CHAPTER XII

PLATE 46FUGDA (R.), CHIEF OF TIMIA AND HIS WAKILATAGOOMKel 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, MusaAg 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 roadsfrom 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 associatedwith 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 associationwith 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 nameprobably 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.”[297]The works of Leo Africanus were published by the Hakluyt Society in three volumes in 1896.[298]Leo, III. p. 820.[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.[300]Leo, III. p. 797.[301]In the Western Sahara north of the road from Arguin to Wadan, and probably near Sabha Jail.[302]North-west of Timbuctoo on the road to Wadan.[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.[304]Leo, III. p. 799.[305]About Lat. 17° N., not to be confused with the town of Agades in Air.[306]Leo: on pages 798 and 799.[307]“Igidi” is more a term for a type of desert country than a true proper name. There are other Igidis in North Africa.[308]Compare also a name of similar type, the place called Siggedim, in about Lat. 20° on the road between Kawar and the Fezzan.[309]Compare Barth’s corruption of the name Gamram in Damergu to Gumrek. Cf.Chap. II.[310]The map onp. 331gives a more accurate idea than the one in the first volume of the Hakluyt Society’s publication.[311]Vide infra,Chap. XII.[312]Cf. Kanem-bu = the people of Kanem.[313]Keane:Man, Past and Present(new edition), p. 473.[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.[315]Leo,op. cit., III. 801.[316]Minutilli,Tripolitania, p. 413, and in El Bekripassim.[317]Leo,loc. cit.[318]In Byzantine times B and V were often interchanged. Cf. Βάνδιλοι for Vandal,apudJustinian.[319]Ibn Khaldun, Book I. p. 234.[320]Unity, that is, in so far as all the non-Arab Libyans have been called Berbers and speak the same language.[321]Cf.Appendix V.[322]Cf. Boule:Fossil Man, p. 316.[323]Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., I. 273.[324]Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., I. 184 sq.[325]Barth,op. cit., Vol. V. p. 553.[326]Infrain this chapter and inChap. XII.[327]Vide supra.[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.[329]An instance of the assimilation of an Arab tribe by the Tuareg will be found on examining the Azger group (infrain this chapter).[330]Duveyrier,op. cit., p. 347.[331]In the Fezzan.[332]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 231.[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.[334]Barth, Vol. V. p. 557.[335]Namely, the Kel Geres.Infra,Chap. XII.[336]Op. cit., p. 330.[337]“Tegehe” appears to mean “descendants” or “family” in the female line.[338]“Ag Ali” = son of ’Ali. The’ainin Arabic when transliterated by the Tuareg becomesgh, and ’Ali, ’Osman, ’Adullah, etc., become Ghali, Ghosman, Ghabdullah, etc. Theghin Temajegh is so stronglygrasseyé(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.[339]Sometimes written Kel Rela (cf.note 3).[340]Bissuel,Les Touareg de l’Ouest, Alger, 1888, p. 13 sq.[341]Bissuel,loc. cit.[342]Cf. diagram showing the migration of the Air Tuareg onpage 388.[343]Duveyrier,op. cit., p. 330.[344]See von Bary,op. cit., pp. 181 and 190.[345]A descriptive geographical name, and perhaps originally a branch of the Ilemtin.[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.[347]SeeChap. XII.[348]Bates,op. cit., Map X, etc.[349]Cf. conclusions at the beginning of this chapter.[350]Op. cit., p. 68, note 7.[351]Bates,op. cit., p. 64.[352]Duveyrier,op. cit., p. 467.[353]The presence of some Ifoghas west of Air will later be shown to be connected with the Tuareg migrations into Air.[354]Op. cit., Vol. IV. App. III. p. 552 sq.[355]Doubtless because they were conquered by the Aulimmiden.CHAPTER XIITHE HISTORY OF AIRPart IThe Migrations of the Tuareg to AirThehistory 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 consequencelose 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 myefforts 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 deductionsmade 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 tothe 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 centuryA.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 incorporatedinto 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 47SIDIThe First ImmigrationBefore 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 camefromthe north; but I am less than certain that they camebythe 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 onemight 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 madeatMaket 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 comefromAowjal. 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 fromA.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 Kanemthey 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 thefive 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 aboutA.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 Bornuunder 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 aboutA.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 nameBeni 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 precedingA.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 inA.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 invasionof the Arabs in the seventh century was only small and at first did not cause widespread ethnic disturbances.[390]Okba invaded the Fezzan inA.H.46 with only a small expeditionary force; the previous expedition ofA.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 inA.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 strangethat 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. TheSendal 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.

