PEOPLE OF THE VEIL[Decoration]MACMILLAN AND CO.,LimitedLONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRASMELBOURNETHE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGODALLAS . SAN FRANCISCOTHE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA,Ltd.TORONTOPLATE 1AGELLAL VILLAGE AND MOUNTAINS[Frontispiece.PEOPLE OF THE VEILBeing an Account of the Habits, Organisationand History of the Wandering Tuareg Tribeswhich inhabit the Mountains of Air or Asbenin the Central SaharaBYFRANCIS RENNELL RODDⵍⵆⵔⵗⵙ“NAUGHT BUT GOOD”WITH ILLUSTRATIONSMACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON1926COPYRIGHTPRINTED IN GREAT BRITAINPREFACEThisbook was originally intended to be an account of the people and mountains of Air in the Central Sahara, where I made a journey during most of 1922 with Angus Buchanan and T. A. Glover. The former had visited the area on a previous occasion and had described the people and places he had seen in his book,Out of the World—North of Nigeria. It therefore seemed more profitable to inquire into some of the problems surrounding the inhabitants of the Sahara whom we encountered, and thus deal with Air and its Tuareg population rather less objectively than had my fellow-traveller. In the course of the succeeding years, as I became more and more immersed in considering various scientific aspects of the Sahara, I came to the conclusion that neither had the Tuareg people nor had this vast area of the earth’s surface been at all adequately examined. Most studies had been objective and, as is unhappily the case with this book, confined to one area. A comprehensive account of the history and ethnology of the Sahara still requires to be written.As a consequence of these investigations, the present work assumed a form for which one journey of nine months in the countries concerned scarcely seems enough justification. That the book was not completed sooner has been due to the impossibility of spending any time continuously either in research or on writing during the three years which have elapsed since I returned. The fact that this book has been the occupation only of such spare time as I have had available accounts for its many conscious deficiencies, which are unfortunately not the more excusablein a volume of the type which it purports to be. If I can feel that it will have served to stimulate the curiosity of students or have assisted them to find their way about the literature on the subject, I shall consider that as a reward calculated to enhance the pleasure which I have derived from writing and reading about this—to me—fascinating topic.It will be one of my lasting regrets that I was unable to complete with Angus Buchanan his journey across the Sahara from Nigeria to Algiers. The delays which we encountered in Air obliged me to return to resume my duties in that branch of H.M.’s Service in which I was then serving. This is not the place to mention the many things which I owe to Angus Buchanan; perhaps the greatest advantage I derived was the promise we gave one another to travel again together if an occasion should come to him and leisure from another profession to me, whereby we might be enabled to renew our companionship of the road. I am grateful to him for permission to use several of his photographs in the present volume as well as certain information which he collected when we were separately engaged on our different work.To T. A. Glover, the Cinematographer, whose services Angus Buchanan secured to accompany him, I owe many pleasant memories of days spent together and his excellent advice in taking most of the photographs which are included in this book.The French officers whom I encountered in the course of my wanderings were as charming and as friendly as perhaps, of all foreign nations, only Frenchmen know how to be. Were the relations between our respective countries always even remotely similar to those which subsisted between us, there would be no room for the suspicion and pettiness which so often mar diplomatic and political intercourse. The mutual confidence in which we lived is illustrated by two events.On a certain occasion in Air when news was receivedof a raid being about to fall on the country, I was honoured by receiving a communication from the French officer commanding the Fort at Agades, indicating the locality in his general scheme of defence whither I might lead on a reconnaissance an armed band of local Tuareg from the village in which I was then living by myself. On another occasion, after travelling for some hundreds of miles with a French Camel Corps patrol, the men were paraded and in their presence I was nominated an honorary serjeant of the “Peloton Méhariste de Guré,” a type of compliment which those associated with the French Army will best realise. It is to the officer commanding this unit, Henri Gramain of the French Colonial Army, that I owe the most perfect companionship I have ever had the fortune to experience. I know that when we meet again we shall resume conversation where we left off at Teshkar in the bushland of Elakkos, one evening in the summer of 1922. He and my other friends, Tuareg, British, French, Arab and Fulani contributed to make that year the happiest I have ever spent.No reader of the works of that great traveller, Dr. Heinrich Barth, will need to be told how much of the data collected in the succeeding pages has been culled from the monumental account of hisTravels in Central Africa. This German, who most loyally served the British Crown in those far countries, is perhaps the greatest traveller there has ever been in Africa. His exploits were never advertised, so his fame has not been suffered to compete with the more sensational and journalistic enterprises accomplished since his day down to modern times. But no student will require to have his praises sung by any disciple.I have to thank the Royal Geographical Society for permission to use the map which was prepared for a paper I had the honour to read in 1923 before a meeting of the Fellows. More especially do I wish to thank E. A. Reeves, their Keeper of Maps, both for the instruction in surveyingwhich he gave me before my journey and for the assistance afforded after my return in checking and working up my results. My cartographic material in the form of road traverses, sketch maps based on astronomical positions, and theodolite computations are all in the Society’s library and available to students. A small collection of ethnographic material which I brought back is at Oxford in the Pitt Rivers Museum, to whose Curator, Henry Balfour, I am indebted both for advice and for plates Nos. 24-26, 37 and 42.H. R. Palmer, now H.M. Lieutenant-Governor of Northern Nigeria, and Messrs. Macmillan & Co. have given me permission to use a table of the Kings of Agades incorporated as Appendix VI. The list originally appearedin extenso, with the names somewhat differently spelled, in an article which he published in theJournal of the African Societyin July 1910. The great learning and sympathetic help which he was good enough to put at my disposal have made me, in common with many others in Nigeria, in whose friendship my journey so richly rewarded me, hope that he may be induced to render more accessible to the public the immense fund of historical and other material which he has accumulated during his long career as a distinguished Colonial servant.The then Governor of Nigeria, Sir H. Clifford, and the French Ministry of Colonies earned the gratitude of Angus Buchanan and myself by their assistance on the road and in facilitating our journey.My brother-in-law, T. A. Emmet, was good enough to execute several drawings from rough sketches I had made on the spot. Two of these drawings are reproduced as plates Nos. 38 and 39.To three persons it is difficult for me to express my gratitude at all suitably. D. G. Hogarth read my manuscript and offered his invaluable advice regarding the final form of the book as it now appears. Many years’ association with him has led others beside myself to regard him in his wisdom as our spiritual godfather in thingsappertaining to the world of Islam. My father devoted many days and nights to correcting the final draft and proofs of this book. My brother Peter, when his versatile mind perceived certain improvements, rewrote Chapter XII after I had become so tired of the sight of my manuscript that I was on the verge of destroying the offensive object. I owe more to both these two than I can explain.F. R. R.New York,31st December, 1925.CONTENTSCHAPTERPAGEI.Introductory1II.The Southlands36III.The City of Agades80IV.The Organisation of the Air Tuareg119V.Social Conditions154VI.The Mode of Life of the Nomads183VII.Trade and Occupations213VIII.Architecture and Art238IX.Religion and Beliefs273X.Northern Air and the Kel Owi298XI.The Ancestry of the Tuareg of Air330XII.The History of Air. Part I. The Migrations of the Tuareg to Air360XIII.The History of Air. Part II. The Vicissitudes of the Tuareg in Air401XIV.Valedictory417APPENDIXPAGEI.A List of the Astronomically Determined Points in Air422II.The Tribal Organisation of the Tuareg of Air426III.Elakkos and Termit442IV.Ibn Batutah’s Journey452V.On the Root “MZGh” in Various Libyan Names457VI.The Kings of the Tuareg of Air463VII.Some Bibliographical Material used in this Book466Index469PLATESPLATEFacing page1.Agellal Village and MountainsFrontispiece2.Elattu143.Desert and Hills from Termit Peak324.Diom in Elakkos42Punch and Judy Show425.Gamram496.River of Agades: Cliffs at Akaraq76Shrine at Akaraq767.River of Agades looking South from Tebehic in the Eghalgawen Massif79Eghalgawen Massif from Azawagh798.Tin Wana Pool83Rock of the Two Slaves, at the Junction of the Tin Wana and Eghalgawen Valleys839.Agades8610.Gathering at Sidi Hamada95Prayers at Sidi Hamada9511.Prayers at Sidi Hamada9712.Omar: Amenokal of Air10813.Auderas Valley looking West120Auderas Valley: Aerwan Tidrak12014.Mt. Todra from Auderas12615.Grain Pots, Iferuan133Garden Wells13316.Auderas: Huts154Auderas: Tent-hut and Shelter15417.The Author dressing a Wound at Auderas16318.Tekhmedin and the Author17819.Bagezan Mountains and Towar Village18220.Huts at Towar showing Method of Construction184Timia Huts18421.Camel Brands19522.Shield Ornamentation and Utensils20923.Timia Gorge216Timia Gorge: