Tibesti mountains seem to fit the description of the
course taken by the expedition sufficiently well, and clearly better
than the Air road and plateau. The Romans, we are told, marched for
three months to the south; it may be objected that this would be an
inordinately long time to take on a journey to Tibesti and that Air,
being somewhat further away from Garama, is the more probable. But
expeditions may take longer or shorter times to traverse any particular
desert road according to the difficulties encountered, the fighting
sustained and the pasturage available on the way for the transport
animals, and I do not think that any conclusion can be drawn from the
reported length of the march. A period of three to four months might
as easily bring one expedition from the Fezzan to Tibesti or to Air
as it would be insufficient for another under different conditions
but on the same road to get more than half-way.
PLATE 45
[Illustration: ASSARARA]
If circumstantial evidence seems to point to Tibesti, there is also
that of the place names given in the account. The Agisymba Regio
contained the mountains of Bardetus, Mesche and Zipta. No similarity
to these names can be found in Air, but in Tibesti the first may well
be the area and massif round the village of Bardai, while Mesche
may be a Latinised form of Miski, a valley and group south-west of
Bardai. For Zipta I can offer no suggestion.
Like the Romans and the Arabs the modern Turks also penetrated Tibesti
as a consequence of their occupation of the Fezzan in an attempt to
stop the Tebu raiding. History is curiously consistent in that we
have no evidence of the Arabs or the Turks having penetrated Air. The
Romans, I assume, probably did not do so either.[293]
The Romans must have come into contact with the Tuareg in the Fezzan,
where the latter, it might be assumed from Arab evidence alone, were
early established if they did not actually constitute the majority of
the original population. It is possible to trace in Roman records
the names of certain well-known Tuareg tribes. The description
which Corippus gives of the Ifuraces, the Ifoghas tribe of the
Southern Tuareg, corresponds accurately with that of the present-day
camel riders of the Sahara. In a description of an encounter with
the Byzantine forces under John, the general himself cuts down a
camel with his sword and the rider falls with the accoutrements and
paraphernalia, which are those of a Tuareg on campaign or in battle
to-day.[294] The activities of the Circumcelliones during the troubles
described by Opatus[295] during the Donatist heresy in North Africa
in the course of the fourth century A.D. remind one irresistibly of
those of the Tuareg. These bands of marauders from the desert came
into Southern Tunisia and Algeria on swift and remorseless errands of
plunder for the greater glory of their heretical Faith. They lived in
the barren hills of the outer waste and descended to burn churches,
sack houses and carry off live-stock with such deadly efficiency and
ease that the motive power of their organisation can only have come
from a spirit which considers raiding a national sport. “When they
were not resisted they usually contented themselves with plunder,
but the slightest opposition provoked them to acts of violence and
murder. . . . The spirit of the Circumcellians, armed with a huge
and weighty club, as they were indifferently supplied with swords and
spears, and waging war to the cry of ‘Praise be to God’ . . . was
not always directed against their defenceless enemies, the peasants of
the orthodox belief; they engaged and sometimes defeated the troops
of the province, and in the bloody action of Bagai they attacked in
the open field, but with unsuccessful valour, the advance guard of
the Imperial cavalry.”[296]
So in later years the Tuareg of Ahaggar, disdaining any but _les
armes blanches_, fell in ranks under the rifle fire of the French
troops at Tit.
But it is curious that in none of these and other early descriptions of
the Tuareg is any mention made of their outstanding characteristics,
so obvious to the person who sees them for the first time—the Face
Veil worn by the men. It seems very strange that none of the classical
and post-classical authors should have recorded a feature which so
distinguishes these people from other races. There is no reference to
the Veil until we come to the first Arab authors, when the whole race
is immediately described by this very peculiarity, as the Muleththemin,
ملثّمين,the “Veiled Ones,” a second form plural past
participle from the root لثم, which also forms the word _litham_,
لثام, the Arabic name for the Veil itself. How it came about
that the Arabs should be the first to record the use of the Veil is
a problem to which I have been able to find no satisfactory solution.
[Footnote 264: Cf. remarks in Chap. VIII regarding the dating of the
mosques in Air.]
[Footnote 265: Barth did not himself, unfortunately, visit
Assode. _Op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 376.]
[Footnote 266: There were sixty-nine inhabited houses in 1909, with
200 inhabitants, according to Chudeau. _Op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 66.]
[Footnote 267: I could not trace any other of the seven mosques
referred to by Barth, nor is the great mosque decorated with columns
as he says, unless the pierced walls supporting the roof can so be
described. There is no “mimbar.”]
[Footnote 268: Some of them were quite old and had painted borders
and coloured letters. The work was all, however, rather rough; no
T’ifinagh writing was found. I had no facilities for examining the
work in detail.]
[Footnote 269: People have stumbled upon small beehive grain pits
in Air cut in the rock away from villages. In these no doubt the
Tuareg who were hastily cleared out of Air in 1918 hid their small
treasures. They will in many cases remain undiscovered perhaps for
centuries and will prove the happiness of some later archæologist.]
[Footnote 270: The significance of the name “People of the King”
will be explained in Chap. XII.]
[Footnote 271: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 360-1.]
[Footnote 272: Or Bundai; Barth has “Bunday.”]
[Footnote 273: The Cortier map is somewhat inaccurate hereabouts.]
[Footnote 274: “Asbenawa,” from “Asben,” the alternative
name for Air in Southland, is the name which is there given to the
Tuareg. Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 334.]
[Footnote 275: Wrongly called Tamgak on the Cortier map. The name
Tamgak is only given to the larger group on the north of the Ighazar.]
[Footnote 276: Not in any way, of course, connected with the Azañieres
mountains, which are many miles away.]
[Footnote 277: The italics are his. Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 458.]
[Footnote 278: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 197. That the road should
have run from Telizzarhen to Anai and then to Air is very doubtful,
as this would have entailed a very devious route. What, doubtless,
was meant was that it ran from Murzuk or Garama via Anai to Air.]
[Footnote 279: See Appendix III.]
[Footnote 280: Temed is a mountain north of Tamgak: there is a pool
below the peak in a cave on which the prophet Elijah is reputed by
the Tuareg to have lived.]
[Footnote 281: Von Bary’s diary, _op. cit._, p. 192.]
[Footnote 282: “The Gate of the Head of the Desert.”]
[Footnote 283: Ptolemy (Marinus of Tyre), I. 8, sec. 4 seq.]
[Footnote 284: Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, V. 5.]
[Footnote 285: Tabudium and Thuben are both mentioned, either of
which might be the well of Tabonie on the Mizda Murzuk road.]
[Footnote 286: In the Fezzan: there are several places of this name
elsewhere.]
[Footnote 287: Ptolemy, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 288: Herodotus, IV. 183.]
[Footnote 289: Narrative of Ibn Abd el Hakim in Slane’s translation
of Ibn Khaldun, _op. cit._, Appendix I to Book I.]
[Footnote 290: I think this name has nothing to do with Hawara but
is derived from Kawar (see below).]
[Footnote 291: _El Bekri_, ed. Slane, 1859, p. 34. Cf. Jawan,
جاوان or, حاوار = Hawar, or خاوار = Khawar? Kawar.]
[Footnote 292: El Noweiri tells the same story of a later expedition in
Morocco led by Okba. If only for the fact that no place of this name
can be found on the route of the latter expedition, the attribution
of the incident to the Kawar campaign is justified, though there are
also other reasons for accepting this identification.]
[Footnote 293: See Schirmer’s note on Von Bary’s diary, _op. cit._,
p. 192.]
[Footnote 294: Corippus, Johannis, IV. 1065-83 _et passim._]
[Footnote 295: De Schis. donatistarum, _passim._]
[Footnote 296: Gibbon: _Decline and Fall_, Chap. XXI.]
CHAPTER XI
THE ANCESTRY OF THE TUAREG OF AIR
After the close of the classical period, the works of that great
historian and philosopher, Abu Zeid Abd el Rahman ibn Khaldun, are our
most fruitful source of information regarding North Africa. Himself
a native of North Africa, whose inhabitants he esteemed inferior
to none in the world, Ibn Khaldun compiled a monumental _History of
the Berbers_, which has become a classic in the Arabic language. His
lifetime, falling between A.D. 1332 and 1406, was still sufficiently
early for him to have had experience of conditions and people before
they had fallen so completely under the influence of the Arabs as
we find them a century or two later. On the subject of the Tuareg,
or Muleththemin as he calls them, the work is perhaps a little
disappointing, for the author seems to have drawn his material from
several sources; he is not wholly free from contradictions. To avoid,
however, adding unduly to the complications attending a study of the
divisions of the Tuareg in the Central Sahara, it will be preferable
in the first instance to examine the account of another historian,
Leo Africanus. Hassan ibn Muhammad el Wezaz el Fazi or el Gharnathi,
to give him his full name, was also a North African, but born, probably
in A.D. 1494 or 1495, at Granada. In the course of his life he became
converted to Christianity, when he relinquished his original name. He
travelled extensively in North Africa, and after living for some time
in Rome, died at Tunis in 1552.[297]
According to Leo,[298] in the interior of Libya there was a people
who wore the Litham or Veil. The nations of this people were called
Lemtuna, Lemta, Jedala, Targa,[299] and Zenega; in other lists the
names are given as Zenega or Sanhaja, Zanziga or Ganziga, Targa, Lemta
and Jedala. While “Lemta” and “Lemtuna” have been regarded
in some quarters as two forms of the same name, the groups are only
ethnically connected, inasmuch as both were Muleththemin. In Leo’s
descriptions of the deserts of Inner Libya the Lemta figure in the
country between Air and the Tibesti mountains; the northern part of
their area is almost identical with the present habitat of the Azger
Tuareg. The Lemtuna, on the other hand, as we shall presently see,
were a subdivision of the Sanhaja who lived much further west. The
passage is a little obscure, but I find it difficult to agree with
the interpretation put upon it by the learned editors of the Hakluyt
Society in their reprint of Leo’s works.
[Illustration: LEO’S SAHARAN AREAS
F. R. del.
Emery Walker Ltd. sc.]
Leo writes:[300] “Having described all the regions of Numidia,
let us now proceed with the description of Libya, which is divided
into five parts. . . .”
“The drie and forlorne desert of Zanhaga which bordereth the
westward upon the Ocean Sea and extendeth eastward to the salt pits of
Tegaza”[301] is clearly the Atlantic area, now called Mauretania by
the French, between Southern Morocco and the Upper Niger and Senegal
rivers. The Zanhaga are the Sanhaja, a famous part of the Muleththemin
early in their recorded history, but now fallen into great decay.
The second area appears to be east of the first. The great steppe and
desert area bounded by Southern Morocco and Southern Algeria in the
north, and by the Niger country from Walata[302] to Gao[303] in the
south, is divided into two and shared between the Sanhaja in the west,
inhabiting his first area, and the Zanziga or Ganziga in the east,
inhabiting his second area. The latter names are akin to the former
and the people, if not identical, are probably related.
The third area was inhabited by the Targa. It commences from the
desert steppe west of Air and extends eastwards towards the desert
of Igidi.[304] Northward it borders on the Tuat, Gourara and Mzab
countries, while in the south it terminates in the wilderness around
Agades and Lower Air. The boundaries of this area are quite clear:
they include the massifs of Air and Ahaggar and the deserts immediately
east and west of the former.
The fourth and fifth areas we will come to later.
Leo is obviously attempting to describe the principal geographical
divisions of the Sahara and the Veiled People inhabiting them. The
boundaries of each area are given in terms of intervening deserts,
or of countries inhabited by sedentaries or by other races which
did not wear the Veil. His divisions, therefore, are not deserts
but habitable steppe or other types of country bounded by deserts,
or non-Tuareg districts.
Some confusion reigns in regard to the third area, the eastern limit
of which is described as the Igidi desert. What is known as the
Igidi desert to-day is a dune area south-west of Beni Abbes in South
Western Algeria; but the position of this Igidi, lying as it does on
the road from Morocco to Timbuctoo, cannot be the _eastern_ boundary
of the third area. This Igidi is, in fact, in the northern part of
the second area, which is that of the Zanziga. Now this second area
is said to contain a desert zone called “Gogdem,” a name which
cannot now be traced in that neighbourhood, though the well-defined
Igidi south-west of Beni Abbes immediately jumps to the mind as a
probable identification. The eastern boundary of the third area, which
includes Air, or, as Leo calls it, “Hair,” must lie between these
mountains and those of Tibesti. This vast tract is in part true desert,
with patches of white sand dunes, and in part desert steppe with scanty
vegetation; it also contains a few oases. In it is one particular area
of white dune desert crossed by the Chad road and containing a famous
well called Agadem.[305] One of two hypotheses is possible: either
the names “Igidi” and “Gogdem” in the paragraphs[306] dealing
with the second and third areas respectively have become transposed in
the text and Gogdem is to be identified with the Agadem dune desert,
or else the whole phrase relating to the desert of Gogdem has been
bodily misplaced at the end of the section dealing with the Zanziga
area, instead of standing at the end of the succeeding paragraph on
the Targa area, in which case Leo would be calling the Agadem dunes
the Gogdem desert, within or near another Igidi[307] waste. Agadem is
quite sufficiently important as a watering-point on a most difficult
section of the Chad road to give its name to the area, nor is it hard
to account for the corruption of the name into Gogdem[308]—such
changes have occurred in many travellers’ notes.[309] The first
hypothesis is the most probable; it affords a simple explanation of
an otherwise obscure passage and renders Leo’s boundaries lucid.
The fourth of Leo’s areas inhabited by the Lemta is described as
extending from the desert east of Air _as far as_ the country of the
Berdeoa. This area seems to be that in which the Chad road and the
wells to the east of it are found. It would include a part of the
desert of Agadem, the Great Steppe north of Lake Chad, and oases like
Jado and the Kawar depression.
The fifth and last area is that _of_ the people of Berdeoa; it adjoins
the Fezzan and Barca in the north, and in the south the wilderness
north of Wadai, including presumably Tibesti and the Libyan desert
west of the Nile Valley. It is said to extend eastward to the deserts
of Aujila, though north-eastward would have been a more accurate
definition.
Between the people of Berdeoa and the Nile Valley are the Egyptian
oases inhabited by the Arabs and some “vile” black people.
Leo’s description of the Sahara is far from being incorrect or
confused; his information may be summarised as follows:[310]
_Areas I and II._—South of Morocco and Western Algeria; north
of the Niger and Senegal rivers; between the Atlantic littoral and
the Ahaggar and Air massifs with their immediately adjacent deserts
or steppes. Inhabitants: Sanhaja in the west and Zanziga in the east.
_Area III._—Air and Ahaggar, with their adjacent areas; south of
Tuat, Gourara and Mzab, and north of Damergu. Inhabitants: Targa.
_Area IV._—Desert and steppe between Air and Tibesti from
Wargla and Ghadames in the north to the country of Kano and Nigeria
generally in the south, including the country of Ghat and the Western
Fezzan. Inhabitants: Lemta.
_Area V._—The Libyan desert of Egypt, the Cyrenaican steppes
and desert, a part of the Eastern Fezzan and Tibesti, Erdi and
Kufra. Inhabitants: the people of Berdeoa with Arabs in the
north-east and some blacks in the south-east.
In the fourth area the Lemta were in the country where the Azger now
live, but the southern and the eastern sides have since been lost to
the Tuareg. Kawar, whence the Tuareg of Air fetch salt, is under the
domination of the latter, but, like the other habitable areas on the
Chad road and in the Great Steppe, is now inhabited largely by Kanuri
and Tebu. There is nothing improbable in the statement that the Lemta
covered the whole of the fourth area. We have quite other definite
and probably independent records of the Tuareg having lived in the
Chad area and in Bornu, whence they were driven by the Kanuri, who are
known to have conquered Kawar in fairly recent historical times.[311]
The people of Berdeoa are the only inhabitants of any of the
five areas who were not Muleththemin. I have little doubt that
they are the inhabitants of Tibesti, where the town or village of
Bardai is perhaps the most important of the permanently inhabited
places. To-day they are Tebu, a name which seems to mean “The
People of the Rock,”[312] with an incorrectly formed Arab version,
Tibawi. The racial problem which they present can only be solved
when they are better known. Keane[313] assumes that they are the
descendants of the Garamantes, whose primeval home was perhaps in
the Tibesti mountains. He notes the similarity of the names of their
northern branch, the Teda, and a tribe called the Tedamansii, who seem,
however, to have lived too far north to be connected with them.[314]
The Southern Tebu or Daza section is certainly more negroid than the
northern, and there are reasons for not accepting the view that the
Garamantian civilisation was the product of a negroid people. Leo[315]
records the discovery “of the region of Berdeoa,” which from the
context is probably a misreading for _a_ “region of the Berdeoa”
in the Libyan desert of Egypt. The area is described as containing
three castles and five or six villages. It is probably the Kufra
archipelago of oases. The story of accidental discoveries of oases
is also told of other places; Wau el Harir,[316] an oasis in the
Eastern Fezzan, was reported to have been found by accident in 1860,
and the Arab geographers relate similar stories of other points in
the Libyan desert. The accounts of Kufra by Rohlfs and Hassanein Bey
go to show that before it became a centre of the Senussi sect, with
the consequent influx of Cyrenaican Arabs and Libyans, the population
was Tebu. The identity of Berdeoa, which I think must be Bardai, was
the subject of some controversy before circumstantial accounts of
its existence were brought back by travellers in modern times. The
name was for long assumed to be a misreading for Borku or Borgu, as
D’Anville suggested. In Rennell’s map accompanying the account of
Hornemann’s travels at the end of the eighteenth century the town
(_sic_) of Bornu north of what is presumably meant to represent Lake
Chad is a mislocation for Bornu province, while Bourgou in Lat. 26°
N., Long. 22° E. is intended to represent Bardai in Tibesti, the
Berdeoa of Leo. The “residue of the Libyan desert”[317] (_i.e._
other than that of the Tebu people of Berdeoa), namely, Augela (Aujila
oasis) to the River of the Nile, we are told by Leo was inhabited
by certaine Arabians and Africans called “Leuata,” a name which
coincides with the Lebu or Rebu of Egyptian records. Idrisi places
them in the same area as Leo, calling them Lebetae or Levata. The
stock is referred to under the general name of Levata or Leuata
by Ibn Khaldun in several connections. An ethnic rather than a
tribal name seems to be involved, and this is natural if they are
the descendants of the Lebu. Bates concludes that in the name of
this people is the origin of the classical word “Libyan.”[318]
The Leuata[319] assisted Hamid ibn Yesel, Lord of Tehert, in a war in
Algeria against El Mansur, the third Fatimite Khalif. In A.D. 947-8,
when El Mansur drove Hamid into Spain, the Levata were dispersed into
the desert; some who escaped found refuge in the mountains between
Sfax and Gabes, where they were still living in Ibn Khaldun’s day;
others he places in the Great Syrtis and in the Siwa area. In Byzantine
times they are shown in the Little Syrtis. El Masa’udi states that
the Leuata survived in the Oases of Egypt. Their principal habitat is,
in fact, not far from the country of the Lebu, who were in Cyrenaica
according to Egyptian records. Both the Tehenu further east and the
Lebu are known to have been subjected to pressure from the Meshwesh
in the west, and some fusion between the two may well, therefore,
have occurred. The ancestors of the Levata of Arab geographers and
the modern Libyan inhabitants of Siwa and the northern oases of the
Western Desert of Egypt are either the product of this fusion or the
descendants of the Lebu alone. The Levata and Lebu seem to have this
in common, that they are probably a non-Tuareg Libyan people immigrant
from across the Mediterranean at the time of the invasions of Egypt
by the Libyan and Sea People. In the course of history they were
displaced and reduced; only in the north-east of the Libyan desert
did they remain at all concentrated or homogeneous.
The Targa who inhabited the third area of Leo concern this volume most
particularly, as their zone includes Air as well as Ahaggar. So long as
the Tuareg were believed to be only a tribe they were identified with
the Targa, but when the former term was discovered to have a wider or
racial significance it was not clear, unless it was a proper name,
why Leo used it of any one section of the Muleththemin. The exact
significance only appears when Ibn Khaldun’s narrative is considered.
In his History of the Berbers Ibn Khaldun attempted to make a
comprehensive classification of the Libyans. After working out
a comparatively simple system which emphasises both the obvious
diversity as well as the superficial appearance of unity[320] of the
population of North Africa, he proceeds to elaborate more complex
schemes of classification which are difficult to reconcile with one
another. He seems throughout to have derived his information from
two or more sources which he was himself unable to co-ordinate.
Ibn Khaldun divides the Libyans into two families descended from the
eponymous heroes, Branes and Madghis, a theory which recognises the
difficulties involved by the assumption that they all belonged to a
single stock. The division may be traced even to-day. In many Libyan
villages the inhabitants are divided into two factions which, without
being hostile, are conscious of being different. The factions are
not found among the nomadic tribes, where opportunities for living
in separate places are greater than in the sedentary districts,
but their existence among the latter, however, is hardly otherwise
explicable than by the assumption of separate racial origins. This
view is suggested by Ibn Khaldun’s classification, and also by
the result of a detailed examination of the different constituent
elements of the Libyan population. Among the Tuareg, whom I consider
belong to a single stock, different from that of the various races
which composed the other Libyans, these factions do not exist even
in the villages where tribal organisation is in process of breaking
down and people of different clans live together under one headman.
Out of deference to the patriarchal system of the Arabs—a habit of
mind which pervades their life and often distorts their historical
perception—Ibn Khaldun has given to the two Libyan families of
Branes and Madghis a common ancestor called Mazigh. Both “Madghis”
and “Mazigh” are probably derived from the common MZGh root
found to be so widespread in North African names.[321] All three are
almost certainly mythical personages. The selection of Mazigh as the
common ancestor points to an attempt having been made, in accordance
with patriarchal custom, to explain the one characteristic which
is really common to all the Libyans including the Tuareg, namely,
their language. While the MZGh root is not at all universally used as
the root of a national appellation, its occurrence in various parts
of North Africa might well allow one to talk of “Mazigh-speaking
People,” or, as we might more comprehensibly say, “Berber-speaking
People.” And so I would confine the use of both “Berber” and
“Mazigh” to a linguistic signification, analogous to that of the
word “Aryan,” which simply denotes people, not necessarily of the
same racial stock, speaking one of the Aryan group of languages.[322]
Ibn Khaldun places the home of most of the divisions of the Beranes
and Madghis Libyans in Syria. They were, he says, the sons of Mazigh,
the son of Canaan, the son of Ham, and consequently related to the
Philistines and Gergesenes, who did not leave the east when their
kinsmen came to Africa. All Moslems possess a form of snobbishness
which is displayed in their attempt to establish some connection,
direct or indirect, with an Arabian tribe related to the people of
the Prophet Muhammad. In Morocco this feeling is so strong that it is
common to find Libyan families free from all admixture with the Arab
invaders, boasting ancestral trees descended from the Prophet. The
Maghreb is full of pseudo-Ashraf; a term in the Moslem world which
is properly reserved for the descendants of the Leader of Islam. The
same occurs in Central Africa. Much of the legendary history of the
Libyans relating to an eastern home may therefore be discounted as
attempts on the part of Moslem historians to connect them with the
lands and race of Islam. Nevertheless, even when all allowances have
been made for this factor there remains to be explained a strong
tradition of some connection between North Africa and the Arab
countries. Not only is it commented upon in all the early histories,
but it is to some extent still current to-day among the people. I am
not convinced that it cannot be explained by the presence among the
Libyans of one element which certainly did come from the East in the
period preceding and during the invasions of Egypt, when the people
of the Eastern Mediterranean co-operated with the Africans in their
attacks on the Nile Valley. The undoubted occurrence of migrations
within the historical period both from Syria and from the east coast
of the Red Sea are alone sufficient, if the characteristic of Moslem
snobbishness is taken into account, to account for such traditions
regarding their home. It is unnecessary to attribute these stories
to the original appearance of the Libyans proper in Africa even if
their cradle is to be looked for in the East. This may be inherently
probable, but must be placed at so remote a date as to ensure that
traditions connected therewith were certainly by now forgotten.
Ibn Khaldun divides the families of Branes and Madghis respectively
into ten and four divisions. Four of the ten Beranes people, the Lemta,
Sanhaja, Ketama and Auriga, are called the Muleththemin, or People
of the Veil.[323] The descendants of Madghis, with whom we are not
concerned, include the Louata or Levata. The hypothesis previously
brought forward for their non-Tuareg origin gains support from the
fact that in Ibn Khaldun’s classification they are not placed in
the same family as the People of the Veil.
We now come to Ibn Khaldun’s views regarding the origin of the
Muleththemin. The four divisions of Lemta, Sanhaja, Ketama and Auriga,
though in the Beranes group, he regarded as of a different origin
to the other six sections. The inconsistency of the patriarchal
classification is apparent. He states that certain traditions which
he is inclined to accept as true connect the Sanhaja and the Ketama
with the Yemen.[324] They were Himyarite tribes which came from the
east coast of the Red Sea to Africa under the leadership of Ifrikos,
the hero who gave his name to Ifrikiya, which is now called Tunisia. In
examining the organisation and history of the Aulimmiden Tuareg who
live between the Air mountains and the Niger bend, Barth[325] found
that they also claimed to be descended from Himyer. Now the Aulimmiden
in name and history are a part of the Lemta who migrated from the
area in North Africa where the rest of the section still lives under
the name of Azger, and where we are first able to identify them from
our records. What is true in this respect of a part is true of the
whole, and three out of the four divisions of the Muleththemin thus
seem to be racially different from the other six Beranes divisions,
the fourth section in question being the Auriga people, who are also
called Hawara. The latter present one of the most difficult problems
in the early history of North Africa. Suffice it here to state that
in the course of the early Arab invasions many of them lost so much
of their individuality that we must rely largely on Ibn Khaldun’s
classification of them among the four divisions of the Tuareg for
their early identity.
There are then, according to Ibn Khaldun, two separate families of
Libyans, and in one of these is a group apparently different racially
from the remainder of the two families.
It is a complicated classification which attempts to establish some
sort of unity among all the Libyans, and at the same time indicates
without room for doubt that the learned historian felt he was dealing
with a mixed population. His difficulties are clear. His statements
support the view that the Tuareg are separate from the rest of the
people called Libyans, who are themselves composed of at least two
stocks, though more than this regarding the origin of the Tuareg I
should not yet feel entitled to deduce from his account.
At a later stage, when the origins of the People of Air come to be
examined, another reference will be found, in the writings of an
authority in the Sudan, to the migration of a people from the east
coast of the Red Sea into Africa. This Himyaritic invasion is so much
insisted upon in various works that the presumption of a migration from
that direction, with which the Tuareg were associated, is tempting,
though it is not clear whether the Sudanese authority was merely
copying Ibn Khaldun’s statements or whether he was working on
independent information. I have mentioned the theory because it is
one of the more usually accepted explanations of the origin of the
Tuareg, but I do not think the problem can be so easily resolved. My
own view is that the Tuareg are not Himyarites, but that the memory
of an invasion from that quarter which undoubtedly did contribute to
the population of Central Africa was adopted by their own traditional
historians and accepted by Ibn Khaldun to establish a connection for
the People of the Veil with the land of the Prophet. The migrations
across the Red Sea are far more likely to have accounted for the
early Semitic influence in Africa, especially in the Nilotic Sudan
before the rise of Islam, and in Abyssinia, than for the origin of
the Tuareg, who, I am convinced, were already in the continent at a
far earlier date.
Ibn Khaldun now introduces a further classification which again
emphasises the separateness or individuality of the Tuareg. He states
that among the Beranes were certain divisions collectively known as
the Children of Tiski. Among these were the Hawara, Heskura, Sanhaja,
Lemta, and Gezula. The Hawara we know were the same as the Auriga;
the Sanhaja and Lemta have already been mentioned. The Heskura and
Gezula may therefore be subdivisions of the Ketama, and the Children of
Tiski, therefore, probably a collective term for all the Muleththemin
as a whole.
Ibn Khaldun’s writings are voluminous and have a baffling tendency to
jump about from subject to subject. Having given us these explanations,
which though complicated are comprehensible, he suddenly brings in a
host of new names, and proceeds to inform us that the Muleththemin are
descended from the “Sanhaja of the second race” and to consist
of the Jedala or Gedala, Lemtuna, Utzila, Targa, Zegawa and Lemta
divisions. It is not within the scope of this work to examine all
the Tuareg groups in Africa in detail. To investigate the Zanziga of
Leo’s second area or the Utzila or Jedala of Ibn Khaldun would only
serve to complicate the issue which deals with the Tuareg of Air. But
the Sanhaja, although they lived in the furthest west of the Sahara,
played such an important part in the history of all the Tuareg that
they must be briefly mentioned in passing.
At one period nearly all the People of the Veil were united in a sort
of desert confederation under the dominion of the Sanhaja. The era
terminated with the death of Ibn Ghania in about A.D. 1233, some
150 years before Ibn Khaldun wrote, even by which time, however,
the inner parts of Africa had hardly recovered. The memory of the
Sanhaja empire, which extended from the Senegal River to Fez and
eastwards perhaps as far as Tibesti, survived in the additional
classifications of Ibn Khaldun and in the stories about the Tuareg
collected by his contemporaries. It is possible to suppose that
the first ethnological systems he gives refer to the state of the
Muleththemin before or during the Sanhaja confederacy, but that
when he gives the list of names of six divisions descended from the
“second race of Sanhaja” he is referring to the People of the
Veil after the death of Ibn Ghania. At that time the name of the
dominant group in the confederation had been given by the other
inhabitants of North Africa generally to all the Tuareg. In the
process of disintegration of the empire several truly Sanhaja tribes
were absorbed by other Tuareg groups. It is difficult to accept the
alternative view that the Sanhaja of the second race are a different
people from the earlier Sanhaja, for such a conclusion would imply
that the Muleththemin were made up of more than one racial stock,
whereas their most obvious characteristic is unity of type and habit.
The Sanhaja division of Ibn Khaldun’s first grouping are obviously
the same as the people of Leo’s first area on the western side of
the great desert which extends between Beni Abbes and Timbuctoo. After
their period of fame they came on evil days, and were reduced to
the position of tributaries when they lost many of their Tuareg
characteristics. Their remnants are the Mesufa and Lemtuna tribes. The
relationship of the Sanhaja and Lemta noted by Barth either means
nothing more than that they were both Muleththemin, or dates from
their association with each other during the Sanhaja empire; for they
were ever separate ethnic divisions of the People of the Veil.
Much trouble has been occasioned by the confusion of the names Lemta
and Lemtuna. The apparent derivation of the latter from the former
may also have been due to the association of the two main divisions:
it is important only to emphasise that while the one is a subdivision
of the Sanhaja now living in the north-west corner of the Sahara near
Morocco, the other is a branch of the Tuareg race co-equal with the
latter. It is in this confusion of names that the explanation is to
be found of the statement so often heard and repeated by Barth, that
the Lemta were the neighbours of the Moorish Walad Delim of Southern
Morocco. The position of the Lemtuna makes this statement true of
them, but not of the Lemta, whose home, both on the authority of Leo
and on other evidence, was far removed from Mauretania, and, to wit,
in the Fezzan. The erroneous association of the Lemta with the Walad
Delim is largely responsible for the wrong account of the migrations
of various sections of the southern and south-eastern Tuareg given
by Barth and his successors.[326]
But let us return to the people who were the ancestors of the
Air Tuareg. The Hawara, according to Ibn Khaldun, El Bekri and El
Masa’udi, inhabited Tripolitania, the deserts of Ifrikiya, and even
parts of Barca. They lived, in part at least, side by side with the
Lemta, Wearers of the Veil, who were “near,” or “as far as”
Gawgawa. It has been assumed that this Gawgawa was the Kaukau of Ibn
Batutah’s travels, and consequently Gao or Gaogao or Gogo or Gagho
on the Niger. But it is more reasonably identified with Kuka on Lake
Chad, and if this is so, the Lemta according to Ibn Khaldun extended
precisely as far as the place referred to by Leo, in speaking of
his fourth area.[327] It is clear that Ibn Khaldun meant “as far
as” and not “near,” for in referring to the Hawarid origin of
a part of the Lemta people he says that they may be so recognised
“by their name, which is an altered form of the word Hawara: for
having changed the و (_w_) into a sort of _k_ which is intermediary
between the soft _g_ and the hard _q_, they have formed “Haggar.”
The latter are, of course, the Ahaggaren, who then, as now, lived in
mountains called by the same name a very long way from Kuka on Lake
Chad; even so they were coterminous with the Lemta, a point which
coincides with the evidence of Leo and others. Further indications of
the extension of the Lemta as far as Lake Chad will be dealt with in
the next chapter; they are confirmed both by the sequence of events
in Air and by the occupation of Tademekka by the Aulimmiden-Lemta,
culminating in A.D. 1640 when the former inhabitants of that area were
driven towards the west.[328] All this would be incomprehensible if
Gawgawa were identified with Gao on the Niger, or if Ibn Khaldun’s
“near” were not interpreted as “towards” or “as far as.”
It may appear strange to find Ibn Khaldun referring to the Hawarid
origin of the Lemta when they are repeatedly given elsewhere by
him as separate and co-equal divisions of the Muleththemin. It is
possible that originally “Hawara” or “Auriga” may have been
the national name of all the Tuareg, and that on the analogy of what
we know happens in the case of tribes which have split up, one group
may have retained the name of the parent stock. But if this ever did
take place it must have happened long before the Moslem invasion, by
which time the Tuareg had already become established in the divisions
which we know; such an occurrence would have no practical bearing
on conditions prevailing to-day. It is therefore easier to assume
that all he meant to convey was the existence of a certain rather
close connection between the Hawara and Lemta. We know in fact that,
though not identical, the two groups have interchanged tribes, some
of each division being found in the other one. This connection would
account for the suspicious etymology of the word “Haggar,” which
sounds uncommonly like an attempt on his part to prove philologically
what is known traditionally to be the case.
The Hawara as we know them to-day are not all Tuareg or even Libyans,
although they were included among the Beranes families under the name
of Auriga, and were specifically numbered among the People of the
Veil. They were described as an element of great importance among the
pre-Arab Libyans and reckoned co-equal with the Sanhaja. Ibn Khaldun
does, however, add that at the time of the Arab conquest of North
Africa they had assimilated a number of other tribes of different
stock, which probably explains the rapid “Arabisation” of a part of
them. It was the non-Tuareg part which became readily proselytised and
so passed under the influence of the new rulers of North Africa. The
Hawara were much to the fore in the occupation of Spain and generally
in the Arab doings of the Fatimite era. Some of them in common with
other Libyans supported the Kharejite schism in Islam; yet another
part which had become “Arabised” established itself under the name
of the Beni Khattab in the Fezzan, with their capital at Zuila. But
those of them who most retained their Tuareg characteristics represent
the original stock. In referring to certain Libyans by the name of
Hawara, Ibn Khaldun is obviously not speaking of Tuareg people;
one may therefore conclude that he means the strangers whom they
assimilated.[329] Consequently I prefer to use the name “Hawara”
for the whole group, but when the section which preserves its Tuareg
characteristics is indicated the name “Auriga” is more applicable.
It may be conceived that a people of such importance left some trace
of their name among the Tuareg of to-day, in addition to the name
“Haggar,” where Ibn Khaldun’s etymology seems suspicious. The
name can be recognised in the form “Oraghen” or “Auraghen,” or
in an older spelling “Iuraghen,” a tribe in the Azger group. The
root also occurs in the name “Auraghiye” given to the Air dialect
of the Tuareg language. These instances are valuable evidence.
Duveyrier[330] records of the Oraghen tribe that “according to
tradition they originally came from the neighbourhood of Sokna.[331]
Before establishing themselves where they are now located, the
tribe inhabited in succession the Fezzan, the country of Ghat, and
Ahawagh, a territory situate on the left bank of the Niger, east of
Timbuctoo. It was in this locality that the tribe divided; one part,
the one under review, returned to the environs of Ghat, the other
more numerous part remained in the Ahawagh. . . .” The Ahawagh or
Azawagh is some way east of Timbuctoo, it is, in point of fact, as
Barth rightly points out, the area south of Air. He says:[332] “Their
original abode was said to be at a place called Asawa (Azawagh)[333]
to the south of Iralghawen (Eghalgawen) in Southern Air.” While
the exact sequence of movements thus recorded may not be accurate,
the indications are of importance in considering the origin of the
people of Air as they refer to a southward migration through Air and
a partial return north. But whereas in the Azger country the Auraghen
are a noble tribe, in the Southland they are a servile tribe of the
Aulimmiden.[334] This fact is very significant and seems to provide
an explanation of the ancestry of the Tademekkat and of some of the
People of Air,[335] who are in part of Hawarid origin. The date of the
expulsion of the Tademekkat people towards the west and north by the
Aulimmiden prior and up to about A.D. 1640 coincides with the legend
recorded by Duveyrier of a party of southern Auraghen who came to
the assistance of their cousins among the Azger and helped to break
the domination of the Imanen kings of the Azger. Those Auraghen who
remained behind in the Tademekka country were eventually reduced to
a state of vassalage and pushed westward during the general movement
which took place in that direction.
But in spite of the occurrence of a tribe with this name among the
Azger, it is not the latter group but the Ahaggaren who were originally
Auriga, even as the Azger were in essence Lemta, notwithstanding the
considerable exchange of tribes which has taken place between the
two groups.
In another place I have had occasion to doubt whether the usually
accepted derivation of the word “Tuareg” applied, as it now is, to
all the People of the Veil was entirely satisfactory. The derivation
seemed founded on the fallacy of “post hoc, ergo propter hoc.”
The name Targa in Leo and Ibn Khaldun appears to be the same word
as Tuareg, in a slightly modified form; but in these authors it
is not used of all but only of a part of the Muleththemin. It is
a proper name like Sanhaja, or Lemta, and the group which bears it
is as important as the other main divisions. Now in one place Leo
names the divisions of the Muleththemin as the Sanhaja, Zanziga,
Targa, Lemta and Jadala; in another as the Sanhaja, Targa, Jedala,
Lemta and Lemtuna, of which we can eliminate the last named as a
subdivision of the Sanhaja. Elsewhere again he calls them the Sanhaja,
Zanziga, Guenziga, Targa and Lemta. Further, in Ibn Khaldun we learn
that the Sanhaja, Hawara, Lemta, Gezula and Heskura are in one group
as the Children of Tiski, and again he divides the race into four
divisions only, the Sanhaja, Auriga, Ketama and Lemta. Of these we
can eliminate the Lemtuna as a part of the Sanhaja. Leo’s Zanziga
and Guenziga are modifications of the latter name and were given to
the Tuareg immediately east of them, probably during their desert
confederation; Ibn Khaldun’s Heskura and Gezula seem to be two names
for one division which possibly was the Ketama. Now if the remaining
names are considered, it is noteworthy that in no one of the lists do
the two names Targa and Hawara or Auriga occur. They are therefore
quite likely to be different names for the same group. Furthermore,
in Leo’s third area the veiled inhabitants of the Air and Ahaggar
mountains are both called Targa, and the latter and a large part of
the former are known to be Hawara. The conclusion is that “Targa,”
so far from being merely a descriptive or abusive term, is another
name for Hawara-Auriga. The fact that the dialect spoken in Air is
called Auraghiye alone would justify Leo classifying the inhabitants
both of Air as well as of Ahaggar under one term, namely, Targa, if,
as is highly probable, the name is an alternative for Auriga or Hawara,
or for at least a large part of them.
Having suggested this equivalent we must return to the question,
already foreshadowed, namely, whether, from an examination of
the present tribes of the Ahaggaren and Azger groups of Tuareg,
any conclusion can be drawn showing that at one and the same time
a connection between the two divisions and a separate ancestry
existed. It is necessary to postulate for the moment, as has already
been done, that the Azger were the old Lemta, for the evidence can
only be considered in detail a little later. It might have seemed
more rational to deal with it now, especially as their history is of
greater importance to Air than that of the Ahaggaren, but for various
reasons which will become apparent it will be found more convenient
to examine the latter first.
In Air and in the south generally the two divisions are referred
to collectively by the name of Ahaggaren. The reason is that the
Azger are now so reduced in numbers that the world has tended to
forget their name for that of their more powerful and prosperous
western neighbours; the Ahaggaren on account of their trading and
caravan traffic have also come more into contact with the outside
world. The Azger, on the other hand, instead of becoming better known,
as a result of the French penetration of the Sahara have migrated
eastwards further and further away from Europeans into the recondite
places of the Fezzan mountains, which they now only leave to raid
Air or Kawar in company with rascals like the northern Tebu and the
more irreconcilable Ahaggaren, who have refused to submit to French
administration. Although in Air “Ahaggaren” has come to mean just
Northern Tuareg, it has no strict ethnic signification.
Many travellers in the Ahaggar country have heard the tradition current
among the population that the Ahaggaren are considered originally to
have formed part of the Azger division. Duveyrier[336] records that
the Ahaggaren and cognate Tuareg to the north-west are divided into
fourteen principal noble tribes:
Tegehe[337] Mellen,
Tegehe n’es Sidi,
En Nitra,
Taitoq,
Tegehe n’Aggali,[338]
Inemba Kel Emoghi,
Inemba Kel Tahat,
Kel[339] Ghela,
Ireshshumen,
Kel Ahamellen,
Ibogelan,
Tegehe n’Essakkal,
Ikadeen,
Ikerremoïn.
Bissuel,[340] however, declares that the Taitoq, Tegehe n’es Sidi
and Ireshshumen form a separate group of people living in the Adrar
Ahnet, who are sometimes called collectively the Taitoq, but should
more correctly be described as the Ar’rerf Ahnet. The noble tribes
of this confederation, the Taitoq proper and the Tegehe n’es
Sidi, claim to be of independent origin and not related either to
the Ahaggaren or the Azger. The Ireshshumen are said to be a mixed
tribe composed of the descendants of Taitoq men, and women of their
Imghad, the Kel Ahnet. There are also four Imghad tribes: the Kel
Ahnet and Ikerremoin, who depend from the Taitoq, and the Tegehe
n’Efis (probably n’Afis) and the Issokenaten, who depend from
the Tegehe n’es Sidi. These Imghad live in Ahnet, but in 1888 were
as far afield as the Talak plain west of Air.[341] The Ikerremoin of
the Ahnet mountains—though probably of the same stock as the noble
tribe of the same name in Ahaggar—are a distinct unit; they were
probably a part of the latter until conquered in war by the Taitoq. The
Tuareg nobles of Ahnet may be considered a separate branch of the race,
possibly descended from the Ketama. They are neither Auriga nor Lemta
and probably not Sanhaja either. The Taitoq tribes must therefore be
omitted from Duveyrier’s record.
He states that a split occurred between the Azger and Ahaggaren. About
fifty years before he was writing, or, in other words, about a century
ago, the Kel Ahamellen, like other Tuareg tribes in the area, were
under the rule of the Imanen kings of Azger. The latter rulers are
described as of the same stock as the Auraghen and as “strangers”
among the Azger. Such a description is logical if they were, as we
may suppose, an Auriga stock living among the Lemta or Azger. The Kel
Ahamellen were settled on the extreme west of the country held by the
latter division, and according to the story became so numerous that
they divided up into the sub-tribes whose names occur in this list,
and so broke away from the allegiance of the Imanen kings. But if
in Duveyrier’s day the Kel Ahamellen had only broken away from the
Azger confederation as recently as fifty years previously, and were,
as he also says, in a state of internal anarchy, it is out of the
question for one clan to have increased sufficiently rapidly to form
fourteen large noble sub-tribes covering an area reaching from Ghat
to the Ahnet massif. The supposition is that the Kel Ahamellen did in
fact break away from the Azger about then, for tradition is strong on
this point, but that instead of being alone to form the new division
they joined a group of other tribes already in existence, namely, the
descendants of the original Auriga-Ahaggaren stock. It is immaterial
whether the latter were also under the domination of the Azger Imanen
kings a century or so before, though it may be remembered that this
reigning clan was itself from Ahaggar.
PLATE 46
[Illustration: FUGDA (R.), CHIEF OF TIMIA AND HIS WAKIL]
[Illustration: ATAGOOM]
Kel Ahamellen, or the “White People,” is a descriptive and
not a proper name, a circumstance which points to the view that
such was not their original appellation. In the course of time the
unit became divided into three tribes, the Kel Ahamellen proper, the
Tegehe Aggali (dag Rali) and the Tegehe n’Esakkal. The “I name”
of the original stock was lost, and so the group collectively bore
the same label as the smaller Kel Ahamellen tribe. By the beginning
of this century, when the French advance took place, the Ahaggaren
were already organised under their own king Ahitagel. When their
country was finally occupied, Musa Ag Mastan was reigning over them
and contributed largely to the pacification. He continued as Amenokal
of Ahaggar until his death in December 1916. Of the fourteen Ahaggar
tribes, therefore, the three Kel Ahamellen are closely related to each
other, and appear to constitute the Azger nucleus among them. There
may, of course, be other Azger among the remaining eleven Ahaggaren
tribes who are the Auriga element, but no other information seems at
the moment available. The traditional connection of these two Tuareg
divisions is so strongly associated with the three Kel Ahamellen that
it is they who must be regarded as the most recent and perhaps as the
primary or principal offshoot of the Azger among the Ahaggar people.
The presence of the Kel Ahamellen in the west would account for the
traditional common origin of the Ahaggaren and Azger. The warlike
qualities of the latter would inevitably tempt a vain people even
though of different stock to associate themselves with so famous a
division. The fact that both Ahaggar and the Azger were at one time
under the domination of the Azger Imanen kings would, moreover, have
the same effect. That some explanation of the sort which I have given
is correct seems to be clear from the two different forms in which
the traditional connection is recorded. Ibn Khaldun postulated the
Hawarid origin of the Lemta, and adduced as proof the etymology of
the name “Haggar.” Duveyrier, on the other hand, declared that
his researches led him to believe that the Ahaggaren were originally
Azger.[342]
The Azger, whom all are agreed to-day in regarding as a distinct
group of Tuareg for all that they are connected with the Ahaggaren
and the people of Air, range over the country between the eastern
slopes of the Ahaggar mountains and Murzuk in the Fezzan. Whereas
the Ahaggaren control the caravan roads between Algeria or Tuat and
Ahaggar, and share with the Tuareg of Air the western tracks between
their respective mountains, the Azger consider the roads from Ghat
to the north and to the east as their own property. They share with
the people of Air the main caravan track by way of Asiu or In Azawa
to the latter country.
It is very difficult to say much of the present state of the
Azger. Their movement away from contact with Europeans and their
intractable characteristics have kept them from becoming known. This
is all the more regrettable, since, owing to their association with
the Fezzan, a knowledge of their history and peculiarities might
throw light on the puzzling problem of the Garamantian and Tuareg
civilisations. They seem also, in spite of their very reduced numbers,
to be the purest of all the Tuareg. Duveyrier’s[343] account of
them is the best one which exists. They have always enjoyed a most
remarkable reputation for courage and even foolhardiness. It is
said that it takes two Azger to raid a village out of which twenty
Ahaggaren would be chased.
The Azger count six noble tribes, the Imanen, Auraghen, Imettrilalen,
Kel Ishaban, Ihadanaren, Imanghassaten. The last-named tribe is of
Arab origin descended from a Bedawi stock of the Wadi el Shati in the
Fezzan. Its members are the fighting troops of the Imanen and have
come to be regarded as Noble Tuareg. Though the People of the Veil
recognise nobility or servility of other races, I know of no other
instance where a foreign stock has achieved complete recognition
among these people as Imajegh or Noble. In all other cases foreign
stocks, even of noble caste according to the standards of the Tuareg,
technically become servile when conquered or absorbed. In the case of
the Imanghassaten, their assimilation to the nobility must have been
due to the fact that they lived side by side with the Azger and were
never conquered by them. In other instances of Arabs associated with
Tuareg the racial distinction remains clear and is recognised. Among
the Taitoq of Ahnet the Arab Mazil and Sokakna tribes supply the
camels for the caravans crossing the desert to Timbuctoo, where the
Arab Meshagra, who dress like the Tuareg, used to be associated with
the veiled Kunta tribe until they were evicted by the Igdalen Tuareg
from their homes and took refuge with the Aulimmiden.[344] But though
associated with them, none of these three Arab tribes have ever been
counted as Tuareg nobles.
Parallel to the Azger Kel Ahamellen among the Ahaggaren are the
Auraghen and Imanen in the Azger group, for they belong to the Auriga
family. Other Azger tribes may also have been Auriga, but there are
no records on the subject.
Nearly all the Azger tribes have dependent servile tribes in addition
to slaves, but there are two classes in the confederation described
as neither noble nor servile but mixed in caste. These are the Kel
T’inalkum[345] (the Tinylkum of Barth) and the Ilemtin tribes,
and two tribes of Inisilman or Holy Men, the Ifoghas and the
Ihehawen. These are accorded the privileges of nobles.[346]
The name of the “Ilemtin” is interesting. It is another form
of “Aulimmiden,” the Tuareg who live in the steppe west of
Air, and is, of course, identical with “Lemta.” Moreover, the
Ilemtin are in the very area where Leo had placed the northern part
of the Lemta division. With their kindred the Kel T’inalkum, who
also are neither noble nor servile, and perhaps with the Ihehawen,
they represent the old parent stock of the Azger-Lemta. Their very
antiquity, together with their tradition of nobility among the other
tribes in the confederation, may be held to account by progressive
deterioration for their curious caste. The Ifoghas and the Kel Ishaban
are said to have been of the Kel el Suk or Tademekkat Tuareg: in the
case of the former, at least, I do not think that this is so. They are
a very widespread tribe in the Sahara, but indications will be given
later showing that they too are probably Lemta. Their association with
Tademekka is doubtless due to a part of them being found in a region
to which they presumably migrated when the other Lemta people invaded
Air from the south-east and also formed the Aulimmiden group.[347]
In late classical times the northern part of the Lemta area of Leo
was occupied by the Garamantian kingdom and by the nomadic Ausuriani,
Mazices and Ifuraces.[348] The Ausuriani and Mazices were people
of considerable importance and behaved like true Tuareg, raiding in
company with one another into Cyrenaica and Egypt. The Maxyes, Mazices,
etc., people with names of the MZGh root, seem to be the Meshwesh
of Egyptian records. They are probably some of the ancestors of the
Tuareg, and may be assumed to have been related to the Ausuriani,
with whom they were always associated. The latter, who are also called
Austuriani, are described by Synesius as one of the native people of
Libya, in contrast with other Libyans whom he knew to have arrived
at a later date.[349] Bates[350] thinks that the Ausuriani may be
the Arzuges of Orosius. Now the form of the name Arzuges, and more
remotely that of Ausuriani or Austuriani, points to an identification
with the Azger. But that is not all. The position of the Ausuriani
in late classical times agrees well with that given by Ammianus for
the home of the Astacures, who are also mentioned by Ptolemy.[351]
This name is intermediate between “Ausuriani” and “Arzuges,”
and again is similar to “Azger.” Duveyrier[352] has come to the
independent conclusion that these people under various but similar
names must be identified with the Azger, who therefore for the last
fourteen centuries appear to have occupied the same area in part
that they do now. Their northern limit, it is true, has been driven
south as a result of the Arab and other invasions of the Mediterranean
littoral, and their southern territory has been lost to them, but in
the main their zone has hardly changed.
One may, however, adduce further evidence. Among the Lemta-Azger are
the Ifoghas, a tribe of Holy Men. There is little doubt that these
people are the Ifuraces of Corippus and others, whose position east
of the Ausuriani is only a little north of where their descendants
still live.[353] Incidentally both the area in which they live and
the area in which they were reported in classical times may be held
to be well within the boundaries of Leo’s Lemta zone. Last of all,
there arises the question of the Ilaguantan or Laguatan of Corippus,
who are not, I think, to be identified with the Levata or Louata, but
are the people who gave the name to the country now called Elakkos,
or Alagwas, or Elakwas, to the east of Damergu and south-east of Air,
at the southern end of the Lemta area of Leo. In view of the course
taken by the migration of the Lemta southwards there is nothing
inherently improbable in the people, who in late classical times
appear in the north, having migrated to a new habitat near the Sudan.
The migration of the Lemta is intimately connected with the history
of the Tuareg of Air, and accounts for the position of the Aulimmiden
west of the latter country. In commenting on the organisation of the
south-western division of the Tuareg, Barth[354] says that the whole
group is designated by the name of Awelimmid, Welimmid or Aulimmiden
(as they are known in Air), from the dominating tribe whose supremacy
is recognised in some form or other by the remainder, “and in that
respect even (the Tademmekat or) Tademekkat are included among the
Aulimmiden;[355] but the real stock of Aulimmiden is very small.” He
goes on to make the statement, which is obviously correct, and which
my deductions absolutely confirm, that “the original group of the
Aulimmiden (Ulmdn is the way the name is expressed in T’ifinagh)
are identical with the Lemta,” the name probably signifying
literally “the Children of Lemta, or rather ‘Limmid,’ or the
name may originally have been an adjective.” As already stated,
I do not agree with him that the Lemta, who became the Aulimmiden,
descended from the Igidi in the north and drove out the Tademekkat,
for I believe that the people in the north were the Lemtuna, living
near the Walad Delim or Morocco, and that they were therefore a
Sanhaja and not a Lemta tribe. If the Lemta had been in the area
where Barth would have them, as opposed to where Leo placed them,
it means that the latter’s account is fundamentally wrong. Nor
would there be any adequate explanation of several phenomena just
now indicated such as the westward movements of the Tademekkat and
the presence of the Ilemtin in the Azger country.
The vicissitudes of the Lemta and Auriga in the history of Air may
be summarised as follows:—The Azger represent the old Lemta stock
in the northern part of the area which Leo allocated to them. They
are identical with the Ausuriani, Asturiani, Arzuges or Astacuri, and
included the Ifoghas (Ifuraces) and Elakkos people (Ilaguantan). The
Mazices are probably also in the same Lemta-Azger group, but I can
find only circumstantial evidence for this supposition. The southern
end of the Lemta area, which reached the Sudan between Lake Chad and
Damergu, was lost to the Tuareg under pressure from the east. They
were driven out of Bornu, where we shall see the Central African
histories placed them in the early days. This part, as well as
the Kawar road down which they came from the north, and the steppe
north of Chad, was cleared of Tuareg by the Kanuri and Tebu from the
east. In Elakkos, the country named by the tribe which in classical
times was in Tripolitania, is the boundary to-day between Tebu and
Tuareg. Progressive ethnic pressure from the east drove the eastern
boundary of the Tuareg westwards, but it also forced the Lemta to
find room in the west for their expansion. Some of the latter, as
we shall see, entered Air from the south; others went on to occupy
Tademekka and drove the inhabitants westward. The Lemta movement
was of long duration and directly involved the first invasion of Air
by the Tuareg: it took place south and then west, not, as Barth and
others would have it, south-eastwards from North-west Africa. Before
these movements took place Ahaggar was held by a Hawara stock which
later received an admixture of Azger by the Kel Ahamellen who had
split off from the latter. Air, which had first been occupied by
a group of Lemta from the south-east, was then invaded by another
wave of Tuareg from the north. They were almost certainly a Hawarid
stock. By the time Leo wrote Air was therefore in a large measure
occupied by the same race and group as Ahaggar, and like the latter
was therefore rightly described as held by the “Targa popolo.”
[Footnote 297: The works of Leo Africanus were published by the
Hakluyt Society in three volumes in 1896.]
[Footnote 298: Leo, III. p. 820.]
[Footnote 299: The learned editor of the Hakluyt Society calls one of
these nations the Tuareg. In my view all five nations were Tuareg,
which term I have throughout used as equivalent to Muleththemin. Of
these five nations, one apparently had Targa as a proper name.]
[Footnote 300: Leo, III. p. 797.]
[Footnote 301: In the Western Sahara north of the road from Arguin
to Wadan, and probably near Sabha Jail.]
[Footnote 302: North-west of Timbuctoo on the road to Wadan.]
[Footnote 303: Also spelt Gago, near the north-west corner of the
great Niger Bend. I have called it Gao throughout, as in the ancient
and uncertain spellings it was often confused with Kuka on Lake Chad.]
[Footnote 304: Leo, III. p. 799.]
[Footnote 305: About Lat. 17° N., not to be confused with the town
of Agades in Air.]
[Footnote 306: Leo: on pages 798 and 799.]
[Footnote 307: “Igidi” is more a term for a type of desert country
than a true proper name. There are other Igidis in North Africa.]
[Footnote 308: Compare also a name of similar type, the place called
Siggedim, in about Lat. 20° on the road between Kawar and the Fezzan.]
[Footnote 309: Compare Barth’s corruption of the name Gamram in
Damergu to Gumrek. Cf. Chap. II.]
[Footnote 310: The map on p. 331 gives a more accurate idea than the
one in the first volume of the Hakluyt Society’s publication.]