PLATE 46FUGDA (R.), CHIEF OF TIMIA AND HIS WAKILATAGOOM

PLATE 46

FUGDA (R.), CHIEF OF TIMIA AND HIS WAKIL

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, MusaAg 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 roadsfrom 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 associatedwith 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 associationwith 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 nameprobably 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.”

[297]The works of Leo Africanus were published by the Hakluyt Society in three volumes in 1896.[298]Leo, III. p. 820.[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.[300]Leo, III. p. 797.[301]In the Western Sahara north of the road from Arguin to Wadan, and probably near Sabha Jail.[302]North-west of Timbuctoo on the road to Wadan.[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.[304]Leo, III. p. 799.[305]About Lat. 17° N., not to be confused with the town of Agades in Air.[306]Leo: on pages 798 and 799.[307]“Igidi” is more a term for a type of desert country than a true proper name. There are other Igidis in North Africa.[308]Compare also a name of similar type, the place called Siggedim, in about Lat. 20° on the road between Kawar and the Fezzan.[309]Compare Barth’s corruption of the name Gamram in Damergu to Gumrek. Cf.Chap. II.[310]The map onp. 331gives a more accurate idea than the one in the first volume of the Hakluyt Society’s publication.[311]Vide infra,Chap. XII.[312]Cf. Kanem-bu = the people of Kanem.[313]Keane:Man, Past and Present(new edition), p. 473.[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.[315]Leo,op. cit., III. 801.[316]Minutilli,Tripolitania, p. 413, and in El Bekripassim.[317]Leo,loc. cit.[318]In Byzantine times B and V were often interchanged. Cf. Βάνδιλοι for Vandal,apudJustinian.[319]Ibn Khaldun, Book I. p. 234.[320]Unity, that is, in so far as all the non-Arab Libyans have been called Berbers and speak the same language.[321]Cf.Appendix V.[322]Cf. Boule:Fossil Man, p. 316.[323]Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., I. 273.[324]Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., I. 184 sq.[325]Barth,op. cit., Vol. V. p. 553.[326]Infrain this chapter and inChap. XII.[327]Vide supra.[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.[329]An instance of the assimilation of an Arab tribe by the Tuareg will be found on examining the Azger group (infrain this chapter).[330]Duveyrier,op. cit., p. 347.[331]In the Fezzan.[332]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 231.[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.[334]Barth, Vol. V. p. 557.[335]Namely, the Kel Geres.Infra,Chap. XII.[336]Op. cit., p. 330.[337]“Tegehe” appears to mean “descendants” or “family” in the female line.[338]“Ag Ali” = son of ’Ali. The’ainin Arabic when transliterated by the Tuareg becomesgh, and ’Ali, ’Osman, ’Adullah, etc., become Ghali, Ghosman, Ghabdullah, etc. Theghin Temajegh is so stronglygrasseyé(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.[339]Sometimes written Kel Rela (cf.note 3).[340]Bissuel,Les Touareg de l’Ouest, Alger, 1888, p. 13 sq.[341]Bissuel,loc. cit.[342]Cf. diagram showing the migration of the Air Tuareg onpage 388.[343]Duveyrier,op. cit., p. 330.[344]See von Bary,op. cit., pp. 181 and 190.[345]A descriptive geographical name, and perhaps originally a branch of the Ilemtin.[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.[347]SeeChap. XII.[348]Bates,op. cit., Map X, etc.[349]Cf. conclusions at the beginning of this chapter.[350]Op. cit., p. 68, note 7.[351]Bates,op. cit., p. 64.[352]Duveyrier,op. cit., p. 467.[353]The presence of some Ifoghas west of Air will later be shown to be connected with the Tuareg migrations into Air.[354]Op. cit., Vol. IV. App. III. p. 552 sq.[355]Doubtless because they were conquered by the Aulimmiden.

[297]The works of Leo Africanus were published by the Hakluyt Society in three volumes in 1896.

[298]Leo, III. p. 820.

[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.

[300]Leo, III. p. 797.