Basalt and Granite Formations21624.Tuareg Personal Equipment22725.Tuareg Camel Equipment23026.Tuareg Weapons23627.House Types24028.House Types24129.Timia: “A” and “B” Type Houses and Hut Circles244Tabello: Interior of “A” Type House24430.House Interiors24831.Mosques25632.Mosques25733.Tifinagh Alphabet26734.Rock Inscriptions in Tifinagh26935.Mt. Abattul and Village27536.The Cross in Ornament27737.Tuareg Personal Ornaments28538.Mt. Arwa29539.Mt. Aggata30040.Rock Drawings30541.Rock Drawings30642.Ornamented Baggage Rests31043.T’intellust31244.Barth’s Camp at T’intellust313Barth’s Camp at T’intellust (another view)31345.Assarara32646.Fugda, Chief of Timia, and His Wakil352Atagoom35247.Sidi36648.Eghalgawen Pool400Tizraet Pool40049.Eghalgawen Valley and the Last Hills of Air41450.Mt. Bila at Sunset419AdditionalPlate⎰⎱Typical Tebu442Termit Peak and Well442MAPS AND DIAGRAMSPAGEMap showing the Trade Roads of North Africa5Diagrammatic Map showing the Drainage of the Central Sahara29Map of Damergu and Neighbouring Parts: 1/2,000,000facing p.36Sketch Map of Air and the Divisions of the Southland40Diagram showing Tribal Descent among the Tuareg130Diagram showing the Government of the Air Tuareg144Map showing Leo’s Saharan Areas331Diagram showing Ibn Khaldun’s Berber Tribes341Diagram showing the Migrations of the Air Tuareg388Genealogy of Certain Kings of Air465Map of Air and Adjacent Parts: 1/2,000,000At endNOTEThegeneral map at the end of the volume was prepared by the Royal Geographical Society from data collected by the author supplementing existing maps published in France and described in the text of the book. The two drawings (Plates 38 and 39) were executed in England by T. A. Emmet from sketches made in Air. Plates Nos. 2, 15 (lower), 34 are from photographs taken by Angus Buchanan. All the other maps, diagrams, pictures, and photographs were prepared by the author from material collected in 1922.NOTEThename “Air” is a dissyllable word: the vowels are pronounced as in Italian according to the general system of transliteration, which follows, wherever possible, the rules laid down by the Committee of the Royal Geographical Society on the Spelling of Proper Names. In the Tuareg form of Berber,tbeforeior similar vowel, especially in the feminine possessive particle “tin,” very often assumes a sound varying between a hard explosivetchand a soft liquid dental, such as is found in the English word “tune.” This modification of the soundtis writtent’, wherever it is by usage sufficiently pronounced to be noticeable. The pronunciation of Tuareg words follows the Air dialect, which often differs from the northern speech. Letters are only accented where it is important to avoid mispronunciation, as in Fadé and Emilía: a finale, as in Assode, which is a trisyllable, should always be pronounced even if not accented.The nasalnoccurring in such words as Añastafidet is writtenñ.Thegh(or Arabic غ,ghen) sound is, as in other Berber languages, very common in the speech of the Tuareg. The letter is so stronglygrasseyéas to be indistinguishable, in many cases, fromr. The French with greater logic write this soundrorr’. Doubtless many names which have been spelled withrin the succeeding pages should more correctly have been spelled withgh: such mistakes are due to the difficulties both of distinguishing the sound in speech, and of transcribing French transliterations.No attempt has been made to indicate the occurrence of the thirdgwhich exists in the Tuareg alphabet, in addition to the hardgand the softg(writtenj).The Arabic letter ع (’ain) does not exist in the speech of the Tuareg; where they use an Arabic word containing this letter, they substitute for it the soundgh.No signs have been used to distinguish between the hard and soft varieties of the lettersd,tandz. The “kef” (Iek) and “qaf” (Iaq) sounds are writtenkandq.PEOPLE OF THE VEILCHAPTER IINTRODUCTORYSaharais the name given in modern geography to the whole of the interior of North Africa between the Nile Valley and the Atlantic littoral, south of the Mediterranean coastlands and north of the Equatorial belt. The word “Sahara” is derived from the Arabic, and its meaning refers to a certain type of stony desert in one particular area. There is no native name for the whole of this vast land surface: it is far too large to fall wholly within the cognisance of any one group of its diverse inhabitants. The fact that it is a Moslem area and sharply distinguished from the rest of Africa has made it desirable to find a better name than “Sahara” to include both the interior and the littoral, for even “Sahara,” unsatisfactory as it is, can only be used of the former. “Africa Minor” has been proposed, but the reception accorded to this name has not been so cordial as to warrant its use. The clumsy term “North Africa” must therefore serve in the following pages to describe all the northern part of the continent; specifically it refers to the parts west of the Nile Valley and north of the Sudan.[1]It is an area which is now no longer permanently inhabitedby negro races, and which is not covered by the dense vegetation of Equatoria.To the general public the name Sahara denotes “Desert,” and the latter connotes sand and thirst and camels and picturesque men and veiled women. The Sahara in reality is very different. Its surface and races are varied. Almost every type of physical feature, except permanent glaciation, can be found. The greater part is capable of supporting animal and vegetable life in some degree. Absolute desert where no living thing can exist does not on the whole form a very large proportion of the surface. It has become usual nowadays to differentiate between the cultivated or cultivable areas, the steppe desert and the true desert. The latter alone is devoid of organic life, and is the exception rather than the rule. The mountain groups of the Sahara fall, as an intermediate category, between the cultivated and the desert lands. Generally speaking, animal and vegetable life exist in the valleys, where some tillage is often possible. The density of population, however, is never comparable with that of the cultivated districts, which, except where they fringe the coast, are usually included in the term “oases.”The mountain groups of the Sahara are numerous and comparatively high. There are summits in the more important massifs exceeding 10,000 feet above the sea. The three most important groups in the Central Sahara are the Tibesti, Air and Ahaggar mountains. In such a generalisation, reference to the Atlas and other mountain masses in Algeria and Morocco may be omitted, since they do not properly speaking belong to the Sahara. The three Saharan massifs are probably of volcanic origin. They have only become known in recent years, and even now have not been fully explored. This is especially the case in regard to Tibesti, an area believed to be orographically connected with Air by the almost unknown plateau of the Southern Fezzan.The Central Sahara with these three groups of mountains differs materially from the Eastern Sahara. Although ourdata for the latter are more limited by lack of knowledge, the structure of the surface immediately west of the Nile Valley appears characteristically to be a series of closed basins. The area is covered with depressions into which insignificant channels flow, and from which there appear to be no outlets. Compared with the river systems of the west, the stream beds are small and ill-defined. One valley of some magnitude, the Bahr Bela Ma which Rohlfs tried to find on his famous journeys in the Libyan desert, has been identified either as a dry channel of the Nile running roughly parallel to it, or alternatively as a valley which starts from N.E. Tibesti and terminates near or in the Wadi Natrun depression just west of the Nile and level with the apex of the Delta. The upper part which drains Tibesti has been called the W. Fardi; elsewhere it is the W. Fareg; the shallow depression crossed by Hassanein Bey on his journey from Jalo to Kufra seems to be part of this system. Examples of closed basins separated from one another by steppe or desert are the oases of Kufra, the Jaghbub-Siwa, Jalo and Lake Chad depressions. In these areas cultivation is frequently intense; salt and fresh water are abundant; and the vegetation sometimes develops luxuriantly into veritable forests of date palms such as exist at Kufra. Between these hollows the intervening Libyan desert is probably the largest and most sterile area of its sort in the world.The Western Sahara, on the other hand, is essentially an area of well-defined river systems with watersheds and dry beds fashioned on a vast scale. The valleys which extend from the mountains of Ahaggar and the Fezzan to the present River Niger have corresponding channels on the other side of the water-parting running through Southern Algeria or Tunisia towards the Mediterranean. There are good reasons for believing that the original course of the Niger terminated in a swamp or marsh north of Timbuctoo, probably the same collecting basin as that west of Ahaggar into which certain rivers from the Atlas also used to flow. The lower Niger from the eastern side ofthe great bend where the river now turns south-east and south drained the Central Sahara by a great channel which had its head-waters in Ahaggar and the Fezzan, and ran west of Air.These Saharan rivers have not contained perennial surface water for long ages. In places they have been covered by more recent sand-dune formations of great extension, but they date from the present geological period. Associated with the desiccation of these valleys is the characteristic of extreme dryness which is one of the few features more or less in accord with popular conceptions of the Sahara. The barrenness of the Sahara is less due to the inherent sterility of the ground than to climatic conditions; desiccation has been intensified in the course of centuries by the purely mechanical processes attendant upon an extremely continental climate and excessively high day temperatures. The latter combined with the extraordinary dryness of the air have contributed to the decay of vegetable, and consequently of animal, life wherever man has not been sufficiently powerful, in numbers or energy, to stay the process. Sterility and desiccation are interacting causes and effects. There is no reason to believe that any sudden change of climate has taken place in the Sahara since the neolithic period, or that it is very much drier now than two thousand years ago. Maximum and minimum temperatures, both average and absolute, have a very wide range seasonally and within the period of twenty-four hours. Temperatures of over 100° F. in the shade are common at all seasons of the year during the day: the thermometer frequently falls to freezing point at night during the winter. Ice is not unknown in the mountains of Tibesti, Air and Ahaggar. The rainfall is irregular except within the belt of summer rains which are so characteristic of Equatorial Africa. In Tibesti the cycle of good rains seems to recur once in thirteen years: in many years both here and elsewhere in the Sahara no rain falls at all. But with these adverse climatic conditions the surprising fact remains, not that the Sahara is so barren, but that it isso relatively well-favoured and capable of supporting different races of people in such comparatively large numbers.