[Footnote 311: _Vide infra_, Chap. XII.]
[Footnote 312: Cf. Kanem-bu = the people of Kanem.]
[Footnote 313: Keane: _Man, Past and Present_ (new edition), p. 473.]
[Footnote 314: Ptolemy, IV., sec. 3, 6. An emendation making
the word read “the people of Cidamus” (Ghadames) is more
tempting. Cf. Bates, _op. cit._, p. 63.]
[Footnote 315: Leo, _op. cit._, III. 801.]
[Footnote 316: Minutilli, _Tripolitania_, p. 413, and in El Bekri
_passim._]
[Footnote 317: Leo, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 318: In Byzantine times B and V were often
interchanged. Cf. Βάνδιλοι for Vandal, _apud_ Justinian.]
[Footnote 319: Ibn Khaldun, Book I. p. 234.]
[Footnote 320: Unity, that is, in so far as all the non-Arab Libyans
have been called Berbers and speak the same language.]
[Footnote 321: Cf. Appendix V.]
[Footnote 322: Cf. Boule: _Fossil Man_, p. 316.]
[Footnote 323: Ibn Khaldun, _op. cit._, I. 273.]
[Footnote 324: Ibn Khaldun, _op. cit._, I. 184 sq.]
[Footnote 325: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. V. p. 553.]
[Footnote 326: _Infra_ in this chapter and in Chap. XII.]
[Footnote 327: _Vide supra_.]
[Footnote 328: This could only follow upon an invasion from the east
or south-east, and not from the north or north-west, as Barth thought
in consequence of his assumption that the Lemta were the Lemtuna near
the Walad Delim. See Barth, _op. cit._ Vol. IV. p. 626.]
[Footnote 329: An instance of the assimilation of an Arab tribe by
the Tuareg will be found on examining the Azger group (_infra_ in
this chapter).]
[Footnote 330: Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 347.]
[Footnote 331: In the Fezzan.]
[Footnote 332: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 231.]
[Footnote 333: This Azawagh must not be confused with the Azawagh
(Azawad) or Jauf, the belly of the desert north-west of Timbuctoo,
though the two words are derived from the same root. _Supra_,
Chap. II. See also Notes in Leo, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 198.]
[Footnote 334: Barth, Vol. V. p. 557.]
[Footnote 335: Namely, the Kel Geres. _Infra_, Chap. XII.]
[Footnote 336: _Op. cit._, p. 330.]
[Footnote 337: “Tegehe” appears to mean “descendants” or
“family” in the female line.]
[Footnote 338: “Ag Ali” = son of ’Ali. The _’ain_ in Arabic
when transliterated by the Tuareg becomes _gh_, and ’Ali, ’Osman,
’Adullah, etc., become Ghali, Ghosman, Ghabdullah, etc. The _gh_
in Temajegh is so strongly _grasseyé_ (as the French term the sound),
as to be very nearly an R. It is consequently very often transliterated
with this letter instead of _’ain_. The Ag ’Ali tribe is therefore
very often referred to as the Dag Rali or Dag Ghali, the prefixed D
being grammatical.]
[Footnote 339: Sometimes written Kel Rela (cf. note 3).]
[Footnote 340: Bissuel, _Les Touareg de l’Ouest_, Alger, 1888,
p. 13 sq.]
[Footnote 341: Bissuel, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 342: Cf. diagram showing the migration of the Air Tuareg
on page 388.]
[Footnote 343: Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 330.]
[Footnote 344: See von Bary, _op. cit._, pp. 181 and 190.]
[Footnote 345: A descriptive geographical name, and perhaps originally
a branch of the Ilemtin.]
[Footnote 346: Schirmer perhaps rightly considers that the Ifoghas
are less holy than Duveyrier imagined. They are as ready to fight
as other tribes, and those in the south have not even the reputation
of sanctity.]
[Footnote 347: See Chap. XII.]
[Footnote 348: Bates, _op. cit._, Map X, etc.]
[Footnote 349: Cf. conclusions at the beginning of this chapter.]
[Footnote 350: _Op. cit._, p. 68, note 7.]
[Footnote 351: Bates, _op. cit._, p. 64.]
[Footnote 352: Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 467.]
[Footnote 353: The presence of some Ifoghas west of Air will later
be shown to be connected with the Tuareg migrations into Air.]
[Footnote 354: _Op. cit._, Vol. IV. App. III. p. 552 sq.]
[Footnote 355: Doubtless because they were conquered by the
Aulimmiden.]
CHAPTER XII
THE HISTORY OF AIR
PART I
THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TUAREG TO AIR
The history of Air is inextricably mixed up with the problems of Tuareg
ethnology. It is best to treat the various questions which arise as
a whole. Information for all the earlier events is scanty. As has
already become apparent in previous chapters, much must be based on
deduction, since no early written evidence of the Air people exists
but that contained in their rock inscriptions. In later years the
practice arose of keeping book records or tribal histories in Arabic;
they were designed to establish the nobility of origin of the various
clans, a subject of continual dispute among the Tuareg; but most of
these precious books, which used to be kept in the mosques or houses of
the learned men, were lost when the whole of Air north of the Central
massifs was cleared by French Camel patrols after the 1917 rebellion.
For long the avowed policy of the French authorities was to remove
the population of the mountains of Air lock, stock and barrel, and
settle them in the lands of Damergu and the Sudan. The Tuareg, as
may be imagined, took unkindly to living in the plains away from the
mountains and desert to which they were used. They cannot be persuaded
to settle on the land as agriculturists except after generations of
contact with tillers of the soil, and even then they only adopt the new
mode of life in a half-hearted fashion or as a result of intermarriage,
and as a consequence lose their individuality. Besides embittering
relations to an extent which may prove irremediable, the French
policy was otherwise disastrous from a local point of view. After
being driven out of their homes in the mountains, these people were
not content to live in the half-way house of the Damergu plains or
in Damagarim. Many of them moved out of French territory altogether
into Nigeria, where they had no quarrel with the authorities and
where existence was even easier than in the belt between the Sahara
and the Sudan. As many as 30,000 Veiled People left Air; most of them
settled in the Emirates of Kano and Katsina.
Depopulation in Air allowed the desert to encroach. Wells fell in,
gardens went out of tillage, and the live-stock of the country, more
especially the camel herds, were reduced to a fraction of what they
had been. These factors in turn contributed to make it harder than
ever to reopen the old caravan roads, after they had been closed
during the Great War. From the economic standpoint the possibility
of obtaining any return from the military occupation of this part of
the Sahara became more than ever problematical. Finally, the cruel
evacuation of Air, for which there was no administrative excuse save
that of short-sighted expediency, made it infinitely more difficult
to obtain information regarding the origin and habits of a people
who are in any case probably doomed to disappear before the advance
of civilisation. The records in their mosques were abandoned to be
rained on and gradually destroyed. Tradition is being lost among
a younger generation in a new environment. In 1922 the policy of
the French was reversed and the population was being encouraged to
return to their homes, but one is inclined to wonder whether it was
not already too late.
In the course of my stay in Air I heard of two books on tribal lore
and history. The one which appeared the most important had belonged
to the family of Ahodu, chief of Auderas village, and had long been in
the possession of his forefathers. In 1917, when the northern villages
were cleared, the book was left in a hiding-place, but all my efforts
and those of Ahodu to trace it were in vain. Later I heard of another
similar work at Agades, but only after I had left the town. It is
kept by a woman called Taburgula, and is quoted by the Kel Geres as
their authority for the nobility, etc. of the tribes of the south.[356]
Certain extracts from a Chronicle of Air have been collected and
translated by H. R. Palmer, Lieut.-Governor of Northern Nigeria. The
information was contained in the notes of a Hausa scribe, who seems to
have compiled them on the authority of a manuscript which is probably
still extant in Air. The compilation is not necessarily accurate, but
ranks as good material, and has already been referred to in previous
chapters as the Agades Chronicle.[357]
Finally, there is the record of Sultan Bello, Emir of Sokoto, when
Denham and Clapperton reached the Sudan in 1824. Bello was a great
historian, and probably the most enlightened ruler in Africa of his
day. He has left for us a history without which we should find it
difficult to piece together the story of Air and the neighbouring
countries.[358]
Such information as it was possible to obtain to supplement these
authorities and Jean and Barth was derived from numerous conversations
with the older men whom I met in Air. By repetition and sifting
it acquired sufficient consistency probably to represent, somewhat
approximately, the truth. Apart from an inadequate knowledge of the
language, I encountered another great difficulty in research. The years
1917 and 1918 were so calamitous for the Tuareg that circumstances
obliged them to change many of their habits of life and scattered their
traditions. There was always a danger of being misled by assuming that
present practices represented historical customs, or that deductions
made in 1922 were necessarily as accurate as if the observations had
been made in 1850.
The early history of Air may be resolved into the answers to the three
problems: When did the Tuareg reach Air? Where did they come from? And,
whom did they meet on arrival? We shall deal with the last first,
piecing together such scanty evidence as is at our disposal.
The existence at an early date in North Africa of negroid people
much further north than their present limit of permanent habitation
is generally admitted. It is logical to suppose that Air, which is
an eminently habitable land, was therefore originally occupied by a
negroid race. In support of this supposition there is the testimony of
Muhammad el Bakeir,[359] son of Sultan Muhammad el Addal, to the effect
that the Goberawa originally possessed Air, under the leadership of
“Kipti” or Copts. Bello adds that the Goberawa were a free people
and that they were the noblest of the Hausa-speaking races. It is not
clear what the mention of Kipti can mean, except that the influence
of the Egyptian Coptic church was spread as far afield as Air;[360]
and this is possible, for traces of Christianity from the Nile Valley
can probably be found in the Chad area. It may, on the other hand,
merely mean that there was a North African element in the racial
composition of the Goberawa; and this is certainly true, for the Hausa
people are not pure Negroes. Gober was the most northern Hausa state,
and later the home of Othman dan Fodio, the founder of the Fulani
empire.[361] The Agades Chronicle states that the people of Daura,
who are regarded as the purest of the Hausa, whatever this people or
race may eventually be proved to be, first ruled in Air; but they
grew weak and were conquered by the Kanuri, who in their turn gave
place to the Goberawa.
Asben is the name by which Air is still known in the Southland, and
the word is probably of the same root as “Abyssinia” and the Arabic
“Habesh.” It may also perhaps be found in the name Agisymba Regio,
but no significance need be attached to this, for the name seems to
have been applied very widely in Africa to countries inhabited by
negroid people.[362]
The exact ethnic origin of the first negroid inhabitants of Air or
their order does not signify very much, once their racial character
is established. Although at first sight the presence of negroids
might seem to account for the peculiar aspect of the city of Agades,
its true explanation, as we have seen, must be sought elsewhere.[363]
The date of the foundation of Agades is considerably later than the
displacement of the early inhabitants of Air by the advent of the
first Tuareg.
In addition to the negroid people of Air, the first Tuareg are said
by Bello to have found some Sanhaja in the country, by which term he
presumably means some Western Muleththemin, who lived in the first
or second of Leo’s zones. This is to some extent confirmed by Ibn
Batutah’s accounts of the tribes which he encountered in these parts,
but I have been unable to trace their descendants with any degree of
certainty. Some of their descendants may probably be found in Azawagh
and Damergu;[364] the Mesufa of Ibn Batutah are also quite likely to
have been Sanhaja. Another tribe of the same name and origin occurs
in North-west Morocco.
The Goberawa capital at this time was T’in Shaman, like the later
Agades lying at the southern borders of the country, a site naturally
likely to be selected by a people of equatorial origin with homes
further south. T’in Shaman or Ansaman is stated by Barth to have been
some twenty miles from Agades on the road to Auderas; but I conceive
this may be a slip. I was only able to find the name applied in Air
to the wells of T’in Shaman, which lie in the direction given,
but scarcely two miles from the city, near the site of the present
French fort. Although the name appears to be a Libyan form it does not
follow that the town was of Tuareg origin or was inhabited by them in
early Goberawa days. Record of it has come to us from Tuareg sources,
referable to a period when Tuareg and Goberawa were living side by side
in Air, but we do not know the Goberawa form of the name. These two
folk were both in the area before the first Tuareg immigration, when
Libyan influence was already strong in Air, and also after the first
immigration, but before the second brought in a sufficient number of
Tuareg to effect the expulsion of the Goberawa.[365] A certain degree
of civilisation must have existed in Air even in these early days,
for several learned men, inhabitants of T’in Shaman, are mentioned
by the historians of Negroland.[366] That it was not a Tuareg town
is further shown by the information recorded, that when Agades was
eventually founded in the fifteenth century A.D., it was from Ir
n’Allem and not from T’in Shaman: Ir n’Allem may be doubtfully
identified with a site north of Agades well within the defending hills
near Solom Solom.[367] Of greater interest perhaps is the close analogy
between the names of T’in Shaman or Ansaman and Nasamones, that great
tribe of travellers on the Great Syrtis described by Herodotus. There
is no doubt that with such caravaneers as we know lived in the north,
the influence of the Tuareg in Air and the South generally must have
been great for a long time before they settled there.
Into Air, inhabited by negroids and Sanhaja, came the modern Tuareg
of Air. What happened to the Goberawa in the process of time as a
consequence of this movement can easily be assumed. Whatever may
have been the terms of a peaceful settlement, the negroid people
were either driven back into Central Africa here as elsewhere, or
they became the serfs[368] of the conquerors, and were incorporated
into the race as Imghad tribes. The darker element among them must
certainly in part be accounted for in this manner.
The modern Tuareg immigrants can broadly be divided into the three
categories, of which the exact significance has already become
apparent. They are the Kel Owi tribes who came into the country
quite recently, the Kel Geres tribes and those septs collectively
known as the People of the King. Of these, the Kel Geres, as well as
a once separate but now associated tribe, the Itesan, are no longer
in Air, but live in an area north of Sokoto, whither they migrated
in comparatively recent times. It requires to be established whether
the people who came to Air before the Kel Owi, all arrived at much
the same time, or in different waves, when the respective movements
took place, and who in each case were the immigrants.
PLATE 47
[Illustration: SIDI]
THE FIRST IMMIGRATION
Before attacking these problems, it will be necessary, because
relevant to their solution, to consider the direction from which the
invasion took place. Tuareg traditions without any exception ascribe
a northern home to the race. They maintain that they reached Air from
that direction in different waves at different times and by different
routes. Ask any Tuareg of the older tribes about the history of his
people and he will say, for instance: “My people, the Kel Tadek,
have been in the country since the beginning of the world,” but he
will add in the same breath: “But we are a people from the north,
from far away, not like the niggers of the south.” They have a story
to the effect that the Sultan of Stambul, seeing how North Africa was
over-populated,[369] ordered the tribes which had taken refuge on the
borders of the Libyan desert in the region of Aujila and the Eastern
Fezzan to migrate and spread the true religion far afield. The Tuareg,
with the Itesan leading, thereupon came into Air. Now, whatever else
they were, the Libyans at the time of these early movements were,
of course, not Moslems, nor is it likely that any Khalif or Emperor
at Constantinople intervened in the way suggested. There is not even
any reason to suppose that the migration occurred in the Moslem era,
though we are not as yet concerned with dates. Such details as these
are picturesque embellishments added in the course of time to popular
tradition. I can agree that the Tuareg came _from_ the north; but I
am less than certain that they came _by_ the north.
North of Air, about half-way between the wells of Asiu and the Valley
of T’iyut, there is a small hill called Maket n’Ikelan, which
means in Temajegh, “The Mecca (or shrine) of the Slaves.”[370]
This is said to have been the northernmost boundary of the old kingdom
of Gober. At Maket n’Ikelan the custom was preserved among passing
Tuareg caravans of allowing the slaves to make merry and dance and
levy a small tribute from their masters. The hill was probably a pagan
place of worship, but is important from the historical point of view,
because tradition represents, somewhat erroneously as regards details,
that there, “when the Kel Owi took possession of old Gober with
its capital at T’in Shaman, a compromise was entered into between
the Red conquerors and the Black natives, that the latter should not
be destroyed and that the principal chief of the Kel Owi should be
allowed to marry a black woman.” The story is interesting, though
there has evidently been a slight confusion of thought, because
there was already a large Tuareg population in Air before the Kel
Owi came comparatively late in history; and it is not they who were
the first Tuareg in the plateau. The marriage of the red chief with
a black slave woman may be an allusion, and perhaps a direct one,
to the practice associated with the Sultan of Air.[371]
With the old frontier of Gober at Maket n’Ikelan one might from this
story have supposed that the first Tuareg invaders met the original
inhabitants of the country there and came to an agreement regarding an
occupation of the northern mountains, whence they eventually overran
the whole plateau. Although such a conclusion would seem to be borne
out by such traditions as I have quoted of a descent from the north,
the weight of evidence indicates the south-east as the direction
from which the first Tuareg actually came. But this will be seen to
be not incompatible with a northern home for the race. The view is
only in conflict with the Maket n’Ikelan tradition if the latter
is interpreted literally. The terms of the settlement of treaty need
only be associated with a point in Northern Air, inasmuch as the site
in question marked the frontier of the old kingdom of Gober, which
the Tuareg eventually took over in its entirety from its ancient
possessors. It need not be supposed that the Treaty was made _at_
Maket n’Ikelan. I regard this old frontier point as merely symbolic
of the event.
The testimony of Sultan Bello regarding the first migration of
the People of the Veil is most helpful.[372] “Adjoining Bornu,
on the south side, is the province of Air (_i.e._ on the south side
of Air). It is inhabited by the Tuareg and by some remnants of the
Sanhaja and the Sudanese. This province was formerly in the hands
of the Sudanese inhabitants of Gober, but five tribes of the Tuareg,
called Amakeetan, Tamkak, Sendal, Agdalar, and Ajaraneen, came out of
Aowjal[373] and conquered it. They nominated a prince for themselves
from the family of Ansatfen, but they quarrelled among themselves
and dismissed him.” Bello thereupon goes on to describe the Arabian
origin of the Tuareg people.
I agree with Barth[374] that these five tribes probably did not
come from Aujila oasis itself, but his remark that one of the
five tribes was “the Aujila tribe” is surely a mistake. Bello
distinctly speaks of the five tribes by name as having come _from_
Aowjal. Aujila seems never to have been the name of a people. As far
back as Herodotus[375] it is already a place name. As for Bello’s
reference to the selection of a ruler from a slave family, it is
probably an allusion to the practice we have already examined,[376]
for Ansatfen, _i.e._ n’Sattafan, means “of the black ones,” from
the word “sattaf” = “black.” The fact that according to the
Agades Chronicle the ninth Sultan was called Muhammad Sottofé (the
Black), who ruled from A.D. 1486-93, and is referred to in Sudanese
records, in some measure confirms the accuracy of Bello’s history.
The story that the first Tuareg came from Aujila is nothing more than
a reflection of their own tradition that they came from a far country
in the north-east, where one of the most important and well-known
points was this oasis, whence people had long been in the habit of
trading as far afield as Kawar and even Gao. Aujila was a northern
caravan terminus. The trade between Aujila and Kawar, as early as the
twelfth century, is referred to by Idrisi,[377] and this reference
is the more interesting as it indicates, though at a later period
than that of the first Tuareg invasion of Air, a steady stream of
traffic organised by the North-eastern Tuareg down the Chad road to
Bornu and Kanem. This is most significant; it had probably been going
on since the days perhaps of the Nasamonian merchant adventurers.
The Agades Chronicle, on the authority of the learned Ibn Assafarani,
says that the first Tuareg who came to Air were the Kel Innek,
under a ruler called the Agumbulum; and that other Tuareg followed
them. Now, Kel Innek means literally “The People of the East”;
it is primarily a generic or descriptive term, and not a tribal
proper name. Ibn Assafarani wrote from Asben, where the eastern
country always and necessarily means the area around Lake Chad. Bello
further mentions that when the Kanuri entered Kanem they settled
there as strangers under the government of the Amakeetan, one of
the five tribes previously mentioned as the first to enter Air. He
also refers to the latter by the general name of Kel Innek. Again,
one of the two tribes in Elakkos, between Air and Lake Chad, are the
Immikitan, while we know from Leo that the Lemta Tuareg occupied an
area extending from the north-eastern Fezzan to Kuka on Lake Chad.[378]
This evidence, therefore, leads one to the conclusion that the first
Tuareg, or at any rate some of the first Tuareg, to enter Air were
not migrants from the north, that is to say, from Ghat or Ahaggar,
but from Kanem and from Bornu in the south-east, which parts are
racially connected with the Fezzan and not with the former areas. In
the course of these movements a group of Immikitan remained in Elakkos,
which, we have seen on the quite distinct evidence of the Ilagwas,
was in any case connected with the Lemta country of the north.
There exists to-day a sub-tribe of the Itesan bearing the name of
Kel Innek. On the analogy of what occurred among the Kel Ahamellen,
among the Ahaggaren, and in recent years in Air also among the Kel
Tafidet, it is almost certain that we have an example here of a name
originally applied to a sub-tribe and the whole group simultaneously
but now used to differentiate a sub-tribe only. The Itesan of to-day,
in spite of their connection with the Kel Geres, were, as will be
explained later on, among the original invaders of Air, a fact which
might in any case have been deduced from the survival among them,
and not among other confederations, of the name Kel Innek.
It appears unnecessary when such an easy interpretation of the
available evidence is forthcoming, and above all when some of the
names accurately recorded by Bello are still traceable in Air, to
assume that they are erroneous. I cannot follow Barth at all when
he is dealing with these early tribes. He seems to have created
difficulties where they do not exist. It is not necessary to suppose
that the five tribes came into Air to form an entrepôt for their
trade between Negroland and Aujila or the north-east generally; the
suggestion is so far-fetched that even Barth admitted that the whole
affair was peculiar.[379]
If an invasion of Air from the south-east took place, what provoked
it? In order to establish even an approximate date, which Jean puts
at about A.D. 800, without, however, giving his reasons, a digression
into the story of Bornu is necessary.
Bello, referring to the people east of Lake Chad, mentions an
early invasion from the Yemen as far as Bornu. He calls the invaders
“Barbars,”[380] which name, however, he seems later to transfer to
the Tuareg, finally, however, reserving it for the Kanuri. Europeans
nowadays, adding considerably to the confusion, have called the
Libyans “Berbers” and the Kanuri “Beriberi.” The invasion
from the Yemen is reported to have taken place under Himyer, but on
the showing of El Masa’udi’s history, probably the most valuable
for so mythical a period, Himyer has been confused with another hero,
Ifrikos. There are other references to an invasion from Arabia across
Africa in various authorities, including Ibn Khaldun. Whether the
invaders were the Kanuri, as the name “Barbar” given to them
by Bello seems to imply, or whether they displaced the Kanuri,
causing the latter to move into Kanem and settle as strangers under
the rule of the Immikitan, then resident in that region, or whether,
in fine, the Kanuri are not a race but a congeries of people, it is
both difficult and irrelevant here to determine. In the first case
there are no difficulties about the application of the name Barbar
to the Kanuri; in the second, the participation of the Kanuri in a
movement connected with a people from Arabia might easily lead Bello
to a confusion resulting in his identification of the Kanuri with, and
his application of Barbar to, the latter. After the settlement of the
Kanuri in Kanem and Bornu under the Tuareg, the name Barbar, originally
that of the subject people, came to be applied to the inhabitants of
the country as a whole, thus including the Tuareg. The persistence of
the name is the more easily accounted for by the predominance later
on of the people to whom it originally belonged, in spite of their
situation in the beginning, for, as we shall see later, the Tuareg,
their masters in the early days, were gradually displaced in Kanem
and Bornu at a period which might coincide with their invasion of Air.
The history of Kanem and Bornu, at first under a single government,
is recorded in a chronicle collected by Barth.[381] It is, of course,
not entirely trustworthy, but the salient facts are reasonably
correct. The first king of Kanem, Sef, doubtfully referred to about
A.D. 850, founded a dynasty and reigned over Berbers,[382] Tebu,
and people of Kanem. This dynasty, called Duguwa, after the name of
the grandson of Sef, continued until the end of the reign of Abd el
Jelil or Selma I, who was succeeded in 1086 by Hume, the first king
of the Beni Hume dynasty. Hume was reputed to be the son of Selma I,
and the change of name in the ruling dynasty is attributed to the
fact that the former was the first Moslem ruler,[383] whereas his
predecessors were not. The chronology is confirmed by El Bekri’s
statement,[384] written towards the end of the Beni Dugu dynasty,
that Arki, the ante-penultimate king of the line in 1067, was a
pagan. The dynastic change of name is even more important when the
ethnic relation of the kings of the Beni Dugu and the Beni Hume are
examined. During the period of the Beni Dugu, Bornu, according to
Sultan Bello, was under the rule of the Tuareg. In the Chronicle two
of the Duguwa kings are stated to have had mothers of the Temagheri
tribe, while another was descended from a woman of the Beni Ghalgha
bearing the Libyan name of Tumayu. The name Beni Ghalgha reminds one
perhaps only fortuitously of the Kel Ghela,[385] while Temagheri may
simply be a variant for Temajegh, which of course is the female form
in the Air dialect of Imajegh, meaning a Tuareg noble, though I am
told this etymology is unlikely. The importance of the women in the
ancestry of these kings, as among all the Tuareg, is emphasised by
the mention of their names. With the Beni Hume, on the other hand, the
alliances seem to have been contracted, no longer with Tuareg women,
but from Hume’s successor, Dunama I, till the reign of Abd el Jelil
or Selma II, with Tebu women. In any event there are good reasons
to believe that the change in the name of the dynasty at the end of
Selma I’s reign in 1086 means more than a mere change in religion;
it marks the passing of the power of the Tuareg in Bornu.[386]
The year 1086 may therefore also mark approximately the first wave of
the Tuareg migration into Air. The immigration was probably gradual,
since tradition records no single event or cataclysm to account for
the changes which took place, which have, on the contrary, to be
deduced from stories like that of Maket n’Ikelan and the change
in the name of a dynasty. But 1086 is probably the latest date of
the migration into Air and it may have been earlier. The invaders
were the five tribes already mentioned, together with or including
others which it would be difficult to trace by name, though one of
them was probably the Itesan. All the tribes concerned can be traced
among the People of the King, most of them in Air, though the Igdalen
are on the south-eastern fringe of the plateau. The Itesan, whose
dominant position in Air involved them in the vicissitudes of the Kel
Geres, shared in their expulsion from the mountains. But the others
belong to the Amenokal, and none of them to that later personage,
the Añastafidet.
The Beni Hume dynasty in Bornu may be regarded as a Tebu dynasty or
a negroid dynasty with Tebu alliances. The Chronicle makes this line
continue until its expulsion from Kanem by the Bulala, a negroid
people from east of Lake Chad, early in the fourteenth century,
and its final extinction with the Bulala conquest of Bornu itself in
the fifteenth century. The Beni Hume line seems in reality to have
terminated in 1177, when Abdallah, or Dala, came to the throne. His
half-brother, Selma II, is described as the first black king of
Bornu, his predecessors having been fair-skinned like the Arabs. It
is this reign which really seems to mark the advent to power of the
negroid Kanuri, to which Bello makes allusion, even if it is not to be
looked for earlier with the rise of the Beni Hume themselves. Bello
describes the occurrence in the following terms:[387] “They came
to Kanem and settled there as strangers under the government of
the Tawarek . . . but they soon rebelled against them and usurped
the country.” But I am nevertheless not disposed to consider the
Beni Hume negroid Kanuri, so much as a Tebu or similar stock,[388]
for, in the reign of Dunama II, the son of Selma II, we find, after a
series of marriages with Tebu women, an apparently definite change of
policy. No more Tebu women are recorded as the mothers of kings, and
instead the great Dunama II, who ruled from 1221 to 1259, waged a war
which lasted seven years, seven months and seven days against these
people. As the result of this campaign he extended the jurisdiction
of the empire of Kanem over the Fezzan, which remained within its
borders for over a century.[389]
The fall of the Duguwa in Bornu at the end of the eleventh century was,
then, the ultimate reason for the first Tuareg invasion of Air. We
should thus have a fairly satisfactory date were it not probably to
be regarded only as the latest limiting date, since the overthrow of
the Tuareg dynasty probably only marked the culmination in Bornu of a
steadily growing ethnic pressure from the east and north. An additional
reason for assuming a late date for the invasion of Air is the detail
recorded by Bello, that when the Kel Innek arrived they found some
Sanhaja tribes already there. Now the true Sanhaja confederation was
not brought into being until the beginning of the eleventh century,
the most probable period for tribes of this division to have wandered
as far afield as Air. It follows that the invasion of the Kel Innek
should be placed later than that or towards the end of the century.
There is scarcely any evidence regarding the earliest period at which
it might have taken place. It may be possible to arrive at an estimate,
when the results of further researches into the history of Bornu have
been made public. It would be most interesting to learn, for instance,
when the first Tuareg reached Bornu and Kanem. Is their presence there
as a ruling caste to be ascribed to the very early days, or are they
to be considered as having come in at a comparatively late epoch? It
is difficult to reconcile their presence there in the earliest times
with their failure to fuse to a greater extent with the local negroid
population and their consequent retention of the individuality which
they still possessed when they entered Air.
In the four centuries preceding A.D. 850, when the first Beni Dugu king
ascended the throne, there are no recorded events in North Africa very
likely to have caused extensive emigration of the Tuareg of the Fezzan
to Equatoria, other than the Arab conquest; the only other invasion,
that of Chosroes with the Persians in A.D. 616, does not seem to have
had a far-reaching effect, or to have been accompanied by foreign
immigration on a large scale. The first invasion of the Arabs in the
seventh century was only small and at first did not cause widespread
ethnic disturbances.[390] Okba invaded the Fezzan in A.H. 46 with
only a small expeditionary force; the previous expedition of A.H. 26
was probably not larger. Arab pressure only began to become intense
in the eighth century, when the conquest of Spain after Tariq’s
exploits in A.D. 710 had become an accomplished fact. And then there
followed another pause until the Hillalian invasion in the eleventh
century took place.
On the other hand, the presence of Tuareg in the earliest days in
the lands east of Lake Chad would find some justification in the
position recorded of the Temahu in the southern part of the Libyan
desert by Egyptian records. They might also explain the mysterious
Blemmyes and the Men with Eyes in their Stomachs referred to by the
classical authors.
On the whole I prefer not to speculate too much along these lines for
fear of plunging into deep waters connected with the people of the
upper Nile basin. I shall simply regard the Tuareg of Bornu as a part
of the Lemta of the Fezzan, which we may assume from various sources
they were. In consequence, however slender the evidence, it becomes
difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Tuareg reached Bornu from
the north along the Bilma road in the course of the Arab invasions
of the eighth century. They remained as rulers of the country until
they were driven from there also, in consequence of increasing Arab
pressure in the Fezzan and in Equatoria itself, for in the middle of
the eleventh century the Hillal and Soleim Arabs are found extending
their conquests as far as Central Africa. Their fighting under Abu
Zeid el Hillali against the Alamt (Lemta) Tuareg in the Fezzan is
still remembered in the traditions of the Equatorial Arab tribes.
All we can say with any degree of certainty is that somewhere between
the eighth and eleventh centuries the Lemta Tuareg eventually emigrated
from the Chad countries. In due course the first five tribes reached
Air, with Elakkos and Damergu behind them already occupied. But in
Air they only peopled the whole land later on. Some of the Tuareg
of this emigration never entered Air at all or stayed in Damergu,
but moved still further west to form with other groups from the north
the Tademekkat and Kel el Suk, as well as some of the communities of
Tuareg on the Niger. Subsequent historical events isolated the Air
tribes, and when other waves of Tuareg joined them, their original
relationship with the western Tuareg and the Aulimmiden had been
forgotten. The origin of the latter is to be explained in this wise,
and not by supposing that they arrived from Mauretania, as Barth would
have it.[391] The further westward movement of the Tuareg from Lake
Chad is borne out by a reference in Ibn Khaldun’s works to some
Itesan[392] under the name of Beni Itisan among the Sanhaja.
Tradition represents that the oldest people in Air are those known
to-day as the People of the King and the Itesan to whom the most
evolved handiwork in the plateau, including the deep wells, is
attributed. With the Itesan are associated all the older and more
remarkable houses in Air. The form and construction of these buildings
evidently had a great influence on the subsequent inhabitants,
but as they are all found in an already evolved type, it is clear
that the tradition and experience necessary for building them must
have been brought from elsewhere. In accepting the view that these
houses are the work of the Itesan and not of the later immigrants I
can only follow the unanimous opinion of the natives to-day, who are,
if anything, too prone to attribute anything remarkable to them. It
may, of course, be discovered later that the Itesan had nothing
to do with any of these works, and it is all the more curious that
in their present habitat north of Sokoto they should have shown no
similar architectural propensities. It is also strange that most of
the “Kel names” among the Itesan are derived from places west of
the Central massifs, while most of the large settlements containing
the best so-called “Itesan” houses are on the east side. But the
houses and wells in Air do not seem to be associated with the Kel
Geres, with whom the Itesan now live, and there seems to be no doubt
whatever in the minds of the natives that they are the works of the
latter and not of other immigrants.
The architectural technique shows that the race was in process of
cultural decay when it reached Air, and that under the influence of
new environment the memory and tradition of this civilisation were
lost with remarkable rapidity. The succession of events and the causes
culminating in the migration of the Chad Tuareg are not inconsistent
with such a decline of culture, but only a thorough investigation of
the Fezzan will probably throw any light upon its derivation.
The popular view of the origin of these stone buildings bears out the
separate identity of the Itesan and the Kel Geres. It is obvious that
the two divisions must have entered Air at different times; and since
the Itesan were therefore among the first invaders, the Kel Geres must
have come in later. This traditional version is further consistent with
facts already noticed, in that among the People of the King in Air
and among the Itesan it is possible to trace the names of the first
recorded tribes to enter Air, whereas their names do not occur among
the Kel Geres. Apart from proving the separate origin of the Itesan and
the Kel Geres, these facts leave little room for doubt that the Itesan
formed part of the group that was the first to invade the plateau.
The names of the five tribes, mentioned by Bello in his history,
were, as we have seen above, the Immikitan, the Igdalen, the Ijaranen,
the Tamgak, and the Sendal. Of these the Immikitan are found with the
Igdalen among the People of the King in Air to-day, while the Ijaranen
survive among the Itesan tribes who now live in the south. The Sendal
and the Tamgak are mentioned as late as 1850 in the Agades Chronicle,
when there is no doubt that they were a people of the king, since
they are referred to as the allies of the Sultan Abd el Qader in a
war against the Kel Geres.
The first Tuareg lived in Air as a minority and as foreigners. It
is possible they represented only a fraction of the Tuareg who were
moving and that the greater part went on into the west. The Agades
Chronicle, describing the advent of the Itesan, records that they
“. . . . said to the Goberawa, ‘We want a place in your town to
settle.’ The Goberawa refused at first to give them a place, but in
the end agreed. The Itesan refused the place as a gift, but bought a
house for 1000 dinars. Into this house they led their chief, and from
there he ruled the Tuareg of the desert. War, however, soon ensued
between the Goberawa, supported by the Abalkoran, and the Itesan. The
result of this war was that the Goberawa went back into Hausaland,
while the Abalkoran went west into the land of the Aulimmiden.”
The Abalkoran had just before in the Chronicle been described as
a priestly caste associated with the Goberawa, but among the Air
Tuareg the name Iberkoran or Abalkoran is the name of the Aulimmiden
themselves. The record has suffered chronological compression, but
clearly implies that the Goberawa were still in South Air at a time
when the Aulimmiden had already reached their habitat west of the
mountains. The latter is an event which some authorities consider
fairly recent, but my view, already put forward elsewhere, is that
the Aulimmiden are not a group of Hawara people who left the Fezzan
some time between 1200 and 1300, as Ibn Khaldun suggests, nor yet
people from Mauretania; I prefer to believe that they are Lemta who
originally migrated to their present habitat from the Chad regions
at much the same time as the first Tuareg invasion of Air took place.
The statement that the Abalkoran left Air to join the Aulimmiden
tends to support the view that this Air invasion was only part of a
general westerly movement.
THE SECOND IMMIGRATION
The second wave of immigration was that of the Kel Geres. Jean believed
that the Kel Geres were among the first arrivals because he wrongly
assumed that they were identical with the Itesan. An examination of
the names of the various groups[393] discloses the fact that whereas
many Itesan tribes have “Kel names” derived from known localities
in Central Air, for the most part in the Auderas neighbourhood,
of the Kel Geres tribes only the Kel Garet, Kel Anigara and the Kel
Agellal have names similarly derived.[394] Traditionally the Kel Geres
reached Air by way of the north. They also are associated with the
story of over-population in the Mediterranean lands. They arrived,
according to Jean, in considerable numbers, and settled in the part
of Air which is west of the road from Iferuan to Agades by way of
Assode and Auderas.[395] East of this line in later days lived the
Kel Owi, and presumably, at this early period, the original five
tribes. The assumption is confirmed by certain evidence, for although
the Itesan tribe names refer to an area lying across this line, the
only territorial Kel Geres tribe names refer to an area west of it;
the country, on the other hand, known to have been occupied by some
of the first immigrants is, as would be expected, to the east. With
the exception of the Igdalen, who moved in recent years, most of the
older People of the King were also east of this line, before the Kel
Owi scattered them.
The present Itesan-Kel Geres group in the Southland is said to number
forty-seven tribes divided as follows:[396]
Itesan 6 tribes of the Itesan.
Kel Geres 12 „ „ Tetmokarak.
6 „ „ Kel Unnar.
5 „ „ Kel Anigara.
6 „ „ Kel Garet.
12 „ „ Tadadawa and Kel Tatenei.
The principal tribal names of the Itesan which retain the more familiar
place names of Air are the Kel Mafinet, Kel T’sidderak, Kel Dogam
and Kel Bagezan or Maghzen, all of them derived from places in the
neighbourhood of Auderas.[397] Among the Kel Geres the name of the
Kel Garet records a habitat somewhat further north, the Kel Agellal
of the Kel Unnar probably came from Agellal, and the Kel Anigara from
an area still further north.
It is difficult to accept the view that the first Tuareg to enter Air
arrived in the eighth century, even if it is only for the reason that
the surviving “Itesan” houses could not for so long a time have
remained in the state of preservation in which some of them are now
found. I am personally not disposed to regard the first immigration
as having taken place much before the latest date previously suggested
as a limit, namely, the end of the eleventh century.
The invasion of the first tribes left the mountains with a mixed
population of Tuareg and Goberawa; the disappearance of the latter
as a separate race was only accomplished when the second or Kel Geres
invasion took place. The Kel Geres so added to the Tuareg population
in Air that henceforward the country must be regarded as essentially
Tuareg, and this probably accounts for the tradition that the Kel
Geres conquered the country, and as they came in both from the north
and by the north, it doubtless gave rise to legends such as that of
Maket n’Ikelan.
Failing more definite evidence than we now possess, I regard the Kel
Geres movement as a part of a Hawara-Auriga emigration from the north
to which Ibn Khaldun alludes. This does not exclude the possibility
of some nuclei of Hawara having gone west of Air to join either the
Aulimmiden or the Tademekkat or both groups. In fact, such a course
of events would explain the distant affinity with, yet independence
of, the Aulimmiden which is insisted upon by many authorities. We
know that by the time Leo was writing he regarded both Ahaggar and
Air as inhabited by Targa, while the Fezzan and the Chad road were
inhabited by Lemta. The Ahaggaren I have previously tried to show
were, in the main, Hawara. Now the advent in Air of a large mass from
this division under the name of Kel Geres would warrant his grouping
of both plateaux under one ethnic heading. The Hawara movement from
the Western Fezzan and between Ghat and Ahaggar may be placed in the
twelfth century, and therefore not so very far removed from the first
immigration into Air from the south-east. It can also be accounted
for by similar causes, namely, the growing pressure of the Arabs,
perhaps as a sequel to the Hillalian invasion.
Following the two initial migrations, it may be assumed that small
nuclei of Tuareg continued to reach Air. These would to-day be
represented by such of the People of the King as are not to be
connected with either the first five tribes or with the Kel Geres.
THE THIRD IMMIGRATION
The third wave was that of the Kel Owi. On Barth and Hornemann’s
authority they arrived in modern times, while according to Jean they
arrived in the ninth century. Barth’s researches, which in all cases
are more reliable than those of Jean, who appears usually to have
accepted native dates without hesitation, led him to believe that
the Kel Owi entered, in fact conquered Air, about A.D. 1740. They
are not mentioned by Leo or any other writers before the time of
Hornemann (A.D. 1800), who obtained such good information about them
that his commentator, Major Rennell, also assumed their arrival to
be recent.[398] By the end of the nineteenth century the Kel Owi
had already achieved such fame that of all Tuareg known to him,
Hornemann only mentions them. He adds in his account that Gober
was at this time tributary to Air, a detail consistent with other
records. Barth’s very late date[399] for the arrival of the Kel
Owi nevertheless presents certain difficulties. It is clear on
the one hand that it could not have been the Kel Owi who made the
arrangement of Maket n’Ikelan, and that it must therefore have been
the Kel Geres or their predecessors, but it is further difficult to
see how a people could have entered Air in such numbers as to become
the preponderant group within barely one hundred years and to have
evicted the firmly rooted Kel Geres tribes so soon. That the Kel Owi
should have appropriated the historical credit for the settlement of
Maket n’Ikelan is easy to understand, for it was they who held the
trade route to the north out of the country, but the early expulsion of
the Kel Geres indicates a numerical superiority which, unfortunately,
native tradition does not bear out.
It is noteworthy that no Kel Owi tribe is represented in the election
of the king, which supports the view that they had not yet reached
Air when the local system of government from Agades was devised.
“The vulgar account of the origin of the Kel Owi from the female
slave of a Tinylcum who came to Asben where she gave birth to a boy
who was the progenitor of the Kel Owi . . . is obviously nothing but
a popular tale. . . .”[400]
The story collected by Jean, which purports to explain the two
categories of tribes in Air to-day, the Kel Owi confederation and
the People of the King, is not more authentic.[401] He tells how,
after the arrival of the Sultan in Air, the Kel Geres kept away from
his presence, while the Kel Owi ingratiated themselves and secured
their own administration under the Añastafidet. The Sultan, however,
wishing to create his own tribal group, divided the Kel Owi amongst
themselves, and this is the origin of the People of the Añastafidet
and the People of the King. In their efforts to ingratiate themselves,
the Kel Owi of Bagezan which, as we have seen, was Itesan country
at the time, sent as a present to the Sultan a woman named T’iugas
with her six daughters of the Imanen tribe of the north; these women
had been sent from the north to cement good relations between Air and
Azger.[402] The six sisters nominated the eldest as their speaker and
the Sultan gave her authority over the rest. She was followed by the
next two sisters, and these three are the mothers of the three senior
tribes of the Kel Owi, namely, the Kel Owi proper, the Kel Tafidet
and the Kel Azañieres.[403] The other three women refused to accept
the leadership of the eldest sister and placed themselves under the
authority of the Sultan direct; and they were the mothers of the
Kel Tadek, Imezegzil and Kel Zilalet.[404] The details of the story
are obviously a Kel Owi invention. They are designed to establish
nobility and equality of ancestry with the older and more respected
tribes. The legend, however, probably also contains certain indications
of truth, notably in the allusion to the Imanen women from the north,
since there does exist an affinity between that tribe and the Itesan,
though it must, of course, be understood that the Kel Bagezan of the
story were an Itesan sub-tribe, and not the later Kel Bagezan of the
Kel Owi group. With these conditions the story becomes intelligible
as a legendary or traditional account. It is not meant to be taken
as literally true, and is not even a very widely accepted version of
the origin of the present social structure in Air, but it is amusing,
for it shows how on this as on every other occasion the Kel Owi have
attempted to claim antiquity of descent equal to that of the tribes
they found on their arrival.
Two other traditions which I collected are best summarised by quoting
the following extract from my diary, written while at T’imia,
a Kel Owi village in the Bagezan mountains. One of the big men in
the village was the “’alim” ’Umbellu, a fine figure of a
man, old and bald but still powerful and vigorous, with the heavy
noble features of a Roman emperor. He used to be the keeper of the
old mosque, and is said to be one of the most learned men in the
country. I had examined the ruined sanctuary, in which he had not set
foot since it was desecrated by the French troops after the Kaossen
revolt, and found some fragments of holy books, which I restored to
’Umbellu in the present mosque at T’imia, a shelter of reeds and
matting. From him I received the same sort of confused account which
others besides myself had heard. “. . . He says that the Kel Owi
are not pure Tuareg, but that some Arabs _or_ (_sic_) Tuareg of the
north came down to Northern Air and mixed with the local population,
which stock became the Kel Owi Confederation; but whether these people
came as raiders or settlers he could not say. He was, however, quite
clear that they had come from the Arab country.[405] Then in almost
the same breath he told me that the Kel Owi are descended from a
woman who came from the north and lived in Tamgak, where she mated
with one of the local inhabitants and became the mother of all these
tribes. He added that she was a Moslem at a time when the Kel Ferwan
(a non-Kel Owi tribe, or People of the King, then living in Iferuan)
were heathen, but whether Christians or pagan he could not say.”
The second story is analogous to that which Barth heard.
Generally speaking traditions give the two separate versions, which
are rather puzzling. If the account of the woman who settled in Tamgak
is taken as a legendary record of the indigenous growth of the Kel Owi
tribes, it must be supposed that their forefathers were in Air for much
more than two hundred years, and Jean’s date would consequently not
be out of the question. Against this must be set the other version,
that they arrived quite recently, a view which is supported unanimously
by all the other Tuareg. It was, we have seen, confirmed by Barth’s
researches and deduced by Rennell from information collected by
Hornemann. The compact organisation and the definite division which
exists between them and the other tribes in Air would also point
to their having a separate origin and being comparatively recent
arrivals; they are still organised in an administrative system which
has not yet had time to break down and merge into the régime of the
other tribes. Furthermore, no mention is made of the Kel Owi by any
of the earlier authors, which, if negative evidence, is nevertheless
significant in the works of an authority like Leo, especially as,
apart from the ethnic distinction which might have been overlooked,
the dual government of the King and the Añastafidet is too remarkable
a feature to have escaped his discernment. The balance of testimony
is therefore in favour of attributing a fairly recent date to their
arrival, though perhaps not so late as Barth would have us believe. I
myself make no doubt that they were late arrivals: I only differ with
the learned traveller in a small matter of the exact date.
But what impelled them to migrate it is difficult to say. Barth thought
that they could be traced to an earlier habitat in the north-west,
and that the nobler portion of them once belonged to the Auraghen
tribe, whence their dialect was called Auraghiye. I have no evidence
on this point except that of Ahodu, who gave me to understand that
the language of the Kel Owi was not different from that of any other
Tuareg tribe in the plateau, and he added that he had not heard
the name Auraghiye employed to describe it, though he knew that it
was applied to the dialect spoken in Ahaggar. Barth’s testimony,
otherwise, is acceptable.
Jean is of the impression that they are essentially of the same race
as the Kel Geres, who were probably Hawara. If this deduction is true,
three possibilities require to be considered. The Kel Owi may have
been an Auraghen tribe living to the north or north-east of Air among
the Azger; or, they may have been among the older Auraghen people,
to use this term in its wider sense, namely, of the Auriga-Hawara,
represented by the Ahaggaren, to whom, of course, the Azger Auraghen
of to-day belong; or, lastly, they may be descended from the Auraghen
of the west, from the Tademekkat country. The last is the soundest
view in the present state of our knowledge, though the second is also
quite probable.
The Tademekkat people, we know, were driven from their homes in
A.D. 1640 by the Aulimmiden. While some of them were driven out to the
west, some at least found their way back into the Azger country.[406]
It is no less probable that others may have gone to Air by a roundabout
route. In that case Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi
in Air seems to be at least fifty years too late. During the last
half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries they would have
been finding their way into Northern Air in small groups. This is
not inconsistent with the appearance at Agades of an Amenokal with
a Kel Owi mother, if the admittedly tentative date of 1629 given in
the Agades Chronicle is placed a decade or so later.
I am inclined to regard the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air as having
taken place in the latter half of the seventeenth century. According
to the Agades Chronicle they were already fighting the Kel Geres
at Abattul, west of the Central massif, in 1728, some time before
Barth’s date; and this obviously implies an earlier arrival in
the north of the plateau, for their entry must have taken place from
that direction and not from the south. But a recent date, taken in
conjunction with the dominant position which the Kel Owi occupied and
their separate political organisation, further implies that they came
in considerable numbers, a conclusion which is at variance with one
set of native traditions. They could not otherwise in two hundred years
have achieved so much as they did by the beginning of the century.
[Illustration: THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREG]
We know that their coming was followed by an economic disturbance
of far-reaching importance. They first occupied North-eastern and
Northern Air; the later phase of their penetration is recorded in
the statement that the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres lived side by side,
west and east of the Iferuan-Auderas-Agades road. The eastern plains
of Air, according to Ahodu of Auderas and ’Umbellu of T’imia,
had by this time been evacuated by the Itesan and the early settlers,
but the invasion of the Kel Owi must have led also to the expulsion
of the early settlers from the northern marches. The removal of the
Kel Ferwan from the Iferuan area, and of the Kel Tadek from their
territories north of Tamgak to the west and the south, probably took
place in this period. The Kel Owi movement, though accompanied by
frequent disturbances, was gradual. At T’imia, where the original
inhabitants, according to ’Umbellu, were Kel Geres, they were only
displaced in the time of his own grandparents by a mixed band of
settlers from various Kel Owi tribes then living in the Ighazar in
Northern Air. ’Umbellu is a man of about sixty now, so this event
may have been one hundred years ago, at a time, in fact, when we should
still expect the southward movement of the Kel Owi to be in progress.
More recently still the south-eastern part of the country was
distributed among certain of their clans. The large Itesan settlements
like those near Tabello had already been abandoned and were never again
permanently inhabited; some dwellings were built later by the Kel Owi,
but never on so large a scale as in the previous epoch. The extant
houses and ruins are mostly of the first period; a few only show
a transitional phase to the later Kel Owi type. Sometimes a compact
block of contiguous buildings is to be found, possessing the character
of a fortified settlement. It would seem that this defensible type of
habitation had been evolved during the period after the Itesan were
known to have been driven out by Tebu raiding and before the Kel Owi
arrived. These dwellings betray certain features alien to the Tuareg,
which may be explained by supposing that they were used by the serfs of
the Itesan when their lords had retreated west of the Bagezan massif.
With the occupation of the eastern part of Air by the Kel Owi,
the ancient caravan road which has run from time immemorial by
T’intaghoda, Unankara, Mari, Beughqot and Tergulawen fell into
their hands. It is the easiest road across the Air plateau, and
perhaps for this reason, but more probably because they always had
propensities of this sort, they developed such commercial ability
that they rapidly made for themselves a dominant place in all trade
and transport enterprises between Ghat and the Sudan. But although
their efficiency in organisation gave them the control of the road,
they certainly did not create it. But they did create a monopoly
which deprived the Kel Geres of their legitimate profit.
The hostilities which soon broke out between the Kel Owi and
the Kel Geres could lead to only one of two possible solutions,
the expulsion or extermination of one of the rivals. Such economic
problems are, of course, not always realised at the time when they
are most urgently felt, and the current record of events to which
they give rise is therefore often slightly distorted. Here, however,
even the popular version shows that the real cause of the disturbances
was an economic one. The Kel Owi began by appropriating the half of
a country in which they were new-comers. They proceeded to demand
the serfs and slaves whom the Kel Geres had possessed since their
subjugation of the negroid peoples of Air. This impossible demand gave
rise to considerable strife and was referred for arbitration to the
reigning Sultan of Agades. The Hausa elements were supported by the
Kel Owi for political reasons and as far as possible abandoned their
former masters. The Sultan seems to have maintained the neutrality
for which he stood, and even to have prevented the tribes which
owed allegiance to him directly and belonged to neither party from
taking sides in the dispute.[407] He was nevertheless unsuccessful,
and after years of desultory fighting the Kel Geres abandoned
Air for Adar and Gober to the west of Damergu and to the north of
Sokoto. They retained their rights in the election of the Amenokal,
to whom they continued to owe nominal allegiance through their chiefs,
and were allowed to continue to use certain Air place-names in their
tribal nomenclature. In the last century they repeatedly interfered
in choice of the Sultan, and they still consider themselves to this
day a part of the Air Tuareg, although their hostility against the
Kel Owi never died. They evacuated the country with all the slaves
and serfs whom they succeeded in retaining. It is possible that a
few of the older non-Kel Owi tribes of Air and Damergu went with them.
If Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi were accepted,
this migration should have occurred in the end of the eighteenth
century. But as a matter of fact the movement took place earlier. Jean
states that an arrangement for the evacuation was reached in the reign
of the Sultan Almoubari or El Mubarak, who ruled thirty-four years,
from A.D. 1653 to 1687. If the agreement was made at the end of his
reign, the date for the immigration of the Kel Owi in accordance with
previous information falls in the neighbourhood of 1640, to which
epoch the reign of Sultan Muhammad Attafriya, who was deposed two
years after his accession by the Itesan, can be assigned. The Kel
Geres did not, however, leave the country directly the arrangement
was made, and in the meanwhile continued the struggle. In 1728 the
Kel Owi and the Itesan were still fighting in Air, the latter being
defeated at Abattul, near Auderas. Halfway through this century the
Itesan were fighting in the Southland and attacked Katsina in company
with the Zamfarawa. It is at this time that the Kel Geres seem to
have obtained a footing in the lands of Adar and Sokoto, though the
Itesan still refused to settle there. In 1759 there is recorded a war
between the Kel Geres and the Kel Tegama at the cliffs of Tiggedi,
in which the latter were defeated. This war was followed by another
in 1761 between the Kel Geres and the Aulimmiden, where, however, the
former suffered. In the same year the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres fought
each other at Agades. In this period the Amenokal Muhammad Hammad,
who had come to the throne in 1735, changed places twice with Muhammad
Guma, according as the Kel Owi or the Kel Geres faction prevailed. The
former, restored to the throne in 1763, undertook an expedition with
the men of Air against the King of Gober, and was severely defeated
in 1767. In order to avenge the defeat, a truce between the warring
Tuareg was finally concluded after a century of fighting. The combined
men of Air then marched on, and defeated Dan Gudde and cut off his
head. This event may be held to mark the final settlement of the
Itesan and Kel Geres in the Southland. Their success accounts for
Hornemann’s report that at the end of the nineteenth century the
Tuareg were masters of Gober. Internecine hostilities continued, but
henceforth the Itesan and the Kel Geres are no longer described as
fighting the Kel Owi but the men of Air, as in 1780 and again in 1788,
when they made their nominee, Muhammad Dani, Sultan at Agades. In 1835
the Amenokal, Guma, was captured in Damergu by the Kel Geres after a
massacre of the Kel Owi. It was only in about 1860 that hostilities,
which were in full progress in Barth’s day, finally ceased.
Why, it may be asked, did the Itesan and not all the rest of the
pre-Kel Geres people of Air leave in consequence of the Kel Owi
invasion? The question is not easy to answer, but the surmise is that,
as the largest and most important group, they became most involved
in the struggle. With their departure and that of the Kel Geres
the remaining people became leaderless: having no confederation
of their own they clustered around the person of the Sultan, and
so came to be known as the People of the King. Yet, on account of
their ancestry and nobility, the Kel Owi sought to attack them and
arrogate to themselves the principal rôles in history, like the story
of the peace of Maket n’Ikelan and that of the Imanen women. These
claims are consistent with the characteristic which is felt to-day in
relations with them—the arrogance of the parvenu. The ascendancy
of the noble Itesan has continued in the Southland as it existed in
Air. They lead the Kel Geres division, with whom fate had made them
throw in their lot. They remain primarily responsible for the choice
of the Sultan even to-day.
Enough—too much perhaps—has been said of the three migrations of
the Tuareg people into Air. It would be tedious to continue on that
narrow subject. The complexity of the tribal organisation of the Air
Tuareg has also been made patent in the earlier attempts to discover
their social life. It is unfortunately impossible, even if space were
available, to allocate the various clans of whose existence report
has reached us to the larger groups or waves of immigration which
have been examined. Lists of the tribes which have survived are given
in Appendix II to this work: they have been arranged in such system
as was feasible, using the information collected by Barth, and Jean,
and by myself. But the classification is unsatisfactory, since there
is, in many instances, but little evidence. The organisation of the
Kel Owi is, of course, the easiest to ascertain and it was briefly
outlined in Chapter X, but the People of the King are really more
interesting both because they were the earliest arrivals and because of
their association with the Itesan culture of the old houses and deep
wells. Among the People of the King the most valuable anthropological
data are to be collected. They brought such civilisation as Nigeria
possessed in the Middle Ages from the Mediterranean, having absorbed
and forgotten much of it on the way and since those epochs.