[301]In the Western Sahara north of the road from Arguin to Wadan, and probably near Sabha Jail.

[302]North-west of Timbuctoo on the road to Wadan.

[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.

[304]Leo, III. p. 799.

[305]About Lat. 17° N., not to be confused with the town of Agades in Air.

[306]Leo: on pages 798 and 799.

[307]“Igidi” is more a term for a type of desert country than a true proper name. There are other Igidis in North Africa.

[308]Compare also a name of similar type, the place called Siggedim, in about Lat. 20° on the road between Kawar and the Fezzan.

[309]Compare Barth’s corruption of the name Gamram in Damergu to Gumrek. Cf.Chap. II.

[310]The map onp. 331gives a more accurate idea than the one in the first volume of the Hakluyt Society’s publication.

[311]Vide infra,Chap. XII.

[312]Cf. Kanem-bu = the people of Kanem.

[313]Keane:Man, Past and Present(new edition), p. 473.

[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.

[315]Leo,op. cit., III. 801.

[316]Minutilli,Tripolitania, p. 413, and in El Bekripassim.

[317]Leo,loc. cit.

[318]In Byzantine times B and V were often interchanged. Cf. Βάνδιλοι for Vandal,apudJustinian.

[319]Ibn Khaldun, Book I. p. 234.

[320]Unity, that is, in so far as all the non-Arab Libyans have been called Berbers and speak the same language.

[321]Cf.Appendix V.

[322]Cf. Boule:Fossil Man, p. 316.

[323]Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., I. 273.

[324]Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., I. 184 sq.

[325]Barth,op. cit., Vol. V. p. 553.

[326]Infrain this chapter and inChap. XII.

[327]Vide supra.

[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.

[329]An instance of the assimilation of an Arab tribe by the Tuareg will be found on examining the Azger group (infrain this chapter).

[330]Duveyrier,op. cit., p. 347.

[331]In the Fezzan.

[332]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 231.

[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.

[334]Barth, Vol. V. p. 557.

[335]Namely, the Kel Geres.Infra,Chap. XII.

[336]Op. cit., p. 330.

[337]“Tegehe” appears to mean “descendants” or “family” in the female line.

[338]“Ag Ali” = son of ’Ali. The’ainin Arabic when transliterated by the Tuareg becomesgh, and ’Ali, ’Osman, ’Adullah, etc., become Ghali, Ghosman, Ghabdullah, etc. Theghin Temajegh is so stronglygrasseyé(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.

[339]Sometimes written Kel Rela (cf.note 3).

[340]Bissuel,Les Touareg de l’Ouest, Alger, 1888, p. 13 sq.

[341]Bissuel,loc. cit.

[342]Cf. diagram showing the migration of the Air Tuareg onpage 388.

[343]Duveyrier,op. cit., p. 330.

[344]See von Bary,op. cit., pp. 181 and 190.

[345]A descriptive geographical name, and perhaps originally a branch of the Ilemtin.

[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.

[347]SeeChap. XII.

[348]Bates,op. cit., Map X, etc.

[349]Cf. conclusions at the beginning of this chapter.

[350]Op. cit., p. 68, note 7.

[351]Bates,op. cit., p. 64.

[352]Duveyrier,op. cit., p. 467.

[353]The presence of some Ifoghas west of Air will later be shown to be connected with the Tuareg migrations into Air.

[354]Op. cit., Vol. IV. App. III. p. 552 sq.

[355]Doubtless because they were conquered by the Aulimmiden.

THE HISTORY OF AIR

Part I

The Migrations of the Tuareg to Air

Thehistory 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 consequencelose 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 myefforts 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 deductionsmade 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 tothe 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 centuryA.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 incorporatedinto 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 47SIDI

PLATE 47

SIDI

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 camefromthe north; but I am less than certain that they camebythe 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 onemight 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 madeatMaket 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 comefromAowjal. 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 fromA.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 Kanemthey 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 thefive 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 aboutA.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 Bornuunder 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 aboutA.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 nameBeni 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 precedingA.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 inA.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 invasionof the Arabs in the seventh century was only small and at first did not cause widespread ethnic disturbances.[390]Okba invaded the Fezzan inA.H.46 with only a small expeditionary force; the previous expedition ofA.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 inA.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 strangethat 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. TheSendal 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.

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