[2]The Air mountains, like the Desert steppes, are only sparsely inhabited. The hill-sides are too wind-swept and rocky to support forests or pastures of any value. Many of the valleys are capable of being cultivated, but in practice are only gardened here and there. In certain districts there are groves of date palms which have been imported from the north. Air is in reality a great Saharan oasis divided from the Equatorial belt by a zone of desert and steppe. It differs from the south in its flora and general conditions, though by its position within the belt of tropical summer rains it belongs climatically to the Sudan.TRADE ROADSF. R. del.Emery Walker Ltd. sc.The oases of the desert, like the Sahara generally, have been the subject of much popular misconception. Theorigin of the word “oasis,” which has reached us in its present form through the classics, may perhaps be found in ancient Egyptian. It seems to be connected with the name of the Wawat People of the West referred to in the Harris Papyrus,[3]and occurs in the names of Wau el Kebir and Wau el Seghir or el Namus, which are oases in the Eastern Fezzan.[4]The term El Wahat,[5]given to one or several of the oases west of the Nile Valley, contains the same root. An oasis is not necessarily a patch of ground with two or three palm trees and a well in the desert. It is simply an indefinite area of fertility in a barren land; it may or may not happen to have a well. There are oases in Southern Algeria and the Fezzan with hundreds of thousands of palm trees, containing many villages and a permanent population. There are others where the pasture is good but where there is neither population nor water. “Oasis” is a term with no strict denotation, it connotes attributes which render animal life possible.In this sense Air, as a whole, is an oasis situated on a great caravan road from the Mediterranean to Central Africa. The mountains so lie in respect of the desert to the north and to the south that caravan journeys may be broken in their valleys, and camels can stay to recuperate. The mountains mark a stage on the road, the importance of which it is difficult to over-estimate. In the history of North Africa, the principal routes across the Sahara from the Mediterranean to the Sudan have seemingly not changed at all. Since the earliest times they have followed the shortest tracks from north to south whenever there was sufficient water. If the Nile Valley and the routes in the desert adjacent thereto are left out of account as beingsuorum generum, there are four main caravan roads across North Africa from north to south. The easternmost runs from Cyrenaica by Kufrato Wadai and Tibesti; only within the last century has it been rendered practicable for caravans by the provision of wells along the southern part, which was opened to heavy traffic by the Senussiya sect. The two central routes run respectively from Tripolitania by the Fezzan, Murzuk and Kawar to Lake Chad, and by Ghadames, Ghat and Air to the Central Sudan. The western route runs from Algeria and Morocco across the desert to Timbuctoo. In addition there is the Moroccan road, which roughly follows the curve of the coast to the Western Sudan and Senegal. Of all these the best known in modern times,[6]and culturally perhaps the most important, has been the Air road. It is noteworthy that all three central routes have been or are within the control of the Tuareg race. As the Tuareg were the caravan drivers of the Central Sahara, so were they also responsible for bringing a certain degree of civilisation from the Mediterranean to Equatorial Africa. That has been their greatest rôle in history.The object of this book is to describe a part of the Tuareg race, namely, those tribes which live in Air and in the country immediately to the south. It will not be possible to examine in any detail the theories surrounding the origin of the race, but certain definitions are necessary if the succeeding chapters are to be understood. The Berbers of North Africa, among whom are usually included the Tuareg, have very disputed origins; for many reasons it is perhaps best to follow the example of Herodotus and use the geographical term Libyans for them. Less controversy surrounds this name than “Berber,” which implies a number of wholly imaginary anthropological connections. Moreover, it is even open to doubt whether the Tuareg are Berbers at all, like the other people so called in Algeria and Morocco. In all this confusion it will be enough to grasp that the Tuareg are a Libyan people with marked individual peculiarities and that they were in North Africa long before the Arabs came. They have been there ever since the earliest times of which wehave any historical record, though in more northern areas than those which they now occupy. The population of the Sahara is very diverse and the affinities of the various elements afford many interesting problems for study; but in the present work we shall be concerned with the one race alone.The Tuareg country may roughly be described as extending from the eastern edge of the Central Sahara, which is bounded by the Fezzan-Murzuk-Kawar-Lake Chad caravan road, to the far edge of the western deserts of North Africa before the Atlantic zone begins, and from Southern Algeria in the north to the Niger and the Equatorial belt between the river and Lake Chad in the south. The Tuareg are so little known even to-day that their very existence is almost legendary. It is with something of a thrill that the tourist in Tunis or Algiers learns from a mendacious guide that a poor Arab half-caste sitting muffled in a cloak is one of the fabled People of the Veil. It is long, in fact, since any of them have visited the Mediterranean coast, for they do not care for Europeans very much. Before the Italo-Turkish War, occasional Tuareg used to reach the coast at Tripoli at the end of the long caravan road from Central Africa; even then they more usually stopped at Ghadames or Murzuk. With the Italian occupation of Tripolitania in 1913 they became apprehensive of intrusion on their last unconquered area; but despite the Italian failure to occupy and administer the interior they have only lately ventured a certain way north once more on raids or for commerce.Though the Hornemann, Lyons and the Denham, Oudney and Clapperton expeditions in the first half of the last century touched the fringe of the Tuareg country, the first Europeans in modern times to come into contact with the Azger group in the Fezzan were Richardson in 1847 and Barth with Richardson in 1849 and subsequent years. Barth, more particularly mentioned in the story of the penetration of Air, is in some respects even now the most valuable authority for all the Tuareg except the Ahaggaren. The first detailed work of value dedicated to the latter was that of Duveyrier,Les Touareg du Nord, published in 1864 after a journey through the Ahaggar and Azger country and the Fezzan. His systematic study of the ethnology of the Tuareg, his geographical work and his researches into the fauna, flora and ancient history of the lands he visited, were presented to the world in a form which has since been taken in France as the model of what a scientific book should be. Ill health was the tragedy of his life, for it prevented his return, and rendered him, as he remarked in later years, “an arm-chair explorer of the Sahara.” After visiting the Wad Righ and Shott countries in Southern Tunisia, he went to El Golea on the road to Tuat and thence turned towards Ghadames and Tripolitania. He eventually reached Ghat, and returned to the Mediterranean coast by Murzuk and Sokna, taking a more easterly road than Barth’s in 1850. Beurmann in 1862, and Dickson ten years previously, had reached the edge of the same Tuareg country, but what Barth had done for the Tuareg of Air and the south, Duveyrier did for the Ahaggaren and Azger.In 1881, twenty years after the expedition of Burin to Tuat, the French determined to penetrate the countries of this fabled race. A column under Colonel Flatters, who had already gained a certain reputation in France as a Saharan explorer, marched almost due south from Wargla and Tuggurt in the eastern part of Southern Algeria up the Ighaghar basin and so reached the north-eastern corner of the Ahaggar country. This valley is the drainage system of the north central Sahara towards the Mediterranean; it virtually divides the old Azger country from that of the Ahaggaren. Near the Aghelashem Wells at the intersection of the valley with the Ghat-Insalah road, Flatters turned S.E., intending apparently to follow the Ghat-Air caravan road to the Sudan. This track he proposed joining at or near the wells of Issala, and then to proceed by much the same route as that which Barth and his companions had selected in 1850. But at Bir Gharama in the Tin Tarabin valley, a few days before it was due to reach Issala, disaster overtookthe column. The European officers, who assumed that their penetration of the Tuareg country was welcome to the inhabitants, had taken none of the military precautions necessary in hostile country. The vital part of the expedition, the officer commanding and his staff, left camp