IDENTIFICATION OF EXTANT TRIBES
Before passing on to a brief summary of Central African history as
a frame into which to fit the Air migrations, I would like to leave
on record for some future student to use such conclusions as I have
been able to reach regarding the descendants of the first invaders
of Air recorded by Sultan Bello.
The geographical areas of the Kel Owi and People of the King
respectively had almost ceased to be distinguishable even before
the 1917 revolution added to the prevailing confusion. In so far
as it is at all possible to lay down broad definitions, Central
and West-central Air belonged to the People of the King, Northern,
North-eastern and Eastern Air to the Kel Owi, or People of the
Añastafidet, and Southern Air, or, as it is more properly called,
Tegama, to the servile tribes. The Talak plain was diversely populated.
The first immigrants, the Immikitan, Sendal, Tamgak, Igdalen,
Ijaranen and probably Itesan, have for the most part survived
in some distinguishable form in or around Air. The survivors are
all, of course, as is to be expected, People of the King. The only
exceptions are certain nuclei which are known to have been absorbed
by the Añastafidet and his people.
In addition to the survivors in Air there are some Igdalen north of
Tahua, while others are Imghad of the Tarat Mellet[408] tribe of the
Ifoghas of the west. These Imghad may have been a part of the Air group
of Igdalen captured in war, or may represent a westward emigration of
a part of the stock which came on evil days in Damergu. Generally,
I regard the presence of these Igdalen in the west as confirming
Bello’s account of their early arrival in the Air area from the east;
it may also be taken to substantiate my view that the first wave of
Tuareg to the El Suk country came from the south-east and not from
the north.[409]
How far can the tribes which are known to exist to-day or whose names
have been recorded by modern travellers be associated with these
groups of early immigrants? A critical examination[410] of the tribes
reveals at least six main tribal groups of the People of the King in
Air itself, that is to say, six groups in which the respective tribes
either acknowledge themselves to be, or can be shown to possess,
certain affinities pointing to a descent from single stocks; but
not all of these can with certainty be identified with Bello’s
named clans. These six extant groups are the Kel Ferwan, Kel Tadek,
Immikitan, Imezegzil, Imaqoaran and Ifadeyen.
Two of them, in some ways the most important, have no proper names of
their own at all: both the Kel Ferwan and Kel Tadek are named after
places, respectively Iferuan in the Ighazar of Northern Air, and the
Tadek valley. Neither of these groups, which have the reputation of
great antiquity and nobility, can be affiliated to any of the other
four groups; they are indubitably separate clans which in the course
of ages have lost their old “I names.” Returning to the five
old tribes of Bello we nevertheless find certain points of contact
between records and actual conditions, as well as certain differences:
_Bello’s tribes._ _Modern groups._
{ Immikitan.
Immikitan = {
{ Imezegzil.
Igdalen = Igdalen.
Ijaranen = Ijanarnen (of the Itesan).
Sendal = ?
Tamgak = ?
? = Kel Ferwan.
? = Kel Tadek.
? = Imaqoaran.
? = Ifadeyen.
(Itesan) = Itesan.
In discussing tribal origins in Air and comparing my results with
those of Jean, I found the greatest difficulty in sorting out the
tribes of the Immikitan and Imezegzil groups: so much so that I am
inclined to think that both clans represent the old Immikitan stock
which split into two main branches some time ago. The widespread use
of the name Immikitan for Tuareg makes it possible that the original
stock of the People of the King was Immikitan in the first instance;
in that event, on the analogy of other Tuareg tribes, when one clan
grew unmanageable in size, new groups were formed, only one of which
retained the original nomenclature as a proper or individual name—a
process which no doubt occurred before any migration out of the Chad
area took place. But that is too far back to consider.
Leaving the Ifadeyen out of account for the moment we are left with the
Kel Ferwan, the Kel Tadek and the Imaqoaran to compete for the right
of descent from the Tamgak and Sendal. A remote ancestry is indicated
by their undoubted nobility and antiquity. The original home of the
Kel Tadek in a valley flowing out of Tamgak and the association of the
Tamgak tribe with the Tamgak massif suggest that these groups may be
identified, in which case the Sendal might be the ancestors of the Kel
Ferwan. Nevertheless there is also a possibility that the descendants
of the Sendal are the old tribes of Damergu. That the descendants of
the Sendal are to be sought for south of, rather than in Air proper,
is further indicated by the record of a war between the People of Air
against the Sendal in Elakkos as late as 1727.[411] The Kel Ferwan,
would, thus, be descended from the Damergu-Elakkos Tuareg directly,
and from the Sendal therefore only indirectly, if their origin indeed
is to be sought in this early wave of immigration at all.
The selection of the Sultan of Agades being in the hands of the tribes
who traditionally sent the deputation to Constantinople after the
arrival of the Kel Geres in Air, and the object of the mission being
to settle a dispute as to who should be king, it would be natural to
find all the contestant groups represented on the delegation. The Kel
Owi would, of course, not figure among them, for they had not at that
time reached Air. Now the names of tribes charged with sending the
delegation is given by Jean, and I accept his version because all the
information which I procured on the subject was very contradictory;
and the list is most interesting. It is given as: the Itesan and
the Dzianara of the modern Itesan-Kel Geres group, and the Izagaran,
Ifadalen, Imaqoaran and Immikitan of the other Tuareg. The Itesan we
know about; the Dzianara were a noble part of the Kel Geres but are
now extinct: it is natural that both these should be represented. The
Izagaran and Ifadalen survive as names of noble Damergu tribes, while
the Immikitan and Imaqoaran represent the older clans of Air proper,
all four, of course, owing allegiance to the King. From their “I
names” these tribes all seem to be old; we have no reason from any
other evidence to believe that any recent arrivals are represented
in the list. The very choice of representatives from each of three
groups may consequently be taken to indicate that these tribes were
regarded as the oldest or most important units in each division. It
is tempting, therefore, to suppose that the Izagaran and Ifadalen are
the descendants of one of the tribes in the first wave of Tuareg which
came from the south-east, and therefore perhaps of Bello’s Sendal.
Another version of the method adopted to select the first Amenokal
is recorded in the Agades Chronicle, which states that the persons
responsible for the task were the Agoalla[412] T’Sidderak, Agoalla
Mafinet and Agoalla Kel Tagei. The story relates how the Agumbulum,
the title of the ruler of the first Tuareg to enter Air, namely the Kel
Innek, desired to settle the differences which had arisen in regard
to the government, but was unable to find anyone to send to Stambul
until an old woman called Tagirit offered to send her grandsons,
who were the chieftains in question. The story emphasises what will
have been noticed on the subject of the origin of the Kel Owi, namely,
that the tribes of Air generally claim a woman either as ancestress or
as a prominent head. The first two names are those of certain Itesan
sub-tribes who, from residence in these mountain areas, which still
bear the same names in Central Air, had adopted geographical Kel
names, and conserve them to this day in their modern habitats in the
Southland. The Kel Tagei is another subdivision of the Itesan, and,
though a servile tribe of this name exists in the Imarsutan section
of the Kel Owi, it is probably a portion of the former enslaved during
the later civil wars of Air.[413]
This alternative story is not necessarily contradictory to the
first version of the deputation to Stambul, even though it does
not allow the remaining tribes of the People of the King to have a
share in the election. Since, however, the Itesan were certainly the
dominant tribe in Air until the arrival of the Kel Owi, the omission
is comprehensible; it is a statement of a part for the whole. If it
has any significance it tends to support the view that the Itesan
were, in fact, a tribe of the Kel Innek from the Chad lands, as I
have supposed, and not a part of the Kel Geres group.
The Imaqoaran and Kel Ferwan, however, remain a difficult problem. The
latter are in many ways peculiar and seem to differ in many ways
so much from their other friends in the division of the People of
the King, that although I have no direct evidence on the subject, I
half suspect them of having come to Air from some other part than the
south-east and at a later period than the first wave. Certain it is
that they specialised in raiding westward, where they obtained their
numerous dependent Imghad. Furthermore, in Cortier’s account of the
history of the Ifoghas n’Adghar there are stories of the formation of
this western group of Tuareg tending to show that while a part of the
division probably came from the north, the bulk of the immigration
was from the east. He says that after the Kel el Suk reached the
southern parts of the Sahara, they divided into two groups. The two
groups fought, and one section, which had apparently settled in Air,
was victorious, whereupon a part migrated into the Adghar, where the
other section had already established itself and had founded the town
of Tademekka. In the fighting, which continued, there seems to have
been considerable movement between the two mountain groups; the Kel
Ferwan portion of the People of the King in Air may therefore be more
nearly related to the western group than to the other Air folk.
The Ifadeyen are associated with Fadé, which is the northernmost
part of the Air plateau. To-day they are very friendly with the Kel
Tadek, and some people have even suggested that they were of the same
stock. There is, however, another tribe, the Kel Fadé, the similarity
of whose name suggests, quite erroneously, an identification. The
Ifadeyen are known to be a very old tribe, while the Kel Fadé are
known to have been formed at about the time of the arrival of the
Kel Owi in Air and to have lived in the Fadé mountains, whence the
Ifadeyen were already moving south. Barth speaks of the Kel Fadé
as a collection of brigands and vagabonds, and implies that they
were mainly outlaws of mixed parentage. A part of them is certainly
Kel Owi and composed of those elements which went on living in the
northern mountains when the main body entered Air, while another
part is almost certainly Ifadeyen; as a whole they remained outside
the Kel Owi Confederation as People of the King. Until about thirty
years ago the Kel Fadé used to maintain that the Ifadeyen were their
serfs; after many disputes the matter was referred to the paramount
chief of the Kel Owi, who, after consulting various authorities,
decided that the Ifadeyen were noble and free. Their chief, Matali,
nevertheless preferred to evacuate the northern mountains completely
in favour of the Kel Fadé in order to avoid further friction, and
since then, a full generation ago, they have been gradually moving
south to the Azawagh, where they pasture in the winter, withdrawing
to Damergu in the dry season. Their original history might have been
easier to ascertain had it not been for the fact that despite its “I
form” their name is a placename, though it is possible that they
gave their name to Fadé and did not take it from their habitat. The
presence of the Ifadeyen in an area west and north of country which
we know the Kel Tadek held, and their association with the latter,
render it likely that we are, in fact, dealing with one and the same
stock, namely, the descendants of the Tamgak.
The Ifadeyen are renowned all over Air for their pure nomadism, and
above all for the fact that they are almost the last of the Tuareg
in the Southern Sahara to retain the current use of the T’ifingh
script with a knowledge of reading and writing it. This learning,
as is usual among Imajeghan tribes, reposes with the women-folk,
one of whose principal functions is to educate the children; it is
consistent with their supposed origin as one of the oldest and purest
of all the tribes in Air.
As a result of the foregoing argument the following suggestions for the
main tribes of the People of the King hitherto mentioned can be made:
_Tribes of the King_ (_Division I_).[414]
{ { Immikitan,
{ Immikitan {
{ { Imezegzil.
{
{ Igdalen Igdalen (Damergu:
{ Division IV).
{
Bello’s five tribes { Tamgak Represented by the Kel
generically called { Tadek and ? Ifadeyen.
_Kel Innek_, {
originally from the { Ijaranen Representing the Itesan,
Fezzan, where the { which includes:
_Imanen_ are also {
found. { (Itesan) Ijaranen,
{
{ _Kel Innek_,
{
{ _Kel Manen (Imanen)_.
{
{ Sendal Represented by the Damergu
{ and Elakkos Tuareg, who
{ include:
{
{ Izagaran,
{
{ Ifadalen.
? Imaqoaran.
?Western Tuareg Kel Ferwan.
Mixed Kel Fadé.
PLATE 48
[Illustration: EGHALGAWEN POOL]
[Illustration: TIZRAET POOL]
[Footnote 356: Letter to the author from G. W. Webster, Resident at
Sokoto, dated 20/6/1923.]
[Footnote 357: _Journal of the African Society_,
No. XXXVI. Vol. IX. July 1910. Further references in this chapter
will be omitted.]
[Footnote 358: Denham and Clapperton: _Account of the First Expedition_
(Murray), 1826. Vol. II. p. 38 seq.; App. XII.]
[Footnote 359: As reported by Bello, Denham and Clapperton,
_loc. cit._]
[Footnote 360: It is to these doubtless that Jean is referring when
he speaks of Egyptian influence in Air. Jean, _op. cit._, p. 86.]
[Footnote 361: Cf. Leo, _op. cit._, Vol. III. p. 828.]
[Footnote 362: Cf. also Asbytæ and Esbet with references in Bates,
_op. cit._, passim. The root is probably, if a generalisation is at
all permitted, applicable to the earliest negroid, or Grimaldi race
survivors, in North Africa.]
[Footnote 363: _Vide supra_, Chap. III.]
[Footnote 364: Cf. _supra_, Chap. II.]
[Footnote 365: Cf. _infra_.]
[Footnote 366: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 337.]
[Footnote 367: _Vide supra_, Chap. IV.]
[Footnote 368: But not necessarily the slaves.]
[Footnote 369: As was the case, for instance, in the days of the
Eighth and Ninth Dynasties of Egypt.]
[Footnote 370: “Akel” (plu. _ikelan_) primarily means “negro,”
and from that “a slave.”]
[Footnote 371: _Vide supra_, Chap. III.]
[Footnote 372: Denham and Clapperton, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 373: _I.e._ Aujila.]
[Footnote 374: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 460.]
[Footnote 375: Herodotus, IV. 172.]
[Footnote 376: In Chap. III.]
[Footnote 377: Idrisi: ed. Jaubert, Vol. I. p. 238.]
[Footnote 378: Cf. Chap. X.]
[Footnote 379: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 460.]
[Footnote 380: To adopt Clapperton’s spelling.]
[Footnote 381: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. IV. App. IX and Vol. II.]
[Footnote 382: _I.e._ Libyans, and not, at this period or in this
context, Kanuri.]
[Footnote 383: According to Maqrizi _apud_ Barth, Vol. II. pp. 635
and 265.]
[Footnote 384: El Bekri, _op. cit._, p. 456.]
[Footnote 385: A tribe of the Ahaggaren.]
[Footnote 386: In a communication to the author, Mr. H. R. Palmer,
Resident in Bornu, writes: “After hearing probably all the extant
tradition on the subject of the early rulers of Kanem, my belief
is that the so-called Dugawa were Tuareg of some kind, and that the
appellation Beri-beri applied originally to them and not to the Teda
element which later on preponderated and gave the resulting Kanemi
empire its language, _i.e._ Kanuri.”]
[Footnote 387: Denham and Clapperton, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 396.]
[Footnote 388: Though the Tebu are probably themselves a Kanuri stock,
a distinction may be drawn between them and the more negroid Kanuri
of Bornu and the Chad lands.]
[Footnote 389: See Abul Fida (French ed.), pp. 127-8 and 245; El
Idrisi (ed. Jaubert), p. 288. At the time of El Maqrizi the empire
of Kanem extended from Zella (Sella), south of the Great Syrtis,
to Gogo (Gao) on the Niger. El Maqrizi lived from 1365 to 1442:
Abul Fida died in 1331 writing his history, which was finished down
to the year A.D. 1329.]
[Footnote 390: Other than a wholesale emigration of Franks and
Byzantines to Europe.]
[Footnote 391: Cf. Chap. XI. _supra_.]
[Footnote 392: See Appendix II. and elsewhere in this chapter, also
Ibn Khaldun, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 3.]
[Footnote 393: In Appendix II.]
[Footnote 394: Consider the proportion of such names in
the Itesan group, and in the forty-six Kel Geres tribes,
respectively. Cf. Appendix II.]
[Footnote 395: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 86.]
[Footnote 396: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 113, and Barth, _op. cit._,
Vol. I. p. 356, also Appendix II. to this volume.]
[Footnote 397: Cf. Appendix II. Tribes having the same place names now
in Air are not related to these clans; their history is independently
established.]
[Footnote 398: Hornemann’s _Journal_, French ed. p. 102 seq.]
[Footnote 399: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 339.]
[Footnote 400: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 343. The Tinylcum
(T’inalkum) is an Azger Imghad tribe: cf. Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 401: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 90-1.]
[Footnote 402: Jean calls them Ahaggaren, but only because all the
northern Tuareg are in Air called Ahaggaren irrespective of whether
they come from the Azger, Ahaggar or Ahnet divisions. In addition
to these Imanen among the Azger and Itesan, there are also some on
the Niger who are probably the product of the same early migrations
which took the five tribes, including the Itesan, into Air.]
[Footnote 403: Compare the grouping in Appendix II. and the comments
in Chap X.]
[Footnote 404: See Appendix II. All these three tribes are People of
the King, though the Kel Zilalet are rather mixed, being sedentaries.]
[Footnote 405: This in Air means the west or north-west. The reference
may be to the Hawara, regarding whom this type of confusion has always
obtained: cf. Arab-Tuareg elements in Hawara group, _vide_ Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 406: Cf. Chap. XI. with reference to Duveyrier’s
information.]
[Footnote 407: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 92-3.]
[Footnote 408: Meaning “The White Goat.” Perhaps a survival
of Totemism.]
[Footnote 409: _Vide supra_, Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 410: See Appendix II. Division I. for details of People of
the King in Air, and Division IV. for the Damergu Tuareg.]
[Footnote 411: Agades Chronicle.]
[Footnote 412: _I.e._ chief of a tribal group.]
[Footnote 413: The Imarsutan Kel Tagei may also have merely
fortuitously acquired this name, which only means the People of the
Dûm Palm, and is therefore not very individual.]
[Footnote 414: In Appendix II.]
CHAPTER XIII
THE HISTORY OF AIR (_continued_)
PART II
THE VICISSITUDES OF THE TUAREG IN AIR
As a division of Tuareg the people of Air cannot be said to have
achieved great deeds in the history of the world as did the Sanhaja;
but as a part of the race they can justly claim to share in its
glory. That they brought culture and the amenities of civilisation
from the Mediterranean to Central Africa has been mentioned several
times. This progress in the past was responsible for the prosperity
of Nigeria to-day.
The People of Air are a small and insignificant group of human beings
considered by themselves alone. It may only be when that characteristic
of the Englishman displays itself and he seeks to extol the virtues,
charm and history of some obscure race, that such a people assumes,
in his eyes at least, an importance which to the rest of the world
may seem unjustified. There is probably no race so vile, so dull or
so unimpressive but that some Briton will arise as its defender, and
aver that if properly treated it is the salt of the earth. I am not
unconscious of the dangers of this frame of mind, but being acutely
aware of the mentality, I trust that this characteristic will not
have led me over-much to conceal the unpleasant or unfavourable.
A chapter which attempts to deal summarily with the history of the Air
Tuareg[415] set in its appropriate frame of Central African history
must inevitably seem in some measure a justification for the trouble
taken to piece together an obscure and complex collection of facts
relating to the country and its people. But the darkness surrounding
the arguments contained in the preceding account of the migrations of
the Air tribes has seemed so impenetrable that instead of closing the
book at this point, I have felt moved to give the reader some rather
less indigestible matter with which to conclude.
To obviate the accusation of attaching unwarrantable importance to
the People of Air, it may be well to state that the population of the
country is small. It was never very large. Perhaps 50,000 to 60,000
souls, including the Kel Geres and the other clans in the Southland,
would have been a conservative estimate in 1904. At that time Jean,
numbering only the People of Air and some of the Tuareg of Elakkos
and Damergu, arrived at a tentative figure of 25-27,000 inhabitants,
but he was certainly misled by his local informants into thinking
that the tribes were smaller than they really were. Nor did he take
all the septs of Air and the Southland into account. His estimate
included somewhat over 8000 People of the King, rather more than
8500 People of the Añastafidet, 4-5000 Irawellan, 2000 slaves and
2500-3000 mixed sedentaries in Agades and In Gall.[416] At the time
of the prosperity of Agades the population of these countries, not
including detached sedentaries and other groups lying far afield,
may have attained a maximum of 100,000.
It is impossible to estimate the total numbers of Tuareg in North
Africa with any accuracy. It would be interesting to make a serious
study of the numbers and general state even of those in French
territories.
The internecine struggles of the Air Tuareg are hardly interesting,
and have only been mentioned where relevant to the origin and movements
of the three immigrations. The wars between the different divisions,
like the Ahaggaren and the Azger, are not really more valuable in
a general survey. But even to summarise the principal events in Air
in the broad outlines is easier than to describe in a few words the
events which took place in the Central Sahara and the Central Sudan
during the 1000 years of history which have elapsed since first,
in my view at least, the Tuareg reached these mountains from their
more ancient northern home.
In early times the Tuareg were already in North Africa. They can be
distinguished probably as early as the Fifth, and certainly as early
as the Twelfth, Dynasty in Egypt. We can follow much of what they
were doing and trace where they were living in Roman times, but it
is less easy to discern the groups which composed the immigrant waves
of humanity into Air until about the time when the first of them came
to the south, and even then the picture is obscure.
When Air was first invaded by the Tuareg it was called Asben and was
part of the kingdom of Gober, a country of negroid people who lived
both in the mountains and to the south. But before the first invasion
took place there was already Libyan influence in the country, both
due to the northern trade which had gone on since the earliest times
conceivable, and also on account of the Sanhaja Tuareg, whose power
and glory had extended thus far eastwards.
The first invasion consisted of tribes who had formed part of a mass of
Tuareg of the Lemta division originally from, and now still settled in,
the Fezzan and Ghat areas. These people had descended the Kawar road
to Lake Chad. They had occupied Bornu, perhaps in the early ninth
century A.D., or even before. The Goberawa of Air or Asben seem
to have received a slight admixture of Libyan blood derived from
the northerners who travelled down the caravan road to the Sudan;
the people of Bornu were more purely negroid, and more so than their
northern neighbours and probably kinsfolk, the Tebu of Tibesti. The
Tuareg who were settled in Bornu were subjected to pressure from the
east and north, at the hands of the Kanuri from east of Lake Chad,
and of the Arabs. In due course, after being kings of Bornu for many
generations the Tuareg began to move westwards. Some of them reached
Air, leaving settlers, or having previously settled the regions of
Elakkos and Damergu. The date of this movement cannot be fixed with
any accuracy; it is probably not as early at the eighth century, but
is certainly anterior to the great Kanuri expansion of the thirteenth
century. An early date is suggested by Barth and accepted by Jean,
probably merely on account of the incidence of the first Arab invasion
of North Africa, though as a matter of fact the forces of Islam for
the sixty years which elapsed after the conquest of Egypt were not
really sufficiently numerous to occasion great ethnic movements. The
six centuries between A.D. 700 and A.D. 1300 are very obscure;
but if any reason must be assigned for the first invasion of Air by
the Bornu Tuareg, it was probably due to the Hillalian invasion of
Africa. For this and other reasons it may, therefore, be placed in
the eleventh century.
With the opening of the Muhammadan era we find a kingdom at Ghana in
Western Negroland with a ruling family of “white people” and the
Libyan dynasty of Za Alayamin (Za el Yemani) installed at Kukia.[417]
Gao, on the Niger, was already an important commercial centre at
the southern end of the trade road from Algeria. In A.D. 837 we
read of the death of Tilutan, a Tuareg of the Lemtuna,[418] who was
very powerful in the Sahara; he was succeeded by Ilettan, who died
in 900; the latter was followed by T’in Yerutan as lord of the
Western Sahara. He was established at Audaghost,[419] an outpost
of the Sanhaja, who appear at this time to have dominated Western
Negroland, including even the great city of Ghana,[420] and to have
carried on active intercourse between the Southland and Sijilmasa in
Morocco. This and the succeeding century are notable for the influence
of the Libyan tribes, in the first instance through the Libyan kings
of Audaghost, and later, at the beginning of the eleventh century,
by the desert confederation which Abu Abdallah, called Naresht,
the son of Tifaut, had brought into being. It was at this time that
the preacher and reformer, Abdallah ibn Yasin, arose and collected
in the Sahara his band of Holy Men called the “Merabtin,” who
were destined to play such a large rôle in the history of the world
under the name of Almoravid in Morocco and in Spain. Throughout the
latter part of the eleventh century and in the whole of the twelfth,
the really important element in all the Western Sahara and Sudan was
the Sanhaja division of the Tuareg of the west, and though nothing is
heard of the effects of their rule on Air, they must nevertheless have
been considerable. The Mesufa branch of the Sanhaja were, according to
Ibn Batutah, established in Gober, south of Air; the influence of the
Sanhaja in Air itself as well as in Damergu is also recorded. West of
Air was the city of Tademekka, nine days northwards from Gao. We also
hear of the Libyan towns of Tirekka, between the Tademekka and Walata,
and Tautek six days beyond Tirekka; all these appear to have sprung
up under the Sanhaja dominion as commercial centres in the same way
as the later city of Timbuctoo. Agades, at this time, had not yet
been founded.
At the beginning of the thirteenth or end of the twelfth century the
second invasion of Air took place. Until now the Tuareg immigrants
had lived side by side with the Goberawa despite the assistance
which the former must have derived from the Sanhaja influence in the
land. The new invaders were the Kel Geres, and their advent led to the
expulsion or absorption of the negroid people. Together with the former
inhabitants and under the leadership of the dominant Itesan tribe,
the Tuareg consolidated their independence in Air. This might never
have been achieved had it not been for the Sanhaja empire in the west;
there is no doubt that the success of the latter contributed directly
to the Bornu and Air movements.
By the time Ibn Batutah made his journey through Negroland in
A.D. 1353, Tekadda, some days south of the mountains, as well as Air
itself were wholly Tuareg.
Between Gao and Tekadda he had journeyed through the land of the
“Bardamah, a nomad Berber tribe,”[421] whose tents and dietary
are described in a manner which makes it clear that we are dealing
with typical nomadic Tuareg. The Bardamah women, incidentally, are
said to have been very beautiful and to have been endowed with that
particular fatness which so struck Barth. At Tekadda the Sultan was a
“Berber” (Libyan) called Izar.[422] There was also another prince
of the same race called “the Tekerkeri,” though further on Ibn
Batutah refers to him somewhat differently, saying, “We arrived in
Kahir, which is part of the domains of the Sultan Kerkeri.” From this
Barth deduces that the name of the ruler’s kingdom, which included
Air but apparently not Tekadda, was “Kerker,” but we have seen
that the chief minister of the Sultan of the Tuareg is called the
Kokoi Geregeri, and it is to this title that I think Ibn Batutah is
referring. Nevertheless, as a branch of the Aulimmiden in the west is
also called Takarkari, this may signify that the plateau was at this
period under the influence of those western Tuareg who have in history
often exerted a preponderating part in the history of Southern Air.
The expansion of Bornu under Dunama II in the thirteenth century
had, in the course of the conquest of the Fezzan, brought about the
occupation of Kawar and other points on the Murzuk-Chad road. This
could not but have had a serious effect on the economics of Air on
account of the Bilma salt trade, and there is a tradition of a war
with Bornu in about A.D. 1300. Raiding on a large scale across the
desert no doubt also took place. By the middle of the fourteenth
century, however, the greatness of Bornu had commenced to decline;
the reigning dynasty was suffering severely at the hands of the “Sô
people,” who were the original pagan inhabitants of the country. They
had succeeded in defeating and killing four successive Kanuri rulers,
and only twenty years after Ibn Batutah’s journey there were sown
in the reign of Daud the germs of that internal strife which led to
the complete expulsion of the Bornu dynasty from Kanem and continuous
warfare between these two countries.
In the west, on the other hand, the power of the empire of Melle
was still, if not quite at its height, at least unmenaced by any
serious rival. With the death of Ibn Ghania in A.D. 1233 the Sanhaja
Confederation had come to an end. There then arose on the Upper Niger
a leader called Mari Jatah I. After making himself master of two of
the greatest negroid peoples of the west, he was succeeded by Mansa
Musa, the founder of the empire of Melle. Mansa Musa, or, as he was
also called, Mansa Kunkur Musa, after adding to his dominions all the
famous countries of Western Sudan, turned eastwards and conquered
Gao, on the Middle Niger. He also subjected Timbuctoo, which had
been founded about the year A.D. 1000 by the Tuareg of the Idenan
and Immedideren tribes during the Sanhaja period, but its conquest
only served to increase its prosperity as a trading centre. It was
visited and inhabited by merchants from all over North Africa.
It is interesting, in considering the history of Melle, to observe
an attempt which was made at this early period, in a country so long
considered by Europeans as savage and barbarous, to solve a problem
of government on more rational lines than has ever been tried in
modern Europe. A dual system of administration was organised to deal
with races foreign to the authority of the central government. There
was a national and a territorial bureaucracy: the feature of the
government was that Melle was divided territorially into two provinces,
or vice-royalties, concurrently with which there were three separate
ethnic or national administrations. It almost goes without saying that
the military administration was kept strictly apart from the civil.
With the death of Mansa Musa and the succession of his son Mansa Magha,
in 1331, the fabric of the empire began to fall in pieces. Timbuctoo
had been successfully attacked in 1329 by the King of Mosi, who
expelled the Melle garrison. A little later the prince, Ali Killun,
son of Za Yasebi, of the original Songhai dynasty of Gao, escaped
with his brother from the court of Mansa Magha, where they had been
living as political prisoners in the guise of pages. They acquired some
measure of independence and, though again subjected by the succeeding
king of Melle, Mansa Suleiman, in about 1336 commenced to lay the
foundations of the later Songhai empire on the Middle Niger. Mansa
Suleiman recaptured Timbuctoo, which at this time, inhabited by
the Mesufa, had begun to take the place of the older Tuareg centre,
Tademekka, further east. The Mesufa, whom we last saw south of Air,
were doubtless being pushed back west again by the pressure of the
Aulimmiden and migrants from the East.
In 1373 the Vizier of Melle, another Mari Jatah, usurped the power
from the grandson of Mansa Magha and reconquered Tekadda, but it
was the last flicker of life in the old empire. The opening years of
the fourteenth century saw a succession of weak kings and powerful
governors who were not strong enough to resist the incursions of
the Tuareg from the desert. Timbuctoo was conquered in 1433 from the
Mesufa by some other Tuareg, probably from the west or north-west,
under Akil (Ag Malwal), who declined to abandon his nomadic life
and installed as governor Muhammad Nasr el Senhaji from Shingit in
Mauretania. The Tuareg at this time were everywhere victorious but
destructive. They never succeeded in consolidating their power into
an empire. In this era of their ascendancy Agades was founded in
about the year 1460, just as Sunni Ali, the son of Sunni Muhammad
Dau, ascended the throne of Gao and changed the whole political map
of North Africa by prostrating the small surviving kingdom of Melle
and finally setting up in its place the Songhai empire.
The incessant bickering and local feuds had driven the Tuareg of
Air to come to some arrangement by which, nominally at least, they
could consolidate themselves against the powers of the Sudan. They had
agreed to have a Sultan, and he was installed, and not long afterwards
the Amenokalate was set up in Agades, at a most eventful period in
Central African history. The empire of Songhai on the Niger seemed
invincible. By 1468 Timbuctoo had been overwhelmed and the governor
driven out; Akil, the Tuareg, was forced to flee westwards. The city
was plundered and the occupation of Western Negroland commenced. In
the meanwhile the Portuguese had planted the factory of Elmina on
the Guinea coast, and Alfonso V was succeeded by João II, who sent
an embassy to Sunni Ali.
Sunni Ali met his death by drowning in 1492, and was followed by his
son Abu Bakr Dau, and at a short interval by Muhammad ben Abu Bakr,
called Muhammad Askia, the greatest of all the kings of the Sudan,
and one of the greatest monarchs in the world of the fifteenth
century. He appears to have ruled with great wisdom, depending
on careful administration rather than on force to maintain his
prestige. In addition to Melle itself and Jenne, which had already
fallen, Ghana and Mosi in the far west were added to Songhai. After a
pilgrimage of great pomp across Africa and through Egypt, Haj Muhammad
Askia turned his attentions to the east. Katsina was occupied in
1513 as well as the whole of Gober and the rest of Hausaland. It was
inevitable, to stop the Tuareg raiding down in the settled country,
that Air should be added to his dominion as well.
In 1515 Askia marched against Al Adalet, or Adil, one of the twin
co-Sultans of Agades, and drove out the Tuareg tribes living in the
town,[423] replacing them with his own Songhai people, a colonisation
from which the city has not recovered to this day. He remained in
occupation a year, and was called the “Cursed.” The conquest
is unfortunately not mentioned by Leo,[424] who only refers to
the expedition against Kano and Katsina; and this is all the more
unpardonable, for he had accompanied his uncle on an official visit to
Askia himself. Leo clearly regards Agades at the time he was writing
as a negro settlement. According to traditions current in the city,
numbers of Tuareg were massacred by Askia’s men, but however many
Songhai may have been planted there, and however many Tuareg expelled,
there is no doubt that considerable numbers remained behind to mix
with the southerners and form the present Emagadesi people. The
town must have been in a very flourishing state at that time:
“the greatest part of the citizens are forren merchants” who
paid “. . . large custom to the king . . . on their merchandise
out of other places.” But apart from the yearly tribute of 150,000
ducats due to the King of Gao, the conquest of Air does not seem to
have affected the independence of the Tuareg, as no mention is made
of a Songhai governor, while the King of Agades, already within a
few years of the time of Leo’s journey, is reported to have kept
a military force of his own.
The contemporaries of Askia in Kanem and Bornu were Ali, the son
of another Dunama, and later, Ali’s son, Idris, both kings of
such renown that their country appears on European maps as early as
1489. Not to be outdone by the Songhai kings, whose emissaries had
reached Portugal, Idris sent an embassy to Tripoli in 1512. Under the
son of Idris, Muhammad, who ruled from 1526 to 1545, the kingdom of
Bornu reached the summit of its greatness. This remarkable century
in Central Africa deserves examination in greater detail, but lack
of space makes it impossible.
Agades was perhaps at the height of its prosperity before and
immediately after the conquest of Muhammad Askia. The scale of life
in which Air shared is shown by the description of Muhammad Askia’s
pilgrimage in 1495. He was accompanied by 1000 men on foot and 500
on horseback, and in the course of which he spent 300,100 mithkal
of gold. The prosperity of Agades continued until the commencement
of the nineteenth century, but in a form far different from what
it must have been in the sixteenth century, when it served as an
advanced trading-post or entrepôt for Gao, at that time the centre
of the gold trade of the Sudan and probably the most flourishing
commercial city in Central Africa. The gradual desertion of Agades,
almost complete by 1790, when the bulk of the population migrated to
Katsina, Tasawa, Maradi and Kano, commenced in 1591, at which date
Gao, the parent city from the commercial point of view, had fallen
to be a province of the Moroccan empire.
The heritage of Muhammad Askia was beyond the power of his successors
to maintain. Intestine wars and intrigues broke down the authority of
the central government. Revolts took place in Melle, and the covetous
eyes of Mulai Ahmed, the Sultan of Morocco, in 1549, were turned
towards Negroland. He demanded the cession of the Tegaza salt-mines,
and though this insult was avenged by an army of 2000 Tuareg invading
Morocco in 1586, Tegaza was captured by the Moors soon afterwards and
the deposits of Taodenit, north of Timbuctoo, were opened instead. The
final blow fell three years later, when Gao was entered by Basha
Jodar, the eunuch-general of Mulai Hamed, with a Moroccan army. The
final struggles of Ishak Askia in 1591 were unavailing. Henceforth
Moroccan governors reigned over the Western Sudan with garrisons in
Jenne, Timbuctoo, Gao and elsewhere. In 1603 Mulai Hamed el Mansur
of Morocco died, with the whole of Western Africa under his rule.
Power in the west thus passed once more from the negroid to the
northern people, but traditions of empire persisted in the centre. In
1571 there came to the throne of Bornu, Idris Ansami, known more
usually from the place of his burial as Idris Alawoma. His mother seems
from her name—’Aisha-Kel Eghrarmar—to have been a Tuareg; she
had the reputation of great beauty. After consolidating his empire to
the east, Idris conquered Hausaland as far west as and including Kano,
where he must have come into contact with the Songhai empire, just then
in process of passing under the rule of Morocco. So Idris Alawoma[425]
turned his attention to the north-west, and undertook three expeditions
against the Tuareg, the last one of which was against Air itself,
the first two presumably being against more southern tribes. The
chronicle of Idris’ expeditions is not clear enough to identify
the exact areas of his operations. The first one was described as a
raid, and the second, an expedition against a tribe. The operations
against Air started from Atrebisa and passed Ghamarama, doubtfully
identified with Gamram in Northern Damergu, after which a host of
Tuareg was overtaken in the open desert between the town, Tadsa,
and Air, and many were slaughtered. Idris returned to Munio by way
of Zibduwa and Susubaki. At an earlier date than these expeditions
his vizier had fought a battle with the Tuareg, who had come with a
numerous host of Tildhin (?)[426] and others to attack him at Aghalwen,
which is Eghalgawen in Southern Air, on the road to the Southland.
Having broken the power of the Air Tuareg, Idris Alawoma ordered
the Kel Yiti, or Kel Wati, who were living in his dominions, to
raid north and north-west in order to keep the tribes in a properly
chastened frame of mind, until they were obliged to sue for peace and
acknowledge their allegiance to the kingdom of Bornu. Barth thinks the
Kel Wati are to be identified with the Kel Eti, or Jokto, a mixed Tebu
and Tuareg people in the parts near Lake Chad. This is probably the
period of raids in South-eastern Air, previously referred to, which
obliged the Itesan to abandon their eastern settlements and move west
into the heart of the mountains. The supposition is borne out by the
record of Idris’ expedition against the Tebu of Dirki and Agram,
or Fashi, which was followed by a long stay at Bilma and the opening
up of relations with the north. All these events fall into the first
twelve years of Idris Alawoma’s reign: of the last twenty-one we
know little.
In 1601 at Agades, Muhammad ben Mubarak ibn el Guddala, or Ghodala,
deposed the Amenokal Yussif ben el Haj Ahmed ibn el Haj Abeshan,
and reigned in his stead for four months. Yussif recaptured the
power and ben Mubarak fled to Katsina and Kano, but returning to Air
entered Agades with a body of men from Bornu. He went on to Assode,
and then retired within a short time to Gamram in Damergu. Yussif
in the meanwhile had collected men in the Southland of Kebbi and
returned to the charge. Ben Mubarak again fled to Bornu, but was
later captured, and died in prison. This period of hostility between
Air and Bornu led Idris Alawoma’s grandson Ali ben el Haj Omar ben
Idris to wage several wars against the Sultan of Agades, though he
was once himself besieged in his own capital by the Tuareg and their
allies. To the wars in this reign, lasting from 1645 to 1684 or 1685,
belong the events which Jean has recorded incorrectly as occurring
in 1300,[427] in the reign of the eighth Sultan before Lamini.[428]
The latter is, of course, the famous Muhammad el Amin el Kanemi of
Denham and Clapperton’s expedition, who was, in fact, the eighth
Sultan before Ali ben Idris.
Tradition in Air and the Agades Chronicle at this point agree tolerably
well with the Bornu Chronicle. The Bornu king laid siege to Agades,
where Muhammad Mubaraki (1653-87) was reigning, and defeated the
Tuareg, who, after a number of engagements in the Telwa valley,
retired to the fastness of Bagezan. Their resources enabled them
to hold out for three years against the Bornuwi forces, who were
starving in the lowlands. The war of 1685 is called in the Agades
Chronicle the War of Famine. The people of Bornu eventually withdrew
eastwards over the desert, hotly pursued by the Tuareg all the way to
the well of Ashegur, north of Fashi, which, as will be remembered, had
previously been occupied by Idris Alawoma. Deserted by their Sultan,
the Bornuwi were surprised, and left 300-400 prisoners in the hands
of the Tuareg, who, from now on to the present day, have exercised a
paramount influence over these oases, where they developed the salt
trade with the Sudan[429] through Air. The gold trade of Songhai,
at one time so important in Agades that it had its own standard
weight for the metal, which long after its disappearance continued
to regulate the circulating medium of exchange, was replaced by the
salt traffic as an asset of much value.[430]
The campaigns of Idris Alawoma and of Ali repeated the effects of the
earlier Kanuri pressure on the west. Evidence of the tendency of the
southern Tuareg to move west has been noticed on several occasions. The
effect of the Bornu campaigns was to exert pressure on the Aulimmiden,
which culminated in their attacks on the Tademekkat people and
eventually in the Kel Owi immigration into Air. The sequence of events
in Air has already been related; the successes of the Aulimmiden
contributed directly and indirectly to the decline of Agades as a
commercial centre. By 1770 they had captured Gao. Under Kawa, in 1780,
they established a dominion over the north bank of the Niger at Ausa;
these were doubtless some factors which influenced the Kel Geres in
their decision to abandon Air as a result of the arrival of the Kel
Owi. The westward move of the Aulimmiden before the Kanuri of Bornu,
who were suffering from the reaction which follows greatness, had left
an area correspondingly free for the Kel Geres to occupy. The middle
of the century had been taken up in desultory fighting between Air and
the south. The next notable event had been in 1761—an attack on Kano
by the Kel Owi and the defeat of the Kel Geres by the Aulimmiden in the
same year. The inroads of the Fulani into Hausaland had commenced, but
as yet Othman dan Fodio had not established himself in Sokoto, or the
ruling families of Fulani in all the large towns of the Central Sudan.
PLATE 49
[Illustration: EGHALGAWEN AND THE LAST HILLS OF AIR]
The protection of the salt trade led to continual struggles between Air
and Bornu. An expedition by the Sultan of Agades, in about 1760,[431]
to Kuka on Lake Chad is probably part of the war of Bilma in 1759
referred to in the Agades Chronicle as having been made by Muhammad
Guma, the son of Mubarak. The Sultan was accompanied by the Kel Ferwan,
and returned with a war indemnity of 2000 head of cattle and a promise
that trade would not be subjected to interference.
The occupation of part of Damergu by the Kel Owi Tuareg is of course
recent, though it had been seized by the earlier immigrants at the
same time as Air, with this difference, that the negroid inhabitants
were never driven out or absorbed as in the mountains. The Kel Owi
interference and immigration took the form of successful raiding or
warfare to keep open the caravan road into the south. The fate of
Damergu in all this long period of history was to be squeezed between
the Tuareg on two sides and the Sudan empires on the other two.[432]
The modern period commences with the passage through Air of the
Foureau-Lamy Mission. Beyond what has already been said, it is
impossible to discuss this phase, as it is still too recent, but the
French version is contained in Lieut. Jean’s admirable review of
French colonial policy in the _Territoires du Niger_.
[Footnote 415: Some notes on the early history and the origins of the
Tuareg race will be found in a paper by the author in the Journal of
the R.G.S. for Jan. 1926.]
[Footnote 416: Jean: _op. cit._, Chap. XIII; and Chudeau: _Le Sahara
Soudanais_, p. 72.]
[Footnote 417: Fifteen days east of Ghana in the Upper Niger
country. Not to be confused with Kuka on Lake Chad, or with Gao (Gago)
on the Middle Niger. Kukia is called Kugha in el Bekri and Cochia by
Ca’ da Mosto (Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. IV., pp. 583-4).]
[Footnote 418: As we have seen, a section of the Sanhaja, and nothing
to do with the Lemta.]
[Footnote 419: Audaghost was for long confused by European geographers
with Agades, or, as soon as the first news of Air was received,
with Auderas. Audaghost was in Mauretania between Tegaza and Walata.]
[Footnote 420: South-west of Walata and west of Timbuctoo: for all
these places see Map I in Vol. I. of the Hakluyt Soc., edition of
Leo Africanus.]
[Footnote 421: Ibn Batutah, French ed., IV. p. 437.]
[Footnote 422: Variant, Iraz, French ed., IV. pp. 442, 445.]
[Footnote 423: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. IV. p. 603; Vol. I. p. 461.]
[Footnote 424: Leo, _op. cit._, Vol. III. pp. 829 seq. and 846.]
[Footnote 425: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 653.]
[Footnote 426: The word may be a corruption of Kindin, the Kanuri
name for the Tuareg.]
[Footnote 427: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 115.]
[Footnote 428: Who did not die 400 years, but barely 100 years, ago,
in 1835.]
[Footnote 429: Jean is, of course, quite unjustified in dragging in
the Kel Owi. His information, owing to the fact that the Kel Owi had
always favoured the French expansion both during the Foureau-Lamy
expedition and when Jean occupied Air, seems to be derived largely
from this source, which is as prejudiced as the accounts given by
all parvenus in the world when discussing history in which they have
not been, but would have liked to have been, involved. A parallel
unjustified assumption of historical responsibility is found in the
Maket n’Ikelan story.]
[Footnote 430: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 467.]
[Footnote 431: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 121.]
[Footnote 432: I cannot agree with Jean that the first occupation of
Damergu, Elakkos and Damagarim by the earlier Tuareg is at all recent
(_op. cit._, pp. 121-2). Some of the events he records are recent,
but not the earlier movements of the tribes.]
CHAPTER XIV
VALEDICTORY
Here my account of the Air Tuareg must close. No one can be better
aware than myself of the shortcomings and discrepancies of my
story. The task would have been easier had a general survey of an
unprejudiced character of the history and ethnology of North Africa
existed. Where my account has wandered from the field of the Tuareg
of Air, it has had to build both a general and a particular foundation
for itself, and I am conscious that the result is not as satisfactory
as it should be. The subjects of script and of language have scarcely
been touched upon at all; they are too large and specialised matters
for this volume. If ever there should come a period of leisure for me,
they might be made the subject of a separate study.
I cannot conceal the pleasure that writing this account has afforded
me in the course of my researches, by making the scenes which I
enjoyed in Air live again before my eyes. Had the time available both
in Africa and since my return been commensurate with my interest in
the subject, the result would have been better. Intended originally
as a book of travel, it has in places become complicated, obscure
and overladen with some of the fruits of inquiry in a vast field,
namely, the origin and nature of all the peoples of North Africa. I
shall feel amply rewarded if another student will allow his curiosity
to be sufficiently stimulated to continue the work.
As the writer of a book of travel I must complete the tale of the
journey. I came to an end of my wanderings where I had begun them,
in Northern Nigeria. My two friends and I had started from there
on 27th April, 1922; I returned there alone on the 29th December of
the same year. After my tour in Northern Air it became apparent that
the time at my disposal must prove too short to achieve the object
of crossing the Sahara to the Mediterranean with my companions. At
Iferuan I regretfully decided to return home by way of Nigeria. At the
commencement of December I turned south and marched to Agellal, a large
village of stone houses under a singularly beautiful mountain. From
there I went to Tefis to see the mosque, and camped at Anu Wisheran,
which means “The Old Well.” There were small deserted settlements
at both places. After another camp at Garet I descended into the basin
of Central Air, over a barren slope intersected by numerous north and
south rivulets between bare stony ridges. I halted in the Anu Maqaran
valley near the boulder on which I discovered the chariot drawing. The
site of my camp had been purely adventitious, but that obscure rock may
well prove to be the most important observation of my whole journey. On
the following day, Bila was reached at the spur of the Azamkoran
mountains, and then we passed by the sugar-loaf hill of Sampfotchi
into the Arwa Mellen and familiar Assada valleys. After a long march
from the Tamenzaret wells I came again to Auderas, where I rejoined
my companions, but only for a day or two, to sort our belongings and
part company, I to return south, they to go on north and after many
tedious delays to reach Algiers. The pleasant people of Auderas came
to say good-bye. My companions walked a mile or so along my road,
over the valley and hill, till we reached the plain sloping down to
Taruaji. There they turned back. With me were only Sidi my guide,
Amadu my servant, and one camel boy. Sidi had not been to Nigeria for
many years and I was anxious for him to see modern Kano. We travelled
fast, stopping only one day on the way in order to try to save a
camel which had caught pneumonia during the bitterly cold nights
in Azawagh. We went by Inwatza, the pool of Tizraet near Turayet,
Akaraq, Eghalgawen, Milen, Hannekar and Tanut, and then straight into
Nigeria without going to Zinder. On 29th December, the thirty-third
day after leaving Iferuan, I reached Kano again after a journey of
some 550 miles in twenty-nine marches. Even the Tuareg admitted that
it was fast travelling. The camels arrived very fit indeed and were
sold. A fortnight later I was embarking at Lagos for England.
PLATE 50
[Illustration: MT. BILA AT SUNSET]
My guide, Sidi, was astonished at the prosperity and development of
Kano. I gave him some small presents and a few things to take back
to Ahodu of Auderas. He left Kano before I did, as he had found a
caravan returning north and did not want to miss the opportunity of
travelling with friends. He came to see me in the morning of the day
he was due to leave, and we walked round the European quarter of Kano
together. I happened to be with a French officer at the time. We met
Sidi waiting where I had told him to be, under a certain tree in front
of a well-known merchant’s store in the European town of Kano. Sidi
got up and greeted me. His hand and mine brushed over one another’s,
the fingers being withdrawn with a closing snap. I gave him the usual
greeting: “Ma’-tt-uli,” and he replied very solemnly, “El
Kheir ’Ras”; which mean, “How do you fare?” and “Naught but
good.” When Tuareg meet these hand-clasps and greetings continue to
punctuate their conversation for a long time. They are varied with the
question, “Iselan?” meaning, “What news?” to which the right
answer is, “Kalá, kalá,” “No, no!” since for them any news
must be bad news. Then, as I have said, Sidi and I and the Frenchman
walked together; the latter looked wonderingly at the demeanour
of my friend, whom he did not know. At last it was time for Sidi
to join the camels of his caravan. Their number had been increased
by one camel which I had given to him. He turned to say good-bye,
but did not speak at all. He took my hand and held it with both of
his, and then bowed his forehead till his veil touched my fingers. I
gave him the thanks of the Lord in Arabic, and he murmured something
incomprehensible. My French friend looked on curiously. And then Sidi
without glancing at him turned quickly and walked away like a Prince
of the Earth striding over the land. He walked erect and swiftly till
I lost him to sight. He never turned his head again.
He was in many ways rather a ruffian, but, like his folk, patient,
long-suffering and unforgiving. He was a true specimen of the Tuareg
race.
These people never become angry or speak loud: I have rarely seen them
excited, but they have an indomitable spirit and for that reason will
perhaps survive. They say, “Kiss the hand you cannot cut off,” and
again, “The path, though it be winding, and the King, though he be
old.” So they may have patience after all to wait for the fulfilment
of their fate and not throw themselves fruitlessly again on rifles or
machine-guns. I remember sitting at Gamram one evening on the ruins of
the walls of the town where once their rulers lived as wardens of the
marches of the desert on that great Saharan road. In my diary I wrote:
“Last night I sat on the old walls looking west towards the yellow
sunset under a blue-black cloud of rain hanging low in the sky. A man
had lit a fire which smoked very much, and the west wind was carrying
the smoke away over the wall in a horizontal streak between me and
the sunset. They have gone, the Tuareg, from history like that streak
of smoke. Even the Almoravids are only a name. I wonder why. They
have fought with a losing hand so long. They were driven down from
the north by the Arabs and by Europe, and harried by everyone. They
have also harried others well. Finally, the French have come and have
occupied their country. For long it was thought that the Tuareg would
be untamable. They fought well and hard. The fire of old remained. In
Air it broke again into flame in 1917 with Kaossen’s revolt, but in
the end the force of European arms prevailed. The French killed many
and punished the people of Air very hardly, too hardly as some of
their own officers think, in dealing with a people which is already
so small and tending to die out. But though calm and peaceful to-day
like the smoke carried away from the fire by the walls of Gamram,
the point of flame remains. I could see the heart of the fire from
which the smoke was coming. I wonder if the flame will burst forth
again. You have fought well, you people. You would not bow your necks,
so they have been broken, but perhaps your day may come again. It
grew dark on the walls of Gamram and the sunset of rain faded away;
the fire continued to burn, but my thoughts turned elsewhere, to
my journey, to my riding camel (wondering whether it would survive:
I gave it some millet that night as extra fodder), to England, and to
what I should have to eat there. I had an omelette which I made myself,
and some fresh milk for supper that evening. Thence my thoughts turned
to other things as well. . . .”
And here it is better that I close. It is on the knees of the gods how
they achieve their destiny. I hope that the gods will be good to them.
They were my very good friends, and I was very pleased to live with
them, for they were very agreeable. Perhaps we shall meet again and
travel together once more. And so their proverb, which has seemed to
me very true, will be fulfilled for them and for me. They say that:
“LIVING PEOPLE OFTEN MEET.”
APPENDIX I
A LIST OF THE ASTRONOMICALLY DETERMINED POINTS IN AIR
The positions given in the following table have been collected from
the record of the proceedings of the Foureau-Lamy Mission, from the
list given on the second sheet of the “Carte de l’Air” prepared
by the Mission Cortier and others on a scale of 1/500,000, and from
the observations by the author. Two positions given in Lieut. Jean’s
_Les Touareg du Sud-Est_ are also included. The French longitudes have
been converted into longitudes east of Greenwich by the addition 2°
20′ 14″.
The author’s observations were carried out with a three-inch
transit theodolite by Cary and Porter, and were in all cases stellar
sights. The latitudes were in all cases determined from pairs of
north and south circum-meridian stars, or from altitudes of Polaris
and one south star. The longitudes were determined by calculations
based on local mean time derived from pairs of east and west stars,
and chronometric differences from points which had previously been
determined by French travellers. Where the author’s longitudes for
points previously determined by French observers are also given,
they are the result of chronometric differences from other points
previously or successively visited. The author, however, has not used
his own longitudes for determining intermediate points when French
observations were available, and his co-ordinates in these instances
are only reproduced for purposes of comparison.
The data for the Foureau-Lamy observations are described in the
record of the proceedings of the expedition. The source of the
positions given on the Cortier map is not stated. The data for
Colonel Tilho’s positions are in the record of the delimitation of
the northern boundary of Nigeria. The author’s computations are in
the records of the Royal Geographical Society in London, where are
also the original route reports and prismatic compass traverses made
throughout the journey.
Where possible the author’s chronometric differences were checked by
opening and closing a series of observations on points previously fixed
by French observers. In one unfortunate case, however, the author’s
watches stopped as a result of his camels going astray and the series
was consequently broken. His watches again stopped at Auderas, where,
however, he stayed a sufficient length of time to re-rate them. At
this place a number of local mean time observations were taken over
a long period.
The author’s longitude observations were carried out as follows:
Series A opened at Fanisau camp near Kano from a position supplied by
the Survey school—closed at Tessawa— Dan Kaba (unreliable),
intermediate position.
Series B opened at Tessawa—_not_ closed: Urufan-Gangara-Tanut,
intermediate positions.
Series C _not_ opened—closed at T’in Wana: Termit—Teskar-Guliski,
intermediate positions.
Series D opened at T’in Wana—closed at Auderas.
Series E opened at Auderas—watches rated—closed at Auderas.
Series F opened at Auderas—closed at Auderas: Abarakan-Teginjir-Telia-
Teloas, intermediate positions.
Series G opened at Auderas—closed at Auderas: Aggata-Assode-Afis-
Iferuan, intermediate positions.
The author’s meteorological record, which was kept for nine months,
has not been reproduced. It consists of daily maximum and minimum,
actual (twice daily), and wet and dry bulb temperatures; aneroid
readings; wind and rainfall, and sunset and sunrise notes. It is at
any student’s disposal to consult.
The following abbreviations are used in the ensuing table:
F—Foureau; Ch—Chambrun (see Record of Foureau-Lamy expedition);
R—Rodd; T—Tilho; C—Cortier’s Map of Air; J—Jean’s _Touareg
du Sud-Est_.