to reconnoitre a well and became separated from their troops, consisting of about eighty Algerian tirailleurs. The officers were attacked by the Tuareg and killed. After the death of Colonel Flatters and Captain Masson, the remainder of the column under Captain Dianous made an attempt to escape north. After an unsuccessful effort by the Tuareg to destroy the party by selling the men dates poisoned with the Alfalehle plant (Hyoscyamus Falezlez),[7]the column reached the Ighaghar once more at the wells of Amjid. But they found the wells occupied by the enemy, and in the ensuing fight Captain Dianous and nearly all his men were killed.The circumstances of the disaster, so vividly recounted by Duveyrier to the Paris Geographical Society on 22nd April, 1881, had followed the publication of his account of a people whom he had described picturesquely, but with some exaggeration, as the “Knights of the Desert.” The massacre created a profound impression in France. The Tuareg came to be regarded as an insurmountable obstacle to the French penetration of North Africa, and expeditions into their country were discontinued. The disaster of Bir Gharama remained unavenged until 1902, when a detachment of Camel Corps under Lieut. Cottonest met the pick of the Ahaggar Tuareg in battle at Tit within their own mountains and killed 93 men out of 299 present, the French patrol losing only 4 killed and 2 wounded out of 120 native soldiers and Arab scouts. Despite the small numbers involved, the fight at Tit broke the resistance of Ahaggar, for it proved the vanity of matching a few old flintlocks and spears and swords against magazine rifles.[8]But if it demonstratedthe futility of overt resistance, it also established for all time the courage of the camel riders of the desert, who hurled themselves against a barrier of rifle fire, unprotected by primeval forest or sheltering jungle, in order to maintain their age-long defiance of the mastery of foreign people.Considering the magnitude of the results they achieve, Saharan, like Arabian, battles involve surprisingly small numbers. The size of armed bodies moving over the desert is limited by the capacity of the wells; the output of water not only regulates the mass of raiding bands, but also determines their strategy, as well as the routes of trading caravans, which are compelled to move in large bodies in order to ensure even a small measure of protection. Only the realisation of this rather self-evident fact enabled the French in the course of years to deal with raiders in Southern Algeria by organising Camel Corps patrols of relatively small size and great mobility. The privations which these raiders are willing to endure made it impossible to fight them with a European establishment.The necessity of imitating the nomad in his mode of life and warfare became obvious to Laperrine from his first sojourn in Southern Algeria, where he made his career as the greatest European desert leader in history with one solitary exception. The encounter of Tit was followed by a number of “Tournées d’Apprivoisement,” patrols to “tame” the desert folk, initiated by Laperrine, and culminating in 1904 in a protracted reconnaissance through Ahaggar, which brought about a final pacification. Charles de Foucauld, soldier, traveller and monk, had accompanied the patrol. He remained on after it was over as a hermit and student among the Ahaggaren until his death in 1916. He had been Laperrine’s brother officer at St. Cyr. Extravagant, reckless and endowed with all the good things of the world, a member of the old French aristocracy in a smart cavalry regiment, the Marquis de Foucauld is one of the most picturesque figures of modern times. After a memorable reconnaissance of Morocco in 1883-4, disguised as a Jew,he became a Trappist monk, and eventually entered a retreat at Beni Abbes, in the desert that he loved too well to leave in all his life. During his years in Ahaggar as a teacher of the Word of God he made no converts to Christianity, but sought by his example alone to lead the people along the way of Truth. It is to be hoped that, in spite of a modesty which precluded it during his lifetime, the knowledge and lore of the Tuareg which he collected in the form of notes will eventually be given to the world in order to supplement his dictionary of the Ahaggar dialect, to-day the standard work on their language, which is called Temajegh.[9]To implement the Laperrine policy of long reconnaissances, a post was built near Tamanghasset in Ahaggar called Fort Motylinski, after an officer interpreter who was one of the first practical students of Temajegh. Lately the post has been moved to Tamanghasset itself, where Father de Foucauld had built his hermitage, and it is now called Fort Laperrine, in memory of the great soldier who was killed flying across the desert to Timbuctoo in 1919.Another post was built at Janet not far from Ghat, to watch the Azger Tuareg. Its capture during the late war by the Arabs and Tuareg of Ghat, and the killing of Father de Foucauld by a raiding party from the Fezzan, are incidents in that same series of intrigues which were instigated in North Africa by the Central Empires and carried on with such success in the Western Desert of Egypt, Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, Southern Algeria and as far afield as Air. If the Senussi leaders have not been responsible for as many intrigues as it has been the fashion to ascribe to this puritanical and perhaps fanatical sect, the Germans at least discovered what others are still learning, that the latent force of nationalism in North Africa among the ancient Libyan and Arab-Libyan peoples is powerful still to-day. The spirit of the Circumcelliones and of the opponents of Islam in the eighthcentury was exploited by the Turks and Germans through the Senussiya, which provided the only organisation available during the Great War, though in fact only few Tuareg and Arabs at Ghat or in the Fezzan were members of, or even friendly to, the sect. These people used the opportunity afforded by the war to procure arms and material through the Senussiya for the consummation of their own ambitions. The new spirit which is abroad in Islam, in Africa as well as in Asia, is an interesting subject of study for the practical politician. There is no occasion to enlarge upon it here.In consequence of these agitations, a raid came out of the east and fell upon Father de Foucauld’s hermitage on the 1st December, 1916. The hermit was killed, but the raiders were not of the Ahaggaren among whom he had lived, and to whom he had devoted his life; they came from Ghat and the Fezzan. They probably started without intent to murder, but because Charles de Foucauld was the greatest European influence in the desert at that time, they desired to remove him and perhaps to hold him as a hostage. In justice it must be admitted that no one had any illusions regarding the political views of the people of the Fezzan; they were in a state of open warfare with the French posts in Southern Algeria. De Foucauld had played a very great part against them in preventing the Ahaggaren risingen masseagainst the French; he was an important intelligence centre for the neighbouring Fort Motilynski; he was apparently, well provided with rifles in his hermitage. When surprised by the raid, he disdained to fight, preferring to fall a martyr to his religion and his country. My excuse, if any is needed, for touching on a subject tending to be controversial is the appearance of a number of mis-statements concerning the barbarity of his murder and the treachery of the people to whom Father de Foucauld had devoted the latter part of his life. It is well to remember, in the first place, that the circumstances of his life and his prestige made the attack a justifiable act of war, for he played a definitely political rôle; secondly, that there wasno treachery or betrayal; and lastly, that his aggressors were a mixed band of Arabs and of Tuareg from another part of the Sahara which had, for generations past, been on terms of raid and counter-raid with the people of Ahaggar.When all has been said of the European penetration of the Tuareg country, it is not very much. The world outside the society of those white men who, during the last fifty years, have spent their lives in the Sahara, can know but little of this race or of their country. The modern literature on the subject is small, even in French; in English it is almost non-existent. On the Tuareg of Air there are only two works of any value: the one by a French officer is recent in date and sadly superficial;[10]the other is incorporated in H. Barth’s account of the British expedition of 1849 and subsequent years to Central Africa.[11]There are a few other works in French about the Tuareg of the north and south-west, but I am not aware that anyone has attempted a general study of the whole people, who have been rather neglected by science. The principal object of this volume will have been achieved if it in any measure fills a want in English records or if it arouses sufficient controversy to induce others to undertake a thorough investigation of the race.The Tuareg are not a tribe but a people. The name “Tuareg” is not their own: it is a term of opprobrium applied to them by their enemies, and connotes certain peculiarities possessed by a number of tribal confederations which have no common name for themselves as a race. The men of this people, after reaching a certain age, wear a strip of thin cloth wound around their heads in such a manner as to form a hood over the eyes and a covering over the mouth and nostrils. Only a narrow slit is left open for the eyes, and no other part of the face is visible. From this practice they became known to the Arabs as the “Muleththemin”or “Veiled People,”[12]while they themselves, in default of a national name, are in the habit of using the same locution in their own tongue to describe the whole society of different castes which compose their community. Whatever the social position of the men, the Veil is invariably worn by day and by night,[13]while the women go unveiled. Few races are more rigidly observant of social distinction between noble and servile tribes; none holds to a tradition of dress with more ritual conservatism.
PEOPLE OF THE VEIL
PEOPLE OF THE VEIL
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PLATE 1AGELLAL VILLAGE AND MOUNTAINS[Frontispiece.
PLATE 1
AGELLAL VILLAGE AND MOUNTAINS
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[Frontispiece.
PEOPLE OF THE VEILBeing an Account of the Habits, Organisationand History of the Wandering Tuareg Tribeswhich inhabit the Mountains of Air or Asbenin the Central SaharaBYFRANCIS RENNELL RODDⵍⵆⵔⵗⵙ“NAUGHT BUT GOOD”WITH ILLUSTRATIONSMACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON1926
Being an Account of the Habits, Organisationand History of the Wandering Tuareg Tribeswhich inhabit the Mountains of Air or Asbenin the Central Sahara
BYFRANCIS RENNELL RODD
ⵍⵆⵔⵗⵙ“NAUGHT BUT GOOD”
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON1926
COPYRIGHTPRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
COPYRIGHT
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
Thisbook was originally intended to be an account of the people and mountains of Air in the Central Sahara, where I made a journey during most of 1922 with Angus Buchanan and T. A. Glover. The former had visited the area on a previous occasion and had described the people and places he had seen in his book,Out of the World—North of Nigeria. It therefore seemed more profitable to inquire into some of the problems surrounding the inhabitants of the Sahara whom we encountered, and thus deal with Air and its Tuareg population rather less objectively than had my fellow-traveller. In the course of the succeeding years, as I became more and more immersed in considering various scientific aspects of the Sahara, I came to the conclusion that neither had the Tuareg people nor had this vast area of the earth’s surface been at all adequately examined. Most studies had been objective and, as is unhappily the case with this book, confined to one area. A comprehensive account of the history and ethnology of the Sahara still requires to be written.
As a consequence of these investigations, the present work assumed a form for which one journey of nine months in the countries concerned scarcely seems enough justification. That the book was not completed sooner has been due to the impossibility of spending any time continuously either in research or on writing during the three years which have elapsed since I returned. The fact that this book has been the occupation only of such spare time as I have had available accounts for its many conscious deficiencies, which are unfortunately not the more excusablein a volume of the type which it purports to be. If I can feel that it will have served to stimulate the curiosity of students or have assisted them to find their way about the literature on the subject, I shall consider that as a reward calculated to enhance the pleasure which I have derived from writing and reading about this—to me—fascinating topic.
It will be one of my lasting regrets that I was unable to complete with Angus Buchanan his journey across the Sahara from Nigeria to Algiers. The delays which we encountered in Air obliged me to return to resume my duties in that branch of H.M.’s Service in which I was then serving. This is not the place to mention the many things which I owe to Angus Buchanan; perhaps the greatest advantage I derived was the promise we gave one another to travel again together if an occasion should come to him and leisure from another profession to me, whereby we might be enabled to renew our companionship of the road. I am grateful to him for permission to use several of his photographs in the present volume as well as certain information which he collected when we were separately engaged on our different work.
To T. A. Glover, the Cinematographer, whose services Angus Buchanan secured to accompany him, I owe many pleasant memories of days spent together and his excellent advice in taking most of the photographs which are included in this book.
The French officers whom I encountered in the course of my wanderings were as charming and as friendly as perhaps, of all foreign nations, only Frenchmen know how to be. Were the relations between our respective countries always even remotely similar to those which subsisted between us, there would be no room for the suspicion and pettiness which so often mar diplomatic and political intercourse. The mutual confidence in which we lived is illustrated by two events.
On a certain occasion in Air when news was receivedof a raid being about to fall on the country, I was honoured by receiving a communication from the French officer commanding the Fort at Agades, indicating the locality in his general scheme of defence whither I might lead on a reconnaissance an armed band of local Tuareg from the village in which I was then living by myself. On another occasion, after travelling for some hundreds of miles with a French Camel Corps patrol, the men were paraded and in their presence I was nominated an honorary serjeant of the “Peloton Méhariste de Guré,” a type of compliment which those associated with the French Army will best realise. It is to the officer commanding this unit, Henri Gramain of the French Colonial Army, that I owe the most perfect companionship I have ever had the fortune to experience. I know that when we meet again we shall resume conversation where we left off at Teshkar in the bushland of Elakkos, one evening in the summer of 1922. He and my other friends, Tuareg, British, French, Arab and Fulani contributed to make that year the happiest I have ever spent.
No reader of the works of that great traveller, Dr. Heinrich Barth, will need to be told how much of the data collected in the succeeding pages has been culled from the monumental account of hisTravels in Central Africa. This German, who most loyally served the British Crown in those far countries, is perhaps the greatest traveller there has ever been in Africa. His exploits were never advertised, so his fame has not been suffered to compete with the more sensational and journalistic enterprises accomplished since his day down to modern times. But no student will require to have his praises sung by any disciple.
I have to thank the Royal Geographical Society for permission to use the map which was prepared for a paper I had the honour to read in 1923 before a meeting of the Fellows. More especially do I wish to thank E. A. Reeves, their Keeper of Maps, both for the instruction in surveyingwhich he gave me before my journey and for the assistance afforded after my return in checking and working up my results. My cartographic material in the form of road traverses, sketch maps based on astronomical positions, and theodolite computations are all in the Society’s library and available to students. A small collection of ethnographic material which I brought back is at Oxford in the Pitt Rivers Museum, to whose Curator, Henry Balfour, I am indebted both for advice and for plates Nos. 24-26, 37 and 42.
H. R. Palmer, now H.M. Lieutenant-Governor of Northern Nigeria, and Messrs. Macmillan & Co. have given me permission to use a table of the Kings of Agades incorporated as Appendix VI. The list originally appearedin extenso, with the names somewhat differently spelled, in an article which he published in theJournal of the African Societyin July 1910. The great learning and sympathetic help which he was good enough to put at my disposal have made me, in common with many others in Nigeria, in whose friendship my journey so richly rewarded me, hope that he may be induced to render more accessible to the public the immense fund of historical and other material which he has accumulated during his long career as a distinguished Colonial servant.
The then Governor of Nigeria, Sir H. Clifford, and the French Ministry of Colonies earned the gratitude of Angus Buchanan and myself by their assistance on the road and in facilitating our journey.
My brother-in-law, T. A. Emmet, was good enough to execute several drawings from rough sketches I had made on the spot. Two of these drawings are reproduced as plates Nos. 38 and 39.