------------------+--------------+----------+-----------+----------
| |Latitude, | Longitude |
Place. | Area. | north. | (east of |Authority.
| | |Greenwich).|
------------------+--------------+----------+-----------+----------
| | ° ′ ″ | ° ′ ″ |
| | | |
DAN KABA[433] |Nigeria | 13-12-40 | 7-44-30 | R
| | | |
TESSAWA |Tessawa |13-45-20·5| 7-59-12·6| T
| | | |
| | 13-45-50 | 7-59-15 | R
| | | |
URUFAN |Tessawa | 14-04-50 | 8-06-25 | R
| | | |
GANGARA |Damergu | 14-36-30 | 8-27-32 | F
| | | |
| | 14-36-42 | — | Ch
| | | |
| | 14-36-50 | 8-25-40 | R
| | | |
TANUT[434] |Damergu | 14-58-20 | 8-47-50 | R
| | | |
GULISKI |Damergu | 15-00-50 | 9-06-20 | R
| | | |
TESHKAR |Elakkos | 15-07-40 | 10-35-10 | R
| | | |
TERMIT |Eastern Desert| 16-04-10 | 11-04-50 | R
| | | |
ABELLAMA |Tegama-Azawagh| 16-16-32 | 7-47-19 | C
| | | |
MARANDET |Tegama-Azawagh| 16-22-20 | 7-24-14 | C
| | | |
AIN IRHAYEN |Tegama-Azawagh| 16-26-40 | 7-55-22 | C
| | | |
TABZAGUR |Tegama-Azawagh| 16-36-57 | 7-08-17 | C
| | | |
TIN WANA |S. Air | 16-42-32 | 8-25-19 | C
(T’in-Nouana) | | | |
| | | |
| | 16-42-55 | 8-25-15 | R
| | | |
IN GALL |S.W. Air | 16-47-08 | 6-54-15 | C
| | | |
TEBEHIC | S. Air | 16-47-32 | 8-21-14 | C
| | | |
EGHALGAWEN | S. Air | 16-48-21 | 8-31-19 | C
| | | |
AGADES (Post) | S. Air | 16-59-19 | 7-57-15 | C
| | | |
„ (T’in | S. Air | 16-59-02 | (8-24-18) | J
Shaman[435]) | | | |
| | | |
TIN DAWIN | S. Air | 17-00-07 | 8-26-19 | C
| | | |
TIN TABORAQ | S. Air | 17-01-50 | 8-08-19 | C
| | | |
TAGIDDA N’ADRAR | W. Air | 17-04-13 | 7-22-21 | C
| | | |
ANU ARERAN | W. Air | 17-15-27 | 7-43-20 | C
| | | |
FAGOSHIA | W. Air | 17-16-01 | 6-57-17 | C
| | | |
TAFADEK | S. Air | 17-23-32 | 7-55-19 | C
| | | |
TAGIDDA N’T’ISEMT | W. Air | 17-25-38 | 6-34-33 | C
| | | |
TINIEN | S. Air | 17-26-54 | 8-09-02 | F
| | | |
| | 17-26-24 | — | Ch
| | | |
IDIKEL | W. Air | 17-29-42 | 7-37-23 | C
| | | |
TELOAS-TABELLO | E. Air | 17-34-40 | 8-49-30 | R
| | | |
EGERUEN |S.W. Air | 17-35-15 | 7-54-22 | C
| | | |
AUDERAS[436] | C. Air | 17-37-50 | 8-19-00 | R
| | | |
| | 17-38-00 | 8-18-14 | F
| | | |
| | 17-37-48 | 8-19-30 | (C)
| | | |
TELIA | E. Air | 17-47-30 | 8-49-20 | R
| | | |
IN KAKKAN | W. Air | 17-49-22 | 7-48-23 | C
| | | |
IN ABBAGARIT |Western Desert| 17-53-47 | 5-59-15 | C
| | | |
TAMET TEDDERET |Western Desert| 17-54-04 | 6-36-18 | C
| | | |
ANU N’AGERUF | W. Air | 17-54-46 | 7-24-22 | C
| | | |
AURERAN | C. Air | 17-56-54 | 8-23-17 | F
| | | |
| | 17-56-42 | — | Ch
| | | |
TEGINJIR | C. Air | 17-59-20 | — | R
| | | |
ABARAKAN | C. Air | 18-03-30 | 8-39-20 | R
| | | |
AGGATA | C. Air | 18-09-00 | 8-26-40 | R
| | | |
UFA ATIKIN | W. Air | 18-09-26 | 7-12-21 | C
| | | |
IN ALLARAM |Western Desert| 18-16-12 | 6-15-19 | C
| | | |
TAMADALT TAN | W. Air | 18-16-23 | 7-49-18 | C
ATARAM | | | |
| | | |
AFASTO | W. Air | 18-17-08 | 7-17-22 | C
| | | |
ZILALET | W. Air | 18-23-19 | 7-51-21 | C
| | | |
ASSODE | C. Air | 18-27-00 | 8-26-50 | R
| | | |
SIDAWET | C. Air | 18-30-54 | 8-02-20 | C
| | | |
AFIS | N. Air | 18-37-30 | 8-35-40 | R
| | | |
AGELLAL | N. Air | 18-43-02 | 8-07-17 | C
| | | |
| | 18-43-00 | 8-10-02 | F
| | | |
| | 18-43-00 | 8-07-14 | Ch
| | | |
FAODET | N. Air | 18-47-20 | 8-34-50 | R
| | | |
IFERUAN[437] | N. Air | 19-04-10 | 8-22-45 | R
| | | |
| | 19-04-28 | 8-22-22 | C
| | | |
| | 19-04-18 | 8-24-32 | F
| | | |
| | 19-04-12 | 8-21-20 | Ch
| | | |
| | 19-04-03 | 8-24-24 | J
| | | |
ZURIKA | N. Air | 19-14-35 | 7-50-15 | C
| | | |
URAREN |Western Desert| 19-31-44 | 7-08-17 | C
| | | |
IN GEZZAM |Western Desert| 19-33-10 | 5-44-20 | C
------------------+--------------+----------+-----------+----------
HEIGHTS ABOVE SEA LEVEL.[438]
IFERUAN 681 metres (F)
673 „ (C)
URAREN 485 „ (C)
SIDAWET 554 „ (C)
AGELLAL 613 „ (C)
604 „ (F)
AUDERAS 798 „ (F)
AGADES (T’in Shaman) 500 „ (F)
IN GEZZAM 374 „ (C)
ZILALET 557 „ (C)
NOTE.—The exact positions of the observations in the same localities
are not identical in the case of all observers, which accounts for
some of the apparent discrepancies.
[Footnote 433: The Dankaba observation is of somewhat doubtful
accuracy.]
[Footnote 434: The Tanut longitude depends on only one stellar
observation for L.M.T.]
[Footnote 435: Jean’s longitude for T’in Shaman, which is the
site of the French post and therefore also of the rest-house where the
Cortier observation was taken, differs so materially from the latter
that it cannot be accepted. It is described (like the position he
gives for Iferuan) as “d’après F. Foureau,” but I can find no
record in the account of the proceedings of the Foureau-Lamy Mission
to justify this statement.]
[Footnote 436: My camp at Auderas was situated about 400 yards east
of the camp site which the Foureau-Lamy Mission occupied and where,
therefore, Foureau’s observation was probably made. This difference
accounts for the discrepancy in our longitudes. The Cortier map shows
an astronomically fixed point at Auderas which, when measured on
the copy in my possession, gives these co-ordinates, but they are
not recorded in the table on the second sheet of the map, as are
the other positions in Air. Foureau’s latitude is based upon five
observations, one of which is appreciably smaller than the other four;
if this result is omitted from the average, the latitude becomes even
higher than it is given in the table.]
[Footnote 437: Foureau’s latitude for Iferuan is based upon five
observations, one of which is appreciably higher than the other four;
if this result is omitted the average practically coincides with my
observation, which was taken on the identical spot.]
[Footnote 438: The altitudes obtained by me from boiling-point
observations and aneroid readings are not given; they are numerous
but have not been fully worked out.]
APPENDIX II
THE TRIBAL ORGANISATION OF THE TUAREG OF AIR
DIVISION I. The People of the King.
DIVISION II. The Itesan and Kel Geres.
DIVISION III. The Kel Owi.
DIVISION IV. The Tuareg of Damergu.
DIVISION V. Unidentified tribes, generic names, etc.
The work of Barth and Jean has been incorporated in these tables;
further reference to these authors is therefore omitted. Alternative
name forms from these and other sources are given in brackets below
the spelling which has been adopted to conform as far as possible with
the rules of the Royal Geographical Society’s Committee on names.
(N) and (S) respectively signify “noble” and “servile” tribes.
In many cases no territorial identification is given, as tribes have
changed their areas very greatly since 1917-18, nor have they settled
down permanently to occupy other ranges since then. When Northern
Air was cleared by the French patrols, the tribes were moved south,
and for the most part they are therefore now in the neighbourhood
of Agades, or in the Azawagh or even further south. But they are
arranged in a disorderly fashion and are always moving from place to
place; any attempt to give their present areas would be fruitless,
since they will probably prove to be only temporary. The process
of returning north had already commenced in 1922 and has presumably
continued since then. Such locations as are given in the tables refer
to periods prior to 1917 unless the contrary is stated.
The left-hand column gives the name of the original tribal stock so far
as it has been possible to trace one. The next column gives the names
of the tribes and sub-tribes formed by the original group. It is often
impossible to state for certain whether large tribes are still to be
described as such, or whether they have become independent tribes with
subsidiary clans. Thus the whole classification must be considered
approximate. It is designed to carry one stage further the system
commenced by Barth, and continued by Jean. Where these two authorities
are stated to have made mistakes or to have been inaccurate, the
brevity of such phrases, occasioned as it has been by the use of a
tabular form of arrangement, does not denote more than an expression
of different opinion. It is intended to convey no disparagement,
but merely to obviate circumlocution. The remarks in the right-hand
column are intended to be read in conjunction with the relevant parts
of the text of this book to which they are supplementary.
DIVISION I. THE PEOPLE OF THE KING.
------------+---------------+----------------------------------------
Group. |Tribes and sub-| Notes.
| tribes. |
------------+---------------+----------------------------------------
1. | |
| |
Kel FERWAN. |Kel FERWAN |From its present name the group was
|(N.). |originally in Iferuan (Ighazar) valley,
| |whence probably expelled to W. and S. by
| |Kel Owi. Original name unknown. Possibly
| |not originally of same stock as others
| |in division, and perhaps immigrant from
| |W. Tribes ranged over S.W. Air, N.W.
| |Damergu, and W. Tegama, but since 1917
| |nearly all the nobles have settled in
| |Katsina, leaving Imghad in old areas.
| |Great raiders westward. About 4320 souls
| |according to Jean.
| |
|IRAWATTAN (N.).|At T’intabisgi (S. Talak plain). The
| |only “I name” tribe recorded in the
| |group.
| |
|Kel AZEL (N.). |At T’intabisgi.
| |
|Kel TADELE. |Large tribe now partially independent of
| |Kel Ferwan group. Described by Jean as
| |servile and by others as noble;
| |explanation being probably that both
| |castes occur as sub-tribes. Apparently
| |originally an Ahaggar tribe which with
| |its Imghad came to Air; if this was due
| |to conquest by an Air tribe, the
| |confusion of status is comprehensible.
| |
| Kel TADELE {|
| (N.). {|Talak-Zurika area. They own Zelim and
| {|Tuaghet pools in Fadé, a part of which
| TEHAMMAM {|is also theirs. Their chief is Rabidin.
| (S.). {|
| |
|IMUZURAK (S.). |W. Tegama and S.W. Air. Some nobles of
| |this name in Damergu are wrongly
| |described by Jean as Imghad of the
| |Ikazkazan. The Imghad Imuzurak were
| |probably captured from the noble sept.
| |
|IMUZURAN (S.). |At T’intabisgi. The name is abusive,
| |meaning “Donkey droppings.” Reputed very
| |fair skinned.
| |
|IBERDIANEN (S.)|At Araten.
| |
| (Berdianen) |
| |
|JEKARKAREN |At Araten.
|(S.). |
| |
|IGEDEYENAN |At Azel.
|(S.). |
| |
| (Gedeyenan) |
| |
| (Iguendianna) |
| |
|ISAKARKARAN |At T’intabisgi. Both names are wrongly
|(S.). |given by Jean as separate units.
| |
| (Zakarkaran) |
| |
|IDELEYEN (S.). |At T’intabisgi.
| |
|IKAWKAN (S.). | Do.
| |
|EGHBAREN (S.). | Do.
| |
| |The last eight servile tribes represent
| |nuclei captured in the W. They are of
| |Tuareg, Arab and Moroccan origin, but
| |have been assimilated to the People
| |of the Veil.
| |
|IFOGHAS (S.). |Tafadek area. Said by Jean to be Imghad
| |of the Kel Ferwan and to have come from
| |the Kel Antassar stock (unidentified) S.
| |of Timbuctoo. They came to Air about
| |1860 and settled under the Amenokal;
| |they were allowed to retain noble
| |privileges. Their inclusion in the Kel
| |Ferwan group indicates that the latter
| |may be of W. origin.
| |
|(IFADEYEN) (?).|Believed to be noble. Included by Jean
| |among the Kel Ferwan Imghad, but for a
| |more probable attribution see Div. I.
| |Group 6.
| |
2. | |
| |
(Kel TADEK).| |No original name is traceable, but that
| |of “Tamgak” is suggested. They were
| |named from the Tidik (or Tadek) valley
| |N. of Tamgak and the Ighazar. One of the
| |oldest tribes in Air. They possessed the
| |country from Agalenge to Tezirzak in
| |Fadé and N. Air. They had the Kel Fares
| |to E. and Kel Tamat to W., and covered
| |area from Temed to just N. of Ighazar.
| |Now scattered all over Air. Their chief
| |is Ahodu of Auderas.
| |
|Kel TADEK (N.).|Tadek valley and Gissat. Now scattered
| |and in small numbers. Their original
| |name is unknown.
| |
|Kel UMUZUT |Agades area, and Damergu. Practically
|(N.). |separate from the other tribes in the
| |division.
| (Kalenuzuk) |
| |
|Kel TEFGUN |At Tefgun mosque, Ighazar. A small
|(N.). |personal tribe of Ahodu’s own family;
| |keepers of the mosque for at least five
| |generations.
| |
|Kel AGHIMMAT |Probably a sub-tribe of the Kel Tadek.
|(?). |
| |
| (Kelghimmat) |
| |
|Kel TAKERMUS |
|(N.). |
| |
|Kel GARET. |Garet plain, C. Air. Not to be confused
| |with the Kel Garet of the Kel Geres.
| Kel GARET |From a place S. of Agellal pronounced
| (N.). |“Anigara.”
| |
| Kel ANIOGARA |
| (?). |
| |
|Kel ANU |
|WISHERAN. |
| |
| Kel |At Anu Wisheran, C. Air. Very nomadic
| ANUWISHERAN |and ancient; now in Tegama.
| (N.). |
| |
|Kel EZELU (N.).|Ezelu valley, S. of above.
| |
|Kel GARET (S.).|A fortuitous collection of Imghad in the
| |Garet valley. The existence of two Kel
| |Garet may be compared with the two Kel
| |Garet in Div. II. Group 5, with whom
| |there may be some connection.
| |
|Kel IZIRZA |
|(N.). |
| |
|IZUMZUMATEN |
|(N.). |
| |
|Kel GIGA (S.). |At Agejir, S. Bagezan. Probably
| |assimilated to the Ittegen.
| |
|ITTEGEN (S.). |Large Imghad section of the Kel Tadek.
| |Their “I name” is the only one in the
| (Etteguen) |Kel Tadek group, and they are probably
| |dependent on some parent tribe, possibly
| |the Kel Giga. They have broken away to
| |form a new tribal group, the modern Kel
| |Bagezan (_q.v._ sub Kel Owi).
| |
|Kel AGGATA |Have recently joined the Kel Tadek
|(?N.). |(Groups 3 and 4).
| |
3 and 4. | |
| |
IMMIKITAN | |The alternative attribution of many
and | |tribes to these two groups makes it
IMEZEGZIL. | |difficult to distinguish them apart. The
| |reason for the confusion is that both
| |groups occur in areas predominantly Kel
| |Owi, where they form isolated islands of
| |extraneous people dependent upon the
| |Añastafidet. Both groups were probably
| |in occupation of N.E. Air when Kel Owi
| |arrived; latter proved unable to
| |eliminate them completely, and the
| |remnants consequently fell under their
| |influence and were thus variously
| |described as belonging to one or other
| |division. The two groups perhaps
| |represent a single stock with the
| |IMMIKITAN predominant, but in later
| |times certainly acquired, as here shown,
| |co-equal status. Immikitan are known to
| |have been among first Tuareg in Air.
| |
|IMMIKITAN. |
| |
| (Amakeetan) |
| |
| IMMIKITAN |Also called ELMIKI. Originally, after
| (N.). |immigration, in N. Central Air. Now
| |isolated nuclei of this division live
| |among people of Div. II. There are also
| |Immikitan in Div. IV. Jean has rightly
| |not accepted popular account that they
| |are Kel Owi owing to recent association.
| |
| Kel TEGIR |At Tegir near Assatartar.
| (N.). |
| |
| (Kel Teguer)|
| |
| Kel |A geographical synonym for the above.
| ASSATARTAR |
| (N.). |
| |
|Kel AGGATA. |
| |
| Kel AGGATA |Aggata area. This tribe did not move
| (N.). |south after the 1917 episode, and thus
| |became affiliated to Kel Tadek. Their
| |chief is El Haj Saleh at Agades.
| |
| Kel TADENAK |Placed by Barth at Tadenak, E. of
| (N.). |Agellal, and later by Jean at Intayet on
| |Anu Maqaran valley.
| |
| (IKARADAN) |Placed by Jean at Aggata, but the word
| (S.). |means Tebu in Air Temajegh; the nucleus
| |almost certainly consists of Tebu living
| |near their masters and not a separate
| |tribe.
| |
|Kel MAWEN (?). |Placed by Jean at N’Ouajour, which is
| |probably In Wadjud near Taruaji. No
| (Kel Maouen) |information.
| |
| (Kel Assarara)|Wrongly placed by Jean in this group
| |either on account of confusion with Kel
| |Assatartar or perhaps because Kel
| |Assarara inhabited Assarara area as
| |Immikitan before the arrival of the Kel
| |Owi (see above). The only Kel Assarara
| |to-day in existence are Kel Owi (_q.v._).
| |
| |
IMEZEGZIL. | |Originally N. of the Immikitan in the
| |Agwau-Afis-Faodet area before arrival of
| |Kel Owi. Jean thinks only two tribes can
| |be assigned to this group, the Kel
| |Faodet and Kel Tagunar, but others seem
| |to belong. The group is surrounded by
| |Kel Owi, who are especially strong in
| |the originally most important area of
| |the tribe, namely Agwau. They are now
| |all in the Agades area.
| |
|(IMEZEGZIL) |No independent Imezegzil survive, but
|(N.). |its existence is remembered in the Agwau
| |area. Remnants are probably represented
| |by the Kel Afis.
| |
|Kel AFIS. |
| |
| (Kel Afess) |
| |
| Kel AFIS |At Afis, N. Air. They are called the
| (N.). |“big men,” the Imezegzil. In the wider
| |geographical term, Kel Afis includes
| |some Kel Owi living in the village. Jean
| |rightly calls Kel Afis a separate tribe
| |which probably represents the oldest
| |part surviving to the Imezegzil.
| |
| AZANIERKEN |Imghad of the above, but living further
| (S.). |W. at Tanutmolet in Ighazar. Their “I
| |name” indicates antiquity, and the fact
| |that the Kel Afis possessed such an old
| |tribe indicates that the latter were the
| |parent stock of group.
| |
| Kel |
| TANUTMOLET |
| (S.). |
| |
| IZARZA. |A group of serfs living among Kel Owi at
| |this village, whose population has come
| |to be called Kel Tanutmolet, which is
| |also used as a variant for the
| |Azanierken. I have a note that these Kel
| |Tanutmolet serfs are also called Izarza,
| |which may be a corrupt form for
| |Azanierken. They are now only two or
| |three families.
| |
|Kel FAODET |At Faodet in the upper Ighazar.
|(N.). |
| |
|Kel TAGUNAR |At Tagunet in the upper Ighazar.
|(?). |
| |
5. | |
| |
IMAQOARAN. | |Originally in W. Central Air. Although
| |belonging to a category of the People of
| |the King, they were never much under his
| |authority.
| |
|IMAQOARAN (N.).|In the Agellal area. Very small, only
| |five families are said to survive. See
| (Immakkorhan) |Kel Wadigi.
| |
|(Kel AGELLAL) |Are probably in great part Imaqoaran,
| |especially when Kel Agellal is used in a
| |general or geographical sense (cf. Kel
| |Agellal, Div. III. Group 4).
| |
|Kel WADIGI. |
| |
| Kel WADIGI |In Wadigi valley, E. of Agellal. Small
| (N,). |unimportant group of recent origin,
| |consisting of Kel Agellal Imaqoaran, Kel
| |Agellal Ikazkazan, and people from
| |Ighazar.
| |
| Kel TEFIS |At Tefis.
| (N.). |
| |
| Kel AREITUN |Imghad of above in Areitun village, W.
| (S.). |of Anu Wisheran (not the Areitun N. of
| |Agellal).
| |
|Kel SIDAWET (N.|At Sidawet village. A sedentary group of
|and S.). |mixed parentage and doubtful origin.
| |Also ascribed to Izeyyakan, but on
| (Kel Sadaouet)|account of the established origin of the
| |Kel Agellal Imaqoaran and Kel Zilalet,
| |whose villages are in same area as
| |Sidawet, they are all probably of the
| |same parentage.
| |
|Kel ZILALET (N.|Zilalet village. Wrongly described as an
|and S.). |independent tribe by Jean.
| |
6. | |Both the last are mixed village groups
| |of people of all castes.
| |
IFADEYEN and| |No more information is available than
Kel FADÉ. | |that given in the preceding chapters
| |(see pp. 399 and 400).
------------+---------------+----------------------------------------
DIVISION II. THE ITESAN AND KEL GERES.
Note: All these tribes are in the Southland, and their present areas
are not, therefore, specified.
------------+---------------+----------------------------------------
Group. |Tribes and sub-| Notes.
| tribes. |
------------+---------------+----------------------------------------
1. | |
| |
ITESAN. | |Probably one of the original tribes of
| |the Kel Innek who invaded Air from the
| |Chad direction. Being the preponderant
| |tribe in Air, the Itesan were driven
| |from the country by the Kel Owi when the
| |latter arrived. Though now in the
| |Southland, the Itesan still play a
| |prominent rôle in electing the Amenokal
| |of Air.
| |
|(Kel) |Named from a group of hills N. of
|T’SIDDERAK. |Auderas.
| |
|Kel TAGEI. |“The People of the Dûm Palm,” possibly a
| |totemic name or else derived from name
| (Kel Tagay) |of a valley so-called. There are many
| |such in Air, in particular one N. of
| (? also |Auderas is probably responsible for the
| Tagayes) |name. Not to be confused with the people
| |in Div. III. Group I.
| |
|Kel BAGEZAN. |Originally inhabiting the mountains so
| |called. Not to be confused with other
| (Kel Maghzen- |later Kel Bagezan.
| Kel Bagezan) |
| |
|Kel ALLAGHAN. |“The People of the Spears.”
| |
| (Alaren) |
| |
|(EMALLARHSEN). |Probably a misreading for “Im” or “In
| |Allaghan” (where the prefix takes the
| |place of “Kel”), and therefore identical
| |with above.
| |
|(ITZIARRAME). |Probably a corrupt name, perhaps a
| |mistake for the above.
| |
|(Kel) TELAMSE. |The second is probably the right form,
| |and is derived from the name of a
| (Kel |village and hills near Auderas.
| T’ilimsawin) |
| |
|Kel MAFINET. |Named after a valley tributary to the
| |Auderas valley.
| |
|Kel DUGA. |The second is probably the right form,
| |and is derived from Mount Dogam, N. of
| (Kel Dogam). |Auderas.
| |
|Kel UYE. |Kel Wadigi, from a valley E. of Agellal,
| |has been suggested as a more correct
| |version. In this case the tribe would
| |more probably belong to the Kel Agellal
| |of the Kel Unnar in Group 3, but the
| |derivation is doubtful.
| |
|Kel MANEN. |Given by Barth as a tribe of the Itesan.
| |
|IMANEN. |With the two following tribes they seem
| |to represent the oldest stock of people
| |who invaded Air from the E. These Imanen
| |are obviously of the same stock as the
| |Imanen of the Azger Lemta division of
| |Tuareg in the N.
| |
|Kel INNEK. |Are given by Barth as a part of the
| |Itesan. While the name may have survived
| |as a tribal name, it is more properly
| |applicable to all the people who came
| |from the E. when Air was invaded. The
| |existence of such a tribe name among the
| |Itesan, whose original name it may have
| |been, is, however, proof of the accuracy
| |of Bello’s statement.
| |
|IJANARNEN. |This tribe is given by Bello as one of
| |those who originally invaded Air from
| (Ijaranen) |the E. The occurrence of such a tribe in
| |the Itesan group, according to Barth,
| |substantiates the supposition made above
| |and in the body of the book.
| |
2. | |
| |
TETMOKARAK. | |
| |
|TETMOKARAK. |
| |
| (Tedmukkeren) |
| |
|Kel TEGHZEREN. |Kel Teghzeren may be a corruption of
| |“Kel Intirzawen” derived from the name
| |of the Asclepias Gigantica. The Kel
| |Teghzeren appear to be the principal
| |tribe of the Tetmokarak, and are
| |possibly the parent group.
| |
|Kel AZAR. |Perhaps derived from a place of that
| |name in the upper Anu Maqaran valley, C.
| |Air.
| |
|(Kel) UNGWA. |The origin of the name is doubtful, for
| |“ungwa” seems in Kanuri to mean
| (Oung Oua) |“village.” The name may be a form of Kel
| |Unnar (see below), another Kel Geres
| (Kel Ungwar) |group.
| |
|TASHEL. |
| |
| (Taschell) |
| |
| (Tashil) |
| |
|ISHERIFAN. |Of which the Isherifan in Damergu were
| |probably a part.
| |
|Kel ATAN. |
| |
|TEGAMA. |See also the People of Tegama in the
| |Damergu group. The two septs are
| |probably of the same stock; they are
| |more fully discussed in the body of the
| |book.
| |
|KERFEITEI. |The second version is perhaps more
| |correct.
| (? Kel Feitei)|
| |
|(Kel) IGHELAF. |From a group of wells in E. Damergu.
| |
| (Ighlab) |
| |
|ESCHERHA. |
| |
|INARDAF |
| |
|ZERUMINI. |
| |
3. | |
| |
Kel UNNAR. | |The Kel Ungwa may be the same people,
| |but there is no information.
| |
|Kel UNNAR. |
| |
|TARENKAT. |
| |
|ALWALITAN. |A patronymic, from the common personal
| |name among the Tuareg, Al Wali.
| |
|GURFAUTAN. |Probably also a patronymic.
| |
|Kel AGELLAL. |From Agellal in C. Air, and not to be
| |confused with the present Kel Agellal
| (Kel Aghellal)|(Div. I. Group 5).
| |
|Kel TAIAGAIA. |?, unless a corruption in the
| |manuscripts of European authors of Kel
| |Agellal.
| |
4. | |
| |
Kel ANIGARA.| |
| |
|(Kel) ANIGARA. |There are two places called Anigara
| |(Aniogara) near Agellal, and this group
| |might be named from either of them. The
| |present Kel Aniogara are a sub-tribe of
| |the Kel Garet (in Div. I. Group 2).
| |
|TAFARZAS. |No information.
| |
|ZURBATAN. | Do.
| |
|IZENAN. | Do.
| |
|TANZAR. | Do.
| |
5. | |
| |
Kel GARET. | |Doubtless originally from the Garet Mts.
| |and plain in C. Air, and not to be
| |confused with the Kel Garet of Div. I.,
| |of whom, however, these people may have
| |been a part which moved S. when the
| |Itesan also went.
| |
|Kel GARET. |The people originally inhabiting the
| |plain of that name.
| |
|Kel GARET |_I.e._ the “Kel Garet of the Mountain,”
|N’DUTSI. |who lived in the mountains in the same
| |area.
| |
|AIAWAN. |No information.
| |
|TIAKKAR. | Do.
| |
|IRKAIRAWAN. | Do.
| |
TADADAWA, | |These are grouped together, largely
Kel TAMEI. | |perhaps because not enough is known to
| |separate their various tribes. Their
| |tribes are given without comment, as
| |there is little available on record.
| |
|TADADAWA. |? the Tadara of Barth.
| |
|Kel TAMEL. |
| |
|Kel AMARKOS. |
| |
|Kel INTADEINI. |Probably from a place Intadeini on the
| |Anu Maqaran, C. Air.
| |
|Kel UFUGUM. |
| |
|TEGIBBUT. |
| |
| (Tgibbu) |
| |
|IBURUBAN. |
| |
| (Iabrubat) |
| |
|TOIYAMAMA. |
| |
|IRMAKARAZA. |Perhaps connected with the name Anu
| |Maqaran.
------------+---------------+----------------------------------------
NOTE.—Barth also gives the following unidentified names of Kel Geres
tribes: _Kel n’Sattafan_ (the Black People), which is also the
name of the family of the Amenokal according to Bello: this tribe,
if it is a tribe at all, may be attributed to the Itesan group;
_Tilkatine_; _Taginna_; _Riaina_, and _Alhassan_.
The caste of these tribes is not specified, but all the principal
units, at any rate, may be assumed noble. The tribes have simply been
enumerated here for purposes of record and comparison. They are not
adduced as ethnological material comparable with that provided by
the lists of tribes in Divisions I. and III.
DIVISION III. THE PEOPLE OF THE AÑASTAFIDET OR KEL OWI
------------+---------------+----------------------------------------
Group. |Tribes and sub-| Notes.
| tribes. |
------------+---------------+----------------------------------------
1. | |
| |
IMASLAGHA. | |The Kel Azañieres, and therefore the
| |Imaslagha, with the Izeyyakan and
| |Igururan, are said to be the oldest of
| |the Kel Owi division.
| |
|IMASLAGHA. |
| |
| Kel |
| AZAÑIERES. |
| |
| Kel |In the Azañieres mountains.
| Azañieres |
| (N.). |
| |
| Kel |West of the southern Kel Nugguru in the
| Intirzawen |Intirzawen and T’ilisdak valley, S. of
| (S.). |Auderas.
| |
| Kel TAGHMEURT|In the Taghmeurt Mts. It has certain
| (N.). |unspecified servile tribes.
| |
| (Tagmart) |
| |
| Kel ASSARARA.|In the Assarara and Agwau area, N.E.
| |Air, at the places mentioned. Their
| |chief in Barth’s day was Annur,
| |paramount chief of Air.
| |
| Kel Assarara|}
| (N.). |}
| |}
| Kel Agwau |}
| (N.). |}
| |}
| Kel Igululof|}
| (N.). |}
| |}
| Kel |} Along the great valley of N.E. Air.
| Oborassan |}
| (S.). |}
| |}
| Kel Anu |}
| Samed (S.). |}
| |}
| Kel |}
| T’intellust |}
| (S.). |}
| |
| |The last is wrongly placed by Jean in
| |Group 2 with the Kel Tafidet.
| |
|IGURURAN |Apparently now extinct in name.
|(Igururan) |
|(N.). |
| |
| Kel FARES |At Fares N. of Agwau; now near Agades.
| (N.). |Their position is confirmed by Barth,
| |but the place is called Tinteyyat. Their
| |original name was probably Igururan, but
| |since the extinction of the parent stock
| |they rank as connected with the
| |Imaslagha group. The “I name” Igururan
| |may have been a group name in the first
| |place.
| |
|Kel ZEGEDAN. |Name recorded by Barth but not now
| |traceable. May be connected with Kel
| |Bagezan, whose position might be
| |described as 1½ days from T’intellust.
| |
|IZEYYAKAN (N.).|By some described as People of the King,
| |but placed by Jean, probably rightly, in
| |this group. Formerly a noble portion of
| |the inhabitants of Auderas.
| |
|IMARSUTAN (N.).|The same considerations as above apply.
| |Wrongly placed at Auderas. Said to have
| |come from unidentified place called
| |Arsu.
| |
| IMARSUTAN |A comparatively modern tribe said to
| (N.). |have been formed from remnants of the
| |old tribe.
| |
| Kel TAGEI |Perhaps a totemic name, but readily
| (S.). |derived from any place abounding in “dûm
| |palms.” Perhaps but not necessarily a
| (Kel Teget) |conquered part of Itesan Kel Tagei (cf.
| |Div. II Group 1).
| (? Kel |
| Tintagete) |
| |
|Kel ERARAR. |Name means “People of the Plain,” and
| |probably refers to plain N. of
| |T’intellust, near which Barth also
| |places them. Name may therefore be
| |generic and applicable to various
| |sections in group.
| |
2. | |
| |
IGERMADEN. | |The name is radically connected with
| |Jerma or Garama in the Fezzan.
| |
|IGERMADEN. |
| |
| IGERMADEN |At Ajiru, E. of Bagezan. The people of
| (N.). |Belkho, paramount chief of Air after
| |Annur.
| |
| Kel AJIRU |Perhaps an alternative name for above,
| (N.). |for the sedentary element among them.
| |
| Kel |The name of the inhabitants of
| ASSATARTAR |Assatartar other than the Immikitan
| (N.). |element there (see Div. I Groups 3 and
| |4).
| |
| (IMMIKITAN |Of Assatartar; have become to be
| (N.)). |considered connected with Igermaden
| |owing to propinquity and gradual
| |absorption.
| |
| (Kel TAGERMAT|Perhaps a confusion for Kel Taghmeurt in
| (N.)). |Group 1; placed by Barth at unidentified
| |place, Azuraiden, E.N.E. of T’intellust,
| |corresponding roughly with Taghmeurt
| |mountains.
| |
|IGADEMAWEN. |Wrongly placed by Jean in Imaslagha
| |group.
| (Ikademawen) |
| |
| IGADEMAWEN |Afasas and Beughqot areas E. of Bagezan.
| (N.). |The name suggests analogies to Kel Mawen
| |of Immikitan in Div. I. Groups 3 and 4.
| (Kel Mawen?)|Perhaps a part of group was here
| |absorbed as in case of Kel Assartartar.
| |
| Kel NABARO |Nabaro villages near Tabello, E. of
| (?). |Bagezan.
| |
| Kel TAFIDET |Also given, but wrongly I think, as an
| (N.). |independent tribe in this group. Lived
| |in the Tafidet Mts. with unspecified
| Kel Tafidet.|servile tribes.
| |
| Kel |Anfissac well E. of T’imia massif.
| Anfissac. |
| |
| Kel |A part of the same tribe which is also
| INTIRZAWEN |servile to Kel Azañieres in Group 1.
| (S.). |
| |
|Kel AGALAK (?).|Placed by Jean in this group. The name
| |is well known but tribe was not
| |identified by me.
| |
| |Jean also places some Ifadeyen, some
| |Ikazkazan of Garazu in Damergu, and some
| |people with generic name of Kel Ighazar
| |in this group; but he is, I think,
| |mistaken in doing so.
| |
3. | |
| |
IMASRODANG. | |In the Ighazar, whence they have
| |acquired the generic name of Kel
Kel | |Ighazar. The latter are placed by Jean
IGHAZAR. | |in Group 2, but they are certainly a
| |separate stock, namely, the Imasrodang,
| |who are co-equal with Igermaden.
| |
| |The headman of the group is Abdulkerim,
| |now living at Azzal near Agades, but
| |formerly settled at T’intaghoda.
| |
| Kel |At T’intaghoda. Reputed to be Holy Men.
| T’INTAGHODA |
| (N.). |
| |
| Kel TAMGAK or|Some serfs and some free wild men living
| IMEDIDERAN. |in Tamgak, historically belonging to,
| |but never subjected by, Kel T’intaghoda.
| |Their status is undefined, for their
| |inherent nobility is recognised.
| |
|Kel ELAR (N.). |}
| |}
|Kel IBERKOM |}
|(N.). |}
| |} All at various points in the Ighazar
| (Kel Abirkom) |} between Iferuan and Iberkom.
| |}
| (Kel Aberkan) |}
| |}
|Kel SELIUFET |}
|(N.). |}
| |
|Kel IFERUAN |Not to be confused with Kel Ferwan in
|(N.). |Div. I.
| |
|Kel TEDEKEL |Now believed to be extinct. Originally
|(?). |also in Ighazar, but said to have become
| |merged with other clans.
| (Kel Fedekel) |
| |
| (Fedala) |
| |
4. | |
| |
IKAZKAZAN. | |The tribe as such of this name has
| |disappeared in the various large groups
| |into which it has become divided. It is
| |considered the junior group of the Kel
| |Owi Confederation, the others being
| |called from their chief constituent
| |parts the Kel Tafidet and Kel Azañieres.
| |The use of these territorial names
| |corresponds in the Ikazkazan to the use
| |of the names of the big subgroups, the
| |Kel Tamat, Kel Ulli, etc.
| |
|Kel TAMAT. |A sub-group named from the Tamat acacia
| |tree. It is the great northern sub-group
| |of the Ikazkazan, corresponding with the
| |Kel Ulli in the south. It would include
| |all the northern Ikazkazan had some
| |tribes not broken off to virtual
| |independent status.
| |
| Kel TAMAT |In part near Agellal, where it has
| (N.). |contributed to form Kel Agellal. Also at
| |Ben Guten in W. Air. There is also a
| |section in Damergu under the Kel Ulli
| |grouping.
| |
| Kel TUBUZZAT |W. Air. In some respects almost
| (N.). |independent.
| |
| Kel AGELLAL |Agellal village. The local tribe of this
| (N.). |name is composed of Kel Tamat, or Kel
| |Tubuzzat and of certain People of the
| |King (see Div. I. Group 5).
| |
| (Kel Wadigi) |Formed of certain composite Kel Agellal
| |and other People of the King (see Div.
| |I. Group 5).
| |
| IBANDERAN (? |Sakafat in W. Air, and also in S.W. Air.
| S.) |
| |
| Kel LAZARET. |As above.
| |
| (Kel Azaret)|
| |
| IGERZAWEN. | Do.
| |
| ALBURDATAN |At Auderas.
| (S.). |
| |
| IFAGARWAL (? |At Issakanan in S.W. Air.
| S.). |
| |
| (Afaguruel) |
| |
| ADAMBER. |At T’in Wafara, which is unidentified.
| |
| AZENATA. |No information.
| |
|Kel TAKRIZAT |At Takrizat in N. Air. Having
|(N.). |unspecified servile tribes, including
| |perhaps some of the above.
| |
|Kel TAGEI (N.).|Distinct from Kel Tagei (S.) in Group 1.
| |Possibly, but not necessarily, connected
| |with Itesan Kel Tagei (cf. Div. II.
| |Group 1), W. Air.
| |
|Kel GHARUS. |
| |
| Kel GHARUS |Gharus valley, Lower Ighazar. Very
| (N.). |nomadic and perhaps the largest tribe in
| |Air.
| |
| AHAGGAREN |Talak plain. Serfs of Kel Gharus but,
| (S.). |having had a noble origin in the north
| |in Ahaggar, are considered quasi-noble
| |in status.
| |
|Kel TATTUS. |Unidentified.
| |
|Kel ULLI. |Meaning the “People of the Goats.”
| |Collective name for all the Ikazkazan in
| |S. Air and Damergu.
| |
| Kel ULLI. |Tegama and Damergu.
| |
| IMUZURAK |Probably a part of older Imuzurak (N.)
| (S.). |in Div. IV.
| |
| (ISHERIFAN |Holy Men. Gamram area (cf. Div. II.
| (N.)). |Group 2 and Division IV.).
| |
| IFADALEN |Damergu.
| (N.). |
| |
| Kel TAMAT | Do. (Cf. above.)
| (N.). |
| |
| |The Kel Ulli group, though nominally
| |Ikazkazan and probably including other
| |tribes than those given above, seem to
| |have absorbed a number of early Tuareg
| |in Damergu. Their presence in this group
| |has led to the suspicion that the
| |latter, instead of being absorbed by an
| |extraneous group of Tuareg, namely, the
| |Kel Owi, really represent the true
| |Ikazkazan stock, which was not in truth
| |a Kel Owi family or clan at all, but a
| |mass of people who joined forces with
| |the latter at an early period of their
| |sojourn in Air.
| |
5. | |
| |
Independent | |Among the Kel Owi there are a number of
tribes. | |independent tribes of servile status.
| |Their existence is not paralleled in the
| |other divisions. They owe allegiance,
| |not to any particular noble tribe, but
| |directly to the Añastafidet. They are
| |consequently more emancipated than most
| |Imghad, a phenomenon which confirms the
| |greater cultural development of the Kel
| |Owi.
| |
|Kel NUGGURU |Divided into two parts. That of the
|(S.). |north called the Toshit (part) N’Yussuf
| |in the Assada valley is actually under
| |Ahodu of Auderas. The southern part
| |between Bagezan and Taruaji Mts. is
| |under Khodi, who claims to be headman of
| |Auderas.
| |
| Kel Idakka. |A part of, or synonymous with, one of
| |above.
| |
| Kel Taferaut.| Do.
| |
|Kel BAGEZAN |In Bagezan under Mineru or El Minir. A
|(S.). |recent composite tribe, not to be
| |confused with Kel Bagezan in Div. I.
| Kel Bazezan. |Group 1. Made up of Ittegen of Kel Tadek
| |(Div. I. Group 2) and several other
| Ittegen. |elements.
| |
| Kel TOWAR. |A sedentary group, principally of serfs,
| |at Towar, S. Bagezan.
| |
|Kel T’IMIA |Nobles of various, but all Kel Owi,
|(N.). |tribal origins living at T’imia village
| |under Fugda.
| |
|Kel TARANET. |Unidentified.
| |
|Kel TAFASAS. |Unidentified, unless the inhabitants of
| |the villages along the Afasas valley, E.
| |of Bagezan.
------------+---------------+----------------------------------------
DIVISION IV. THE TUAREG OF DAMERGU
A. People of the King.
B. People of the Añastafidet.
---------------+-----------------------------------------
Tribe and sub- | Notes.
tribe. |
---------------+-----------------------------------------
A. People of |The oldest tribes in Damergu, as might
the King. |be expected, are all of the People of
|the King. They do not belong to any of
|the Air tribes of this category; like
|most of the latter, they probably
|represent the oldest stock of Tuareg in
|these regions.
|
|It has not been possible to identify the
|names of the stock or stocks to which
|the tribes belonged, so no larger
|grouping has been attempted.
|
IFOGHAS (N.). |The Ifoghas certainly represent a stock
|as well as a tribe, but it has not been
|ascertained whether among the Damergu
|Ifoghas several tribal divisions are
|recognised, nor whether the under-
|mentioned tribes were originally of the
|Ifoghas group. Though very poor and
|fallen on evil days, they are considered
|Holy Men, and would be more readily
|recognised as noble were their state of
|destitution less severe. They are the
|Ifuraces of the classics and have
|related groups in other parts of the
|Sahara.
|
Kel TAMIZGIDDA |Meaning the People of the Mosque, Holy
(N.). |Men. Farak area. (See further note
|below.)
(Misgiddan) |
|
(? Mosgu) |
|
ISHERIFAN (N.).|In Damergu since the earliest time. The
|name is equivalent to “Ashraf,” or
|Descendants of the Prophet. Gamram area.
|(See further note below.)
|
“MALLAMEI.” |A name given by Jean. It appears to be a
|Hausa equivalent of one of the above
|names, indicating that the tribe is
|holy.
|
|The last three names (probably only two
|names are really involved) are not
|really proper names. They are
|descriptive names connected with the
|attribution of sanctity to the men of
|these clans. In view of the well-known
|application of such a description to the
|Ifoghas wherever this tribe appears, it
|is quite justifiable to suppose that
|these clans, which incidentally are
|known to have inhabited Damergu from
|remote times, are really tribes of the
|Ifoghas stock.
|
IZAGARAN. |
|
(Izagharan) (?|In Damergu from earliest times.
N). |
|
IZARZARAN (? |Name recorded by Jean.
N.). |
|
IGDALEN (N.). |A stock known to have entered these
|parts with the very first Tuareg to
|arrive. Subdivisions of this stock are
|not known unless some of the other
|Damergu tribes and Air clans previously
|mentioned must so be classed.
|
|S. of Agades, W. Tegama and N. Damergu.
|Holy Men. Very fair. Said not to carry
|arms.
|
(Kel Tadek). |A semi-independent tribe of the Kel
Kel UMUZUT |Tadek stock (see Div. I. No. 2). N.
(N.). |Damergu.
|
IFADEYEN (N.). |Now live in Azawagh and Damergu (see
|Div. I. No. 6).
|
B. People of |
the |
Añastafidet. |
|
IKAZKAZAN. Kel |Including various unspecified sub-tribes
ULLI. |(N.) and (S.).
|
IFADALEN (S.). |Wrongly placed by Jean as an independent
|tribe in Damergu. They are Holy Men and
|probably were of the same stock as
|tribes in category A (above), but at one
|time were subjected by the Ikazkazan.
|
|The Isherifan are wrongly given by Jean
|as a People of the Añastafidet, probably
|on the grounds that they were at one
|time conquered by Belkho, chief of the
|Igermaden (see Div. III. No. 2).
|
|The Ikazkazan and Immikitan of Elakkos
|are specifically referred to at length
|in the text of the book.
---------------+-----------------------------------------
DIVISION V
Various unlocated and unidentified tribes; generic tribal names;
more important village groups of mixed origins owing to breakdown of
tribal organisation under sedentary conditions.
Kel AGELLAL. See Div. I. Group 5 and Div. III. Group
4. Originally an Imaqoaran area, but
these, with Ikazkazan of various tribes
and people from Ighazar, formed the
present Kel Agellal. Principally noble,
but also some Imghad. Agellal village.
Kel ZILALET. See Div. I. Group 5. Zilalet village.
Kel SIDAWET. Do. Sidawet village.
Kel AUDERAS. Principally Kel Aggata (_q.v._ Div. I.
Groups 2 and 4) and Kel NUGGURU (_q.v._
Div. III. Group 5). All Imghad except
three or four families of Kel Aggata and
Ahodu’s own dependents from Kel Tadek
who came when he was given the
chieftainship of the village by the
French at the time of the Foureau-Lamy
expedition. Auderas village.
Kel T’IMIA. All noble Kel Owi, but derived from many
different tribes. Present inhabitants
occupied village after the Kel T’imia of
the Kel Geres went out. T’imia valley.
See Div. III. Group 5.
Kel TOWAR. Mixed Imghad of Kel Owi with one or two
nobles from Kel Bagezan and Imasrodang.
Towar village.
Kel AGADES. Not a strict term: only used in a
geographical sense. The real inhabitants
of Agades are called Emagadezi (_vide_
Chap. III). Songhai colony left in the
sixteenth century, and people from all
other tribes make up population, which
is principally Imghad. Since 1917, when
they lost their camels, many of the
Tuareg from N. Air settled in Agades, or
in the neighbourhood.
Kel IN GALL. Population composed of Songhai, Igdalen
and some Aulimmiden in addition to Kel
Ferwan and Ikazkazan. There are probably
some Ifoghas both here and also at the
three Tagiddas. In Gall area.
IKARADAN. The Temajegh name for the Tebu, of which
there are probably several groups in Air
captured on raids; notably one group, a
part of the Kel Aggata.
IZERAN. Given by Barth as a tribal name, but as
the word (in the correct form, Izghan)
means “Kanuri” in Temajegh, the same
considerations apply as in the case of
the Ikaradan. Many Kanuri groups are
known to have been captured on raids.
Kel IGHAZAR. A generic term for all the tribes living
in the Ighazar. They are principally
Imasrodang Kel Owi.
Kel AGHIL. Given by Barth as Kel Aril. A generic
term meaning the “People of the South,”
and applied especially to the Kel Geres.
Kel ATARAM. Meaning the “People of the West,”
applied especially to the Tuareg and
Moors of Timbuctoo, and the Aulimmiden
and Tuareg of the Mountain, in the
Western Desert.
Kel INNEK. Given by Barth as a tribal name. But it
means the “People of the East,” and is
similar to the above names.
Kel T’ISEMT. (Kel Tecoum) Meaning the “People of the
Salt.” According to Jean it is applied
to a tribe in the Telwa valley, but
appears to be in the nature of a
nickname given to people who made the
collecting of Agha a trade. It is given
to the southern Kel Nugguru generally
(_q.v._ Div. III. Group 5) and to the
people of the Tagiddas and the Ifoghas
of Damergu. The People of the Tagiddas
in any case are probably of the Ifoghas,
so that Kel T’isemt may have been the
name of a large division of the latter
on the analogy of the “Kel Ulli”
division of the Ikazkazan.
IDEMKIUN. Seems to be the tribal name of which
Tademekka is the feminine form.
According to Cortier (Appendix to _D’une
Rive à l’Autre du Sahara_) this tribe
survives in Air, but I have been unable
to trace the name. They are probably a
part of the Tuareg who settled in Air
and further west during the very first
migrations which took place.
Kel TALAK. A generic name for all the tribes which
roam about the Talak plain.
APPENDIX III
ELAKKOS AND TERMIT[439]
North of Gure the hills terminate suddenly in a cliff, and the area
called Elakkos begins to the north of them. It has an individuality
of its very own. A maze of small, closed depressions, that become
ponds and lakes after the rainy season, break up the plain into sharp
unsystematic undulations, which appear originally to have been sand
dunes. They have now become fixed with grass and scanty scrub, but in
most cases retain their characteristic shape. Here and there, rising
several hundred feet above the plain, are a number of flat-topped
hills of red sandstone. They stand alone like islands off a rock-bound
coast. The edges of the hills are sheer cliffs, but the lower parts
are covered with fallen detritus, which has formed steep slopes above
the plain, and the wind has washed the sand up against their sides.
The plain of Elakkos is like a sea floor from which the water has
only recently run off. An irregular sand-strewn bottom has been
left, churned up by immense waves that, in a succession of cyclonic
storms, washed the sand up against the sides of the islands before
retreating. When the blinding glare of midday has passed, deep blue
shadows in the hills appear, and the country looks very beautiful. The
great table-topped hills are blood-red and blue, in an expanse of
yellow sea. Little villages are dotted about in the plain with a few
trees and some deep green vegetation in the hollows.
[ADDITIONAL PLATE]
[Illustration: TYPICAL TEBU]
[Illustration: TERMIT PEAK AND WELL]
Lying between the desert and the Sudan, Elakkos has suffered
greatly. It has been a field of battle where the Tuareg of Air, the
Tebu from the north-east and the people of Bornu have met one another
in order to do battle. Until the advent of the French it was considered
the legitimate playground for the only international sport known
in the desert, the gentle occupation of raid and counter-raid. The
flat-topped hills, with scarcely a path worthy of the name to ascend
the cliffs, were the citadels of the villages which nestle under their
slopes. The huts in the villages are built of straw with conical roofs:
neither mud buildings nor walled settlements exist. The inhabitants
are Kanuri, sedentary Tuareg, and both nomadic and settled Tebu.
While the Tuareg and Tebu live side by side with the Kanuri, the
first two are such uncompromising enemies that they never adventure
themselves into each other’s territory. The dividing line between
them in Elakkos is sharp and clearly defined; it runs just west of
the village group of Bultum, which is the last permanent settlement
on the caravan road from Damagarim to Kawar by the wells of Termit,
where twice a year pass caravans to fetch salt in the east. They leave
at the same seasons when the people of Air, whom they join at Fashi,
also cross the desert.
The Tuareg of Elakkos to-day are sedentary, but their tribal names,
Ikazkazan and Immikitan, belong to noble Air clans of confirmed
nomadic habits. As in Damergu, they are the ruling class. Barth,[440]
basing himself on hearsay information sixty years earlier than Jean,
stated that they were akin to the Tegama people.[441] The Ikazkazan of
Garazu in Elakkos, however, according to tradition, are late arrivals,
certainly later than the Immikitan, who live rather further east. The
latter seem to have come when the first Tuareg arrived from the
east and installed themselves in Air. It is not clear which of the
two tribal groups Barth proposed to classify as akin to the Tegama,
but presumably he meant the Immikitan.
The Ikazkazan of Garazu are grouped by Jean[442] as a sub-tribe of the
Kel Tafidet, probably the, if not actually the, principal tribe of the
Kel Owi Confederation. While I had no opportunity during my only too
short sojourn in Elakkos, in the course of a rapid march to Termit,
to collect information on the ethnology of the Tuareg in this area,
my experience in Air leads me to doubt the accuracy of Jean’s
attribution. It is very improbable that a section of so important
a tribe as the Ikazkazan could in any circumstances have come under
the control of another tribe within the same Kel Owi Confederation,
like the Kel Tafidet, least of all when it had moved so far afield
as Elakkos.
Both from Barth’s description of the “Principality of Elakkos,”
that “sequestered haunt of robbers and freebooters,” as well
as from other indications, there seem to have been more People of
the Veil in this area in former days than now. The decrease may
be accounted for by a general movement westwards, as a consequence
of the encroachments of the Kanuri from Bornu, who were themselves
constantly being driven onwards by pressure from the east, by the
advent in the Chad area of the Arab tribes from the north, and by
raids of the Tebu from Tibesti.[443]
Barth records that Elakkos was celebrated among the hungry people of
the desert on account of its grain. The same reputation and source
of wealth continue to the present time. More millet is grown in a
limited area on the sandy plains of this country than in almost any
other part of the belt which marks the transition between the Desert
and the Sown. But Elakkos is especially celebrated among the Tuareg
all over North Africa for the shields which are used by the People
of the Veil and are made in this country. The hide of the white oryx,
which with much other game lives in the bush along the border of the
desert, is used for their manufacture. Their reputation in Temajegh
speech and poetry points to the country of Elakkos having long been
essentially Tuareg, for the traditional shape and technique are not
found among the neighbouring peoples.
The strong circumstantial evidence regarding the essentially Tuareg
character of the country, is further borne out by a reference in Leo
to the Lemta Tuareg. This people, we are told, extended over all that
part of North Africa which lay immediately east of the Targa people,
from the Fezzan as far as Kawkaw. The latter, for reasons which have
been discussed, was not Gao or Gago on the Niger, but Kuka on Lake
Chad.[444] But there is more than this, Elakkos is alternatively spelt
Alakkos, Alakwas, and Ilagwas, which cannot be denied to bear a marked
resemblance to the name of the Ilasgwas people of Corippus, who in
Byzantine times were fighting in the Fezzan, or in other words in an
area, according to Leo, occupied by the Lemta Tuareg. One would in any
case have been inclined to accept the tradition that the early Tuareg
in Elakkos were formerly more numerous than now, but in the light of
this additional evidence I am satisfied that they are identical with
the very Ilasgwas who came from the north, and therefore of the same
stock as the Tuareg in the Fezzan. It follows that they were of the old
Aulimmiden-Lemta stock and that they were a part of the latter group
which entered the Chad area from the north and then moved westwards. I
further believe that the Ilasgwas gave their name to Elakkos, where
some of them stayed while the rest of the Lemta tribes went on, some
of them into Air and some of them further west. The origin both of
the Immikitan in Elakkos and in Air is due to this movement.
Elakkos is well supplied with water at all times of the year. Tropical
summer rains fall in abundance, leaving pools in the depressions,
to which most of the inhabitants of the villages migrate for the few
weeks which elapse between sowing and reaping the millet, during and
directly after the annual break of the weather. As the pools dry up,
leaving a luxuriant Sudanese vegetation around the edges, recourse
again becomes necessary to the numerous village wells. They are all
of considerable depth, and surrounded by large spoil heaps, but the
output is not very copious, or rather not sufficiently large to supply
numerous thirsty camels in hot weather, when each animal may drink
ten gallons or more. I travelled through Elakkos in June 1922 with a
section of French Camel Corps, and we found watering a very tedious
operation. The wells we used were 150 to 220 feet deep, and in order
that the fastidious animals should drink copiously, the water had to be
drawn at noon in a “shade temperature” ranging from 105° to 110°
Fahr. in places where invariably there was no real shade to be seen.
After leaving the Bultum group of three Kanuri and Tebu hamlets, the
road from Damagarim to Kawar crosses a low scarp and plunges into the
belt of thick green bush which merges imperceptibly into small thorn
scrub and divides the Southland from the desert. The vegetation in
this zone ranges from small thorns to largish trees. It is part of
the same belt of bush which surrounds Damergu, with this difference,
that the latter immediately south of Air extends considerably further
north and forms a salient of vegetation into the desert. The Elakkos
bush is luxuriant even in the dry season, and abounds in game. If a few
more wells were made available it would soon be thickly inhabited by
pastoral tribes, now that immunity from the northern raiding parties
has more or less been assured. It is a sanctuary for large herds of
various species of gazelle, for the white oryx and addax antelope, as
well as for numerous ostriches and some giraffes. There are excellent
pastures for cattle, goats and camels, but although some of the Damergu
Tuareg use the western part for their flocks and a few Tebu use the
eastern side, there are few inhabitants in the country at any time
of year. The surface of old fixed dunes is undulating, and in the
occasional deep hollows are a few wells like those of Tasr[445] and
Teshkar[446] on the Termit road, and Bullum Babá and others to the
west. The wells belong to the Tebu, who visit them with their cattle
in the summer. Immediately around them the vegetation has been eaten
bare and the whitish downs under which they lie show up some distance
away. The three wells at Tasr are twenty-seven feet deep; they are the
last water before the Termit wells are reached, forty hours’ fast
marching further on into the desert. The road, it is true, passes by
Teshkar, but the output of the single well there, forty-five feet deep,
is insufficient for more than a few animals at a time.
For more than ten hours’ marching N.N.E. of Teshkar, which is in
Lat. 15° 07′ 40″ N., Long. 10° 35′ 10″E.,[447] the country
gradually gets more barren, but the character of the bush is maintained
by small trees and shrubs on a reddish ground. Then suddenly the track
descends into a hollow between bare snow-white dunes. A succession of
depressions between them is followed, the path crossing the intervening
sand-hills diagonally to their general direction. The sand dunes
themselves are loose and shifting, but the hollows curiously enough
are permanent and contain small groups of vivid green acacias. When
we first entered the dunes there was a thick white mist on all the
land and the green trees and white sand looked very mysterious and
beautiful in the early dawn. This belt of dunes marks the edge of
the desert itself. The long, buff-coloured, whale-back dunes of the
latter are covered with very scanty salt grass and scrub; they are
typical of the Saharan steppe desert. The surface is fairly good;
the form of the dunes is fixed, for the sand is heavy. The occasional
small tree is a landmark for miles around. At one point we passed
a depression with some larger acacias, but otherwise there were no
recognisable marks to guide a caravan to Termit and the north-east.
The heat of the June weather obliged us to travel largely by night,
and in the course of one march which commenced at 3 a.m. it soon became
apparent that the guide had lost his way. He had mistaken a star to
the west of the Southern Cross for the one to the east of Polaris,
and was marching S.W. instead of N.N.E. We decided to halt until dawn,
but not before many precious hours had been wasted and the prospect of
reaching Termit on the third day after leaving Teshkar had completely
vanished, the normal distance from there to the wells of Termit being
twenty-eight hours’ fast marching, or about thirty-five by caravan.
Under ordinary conditions the mountains of Termit are visible for
some time before they are reached; in point of fact on our way
south we saw the Centre Peak at a distance of no less than fourteen
hours’ marching. Approaching it, however, the intense heat and wind
had obscured everything in a dense mist which limited the maximum
visibility to under two miles. On this day in camp the thermometer
registered 113·9° F. in the shade at 2 p.m. The heat usually appeared
to last without appreciable change from 11 a.m. till 3 p.m. Owing to
the misadventure of the previous night we were not very sure of our
position, and dependent on seeing the mountains to find our next water,
which we sorely needed as the supply was rather short. Then suddenly as
evening came on the atmosphere cleared and an imposing chain of dark,
jagged peaks, with no appreciable foot-hills, appeared suddenly in
the east. The range faded out of sight to the north and south beneath
the sand of the desert. An isolated group of blue mountains in a sea
of yellow sand at evening is one of those unforgettable sights which
reward the traveller in the desert. Their beauty is never equalled
by any snowy peaks or waterfalls in a more favoured land.
After crossing a narrow belt of shifting sand we camped the next
morning in a valley at the foot of the Centre Peak of Termit, near the
famous well which is reputed to have been made by Divine agency. The
water lies in Lat. 16° 04′ 10″ N., Long. 11° 04′ 50″ E.,[448]
forty feet below ground. The bottom of the well has become vaulted
owing to the continual collapse of the sides. In the course of a
week’s stay another well was dug a few yards from the old one,
in spite of the pessimism of the well-diggers, who considered it
useless as well as very tiring to emulate the Almighty. But about
forty feet down through the packed sand of the valley-bottom water
filtering through a bed of loose gravel was duly reached. Some 1½
miles west in a continuation of the valley where it turns towards the
north, is another group of several wells. They are almost surrounded
by sand dunes, and have latterly in part become silted up. Some of
them are likely to be covered entirely in a few years’ time by
an encroaching dune. We cleared two of these wells, but they proved
very saline in contrast with the excellent water of the main wells;
nevertheless they were sufficiently good for camels.
Termit is within the area of the summer rains, which form a pool
lasting for about two months to the north of the western group of
wells. I marched seven miles north with some Tebu who were based on
Termit for their hunting season without reaching anywhere near the end
of the range. The vegetation got scantier and the loose sand of the
outer desert had been washed higher and higher up the eastern sides of
the hills, which here extended in a single chain of no great depth in
a north-easterly direction. But I never reached the end of the chain.
The foot-hills around the main peak, where the laterite rock in places
is in process of disintegration, carry a certain amount of vegetation,
principally of the shrub known as “Abisgi” (_Capparis sodata_),
together with several grasses and small acacias. We found many gazelle
and antelope were pasturing there. Behind the rugged _contreforts_
rises the steep wall of the main range to a height of over 2000 feet at
the main peak, which appears to be about 2300 feet above the sea. To
the east, behind the principal chain and some 300 feet higher than
the valley where the wells are and surrounding desert, is a small
plateau which extends for a distance of some four to five miles as
far as a secondary and lower Eastern Chain which divides it from the
desert beyond. This narrow plateau tapers away to the north, where the
two chains join one another. It is well covered with small trees and
scrub and contains several small groups of hillocks. The passes on to
this plateau from the west run steeply up to its level; they are, in
fact, the ravines formed by the water draining off the plain, which,
when we looked down on it from the centre peak, appeared to be the
playground of several enormous flocks of antelope and gazelle. The
mountain sheep of Air was also found and shot here—the furthest
south where this animal has yet been reported.
The rocky slopes of the range are incredibly rough. They are entirely
covered with loose pebbles, stones and boulders of all sizes. In some
places the black laterite rock has assumed the strangest shapes. At
one point on the centre peak the entire slope was apparently covered
with stone drain-pipes, whole and broken, including perfectly shaped
specimens with ½ in. walls, 15 in. long and 5 in. to 2 in. in
internal diameter. In addition to these, plates, bowls, cylinders,
small balls and tiles of all shapes were to be seen.
Although capable of supporting the flocks of a limited number of
people, there are no traces of inhabitants. Termit never seems to have
been anything but a _point de passage_. It was for long a favourite
haunt of Tebu raiders from the N.E. and E., for the road from the
south branches here both to Fashi and to Bilma. There is also a track
to the Chad country by Ido well, and one to Agadem on the Kawar-Chad
road. There were traditions of a direct caravan road from Air to Lake
Chad, which I was anxious to investigate, but the condition of my
camels made it impossible. I am glad to say that connection between
the Elakkos Camel Patrol and Air was successfully established in the
course of the summer of 1922 by the unit I had accompanied to Termit,
and thanks to the courtesy of my friend, its Commanding Officer,
than whom I have never met a more perfect travelling companion, I
was supplied with full details which I reproduce in his own words,
translated into English:
“From Talras (an old well near T’igefen) we marched together (two
sections of Camel Corps) to the north for about 80 km. There we were
lucky enough in the middle of a truly desert area to chance on a patch
of trees, perhaps some 700 to 800 in number, where we parted company. I
marched east for thirty-seven hours and made the peak overhanging
the walls of Termit with great accuracy. Lieut. X. (with the other
section of Camel Corps), after marching thirty-six hours approximately
north-west and following a valley bed, arrived at Eghalgawen (in
South Air). I made him come back by Tanut. . . . When I return I
shall have a well dug where we separated, and the Agades-Termit road
will be possible for going direct to Chad, as I know there is a well
between Termit and the lake.”
In improving the water supply at Termit we had accomplished our
work. I was obliged to give up my idea of going straight to Air,
and consequently returned with the Camel Corps to Teshkar, marching
twenty-seven hours in three comfortable stages of seven, nine and
eleven hours. There we parted company. I proceeded due west with four
camels to rejoin my own caravan, marching to the wells of Bullum
Babá (two wells forty feet deep), and thence through impenetrable
bush without landmarks or visibility until I crossed the Diom-Talras
track, along which I passed in a north-west direction. I had intended
to water at T’igefen just south of Talras, but found the wells
there as well as those at Fonfoni had been filled in. Like those of
Adermellen and Tamatut, they were destroyed in 1917 during the revolt
in Air to prevent raiding towards the south. Water was eventually
obtained in shallow wells at Ighelaf, though a violent and drenching
thunderstorm at T’igefen, the first one of the season, would have
provided drinking water had I been really short; as it was, it merely
made my men and myself very wet and cold and miserable during the
ensuing night. I reached the first village of Damergu at Guliski on
the fifth day from Teshkar.
[Footnote 439: See also Plates 3 and 4.]
[Footnote 440: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 549-50.]
[Footnote 441: Cf. Chap. II. _supra_.]
[Footnote 442: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 102 and 109.]
[Footnote 443: Cf. Chaps. XII. and XIII.]
[Footnote 444: See map, page 331, and Chaps. XI. and XII.]
[Footnote 445: Also pronounced Tars. See map, facing page 36.]
[Footnote 446: Spelt Tashkeur on the French maps.]
[Footnote 447: See Appendix I.]
[Footnote 448: See Appendix I.]
APPENDIX IV
IBN BATUTAH’S JOURNEY
Ibn Abdallah Muhammad, better known as Ibn Batutah, seems to have
returned to the north by way of Air from a visit to the Sudan which
he made after his better known travels in the East. He left Fez in
A.D. 1351 for the countries of the Upper Niger by way of Sijilmasa[449]
and Tegaza,[450] and returned to Morocco in 1354. His account[451] of
Air and the neighbouring parts is brief but very well worth examining,
as it raises several interesting historical points.
After visiting all the Western Sudan as far as Kawkaw (Gao or Gago
or Gaogao) on the Niger he went to Bardama, where the inhabitants
protect caravans and the women are chaste and beautiful, and “next
arrived at Nakda, which is handsome and built of red stone.”[452] The
variants of this name are spelt نَكْدَا, Nakda; ثُكْذَا,
Thukdha; تَكْدَا, Tukda, and by the learned Kosegarten in his
version تَكَدَّا, Takadda. The latter, with a somewhat corrupt
text, reads: “_Takadda scorpiis abundat. Segetes ibi raræ. Scorpii
morsu repentinum infantibus adferunt mortem, cui remedio occurritur
nullo: viros tamen raro perimunt. Urbis incolæ sola mercatura
versantur. Ægyptum adeunt, indique vestes pretiosas afferunt;
de servorum et mancipiorum multudine inter se gloriunt._” Lee’s
translation, after describing the arrival at Tekadda, proceeds: “Its
water runs over copper mines, which changes its colour and taste. The
inhabitants are neither artisans nor merchants. The copper mine is
without Nakda (Tekadda), and in this slaves are employed, who melt the
ore and make it into bars. The merchants then take it to the infidel
and other parts of the Sudan. The Sultan of Nakda is a Berber. I met
him and was treated as his guest, and was also provided by him with
the necessaries for my journey. I was often visited by the Commander
of the Faithful in Nakda, who ordered me to wait on him, which I did,
and then prepared for my journey. I then left this place in the month
of Sha’aban in the year 54 (A.D. 1353), and travelled till I came
to the territories of Hakar (هكاَر), the inhabitants of which
are a tribe of the Berbers, but a worthless people. I next came to
Sijilmasa and thence to Fez.” Kosegarten’s version, however,
differs somewhat, reading, “. . . and left Tekadda with a band
of travellers making for Tuat. It is seventy stages from there, for
which travellers take their provisions with them, as nothing is to
be found on the road. We reached Kahor, which is the country of the
Sultan of Kerker, with much pasture. Leaving there we journeyed for
three days through a desert without inhabitants and lacking water;
thence for fifteen days we journeyed through desert not lacking water
but without inhabitants. Then we came to a place of two roads where
the road that goes to Egypt leaves the road which leads to Tuat. Here
is a well whose water flows over iron: if anyone washes clothes with
these waters they become black. Thence after completing ten days we
came to Dehkar[453] (دَهْكاَر). Through these lands, where
grasses are scarce, we made our way, reaching Buda, which is the
largest of the towns of Tuat.”
Such are the accounts given by the first intelligent traveller in Air,
and they are all too brief. The two versions are not contradictory,
but in a sense supplementary to one another, and are probably excerpts
made by different persons from a longer original work. The discrepancy
between “Tekadda” and “Nakda,” and between “Hakar” and
“Dehkar” are not difficult to account for in Arabic script. The
first in each case seems to be correct. Ibn Batutah says the people of
Hakar wore the veil; and “Hakar” is of course Haggar or Ahaggar,
the mountains by which it is necessary to pass on the way from Air to
Tuat; the Tuareg in Arab eyes are all worthless, as their name implies.
“Kahor” is a variant for “Kahir,” used indiscriminately by
Arab writers with “Ahir” for Air. Barth’s[454] explanation of
the insertion of an “h” in “Ahir” (اهير), is interesting
but unnecessary if, as is clear, it is derived from “Kahir”
(كاهير). These variants seem all to be merely Arabic attempts to
spell “Air,” which the Tuaregs write in their own script ⵔⵉⴰ (R Y A).
Tekadda has been assumed by Barth[455] and others to be one,
or a group, of three localities, Tagidda n’Adrar, Tagidda
n’Tagei, Tagidda n’T’isemt,[456] lying some 40, 50 and 100
miles respectively W. or W.N.W. of Agades.[457] But there are good
reasons for not accepting this identification. In the first place,
though salt deposits are worked at Tagidda n’T’isemt, there are
no signs of copper mines at this point, or indeed anywhere in Air. In
the second place, it is very unlikely that the ruler of a locality
so close as any of the Tagiddas to the important communities in Air,
in any one of which the Sultan of that country might have had his
throne,[458] should have equalled the latter in importance; but Ibn
Batutah’s Sultan of Tekadda seems to have been at least as important
a personage as the Sultan of Air, whom he calls the Sultan of Kerker,
Ruler of Kahor.
The problem presented by “Kerker” is not easy, but the existence
of a district still called Gerigeri, some fifty miles east of the
Air mountains, and about forty miles north of Tagidda n’T’isemt,
inclines one to regard this Sultan, who was also ruler of Kahor, as
one of the Aulimmiden chiefs who are known at various times to have
dominated the mountains. If this view is correct the Sultan of Tekadda
must certainly have had his being some way further south than the
Tagiddas, since two rulers of such an importance as Ibn Batutah makes
them out to be would certainly not have lived only forty miles apart.
Lastly, the traveller speaks of seventy stages between Tekadda and
Tuat, which is in fact only forty-five stages from Agades,[459]
and therefore the same or perhaps rather less from the Tagiddas,
which are in the latitude or even somewhat north of the city. Now
forty-five marching stages are equivalent to some sixty caravan days,
including halts, while seventy stages correspond to about one hundred
days’ journeying. As it is clear that he did not delay on the road,
the disproportion between the normal time taken to travel from the
Tagiddas to Tuat and the time he did take from Tekadda to Tuat makes
it impossible not to look for Ibn Batutah’s point of departure at
some considerable distance south of Agades.
An examination of the times assigned to the various stages of the
journey makes it apparent that in the first part he actually marched
rather faster than an ordinary commercial caravan. Considering the
actual times he employed, we find that he took one month crossing
Ahaggar to Tuat; the usual time for this section on the Agades In
Salah road is twenty marching days, and Ibn Batutah probably took
about that time, making thirty days with halts. We next find that
it took ten days from Hakar (Ahaggar) to the place where the roads
to Egypt and Tuat divided. This point is at the wells of In Azawa or
Asiu, which are close together on the northern boundary of Air; the
distance between them and Ahaggar is in fact ten days’ marching. It
is reasonable to assume that Ibn Batutah’s point where the roads
divide is, in fact, In Azawa or Asiu, and has therefore remained
unchanged for over four centuries. South of these wells he had
spent fifteen days in a country which was barren but had numerous
watering-points—a good description of Air by a traveller who was
used to the fertile and populous Sudan; the period of fifteen days
corresponds accurately with the number of stages between In Azawa and
Agades by any of the routes through Air.[460] As Agades was probably
not founded at this date, Ibn Batutah in coming from the Niger would
have no reason to travel as far as the site of the city and probably
therefore kept west of the Central massifs and counted this stage from
some point west of Agades like In Gall, though the exact locality is
immaterial. South of this stage he crossed a desert where there is
no water for three days: this is clearly the sterile tract separating
Air from the Southland. The total of these times is fifty-eight days,
even counting thirty days in Ahaggar instead of twenty; this, at a
generous estimate, may be called sixty, from the northern edge of the
Southland across Air and Ahaggar to Tuat, and this reckoning coincides
with the usual forty-five caravan marching stages to which previous
reference has been made. There are, therefore, still at least ten
days to be accounted for, and they are referred to in the passage
in which he simply states that he left Tekadda and marched for an
indefinite time, making no mention of the number of days employed till
he reached the domains of the Sultan of Kerker. I would be inclined to
look for Tekadda not at any of the Tagiddas, which are rather north
of the River of Agades and consequently north of the three days’
desert travelling, but at some point in the direction of Gao, thirteen
days’ journey from the southernmost part of Air, or ten days from
the northern fringe of the Southland below the desert belt. I have
unfortunately no knowledge of the country west of Damergu to suggest
an identification, but am convinced that no place in or just west of
Air is intended by the description of Tekadda.
[Footnote 449: Sijilmasa (Sigilmasiyah) was the capital of the Tafilelt
area in Morocco south of the Atlas. Its ruins in the Wadi Ifli are
now called Medinet el ’Amira.]
[Footnote 450: The salt mines of Tegaza were referred to in
Chap. XII. They were abandoned in A.D. 1586, and those of Taodenit,
where caravans still go from Timbuctoo to fetch salt for the Upper
Niger, were opened instead. Vide Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. V. p. 612,
and Map No. 14 (Western Sheet) in Vol. V.]
[Footnote 451: _Ibn Batutah_: by Lee in the Oriental Translations Fund,
1829, pp. 241-2, etc.]
[Footnote 452: _Scilicet_, red mud.]
[Footnote 453: Probably another version of Hakar (هَكاَر).]
[Footnote 454: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 336.]
[Footnote 455: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 335.]
[Footnote 456: Tagidda (Cortier, Map of Air—Teguidda) means a
small hollow or basin where water collects (De Foucauld, I. 276). The
names of the three places therefore mean “Basin of the Mountain,”
“Basin of the Dûm palm,” and “Basin of Salt.” Tagidda = basin,
is not to be confused with Tiggedi = cliff (as the Cliff S. of Agades),
from the root _egged_, “to jump.” De Foucauld, _op. cit._, I. 273,
and Motylinski, _Dictionnaire_, etc., 1908.]
[Footnote 457: Not three days south-west, as Barth says.]
[Footnote 458: Agades was probably not founded in Ibn Batutah’s
day, or he would certainly have referred to it; there were, however,
other large settlements in Air already in existence at this time,
such as Assode (see Chap. XVII).]
[Footnote 459: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I., App., and others; also
my information.]
[Footnote 460: Cf. Chap. III.]
APPENDIX V
ON THE ROOT “MZGh” IN VARIOUS LIBYAN NAMES
Many authors have assumed that the word “Imajegh” was a generic or
even a national name applicable to the whole of the Tuareg race, and
perhaps even to most of the Libyans in North Africa. The “MZGh”
root of this word, which properly denotes the noble caste of the
Tuareg, does indeed appear in the classical names of many tribes
or groups of people in North Africa. Among these may be cited the
Meshwesh of early Egyptian records and the Macae of Greek historians,
the latter being apparently a racial and not a tribal name. The root
reappears in several such forms as Mazices, Maxitani, Mazaces, etc.,
all belonging to a people found principally in the Great Syrtis, in
Southern Cyrenaica, and in Tripolitania, both on the coast and in the
interior:[461] a more isolated group with radically the same name,
the Maxyes, is placed by Herodotus as far west as Tunisia.[462]
In the Air dialect of the Temajegh language the name for the nobles
of the Tuareg takes the form of “Imajeghan” with the singular
“Imajegh.” In other dialects the word displays some variations
including the forms Amazigh, Imazir, Imohagh, Imohaq, Imoshag, etc.,
according to the local pronunciation. The word is derived according
to an informant of Duveyrier[463] from the verb “ahegh,” meaning
“to raid” or, by extension of the meaning, “to be free,” or
“independent.” De Foucauld, however, gives the form of the word
as “Amahar,” a proper name having as its root ⵗⵂ (Gh H), like “Ahegh,”
but not necessarily derived from the latter.[464]
As has already been noted, the name does not cover the totality of the
race, for it does not include the servile clans, which, whatever their
origin, are considered even by the nobles to belong, like themselves,
to the Tuareg people. The word “Imajegh” is a caste and not a
racial appellation.
I am doubtful if Sergi is justified in using a statement made by Père
de Foucauld in 1888,[465] to the effect that the “Berbers” of North
Africa generally, and those of the north-west in particular, who are
known to the Arabs under various names, used the MZGh root as a name
for themselves in such a manner as to indicate that it was a national
appellation or the name of a racial stock of wide extension. It would
be interesting to know how far de Foucauld, after a long period of
residence as a hermit among the Tuareg of Ahaggar, modified the views
he expressed in 1888. Subject to correction by any authority having had
access to his notes, I take it he would rather have meant that the MZGh
root was used in a quasi-national sense in a number of Berber dialects
or by a number of Berber-speaking people when talking of themselves,
but not in referring generally to the population of North Africa.
Stuhlmann[466] went so far as to talk of “Die Mazigh Völker,”
and stated that all the “Berbers” from Tripoli to Western Morocco
call themselves Mazigh: this, however, is not the case. As Lenz,
supporting the theory of a dual origin for the Libyans, points out,
the “Berbers”[467] even of Morocco are divided into two families,
to which he gives the names of Amazigh and Shellakh.[468]
Hanoteau, on the other hand, seeking at least a unity of language,
says[469] that “plusieurs de ces peuples . . . ont oublié leur nom
national. Mais partout où les populations berbères ont été à
l’abri du contact et de l’influence arabe, elles ont conservé
des noms appartenant à leur idiome,” and he goes on to mention
the various dialectical forms of the MZGh root which he has found
in different localities. He concludes, “toutes ces dénominations
ne sont en realité que des variantes de prononciation d’un même
nom.” This certainly is so, but that he is justified in assuming it
to be a national name is more doubtful. He next tries to establish
that the signification which “some people” have given to the
word Imajegh and its derivatives is not substantiated, and that
when a Tuareg wishes to refer to a noble or to a free man he calls
them “ilelli” or “amunan” and not “imajeghan.” This,
however, is not correct. The first two words may indeed signify an
abstract quality, but when the nobles are mentioned, “Imajegh” is
invariably used. Hanoteau’s statement is misleading. In addition
to the use of the term “imajeghan” to denote the Tuareg nobles,
with no reference to their characters or qualities, the Tuareg say
“imajegh” to qualify any individual, as “imajegh” to denote
someone of a certain class either in their own or in another race. They
speak of the “Imajeghan n’Arab,” meaning the upper class Arabs
as opposed to the slaves and under-dogs of the Arab countries. They
describe the British, I am glad to say, as Imajeghan, or the White
Nobles, even in every-day conversation among themselves. It is always
a class distinction, and not a compliment, an epithet of virtue or
a national name. The dictionaries and grammars of Motylinski, de
Foucauld,[470] Masquerey and even of Hanoteau himself on the Tuareg
language bear out this point.
One of the principal reasons for using the foreign word “Tuareg”
to describe this people is that they do not possess a national
name. Barth,[471] who is a meticulous observer, makes this very clear:
“as Amóshagh (in the plural form I’móshagh)[472] designates
rather in the present state of Tawárek society the free and noble man
in opposition to A’mghi (plural, Imghad), the whole of these free
and degraded tribes together are better designated by the general term
‘the Red People,’ ‘I’dinet n’sheggarnén,’ for which there
is still another form, viz. ‘Tishorén.’” I myself did not hear
these two terms used in Air, so prefer to adopt the circumlocution
Kel Tagilmus, or People of the Veil, which is used and understood by
all Tuareg.
Many of the Imghad, or servile people, are themselves of noble origin,
but have become the serfs of other noble clans by conquest. It is clear
that the former could not use as a national name what is primarily
a caste name to which they had lost their right.
The confusion which has arisen around the word “imajegh” and
hasty generalisations such as those of Stuhlmann are nevertheless
easy to understand, for a superficial observer talking to nobles of
the Tuareg race would so readily be impressed by the recurrence and
common use of the term as to assume that it really had some national
sense. But Sergi[473] in this connection is misleading in citing the
authority of Barth when he writes, with a footnote referring to the
great explorer and implying that he is quoting him almost textually,
“il nome di questi Berberi è quello di Tuareg, plurale di Tarki
o Targi. Ma, osserva lo stesso Barth, questo non è il loro nome
nazionale. . . . Il vero nome che essi si danno è quel medesimo
che già si dava ad alcune tribù del settentrionale d’Africa,
conosciuto dai Greci e dai Romani, cioè di Mazi o Macii, Maxitani
è dato loro anche dagli scrittori Arabi. Oggi si adopera la forma di
Amosciarg al singolare. . . . Questo sembra essere applicato a tutte
le frazioni della tribù mentre quel di Tuareg probabilmente deriva
dagli Arabi.” Barth, we have seen, does not do so, and Sergi is
making the same error as Stuhlmann. It is true that at one point,
in discussing the use of the name “Tuareg,” Barth[474] goes so
far as to say, “This (the MZGh root) is the native name by which
the so-called Tawarek designate their whole nation, which is divided
into several families,” but from the context and from the passage
generally, as well as from the other passages already quoted, it is
manifest that he was referring only to the noble part of the race and
not to the Imghad as well, who, he had not then realised, as he later
understood, are a part of the nation.[475] The context of the passage
just quoted from Barth is one in which he is showing that the Tuareg
are not a tribe, but a nation, as has already been pointed out: He
corrects his predecessors, saying:[476] “This name (Terga, Targa,
Tarki, etc.), which has been given to the Berber inhabitants of the
desert, and which Hodgson _erroneously supposed to mean ‘Tribe,’_
is quite foreign to them. . . .” Richardson,[477] in a previous
trip to the Central Sahara before travelling to Air and the Sudan
with Barth, had already made the same point clear. It is therefore
with no shadow of justification that Sergi[478] states: “Barth
non fa distinzione alcuna delle popolazioni dando il nome etnico di
Tuareg o Imosciarg, e le considera tutte come una grande tribù.”
He does nothing of the sort.
Bates[479] goes into the question of the MZGh names very
fully. He thinks that it is evidence “of an ethnic substratum of
‘autochthones’ of a single race.” He notes the obviously close
connection between the MZGh root used by the Tuareg nobles and the
names in the Atlas mountains on the one hand, and the root of the
Mazices, Mazaces, Macae, etc., names whose affinity with the Meshwesh
of the invasions of Egypt is also obvious on the other hand. He draws
the inference that a racial rather than a tribal name is involved.[480]
Nevertheless, some explanation must be sought for the appearance
of the root both in a Tuareg caste name in the names of certain
Atlas tribes and in classical geographical lists of North African
people. Much as one might be tempted, however, to believe with Barth
in the existence of a substratum of a single race, there is no real
justification for assuming that all the people using the root in
one form or another were even closely related. Its adoption may
well have become widespread among various peoples by the use of a
common language. If in its primary sense it had implied nobility or
freedom or some such attribute, it is more than likely that the innate
snobbishness of one race in contact with, or at one time subjected to,
another race using the root in this sense, would rapidly lead them to
adopt it and misuse it as their own national appellation. I am not
inclined to consider the use of this root as evidence for anything
but community of language. With the mixed origins which we know the
Libyans possessed, any other conclusion would be dangerous. It must
be remembered that there is plenty of evidence to show that in spite
of the diversity of races involved, they had by the time of the Arab
conquest all come to speak a common language or a series of dialects
linguistically of the same origin. It is only at an early period,
when the use of a single language in North Africa was probably not
widespread, that the common root in the “Meshwesh” and “Macae”
names can be assumed as an indication of the affinity or identification
of these peoples with the later Tuareg. And at that time the names are
found in the centre of North Africa only and not in the west or even
in Algeria. The same considerations apply to the “Temahu”[481]
of Egyptian records. The feminine form of Imajegh or Amoshagh, etc.,
is, of course, Temajegh or Tamahek, etc., which is the name given
to the language which the Tuareg speak, though were it not for the
physical likeness of the Temahu in Egyptian paintings to the Tuareg
the similarity of the names alone would probably be insufficient to
draw a conclusion to which, however, nearly all evidence also points.
[Footnote 461: Bates, _op. cit._, Maps III to X.]
[Footnote 462: Herodotus, IV. 191.]
[Footnote 463: Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 318.]
[Footnote 464: De Foucauld: _Dict. Touareg-Fraçais_, Alger,
Vol. I. p. 451.]
[Footnote 465: De Foucauld: _Reconnaissance du Maroc_, Paris, 1888,
p. 10 _seq._]
[Footnote 466: F. Stuhlmann: _Die Mazighvölker_, Kolonial Institut,
Band 27.]
[Footnote 467: _I.e._ Libyans.]
[Footnote 468: Lenz: _Timbuktu: Reise durch Marokko_, etc., Leipzig,
1884.]
[Footnote 469: Hanoteau: _Grammaire Kabyle_, p. ix.]
[Footnote 470: De Foucauld: _Dict._, Vol. I. p. 452, _sub_
“Amajer.”]
[Footnote 471: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. V. App. III.]
[Footnote 472: Or in Air “Imajeghan.”]
[Footnote 473: Sergi: _Africa_, etc., pp. 342-3.]
[Footnote 474: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 222-6.]
[Footnote 475: Where Barth is in apparent contradiction in Volume I
with other statements, and especially in Volume V, on this question
of the MZGh root as a national name, the explanation, I think, is
that he did not apparently consider the Northern Imghad, of whom
he was speaking in the first volume, as pertaining to the Tuareg
nation. Later on, when this became clear, he corrected himself.]
[Footnote 476: _Loc. cit._]
[Footnote 477: Richardson: _Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara_,
Vol. II. p. 140.]
[Footnote 478: _Loc. cit._]
[Footnote 479: Bates, _op. cit._, p. 42 _seq._]
[Footnote 480: _Ibid._, p. 71.]
[Footnote 481: And therefore of the Tehenu.]
APPENDIX VI
THE KINGS OF THE TUAREG OF AIR
The following list of the kings of Agades was collected by
Mr. H. R. Palmer, now Lieutenant-Governor of Northern Nigeria,
in a record which has been referred to in the body of this work
as the Agades Chronicle. The information was supplied by a learned
Hausa scribe and is derived from Tuareg sources, probably in part
MSS. The record ranks as “good oral testimony.” It was published
in an English translation prepared by Mr. Palmer and printed in the
_Journal of the African Society_, Vol. IX. No. XXXVI., July 1910. I
am indebted to Mr. H. R. Palmer and to Messrs. Macmillan and Co.,
Ltd., the publishers of the _Journal_, for permission to reproduce
the information _in extenso_.
In the following pages little more is given than the bare list of kings
with the dates, but much of the other information contained in the
Chronicle has been incorporated in the text of the third, eleventh,
twelfth and thirteenth chapters of this book. The spelling of some
of the proper names in the list and in the text has been slightly
modified to accord with the system of transliteration adopted.
The genealogical table following the list of kings has been compiled
from the information contained in the Chronicle.
-------+-----+----+---------------+--------+--------------------------
| Date. | | Period |
+-----+----+ Name. | of | Remarks.
|A.D. |A.H.| | reign. |
-------+-----+----+---------------+--------+--------------------------
| | | | |
I|1406 |809 |Yunis, son of |20 yrs. |
| | |Tahanazeta | |
| | | | |
II|1425 |829 |Akasani |6 „ |Son of the sister of
| | | | |Yunis.
| | | | |
III|1429 |833 |El Haj Aliso |20 „ |He was killed by his
| | | | |people.
| | | | |
IV|1449 |853 |Amati |?4 „ |Brother of the above: he
| | | | |also was killed and the
| | | | |dynasty ended.
| | | | |
V| ? | ? |Ibn Takoha |4 yrs. |A new dynasty.
| | | |2 mths. |
| | | | |
VI|1453 |857 |Ibrahim ben |9 yrs. |
| | |Hailas | |
| | | | |
VII| | |Yusif ben |16 „ |Brother of the above.
| | |Gashta | |
| | | | |
VIII|1477 |882 |Muhammad the |10 „ |
| | |Great | |
| | | | |
IX|1486 |892 |Muhammad | |Date confirmed
| | |Sottofe | |approximately from
| | | | |Nigerian records. He was
| | | | |a contemporary of M.
| | | | |Rimfa of Kano, 1463-99,
| | | | |and Ibrahim of Katsina,
| | | | |1493-6.
| | | | |
X|1493 |899 |Muhammad ben |9 „ |Son of sister of above:
| | |Abdurahman el | |he was killed.
| | |Mekkaniyi | |
| | | | |
XI|1502 |908 |The twins Adil | |Known as the children of
| | |and Muhammad | |Fatimallat. They reigned
| | |Hammat | |together. Their date is
| | | | |confirmed by the advent
| | | | |of Askia to Air in their
| | | | |reign in 1515.
| | | | |
XII|1516 |922 |Muhammad bin |2 yrs. |
| | |Talazar | |
| | | | |
XIII|1518 |924 |Ibrahim |24-5 |Son of M. Sottofe.
| | | |yrs. |
| | | | |
XIV|1553 |961 |Muhammad el |39-40 „ |Brother of above (name
| | |Guddala | |also given as Ghodala
| | | | |and Alghoddala).
| | | | |
XV|1591 |1000|Akampaiya |2½ „ |
| | | | |
XVI|1594?| — |Yusif |8 & 28 |Son of sister of above.
| | | |yrs. |
| | | | |
XVII|1601?| — |Muhammad bin | |Son of younger brother
| | |Mubaraki ibn | |of Yusif’s father, and
| | |el Guddala | |presumably grandson of
| | | | |No. XIV; deposed Yusif
| | | | |and was shortly after
| | | | |himself deposed.
| | | | |
XVIII|1629?| — |Muhammad |2 yrs. |Son of Yusif: his mother
| | |Attafrija | |was daughter of No. XIV.
| | | | |Deposed.
| | | | |
XIX|1631?| — |Aukar ibn |1 mth. |Deposed.
| | |Talyat | |
| | | | |
XX|1631 | — |Muhammad |? 31 |For the second time.
| | |Attafriya |yrs. |
| | | | |
XXI|1653 |1064|Muhammad |34 „ |? Son of father of above.
| | |Mubaraki | |
| | | | |
XXII|1687 |1098|Muhammad Agabba|33-4 |
| | | |yrs. |
| | | | |
XXIII|1720 |1132|Muhammad el |9 mths. |
| | |Amin | |
| | | | |
XXIV|1720 |1133|El Wali |1 yr. 2 |Brother of above.
| | | |mths. |
| | | | |
XXV|1721 |1134|El Mumuni |9 mths. |
| | |Muhammad | |
| | | | |
XXVI|1722?| — |Muhammad | |Son of No. XXII.
| | |Agagesha | |
| | | | |
XXVII|1735 |1147|Muhammad Hammad|5 yrs. |Son of No. XXI. Deposed.
| | | | |
XXVIII|1739 |1152|Muhammad Guwa |4 yrs. |? Son or grandson of No.
| | | |7 mths. |XVII.
| | | | |
XXIX|1744 |1742|Muhammad Hammad| |For the second time.
| | | | |
XXX|1759 | — |Muhammad Guwa |4 yrs. | Do.
| | | |6 mths. |
| | | | |
XXXI|1763 |1176|Muhammad Hammad|5 yrs. |For the third time.
| | | |6 mths. |
| | | | |
XXXII|1768 |1181|Muhammad |25 yrs. |Son of above.
| | |Guddala | |
| | | | |
XXXIII|1797 | — |Muhammad Dani |5 yrs. |Deposed in A.H. 1212.
| | | |7 mths. |
| | | | |
Interregnum |7 yrs. |Government of chief
| |learned men.
| | | | |
XXXIV|1797 |1212|El Bekri [El |19-20 |Succeeded in 1797, but
| | |Bakeri] |yrs. |was not installed till
| | | | |later.
| | | | |
XXXV|1815 |1231|Muhammad Gumma |5 yrs. |
| | | |1 mth. |
| | | | |
XXXVI|1826 | — |Ibrahim Waffa |7 yrs. |Deposed.
| | | | |
XXXVII|1835 | — |Guma |7 „ |Killed.
| | | | |
XXXVIII|18-- | — |Abdul Qader |22-3 |Deposed in 1857.
| | | |yrs. |
| | | | |
XXXIX|1857 |1274|Ahmed Rufaiyi |12 „ |Twice deposed, finally
| | | | |in 1869.
| | | | |
XL|about|1286|Sofo el Bekri |? 32 „ |Four times deposed.
|1869 | | | |
| | | | |
XLI|about|1318|Osman Mikitan |4 yrs. |
|1900 | | |5 mths. |
| | | | |
XLII|1904 |1322|Ibrahim Da Sugi|4 yrs. |Three times deposed.
| | | | |
XLIII|1908 |1336|Tegama |11 „ |Died in prison.
| | | | |
XLIV|1919 | |Omar |Reigning|
-------+-----+----+---------------+--------+--------------------------
[Illustration]
APPENDIX VII
SOME BIBLIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL USED IN THIS BOOK
A great student was showing a friend over his library, and it happened
to the friend to ask the obvious question that has occurred to nearly
everyone in the same circumstances. The learned man in reply remarked
wearily, that neither had he read all the books which adorned his
shelves, nor yet were those all the books which he had read. I would
say much the same of the lists which are given below. Many as are
the works mentioned, those dealing with Air in any detail are very few.
A fuller bibliography of the people and places in the Central Sahara
generally will be found in Gsell’s first volume of his _Histoire
de l’Afrique du Nord_ and in Oric Bates’ _Eastern Libyans_.
MAPS
Carte de l’Air: Mission Cortier, Service Géographique des
Colonies. Two sheets. 1912. 1/500,000. With a table of astronomical
positions.
Territoires Militaires du Chad: Édition Meunier. 1921. 1/4,000,000.
Afrique Occidentale Française: Service Géographique des
Colonies. Sheet 3. 1/2,000,000.
Carte du Sahara: Delingette and others, Société d’Éditions
Géographiques, Maritimes et Coloniales. 1/4,000,000.
Afrique: Service Géographique de l’Armée. Sheet 19. 1896.
1/2,000,000 with neighbouring parts on other sheets.
Africa settentrionale (Edizione provvisoria). 1917. Ministero
delle Colonie. 1/4,000,000.
A geological map and diagrammatic section of Air, in Chudeau’s
thesis (see Bibliography).
Map of Air and neighbouring parts, compiled from data collected by
the author. _R.G.S. Journal_, Vol. LXII., August 2, 1923. 1/2,000,000.
Original sketch maps and topographical data in the works of Barth,
Foureau-Lamy, Jean, Chudeau and Buchanan enumerated in the
Bibliography.
The Anglo-French frontier was delimited by the Mission Tilho. There
are various sheets covering the frontier from Lake Chad to the Niger,
on a scale of 1/500,000, but they do not extend far into Damergu.
General maps of the Sahara are not enumerated. They are many.
GENERAL BOOKS ABOUT THE CENTRAL SAHARA
Duveyrier, H.: _Exploration du Sahara. (Les Touareg du Nord.)_
Two volumes. Paris. 1864.
_Duveyrier_, H.: Biographical sketch by Manoir and Schirmer, 1905.
Carette: “Recherches sur l’Origine et les Migrations des
principales tribus de l’Afrique septentrionale.” In _Exploration
scientifique de l’Algérie_. Paris, 1853. Vol. III.
Schirmer, H.: _Le Sahara_. 1893.
Gautier, E. F.: _La Conquête du Sahara_. Paris, 1922.
Boissier, G.: _L’Afrique Romaine_. Paris, 1901.
Marmol-Caravajal: _History of Africa_. Three volumes. 1667.
Tissot, C. J.: _Géographie comparée de la province romaine de
l’Afrique_. Two volumes and atlas. 1884-8.
Bates, O.: _The Eastern Libyans_. London: Macmillan, 1914.
Gsell, S.: _Histoire de l’Afrique du Nord_. In course of
publication. Four volumes have appeared. Paris, 1921, etc.
Richardson, J.: _Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara_. London,
1847. Two volumes.
Minutilli, F.: _La Tripolitania_. Rome, 1912.
de Agostini, E.: _Le Popolazioni della Tripolitania_. Tripoli, 1917.
Denham and Clapperton: _Travels and Discoveries in Central
Africa_. London: Murray, 1826. Two volumes.
Lyon, G. F.: _Travels in Northern Africa_. London: Murray, 1921.
Bazin, R.: _Life of Charles de Foucauld_. London, 1923.
Hornemann: _Travels in the Interior of Africa_. Commentary by
Major Rennell. French edition. Dentu: Paris, 1803.
Rennell’s miscellaneous works and addresses to the African
Society, and his Commentary on Herodotus.
Largeau, V.: _Le Sahara_. Paris, 1877.
Desplagnes, L.: _Le Plateau Central Nigérien_. Paris, 1907.
LINGUISTIC AND GRAMMATICAL
The contributions of Halévy, Letourneux, Hanoteau, etc. in
various periodicals.
Hanoteau, A.: _Grammaire de la Langue Tamachek_. Algiers, 1896.
Masquerey, E.: _Dictionnaire Français-Touareg_. Paris, 1898.
—— _Essai de Grammaire Touareg_. Paris, 1896.
de Foucauld, C.: _Dictionnaire abrégé Touareg-Français_. Two
volumes. Algiers, 1918, etc.
—— _Notes pour servir à un Essai de Grammaire Touaregue_. Algiers,
1920.
Freeman, H. Stanhope: _A Grammatical Sketch of the Temahuq Language_.
London: Harrison, 1862.
BOOKS DEALING WITH THE TUAREG AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE
SAHARA GENERALLY
Ripley, W.: _The Races of Europe_. 1900.
Sergi, G.: _The Mediterranean Race_. London, 1901.
—— _Arii ed Italici_. 1898.
—— _Africa, La stirpe camitica_. Turin, 1897.
Keane, A. H.: _Man, Past and Present_. Cambridge, 1920.
Boule, M.: _Fossil Man_. Edinburgh, 1923.
Duveyrier, H.: _Les Touareg du Nord_ (Volume I of the work
already cited).
Cortier, M.: _D’une Rive à l’autre du Sahara_. Paris, 1908.
Bissuel: _Les Touareg de l’Ouest_.
Aymard, Capt.: _Les Touareg_. Paris, 1911.
Foureau, F.: _Mission chez les Touareg_. 1895.
—— _Une Mission au Tadamayt_. 1890.
King, H.: _A Search for the Masked Tawareks_. London, 1908.
Rinn, L.: _Origines Berbères_. 1889.
Schirmer, H.: _De nomine et genere populorum qui Berberi . . .
dicuntur_. 1892.
Buchanan, A.: _Sahara_. Murray, 1926.
Stuhlmann, F.: _Die Mazighvölker_. Kolonial Institut. Band 27.
—— _Ein Ausflug im Aures_. Kolonial Institut. Band 10.
—— _Handwerk und Industrie in Ost-Afrika_. Kolonial Institut. Band 1.
Newberry, Percy: _Beni Hassan_. 1893.
Rosellini, I.: _I Monumenti dell’ Egitto e della Nubia_. 1832-44.
Elliot Smith, G.: _The Ancient Egyptians_. 1923.
Maspero, G.: _L’Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’orient_. 1909.
Meyer, E.: _Geschichte des Altertums_.
Rodd, F.: A paper on the Origins of the Tuareg, _R.G.S. Journal_,
Vol. LXVII. No. 1. Jan. 1926.
CLASSICAL AND ARABIC AUTHORS
Pliny’s _Natural History_. Various editions.
Strabo’s _Geography_. Various editions.
Herodotus’ _Geography_. Various editions.
Hanno’s _Periplus_ (London, 1797), and _Geographi Græci Minores_
(Editio Mueller).
Sallustius: _De bello Jugurthino_. Various editions.
Ptolemy’s _Geography_ and _Marinus of Tyre_.
The Works of Diodorus Siculus.
Corippus: _Libri qui supersunt_. Berlin, 1879.
The Works of Aulus Gellius.
Silius Italicus: _Œuvres complètes_. 1850.
Leo Africanus: _History and Description of Africa_. Hakluyt
Society. London, 1896. Three volumes.
Ibn Batutah’s _Travels_. Translation of Defrémery and Sanguinetti.
Paris: Société Asiatique. 1893. Four volumes.
—— Lee’s edition in the Oriental Translations Fund, with references
to Kosegarten’s edition, 1929.
Ibn Khaldun’s _History of the Berbers_. Translation by Slane.
Algiers, 1852-4. Four books.
Abderrahman Ibn Abd el Hakim’s _History of the Conquest of Egypt_.
In the above edition of Ibn Khaldun.
El Noweiri: Extracts in the above edition of Ibn Khaldun.
Abdallah abu Obeid Ibn Abd el Aziz el Bekri: _A Description of
North Africa_. Edition Slane. Algiers, 1913.
—— Wüstenfels _Das Geographische Wörterbuch des Abu Obeid el Bekri_.
1876.
Abu el Hassan Ali Mas’udi: _The Meadows of Gold_. Oriental
Translations Fund, 1841.
Sultan Bello’s History. See Denham and Clapperton’s journey.
WORKS DEALING MORE PARTICULARLY WITH AIR
Barth, H.: _Travels in Central Africa_. Five volumes. London,
1857. (For Air, see principally Vol. I. Historical and ethnological
references to the Tuareg are contained in all the volumes.)
Jean, C.: _Les Touareg du Sud-Est; L’Air_. Paris, 1909.
_Documents Scientifiques de la Mission Foureau-Lamy_. Paris.
Buchanan, A.: _Out of the World North of Nigeria_. London: Murray,
1921.
_Novitates Zoologicæ_, the Journal of the Tring Museum, Vol. XXVIII.
pp. 1-13, 75-77. 1921.
Rodd, F.: A paper (with map) on Air, _R.G.S. Journal_, Vol. LXIII.
2, August, 1923.
von Bary, E.: his Diary edited by Schirmer. Paris (Fischbacher),
1898.
Chudeau, R., and Gautier, E. F.: _Missions au Sahara et au Soudan_.
Two volumes (especially Vol. II.). Paris, 1908.
Palmer, H. R.: “Some Asben Records.” (The Agades Chronicle),
_Journal of the African Society_, No. XXXVI. Vol. IX., 1910.
INDEX
“A” names, tribal, 128
“A type” of Tuareg houses, 244-6, 247, 248, 249, 253, 255, 258,
260, 302, 316; ornamentation of, 246, 247, 248
“A’ada” (right of passage), 237
Abadarjan, Ridge of, 70, 71, 78
Abalkoran, the, 379
“Abandoned of God,” the, 274
Abarakan, 216, 217, 238, 241, 243, 299; position of, 425
Abattul, 213, 214, 388; Itesan defeated at, 391; mosque of, 213,
214, 291
Abattul, Mount, 156, 213
Abd el Jelil (Selma I), 372, 373
Abd el Qader, Sultan, 93, 99, 100, 108-9, 117, 379, 467
Abd el Rahman, 290
Abdallah, King of Bornu, 374
Abdallah, Abu, 405
Abdallah ibn Yasin, 405
Abderrahman Ibn Abd el Hakim, 468
Abdominal strain of camel riding, 180, 194
Abdulkerim, 122, 436
Abellama, 60, 69, 70, 75; position of, 424
Aberkan, Kel, 437
“Abesagh” acacia, 226
Abeshan, Sultan, 103
Abirkom, Kel, 437
“Abisgi” bush, 82, 449; leaf as condiment, 160
Ablutions, Tuareg remiss in, 273, 274
“Aborak” tree, 226; articles made from wood of, 229
Abscess, native treatment of, 82
Absen (Air), 17, 28
Absenawa (people of Air), 17
Abu Abdallah, 405
Abu Bakr Dau, 409
Abu Muhammad, 176
Abyssinia, Semitic influence in, 342
Acacia, People of the, 307, 437
Acacia trees, 58, 67, 86, 211, 226, 447, 449; eaten by camels, 199;
a defence from insects, 121; thorns of, 165, 166, 199
Adalet, Al, Sultan of Agades, 409-10
Adamber, the, 437
Adar, Kel Geres move to, 390, 391
Adaudu, 242, 243
Addal, Muhammad el, Sultan, 363
Addax antelopes, 446
Aderbissinat, 69-70; fort, 70; well, 75
Adermellen well, 451
Adesnu, spirits of, 279
“Adghar,” 18 _n._[18], 254
Adghar n’Ifoghas, 18 _n._[18], 209, 260, 399
Adil, Sultan, 409-10, 464
Adjeur, _see_ Azger.
Adoral valley, 242
Adrar Ahnet, tribes of, 351
Adultery not common among Tuareg, 177
Adze, Tuareg, 229
Aerwan wan Tidrak, 156 _n._[150]
Æthiopia; matriarchate in, 152 _n._[144]; Romans in, 323
Afaguruel (Ifagarwal), the, 437
Afasas, 241, 250, 436; valley, 210 _n._[200], 243, 439
Afasas-Tebernit groups, houses in, 248, 250, 251
Afasto, position of, 425
Afaza grass, 158, 160, 212
Afis, 315, 430; inscription on grave at, 260; position of, 425
Afis mountains, 308, 314, 315
Afis, Kel, 430
Africa, partition of, 20, 22, 25; problem of introduction of camel
into, 206-8
Africa, North, _see_ North Africa.
“Africa Minor,” 1
“Ag Ali” (son of Ali), 350 _n._[338]
Ag Malwal, 408
Ag Mastan, 169, 353
Aga (salt), 125, 441
Agadem, 333-4, 450; road to, 32; well, 58
Agades, 19, 84, 298, 303, 405, 413, 426, 440; Air administered from,
115-16, 383; decline of, 411, 414; foundation of, 102, 364, 365,
409; population of, 113, 402; position of, 424, 425; prosperity of,
former, 411; quarters of, 91; races and languages of, 117, 118;
revolt of 1917 and, 84, 85, 86, 98, 189-90; sanitary system of, 91;
site of, peculiar, 110, 112-16, 364; Songhai colonisation of, 410,
440; Songhai element in people of, 117; Sudanese in aspect, 87, 90
Amenokal of, _see_ Amenokal; Añastafidet’s residence
at, 92, 100, 145; Barth’s journey to, 23; battle at, 392;
blacksmith-jewellers of, 229-30; earth from, daubed on women’s
faces, 173; exchange rates at, 221, 414; French occupation of, 27,
52; French post at, 86, 91, 118, 218; gaol of, 107; Hole of Bayazid
at, 281; Holy Men of, 290; House of Kaossen at, 92-3; houses of,
87, 90, 91, 92, 246; King of, _see_ Amenokal; Kings of, list of,
463-5; leather-working at, 164, 165, 174, 227, 228; markets at,
91; merchants of, 410; minaret of, 87, 93-4, 302; measures of, 221;
mithkal of, 221-2; Mosque, Great, of, 86, 87, 93-4, 257, 258; pots
made near, 160, 161; prostitution in, 177; sandals made in, 164,
165; Sultan of, _see_ Amenokal; tribal history kept at, 362;
weights of, 221-2; wells at, 90; wireless station at, 188; women
of, 118
Agades Chronicle, the, 53, 93 _n._[81], 100 _n._[86], 102, 103, 303,
362, 363, 369, 379, 387, 388, 396 _n._[411], 414, 415; list of kings
of Air compiled from, 463-5; on selection of first Amenokal, 397-8
Agades Cross, the, 44, 277, 283, 284
Agades, Kel, 117, 130, 440
Agades, River of, 33, 34, 69, 70, 71, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83,
115, 119, 121, 123, 127, 183, 189, 258, 456; plain of, 79, 82-3, 85-6
Agades-Tabello road, 85-6
Agades-Taberghit road, 62
Agades-Tanut road, 69-70
Agades-Termit road made practicable, 451
Agajida, 290
Agalak mountains, 216, 299, 301
Agalak well, 300
Agalak, Kel, 436
Agalenge, 428
Agamgam, 315, 318, 319, 320, 321; pool, 219
Agaragar, 239, 264, 315
Agate, ornaments made of, 282, 283
Agdalar, the, 368
Agejir, 239, 240, 241, 429; houses in, 248, 252; mosque of, 255
Agellal, 26, 290, 299, 302, 418, 431, 437, 440; houses in, 248,
254; position of, 425
Agellal, Kel: of the Kel Unnar, 380, 381, 432, 433; Ikazkazan, 437;
Imaqoaran, 431; present, mixed, 440
Agerzan valley, 243
Agewas, 320
Aggata mountain, 33, 216, 299, 300; spirit drums of, 279, 300
Aggata well, 299, 300, 430; position of, 425
Aggata, Kel, 290, 429, 430, 440, 441
“Agha” (salt), 125, 441
Aghalwen, 412
“Aghelam,” 219
Aghelashem wells, 9
“Aghil” (measure of length), 222
Aghil, Kel, 441
Aghimmat, Kel, 429
Aghmat well, 66, 74
“Agilman” (pool) of Taghazit, 23
Agisymba Regio, attempt to identify with Air, 318, 322, 324, 326;
derivation and application of name, 364
“Agoalla,” 147
Agoalla Kel Tagei, 397
Agoalla Mafinet, 397
Agoalla T’Sidderak, 397
Agoras, the, of Assode, 301, 304, 308, 309
Agram (Fashi), 413
Agriculture: in Air, 131-4, 135; despised by noble Tuareg, 127,
134, 174, 360
Agumbulum, the, 369, 397
“Agwalla,” 147
Agwau, 262, 314, 315, 319, 430, 435; valley, 314
Agwau, Kel, 304, 314, 435
Ahaggar, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 18, 334, forms of the name, 128
Amenokal of, 169, 352-3; camels of, 196; De Foucauld in, 11-12, 13;
Hawara occupy, 359; Ibn Batutah in, 453, 454, 455, 456; language of,
12, 387; mountains, 2, 3, 4, 6, 18, 332
Ahaggar, Kel, 17, 139; _see_ Ahaggaren.
Ahaggaren (Imghad of Kel Gharus), 308, 438
Ahaggaren (Tuareg of Ahaggar), 109, 148, 209, 345, 350, 384
_n._[402], 402; works on, 8-9, 20
Originally Auriga, 270, 348, 349, 352; Azger and, their origin
and connection, 349-53; caravan roads controlled by, 353; dialect
of, 270; French occupation resisted by, 10, 13, 328, 350, 352-3;
polytheistic traces among, 275; as raiders, 182, 350, 354; tribal
divisions of, 350-51
Ahamellen, Kel, 351, 352, 353, 355, 359, 370
Ahawagh, 347
“Ahel” and “Kel,” 129
Ahir (Air), 454
Ahitagel, 352
Ahmadu, of the Kel Tagei, 197, 210, 211
Ahmadu ag Musa, 210
Ahmed Rufaiyi, Sultan, 99
Ahnet mountains, 17, 260, 351, 352, 354
Ahnet, Kel, 351, 354
Ahodu, chief of the Kel Tadek, 26-7, 127, 149, 154, 155, 161, 172,
180, 181, 182, 215, 266, 269, 270, 278, 298, 305, 419, 428, 438,
440; disputed headship of Auderas, 142-3; female descent exemplified
in family of, 149, 150, 151; French assisted by, 26-7, 142, 290;
on the Kel Owi, 149, 387, 389; on Queen Kahena, 170, 265; raiding
reminiscences of, 191-3; his son, 150, 151, 165; his sword, 233;
tribal history in possession of family of, 361-2; on the Veil, 289;
his wife, 150, 161, 172, 284
Aiawan, the, 434
Ain Irhayen, position of, 424
Air, 5, 6, 18-19, 112, 115, 334; as a geographical term, 28;
attempted identification with Agisymba Regio, 318, 322, 324, 325;
origin of name of, 28; original inhabitants of, 138, 363-4, 365-6;
not penetrated by Romans, Arabs or Turks, 327
Air, accounts of, 18-19, 452-3, 456; agriculture in, 5, 131-4;
Askia’s conquest of, 409-10, 411; astronomically determined points
in, 422-5; Azger and, women sent to ensure friendship between, 384;
Bornu and, war between, 406-7, 412; boundaries of, 28-33; camels of,
195, 196-7; caste system of, 136, 137-8, _see_ Nobles and serfs;
civilisation of, pre-Tuareg, 365; climate of, 28, 123; cotton of,
132; Damergu economically part of, 47; disease in, 178, 179-80;
dialect of, 270, 347, 349; distribution of, 394; drainage system of,
23, 28-31, 71, 76, 122-3, 183, 214-15, 242; economics of, 133-4,
218-20; European penetration of, 8-14, 19-27; evacuation of, 1918,
113, 121-2, 302, 309, 360-61, 426; exploration of, 23-4, 24-5, 27;
fair tribes of, 162; fauna and flora of, 27-8, 119, 120; French
occupation and annexation of, 26, 27, 50, 52, 99, 114 _n._[104],
361, 420; revolt against, _see below_ revolt in, 1917; geology
of, 27, 31, 33-5, 76, 78, 79, 183, 215, 216, 241-2; Goberawa in,
364, 365-6, 379, 403; graves and tombs of, 259-63; history of,
17, 360-416; Holy Men of, 290, 293; holy tribes of, 290-91, 306;
houses and huts of, 89, 90, 244-55; infant mortality high in, 178;
Lemta invasion of, 356, 358, 359; Libyan influence in, 403; lions
in, 119, 120; live-stock of, 202, 204-5, 361; mosques of, 255-8;
mountains of, 2, 4, 5, 16, 23, 27, 83-4, 156-7, 332, 334; negroid
original inhabitants of, 363-4, 365-6; oases of, 32; population of,
402; raids from, 190-91; raids on, 113-14, 188, 189, 350; rains in,
79, 120-21, 123-4; revolt in, 1917, 39, 59, 60, 69, 70, 84-5, 86,
93, 98, 121-2, 127-8, 185, 205, 302, 309, 420; roads of, 32, 37, 38,
353-4; rock drawings and inscriptions in, 207, 213, 216, 260, 263-5,
269, 271, 276, 315, 318, 319, 321-2, 360; rocks of, 72, 76, 78, 126;
Roman campaigns near, 322, 323, 324, 325-6; Sanhaja in, 364, 365,
368, 375, 405; scale of life in, former, 411; Senussiya in, 290;
spirits of, 278-81; tribal names in, 128, 129; tribal warfare in,
101; Sultan of, _see_ Amenokal.