To three persons it is difficult for me to express my gratitude at all suitably. D. G. Hogarth read my manuscript and offered his invaluable advice regarding the final form of the book as it now appears. Many years’ association with him has led others beside myself to regard him in his wisdom as our spiritual godfather in thingsappertaining to the world of Islam. My father devoted many days and nights to correcting the final draft and proofs of this book. My brother Peter, when his versatile mind perceived certain improvements, rewrote Chapter XII after I had become so tired of the sight of my manuscript that I was on the verge of destroying the offensive object. I owe more to both these two than I can explain.
F. R. R.
New York,31st December, 1925.
NOTE
Thegeneral map at the end of the volume was prepared by the Royal Geographical Society from data collected by the author supplementing existing maps published in France and described in the text of the book. The two drawings (Plates 38 and 39) were executed in England by T. A. Emmet from sketches made in Air. Plates Nos. 2, 15 (lower), 34 are from photographs taken by Angus Buchanan. All the other maps, diagrams, pictures, and photographs were prepared by the author from material collected in 1922.
Thename “Air” is a dissyllable word: the vowels are pronounced as in Italian according to the general system of transliteration, which follows, wherever possible, the rules laid down by the Committee of the Royal Geographical Society on the Spelling of Proper Names. In the Tuareg form of Berber,tbeforeior similar vowel, especially in the feminine possessive particle “tin,” very often assumes a sound varying between a hard explosivetchand a soft liquid dental, such as is found in the English word “tune.” This modification of the soundtis writtent’, wherever it is by usage sufficiently pronounced to be noticeable. The pronunciation of Tuareg words follows the Air dialect, which often differs from the northern speech. Letters are only accented where it is important to avoid mispronunciation, as in Fadé and Emilía: a finale, as in Assode, which is a trisyllable, should always be pronounced even if not accented.
The nasalnoccurring in such words as Añastafidet is writtenñ.
Thegh(or Arabic غ,ghen) sound is, as in other Berber languages, very common in the speech of the Tuareg. The letter is so stronglygrasseyéas to be indistinguishable, in many cases, fromr. The French with greater logic write this soundrorr’. Doubtless many names which have been spelled withrin the succeeding pages should more correctly have been spelled withgh: such mistakes are due to the difficulties both of distinguishing the sound in speech, and of transcribing French transliterations.
No attempt has been made to indicate the occurrence of the thirdgwhich exists in the Tuareg alphabet, in addition to the hardgand the softg(writtenj).
The Arabic letter ع (’ain) does not exist in the speech of the Tuareg; where they use an Arabic word containing this letter, they substitute for it the soundgh.
No signs have been used to distinguish between the hard and soft varieties of the lettersd,tandz. The “kef” (Iek) and “qaf” (Iaq) sounds are writtenkandq.
PEOPLE OF THE VEIL
INTRODUCTORY
Saharais the name given in modern geography to the whole of the interior of North Africa between the Nile Valley and the Atlantic littoral, south of the Mediterranean coastlands and north of the Equatorial belt. The word “Sahara” is derived from the Arabic, and its meaning refers to a certain type of stony desert in one particular area. There is no native name for the whole of this vast land surface: it is far too large to fall wholly within the cognisance of any one group of its diverse inhabitants. The fact that it is a Moslem area and sharply distinguished from the rest of Africa has made it desirable to find a better name than “Sahara” to include both the interior and the littoral, for even “Sahara,” unsatisfactory as it is, can only be used of the former. “Africa Minor” has been proposed, but the reception accorded to this name has not been so cordial as to warrant its use. The clumsy term “North Africa” must therefore serve in the following pages to describe all the northern part of the continent; specifically it refers to the parts west of the Nile Valley and north of the Sudan.[1]It is an area which is now no longer permanently inhabitedby negro races, and which is not covered by the dense vegetation of Equatoria.
To the general public the name Sahara denotes “Desert,” and the latter connotes sand and thirst and camels and picturesque men and veiled women. The Sahara in reality is very different. Its surface and races are varied. Almost every type of physical feature, except permanent glaciation, can be found. The greater part is capable of supporting animal and vegetable life in some degree. Absolute desert where no living thing can exist does not on the whole form a very large proportion of the surface. It has become usual nowadays to differentiate between the cultivated or cultivable areas, the steppe desert and the true desert. The latter alone is devoid of organic life, and is the exception rather than the rule. The mountain groups of the Sahara fall, as an intermediate category, between the cultivated and the desert lands. Generally speaking, animal and vegetable life exist in the valleys, where some tillage is often possible. The density of population, however, is never comparable with that of the cultivated districts, which, except where they fringe the coast, are usually included in the term “oases.”
The mountain groups of the Sahara are numerous and comparatively high. There are summits in the more important massifs exceeding 10,000 feet above the sea. The three most important groups in the Central Sahara are the Tibesti, Air and Ahaggar mountains. In such a generalisation, reference to the Atlas and other mountain masses in Algeria and Morocco may be omitted, since they do not properly speaking belong to the Sahara. The three Saharan massifs are probably of volcanic origin. They have only become known in recent years, and even now have not been fully explored. This is especially the case in regard to Tibesti, an area believed to be orographically connected with Air by the almost unknown plateau of the Southern Fezzan.
The Central Sahara with these three groups of mountains differs materially from the Eastern Sahara. Although ourdata for the latter are more limited by lack of knowledge, the structure of the surface immediately west of the Nile Valley appears characteristically to be a series of closed basins. The area is covered with depressions into which insignificant channels flow, and from which there appear to be no outlets. Compared with the river systems of the west, the stream beds are small and ill-defined. One valley of some magnitude, the Bahr Bela Ma which Rohlfs tried to find on his famous journeys in the Libyan desert, has been identified either as a dry channel of the Nile running roughly parallel to it, or alternatively as a valley which starts from N.E. Tibesti and terminates near or in the Wadi Natrun depression just west of the Nile and level with the apex of the Delta. The upper part which drains Tibesti has been called the W. Fardi; elsewhere it is the W. Fareg; the shallow depression crossed by Hassanein Bey on his journey from Jalo to Kufra seems to be part of this system. Examples of closed basins separated from one another by steppe or desert are the oases of Kufra, the Jaghbub-Siwa, Jalo and Lake Chad depressions. In these areas cultivation is frequently intense; salt and fresh water are abundant; and the vegetation sometimes develops luxuriantly into veritable forests of date palms such as exist at Kufra. Between these hollows the intervening Libyan desert is probably the largest and most sterile area of its sort in the world.
The Western Sahara, on the other hand, is essentially an area of well-defined river systems with watersheds and dry beds fashioned on a vast scale. The valleys which extend from the mountains of Ahaggar and the Fezzan to the present River Niger have corresponding channels on the other side of the water-parting running through Southern Algeria or Tunisia towards the Mediterranean. There are good reasons for believing that the original course of the Niger terminated in a swamp or marsh north of Timbuctoo, probably the same collecting basin as that west of Ahaggar into which certain rivers from the Atlas also used to flow. The lower Niger from the eastern side ofthe great bend where the river now turns south-east and south drained the Central Sahara by a great channel which had its head-waters in Ahaggar and the Fezzan, and ran west of Air.
These Saharan rivers have not contained perennial surface water for long ages. In places they have been covered by more recent sand-dune formations of great extension, but they date from the present geological period. Associated with the desiccation of these valleys is the characteristic of extreme dryness which is one of the few features more or less in accord with popular conceptions of the Sahara. The barrenness of the Sahara is less due to the inherent sterility of the ground than to climatic conditions; desiccation has been intensified in the course of centuries by the purely mechanical processes attendant upon an extremely continental climate and excessively high day temperatures. The latter combined with the extraordinary dryness of the air have contributed to the decay of vegetable, and consequently of animal, life wherever man has not been sufficiently powerful, in numbers or energy, to stay the process. Sterility and desiccation are interacting causes and effects. There is no reason to believe that any sudden change of climate has taken place in the Sahara since the neolithic period, or that it is very much drier now than two thousand years ago. Maximum and minimum temperatures, both average and absolute, have a very wide range seasonally and within the period of twenty-four hours. Temperatures of over 100° F. in the shade are common at all seasons of the year during the day: the thermometer frequently falls to freezing point at night during the winter. Ice is not unknown in the mountains of Tibesti, Air and Ahaggar. The rainfall is irregular except within the belt of summer rains which are so characteristic of Equatorial Africa. In Tibesti the cycle of good rains seems to recur once in thirteen years: in many years both here and elsewhere in the Sahara no rain falls at all. But with these adverse climatic conditions the surprising fact remains, not that the Sahara is so barren, but that it isso relatively well-favoured and capable of supporting different races of people in such comparatively large numbers.[2]
The Air mountains, like the Desert steppes, are only sparsely inhabited. The hill-sides are too wind-swept and rocky to support forests or pastures of any value. Many of the valleys are capable of being cultivated, but in practice are only gardened here and there. In certain districts there are groves of date palms which have been imported from the north. Air is in reality a great Saharan oasis divided from the Equatorial belt by a zone of desert and steppe. It differs from the south in its flora and general conditions, though by its position within the belt of tropical summer rains it belongs climatically to the Sudan.