Tuareg of, _see_ Tuareg of Air; invasion of Air by, 359, 366-93,
394, 395, 396, 397, 403, 404, 405-6; its date, 364, 371, 373, 375,
381, 403, 404; their vicissitudes in, 401-16; Tuareg symbol for
name of, 454
Air, Central, 299, 418; belonged to People of the King, 394; rains
in, 123; tribal names derived from, 378, 380, 398; view over, 126
Air, Eastern, Kel Owi in, 394
Air, North-eastern: houses of, 252, 254; unnamed valley of, 304
Air, Northern, 298-329; ancient monuments in, 263; evacuation of,
1918, 309; houses of, 252, 309-11, 316; Kel Owi tribes of, 303-8,
394; palm groves of, 317; roads traversing, 318-22; salt caravan
route from, 315
Air, Southern: Goberawa in, 379; graves in, 263; servile tribes in,
394; _see_ Tegama.
’Aisha-Kel Eghrarmar, 412
Ajaraneen, the, 368
Ajiru, 24, 129 _n._[117], 146, 243, 305, 436
Ajiru, Kel, 436
Akaraq, 71, 77, 79, 82, 183, 189, 418; valley, 77-8, 258, 263
Akasani, Sultan, 102
“Akel,” meaning of, 134 _n._[123], 136, 367 _n._[370]
Akil, 408, 409
Akir (Air), 28
Akri, 47
Akritan hills, 47
Alagwas, Alakkos, Alakwas (Elakkos), 357, 445
Alali, Bir, 51, 52, 92
Alamt (Lemta) Tuareg, 376
Alaren (Allaghan), Kel, 432
Alarsas, 121
Albes, well of, 243
Alburdatan, the, 437
Alfalehle plant, 10
Alfalehle river, 30-31
Algeria, 41; Christianity in, 294; the Circumcelliones, 328; French
expedition from, 25, 26-7; French occupation of, 22; funerary
monuments in, 261; rock drawings in, 318
Algeria, Southern, 332, 334; French operations in, 11; native Camel
Corps in, 189
Algeria-Ahaggar caravan road, 353
Algiers, 418
“Alguechet,” 6 _n._[5]
Alhassan, the, 434 _n._
Ali, King of Bornu, 410
Ali ben el Haj Omar ben Idris, King of Bornu, 413, 414
Ali ibn Tama el Ghati, 96, 154-5, 191, 192, 193, 280, 282
Ali Killun, 408
Aliso, El Haj, Sultan, 102, 463
“Alkarhat,” game of, 281
“Allagh” (spear), 234
Allaghan, Kel, 432
“Allelthrap” (ghosts), 281
Alliances, tribal, 147-8
Alluvial soil, Air, 31; plain of River of Agades, 79, 121
Almoravids, the, 405, 420
Almoubari, Sultan, 102 _n._[91], 391
Alms-houses, 255
Almubari (El Mubaraki), 102 _n._[91], 391
Alphabet, Tuareg, 266, 267-8
Alwali, 96, 209-10, 211
Alwalitan, the, 433
“Alwat” plant, 77, 210, 211
Amadu, 154, 180, 315, 418
Amahar (form of Imajegh), 457-8
Amakeetan (Immikitan), the, 368, 370, 429
“Amán” (peace), 237
Amarkos, Kel, 434
Amati, Sultan, 102, 463
Amazigh (form of Imajegh), 457
Amazigh, the, 458
Amazons, suggested explanation of story of, 152, 170, 288
Ameluli, 91
Amenokal, the (Sultan of Agades), 54, 96, 97-100, 134, 144, 304,
387, 409; deputation sent to Constantinople for the first, 101,
102, 104-5, 396-7; list of his successors, 463-5
election of, 99, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, 391, 393, 432; family
of, foreign appearance of, 117; family name of, 434 _n._; female
descent of, 151; first, possibly a Byzantine prince, 102, 104;
legend of Imanen women sent to, 384; installation of, 99-100,
101-2, 383, 384, 391, 393, 396-7, 432; Itesan and election of,
100, 103, 109, 379, 391, 393, 397, 432; judicial functions of, 107,
110, 141, 390; Kel Geres and election of, 100, 146, 384, 391, 392,
393, 397; Kel Owi and election of, 100, 108, 383, 396-7; officials
and courtiers of, 106-7; palace of, 97, 100; People of, 374, 384,
_see_ People of the King; position of, 101, 104-5, 107-8, 109-10,
116, 141, 144, 145, 146; precarious tenure of office, 99, 368, 392;
revenue of, 110; second, Agades mosque presented to, 257, 258
Amenokal of Ahaggar, the, 169
Amenokal, Kel, _see_ People of the King.
Amezegzil, the, 430
“Amghid” (singular of “Imghad”), 140 Amidera valley, 84
Amin, Muhammad el, Sultan, 413, 464
“Amitral” (measure of length), 222
Amjid, wells of, 10
Ammianus, 356
Amon, Egyptian deity, 295
Amosciarg (form of Imajegh), 460
Amóshagh (form of Imajegh), 459-60, 462
Amulet cases, leather, 228
Amulets, Tuareg, 282, 284
“Amunan,” 459
“Amzad” (mandoline), 272
Anai (S.W. of Murzuk), 318, 319, 320, 321, 324
Anai (Kawar), 318
Añastafidet, the, 96, 107, 144, 239, 290, 301, 302, 303, 374;
origin of authority of, 384, 386; election of, 145; freed slaves of,
139; house of, 92, 100, 145, 301; position and duties of, 107, 145-6
Añastafidet, people of the, 374, 384, 386, 394, 429; numbers of,
402; tribes and subtribes of, 435-9, 440
Anfissak valley, 242; well, 242, 436
Anfissak, Kel, 243, 436
Angels, Tuareg belief in, 278
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1 _n._[1]
Anglo-French boundary, Northern Nigeria, 41
Anglo-German Convention, 1890, 25
Anigara, 433
Anigara, Kel, 380, 381, 433
Animals, domestic, Air, 202-6; rock drawings of, 264-5
Animistic view of nature, Tuareg, 295
Aniogara, Kel, 429, 433
Ankh, the Agades Cross and the, 285
Annur, chief of the Kel Owi, 23, 24, 108, 134, 135, 146, 304-5,
308, 312, 313, 435
Ansaman (T’in Shaman), 364-5
Ansatfen, family of, 368, 369
Ant-bear secured by Buchanan, 121
Antassar, Kel, 428
Antelopes, 446, 449, 450
Antimony, women’s eyes darkened with, 173
Anu Areran, position of, 424
Anu Maqaran, 215, 216, 238, 243, 299, 418, 434; rock drawing, 321-2
Anu n’Ageruf, position of, 425
Anu n’Banka, 62, 66, 74
Anu Samed valley, 311; houses in, 248
Anu Samed, Kel, 435
Anu Wisheran, 248, 418, 429
Anu Wisheran, Kel, 429
Aouror well, 74, 75
Aowjal, _see_ Aujila, 368, 369
“Ara” (salt), 125, 127 _n._[115]
Ara valley, 183, 184, 216, 240
Arab authors: the Veil first mentioned by, 328-9; works by, 468
Arab country, meaning of term in Air, 385 _n._[405]
Arab element among Imghad, 138, 139
Arab geographers and historians, 61, 468; _see_ Bekri, Ibn Khaldun,
etc.
Arab merchants, Agades, 96, 106; caravan raided by Ahodu, 192-3
Arab raiders, 12, 13, 14, 188
Arabia, 266; question of introduction of camels from, 207; invasions
from, 371
Arabian origin of Tuareg, Bello on, 368, 369, 371
Arabic: Temajegh and, 271; used by Tuareg, 268, 269
Arabs: Air not invaded by, 324; head-cloths worn by, 286; Kaossen
believed killed by, 98; North Africa conquered by, 293-4, 346, 356,
371, 375-6, 404; patriarchal system of, 339; raids by, 12, 13, 14,
188; robes of, 285 _n._[253]; Southland invaded by, 325, 326, 376,
403, 444; Spain conquered by, 376
Tuareg (Muleththemin, _q.v._) and, 14-15, 273, 274, 287, 294,
364; Arab influence on, 324-5; Arab opinion of, 454; connection
with Arabs claimed in order to establish descent from the Prophet,
339, 342; Arab tribes assimilated by, 347 _n._[329], 354; Arabs
considered newcomers by, 170; Arabs called “white” by, 162;
upper-class Arabs considered nobles by, 459
Arakieta, 238, 243
“Araruf,” 200
Araten valley, 78, 428
Archean rocks, Air, 33, 34, 35, 78
Architecture, Tuareg, 184, 241, 244-59; ascribed to the Itesan,
253, 377, 378
“Areg,” 274 _n._[243]
Areitun, 431
Areitun, Kel, 431
“Argem” (funerary monuments), 260-62, 263
Arguin, 332 _n._[301]
Arharkhar valley, 156 _n._[152]
Aril, Kel, 441
Arki, King of Kanem, 372
Arm daggers, Tuareg, 234
Arm rings, Tuareg, 91, 285-6, 289
Armes blanches, Tuareg allegiance to, 55, 235-6, 328
Ar’rerf Ahnet, the, 351
Arrow-heads, conventionalised, as ornaments, 283
Arrows, poisoned, used by bush folk, 45
Arsu, 304
Art, Tuareg, 246, 263-5
Arwa, Mount, 216, 300, 321
Arwa Mellen, 215, 299, 418
“Aryan,” the word, 339
Arzuges, the, 356, 358
Asaki, the, 291
Asawa, 347
Asben (Air), 17, 28, 313 _n._[274], 363-4, 369, 403; derivation
of, 363-4
Asben horses, 202
Asbenawa (people of Air), 17, 202, 313
Asbytæ, 364 _n._[362]
Asclepias, use of juice of, 180
Asclepias, People of the, 307, 433
Ashanti, matriarchal survivals in, 152, 171; religious feasts, 274
Ashegur well, 32, 219, 315, 318, 320, 321, 414
Ashraf (descendants of the Prophet), 339-40, 439
Asiu, 23, 30, 31, 354, 367, 455, 456
Askar, _see_ Azger.
Askia, Ishak, 411
Askia Ismael, 291
Askia, Muhammad el Haj, 291, 409-10; conquests of, 116, 117, 409-10;
pilgrimage of, 409, 411
Asnagho, peak, 300
Assa, 125
Assada valley, 34, 214-15, 218, 298, 418
Assadoragan, 309
Assarara, 247, 314, 315, 435
Assarara mountains, 314
Assarara, Kel, 134, 303, 304, 314, 430, 435
Assatartar, 308, 314, 436
Assatartar, Kel (Igermaden), 436
Assatartar, Kel (Immikitan), 430
Assawas swamp, 31, 78
Assingerma, 241 _n._[217]
Assode, 145, 233, 299, 300-303, 314, 413, 454 _n._[458]; first real
capital of Air, 303; houses of, 248, 254, 302; mosque of, 255, 257,
301-2; position of, 425
Astacures, the, 356, 358
Astronomically determined points in Air, list of, 422-5
Atagoom, 185, 239; amulets worn by, 282; cases of possession in
family of, 279-80
Atan, Kel, 433
Atara, the, 155
“Ataram” (west), varying sense of, 244, 247
Ataram, Kel, 129, 441
Atkaki, 239
Atlas languages, 270
Atlas mountains, 2; MZGh names in, 461, 462
Atrebisa, 412
Attafriya, Muhammad, Sultan, 391, 464
Audaghost, Libyan kings of, 404, 405
Auderas, 26, 33, 155-7, 161, 214, 241, 253, 404 _n._[418]; author’s
stay at, 123, 127, 154-5, 157, 158-62, 171-2, 178, 275, 279-80, 418,
423, 424 _n._[436]; basin of, 34, 131, 156, 213; cemetery at, 181;
headship of, disputed, 142-3; houses of, 213, 248; Itesan “Kel
names” derived from, 380, 381; Kel Ataram of, 129 _n._[117];
lion killed near, 119-20; measures of, 221; plough seen at, 133;
position of, 424, 425; possession, case of, at, 279-80; rainy season
at, 123-4; village organisation in, 131, 142-3
Auderas, Kel, 440
Augela (Aujila), 336
Augila, people of, 282
Aujila, 318, 334, 336; story of compulsory migration from, 366,
368, 369; trade with Kawar, 369, 370
Aulimmiden, the, 18, 101, 109, 408, 441; the Abalkoran and, 379;
Amenokal and, 144; El Baghdadi attacked by, 292; horses of, 202;
Ibn Batutah’s possible reference to, 455; Ilemtin a form of the
name, 355; Kel Geres defeated by, 391, 415; identical with the Lemta,
341, 345, 355, 356, 357-8, 379, 445; matriarchal inheritance system
disliked by, 152 _n._[149]; origin of, 341, 377, 379; position of,
explained, 357-8; raids on, 139, 190; Tademekka occupied by, 345,
348, 357, 387, 414
Aulus Gellius, 468
Auraghen, the, 347, 348, 352, 354, 355; noble in Azger, servile in
Southland, 348; noble Kel Owi once belonged to, 387
Auraghiye dialect, 270, 347, 349, 387 Aureran well, 215, 299;
position of, 425
Aures, people of, 294
Aures, Queen of the (Kahena), 170, 265, 294
Auriga, the, 270, 340, 341, 343, 346, 347, 348, 349, 352;
Auriga-Hawara represented by Ahaggaren, 353, 355, 387
Ausa, 415
Austria, “talhakim” made in, 282
Austuriani (or Ausuriani), the, 356, 357, 358
Autochthonous significance of MZGh root, 461
Awa, tomb of, 281
Awelimmid (Aulimmiden), the, 357
Axe, Tuareg, 229
“Azalai,” the, 219
Azamkoram mountains, 418
Azañieres mountains, 157, 308, 314 _n._[276]
Azañieres, Kel, 145, 147, 148, 243, 303, 304, 435, 436, 437;
legend of the mother of, 384
Azañierken, the, 430, 431
Azanzara valley, 84
Azar valley, 243
Azar, Kel, 433
Azaret, Kel, 437
Azawad, 61
Azawagh (Asawa), 347
Azawagh, the, 32, 49, 54, 61, 62-3, 80, 114, 115, 242, 309, 347
_n._[333], 426; cold encountered in, 63, 167, 418; deserted sites
in, 64; millet cultivation in, 74; Ifadeyen move into, 209, 399;
population decreasing in, 64; Sanhaja in, 364; Tegama of, 54; valleys
of, 61-2, 63, 66-7, 71, 76; wells of, 74-5; wind prevalent in, 63
Azawagh, Kel, 64, 65, 80; name disappears, 65
Azawak, 31
Azbin (Air), 17
Azel, 428
Azel, Kel, 427
Azelik valley, 71
Azenata, the, 437
Azger country, the, 9, 18, 335, 353, 355, 356; Aulimmiden return to,
387; Auraghen noble in, 348; Ifoghas of, 54
Azger Tassili, the, 260, 261
Azger Tuareg, 17, 148, 331, 335, 347, 402; Ahaggaren and, origin and
connection of, 348, 349-53, 359, 402; Ausuriani identified with,
356, 358; camel brands of, 201-2; caravan roads controlled by,
353; courage of, 354; divination by women of, 281; European contact
with, 8, 9; fort built to watch, 12; French penetration and, 12, 18,
350, 354; Imanen of, 348 _n._[385], 432; Imanen kings of, 352, 353;
inheritance, system of, 153; Kaossen sheltered by, 92; Kel Ahamellen
break from, 352, 359; old Lemta stock represented by, 341, 348,
350, 355-9, 432; migrations of, 18, 350; purity of stock of, 18,
354; raids by, 350, 354; tribes of, noble and mixed caste, 354-5;
warlikeness of, 353, 354; women sent by, to first Sultan of Air, 384
Azger-Auraghen, the, 348, 387
Azjer Tuareg, _see_ Azger, 17
Azuraiden, 436
Azzal, 121, 122, 436
“B type” of Tuareg houses, 246-8, 249 _n._[221], 250, 252, 254,
309, 310-11, 314, 315, 316
“Bab Ras el Hammada,” 323
Babies, Tuareg method of carrying, 179
Bacos valley, 216
Badge of office, Añastafidet’s, 145
Bagai, 328
Bagezan horses, 202
Bagezan mountains, 23, 33, 34, 84, 85, 123, 126, 127, 156, 183,
216, 238-40, 299, 319, 384, 385, 389; an unknown area, 238; houses
of, 239, 240-41; limes found in, 160, 239; lions in, 120; name of,
connected with Agisymba, 324; Tuareg stronghold against Bornuwi, 414
Bagezan, Kel; Itesan sub-tribe, 381, 385, 432; Kel Owi group, 184,
385, 429, 435; present, composite, 239, 240, 438-9
Baghdadi, El, 213, 214, 215, 291, 292, 293
Baghzen, Kel, 129
Bagirmi, 26
Bahr Bela Ma, 3
Bairam, feast of, 274
Bakeir, Muhammad el, Sultan, 363, 465
Bakiri, Sultan, 99; _see_ Bekri.
Bandages, abdominal, worn by Tuareg riders, 180, 194
Bangles, women’s, 283-4
“Barbars,” the term, 371, 372
Barca, 334; food taboos in, 295; the Hawara in, 345
Bardai, 327, 335, 336
Bardamah, the, 406; women of, 452
Bardetus mountain, 327
Barkasho, 169-70
Barth, Dr. Heinrich, 8, 9, 21, 22-3, 28, 31 _n._[36], 36, 49, 118,
127 _n._[115], 128, 132, 180 _n._[172], 214, 243, 299, 362, 392;
_Travels and Discoveries in Central Africa_ by, 14, 23, 106 _n._[96],
277 _n._[247], 410 _n._[423], 412 _n._[425], 452 _n._[450], 455
_n._[459], 460, 461, 468; expeditions of, 8, 9, 18, 20, 21, 23-4,
36, 59, 60, 61, 215; attempts on his life, 290, 304, 312
account of Air by, 18, 28; origin of name of, 28, 454; Tuareg
invasion of, 359, 368, 370-71, 382-3, 386, 387, 391
on Abd el Qader, 108, 117; on site of Afasas, 241; his journey to
Agades, 23, 70, 71, 78, 80 _n._[75], 122; at Agades, 86, 87, 90,
91, 92, 93, 99, 117, 118; on date of foundation of Agades, 116;
on the Amenokal and Añastafidet, 100, 105, 108, 145 _n._[135],
146; Annur and, 304-5, 312, 313; on Assode, 301; at Auderas, 133,
156 _n._[150]; in the Azawagh, 49, 63, 67, 70, 71, 78, 80 _n._[75];
on Bardamah women, 406; on El Maghili, 291-2; on Elakkos, 444;
on exchange rates, 222; on Gamram, 49, 334 _n._[309]; on Ibn
Batutah’s journey, 406, 454, 455; Kanem and Bornu chronicle
collected by, 372-3; lion’s prints seen by, 120; on population
of Murzuk, 113; on the MZGh root in North African names, 460-61,
462; as an ox-rider, 203; rock drawings discovered by, 265, 319;
Roman remains discovered by, 322; on site of T’in Shaman, 364;
at T’intellust, 308, 312-13; his quarters there still known as
the House of the Christians, 312-13
on the Tuareg: etymology of word, 273-4; absence of national name,
459-60; Air invaded by, 359, 368, 370-71, 382-3, 386-7; date of
invasion, 382-3, 386, 391, 404; the Aulimmiden, origin of, 341,
357-8, 377; the Auraghen (Oraghen), 347-8, 387; Azger tribes, 355;
Damergu tribes, 53, 54; Elakkos tribes, 444; female descent system,
152-3; Imghad and slaves, mistakes regarding, 134-5, 142 _n._[133];
the Kel Fadé, 399; the Kel Owi, their arrival in Air, 382-3,
386, 387, 391; their earlier habitat, 387; their language, 270;
the Kel Wati, 412; Lemta migrations, mistakes regarding, 344-5,
359; tribal names, 129, 130; tribal organisation, 380 _n._[396],
393, 426, 427; women, fatness of, 118, 172
Bary, Erwin von, 24-5, 146, 241, 321, 355 _n._[344], 468; Air
explored by, 24-5; boundary fixed by, 31; detained at Ajiru, 24,
243-4; on disease among Tuareg, 179, 180; on the Imajeghan, 139
_n._[128]; on laws of succession among Kel Owi, 151; on lions in
Air, 120; on rains in Air, 123 _n._[114]; on social distinctions
lost among Kel Owi, 144 _n._[134]; prevented from entering Sudan,
24, 244; on tribal names, 129 _n._[117]
Basalt boulders, 210, 215, 216, 217
Basalt flows, Air, 33, 34, 119, 126, 183, 216
Basin formations, 3, 32, 43
Basket, grain measures in, 221
Basset, 206
Bates, Oric: _Eastern Libyans_ by, 6 _n._[3], 145 _n._[136],
166 _n._[160], 176, 267 _n._[236], 294 _n._[259], 336 _n._[314],
364 _n._[362], 466, 467; references to, on: the Ausuriani, 356;
cross symbol among Tuareg, 276, 278; cross-belts, Libyan, 194;
eating of dogs, 295; female descent, 151; funerary monuments, 260,
262; Imghad and Imajeghan, 137; Lebu and word Libyan, 337; MZGh
root of Libyan names, 457 _n._[461], 461; the “penistasche,”
164 _n._[158]; religious beliefs, 275; sun worship, 276, 278, 295
Battles, Saharan, small numbers involved, 11
Bayazid, the Hole of, 281
Bazin, R.: _Life of Charles de Foucauld_, 12 _n._[9], 271 _n._[240],
467
Beds, nomads’, 212
Beduaram, 21
Bekri, El, Sultan, 99, 293, 325, 336 _n._[316], 345, 372, 404
_n._[417], 465, 468
“Bela,” 134
Belkho, paramount chief of Air, 24, 146, 191, 243, 244, 305-6, 436;
defeat of the Isherifan by, 50, 75, 440
Bello, Emir of Sokoto, 362, 372; on “Barbar” invasion of Air,
371; on Goberawa Copts, 294, 363; on rise of Kanuri in Kanem,
369-70, 374; on Sultan of Agades, 99, 108
on Tuareg invasion of Air, 364, 368, 369-70; the original
five tribes, 368, 369, 394, 397, 400, 432, 433; their modern
representatives, 394-5, 397, 400
Bells, camel, the Prophet’s ban on, 293
Belly of the Desert, the, 30, 347 _n._[333]
Belts, Libyan, 194, 265; Tuareg, 180, 194
Ben Guten, the, 131 _n._[120], 437
Ben Hazera, 282 _n._[252]
Ben Mubarak, Muhammad, 413
Benghazi, 110
Beni Abbes, 333, 344
Beni Dugu dynasty, 372, 375
Beni Ghalgha, 372-3
Beni Hume dynasty, 372, 373, 374, 378
Beni Itisan, 377
Beni Khattab, 347; conquest of Zuila by, 112
Benue, the, 30
Beranes Libyans, 339, 340, 341, 342, 346
Berber, linguistic sense of word, 339
Berber languages, 270, 271; camel names in, 206; MZGh root in, 458
“Berbers”: confused use of term, 371-2; applied to Libyans and
Tuareg, 338, 371, 372, 458, 461; Jewish tribes of, 294
Berbers of North Africa, 16; arrival in N. Africa, 262; Arab invasion
resisted by, 170; former Christianity of, suggested, 273; funerary
monuments of, 261; Ibn Batutah on, 453; Ibn Khaldun’s _History_
of, 295, 330, 338; matriarchal inheritance system of, 152-3;
MZGh root, significance of, among, 458; origins of, 7; robes of,
285 _n._[253]; sun worship by, 295; Tuareg and, 7, 16, 371, 372,
458, 461; element of, in Tuareg Imghad, 138
Berdeoa, country of the, 334, 335-6
Berdianen, the, 428
“Beriberi,” applied to Kanuri, 371, 373 _n._[386]
Bettina plant, the, 10 _n._[7]
Beughqot, 242, 390; valley, 71, 209, 210 _n._[200], 218, 238, 243,
244, 390, 436
Beurmann, 9
Bianu, feast of, 274-5
Bibliographical material, list of, 466-8
Bight of Benin, 22, 30
Bila, Mount, 157, 214, 215, 216, 299, 418
Bilalen, 143
Bilasicat valley, 243
Bilet, 157
Bilma, 21, 305, 413; French fort at, 320; wireless station at, 188
salt caravan, 69, 85, 114, 115, 195, 210, 217, 218-20, 443;
Amenokal’s revenue from, 110; number of camels in, 218; French
escort for, 84, 218, 219; Minister accompanying, 106; raids on,
218, 219, 450; route of, 32, 114, 145, 219, 264, 315, 320, 450
salt trade, 133, 218, 219-20; struggles between Air and Bornu for,
407, 415
war of, 407, 415
Bir Alali, 51, 52, 92
Bir Gharama, disaster to French at, 9-10, 236
Birds, taboo on, 294
Birjintoro, 46
Births, among Tuareg, 179, 181
Bishoprics, North African, 293
Bissuel: _Les Touareg de l’Ouest_, 10 _n._[7], 351, 467
“Black” and “White” Tuareg, 139-40
Blacksmith, Tuareg, 155, 228-9, 230, 283-4
Blanket carried by some Tuareg, 166
Bleeding, remedy for donkey disease, 203
Blemmyes, the, 376
“Blood in the head,” camel and donkey disease, 200-201, 203
“Blue,” negroes spoken of as, 162
Blue-eyed Tuareg, 161
Boghel valley, 122
Bomba, Gulf of, 260
Books, Tuareg, 269; lost during revolt, 360, 361-2; fragments of,
discovered, 385
Booz, 320, 321
Borgu, 336
Borku, 336
Bornu, 26, 191, 192, 336, 369; on early maps, 336, 410
Beni Hume dynasty in, 372, 373, 374, 378; Bulala conquest of, 374;
Christian influence in, 294; history of, chronicle of, 372-3, 374
Empire of, 37, 47, 374, 406, 410, 412; decline of, 407; war with
Air, 407, 415, 443
Kanuri in, 335, 371, 403, 407
Tuareg arrival in, problem of, 375-6; their ascendancy in, 372-4,
375, 376, 403-4, 406; expulsion of, from, 335, 358, 372, 374, 375,
403-4; migration into Air from, 370, 371, 372, 375, 376-7, 403-4;
Tuareg besiege, 413
Bornu Chronicle, 372-3, 374, 413
Bornuwi, 44
Bororoji Fulani, 57-8
Borrow pits, Sudanese, 90
Boucle du Niger, La, 30
Boulders, basalt, 34, 183, 210
Boule, M.: _Fossil Man_, 339 _n._[322], 467
Boundaries of Air, 28-33
Bourgou, 336
Bouthel, Sergeant, 50-51
Bows and arrows used by Kanuri, 55; not used by Tuareg, 235, 236
Boys, Tuareg, circumcision of, 179; dress of, 177; upbringing
of, 177-8
Bracelets, women’s, 283-4
Brahim, Sultan, 52, 99, 108
Brands, tribal, on camels, 201-2
Branes, Libyan family of, 338, 339, 340, 341
Brass, decorative work in, 310
Braun, 320
Bridle, camel, 193, 231
Bridle stand, 309
Brigands, 122
British described as White Nobles, 459
British part in exploration of Central Sahara, 20, 313; in
penetration of West Africa and Sudan, 36-7
British tendency to belaud obscure races, 401
Broking centres for desert traffic, 110, 111
Buchanan, Captain Angus, 20, 68, 110, 120, 121, 155, 164, 238, 299;
fauna of Air collected by, 27; _Out of the World North of Nigeria_,
27 _n._[31], 70 _n._[67], 468
Buda, 453
Buddei valley, 127 _n._[115]
Buddei-Telwa drainage system, 183
“Bugadie,” 134
Building methods: Sudan and Northern Nigeria, 88-9; Tuareg, 89,
90, 248-50, 251-2
Bulala, the, conquest of Bornu by, 374
Bulls, 203
Bullum Babá well, 446, 451
Bullum village group, 443, 446
Bundai hills, 308 _n._[272]
Burials, Tuareg, 181-2
Burin, 9
Burr grass, 45, 58-9, 62, 164, 165, 226, 227; seeds ground and eaten,
158, 160, 211
Bush, Central African, discomforts of travel in, 45-6; Damergu,
58-9, 446; Elakkos, 446, 447, 451; the Southland, 42, 43
Bush folk, poisoned arrows used by, 45
Bushman drawings, 264
Bustard, 43, 265
Butter, Tuareg, 158
“Buzu,” 134, 135-6, 159
Byzantine origin of first Sultan of Air discussed, 102, 104
Byzantines: emigration from North Africa, 376 _n._[390]; encounters
with Tuareg, 327
“C type” Tuareg houses, 250, 251-2
Ca’da Mosto, 404 _n._[417]
Cæsar, camels captured by, 206
Caillé, 19
Cairns, memorial, 292-3
Cairo, 20; Arab rottl in, 222
Cairo-Timbuctoo road, 318
Calabashes, rare in Air, 161; as grain measures, 221; as drums, 272
Camel bells, the Prophet’s ban on, 293
Camel Corps, French, 10, 11, 68, 84, 188, 189, 193, 198; camels
stolen from, 188; rate of travel of, 193
Camel skeletons, palæolithic, 207
Camel-borne trade, decline of, 38
Camel-riding, abdominal strain of, 180, 194; position for, 232
Camels, 38, 95, 194-5, 354; their arrival in Africa, problem of,
206-8; breeds of, 195-7; delicacy of, 198; diseases of, 72, 199-201;
equipment of, Tuareg, 193-4, 223-4, 227, 230-31, 276-7; fodder of,
62, 64, 199; herding of, 135-6, 141-2; a popular investment, 134;
loading and unloading, 198, 223, 224-5; numbers of, 204-5, 361;
prices of, 204; raids for, 188, 190, 191; rock drawings of, 265;
saddles of, 223-4, 227, 230-31, 276-7; salt needed by, 125; with
salt caravans, 218, 219, 220; sores of, 72, 199, 201; technique of
travel with, 193, 198-9; Temajegh names for, 197; thirst of, 72,
198-9, 445-6; tribal marks on, 201-2; rarely trotted, 193
Canaan, 339
Caravan roads, 5, 6-7, 30, 32, 43-4, 48, 62, 114, 145, 219, 242,
264, 308-9, 315, 320, 325, 443, 450; abandoned owing to destruction
of wells, 60-61; closed during war, 361; controlled by Azger and
Ahaggaren, 353-4; controlled by Kel Owi, 390, _see_ Kel Owi road;
evacuation policy and, 361; the “Garamantian way,” 318-20;
junction at Iferuan, 318; Roman garrisons on, 208; and sites of
cities, 110, 111, 112, 114
Caravan trade: Añastafidet’s position and, 145; breakdown of,
during war, 142, 146
Caravan wells, 74-5, 80; rights over, 75
Caravans: large, formed for safety’s sake, 11; camels for,
supplied by Arabs, 354; raids on, 50, 51, 52, 59, 80, 191-3, 218,
219, 450; salt, _see_ under Bilma.
Cardinal points, Temajegh names for, 244
Carpentry, 228
Carthaginians, camels not used by, 206
Casamicciola, 242
Caste, mixed, of some Azger tribes, 355
Caste system, Air, 103-4, 108, 136, 137-8; _see_ Noble and servile
tribes.
Cattle, Air, 133-4, 202, 203, 204, 205; horns of, anointed by
Bororoji, 58
Cats, Air, 203
Cave paintings, European, 264
Cemeteries, Nubian, 260; Tuareg, 181, 216, 259-63; urn cemetery,
Marandet, 121, 161, 263
Central Africa: Arab influence in, 325; Arab invasion of, 376;
bush of, discomforts of travel in, 45-6; Empires of, 47 (_see_
Bornu, Melle, Sokoto, Songhai); French scheme for occupation of,
25-7; history of, in relation to that of Air, 358, 401, 403-16;
huts of, 87, 89; Mediterranean civilisation brought to, 401; trend
of migration towards, 39, 342
Central Air, 299, 418; belonged to People of the King, 394; rains
in, 123; tribal names derived from, 378, 380, 398; view over, 126
Central Empires, unrest in North Africa fomented by, 12-13, 93
Central Sahara, 2; bibliography of, 467; British part in exploration
of, 20-24; caravan road, 318; drainage system of, 4, 28-34; allocated
to French, 20, 22; guides of, 185, 186; mountain groups of, 2;
rains in, 28; Roman penetration of, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326-7
Central Sudan, caravan route to, 7
Centre Peak, Termit, 448, 450
“Cercles,” 41
Chad, Lake, 3, 21, 23, 266; caravan road, 7, 8, 320, 325, 326, 333,
334, 335, 369; diversion of water from, 30; French expeditions to,
25-6, 50-51; Lemta extend to, 345; track from Termit to, 450
Chad area: Arab invasion of, 444; early home of the Lemta, 376;
Tuareg migration into Air from, 376-7, 378, 379, 396, 403, 432, 445
Chad road, 7, 8, 320, 325, 326, 333, 334, 335, 369
Chanoine, Lieut., 26
Chariots, discussion of ancient use of, in Air, 318-19, 320,
321-2, 324
Cheese, Tuareg, 157, 158
Chemical incrustation, line of valley marked by, 68
Chickens, 206
“Chief of the Market Place,” 106
“Chief of the White People,” 106
Childbirth among Tuareg, 179
Children, Tuareg, 174, 177-9; belong to the mother, 148-9; education
of, 268, 400; naming of, 181; suckled late, 178-9
Chosroes, invasion of North Africa by, 375
Christianity: question of its existence in Air, 256-7, 363; former
Berber religion, 273, 274; among the Tegama, 53, 54; possibly
former religion of Tuareg, 275-8, 293-4; traces of its influence
among Tuareg, 275-6, 277, 278, 284-5, 289, 293-4
Christians, House of the, 312-13
Chudeau, R., 27, 32, 257, 468; on Assode, 301 _n._[266]; _Le Sahara
Soudanais_, 27 _n._[30], 31 _n._[34], 34-5, 41 _n._[45], 94 _n._[82],
102 _n._[89],[91], 205, 402 _n._[416]
“Cidamus, the people of,” 336 _n._[314]
Cillaba (Cilliba), 323
Cillala (Zuila), 112
Cinerite, Auderas basin, 34, 183
Circumcelliones, the, 12, 328
Circumcision, practised by Tuareg, 179
Cities, North African, caravan roads and sites of, 110, 111, 112, 114
Cities of the Desert, 110-13, 114
Citroën Motor Expedition, 271 _n._[239]
Clapperton, Captain H., 8, 20, 21; death of, 21; _Travels and
Discoveries in Central Africa_ (Denham and Clapperton), 99 _n._[85],
362, 363 _n._[359], 368 _n._[372], 371 _n._[380], 374 _n._[387],
413, 467
Classical authors, references in, possibly indicate early Tuareg,
376; bibliography of, 468
Clay amphoræ, grain stored in, 317
Climate, of Air, 28, 123; of the Sahara, 4-5
Cloth, native, 164, 166, 167, 194
Cochia, 404 _n._[417]
Coins, Air, 221-2
Cold weather, encountered in Azawagh, 63, 167, 418; scantiness of
Tuareg dress for, 166-7
Colocynth, use of juice of, 180
Colour, used on houses of Agades, 92; not used in Tuareg dress,
95, 96
Colouring of Tuareg, 161-2, 173, 367, 460
Concubinage in Air, 170, 171; the caste system and, 136; impossible
for noble women, 160, 171
Congo, French expedition from, 25, 26
Congress of Berlin, 25
Constantinople, delegation from Air seeks a Sultan from, 101, 102,
104, 396-7; list of tribes sending the delegation, 397
Cooley, _Negroland of the Arabs_, 116 _n._[106]
Copper mines, Tekadda, 452-3, 454
Coptic Christianity, influence of, in Air, 294, 363
Corippus, 207, 295, 327 _n._[294], 357, 445, 468
Cornelius Balbus, 322, 323
Cornish, V., 66 _n._[63]
Cortier: _D’une Rive à l’autre du Sahara_, 209 _n._[198],
277 _n._[247], 441, 467; history of Ifoghas n’Adghar, 398-9;
Geographical Mission, maps of Air, 27, 71, 131 _n._[120], 156
_n._[152], 183, 210 _n._[200], 214 _n._[206], 215 _n._[207],
218 _n._[208], 238, 241, 311 _n._[273], 314, 422, 424-5, 454
_n._[456], 466
Cosmetics used by Tuareg women, 173
Cotton cultivation, Air, 132, 227
Cottonest, Lieut., 10
Counting, Tuareg method of, 191
Courage of Tuareg, 11, 169-70, 236, 237, 354; of Tuareg women, 169-70
Cow-camels, 197, 201
Cowrie-shell currency discarded, 221
Cows, scarce in Air, 203
Crescentic type of sand dunes, 66-7, 68
Criminals, gaol for, Agades, 107
Cross, Tuareg use of, as ornament, 235, 276-7, 278, 289, 293; the
Agades Cross, 44, 277, 283, 284; cross-hilted swords, 233, 234,
276, 289; on pommel of saddle, 230, 276-7, 289; on shields, 235
Crows, camels attacked by, 199
Cruciform design, Tuareg use of, _see_ Cross.
Crusaders, the, 233, 276
Cubes on women’s bracelets, 284
Currency, Air, 221-2
Currie, Sir J., 132 _n._[121]
“Cursed,” the (Muhammad Askia), 410
Curzon, Lord, 279
Cydamus, 323
Cyrenaica: camels introduced into, 207; the Lebu in, 337; raids into,
in classical times, 356; steppes and desert of, 335
“D type” Tuareg houses, 250, 251
Dabaga, 122, 125
Daggers, Tuareg, 234
Dala, King of Bornu, 374
Damagarim, 42, 43, 44, 48, 150, 218, 320, 361, 443, 446; date of
Tuareg occupation of, 415 _n._[432]
Dambansa, 46
Dambida, 46
Damergu, 23, 32, 41, 43, 44-62, 209, 309; an appanage of Air,
47; Agades Cross in, 284; Barth in, 23; bush of, 45-6, 58-9, 446;
cattle supplied from, 203; cultivation in, 47, 48, 132, 133, 217;
drainage system of, 46; French entry into, and events leading to
occupation of Air, 50-52; Fulani of, 16, 54, 55, 56-8, 203; geology
of, 46; granary of Air, 47; hills of, 46-7; measures of, 221; negroid
inhabitants of, 415; oryx hide shields from, 235; oxen used in, 203;
population of, 48, 64; raiders in, 50, 51, 188, 189; rains in, 124;
revolt, 1917, in, 85; Sanhaja in, 364, 405; villages of, 48
Tuareg of, 47-8, 52-3, 303, 400, 446; evacuated from Air to,
360-61; their predominance in, 54-5; their migration into, 377,
396, 404, 415; Sendal possibly ancestors of, 396; Sultans of, 47-8;
tribes and sub-tribes of, 18 _n._[18], 400, 426, 427, 428, 433,
436, 437, 438, 439-40
Dan Gudde, King of Gober, 392
Dan Kaba, 55; position of, 424
Dancing, Tuareg, 44, 272
Danda, ruler of the Imuzuraq, 50, 51
Dani, Muhammad, Sultan, 392
D’Anville, 336
Darfur, Tuareg in, 51
Date-palms: cultivation of, 131, 155, 216, 217, 239, 317; disputed
ownership of, 298; scarcity of, 224
Dates, 160; date of ripening, 157; preserved, 160; trade in, 218, 220
Daud, King of Kanem, 407
Daura, 41; people of, 363
Daza, the, 336
De la Roncière, Charles, 19 _n._[19],[20]
Deformation of body not practised among Tuareg, 179
Dehkar, mentioned by Ibn Batutah, 453
Demmili, 47, 48
Denham, D., Oudney, and Clapperton expedition, 8, 20, 21; _Travels
and Discoveries in Central Africa_ (Denham and Clapperton), 99
_n._[85], 362, 363 _n._[359], 368 _n._[372], 371 _n._[380], 374
_n._[387], 413, 467
Depopulation of Air, results of, 361
Descent, Tuareg system of, 103-4, 148-53, 373, 398
Desert between Air and Southland, 456
Desert, steppe and true, 2, 332, 333, 334
Desert vegetation, 64, 70, 226; hardiness of, 67; rain and, 124;
Elakkos and Termit, 445, 446, 449
Desert warfare: small numbers involved in, 11; tactics of, 236-7
Desiccation, of the Sahara, 4; of upper reaches of Niger, 30
Desplagnes: _Le Plateau Central Nigérien_, 261, 467
Devil, the, Tuareg belief in, 278
Dianous, Captain, 10
Dibbela well, 21
Dickson, 9
“Diffa” (reception), 272
Diodorus Siculus, 152, 468
Diom-Talras track, 451
Dirki, 413
Disease in Air, 178, 179-80
Diseases of camels, 199-201
Distance, no measure of, Air, 222
Distances covered by raiders, 188, 189-90
Divination, methods of, 281-2
Divorce among Tuareg, 176-7
Doctor, author as, 171-2, 178, 180, 186
Dogam village, 184
Dogam, Kel, 381, 432
Dogam, Mount, 33, 131, 156, 183, 213, 214, 215, 216, 432
Dogs: Air, 203, 205-6; eaten by Eastern Libyans, 295
Domestic animals, Air, 202-6
Donatist heresy, the, 328
Donkeys: Air, 202, 203-4; wild, 204
Doors of Tuareg houses, 245-6, 247, 277, 309
Drainage system of Air, 23, 28-31, 71, 76, 122-3, 183, 214-15, 242;
of Sahara, 3-4, 9, 28-33
Draughts, game of, 281
Drawings, rock, 263-5, 269, 315, 318, 319; of camel, 265; of ox-drawn
vehicles, 321-2; of shield with cruciform design, 276
Dress, Tuareg, 14, 15, 95-6, 163-7, 177, 265, 289; simplicity of,
164; of women, 172
Drought, former administrative measures against, 47, 48
Drugs, Tuareg, 180
Drum as badge of office, 145
Drums, spirit, legends of, 278, 279, 300
Drums, Tuareg, 272
Dryness of air in the Sahara, 4
Dual administration of empire of Melle, 407-8
Dubreuil, 271 _n._[239]
Duga, Kel, 432
Dûm Palm, People of the, 307, 398 _n._[413], 432, 435
Dûm palms, 87, 122, 125, 131, 156, 158, 226; rope made of fronds
of, 224; sandals made of fronds of, 165; wood used in building,
88, 93, 245, 249
Duguwa dynasty, the, 372, 373, 375
Dunama I, 373
Dunama II, 374, 406
Dunes, sand, 4, 58, 62, 63-4, 66-7, 70, 442, 446, 447
Duveyrier, H., 8-9, 266, 271, 322; explorations and work of,
8-9; _Les Touareg du Nord_ by, 9, 28-9, 54 _n._[54], 169, 180,
282 _n._[252], 467; on Ahaggaren and Azger, 350-52, 353, 354, 355
_n._[346], 356; on Bir Gharama disaster, 10; on dogs of Air, 206;
on food taboos, 206; on the “Garamantian way,” 203, 318-19,
320, 321, 324; on derivation of Imajegh, 457; on marriage system of
Tuareg, 171; on origin of Oraghen, 347, 348; on religion of Tuareg,
274, 275; on shields of Tuareg, 234 _n._[215]; on T’ifinagh
alphabet, 266
Dzianara, the, 397
“E type” of Tuareg houses, 250
“Early Period” rock drawings, 264
Earthenware, Tuareg, 160-61
Eastern Air, Kel Owi in, 394
Eastern Desert, roads across, 320
Eastern origin of camel, theory of, 207, 208
Eastern origin of the Libyans, probability of, 340
Eastern Sahara, 2-3; drainage system, 3
Ebesan, El Haj, 102-3
Economic issues between Kel Owi and Kel Geres, 390
Economics of Air, 133-4, 218-20
Education, Tuareg, 174, 177-8, 268, 400
Efaken, Mount, 156, 213
Efale, the guide, 125, 149, 187, 225, 320
Egeruen, position of, 424
Eghalgawen, 68, 69, 347, 412, 418, 451; position of, 424; valley,
76, 77 _n._[72]; watering points, 76, 80, 114
Eghalgawen-T’in Wana massif, 71, 77, 78; fossil trees in,
259 _n._[226]
Eghbaren, the, 428
Egypt: Arab conquest of, 404; invasions of, by Libyans and Sea
People, 337, 340; matriarchate in, 152 _n._[145]; raids into,
in classical times, 356; weights in, 222
Egyptian Coptic church, influence of, in Air, 294, 363
Egyptian oases, the, 334, 337
Egyptian paintings, of Libyans, 194, 265; figures like Tuareg on, 462
Egyptian records, possible references to Tuareg in, 376, 462
El Golea, 9
El Suk, 394
El Suk, Kel, 355, 377
Elakkos, 42, 49, 51, 81, 357, 358, 442-8; as battle-ground, 396,
442-3; bush of, 49, 58, 446, 447, 451; Camel Patrol of, 450; grain
of, 444, 445; name of, its origin, 357, 445; oryx hide shields of,
235, 444; plain of, 442; rains in, 445; wells of, 445-6, 447
Tuareg of, 51, 303, 307, 308, 370, 396, 400, 440; their migration
into, 376, 377, 404, 415 _n._[432]; their predominance in, 443,
444, 445
Elakwas (Elakkos), 357
Elar, Kel, 129, 437
Elattu, 96
Elazzas, hut foundations at, 262-3; valley, 216
Elijah, the cave of, 321 _n._[280]
Elijinen, the, Tuareg tales of, 278-81; amulets against, 282
Elmiki (Immikitan), the, 429
Elmina, Portuguese factory at, 409
Elnoulli, 241
“Em” names, tribal, 130
Emagadezi people, the, 107, 117, 130, 410, 440
Emallarhsen, the, 432
Emilía, 243
Emirates of Nigeria, 37, 38, 41; French administration of, 42;
_see_ Daura, Hadeija, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto.
Emululi, 239, 241
En Nitra, the, 350
“Enad” (smith), 155, 228-9, 230
Enclosures: funerary monuments, 260-62, 263; places of worship,
258-9, 292-3; round Tuareg houses, 250, 251, 262-3
“English Hill,” the, 313
English tendency to extol obscure races, 401
Ennedi, 92
Entrepôts of the desert, 110, 111
Envelopes, leather, 228
Equatorial Africa, 2, 21; Arab pressure in, 376; French, annexed,
26; operations against French in, 92; rainfall belt of, 4; Tuareg
migration to, 375
Erarar, Kel, 436
Erarar n’Dendemu, 156, 214, 292, 293
Erdi, 335
Erosion in valleys of Air, 34; of sandstone formations, 77, 79, 81
“Ers” (eresan), 213
“Ers, Rodd’s,” 243
Esbet, 364 _n._[362]
Escherha, the, 433
Etaras valley, 183, 243
Ethical standards, Tuareg, pre-Moslem source of, 296
Ethnology of Air, 28
Eti, Kel, 412
Etteguen, the, 429
Eunuchs, negro, 179
European affairs, knowledge of, in Sahara, 266
European penetration, of the Sudan, 36-7, 38, 41-2; of Tuareg
country, 8-14, 19-27
European salt competing with Bilma product, 219
Europeans, Tuareg hostility to, 23, 24, 154; Holy Men and, 290
Evacuation of Air during revolt, 113, 121-2, 302, 309, 360-61, 426
Exchange, rates of, 221, 222
Exorcism of spirits, 280
Exploration of Tuareg country, 8-14, 19-27
Eye troubles common in Air, 179
Eyes, Tuareg, colour of, 161
Ezelu valley, 429
Ezelu, Kel, 429
Faces of Tuareg: man’s, seen without veil, 187; women’s, daubed
with earth or ochre, 173
Factions in Libyan villages, 338-9
Fadé, 23, 317, 319, 320, 321, 399, 400, 427
Fadé, Kel, 169, 318, 399, 400, 431
Fadeangh, Barth’s name for Fadé, 23 _n._[25]
Fagoshia, position of, 424
Fairness of skin among Tuareg, 161-2; a social distinction, 162, 173
Faji, Tuareg village, 39
Faken, Mount, 213
Falezlez, Wadi, 30-31
Fall, 51
Family system, Tuareg: authority of heads of families, 147; female
descent, 103-4, 148-53, 373, 398
Famine, the War of, 414
Faodet, 253, 254, 315-16; position of, 425
Faodet, Kel, 430, 431
Farak, 50, 51, 52, 54, 59, 60, 62, 439; disasters at, 59; hill
north of, 60; water supply at, 59
Fardi, Wadi, 3
Fareg, Wadi, 3
Fares, 304, 314, 316, 319
Fares, Kel, 149, 304, 428, 435
Fasher, El, 51
Fashi, 32, 68, 160, 191, 218, 219, 220, 315, 413, 414, 443, 450
Fashi road, 320
Fatimite era, the, 346
Fatness of Tuareg women, 118, 172, 406; a sign of affluence, 172
Fauna of Air, 27-8
Feast of the Sheep, Sidi Hamada, 95-7
Feast of the Veil, 289
Feasts, religious, 274-5
Fedala, the, 437
Fedekel, Kel, 437
Feet, insensitive skin of Tuaregs’, 165
Feitei, Kel, 433
Female descent, rule of, among Tuareg, 103-4, 148-53, 373, 398;
of kings of Kanem, 373
_Femmes douairières_, Tuareg, 169
Ferwan, Kel, 102, 104, 119, 129, 150, 415, 441; described as heathen,
258, 386; Imghad of, 139, 398; numbers of, 427; origin of, 395,
396, 398-9, 427; among original invaders of Air, 395, 396, 398,
399, 400; tribes and sub-tribes of, 427-8; women of, status of, 174
Festivals, Tuareg, 181, 274-5
Fevers, value of quinine against, 178
Fez, 343, 452, 453
Fezzan, the, 8, 9, 20, 112, 145, 334, 335; Ahaggaren and Azger
migrate into, 350; Arab conquest of, 325, 376; Azger of, 350, 354;
British geographical work in, 8, 20; cattle trade between Air and,
203; date palms of, 317; exploration of, 8, 9, 20, 248; French and
British factions in, 22; anti-French and -British activities in,
during war, 84, 92; Hawara of, 347, 379; houses of, 248, 254, 255;
conquered by Kanem, 112, 374, 406; Kel Innek of, 400; Lemta Tuareg
of, 376, 403, 445; oases of, 6; Okba’s invasion of, 376; Oraghen
of, 347; racial mixture in, 16; raiders of, 12, 13, 187, 188, 350;
road from Air to, 318-21; Roman occupation of, 322, 323, 324, 326,
403, 445; wheat exported from Air to, 133
Fezzan, Eastern, the, 112, 335; story of compulsory migration from,
366, 375
Fezzan, Southern, mountains of, 2, 3, 4
Fezzan mountains, unknown area between Air and, 32
Fezzanian branch of Tuareg, 254
Fida, Abul, 374 _n._[389]
Fire-making, nomads’ method of, 212
Firing, camel diseases treated by, 201
Fish, taboo on, 294
Flagged road (the “Garamantian way”), its existence discussed,
318-20
Flammand: _Les Pierres Ecrites_, 264 _n._[232]
Flat arm-rings, 286
Flatters, Colonel, 26; French expedition under, 9-10, 236
Flies, a pest, during rains in Air, 120-21, 125, 126
Flora of Air, 27
Flour, millet, preparation of, 159-60
Flowers rare in Air, 226
Fonfoni, wells filled in at, 451
Food, Tuareg, 157-60, 174, 211, 212
Food taboos, totemic, 294-5
Footgear, Tuareg, 164-6
Foreign Affairs, Tuareg Minister for, 106, 145
Foreign origin and servile status, 354
Foreign races, administration of, by empire of Melle, 407-8
Fort Laperrine, 12
Fort Motylinski, 12, 13
Fort Pradie, 51, 92
Fortified settlements, buildings of type of, 389
Fossil trees, specimens of, 81-2, 259
Foucauld, Charles de, 11-12, 13-14; on derivation and use of the
word Imajegh, 457, 458, 459; Tuareg dictionary by, 12 _n._[9], 269,
271, 454 _n._[456], 467; on Tuareg religion, 275
Foureau, F., 36, 299, 467
Foureau-Lamy Expedition, 26-7, 36, 50, 51, 60, 86, 99, 114 _n._[104],
143, 290, 316, 414 _n._[429], 416; observations taken from, 422,
424-5
Franks, emigration from North Africa, 376 _n._[390]
Freeman, H. Stanhope, 267, 467
French, the: African exploration and expansion by, 9-14, 25-7, 37;
penetration of Tuareg country by, 9-14, 26-7, 350, 352; occupation
and annexation of Air by, 26, 27, 50-52, 99, 114 _n._[104]
books destroyed by action of, 361, 385; Camel Corps of, 10, 11,
68, 84, 188, 189, 193, 198, 218, 219, 446, 450-51; colonial policy
of, 42, 360-61, 416; evacuation policy of, 360-61, 385; forts of,
12, 13, 86, 91, 118, 218, 316, 317, 320; maps of Air by, 27, 65,
68, 71, 131 _n._[120], 156 _n._[152], 183, 210 _n._[200], 214
_n._[206], 215 _n._[207], 218 _n._[208], 238, 241, 311 _n._[273],
314, 422, 424-5, 454 _n._[456], 466; mosque desecrated by, 385;
Nigeria indirectly defended by, 85; sedentarism encouraged by, 131;
seeds supplied by, 132; slavery abolished by, 134 _n._[122]
Tuareg and, hostilities between, 9-11, 13, 26, 51, 52, 114
_n._[104], 236, 328; migration of some tribes from, 51, 350, 352;
pacific counsels of others, 26-7, 51, 52, 414 _n._[429]; the 1917
revolt against, 39, 59, 60, 69, 70, 84-5, 86, 93, 98, 121-2, 127-8,
169, 185, 205, 302, 309, 420
French works on Air and the Tuareg, 14, 466, 467, 468. _See under
names of authors mentioned on these pages_.
Frobenius, 264 _n._[232]
Fugda, 217, 250, 439
Fulani, the, of Damergu, 16, 54, 55, 56-8, 203; Agades Cross among,
284; Hausa and, feud between, 42-3; houses of, 89; language of,
118, 155; musical instruments of, 44; a noble race, 56-7; in Punch
and Judy show, 56; tradition of return to the East among, 58
Fulani, Bororoji, 57-8
Fulani, Rahazawa, 57
Fulani Empire of Sokoto, the, 37, 57, 363, 415
Funerals, Tuareg, 181-2
Funerary inscriptions, absence of, 260, 263
Funerary monuments, North African, 260-62
“Fura,” 157, 305
Furniture, 309; household, Tuareg, 229-30
Gabes, 337
Gadé, Mount, 77 _n._[73], 79, 85
_Gado_, the, 100
Gagho (Gao), 345
Gago (Gao), 332 _n._[303], 404 _n._[417], 445, 452
Gall, 52
Game: Auderas, 184, 213; Elakkos, 446; Damergu, 43; Termit, 449,
450; T’in Wana, 81
Gamram, 47, 49-50, 52, 60, 334 _n._[309], 412, 413, 438, 439;
its amenities, 49; Belkho’s attack on, 75; extract from diary
written at, 420-21
Gangara, 44, 46, 48, 57, 97; position of, 424
Ganziga, the, 331, 332, 334
Gao, 110, 318, 332, 369, 374 _n._[389], 404, 405, 445; Agades as
entrepôt for, 411; Aulimmiden capture, 414; centre of gold trade,
411; decline of, 411; history of, 407, 408, 409; Ibn Batutah in,
345, 452, 456; Moors occupy, 411
Gao, King of, tribute from Air to, 410
Gaogao, (Gao), 345, 452
Garama, 112, 306, 323, 326, 436; the “Garamantian way,” 318-20,
321, 324
Garamantes, the, 16, 318, 321, 322, 323, 326, 354, 356; ox-drawn
chariots of, 203, 208, 318, 320, 321-2, 324; suggested descendants
of, 335-6
Garari, 44
Garazu, Ikazkazan of, 436, 443-4
Gardens, cultivation of, Air, 131, 132; carried on by negro slaves,
135
Garet valley, 418, 429, 434
Garet, Kel, (of Kel Geres), 380, 381, 434
Garet, Kel, (of Kel Tadek), 429
Garet n’Dutsi, Kel, 434
Gautier, E. F., 261-2, 468; _La Conquête du Sahara_, 10 _n._[8],
467; _Le Sahara_, 5 _n._[2], 27 _n._[30], 31 _n._[33]
Gawgawa, 345
Gazelle, 43, 81, 184, 204, 213, 446, 449, 450
Gedala, the, 343
Gedeyenan, the, 428
Geographical tribal names, 128, 129, 130
Geography, Tuareg knowledge of, 265-6
Geography of the Sahara, 2-5
Geres, Kel, 17, 53; Air invaded by, 256, 378, 380-82, 405-6; leave
Air for Southland, 65, 143, 366, 390-91, 392, 415; and Amenokal’s
installation, 100, 146, 384, 391, 392, 393, 397; Aulimmiden defeat,
391, 415; camels, white, of, 196; a Hawara people, 65, 82, 348
_n._[335], 387; houses of, 251, 253, 254; Islam introduced by, 256,
258; Itesan and, connection between, 370, 373, 378, 380, 392, 393,
397, 398; Kel Owi defeat and displace, 373-4, 383, 388, 389, 390,
391, 392, 415; tribal record of, 362; tribes of, 65, 381, 422-3;
wars of, 388, 390, 391-2, 415; women as heads of villages of, 169
Gergesenes, Libyans related to, 339
Gerigeri, 455
“Germa,” root of many place names, 306
German intrigues in North Africa during the War, 12-13, 93
Gezula, the, 343, 349
Gh sound, difficulty of transliterating, 271, 350 _n._[338]
Ghadames, 7, 8, 9, 21, 110, 323, 335, 336 _n._[314]; population of,
113; divination by women of, 281
Ghadamsi dialect, 267, 270
Ghamarama, 412
Ghana, kingdom of, 404, 405, 409
Gharama, Bir, 9-10, 236
Gharnathi, El, 330; _see_ Leo Africanus.
Gharus, 438
Gharus, Kel, 139, 143, 150, 308, 438
Gharus n’Zurru, 69, 74
Ghat, 7, 9, 20, 23, 24, 114, 145, 185, 335, 390; difficulty of
transcribing the word, 271; caravan road to, 30, 318; caravan roads
from, controlled by Azger, 354; cattle trade with, 203; development
of, 111-12, 113; Holy Men of, 280; houses of, 248; Oraghen in, 347;
population of, 113; race of, original, 155; raiders from, 12, 13;
religion of, recent conversion to Islam, 257-8; Romans in, 322,
323, 326; spirits at, 280
Tuareg of, female succession among, 151-2; Lemta, 403
Ghati camels, 195-6; brands of, 201-2
Ghela, Kel, 351, 373
Gheshwa, Mount, 33; volcanic cone, 241, 242
Ghodala, El (Guddala), 413; ruling family of, 103
Ghosts, Tuareg belief in, 278-9, 281
Ghudet, 320, 321
“Ghussub” water, 19, 157, 305
Gibbon quoted, 328
Gidjigawa, 51
Giga, Kel, 80, 429
Ginea, Mount, 47, 51
Giraffes, 43, 264, 446
Girls, Tuareg, freedom of, 173, 174-5
Gissat hills, 214, 428
Glyphs, rock, _see_ Rock drawings.
Goats, Air, 203, 204, 205
Goats, People of the (Kel Ulli), 52, 129, 307-8, 438
Goatskins, 223, 224; decorated, 227, 228; for water, 232
Gober, Kingdom of, 363, 367, 368, 403, 405; Air receives tribute
from, 383; Air at war with, 392; chiefs of, Copts, 294; Kel Geres
migrate to, 390, 391, 392; Songhai occupy, 409
Goberawa, the, 363, 403; in Air, 363, 364, 365, 368; driven from Air,
379, 381, 405; the Itesan and, 379
God, Tuareg words for, 278
Goethe, 91
“Gogdem,” 333-4
Gogo (Gao), 345, 374 _n._[389]
Gold Coast, British penetration of, 36
Gold currency, disappearance of, 221
Gold trade in Sudan, 411, 414
Gorset, Mount, 211
Gourara, 332, 334
Gourds, 132; rare in Air, 161
Government of the Air Tuareg, 144-8; of the tribal units, 147-8
Grain: from Damergu exported, 47; dishes made from, 157-8; of
Elakkos, 444; grinding of, 159-160; measures of, 220-21; former
reserves of, 48
Grain pits, Assode, 302
Granary of Air, Damergu as, 47
Granite formations, Air, 78, 119, 125
“Grape design” on Tuareg pottery, 161
Grasses, seeds of, ground and eaten, 158
Graves, Tuareg, 181, 259-63; peculiar form for a smith, 229
Great Bear, Tuareg name for, 226 _n._[212]
Great Bend, the, 30
Great South Road, the, 80; _see_ Kel Owi road and Tarei tan Kel Owi.
Green leather and silver, saddles ornamented with, 230-31
Grimaldi race, survivors of, 364 _n._[362]
Gsell: _Histoire de l’Afrique du Nord_, 173 _n._[168], 207
_n._[194], 208, 466, 467
Guddala, El, 413, 464; ruling family of, 103
Guenziga, the, 349
Guides, 72, 81, 125, 149, 185-7, 225-6, 320, 447; _see_ Efale,
Ishnegga, Kelama, Sattaf, Sidi, T’ekhmedin.
Guinea coast, Portuguese factory on, 409
Guinea corn, 47, 131, 133; cakes of, 157
Guinea-fowl, 43, 125, 126
Guinea-worm, 180
Gulbi n’Kaba, the, 33, 43, 44, 46, 71
Gulbi n’Maradi, the, 33
Guliski, 50, 60, 451; position of, 424; rainstorm at, 83
Guma, Muhammad, Sultan, 392, 465
“Gumrek,” 334 _n._[309]
Gundai hills, 308, 309, 313
Gure, 42, 43, 44, 442
Gurfautan, the, 433
Gurzil (the sun-god), 295
Haardt, 271
“Hád” plant, 70
“Hadanarang” (Ihadanaren), the, 128
Hadeija, 21, 41
Haggar, French form of Ahaggar, 128, 454; Ibn Khaldun’s etymology
of, 345, 346, 347, 353
“Hair,” _see_ Air.
Hair of Tuareg, 161; of children, 177; untidiness in, an abomination,
117
Haj Road, the, 20, 318
Hakar (Ahaggar), Ibn Batutah in, 453, 454, 455, 456
Hakluyt Society reprint of Leo Africanus, editors of, 331
Halévy, J., on Libyan script, 267
Halo, solar, an evil omen, 296
Ham, 339
Hamed el Rufai, Sultan, 99
Hammad, Muhammad, Sultan, 103, 109, 392, 464, 465
Hammada el Homra, the, 322, 324
Hamid ibn Yesel, 337
Handful as unit of capacity, 220-21
Hannekar, 59, 60, 72, 74, 81, 418; track to Agades, 62
Hanoteau, A.: grammar of Temajegh by, 266, 269, 271, 467; on MZGh
root, 458-9
Harris Papyrus, the, 6
Hassan ibn Muhammad el Wezaz el Fazi, 330; _see_ Leo Africanus
Hassanein Bey, 3, 336
Hatita camel mark, 202
Hats, Kano conical, 166
Haunted places, Air, 278-9
Hausa, the term, 16 _n._[17]; called “black,” 162; commercial
genius of the people, 38; feud with Fulani, 42-3; houses of, 89;
not pure negroes, 363
Hausa language, 16, 17, 40-41, 118, 154
Hausaland, 218; conquered by Bornu, 412; Fulani ascendancy in, 56,
57, 415; Goberawa withdraw into, 379; Songhai occupation of, 409
“Hawar, people of,” 325
Hawara, the, 65, 270, 274, 325 _n._[290], 341, 359, 385 _n._[405];
ancestors of the Ahaggaren tribes, 270, 345, 349, 359, 387;
“Arabisation” of, 346-7; Auriga the same as, 341, 343, 346, 347,
349, 387; home of, 345; Ibn Khaldun on, 341, 343, 345, 346, 347,
353, 379; Kel Geres descended from, 65, 82, 348 _n._[334], 387;
division of Libyan family, 341, 343, 346, 347; Lemta people and,
345, 346, 348, 353; not all Tuareg, 346-7
Hawarid origin of the Lemta, 345-6, 353, 359
Hawk’s head as amulet, 282
Head-cloths, Arab use of, 286
Head-piece, camel’s, 276
Head-ropes, camel’s, 193, 224, 228
Head-stones on graves, 260
Headmen, village, 127-8, 131, 339
Heaven, Tuareg belief in, 278
Height of Tuareg, 163
Hell, Tuareg belief in, 278
Henna, use of, 173
Herding, live-stock, 135-6
Hereditary principle rare among Tuareg, 151
Hernia frequent among Tuareg, 180
Herodotus, 7, 176, 206, 208, 281, 282, 295, 324, 365, 369, 457, 468
Heskura, the, 343, 349
“Hill of the Christians,” the, 313
Hillali, Abu Zeid el, invasion of North and Central Africa by,
376, 404
Himyarite tribes, 341; invasion of, 342
Himyer, 341, 371
Historical works, native, 360, 361-2
History, Tuareg knowledge of, 265, 360, 361-2
Hobble ropes, 224
Hoggar, French form of Ahaggar, 128
Hole of Bayazid, the, legend of, 281
Holy Books, niches in houses for, 247
Holy Men, 289, 290, 293, 316, 355, 357, 405; amulets manufactured
by, 282; children named by, 181; divination by, 281; as exorcisers,
280; raids on Aulimmiden forbidden by, 190
Holy tribes, 290-91, 306, 355, 357, 437, 438, 439, 440
Hornemann, F. C., expedition of, 8, 19-20, 336; on date of arrival
of Kel Owi in Air, 383, 386; on the Tegama, 53; on Tuareg ascendancy
in Gober, 392; work by, 19 _n._[22], 336, 467
Horses, Air, 202
Hospitality, Tuareg laws of, 210, 237
House of the Christians, 312-13
House-flies, country infested by, during rains, 120, 121, 125
Household duties, Tuareg, 174
Household slaves, 134, 136
Houses: Central African, 87, 89; Northern Nigerian, 87-8, 89;
Sudanese, 87, 88, 90; Tuareg, various types of, 89, 90, 92, 181,
184, 239, 240-41, 244-55, 256, 302, 309, 310-11, 314, 315-16;
attributed to the Itesan, 239, 244-6, 251, 252, 253, 254, 377-8,
381, 389, 393; fortified type, 389
Huart, C.: _Arabic Literature_, 292 _n._[256]
Human figure, rock drawings of, 265
Hume, King of Kanem, 372; _see_ Beni Hume.
Huts, Tuareg, 184, 253, 254; stone circles round, 262-3; on raised
plinths, 262-3
“I names,” tribal, 128, 130, 139, 303-4, 306, 352, 400, 430;
lost, 395
Iabrubat (Iburuban), the, 434
Ialla (God), 278
Ibandeghan, the, 52
Ibanderan, the, 437
Iberdianen, the, 428
Iberkom, 316
Iberkom, Kel, 437
Iberkoran (Aulimmiden), the, 379
Ibn Abd el Hakim, 325 _n._[289]
Ibn Assafarani, 369
Ibn Batutah, 18, 19, 452, 468; account of Air by, 18, 19, 452-3,
456; Agades not mentioned by, 116; his journey, 114, 406, 452-6;
on female descent, 103, 151; on the Mesufa, 175-6, 364, 405
Ibn Ghania, 343, 407
Ibn Khaldun, Abu Zeid Abd el Rahman, 151 _n._[141], 293,
294 _n._[258], 295, 325 _n._[289], 330, 337-43, 371, 377, 468;
classification of the Libyans by, 338-43; on the divisions of the
Muleththemin, 349, 379; on the origin of the Tuareg, 343-4, 345,
346, 347, 348, 353, 379
Ibogelan, the, 351
Ibrahim, Sultan, 464
Ibrahim Dan Sugi, 99
Ibram, Chief of the Tegama, 53
Iburuban, the, 434
Ibuzahil, 102, 104
Ice in the Sahara, 4
Idakka, Kel, 438
Ideleyen, the, 428
Idemkiun, the, 441
Idenan, the, founders of Timbuctoo, 407
Idikel, position of, 424
I’dinet n’sheggarnén, Barth’s term for Tuareg, 460
Ido well, 450
Idris, King of Bornu, 410
Idris Alawoma (Ansami), King of Bornu, 412, 413, 414
Idrisi, El, 337, 369, 374 _n._[389]
“Iet,” Tuareg letter, 276
Ifadalen, the, 397, 400, 438; Damergu, 440
Ifadeyen, the, 60, 65, 74, 80, 82, 191, 209, 395, 428, 431, 436;
of Damergu, 440; literacy of, 268, 400; nomadism of, 400; origin of,
399-400; wells attributed to, 74
Ifagarwal, the, 437
“Ifarghan, village of,” 156 _n._[150]
Iferuan, 26, 114, 115, 122, 129, 189, 218, 246, 290, 302, 308, 311,
315, 317, 418; French fort at, 316; houses at, 248; Kel Ferwan
move from, 389; Kel Ferwan named after, 395, 427; position of,
424 _n._[435], 425; rains in, 123, 124; roads meeting at, 318, 319;
valley, 258
Iferuan, Kel (not Kel Ferwan), 437
Iferuan-Ghat track, 185
Ifli, Wadi, 452 _n._[449]
Ifoghas, the, 52-3, 54, 254, 327, 394, 428, 441; of the Azger,
18 _n._[18]; of Damergu, 18 _n._[18], 80, 439; a holy tribe, 355,
357, 439; probably Lemta, 355-6, 357, 358
Ifoghas n’Adghar, 18, 52, 398-9
Ifoghas of the Mountain (Ifoghas n’Adghar), 18, 52, 398-9
Ifrikiya, 325, 341; defended by Queen Kahena against Arabs, 170,
265; the Hawara in, 345
Ifrikos, 341, 371
Ifuraces, the, 327, 356, 357, 358, 439
“Ifurfurzan,” colour of camels, 196
Igademawen, the, 243, 306, 436
Igdalen, the, 162, 355, 380, 394, 395, 400, 441; of Damergu, 440;
a holy tribe, 290; Imghad among, 394; their migration into Air,
373, 378, 380, 394, 395
Igedeyenan, the, 428
Igermaden, the, 146, 243, 303, 306, 436; chief of, _see_ Belkho;
massacre of, 191; tribes and sub-tribes of, 436
Igerzawen, the, 437
Ighaghar basin, 9, 10, 28
Ighaghrar valley, 156 _n._[152], 214
Ighazar basin, the, 23, 26, 34, 241 _n._[217], 264, 308, 315, 316,
395, 437; evacuated during revolt, 122; Kel Owi occupy, 308, 389,
427; measures used in, 221; palm trees of, 316, 317; villages of,
316, 318; wheat cultivation in, 133
Ighazar, Kel, 122, 436-7, 441
Ighazar n’Agades, 78
Ighelablaban, 239
Ighelaf wells, 451
Ighelaf, Kel, 60, 433
“Ighillan” (measure of length), 222
Ighlab (Ighelaf), Kel, 433
Ighzan, 33
Igidi, desert of, 332, 333-4
Igidi, the, 358
Iguendianna, the, 428
Igululof, 309-11; houses in, 248
Igululof, Kel, 304, 435
Igururan, the, 304, 435
Ihadanaren, the, 128, 354
Ihagarnen, the, 162 _n._[156]
“Ihaggar” (Ahaggar), 128
Ihaggaren, the, 162 _n._[156]
Ihehawen, the, a holy tribe, 355
Ihrayen spring, 62, 70, 71
Ihrsan, the spirits of, 279
Ijanarnen, the, 395, 433
Ijaranen, the, 378, 394, 395, 400, 403, 433
Ikadeen, the, 351
Ikademawen (Igademawen), the, 436
Ikaradan, the, 117, 430, 441
Ikawkan, the, 428
Ikazkazan, the, 128, 145, 169, 290, 303, 307-8, 318, 437-8;
in Damergu, 52, 303, 436, 440; in Elakkos, 303, 307, 308, 443-4;
Imghad of, called heathen, 273; tribes and sub-tribes of, 52, 129,
307-8, 437-8, 441
Ikelan, the, 134, 135, 136, 155
Ikerremoïn, the, 351
Ilaguantan, the, 357, 358
Ilagwas (Elakkos), 445
Ilagwas, the, 370
Ilasgwas, the, Elakkos Tuareg identified with, 445
Ilemtin, the, 355-6, 358
Ilettan, 404
“Illeli,” 459
Imajegh: the MZGh root of the word, 457-62; a caste appellation,
458, 459, 460
Imajeghan (nobles, _q.v._), 15, 170, 171, 354-5; Ahaggaren,
350-51, 352; Azger, 348, 354-5; dark colouring of, 162; diminishing
numbers of, 150; marriage tribute payable to, 141; among Kel Owi,
144 _n._[134]; relations of Imghad and, 137, 138, 139, 140-43
Imajeghan n’Arab, the, 459
Imam, the, Agades, 96, 97
Imanen, the, 354, 355, 400, 432; affinity with the Itesan, 384-5
Imanen Kings of Azger, 348, 352, 353
Imanen women, legendary mothers of Kel Owi tribes, 384, 392
Imanghassaten, the, 354
Imaqoaran, the, 52, 395, 396, 397, 398, 400, 431
Imarsutan, the, 52, 304, 435; Kel Tagei of, 398, 435
Imaslagha, the, 134, 303, 304, 314; tribes and sub-tribes of, 134,
303-4, 435-6
Imasrodang, the, 129, 303, 306, 436; tribes and sub-tribes of, 129,
306, 436-7, 440, 441
“Imawal” (part of the Veil), 287, 288
Imazir (form of Imajegh), 457
Imettrilalen, the, 354
Imezegzil, the, 303, 384, 395, 400; tribes and sub-tribes of,
429, 430
Imghad (serfs), 15, 105, 128, 137-8, 142, 351; Barth’s error
regarding, 461 _n._[475]; categories of, 138-9; concubinage and,
138-9; dark colouring of, 162, 366; Imajeghan and, relations between,
137, 138, 139, 140-43; among Kel Owi, 144 _n._[134]; lists showing
tribes of, 427-31, 435-40; negroid inhabitants of Air as, 138,
365-6; nobles, conquered, as, 138, 394, 460; origins of, 137-8,
139, 365-6, 394, 460; prosperity of, 137, 142; racial types in,
137, 138; slaves rise to be, 135; status of, 105, 140-43, 150;
veils, distinguishing, worn by some, 139-40
Imi n’Aghil, 247
Imi n’Ataram, 247
Imi n’Innek, 247
Imi n’Tasalgi, 247
Immakkorhan (Imaqoaran), the, 431
Immedideran, the, 307, 437; founders of Timbuctoo, 407
Immidir, Wadi, 31
Immikitan, the, 243, 303, 304, 371, 429, 443; of Assatartar,
436; of Elakkos, 370, 440, 443; name used for Tuareg, 396; one of
original five tribes, 370, 378, 394, 395-6, 397, 400, 429, 443;
tribes and sub-tribes of, 429-30
Imohagh (form of Imajegh), 457
Imohaq (form of Imajegh), 457
Imóshag (form of Imajegh), 457, 459
Imuzurak, the (Ikazkazan), 438
Imuzurak, the (Kel Ferwan), 50, 52, 428; hostilities with French,
51, 52
Imuzuran, the, 428
In Abbagarit, position of, 425
In Allaram, position of, 425
In Asamed, 26, 30, 31, 33, 54, 59, 61, 62, 123; filled in, 60
In Azawa, 260, 317, 318, 354, 455, 456
In Bodinam, 240
In Gall, 114, 189, 317, 318, 402, 441, 456; position of, 424
In Gall, Kel, 441
In Gezzam, position of, 425
In Kakkan, position of, 425
In Salah, 30, 111
In Wadjud, 430
Inafagak valley, 61
Inardaf, the, 433
Independent tribes, Kel Owi, 438-9
Indigo cloth, Tuareg dress made of, 163, 164, 177; the Veil made of,
140, 287
Indigo plant, 132
Indigo-stained skin as protection from sun, 163
Industries, Tuareg, 131, 164-6, 174, 227-30, 231, 277, 310; in
women’s hands, 174, 227
Inemba Kel Emoghi, the, 350
Inemba Kel Tahat, the, 351
Infant mortality high among Tuareg, 178
Infanticide, 175
Inheritance and succession, matriarchal tradition in, 151-3; of
women’s property, 168
Inisilman (Holy Men), 54, 154, 290, 291; Azger tribes of, 355;
_see_ Holy Men and Holy tribes.
Innek, Kel, 129, 369; first Tuareg to enter Air, 254, 369, 370,
375, 397, 398, 400; sub-tribe of the Itesan, 370, 398, 432
Innek, Kel (unlocated), 441
Inscriptions: on arm rings, 286; on graves, 260; on rocks, 213,
260, 264, 268-9, 271, 315, 360
Insect pests during rains in Air, 120-21, 125-6
Installation of Amenokal, 99-100, 103, 108, 109, 379, 383, 391,
393, 397, 432
Intadeini, 434
Intadeini, Kel, 434
Intayet, 430
Inter-breeding in camels, result of, 196-7
Intirza, Kel, 307
Intirzawen, Kel (Tetmokarak), 433; (Kel Owi), 435, 436
Inwatza, 418
Inzerak, 214, 215
Ir n’Allem, 122, 365
Iralghawen (Eghalgawen), 347
Irawattan, the, 427
Irawellan (outdoor slaves), 134, 135, 155; numbers of, 402
Iraz, Sultan, 406 _n._[422]
Irejanaten, the, 151
Ireshshumen, the, 351
Irkairawan, the, 434
Irmakaraza, the, 434
“Irolangh,” 134
Iron in well, alleged effect of, 453
Iron-working, Tuareg, 229
_Irratemat_ (sandals), 165 _n._[159]
Irrigation, Air, 131, 132, 133, 239
Isabel (Izubahil), wife of first Sultan of Agades, 102, 104
Isagelmas valley, 80, 82
Isakarkaran, the, 428
Ischia, lava flows on, 242
Ishaban, Kel, 355
Isherifan, the (of Gamram), 50, 52, 60, 439; a holy tribe, 290,
438; Belkho’s defeat of, 50, 75, 440
Isherifan, the (Tetmokarak), 433
Ishnegga, the guide, 72, 81
Islam: introduction of, into Air, 256-8; Maliki sect of, 291-2;
matriarchate modified by, 152; new spirit in, 12, 13; Tuareg
conversion to, and lax practice of, 273, 274, 290, 291, 293, 324-5;
women’s position under, 152, 168, 170, 174
Issala, wells of, 9
Istambul (Constantinople), 101, 266
Italian occupation of Tripolitania, and Tuareg movements, 8
Itesan, the, 109, 214, 253, 394, 406; original invaders of Air,
244, 253, 254, 370, 373-4, 378, 379, 380, 381, 395, 400, 432; leave
Air for Southland, 366, 373-4, 377, 392, 393, 398, 432; and the
election of the Amenokal, 100, 103, 109, 379, 391, 393, 397, 432;
the Goberawa and, 379; houses attributed to, 239, 244-6, 251, 252,
253, 254, 377-8, 381, 389, 393; “Kel” names among, origin of,
378, 380, 381, 398; connection between the Kel Geres and, 370, 373,
378, 380, 392, 393, 397, 398; migration westward of, 251, 252, 377,
389, 398, 413; among the Sanhaja, 377; tribes and sub-tribes of,
380-81, 398, 432-3; wells attributed to, 300, 377, 378
Ittegen, the (Kel Tadek), 429; (independent), 438
Itziarrame, the, 432
Iuraghen, the, 347
Iwarwaren, the, 162
Izagaran (Izagharan), the, 52, 397, 400, 440
Izagarnen (“the red ones”), name for Tuareg, 162 _n._[156]
Izagheran, the, 52
Izar, Sultan, 406
Izarza, the, 430-31
Izarzaran, the, Damergu, 440
Izenan, the, 434
Izeyyakan, the, 303, 431, 435
“Izghan,” 117
Izirza, Kel, 429
Izubahil (Isabel), wife of first Sultan of Agades, 102, 104
Izumzumaten, the, 429
Jackals, 125
Jado oasis, 320, 321, 326, 334
Jaghbub, 3
Jajiduna, 47, 48; French fort at, 51
Jalo, 3
Janet, 12, 53, 185
Jauf, 347 _n._[333]
Jawan, 325
Jean, Lieut. C., 27, 238, 387; _Les Touareg du Sud-Est_ by, 14,
28, 50 _n._[50], 94 _n._[82], 101 _n._[88], 102 _n._[89],[91],
107 _n._[98], 120 _n._[110], 174 _n._[169], 274 _n._[245], 281
_n._[251], 390 _n._[407], 468; Agades occupied by, 52; on Assode,
301; astronomical observations made by, 422, 424, 425; on Bornu wars
with Air, 413; on Egyptian influence in Air, 363 _n._[360]; on French
colonial policy, 416; on the houses of Bagezan, 240-41; live-stock
census by, 204; on Kel Geres invasion and evacuation of Air, 380,
391; on date of arrival of Kel Owi in Air, 257 _n._[225], 382, 386;
on date of mosques of Air, 256, 257; on polygamy in Air, 170-71;
on population of Air, 402; on tribal origins and organisation,
383-4, 387, 393, 395, 426, 427, 428-31, 435-6, 439-41, 443-41;
tribes sending delegation to Constantinople, list given by, 397;
on Tuareg invasion of Air, and its date, 256, 362, 371, 382, 386,
404; on Tuareg of Damergu and Elakkos, 415 _n._[432], 443, 444
Jedala (Jadala), the, 331, 343, 348, 349
Jekarkaren, the, 428
Jenne, 409, 411
“Jenun” (Jinn), 278 _n._[249], 280
Jerboa considered unclean, 294
Jerma, 112, 306, 321, 323, 325, 436
Jewellers, Agades, 229
Jews, “Berber” tribes as, 294; massacre of, in Tuat, 291, 292
Jinns: amulets against, 282; Tuareg tales of, 278-81
Joalland, Lieut., 50
Jodar, Basha, 411
John, Byzantine general, 327
John (Yunis), first Sultan of Agades, 102, 103, 104, 463
Jokto, the, 412-13
Juba, 206
Judaism in North Africa, 294
Justice, system of, Agades, 107, 110
Kadhi, the, Agades, 96, 107; house of, 92
Kaffardá valley, 63
Kahena, Queen, 170, 265, 294
Kahir (Air), 406, 454
Kahor (Air), 453, 454, 455
Kaimakam, 25
Kalama, 226
Kalenuzuk, the, 428
Kallilua, 46, 48
Kanem, 369; chronicle of, 372-3, 374; Bornu dynasty expelled from,
374, 375; Fezzan overrun from, 112, 374, 406; Kanuri seize power
in, 369, 370, 371-2, 374, 407; Tuareg as rulers of, 371, 372-3,
374, 375; Tuareg expelled by Kanuri from, 371-2, 374, 375; Tuareg
invade Air from, 369-70, 372, 375
Kanem, Empire of, 374, 410
Kano, 38, 44, 106, 110, 291, 335, 413, 418, 419; Agades deserted for,
411; annexation of, 137; Bornu conquers, 412; cloth of, 164, 166;
country round, 41; Fulani in, 57; houses of, 87, 90; industries of,
164, 166; Kel Owi attack on, 415; modern prosperity of, 418, 419;
railway from Lagos to, 38; Senussi “zawia” at, 48; slave market
in, 38; Songhai attack on, 410; Tuareg migrate to, 38, 39, 361, 411
Kano, Emirate of, 37
Kanuri, the, 16, 49, 117, 218, 441; Agades Cross among, 284; as
“Barbars” or “Beriberi,” 371; Bornu Tuareg overthrown by,
335, 371-2, 374, 375, 403, 404; in Damergu, 42, 43, 47, 55, 56;
Daura conquered by, 363; in Elakkos, 443, 446; Goberawa conquer,
363; hair dress of, 44; settlement and rise to power in Kanem, 369,
370, 371-2, 374, 407; Kawar conquered by, 335; language of, 16,
118, 373 _n._[386]; Tuareg migrations caused by, 335, 358, 369-70,
372, 375, 404, 414, 415, 444; their name for Tuareg, 412 _n._[426]
Kaossen, 69, 84, 86, 92-3, 99, 185, 385, 420; the House of,
Agades, 92
Karawa, 46
“Karengia” grass, 58-9, 62; _see_ Burr grass.
Karnuka, 155
Karruwe (weight), 222
Kashwar n’Tawa, 68
Kaswa n’Rakumi, 91
Katanga, 91
Katchena, Kel, 40, 117
Katsina, 38, 110, 291, 413; Agades deserted for, 411; annexation
of, 37; El Baghdadi preaches in, 291, 292; Fulani in, 57; Itesan
attack, 391; slave market in, 38; Songhai occupation of, 409, 410;
Tuareg migrate to, 39, 361, 411, 427
Katsina, Emir of, 39
Kaukau, 345
Kawa, 414-15
Kawar, 31, 32, 98, 218, 334, 335, 369; caravan road by, 7, 8, 37,
318, 320, 325, 358, 369, 403, 443, 446, 450; Kanuri conquer, 335,
406; Okba’s campaign in, 325, 326 _n._[292]; pastureless, 219;
raids on, 182, 188, 191, 350
Kawar road, 318, 320, 325, 358, 369, 403, 443, 446, 450
Kawkaw (Gao), 452
Kawkaw (Kuka), 445
Keane: on the Berdeoa and the Garamantes, 335-6
Kebbi, 413
“Kel” names, tribal, 128-30, 139, 303-4, 370; among the Itesan,
derivation of, 378, 380, 381
Kel Aberkan, _etc._, _see under_ Aberkan, Kel, _etc._
Kel Owi road, 61, 74-5, 308, 319, 320, 383, 390. _See also_ “Tarei
tan Kel Owi.”
Kelama, 187
Kelghimmat, the, 429
Kerfeitei, the, 433
Kerker, Sultan of, Ibn Batutah’s, 406, 453, 454-5, 456
Keta valley, 61, 64
Ketama, the, 340, 341, 343, 349, 351
Khalif (Commander of the Faithful), deputation from Air to, 101,
102, 104, 105
“Khans,” 255
Kharejite schism, the, 346
Khodi, 142-3, 185, 438
Khoms, 21
Kidal, 52
Kidigi, 60
Kindin, Kanuri name for Tuareg, 412 _n._[426]
King, _see_ Amenokal.
Kings of Agades, list of, 463-5
“Kipti” (Copts) in Air, 294, 363
“Knights-Errant of the Desert Roads,” the, 168
Knives, Tuareg, 234, 236
“Kohl” (antimony), use of, 173
Kokoi Geregeri (chief minister), 106, 406
“Kolouvey” (Kel Owi), the, 20
Korunka, 180 _n._[172]
Kosegarten, J. G. L., version of Ibn Batutah by, 452, 453, 468
Kufara (heathen), 273
Kufra, 3, 6, 98, 335, 336; a Senussi centre, 336
Kugha, 404 _n._[417]
Kuka, 21, 332 _n._[303], 345, 415, 445
Kukia, Libyan dynasty of, 404
Kunta, the, 355
“Kus-kus,” 133, 157-8
Kuttus, 42
Laghuat, 111
Lagos, 38, 419; railway to Kano from, 38
Laguatan, the, 357
Lake, Gamram, 49; rumoured, in Bagezan, 238
Lake Chad, _see_ Chad, Lake, _and_ Chad area.
Lamini, Sultan, 413
Lamy, Commandant, 26, 36; _see_ Foureau-Lamy Expedition.
Land settled on chief women, 169
Language, Tuareg (_see_ Temajegh), 15, 339; words associated with
Christianity in, 277
Laperrine, 11, 12
Laperrine, Fort, 12
Laterite rock, disintegrating, 449, 450
Latif, Sheikh el, 192
Latitudes and longitudes of points in Air, 422-5
Lava flows, Air, 216, 241-2
Lazaret, Kel, 437
Leather and metal decoration, 277, 310
Leather pouches, amulets in, 282, 284
Leather-working industry, 174, 277-8; in women’s hands, 174;
decorated luggage rests, 277; riding saddles, 230-31, 377
Lebetae, 337
Lebu, the, 337
Lee, S., translation of Ibn Batutah, 452-3, 468
Legends, Tuareg, 279, 280, 281
Lemta, the, 254, 331; Ahaggaren and, 345; Aulimmiden as part of,
341, 345, 355, 356, 357-8, 379, 445; Azger Tuareg as, 331, 335, 341,
348, 350, 351, 352, 355, 357, 358, 432; area occupied by, 331, 334,
335, 341, 344, 345, 355, 356, 357, 358, 370, 445; Barth’s error
regarding, 344-5, 358; Bornu Tuareg as, 376; Hawarid origin of, 345,
346, 353; Ibn Khaldun on, 340, 343, 345, 346, 353; Ifoghas as, 355,
356, 357, 358; Ilemtin represent, 355, 358; Lemtuna and, confusion
between, 344-5, 358; Leo Africanus on, 331, 334, 335, 344, 345,
349, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 370, 445; as a Libyan people, 331,
334, 335, 340, 341, 343; migration of, south and west, 341, 345,
356, 357, 358-9, 376-7, 378, 379, 445; original stock of first and
last migrants into Air, 254, 345, 349, 356, 359, 370, 403; Tuareg
invasion of Air involved by migration of, 358-9, 377, 379, 403, 445
Lemtuna, the, 331, 343, 344, 349, 358, 404; confused with Lemta,
344-5, 358
Length, measure of Air, 222
Lenz, O.: on the two families of the “Berbers,” 458
Leo Africanus, 6 _n._[5], 110 _n._[101], 330, 347 _n._[333], 363
_n._[361], 468; account of Agades by, 19, 410; account of Air by,
18, 19, 359; on the Amenokal, 97 _n._[83], 99, 108, 110 _n._[101];
Kel Owi not mentioned by, 383, 386; on the Lemta, 331, 334, 335,
344, 345, 349, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 370, 445; on the divisions
of the Muleththemin, 330-31, 332, 334-5, 337-8, 343, 344, 345, 348,
349; on areas and tribes of the Sahara, 330-35, 336-7, 343, 344,
345, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 364
Leptis Magna, 207, 208
“Leuata,” the, 337
Leucæthiopians, the, 173 _n._[168], 307
Levata, the, 337, 340, 357
Library, Assode, remains of, 302
Libya, areas and peoples of, Leo Africanus on, 330-35, 336-7;
_see_ Libyans.
Libyan, origin of word, 337
Libyan desert, the, 3, 334, 335, 336, 337; story of compulsory
migration from, 366; Tuareg possibly originally inhabitants of,
366, 376
Libyan dynasty, Kukia, 404
Libyan influence in Air and the Southland, 403, 405, 406
Libyan names, the MZGh root in, and its significance, 339, 356,
457-62
Libyans, the, 16, 164 _n._[158], 262; areas and peoples of, 330-35,
336-7, 338-43, 356; belts worn by, 194, 265; term used for Berbers,
7, 371, 372 _n._[382]; classification of, by Ibn Khaldun, 338-43;
descent from Prophet claimed by, 339-40, 342; dogs ceremonially eaten
by, 295; Eastern origin of, legendary, 340; facial characteristics
of, 187; Leo Africanus on, 330-35, 336-7; marriage customs of, 176;
migration of, legendary, 366-7; nationalism among, 12-13; origin of,
mixed, 340, 458, 462; sun worship among, 12-13; Tuareg relationship
with, 7, 262, 341, 342, 356, 366, 462; women, status of, among,
151, 152
Libyans, Eastern, work on, _see_ Bates.
Libyans, Meshwesh, 151, 337, 356, 457, 461, 462
Lime trees, 160, 239
Lion claws as amulets, 282
Lions still seen in Air, 119-20
Literature, Tuareg, 173, 263; historical works, 360, 361-2
_Litham_ (the Veil), 329, 330
Live-stock industry, Air, 133-4, 190, 202-5; evacuation policy and,
361; herding carried on by slaves, 135-6
Lizards, taboo on, 294
Load ropes, 224
Loading and unloading camels, 198, 223, 224-5
Lollius, L., 207
Louata, the, 340, 357
Love affairs, Tuareg, 174-5, 176
Lugard, Sir F., 37, 42
Luggage rests, decorated, 230, 310
Lyon, G. F., work by, 21, 467
Lyon expedition, the, 8
Ma el Fares, 325-6
Macae, the, 457, 461, 462
MacGuire, Corporal, 21
Macii, the, 460
Madghis, Libyan family of, 338, 339, 340, 341
Mafaras, 326
Mafinet hills, 156; valley, 131 _n._[120]
Mafinet, Kel, 381, 432; Agoalla of, 397
“Magadeza,” the, 106-7
Magazawa Hausa women, 44
Maghili, El, 291, 292, 293
Maghrabi camels, 196
Maghreb, the, 339
Maghzen (Bagezan), Kel, 381, 432
Magic square, rock drawing of, 321
Magnesia, battle of, 206
Maisumo valley, 69; well, 74, 76
“Makam el Sheikh ben Abd el Kerim,” 292
Maket n’Ikelan, 138; tradition of, 367-8, 373, 381, 383, 392,
414 _n._[429]
Malabar Indians, laws of inheritance among, 151
Malam Chidam, 46
Malaria, 178, 179, 181, 186
Maliki sect, people of Air belong to, 291, 292
Mallamei, the, 439
Manding origin of leather industry, 227
Manen, Kel, 400, 432
Manga, 21
Mange in camels, 201
Manna, Leo Africanus on, 19
Mansa Magha, 408
Mansa (Kunkur) Musa, 407, 408
Mansur, El, 337
Manumission of slaves, 135, 137, 138, 140, 141
Manuscripts found at Assode, 302
Maouen (Mawen), Kel, 430
Maps, Tuareg comprehension of, 266
Maps of Air, 466-7; _see_ Cortier.
Maqrizi, El, 372 _n._[383], 374 _n._[389]
Maradi, 42, 411
Marandet, 77, 119, 121; position of, 424; urn cemetery at, 121,
161, 263
Marcellinus, Ammianus, 207 _n._[191]
Mari, Mount, 242, 308, 390
Mari well, 242
Mari Jatah I, 407
Mari Jatah, Vizier, 408
Maria Teresa dollars, 221, 222
Marinus of Tyre, 323 _n._[283]
Markets, development of, along caravan roads, 110
Marmol, 116
Marriage, Tuareg system, 170-71, 174, 175, 196-7; festivals,
181; late in life, 173, 289; not arranged, 174; by purchase, 181;
wife’s intimate male friends, 175-6
Marriage portions, 177; Imghad, part payable to Imajeghan, 141
Masalet, 69, 81, 114
Masa’udi, El, 337, 345, 371, 468
Maspero, G., 286, 468
Masquerey, E., dictionary and grammar of Temajegh by, 222 _n._[211],
266, 271, 459, 467
“Masri” blades, 233
Masson, Captain, 10
“Master of the Interior of the Palace,” 106
Matali, chief of the Ifadeyen, 399
Maternus, Julius, in the Fezzan, 323, 326
Matriarchate, the, 151-3
Matriarchy among Tuareg, 103, 148-53, 170, 171; and monogamy, 171
Mats, 158, 174, 212, 227
Mauretania, 332, 377, 379, 404 _n._[419]
Mawen, Kel, 430, 436
Maxitani, the, 457, 460
Maxyes, the, 356, 457
Mazaces, the, 457, 461
Mazi, the, 460
Mazia, 46, 48
Mazices, the, 356, 358, 457, 461
Mazigh, common ancestor of Libyans, 339, 341, 458
Mazigh, the, 458
Mazil, the, Arab tribe, 354
Measures and weights, Air, 220-22
Meat, little eaten by Tuareg, 158-9
“Mecca of the Slaves, The,” 367; _see_ Maket n’Ikelan
Medicine, native, 82, 180, 201
Medina date palms, 317
Medinet el ’Amira, 452 _n._[449]
Mediterranean, the: civilisation brought southwards from, 37, 393,
401; known to Tuareg, 266
Mela, 282
Melle, Empire of, 37, 47, 48, 407-8, 409; administration of foreign
races by, 407-8; revolts in, 411; Songhai overthrow, 409
Melle, Vizier of, 408
Melons, 132
“Men with Eyes in their Stomachs,” possibly Tuareg, 376
Menzaffer valley, 59
“Merabtin,” the, 405
“Meratha” (Imghad), 140
Mermeru, 91
Mesche mountain, 327
Meshagra, the, Arab tribe, 354-5
Meshwesh, the, 337, 457, 461; probable ancestors of Tuareg, 356,
462; succession in female line among, 151
Mesi (God), 278
Mesufa, the, 151, 153, 344, 364, 405, 408; status of women of, 175-6
Meteorological record kept by author, 423
Migration from Red Sea, reference to, 342
Migrations, tribal, _see under names of tribes_.
Migrations, Tuareg: into Air, 52, 53, 113, 254, 256, 359, 364, 365-6,
366-93, 403, 404; date of, 256, 364, 371, 373, 375, 381, 403, 404;
caused by Kanuri, 335, 358, 369-70, 372, 375, 404, 414, 415, 444;
Lemta movement and, 358-9, 377, 379, 403, 445; stages of, 52, 53,
254, 359, 366-93, 394, 403; into the Southland, 17, 38, 39, 51,
65, 143, 361, 366, 373-4, 377, 390-91, 392, 393, 398, 411, 415, 432
Mikitan, Osman, 52, 99, 108, 465
Milen, 60, 62, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 418; well of, 72-4, 75, 76
Milk, camel’s, 211; offering of, Bororoji custom, 58
Millet cultivation, 47, 64, 131, 133, 444, 445; dishes made from,
157; flour, preparation of, 159-60; stores for, in villages, 42
Millet mortar used as drum, 272
Mimosa, 226
Minaret, Agades, 86, 87, 93-4, 302; Assode, 301, 302
Mineral springs, 127, 241
Minéru, 239, 438
Minir, El, 239, 438
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Agades, 106, 116
Mintaka, El, 154, 155, 181, 280, 302
Minutilli, 336 _n._[316]
Mirages, Northern Air, 300
Misgiddan (Tamisgidda), the, 439
Misurata, 21
“Mithkal,” 221-2
Mithridates, 206
Mixed caste, Azger tribes of, 355-6
Mizda-Murzuk road, 322, 323 _n._[285]
Mokhammed, 96
Monarchy, democratic Tuareg system of, 107-8
Mongolian traits in Southland women, 44
Monkeys, 213, 239
Monogamy, 293; more frequent in Air than polygamy, 170, 171
Moorish tribes, raids by, 188
Moors conquer Western Sudan, 411
Moroccan road, the, 7
Morocco, 358; “Berbers” of, 458; Ibn Batutah in, 411; Negroland
conquered by, 411; Okba’s expedition in, 326 _n._[292]; Sanhaja
trade with, 405; Tuareg invasion of, 411
Morocco, Southern, 332, 334
Mosgu (Kel Tamisgidda), the, 439
Mosi added to Songhai empire, 409
Mosi, King of, 408
Moslem attitude to women, 152, 168, 170, 174
Moslem faith: introduction of, into Air, 256-8; Maliki sect of,
291-2; new spirit in, 12, 13; polygamy permitted by, 170; a form
of snobbishness induced by, 339-40, 342; Tuareg adoption of, 256,
257-8, 273, 274, 290, 291, 293, 324-5. _See also_ Islam.
Moslem graves, 259
Mosque, People of the, 439
Mosques, Tuareg, 93, 94, 255-8, 301-2; Agades, 86, 87, 93-4; Assode,
301-2; records kept in, 360, 361; T’intaghoda, 257, 258, 316
Mosquitoes, Air, prevalent during rains, 120, 121
Motor road between Lake Chad and Niger, 42
Motylinski, Temajegh dictionary by, 12, 454 _n._[456], 459
Motylinski, Fort, 12, 13
Mounds of stones as memorials, 292-3
Mountain groups of the Sahara, 2, 5
Mountain sheep of Air, 450
Mountains in the desert, beauty of, 448
“Msid Sidi el Baghdadi,” 292
Mubaraki, Muhammad, 102 _n._[91], 391, 413, 464
Mud construction, 41, 43, 48, 249-50, 252; Sudan and Northern
Nigeria, 88, 89, 90
“Muda,” grain measure, 221
Muhammad (of Towar), 185
Muhammad, King of Bornu, 410
Muhammad, the Prophet, Moslem desire to claim descent from,
339-40, 342
Mulai Ahmed, Sultan of Morocco, 411
Mulai Hamed el Mansur, Sultan of Morocco, 411
Muleththemin, the (Arab name for Tuareg), 14-15, 274, 287, 294,
364; Ibn Khaldun on origin of, 340-49, 353, 379; Leo Africanus on
the divisions of, 330-31, 332, 334-5, 337-8, 343, 344, 345, 348, 349
Munio, 412
Murmur, 21
Murzuk, 7, 8, 9, 20, 21, 191, 325, 353; capital of Fezzan, 323;
the “Garamantian way” from, 318, 319 _n._[278], 324; population
of, 113; rains in, 124; road to Lake Chad by, 7, 8, 32, 320; Roman
remains on road to, 322; as trade centre, 112, 113
Musa, camel-man, 169, 170
Musa, chief of the Imuzuraq, 51
Musa, Haj, 290
Musa, Mansa Kunkur, 407, 408
Musa ag Mastan, Amenokal of Ahaggar, 169, 352-3
Muscles of Tuareg not conspicuous, 163, 187
Music, Tuareg, 272
Musical instruments, Tuareg, 272
Mzab, 332, 334
MZGh root of North African names, 339, 356; its significance, 457-62
Nabaro, 436
Nabaro, Kel, 436
Nabarro, 218 _n._[208]
Nachtigal: population of Murzuk, 113
Nakda, 452; copper mines of, 452-3; Sultan of, 453
Names, tribal: North African, MZGh root of, 339, 356, 457-62;
Tuareg, 128-31
Naresht, son of Tifaut, 405
Nasamones, the, 282, 365, 369
Nationalism in North Africa, 12-13
“Natron” encrustations seen by Barth, 127 _n._[115]
Natrun, Wadi, 3
Nature, animistic view of, among Tuareg, 295
Neck ornaments, 283
Necklaces, women’s, 283
Needlework, skill of Tuareg men in, 174
Negro music, influence of, 272
Negroes: eunuchs purchased, 179; matriarchate among, 152-3; as
slaves, 135; Tuareg contempt for, 173
Negroid inhabitants of Air, pre-Tuareg, 363-4, 365-6, 403, 405;
type of Air Imghad, 138
Negroland, 101, 371; historians of, 365; Ibn Batutah’s journey
through, 406, 452; Roman expedition to, 326
Negroland, Western, 404; occupied by Songhai, 409
“Neutral vowel” in Tuareg tribal names, 128
New Year, feast of the, 275
News, communication of, in Africa, 266
N’Gurutawa, 21
Niches in Tuareg houses, 246, 247-8, 252, 254, 255, 256, 309
Niger, the, 3-4, 30, 332; diversion of Upper into Lower, theory
of, 30; drainage basin of, 3-4; Romans said to have reached, 322;
Tuareg communities on, 377, 384 _n._[402]
“Niger,” Pliny’s, 28-9
Niger Empires, the, 37, 47, 407-12; _see_ Melle _and_ Songhai.
Niger, Territoires du, 41-2, 43, 416; raids in, 189
Niger-Tchad, Colonie du, 41 _n._[46]
Nigeria, 17, 18, 24, 219, 335; author returns through, 418-19;
Anglo-French boundary, 41; British penetration of, 20, 21, 36-7;
French indirectly defend, 85; horses of, 202; Mediterranean
civilisation brought to, 393, 401; railway development in, 38;
rains in, 123; totemism in, 294
Tuareg in, 38-41, 361; civilisation brought to, by, 393, 401;
transport work in, by, 38, 298
Nigeria, Northern, 37; author’s journey begins and ends in,
417-18; British annexation of, 37; houses of, 87-8
Nigerian Emirates, the, 26, 37; British annexation of, 37; _see_
Kano, Katsina, _and_ Sokoto.
Nile, the, 266
Nile valley, Libyan invasions of, 340
Nilotic Sudan, the, 1 _n._[1]; Fulani settlement in, 58; Semitic
influence in, 342
No, Quarter of, Ghat, 258
Nobility of origin, Tuareg adherence to, 137; records kept to
establish, 360, 362
Noble and servile tribes (_see_ Imghad _and_ Imajeghan), 15; lists
showing, 427-31, 435-40
Noble women, high standing of, 150, 151, 168, 169, 171, 172, 174
Nobles: British described as, 459; conquered, as Imghad, 138,
394, 460
Tuareg (Imajeghan), 137, 217; appearance of, 217; female descent of,
150-51; Holy Men treated as, 355; Imghad and, relationship between,
136, 137, 138, 140-43; northern, black veil worn by, 139; original
pure race represented by, 137
Nomadic Tuareg, described by Ibn Batutah, 406
Nomadism and sedentarism, difficulties of co-ordinating, 131
Nomads, 16, 209, 212, 406; ability to dispense with water, 208,
209-10; Ifadeyen famous as, 400
North and west, confusion of terms, 244, 247
North Africa: the term, 1
Arab conquest of, 346, 375-6, 404, 462; Arab countries, traditional
connection with, 340; Bishoprics of, 293; British part in
exploration of, 20-21; camels, problem of introduction into, 206-8,
267; caravan roads (_q.v._) of, 5, 6-7; caravan roads and sites of
cities of, 110, 111, 112, 114; Central Empires, intrigues of, in,
12-13, 93; fossil camel skeletons found in, 267; French expansion
in, 20, 22; funerary monuments in, 260-62; history of, its sources,
330; Islam, spread of, in, 256, 257-8, 325; migration from,
compulsory, legend of, 366, 375, 380; migrations into, 39, 340,
341; negroid peoples once farther north in, 342; partition of, 20,
22; Persian invasion of, 375; population of, its superficial unity,
338; rock drawing in, 264; tribal names of, and MZGh root, 339,
356, 457-62; Tuareg in, in early times, 403
North-eastern Air; houses of, 252, 254; unnamed valley of, 304
Northern Air, 298-329; ancient monuments in, 263; evacuation of,
1918, 309; houses of, 252, 309-11, 316; Kel Owi tribes of, 303-8,
394; palm groves of, 317; roads traversing, 318-22; salt caravan
route from, 315
Nose-piece, camel’s, 231
Nose-ring, camel’s, 231
N’Ouajour, 430
Noweiri, El, 326 _n._[292], 468
N’Sattafan, Kel, 434 _n._
Nubian cemeteries, 260
Nugguru, Kel, 127, 139, 142, 185, 215, 435, 438, 440, 441
Oases, 2, 3; accidental discoveries of, 336; of Air, 32; Egyptian,
334, 337; origin of the word, 6; Saharan, 3, 5-6
Oborassan, 313, 314
Oborassan, Kel, 435
Ochre, Tuareg women’s faces daubed with, 173
Oghum, Rocks of, 68
Ogive niches in Tuareg houses, 246, 247-8, 252, 254, 255, 256, 309
Okba ibn Nafé, campaigns of, 325, 326 _n._[292], 376
Okluf, 126, 127
“Old Well,” the, 418
Ollelua, 46
Omar, Sultan, 84, 96, 97-8, 100, 104, 109, 117, 195, 465; horses of,
202; refuses to attack French, 290
Optatus, 328
Oraghen, the, 347
Orfella, 110
Orientation: of Moslem graves, 259, 260; of Tuareg houses, 244,
246-7, 248, 251, 252, 253, 254
Ornament of the Nobles, the, 284
Ornamental work, Tuareg, 230-31, 277, 310
Ornaments, Tuareg, 282-6
Orosius, 356
Oryx, white, 444, 446
Oryx hide shields, 235, 444
Osman Mikitan, Sultan, 52, 99, 108, 465
Ostrich feathers, on camel’s nose-piece, 231
Ostriches, 43, 121, 264, 446
Othman dan Fodio, 363, 415
Oudney, Dr. W. (with Denham and Clapperton), 8, 20; death of, 21
Oung Oua (Ungwa), Kel, 433
Outdoor slaves, 134, 135-6, 155, 402
Outhouses, Tuareg, 250
Over-population of Mediterranean lands, and compulsory migration,
story of, 366, 375, 380
Overweg (with Barth and Richardson), 18, 20, 21, 23-4; death of, 21
Owari, 239
Owi, Kel, 20, 23, 53, 54, 107, 134-5, 143, 144, 184, 217, 239; their
arrival in Air, 382-93, 414, 415; cause of migration of, 386-7; date
of arrival of, 135, 149, 257, 258, 366, 367, 382-3, 386, 387, 388,
391; and the Amenokal, 100, 108, 383, 396-7; the Añastafidet of,
92, 96, 100, 107, 139, 144-6, 148; arrogance of, 383; Assode the
capital of, 301, 303; Auraghen and, 387; caravan road controlled
by, 61, 74-5, 308, 319, 320, 383, 390; claims and pretensions of,
unjustified, 384-5, 386, 392-3, 414 _n._[429]; commercial ability of,
390; country of, 243, 244, 299, 394; in Damergu, 415; dialect of,
270, 387; disease among, 180; disparaged by other tribes, 135, 149,
295; attitude towards French of, 51, 52, 414 _n._[429]; in Gober,
tradition of arrival of, 367-8; houses of, 252, 253, 254; Ifadeyen
and, 399; Immikitan and, 429; Itesan driven out by, 366, 373-4, 391,
392, 393, 398, 432; Kel Geres displaced by, 373-4, 383, 388, 389,
390, 391, 392, 415; measures of, 221; and mosque of T’intaghoda,
257; mothers of, legend of, 384-5, 386; origin of, 148, 380, 385-7;
sun as mother of, 295; tribal organisation of, 303-8, 430, 435-9;
women of, noble, 150
Ox, rock drawing of, 265
Ox and cart, drawing of, 265, 319, 321-2, 418
Ox-drawn chariots of the Garamantes, 318, 320, 321-2, 324; rock
drawing suggestive of, 265, 319, 321-2, 418
Oxen: as pack animals, 203, 208; harnessed to carts, 203, 208, 215;
_see_ Ox-drawn chariots.
Pack-saddles, camel, 223-4
Paint, Tuareg women’s faces daubed with, 173
Paleolithic camel skeletons discovered, 207
Palicanus, L. Lollius, 207
Palm frond mats, 227; rope, 224; sandals, 165
Palm groves, 316, 317
Palm trees not destroyed in warfare, 236
Palmer, H. R., 362, 373 _n._[386], 463, 468
Paper currency disliked by Tuareg, 221
Partition of Africa, 20, 22, 25
Pasture wells, Azawagh, 74, 75, 80; rights over, 75
Patience, Tuareg, philosophic, 296, 420
Patination of rocks of Air, 35; of rock drawings, 321
Patriarchal government: Arab, 339; of Tuareg tribal units, 147
“Penistasche,” the, 164 _n._[156]
People of the Acacia (Kel Tamat), 307, 437
People of the Añastafidet, 374, 394; in Damergu, 440; estimated
numbers of, 402; tribes and sub-tribes of, 435-9
People of the Asclepias (Kel Intirzawen), 307, 433
People of the Deep Well (Kel Gharus), 308
People of the Dûm Palm (Kel Tagei), 307, 398 _n._[413], 432, 435
People of the East (Kel Innek), 129, 369, 441
People of the Goats (Kel Ulli), 52, 129, 307-8, 438
People of the King, 143, 144, 146, 148, 149, 304, 306, 366, 392,
393; represent earliest arrivals in Air, 373, 374, 377, 378-9;
geographical area of, 394; Immikitan possibly original stock of,
396; interest attaching to, 393; Kel Owi and, 146, 148, 149, 303,
366, 380, 392; numbers of, estimated, 402; origin of, legendary,
384, 386; tribes, sub-tribes, and organisation of, 395, 398, 400,
427-31; in Damergu, 437-40
People of the Mosque (Kel Tamisgidda), 439
People of the Rock (Tebu), 335
People of the Salt (Kel T’Isemt), 441
People of the Sand (suggested meaning of Tuareg), 274
People of the South (Kel Aghil), 441
People of the Spears (Kel Allaghan), 432
People of the Veil, _see_ Tuareg.