TRADE ROADSF. R. del.Emery Walker Ltd. sc.
TRADE ROADSF. R. del.Emery Walker Ltd. sc.
TRADE ROADS
The oases of the desert, like the Sahara generally, have been the subject of much popular misconception. Theorigin of the word “oasis,” which has reached us in its present form through the classics, may perhaps be found in ancient Egyptian. It seems to be connected with the name of the Wawat People of the West referred to in the Harris Papyrus,[3]and occurs in the names of Wau el Kebir and Wau el Seghir or el Namus, which are oases in the Eastern Fezzan.[4]The term El Wahat,[5]given to one or several of the oases west of the Nile Valley, contains the same root. An oasis is not necessarily a patch of ground with two or three palm trees and a well in the desert. It is simply an indefinite area of fertility in a barren land; it may or may not happen to have a well. There are oases in Southern Algeria and the Fezzan with hundreds of thousands of palm trees, containing many villages and a permanent population. There are others where the pasture is good but where there is neither population nor water. “Oasis” is a term with no strict denotation, it connotes attributes which render animal life possible.
In this sense Air, as a whole, is an oasis situated on a great caravan road from the Mediterranean to Central Africa. The mountains so lie in respect of the desert to the north and to the south that caravan journeys may be broken in their valleys, and camels can stay to recuperate. The mountains mark a stage on the road, the importance of which it is difficult to over-estimate. In the history of North Africa, the principal routes across the Sahara from the Mediterranean to the Sudan have seemingly not changed at all. Since the earliest times they have followed the shortest tracks from north to south whenever there was sufficient water. If the Nile Valley and the routes in the desert adjacent thereto are left out of account as beingsuorum generum, there are four main caravan roads across North Africa from north to south. The easternmost runs from Cyrenaica by Kufrato Wadai and Tibesti; only within the last century has it been rendered practicable for caravans by the provision of wells along the southern part, which was opened to heavy traffic by the Senussiya sect. The two central routes run respectively from Tripolitania by the Fezzan, Murzuk and Kawar to Lake Chad, and by Ghadames, Ghat and Air to the Central Sudan. The western route runs from Algeria and Morocco across the desert to Timbuctoo. In addition there is the Moroccan road, which roughly follows the curve of the coast to the Western Sudan and Senegal. Of all these the best known in modern times,[6]and culturally perhaps the most important, has been the Air road. It is noteworthy that all three central routes have been or are within the control of the Tuareg race. As the Tuareg were the caravan drivers of the Central Sahara, so were they also responsible for bringing a certain degree of civilisation from the Mediterranean to Equatorial Africa. That has been their greatest rôle in history.
The object of this book is to describe a part of the Tuareg race, namely, those tribes which live in Air and in the country immediately to the south. It will not be possible to examine in any detail the theories surrounding the origin of the race, but certain definitions are necessary if the succeeding chapters are to be understood. The Berbers of North Africa, among whom are usually included the Tuareg, have very disputed origins; for many reasons it is perhaps best to follow the example of Herodotus and use the geographical term Libyans for them. Less controversy surrounds this name than “Berber,” which implies a number of wholly imaginary anthropological connections. Moreover, it is even open to doubt whether the Tuareg are Berbers at all, like the other people so called in Algeria and Morocco. In all this confusion it will be enough to grasp that the Tuareg are a Libyan people with marked individual peculiarities and that they were in North Africa long before the Arabs came. They have been there ever since the earliest times of which wehave any historical record, though in more northern areas than those which they now occupy. The population of the Sahara is very diverse and the affinities of the various elements afford many interesting problems for study; but in the present work we shall be concerned with the one race alone.
The Tuareg country may roughly be described as extending from the eastern edge of the Central Sahara, which is bounded by the Fezzan-Murzuk-Kawar-Lake Chad caravan road, to the far edge of the western deserts of North Africa before the Atlantic zone begins, and from Southern Algeria in the north to the Niger and the Equatorial belt between the river and Lake Chad in the south. The Tuareg are so little known even to-day that their very existence is almost legendary. It is with something of a thrill that the tourist in Tunis or Algiers learns from a mendacious guide that a poor Arab half-caste sitting muffled in a cloak is one of the fabled People of the Veil. It is long, in fact, since any of them have visited the Mediterranean coast, for they do not care for Europeans very much. Before the Italo-Turkish War, occasional Tuareg used to reach the coast at Tripoli at the end of the long caravan road from Central Africa; even then they more usually stopped at Ghadames or Murzuk. With the Italian occupation of Tripolitania in 1913 they became apprehensive of intrusion on their last unconquered area; but despite the Italian failure to occupy and administer the interior they have only lately ventured a certain way north once more on raids or for commerce.
Though the Hornemann, Lyons and the Denham, Oudney and Clapperton expeditions in the first half of the last century touched the fringe of the Tuareg country, the first Europeans in modern times to come into contact with the Azger group in the Fezzan were Richardson in 1847 and Barth with Richardson in 1849 and subsequent years. Barth, more particularly mentioned in the story of the penetration of Air, is in some respects even now the most valuable authority for all the Tuareg except the Ahaggaren. The first detailed work of value dedicated to the latter was that of Duveyrier,Les Touareg du Nord, published in 1864 after a journey through the Ahaggar and Azger country and the Fezzan. His systematic study of the ethnology of the Tuareg, his geographical work and his researches into the fauna, flora and ancient history of the lands he visited, were presented to the world in a form which has since been taken in France as the model of what a scientific book should be. Ill health was the tragedy of his life, for it prevented his return, and rendered him, as he remarked in later years, “an arm-chair explorer of the Sahara.” After visiting the Wad Righ and Shott countries in Southern Tunisia, he went to El Golea on the road to Tuat and thence turned towards Ghadames and Tripolitania. He eventually reached Ghat, and returned to the Mediterranean coast by Murzuk and Sokna, taking a more easterly road than Barth’s in 1850. Beurmann in 1862, and Dickson ten years previously, had reached the edge of the same Tuareg country, but what Barth had done for the Tuareg of Air and the south, Duveyrier did for the Ahaggaren and Azger.
In 1881, twenty years after the expedition of Burin to Tuat, the French determined to penetrate the countries of this fabled race. A column under Colonel Flatters, who had already gained a certain reputation in France as a Saharan explorer, marched almost due south from Wargla and Tuggurt in the eastern part of Southern Algeria up the Ighaghar basin and so reached the north-eastern corner of the Ahaggar country. This valley is the drainage system of the north central Sahara towards the Mediterranean; it virtually divides the old Azger country from that of the Ahaggaren. Near the Aghelashem Wells at the intersection of the valley with the Ghat-Insalah road, Flatters turned S.E., intending apparently to follow the Ghat-Air caravan road to the Sudan. This track he proposed joining at or near the wells of Issala, and then to proceed by much the same route as that which Barth and his companions had selected in 1850. But at Bir Gharama in the Tin Tarabin valley, a few days before it was due to reach Issala, disaster overtookthe column. The European officers, who assumed that their penetration of the Tuareg country was welcome to the inhabitants, had taken none of the military precautions necessary in hostile country. The vital part of the expedition, the officer commanding and his staff, left camp to reconnoitre a well and became separated from their troops, consisting of about eighty Algerian tirailleurs. The officers were attacked by the Tuareg and killed. After the death of Colonel Flatters and Captain Masson, the remainder of the column under Captain Dianous made an attempt to escape north. After an unsuccessful effort by the Tuareg to destroy the party by selling the men dates poisoned with the Alfalehle plant (Hyoscyamus Falezlez),[7]the column reached the Ighaghar once more at the wells of Amjid. But they found the wells occupied by the enemy, and in the ensuing fight Captain Dianous and nearly all his men were killed.