People of the West (Kel Ataram), 129, 441
Peroz, Colonel, 50
Perry: _Children of the Sun_, 152 _n._[146]
Persian invasion of North Africa, 375
Petroglyphs, _see_ Rock drawings _and_ Rock inscriptions.
Philistines, Libyans related to, 339
Phœnician script and Libyan, 267
Photographs of unveiled Tuareg not permitted, 288
Physical characteristics of Tuareg, 161-3, 172, 177, 187, 217;
deformation not practised, 179
“Pi” dogs, 205
Piebald camels, 196
Pigeons, 125
Pigs, taboo on eating of, 294, 295
Pilgrim road, Timbuctoo-Cairo, 20, 114, 318
Pilgrimage, Muhammad Askia’s, 409, 411
Pitchers, 160-61
Plaque, men’s ornament, 285
Pleiades, Tuareg name for, 226 _n._[212]
Pleistocene period, discovery of camel-skeletons of, 207
Pliny, 207, 324, 468; quoted, 322-3
Plough seen by Barth, 133
Plutarch, 206
Poetry, Tuareg appreciation of, 263, 265, 271, 272; women authors
of, 169, 173, 271, 272
Poison, use of, by Tuareg, 10
Poisoned arrows used by bush folk, 45
Poisonous plants, deaths of camels due to, 200
Police, Agades, 106
Polygamy infrequent in Air, 170-71
Polytheism, traces of, among Ahaggaren, 275
Pomel, 264 _n._[232]
Pommel of Tuareg saddle, ornamental cross on, 230, 276-7, 289
Pompey, 207
Pools, 213, 215, 442, 445, 449
Population: of Air, 402; variation of, in desert cities, 113
Portfolios, leather, 228
“Ports,” trans-desert traffic, 110, 111
Portuguese and Songhai rulers, 409, 410
Possession, case of, Auderas, 279-80
Pottery, Tuareg, 160-61, 317
Pouches, leather, 228
Pradie, Fort, 51, 92
Prayer enclosures, 292-3
Pre-Moslem, funerary remains, 260-63; place of worship, 258-9, 263
Precipitation of rain, North Africa, 123, 124
Prime Minister, Tuareg, also Minister for Foreign Affairs, 106;
title of, 106, 406
Property, women’s ownership of, 168-9, 177, 293
Prophet, the, Moslem desire to claim descent from, 339-40, 342
Prophet’s Birthday, the, feast of, 275
Prosody, Tuareg, 271
Prostitution among Tuareg, 177
Proverbs, Tuareg, 176, 182, 237, 420, 421
Pseudo-Ashraf, the, 339-40
Ptolemy, 323 _n._[283],[287], 336 _n._[314], 356, 468; on the Kel
Tegama, 53, 65
Pumpkins, 132; spirits in form of, 280
Punch and Judy show, Tuareg ascendancy symbolised in, 55-6
“Pura” water, 19, 157
Qadria sect, 302
Qibla, the, 95, 97, 255, 258, 259, 292
Querns, Tuareg, 159-60, 309
Quinine, value of, in fever cases, 178, 186, 187
Quran, the, 265, 280, 281, 296; in Tuareg language, 269; verse of,
as amulet, 282
R and Gh sounds, confusion between, 271
Rabah, 26
Rabidin, 427
Racks in houses, 309
Rahazawa Fulani, 57
“Rahla” (riding saddle), 230-31
Raiding, 11, 12, 13-14, 113, 187-93, 350, 407, 444; Ahodu’s
reminiscences of, 191-3; the Amenokal and, 109-10; Camel Corps
organised to suppress, 11, 51, 188, 189, 218, 219; cessation of,
187, 193; in Damergu, 50, 51, 59; fear of, still prevalent, 311,
315; legend of raiders swallowed up, 281; regarded as a sport,
187, 193, 328, 443; technique of, 11, 187-93, 236, 237; weather
conditions supposed to foretell, 295-6; wells filled in to prevent,
59, 60, 451; by women, 169-70
Railway development, its effect on camel-borne trade, 38
Rainbow, superstition regarding, 296
Rainfall in the Sahara, 4, 28; ancient, 28; geological effects of,
79; during storms, 83
Rain-water pools, Azawagh, 62, 67-8
Rains, the: in Air, 121, 123-4, 220; in Elakkos, 445; discomforts
of travel during, 120-21, 123, 124, 125; raids begun after, 188
Ramadhan, Tuareg observance of, 274
Rapsa (Ghat), 322, 323, 326
Rats eaten by Tuareg, 294
Rattray: _Ashanti_, 152 _n._[146]
Rebu, the, 337
“Red,” Tuareg spoken of as, 162, 173, 367, 460
Red agate “talhakim,” 282
Red mud, cities and houses constructed of, 41, 43, 48, 88, 90,
452 _n._[452]
Red ochre, Tuareg women’s faces daubed with, 173
Red Rock Desert, pass over, 323
Red rocks, Air, 35
Red Sea, migrations of tribes from, into North Africa, 340, 341, 342
“Reg,” 274 _n._[243]
Reindeer Age, cave paintings of, 264
Rela, Kel, 351 _n._[339]
Religion of Tuareg, 273-8, 290, 291-4; earlier, possibly
Christianity, 275-8, 293-4; traces of Christian influence, 275-6,
277, 278, 284-5, 289, 293-4; their conversion to Islam, and their
lax practice, 273, 274, 290, 291, 293, 324-5
Rennell, Major, 383, 386; commentary on Hornemann by, 336, 383,
386, 467; map by, 336; works by, 336, 383, 386, 467
Revenue, the Amenokal’s, 110
Revolt against French in Air, 1917, 39, 69, 70, 84-5, 98, 309, 394,
420, 421; Agades besieged during, 70, 85, 86, 98; camel requisitions
a cause of, 205; evacuation of Air during, 113, 121-2, 302, 309,
360-61, 426; Kaossen’s leadership of, 69, 84, 86, 92-3, 185, 385,
420; Nigeria indirectly defended during, 85; opening tragedy of,
84; social effects of, 127-8, 338-9; Tegama’s part in, 98-9;
T’ekhmedin’s part in, 98-9; wells filled in during, 59, 60, 451
Rhymes, Tuareg, 271
Rhyndacus, 206
Riaina, the, 434 _n._
Richardson, J.: _Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara_ by, 151-2,
467; death of, 21; expeditions of, 8, 18, 20, 21, 23-4, 248, 461;
on houses of Ghat, 248
Ridge of Abadarjan, 70, 71, 78
“Rigm” (funerary monument), 260 _n._[227], 261-2, 263
Ring of stones marking graves, 259
Rings, agate, as neck ornaments, 283
Rings, arm, Tuareg, 91, 285-6, 289
Rio de Oro, raiding in, 187, 188
Ritchie, death of, 21
River of Agades, 33, 34, 69, 70, 71, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83,
115, 119, 121, 123, 127, 183, 189, 258, 456; plain of, 79, 82-3, 85-6
River beds of Central Sahara, 28-31
Rivoli, 91
Roads, caravan, _see_ Caravan roads; the “Garamantian way,”
318-20, 321, 324
Robe, T’ekhmedin’s, the fate of, 195
Robes, Tuareg, 163-4, 166-7, 195
Rock, People of the, 335
Rock drawings, 213, 216, 260, 263, 264, 318; of animals and birds,
264-5; of camels, 207, 265; of human figures, 265, 319; of men
with animal heads, 319; modern, 264, 265; of ox and cart, 265, 319,
321-2, 418; of shield with cruciform design, 276
Rock inscriptions, 213, 260, 264, 268-9, 271, 315, 360; funerary,
260, 263; profusion of, 263, 268
Rohlfs, F. G., expeditions of, 3, 19; _Kufra_ by, 6 _n._[4], 336
Roman remains discovered by Barth, 322
Romans, the: caravan roads garrisoned by, 208; penetration of the
Sahara by, 322-3, 324, 325, 326-7; Tuareg swords probably derived
from, 234
Romanus, 207
Roncière, Charles de la, 19 _n._[20],[21]
Roofs of Tuareg houses, 249, 250, 256
Rope-making, native, 224; in leather, 228
Rothschild, Lord, his museum at Tring, 27-8
Rottl (Arab weight), 222
Royal Geographical Society, author’s computations in charge of, 423
Rufai el Ghati, 192
Sabha Jail, 332 _n._[301]
Sacrifices of sheep, 95, 97, 274, 275
Sadaouet (Sidawet), Kel, 431
Saddle-sores on camels, 199, 201
Saddle-stone querns, 159-60, 309
Saddles, camel; Tebu, 277; Tuareg, 193, 223-4, 227, 230-31, 276-7,
289; with cross on pommel, 230, 276-7, 289
Sahara, the, 1-6; not once a sea-bed, 78 author’s companions cross,
418; British influence in, 21-2; climate of, 4; European affairs well
known in, 266; French occupation of, 25, 350; funerary monuments of,
260-62; Leo Africanus’ description of, 331-5; mountain groups of,
2; name of, 1; oases of, 2, 3, 5-6; population of, 113; races of, 2,
8; railway across, advocated, 38; rainfall in, 4, 124; rivers of,
3, 4; Roman penetration of, 322-3, 324, 325, 326-7; surface of,
2-6; “talhakim” prized in, 282; temperatures in, 4; transport
methods in, early, 207-8; warfare in, small numbers involved, 11
Sahara, Central, 2, 4, 8; British geographical work in, 20-21, 22-4
Sahara, Eastern, 2-3
Sahara, Western, 3-4
Saharan Alps, the, 35
Saharan and Equatorial zones, transitional area between, 41
Sahel Zone, the, 41
Sakafat, 437
Sale, 274 _n._[245]
Saleh, El Haj, 96, 290, 430
Salla Laja (Laya), the Feast of the Sheep, 95-7, 274
Salla Shawal, 274
Sallust, 206, 468
Salt: impregnation of soil with, 125; price of, 218
Salt caravans, 69, 84, 85, 114, 115, 133, 145, 195, 210, 217, 218-20,
335, 443, 452 _n._[450]; Amenokal’s revenue from, 110; French
escort for, 84, 218, 219; Minister accompanying, 106; raids on,
188, 218, 219, 450; route of, 32, 114, 145, 219, 264, 315, 320, 450
Salt mines: Bilma, _q.v._; captured by Moors, 411; Taodenit, 30,
411, 452 _n._[450]; Tegaza, 411, 452 _n._[450]
Salt, People of the, 441
Salt-pits, 125
Salt trade, 133, 218, 219-20, 414; struggles between Air and Bornu
for, 415
Saltpetre, uses of, 211
Sampfotchi hill, 418
Sand: effect on feet, 165; wind-borne, polishing of rocks by, 35,
79; wells silted up by, 66, 72, 74
Sand, People of the, 274
Sand-dune formations, 4, 58; characteristic form in Azawagh, 63-4,
70; crescentic type, 66-7; in Elakkos, 442, 446, 447; mobile, 66,
67; valleys formed between, 62
Sand-grouse, 81
Sandstone formations: Elakkos, 442; effects of erosion, 77, 79, 81
Sand viper, 227
Sandals, Tuareg, 164-6
Sanhaja, the, 274, 331, 332, 340, 343-4, 346, 348, 349, 401; in Air
at arrival of Tuareg, 364, 365, 368, 375, 405; Empire of, 343-4,
403, 404-5, 407; Itesan among, 377; Mesufa and Lemtuna
sections of, 151 _n._[141], 344, 349, 358, 364, 405; of North-west
Morocco, 364
Santambul (Constantinople), 101
Sariki n’Kaswa, 106
Sariki n’Turawa, the, 96, 106
Sattaf, 187
Say, 50
Schirmer, H.: _Le Sahara_ by, 5 _n._[2], 142 _n._[132], 327
_n._[293], 467; on the Ifoghas, 355 _n._[346]
Scorpion, 227
Script, Tuareg, _see_ T’ifinagh.
Seats, wooden, for women, 309
Sedentaries: factions among, 338; numbers of, 402
Sedentarism, encouraged by French, 131; nomadism and, difficulties
of co-ordinating, 131, 143
Seeds, very valuable in Air, 132, 133; used for food, 158, 160
Sef, King of Kanem, 372
Seliufet village, 23, 122, 248, 316
Seliufet, Kel, 129, 437
Selma I, King of Kanem, 372
Selma II, first black king of Bornu, 373, 374
Semitic influence in Africa, 342
Semitic languages, relationship of Temajegh to, 270
Sendal, the, 394, 396, 400; one of original five tribes in Air,
368, 378; their modern representatives, 395, 396, 400
Senegal, caravan route to, 7
Senegal River, 343
Senegalese troops, French, 84, 98, 118, 316; Camel Corps of, 189
Senhaji, Muhammad Nasr el, 408
Senussiya, the: their part in the revolt in Air, 12, 13, 51, 84,
93, 98; caravan route opened by, 7; in Equatorial Africa, operations
against French, 92; Kufra the centre of, 336; Tuareg relations with,
48-9, 290
Septimius Flaccus, 323, 326
Serfs, _see_ Imghad.
Sergi, G., 458, 460, 467
Sert, 325
Servile tribes, _see_ Imghad.
Sfax, 337
Sheath knives, Tuareg, 234
Sheep, Air, 202, 204, 205, 450; sacrifices of, 95, 97, 274, 275
“Sheikh el Arab,” 106
Shellagh, the, 458
“Sherrifa,” title of royal family of Air, 105
Shields, Tuareg, 234-5, 276, 444
Shillugh language, 270
Shingit, 408
Shott country, the, 9
Sidawet, 299, 431, 440; houses in, 254; position of, 425
Sidawet, Kel, 431, 440
Sidi, the guide, 68, 234 _n._[214], 266, 270, 298, 307, 309,
315, 418; description of Belkho by, 305, 306; on the House of the
Christians, 311-12; leaves the author in Kano, 419-20
Sidi Hamada, shrine of, 94-5; Feast of the Sheep at, 95-7
Sierra Leone, British penetration of, 36, 37
Siggedim, 334 _n._[308]
Sijilmasa, 110, 405, 452, 453
Silius Italicus, 152 _n._[144], 468
Silk not in great demand among Tuareg, 164
Silurian rocks, Air, 33, 34, 35
Silver, saddles ornamented with, 230-31
Silver bracelets, 283-4
Silver coins melted down, 229
Silver currency, 221
“Sinko” (five-franc piece), 221
Siwa, 3, 318, 337
Siwi dialect, 270
Skin, colour of, in Tuareg, 161-2, 173
Slave King of the Tuareg of Air, the, 96, 97, 100, 103, 104-5, 108,
367, 369
Slave markets, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, 38
Slave trade, African, 38; British attempts to abolish, 20, 21, 22;
former Tuareg, 135
Slavery legally abolished in Air, 134 _n._[122]
Slaves, 103-4, 178; position of, 15 _n._[13], 103-4, 105, 134,
178; raised to status of Imghad, 135; slave mothers and status of
children, 150; stolen in raids, 190; veil not worn by, 15 _n._[13],
140
“Slaves, the Mecca of the,” 367
Sliding doors in Tuareg houses, 245-6
Smiths, Tuareg, 155, 228-9, 230; jewellery made by, 283-4
Smoking, not a Tuareg practice, 211
Snobbishness, Moslem form of, 339-40, 342
Snuff, taken by Tuareg, 211; used as remedy for camel disease, 200
“Sô people,” the, 407
Soap-stone, ornaments of, 282, 283
Social distinctions, Tuareg, present breakdown in, 142
Social effects of revolt of, 1917, 127-8, 338-9
“Sofo” tower, Agades, 94
Sokakna, the, Arab tribe, 354
Sokna, 9, 347
Sokoto, 21, 33, 38, 47, 48, 101, 106, 110, 415; British annexation
of, 37; Fulani Empire of, 37, 57, 363, 415; Itesan settle near, 109
_n._[100], 366, 373-4, 392, 393, 398, 432; Kel Geres settle near,
17, 39, 65, 143, 366, 373, 390-91, 392, 415: route to, alternative,
114; slave market in, 38; stone buildings in, 89 _n._[78]; Tegama
expedition against, 53
Sokoto, Emir of, influence of, 109 _n._[100] _See also_ Bello.
Sokoto-Agades track, 85
Soleim Arabs invade Central Africa, 376
Solom Solom, 122, 365
Songhai Empire, the, 37, 47, 48, 117, 227, 291, 408, 409, 410,
411; Agades colonised by, 117, 410, 440; gold trade of, 411, 414;
Moors overthrow, 411, 412; Portuguese and, 409, 410
Songhai language, 117, 118
Sorbo Hausa, 50
Sores, camels’, 199, 201
Sottofé, Muhammad, Sultan, 369, 464
South, People of the, 441
Southern Air: Goberawa in, 379; graves in, 263; servile tribes
in, 394
Southern Algeria, native Camel Corps in, 189
Southland, the, 17, 36-79; Air and, political relations of, 105,
116; Barth’s expeditions in, 23-4, 36, 49, 59, 60-61; bush of,
42, 43, 44, 45, 58, 444, 446; houses and huts of, 184, 249, 250;
Itesan migration to, 109 _n._[100], 366, 373-4, 377, 392, 393, 398,
432; Kel Geres migration to, 17, 39, 65, 143, 366, 373, 390-91, 392,
415; music of, 17; Morocco and, trade between, 405; Tuareg of, 17-18;
Tuareg ascendancy in, 54-6; Tuareg migrations to, 17, 38-9, 51,
65, 143, 361, 366, 373-4, 377, 390-91, 392, 393, 398, 411, 415, 432
Southward trend of migration in N. Africa, 39
Soyuti, El, 291, 292
Spain, Arab conquest of, 346, 376, 405
Spear grass, 226
Spears, People of the, 432
Spears, Tuareg, 233-4, 236
Spirits, Tuareg belief in, and tales of, 278-81, 300, 306; amulets
against, 282
Spoons, Tuareg, 229, 276
Spouts on roofs of Sudanese houses, 89, 90
Stambul, delegation from Air to, 101, 102, 104, 396-7
Stambul, Sultan of, story of migration ordered by, 366-7, 380
Stars, Tuareg names for, 226 _n._[212]
Steppe, the Great, 334, 335
Steppe desert, 114, 115, 332, 333, 334, 447; and true desert, 2,
332, 333, 334
Sticks for holding bridles and ropes, 277
Stone, not used in building in Sudan and Northern Nigeria, 89;
used by Tuareg, 89
Stone arm rings, Tuareg, 91, 285-6
Stone flags, “Garamantian way” said to be paved with, 319
Stone houses, 155, 184, 213, 239, 250, 418
Stone ornaments, small, 283
Stone “talhakim,” mystery of origin of, 282-3
Stones: circles of, round huts, 262-3; coloured, to indicate tracks,
293; graves marked by, 259-60; hammered, not chiselled, 260, 264;
mounds of, as memorials, 292-3
Strabo, 207 _n._[193], 468
Stuhlmann, F., 468; on MZGh root in “Berber” names, 458, 460
Sub-tribes: “Kel names” of, 128-9; lists of, 427-41
Succession and inheritance, matriarchal tradition in, 151-3, 168
Suckling of children, protracted, 178-9
Sudan, the, 1 _n._[1], 37; Air and, political relations with, 105,
116; Barth’s expedition in, 23, 37; British share in opening up,
20; European penetration of, 20, 36-9; Fulani rise to power in,
415; funerary monuments in, 261; horse saddles of, 231; houses of,
87, 88, 90; Ibn Batutah in, 452, 456; Islam in, 291; Lemta area
extends to, 345, 357, 358, 370, 445; Mediterranean civilisation in,
37; salt trade with, 414; Sanhaja power in, 405; syphilis thought
to originate in, 179; taboos originating in, 294; “talhakim”
prized in, 282; Tuareg driven from, 358; Tuareg evacuated to,
360-61; wheeled vehicles in, 322
Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian, 1 _n._[1]
Sudan, Nilotic, 1 _n._[1]; Fulani settlement in, 58; Semitic
influence in, 342
Sudan, Western: French expedition from, 25; added to empire of Melle,
407; Moorish conquest of, 411
Sudan Empires, the, 37; history of, 405, 406, 407-15; _see_ Melle
_and_ Songhai.
Sudanese buildings, 249
Sudanese historian on migrations from Red Sea, 342
Sudanese pottery, 161, 317; clay amphoræ, 317
Suk, El, country, Tuareg migration to, 394
Suk, Kel el, 355, 377, 394
Suleiman, Mansa, 408
Suliman, El Haj, library of, 302
Sultan of Agades, _see_ Amenokal.
Sun, halo round, an evil omen, 296
Sun worship, Libyan, 276, 278, 295; trace of, among Tuareg, 295
Sunni Ali, 291, 409
Sunni Muhammad Dau, 409
Sunsets, magnificent, Air, 123, 181; superstition regarding, 296
Superstitions of Tuareg, 275, 293; concerning weather, 295-6
Susubaki, 412
“Switzerland of the Sahara,” the, 317
Sword dance, Tuareg, 272
Swords, Tuareg, cross-hilted, 96, 233, 234, 236, 276, 289
Symbolism in Tuareg rock drawings, 264, 265
Synesius, 356
Syphilis, 179-80
Syria, Ibn Khaldun on inhabitants of, 339
Syrtis, Great, 325, 337, 365; people of, 457
Syrtis, Little, 337
Tabello, 86, 209, 210, 243, 244, 298, 320; houses at, 241, 244-8,
249, 250, 251, 252; Itesan settlements at, abandoned, 244, 389;
salt caravan assembles at, 85, 218, 219, 243
Taberghit valley, 58, 61, 62, 66, 67, 68, 70, 74
Tablet ornaments, 283
Tabonie, 323
Taboos, food, totemic, 294-5
Tabudium, 323
Taburgula, 362
Tabzagur, position of, 424
Tadadawa, Kel, 381, 434
Tadek valley, 395, 396, 428
Tadek, Kel, 26, 80, 143, 149, 150, 170, 185, 239, 298, 318, 428-9;
antiquity of, 149, 366, 428; represent original invaders of Air,
395, 396, 400; expelled by Kel Owi, 389; mother of, legend of, 384;
tribes and sub-tribes of, 428-9, 430, 440
Tadele, Kel, 427
Tademari, 47, 48, 51
Tademekka, 169, 254, 441; Aulimmiden occupy, 345, 348, 358, 387, 414
Tademekka, city of, 405, 408; foundation of, 399
Tademekkat, the, 355, 356, 357, 377; driven out by Aulimmiden, 345,
348, 358, 387, 414
Tadenak, Kel, 430
Tadent, 101
Tadesa, 239
Tadsa, Tuareg defeat near, 412
Tafadek, 428; position of, 424
Tafarzas, the, 434
Tafasas, Kel, 439
Tafassasset, the, 30, 31
Tafassasset-T’immersoi basin, 71
Taferaut, Kel, 438
Tafidet, Child of, 144; _see_ Añastafidet.
Tafidet range, 157, 306, 308, 313, 436; valley, 32 _n._[37]
Tafidet, Kel, 134, 148, 307, 370, 436, 437, 443-4; “agoalla”
of, 147; and appointment of Añastafidet, 145, 306; place in Kel
Owi Confederation, 134, 306, 443-4; mother of, legend of, 384;
origin of, 148, 303, 306
Tafilelt area, Morocco, capital of, 452 _n._[449]
Tagay (Tagei), Kel, 432
Tagedufat, 80, 120; valley, 32-3, 63-4, 66, 67-8, 71, 74, 76;
well, 74
Tagei, Kel (Ikazkazan), 210, 307, 438; (Imaslagha), 435; (Itesan),
397, 398, 432
Tagermat, Kel, 436
“Taghalam,” the, 219, 220
Tagharit valley, 131 _n._[120]; lions in, 119, 120, 214 _n._[206]
Taghazit, 23, 33
Taghist plateau, 156, 292
Taghmeurt range, 157, 308, 435, 436
Taghmeurt, Kel, 435, 436
Taghmeurt n’Afara, 313, 315, 318, 319
Tagidda n’Adrar, 454, 455, 456; position of, 424
Tagidda n’Tagei, 454, 455, 456
Tagidda n’T’isemt, 454, 455, 456; position of, 424
Tagiddas, the: and Ibn Batutah’s “Tekadda,” 454-6; people
of, 441
“Tagilmus” (the Veil), 15 _n._[15], 140, 287-90
Tagilmus, Kel, 15, 460
Taginna, the, 434 _n._
Tagirit, 397
Tagmart (Taghmeurt), Kel, 435
Tagunar, Kel, 430, 431
Tagunet, 431
Tagurast, 91
Tahanazeta, 102
Tahua, 42, 188, 394
Taiagaia, Kel, 433
Taitoq, the, 17, 350, 351, 354; dialect of, 266-7
Takadda (Nakda), 452
Takarkari, the, 406
“Takatkat,” 164
Takazanzat (Takazuzat), rock of, 240
Takermus, Kel, 429
“Takirbai,” 164
Takrizat, 437
Takrizat, Kel, 209, 290, 437; a holy tribe, 290, 291
“Takuba” (sword), 233
Talak plain, 31, 114, 131, 209, 214, 308, 351, 394, 438, 441;
tomb of Awa in, 281
Talak, Kel, 441
Talat Mellen, 308
“Talha” acacia, 226
“Talhakim,” the (ornament), 282-3, 284
“Talimt,” 226 _n._[212]
Talras, 68, 450
Tamadalt Tan Ataram, position of, 425
Tamanet, 242, 243
Tamanghasset, 12
“Tamat” acacia, 226, 227
Tamat, Kel, 52, 60, 307, 428, 437, 438
Tamatut well, 60; destroyed, 60, 451
Tamel, Kel, 434
Tamenzaret, wells of, 215, 418
Tamet Tedderet, position of, 425
Tamgak, 311, 389, 428, 437; mother of Kel Owi settles in, 386;
“Wild Men” of, 306-7, 437
Tamgak mountains, 157, 311, 314 _n._[275], 315, 316, 317, 321, 396
Tamgak, Kel, 306, 394, 400, 437; one of the original five tribes,
368, 378, 379; modern representatives of, 395, 396, 400, 437
Tamizgidda, Kel, 53, 439
Tamkak, the, 368; _see_ Tamgak, Kel.
Tanamari, 51
“Tanghot” (spirit), 281
Tanut (in Damergu), 47, 48, 52, 69, 81, 119 _n._[107], 418, 451;
position of, 424
Tanut (near Marandet), 119, 121
Tanut Unghaidan, 122
Tanutmolet, 316, 430; houses in, 248
Tanutmolet, Kel, 430-31
Tanzar, the, 434
Taodenit, 219; salt deposits of, 30, 411, 452 _n._[450]
“Tara,” camel disease, 201
Tara Bere, 91
Taranet, Kel, 439
Tarantulas, 227
Tarat Mellet, the, 394
“Tarei tan Kel Owi,” 61, 308, 314
Tarenkat, 433
Targa, the, 19, 445; Ibn Khaldun on, 343; Leo Africanus describes
Air and Ahaggar as inhabited by, 19, 331, 332, 333, 334, 337-8,
359; and the name “Tuareg,” 273, 338, 348-9, 461
Tariq, 376
“Tariqa,” Senussi, 290
“Tarki” (Tarqi) and the word “Tuareg,” 257, 274, 460, 461
Tarrajerat, 80
Taruaji, 418
Taruaji mountains, 78, 84, 86, 126, 127, 156, 183
“Tasalgi” (north), 244, 247
Tasawa, 305, 411
Tasawat, 244; mosque of, 255-6
Tasessat, 239
Tashel (Taschell, Tashil), the, 433
Tashkeur (Teshkar) well, 446 _n._[446]
Tasr, wells of, 446-7
Tassili, Azger, 260, 261
Tatenei, Kel, 381
Tateus well, 66, 74
Tattus, Kel, 438
Tautek, 405
Tawarek, the, 118, 257, 273, 460; Arab etymology of, 257; _see_
Tuareg.
Tazizilet, 69, 71, 219
Tebehic, 80, 82; position of, 424; spirits of, 279
Tebernit valley, 243; water holes, 242
Tebu, the, 16, 109, 218, 318, 358, 403, 413, 443, 446; Berdeoa,
people of, identified with, 335-6; Bornu dynasty of, 372, 374;
boundary between Tuareg and, 358, 443; camel saddles of, 277; camels
of, 196; Dunama II’s war with, 374; Ikaradan, Temajegh name for,
117, 335, 430, 441; Itesan driven out by, 389, 413; language of,
118, 155; origin of, 335-6; raids by, 59, 69, 188, 190, 296, 320,
327, 350, 389, 444, 450; throwing irons used by, 235; treachery of,
98, 236; Tuareg driven from south by, 358; Tuareg feud with, 98,
190, 442, 443; women of, wives of kings of Kanem, 373, 374
Technique of raids, 11, 189-93, 236, 237
Tecoum, the, 441
Teda, the, 335, 373 _n._[387]
Teda Inisilman, 155
Tedamansii, the, 336
Tedekel, Kel, 437
“Tedi” or “teddi” (measure of length), 222
Tedmukkeren (Tetmokarak), the, 433
“Tefakint,” 221
Tefgun, mosque of, 27, 149, 317, 428
Tefgun, Kel, 428
T’efira, 127 _n._[115]
Tefis, 248, 431; mosque of, 256, 258, 418
Tefis, Kel, 431
Tegama (Southern Air), 23, 32, 53, 64, 65, 188, 209, 303; Barth in,
23, 53, 118; camels of, 196, 197, 210; servile tribes of, 127, 128,
394; villages of, 127-8
Tegama valley, 58
Tegama, Kel, 53-4, 64-5, 118, 127, 128, 394, 433, 443; defeated by
Kel Geres, 391; women of, 118
Tegama, Sultan, 98-9, 109, 465
Tegaza, 404 _n._[419], 452; Moors capture, 411; salt mines of, 332,
411, 452 _n._[450]
Tegbeshi, 184
“Tegehe” (descendants), 350 _n._[336]
Tegehe Mellen, the, 350
Tegehe n’Aggali, the, 350, 352
Tegehe n’Efis, 351
Tegehe n’es Sidi, the, 350, 351
Tegehe n’Essakal, 351, 352
Tegemi (Tégémui), 68
Teget (Tagei), Kel, 435
Teghazar valley, 84, 86, 241
Teghzeren, Kel, 433
Tegibbut, the, 434
Tegidda valley, 215, 299
Teginjir, 33; plain, 241, 242; position of, 425; spring, 241
Tegir, 430
Tegir, Kel, 430
Teguer, Kel, 430
Tehammam, the, 427
Tehenu, the, 337, 462 _n._[481]
Tehert, 337
Tekadda, 406, 408
Ibn Batutah’s, 452-3, 454, 455, 456; copper mines of, 452-3,
454; identification of, attempted, 454, 455; Sultan of, 151, 152,
406, 454, 455
“Tekerkeri, the,” 406
T’ekhmedin, the guide, 185-7, 195, 225, 239
Tekursat valley, the, 60, 61
Telamse, Kel, 432
Telezu valley, 239, 240, 243
Telia, position of, 425
Telizzarhen, 265; rock drawings of, 319
Tellia valley, 243
Teloas-Tabello, position of, 424
Telwa river, 122-3, 127; valley, 84, 115, 122-3, 125, 414, 441
Temagheri, the, 372, 373
Temahu, the, 376, 462
Temajegh, 12, 15, 118, 154, 266, 269, 270-71, 462; camel names in,
197; Christianity, words associated with, in, 277-8; dictionaries of,
12, 467; etymology of, 15 _n._[14], 373, 462; “Kel” names in,
129; Latin, traces of, in, 75 _n._[70], 278; origin of, 267-8, 270;
Quran translated into, 269; written, _see_ T’ifinagh.
Tembellaga, 58
Temed, 321, 428
“Temeder” (part of the Veil), 287
Temperatures in the Sahara, 4, 298
Tents, Tuareg, 89, 212
“Terga,” 273, 461; _see_ Targa.
Tergulawen, 50, 61, 62, 67, 69, 114, 242, 390; road, 70; well, 59,
60, 74, 80
Terjeman, quarter of Agades, 91, 118
Terminal points of trans-desert traffic, 110, 111
Termit, 32, 46, 58, 67, 68, 81, 218, 320, 448-50; author’s march
to, 46, 81, 444, 446-51; drainage of, 450; mountains of, 448,
449-50; position of, 424; rocks of, oddly shaped, 450; wells of,
443, 447, 448-9, 451
Territories du Niger, 41-2, 43, 189, 416
Tesabba valley, 210
Teshkar, 446, 447, 451; position of, 424
Teskokrit, 69, 72
Tessawa, 42, 43, 46, 47; position of, 424
Tessuma valley, 243
Tetmokarak, the, 65, 381, 433
Teworshekaken valleys, 61
Tezirzak, 428
Tezogiri valley, 78
Tgibbu (Tegibbut), the, 434
Thorns in vegetation of Air, 199, 226
Throwing-iron, used by Tebu, 235
Thuben, 323
Thugga inscription, 267
Thukdha (Nakda), 452
Thunderbolt, an evil omen, 296
Thunderstorms, violent, 82-3, 451
Tiakkar, the, 434
T’iaman, 143
Tibawi (Tebu), 335
Tibesti, 7, 92, 98, 218, 334, 335, 403, 444; identified with
Agisymba Regio, 325, 326, 327; camels of, 195; camels commandeered
for expeditions to, 205; drainage system of, 3; mountains of, 2, 4,
32; raiding in, 187, 193, 276, 444; rainfall of, 4; rock drawing in,
276; unknown area of, 32; Turkish penetration of, 327
Tidikelt, 111
Tidrak hills, 156, 181
Tifaut, 405
T’ifinagh (Tuareg script), 15-16, 263, 264, 266-9, 271, 276, 289;
name of Air in, 454; alphabet of, 266-7; Arabic letters in, 271;
Ifadeyen familiarity with, 268, 400; inscriptions in, 81, 264,
268, 269, 286; origin of, 267-8; Quran in, 269; taught by women,
173-4, 268
T’igefen, 450
Tiggedi cliff, 65, 70, 71, 76-7, 454 _n._[456]; defeat of Kel Tegama
at, 391
“Tiggeur” acacia, 226
T’ighummar valley, 215
Tikammar cheese, 157, 158
Tildhin, the, 412
Tilemsan, 291
Tilho, Colonel, 30; Anglo-French frontier delimitation by, 41;
maps of, 33 _n._[38], 41, 466; observations made by, 422, 424
T’ilimsawin hills, 156
T’ilimsawin, Kel, 432
T’ilisdak valley, 127, 435
Tilkatine, the, 434 _n._
Tilutan, 404
Timbuctoo, 7, 23, 30, 110, 344, 354, 405; earliest accounts of,
19; camels of, 196; foundation of, 407; Melle conquest and loss of,
407, 408; mithkal of, 222; Moorish garrison in, 411; “People of
the West” in, 441; salt caravan from, 188, 219, 452 _n._[451];
Songhai conquest of, 409; Tuareg of, 18; Tuareg conquest and loss
of, 408, 409
Timbuctoo-Cairo pilgrim road, 114, 318
Timbulaga, 70
T’imia, 33, 186, 204, 216-17, 241, 290, 299, 308, 311, 385, 439;
houses in, 248, 250; hut circles at, 262; Kel Owi invasion of,
389; massif of, 33, 216, 242; measures used in, 221; mosque of,
385; rock drawing at, 194 _n._[178]; women of, 173
T’imia, Kel, 298, 439; mixed, 440
T’imilen mountains, 299
T’imilen valley, 243, 299
T’immersoi, 31, 32, 33, 78
“Timmi” (oath of friendship), 237
T’imuru peak, 300
T’in Awak mountain, 300
T’in Dawin, 78; position of, 424
T’in Shaman, 116, 364-5, 367; French post at, 86, 99, 365;
position of, 424
T’in Taboraq, 82, 84, 85; position of, 424
T’in Tarabin valley, 9, 30
T’in Wafara, 437
T’in Wana, 71, 73, 76, 77, 78, 80, 213; fossil trees at, 81-2, 259
_n._[226]; pool of, 81; position of, 424; rock inscriptions at, 81
T’in Wansa, 309; houses in, 248
T’in Yerutan, 404
T’inalkum, Kel, 355, 383 _n._[400]
T’inien, 214; position of, 424
T’inien mountains, 125, 156
T’intabisgi, 427, 428
Tintagete, Kel, 435
T’intaghoda, 26, 122, 308, 316, 390, 436, 437; Barth’s expedition
attacked at, 23, 290, 312; capital of Northern Air, 316; houses of,
248, 316; mosque of, 257, 258, 316
T’intaghoda, Kel, 129, 312, 437; a holy tribe, 291, 306, 437
T’intellust, 308, 309, 311, 319, 320, 321, 436; Barth’s
headquarters at, 23, 122, 308, 312-13
T’intellust, Kel, 435
Tinteyyat, 435
Tinylcum, the, 383
Tinylkum, Barth’s, 355
Tirekka, 405
“Tirik” (riding saddle), 230-31
T’iriken peak, 299-300
Tirza, 180 _n._[172]
Tisak n’Talle, 91
T’Isemt, Kel, 441
Tishorén (Tuareg), 460
Tiski, the Children of, 342-3, 349
Tissot, C. J.: _Géographie comparée_, 207 _n._[190]
Tit, Ahaggar Tuareg defeated at, 10, 11, 328
T’iugas and her six daughters, story of, 384
T’iwilmas, 314, 316
T’iyut valley, 23, 31 _n._[36], 367
Tizraet, the pool of, 418
Tobacco chewed by Tuareg, 211
Tobacco snuff as remedy for camel disease, 200
Todra, Mount, 84, 123, 127, 131, 156, 181, 183, 184, 213, 214, 215,
216, 239
Toga, North African robes said to be descended from, 285
Toiyamama, the, 434
Tokede valley, 239, 240, 243
Toledo swords owned by Tuareg, 233
Tomb of Awa, 281
Tombs (_see_ Graves), Air, 259-63; possibly made in floor of hut, 263
Tools, Tuareg, 229
Toreha, 180 _n._[172]
Toshit N’Yussuf, 438
Totemism, survival of, among Tuareg, 294-5, 394 _n._[408]
_Tournées d’apprivoisement_, 11
Towar, 183, 184-5, 186, 195, 238, 239, 240, 243, 283, 440; houses
in, 248, 252
Towar river, 183
Towar, Kel, 184, 439; mixed, 184, 440
Tower of Agades, 94; _see_ Minaret.
Tracks, marked by coloured stones, 293
Trade roads, 5, 23, 37, 38; map of, 5; railway’s effect on, 38;
_see_ Caravan roads.
Traghen, 112
Transliteration, difficulties of, 271, 350 _n._[338]
Transport enterprises, Kel Owi monopoly of, 390
Trans-Saharan caravan roads, 308-9, 318
Trans-Saharan railway, suggestion of, 38
Travelling bags, leather, Tuareg, 228
Treachery, Tuareg averse to, 236, 237
Treaty between Tuareg and original inhabitants of Air, tradition
of, 367-8
Trees, fossil, 81-2, 259 _n._[226]
Triangular ornaments (“talhakim”), 282-3
Tribal allegiance derived through mother, 149-51
Tribal alliances, 147-8
Tribal chiefs: and the Amenokal, 108, 144; authority of, passing
to village headmen, 127-8, 131; functions of, 110, 147; measures
kept by, 220; selection of, 108
Tribal classification, importance attached by Tuareg to, 143-5
Tribal councils, women in, 168, 169
Tribal feuds set aside in trade centres, 111
Tribal groupings, 147-8
Tribal histories, 360, 361-2
Tribal marks on camels, 201-2
Tribal names, Tuareg, 128-31
Tribal organisation of Tuareg of Air, 393, 400, 426-41
Tribal warfare, 390, 391, 392, 402-3; before appointment of common
ruler, 101
Tribes, colour differences in, 161, 162; holy, 290-91, 306, 355,
357, 437, 438, 439, 440; of mixed caste, 355; noble and servile,
_see_ Imajeghan, Imghad, _and_ Noble and servile tribes.
Tripoli, 110; caravan road, 23, 48, 61, 242; Col. Hamer Warrington
Consul at, 21; embassy from Bornu to, 410
Tripolitania, 41, 187, 208, 358, 457; former British paramountcy in,
20, 21, 22; anti-French and -British activities in, 84; Hawara in,
345; Islam, spread of, in, 257; Italian occupation of, Tuareg and,
8; rock drawings in, 318; Southern, Roman occupation of, 323
Trotting on camels thought unwise, 193
Trousers, Tuareg, 164, 289
Tsabba valley, 210
T’Sidderak hills, 214
T’Sidderak, Agoalla of, 397
T’Sidderak, Kel, 381, 432
Tuaghet pool, 427
Tuareg of Ahaggar, _see_ Ahaggaren.
Tuareg of Air: not a tribe but a people, 14, 461; racial purity of,
16, 137, 161, 162, 163
their arrival in Air, 359, 366-93, 394, 395, 396, 397, 403,
404, 405-6; its date, 364, 371, 373, 375, 381, 403, 404; their
vicissitudes, 401-16; future of, 420, 421
accounts of, 8-9, 10, 14, 18-20, 24, 25, 28
adultery not common among, 177
agriculture despised by, 127, 134, 174, 360
amulets worn by, 282, 284
ancestry of, 7-8, 254, 345-6, 353, 359, 366, 367, 368, 369, 385-7,
403, 462; Bello on, 368, 369, 371; Ibn Khaldun on, 343-4, 345, 346,
347, 348, 353, 379; Leo Africanus on, 330-31, 332, 334-5, 337-8,
343, 344, 345, 348, 349
animism of, 295
architecture of, 184, 241, 244-59, 377, 378
art of, 246, 263-5
belts worn by, 180, 194, 236, 237
Berbers and, 7, 16, 338, 371, 372, 458, 461
“Black” and “White,” 139-40
blue-eyed, 16
calm manner of, 420
caravan trade of, 7, 38, 48, 50, 142, 145, 146; _see_ Salt
caravans.
caste system of, 103-4, 108, 136, 137-8; _see_ Imajeghan _and_
Imghad.
cattle trade of, 133-4, 190, 202-5
characteristics lost by, 40-41
children of, 148-9, 174, 177-9, 181, 268, 400
chivalry of, 168, 236-7
Christianity, former, of, 275-8, 284-5, 289, 293-4
circumcision practised by, 179
civilisation of, present, decline from earlier, 7, 255, 265,
268, 378
civilising rôle of, 37, 393, 401
cleanliness of, 163, 273, 274
colouring of, 161-2, 173, 367, 460
courage of, 11, 169-70, 236, 237, 354
dancing of, 44, 272
disease among, 178, 179-80
divorce among, 176-7
dress of, 14, 15, 95-6, 163-7, 177, 265, 289
education among, 174, 177-8, 268, 400
Europeans and, 8, 23, 24, 154, 290
evacuation of, by French, 113, 121-2, 302, 309, 360-61, 426
family system of, 103-4, 147, 148-53, 373, 398
female descent among, 103-4, 148-53, 373, 398
festivals of, 181, 274-5
food of, 157-60, 174, 211, 212
French and: hostilities between, 9-11, 13, 26, 51, 52, 114
_n._[104], 236, 328; migration of some tribes from, 51, 350, 352;
pacific attitude of others, 26-7, 51, 52, 414 _n._[429]; revolt
against, in 1917, 39, 59, 60, 69, 70, 84-5, 86, 93, 98, 121-2,
127-8, 169, 185, 205, 302, 309, 420
furniture of, 229-30
geographical knowledge of, 265-6
government of, 144-8
graves and tombs of, 181, 229, 259-63
greetings used between, 419
historical knowledge of, 265, 360, 361-2
honour, sense of, among, 296
hospitality of, 210, 237
houses of, various types, 89, 90, 92, 181, 184, 239, 240-41,
244-55, 256, 302, 309, 310-11, 314, 315-16, 377-8, 381, 389, 393
huts of, 184, 253, 254, 262-3
industries of, 131, 164-6, 174, 227-30, 231, 277, 310
judicial system of, 107, 110
Kings of, _see_ Amenokal; list of, 463-5
language of, 15; _see_ Temajegh.
Libyans and, 7, 262, 341, 342, 356, 366, 462
literature of, 173, 263, 269, 360, 361-2
live stock of, 133-4, 190, 202, 203, 204-5
love affairs among, 174-5, 176
marriage system of, 170-71, 173, 174, 175-7, 181, 289
matriarchal system among, 103-4, 148-53, 170, 171
medicine among, 82, 180-81, 201
migrations of, _see_ Migrations.
ministers and officials of, 106-7
monarchy, democratic, of, 107-8, 145
monogamy usual among, 170, 171
mosques of, 86, 87, 93, 94, 255-8, 301-2, 360, 361
music of, 272
name of, 14, 15, 118, 257, 273-4, 412 _n._[426], 454, 459-60,
461; derivation of, 348-9
noble and servile, 15, 103-4, 110, 128, 137, 140-43, 217; _see_
Imajeghan _and_ Imghad.
nomadism of, 16, 208, 209, 212, 400, 406
numbers of, 402
origin of, _see above under_ ancestry of.
ornaments of, 282-6
patience of, 296, 420
physical type of, 161-3, 172, 177, 187, 217
poetry of, 169, 173, 263, 265, 271, 272
population of, 402
pottery of, 160-61, 317
prostitution among, 177
proverbs of, 176, 182, 237, 420, 421
raiding by, 51, 59, 187, 188, 189, 190-94
“red” colouring of, 162, 173, 367, 460
religion of, 273-8, 290, 291-4; earlier, possibly Christianity,
275-8, 293-4; traces of Christian influence, 275-6, 277, 278,
284-5, 289, 293-4; their conversion to Islam, and their lax
practice, 273, 274, 290, 291, 293, 324-5
revolt of, 1917, _see above under_ French.
script of, 15-16; _see_ T’ifinagh.
shields of, 234-5, 276, 444
slave trading, former, by, 135
slaves of, 15 _n._[13], 103-4, 105, 134, 135, 140, 150, 178
snuff taken by, 211, 220
Sultan of, _see_ Amenokal.
superstitions of, 275, 278-81, 293, 295-6
taboos among, 294-5
tobacco chewed by, 211
tools of, 229
totemism among, 294-5, 394 _n._[408]
trade of, 38, 48, 50, 133, 414
tribal names of, 128-31
tribes and sub-tribes of, 143-5, 393, 400, 426-41
unselfishness of, 95, 177, 178
vanity of, 95
Veil worn by, 14-15, 139-40, 163, 284-90, 328-9
warfare, methods of, 236-7; tribal, 101, 390, 391, 392, 402-3
weapons of, 233-6, 276; allegiance to _armes blanches_, 55, 235-6,
328; arm daggers, 234; knives, 234, 236; spears, 233-4, 236;
swords, 96, 233, 234, 236, 276, 289
weights and measures of, 220-22
women of, _see_ Women, Tuareg.
Tuareg, Azger, Damergu, Elakkos, Fezzan, _etc._, _see under those
heads_.
Tuat, 9, 260, 291, 292, 332, 334; earliest account of, 19; Ibn
Batutah’s journey to, 453, 455, 456; Jews massacred in, 291
Tuat road, 318, 353, 453
Tuat-Tidikelt area, 111
Tuberculosis case at Auderas, 180
Tubuzzat, Kel, 437
“Tufakoret” (solar halo), 296
Tuggurt, 9, 111
Tukda (Nakda), 452
Tumayu, 372
Tummo, 320
Tumuli, funerary, 260-61
Tunfafia, 180 _n._[172]
Tunisia, 325, 341, 457; Christianity in, 294; the Circumcelliones
in, 328; spread of Islam in, 257
Tunsi, El, 192
Turayet, 51, 418; graves in, 263; valley, 84, 183
Turdja, 180 _n._[172]
Turha, 180 _n._[172]
Turks: their part in the 1917 revolt, 93, 98; penetration of
Tibesti by, 327
Ufa Atikin, position of, 425
Ufugum, Kel, 434
Ula, 191
Ulcer, nasal, caused by sand, 180
Ulli, Kel, 52, 129, 307, 437, 438, 441; Damergu, 440
’Umbellu, the ’alim, 217, 270, 290, 385, 389
Umuzut, Kel, 428; Damergu, 440
Unankara valley, 308, 390
Uncle, maternal, descent traced through, 151
Ungwa, Kel, 433
Unnar, Kel, 381, 432, 433
Uraren, position of, 425
Urn burial, 161, 263; pre-Tuareg example of, 121
Urufan, 44; position of, 424
Ushr, 180 _n._[172]
Utzila, the, 343
Uye, Kel, 432
Valleys, of Air, 34-5, 83-4; of Azawagh, 61-2, 63, 66-7, 71, 76
Vassalage and Imghadage compared, 38, 140, 141
Vegetables, cultivation of, 131-2, 133
Vegetation, desert, 64, 70, 226; hardiness of, 67; rain and, 124;
Elakkos and Termit, 445, 446, 449
Veil, People of the, _see_ Tuareg.
Veil, the, 14-15, 41, 284, 286-90, 328; appearance of Tuareg without,
187; colour of, 117, 139-40; how put on, 287-8; Southerners adopt
practice of wearing, 41; theories concerning, 288-90; not worn by
women and slaves, 15, 140, 288
Venereal disease, 179-80
Vespasian, 322
Vesuvius, 242
Vicissitudes of Tuareg in Air, 401-16
Village organisations, effect of 1917 revolt on, 127-8, 338-9
Villagers, nomads’ lot envied by, 212
Villages, Central and North African type, 42, 43, 48, 87-90, 91;
Damergu, 48; Elakkos, 442, 443, 446; Tuareg, no factions in, 338
Viper, Sand, 227
Vizir, the, Agades, 106, 116
Vogel, Dr., 21
Volcanic origin of Saharan mountains, 2; phenomena in geology of Air,
33, 79, 81, 183, 215, 216
Volcano, Gheshwa, 241-2
Von Bary, Erwin, _see_ Bary.
Voulet, Captain, French expedition under, 25-6, 51
Wad Righ, 9
Wadai, 7, 334
Wadan, 325, 332 _n._[301]
Wadi el Shati, 354
Wadigi valley, 431
Wadigi, Kel, 431, 432, 437
Wahat, El, 6
“Wakili,” the Sultan’s, 106
Walad Delim, the, 344, 345 _n._[328], 358
Walata, 153, 175, 332, 404 _n._[419], 405
War of Famine, the, 414
Warfare, desert: raids distinct from, 190; small numbers involved
in, 11; Tuareg methods of, 236-7
Wargla, 9, 110, 335
Warrington, Colonel Hamer, 21
Warrington, Henry, 21
Water, native powers of abstinence from, 189, 208, 209, 210
“Water of the Horse,” 325-6
Water-skins, 232
Watering points: for salt caravans, 219; technique of raids and,
11, 188, 189; _see_ Wells.
Wati, Kel, 412-13
Wau el Harir, 336
Wau el Kebir, 6
Wau el Namus, 6
Wau el Seghir, 6
Wawat People of the West, 6
Weather superstitions, Tuareg, 295-6
Weathering, uneven in action, 321
Webster, G. W., 362 _n._[356]
Weights and measures, Air, 220-22
Welimmid (Aulimmiden), the, 357
Well, iron in, Ibn Batutah on, 453
Well, People of the Deep, 308
Wells, 7, 74-6, 80, 300; filled in during revolt, 59, 60, 451;
not poisoned in warfare, 236; silted up, 66, 72, 74
of Azawagh, 74-6, 80; of Elakkos, 445-6, 447; irrigation, 132-3;
attributed to the Itesan, 377, 378, 393; of Northern Air, 300;
origin and guardianship of, 74-5, 377, 378, 393
West, People of the, 129, 441
West and north, confusion of terms for, 244, 247
Western Negroland: Sanhaja dominant in, 404-5; occupied by Songhai,
409
Western Sahara, 3-4; caravan route to, 7; Sanhaja rulers of, 404, 405
Western Sudan, French expedition from, 25
Wheat: cultivation of, 131, 133; “kus-kus” made of, 157-8;
considered a luxury, 160
Wheeled transport, ancient use of, in Air, discussed, 318-19, 320,
321-2, 324
“White” and “Black” Tuareg, 139-40
White camels, 196
“White Nobles,” Tuareg term for British, 459
“White People,” the (Arab traders), 106, 404
“White People,” the (Kel Ahamellan), 352
Wild donkeys, 204
“Wild Men of Air,” the, 306-7
Wireless stations: Agades, 86; raiders handicapped by, 188
“Witnesses, The,” 260
Wives of Tuareg: male friends allowed to, 175-6; monogamy usual in
Air, 170, 171; purchase of, 177
Wolof language, 118
Women: Bardamah, 406, 452; Bororoji, 57; Hausa and Kanuri, 44;
Kel Owi, 180; Tegama, 54
Tuareg: general status of, 167-71, 272, 293; claimed as tribal
ancestresses or leaders, 398; in childbirth, 179; courage of,
169-70; descent traced through, 103-4, 148-53, 373, 398; divination
by, 281-2; dress of, 167, 172; eat with men, 174; education given
by, 173-4, 268, 400; faces of, painted, 173; fatness of, 118, 172,
406; forwardness of, 54, 118; household duties of, 174; industries
in hands of, 174, 227; male friends of, 175-6; marriage system,
170-71, 174, 175-6, 181, 196-7; noble, high standing of, 150, 151,
168, 169, 171, 172, 174; old, handsomeness of, 173; ornaments of,
283; as poets, 169, 173, 271, 272; property owned by, 168-9, 177,
293; in public life, 168, 169; salons held by, 272; spirits
supposed to attack, 279-81; veil not worn by, 15, 288; young, 172,
173, 174-5
World, roundness of, known to Tuareg, 266
Wounds, Tuareg treatment of, 201
Yellow ochre used as cosmetic, 173
Yemen, the, 341; early invasion from, 371
Yes, Quarter of, Ghat, 258
Yiti, Kel, 412
Youngest member of party made cook, 159
Youths, Tuareg, dress of, 289
Yunis, Sultan, 102, 103, 104, 463
Yusif (ben el Haj Ahmed ibn el Haj Abeshan), Sultan, 102 _n._[91],
103, 413, 464
Za Alayamin (el Yemani), Libyan dynasty of, 404
Za Yasebi, 408
Zakarkaran, the, 428
Zamfarawa, the, 391
Zanhaga, desert of, 332
Zanziga, the, 332, 333, 334, 343, 348
Zaria, type of houses of, 87
Zawzawa, 46, 145
Zegawa, the 343
Zegedan, Kel, 435
Zelim massif. 33; pool of, 317, 427
Zella, 374 _n._[389]
Zenega, the, 331
Zerumini, the, 433
Zibduwa, 412
Zilalet, 299, 431, 440; position of, 425
Zilalet, Kel, 384, 431, 440
Zinder, 42, 43-4, 49, 50, 51, 85, 189, 418; French garrison at,
85; Senussi “zawia” at, 49
Zinder-Chad, territory of, 50
Zinder-Fashi-Kawar road, 32
Zipta mountain, 327
Zuila (Cillala), 112, 323, 347
Zu’lhajja, 274
Zungu, 46
Zurbatan, the, 434
Zurika, position of, 425
[Illustration: Map showing MR. FRANCIS RODD’S ROUTES in AÏR AND
ADJACENT PARTS of FRENCH WEST AFRICA
_Published by permission of the Royal Geographical Society._]
Transcriber's note:
pg 76 Changed: _Crucifera thebaica_ to: _Cucifera_
pg 184, footnote 176, Changed: Plate 21 to: Plate 20
pg 220 Changed: gives undulys hort weight to: unduly short
pg 221 Changed: especially in measurng the to: measuring
pg 224 Changed: at one end pased over to: passed
pg 323 Changed: justify a futher advance to: further
pg 350, footnote 338, Changed all instances of: ʿ to: ’
pg 423 Changed: author’s meterological record to: meteorological
pg 435 Changed: abounding in in “dûm palms.” to: abounding in
“dûm palms.”
pg 442 Changed: in an expense of yellow sea to: expanse
pg 451 Changed: Bultum Babá to: Bullum
pg 457 Changed: authors have asumed that to: assumed
pg 460 Changed: del settrentrionale d’Africa to: settentrionale
pg 468 Changed: Oriental Translations Fund, 1941 to: 1841
pg 470 Changed: Agheláshem wells to: Aghelashem
pg 473 Changed: Aulimmiden, the, [. . .] inheritance system disliked
by, 153 to: 152
pg 487 Changed: Songhai atack on to: attack
Minor changes in punctuation have been done silently.
Other spelling inconsistencies have been left unchanged.
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