The circumstances of the disaster, so vividly recounted by Duveyrier to the Paris Geographical Society on 22nd April, 1881, had followed the publication of his account of a people whom he had described picturesquely, but with some exaggeration, as the “Knights of the Desert.” The massacre created a profound impression in France. The Tuareg came to be regarded as an insurmountable obstacle to the French penetration of North Africa, and expeditions into their country were discontinued. The disaster of Bir Gharama remained unavenged until 1902, when a detachment of Camel Corps under Lieut. Cottonest met the pick of the Ahaggar Tuareg in battle at Tit within their own mountains and killed 93 men out of 299 present, the French patrol losing only 4 killed and 2 wounded out of 120 native soldiers and Arab scouts. Despite the small numbers involved, the fight at Tit broke the resistance of Ahaggar, for it proved the vanity of matching a few old flintlocks and spears and swords against magazine rifles.[8]But if it demonstratedthe futility of overt resistance, it also established for all time the courage of the camel riders of the desert, who hurled themselves against a barrier of rifle fire, unprotected by primeval forest or sheltering jungle, in order to maintain their age-long defiance of the mastery of foreign people.
Considering the magnitude of the results they achieve, Saharan, like Arabian, battles involve surprisingly small numbers. The size of armed bodies moving over the desert is limited by the capacity of the wells; the output of water not only regulates the mass of raiding bands, but also determines their strategy, as well as the routes of trading caravans, which are compelled to move in large bodies in order to ensure even a small measure of protection. Only the realisation of this rather self-evident fact enabled the French in the course of years to deal with raiders in Southern Algeria by organising Camel Corps patrols of relatively small size and great mobility. The privations which these raiders are willing to endure made it impossible to fight them with a European establishment.
The necessity of imitating the nomad in his mode of life and warfare became obvious to Laperrine from his first sojourn in Southern Algeria, where he made his career as the greatest European desert leader in history with one solitary exception. The encounter of Tit was followed by a number of “Tournées d’Apprivoisement,” patrols to “tame” the desert folk, initiated by Laperrine, and culminating in 1904 in a protracted reconnaissance through Ahaggar, which brought about a final pacification. Charles de Foucauld, soldier, traveller and monk, had accompanied the patrol. He remained on after it was over as a hermit and student among the Ahaggaren until his death in 1916. He had been Laperrine’s brother officer at St. Cyr. Extravagant, reckless and endowed with all the good things of the world, a member of the old French aristocracy in a smart cavalry regiment, the Marquis de Foucauld is one of the most picturesque figures of modern times. After a memorable reconnaissance of Morocco in 1883-4, disguised as a Jew,he became a Trappist monk, and eventually entered a retreat at Beni Abbes, in the desert that he loved too well to leave in all his life. During his years in Ahaggar as a teacher of the Word of God he made no converts to Christianity, but sought by his example alone to lead the people along the way of Truth. It is to be hoped that, in spite of a modesty which precluded it during his lifetime, the knowledge and lore of the Tuareg which he collected in the form of notes will eventually be given to the world in order to supplement his dictionary of the Ahaggar dialect, to-day the standard work on their language, which is called Temajegh.[9]
To implement the Laperrine policy of long reconnaissances, a post was built near Tamanghasset in Ahaggar called Fort Motylinski, after an officer interpreter who was one of the first practical students of Temajegh. Lately the post has been moved to Tamanghasset itself, where Father de Foucauld had built his hermitage, and it is now called Fort Laperrine, in memory of the great soldier who was killed flying across the desert to Timbuctoo in 1919.
Another post was built at Janet not far from Ghat, to watch the Azger Tuareg. Its capture during the late war by the Arabs and Tuareg of Ghat, and the killing of Father de Foucauld by a raiding party from the Fezzan, are incidents in that same series of intrigues which were instigated in North Africa by the Central Empires and carried on with such success in the Western Desert of Egypt, Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, Southern Algeria and as far afield as Air. If the Senussi leaders have not been responsible for as many intrigues as it has been the fashion to ascribe to this puritanical and perhaps fanatical sect, the Germans at least discovered what others are still learning, that the latent force of nationalism in North Africa among the ancient Libyan and Arab-Libyan peoples is powerful still to-day. The spirit of the Circumcelliones and of the opponents of Islam in the eighthcentury was exploited by the Turks and Germans through the Senussiya, which provided the only organisation available during the Great War, though in fact only few Tuareg and Arabs at Ghat or in the Fezzan were members of, or even friendly to, the sect. These people used the opportunity afforded by the war to procure arms and material through the Senussiya for the consummation of their own ambitions. The new spirit which is abroad in Islam, in Africa as well as in Asia, is an interesting subject of study for the practical politician. There is no occasion to enlarge upon it here.
In consequence of these agitations, a raid came out of the east and fell upon Father de Foucauld’s hermitage on the 1st December, 1916. The hermit was killed, but the raiders were not of the Ahaggaren among whom he had lived, and to whom he had devoted his life; they came from Ghat and the Fezzan. They probably started without intent to murder, but because Charles de Foucauld was the greatest European influence in the desert at that time, they desired to remove him and perhaps to hold him as a hostage. In justice it must be admitted that no one had any illusions regarding the political views of the people of the Fezzan; they were in a state of open warfare with the French posts in Southern Algeria. De Foucauld had played a very great part against them in preventing the Ahaggaren risingen masseagainst the French; he was an important intelligence centre for the neighbouring Fort Motilynski; he was apparently, well provided with rifles in his hermitage. When surprised by the raid, he disdained to fight, preferring to fall a martyr to his religion and his country. My excuse, if any is needed, for touching on a subject tending to be controversial is the appearance of a number of mis-statements concerning the barbarity of his murder and the treachery of the people to whom Father de Foucauld had devoted the latter part of his life. It is well to remember, in the first place, that the circumstances of his life and his prestige made the attack a justifiable act of war, for he played a definitely political rôle; secondly, that there wasno treachery or betrayal; and lastly, that his aggressors were a mixed band of Arabs and of Tuareg from another part of the Sahara which had, for generations past, been on terms of raid and counter-raid with the people of Ahaggar.
When all has been said of the European penetration of the Tuareg country, it is not very much. The world outside the society of those white men who, during the last fifty years, have spent their lives in the Sahara, can know but little of this race or of their country. The modern literature on the subject is small, even in French; in English it is almost non-existent. On the Tuareg of Air there are only two works of any value: the one by a French officer is recent in date and sadly superficial;[10]the other is incorporated in H. Barth’s account of the British expedition of 1849 and subsequent years to Central Africa.[11]There are a few other works in French about the Tuareg of the north and south-west, but I am not aware that anyone has attempted a general study of the whole people, who have been rather neglected by science. The principal object of this volume will have been achieved if it in any measure fills a want in English records or if it arouses sufficient controversy to induce others to undertake a thorough investigation of the race.
The Tuareg are not a tribe but a people. The name “Tuareg” is not their own: it is a term of opprobrium applied to them by their enemies, and connotes certain peculiarities possessed by a number of tribal confederations which have no common name for themselves as a race. The men of this people, after reaching a certain age, wear a strip of thin cloth wound around their heads in such a manner as to form a hood over the eyes and a covering over the mouth and nostrils. Only a narrow slit is left open for the eyes, and no other part of the face is visible. From this practice they became known to the Arabs as the “Muleththemin”or “Veiled People,”[12]while they themselves, in default of a national name, are in the habit of using the same locution in their own tongue to describe the whole society of different castes which compose their community. Whatever the social position of the men, the Veil is invariably worn by day and by night,[13]while the women go unveiled. Few races are more rigidly observant of social distinction between noble and servile tribes; none holds to a tradition of dress with more ritual conservatism.