The statement that the Abalkoran left Air to join the Aulimmiden tends to support the view that this Air invasion was only part of a general westerly movement.The Second ImmigrationThesecond wave of immigration was that of the Kel Geres. Jean believed that the Kel Geres were among the first arrivals because he wrongly assumed that they were identical with the Itesan. An examination of the names of the various groups[393]discloses the fact that whereas many Itesan tribes have “Kel names” derived from known localities in Central Air, for the most part in the Auderas neighbourhood, of the Kel Geres tribes only the Kel Garet, Kel Anigara and the Kel Agellal have names similarly derived.[394]Traditionally the Kel Geres reached Air by way of the north. They also are associated with the story of over-population in the Mediterranean lands. They arrived, according to Jean, in considerable numbers, and settled in the part of Air which is west of the road from Iferuan to Agades by way of Assode and Auderas.[395]East of this line in later days lived the Kel Owi, and presumably, at this early period, the original five tribes. The assumption is confirmed by certain evidence, for although the Itesan tribe names refer to an area lying across this line, the only territorial Kel Geres tribe names refer to an area west of it; the country, on the other hand, known to have been occupied by some of the first immigrants is, as would be expected, to the east. With the exception of the Igdalen, who moved in recent years, most of the older People of the King were also east of this line, before the Kel Owi scattered them.The present Itesan-Kel Geres group in the Southland is said to number forty-seven tribes divided as follows:[396]Itesan6tribes of theItesan.Kel Geres12„„Tetmokarak.6„„Kel Unnar.5„„Kel Anigara.6„„Kel Garet.12„„Tadadawa and Kel Tatenei.The principal tribal names of the Itesan which retain the more familiar place names of Air are the Kel Mafinet, Kel T’sidderak, Kel Dogam and Kel Bagezan or Maghzen, all of them derived from places in the neighbourhood of Auderas.[397]Among the Kel Geres the name of the Kel Garet records a habitat somewhat further north, the Kel Agellal of the Kel Unnar probably came from Agellal, and the Kel Anigara from an area still further north.It is difficult to accept the view that the first Tuareg to enter Air arrived in the eighth century, even if it is only for the reason that the surviving “Itesan” houses could not for so long a time have remained in the state of preservation in which some of them are now found. I am personally not disposed to regard the first immigration as having taken place much before the latest date previously suggested as a limit, namely, the end of the eleventh century.The invasion of the first tribes left the mountains with a mixed population of Tuareg and Goberawa; the disappearance of the latter as a separate race was only accomplished when the second or Kel Geres invasion took place. The Kel Geres so added to the Tuareg population in Air that henceforward the country must be regarded as essentially Tuareg, and this probably accounts for the tradition that the Kel Geres conquered the country, and as they came in both from the north and by the north, it doubtless gave rise to legends such as that of Maket n’Ikelan.Failing more definite evidence than we now possess, I regard the Kel Geres movement as a part of a Hawara-Auriga emigration from the north to which Ibn Khaldun alludes. This does not exclude the possibility of some nuclei of Hawara having gone west of Air to join either the Aulimmiden or the Tademekkat or both groups. In fact, such a course of events would explain the distant affinity with, yet independence of, the Aulimmiden which is insisted upon by many authorities. We know that by the time Leo was writing he regarded both Ahaggar and Air as inhabited by Targa, while the Fezzan and the Chad road were inhabited by Lemta. The Ahaggaren I have previously tried to show were, in the main, Hawara. Now the advent in Air of a large mass from this division under the name of Kel Geres would warrant his grouping of both plateaux under one ethnic heading. The Hawara movement from the Western Fezzan and between Ghat and Ahaggar may be placed in the twelfth century, and therefore not so very far removed from the first immigration into Air from the south-east. It can also be accounted for by similar causes, namely, the growing pressure of the Arabs, perhaps as a sequel to the Hillalian invasion.Following the two initial migrations, it may be assumed that small nuclei of Tuareg continued to reach Air. These would to-day be represented by such of the People of the King as are not to be connected with either the first five tribes or with the Kel Geres.The Third ImmigrationThe third wave was that of the Kel Owi. On Barth and Hornemann’s authority they arrived in modern times, while according to Jean they arrived in the ninth century. Barth’s researches, which in all cases are more reliable than those of Jean, who appears usually to have accepted native dates without hesitation, led him to believe that the Kel Owientered, in fact conquered Air, aboutA.D.1740. They are not mentioned by Leo or any other writers before the time of Hornemann (A.D.1800), who obtained such good information about them that his commentator, Major Rennell, also assumed their arrival to be recent.[398]By the end of the nineteenth century the Kel Owi had already achieved such fame that of all Tuareg known to him, Hornemann only mentions them. He adds in his account that Gober was at this time tributary to Air, a detail consistent with other records. Barth’s very late date[399]for the arrival of the Kel Owi nevertheless presents certain difficulties. It is clear on the one hand that it could not have been the Kel Owi who made the arrangement of Maket n’Ikelan, and that it must therefore have been the Kel Geres or their predecessors, but it is further difficult to see how a people could have entered Air in such numbers as to become the preponderant group within barely one hundred years and to have evicted the firmly rooted Kel Geres tribes so soon. That the Kel Owi should have appropriated the historical credit for the settlement of Maket n’Ikelan is easy to understand, for it was they who held the trade route to the north out of the country, but the early expulsion of the Kel Geres indicates a numerical superiority which, unfortunately, native tradition does not bear out.It is noteworthy that no Kel Owi tribe is represented in the election of the king, which supports the view that they had not yet reached Air when the local system of government from Agades was devised.“The vulgar account of the origin of the Kel Owi from the female slave of a Tinylcum who came to Asben where she gave birth to a boy who was the progenitor of the Kel Owi . . . is obviously nothing but a popular tale. . . .”[400]The story collected by Jean, which purports to explainthe two categories of tribes in Air to-day, the Kel Owi confederation and the People of the King, is not more authentic.[401]He tells how, after the arrival of the Sultan in Air, the Kel Geres kept away from his presence, while the Kel Owi ingratiated themselves and secured their own administration under the Añastafidet. The Sultan, however, wishing to create his own tribal group, divided the Kel Owi amongst themselves, and this is the origin of the People of the Añastafidet and the People of the King. In their efforts to ingratiate themselves, the Kel Owi of Bagezan which, as we have seen, was Itesan country at the time, sent as a present to the Sultan a woman named T’iugas with her six daughters of the Imanen tribe of the north; these women had been sent from the north to cement good relations between Air and Azger.[402]The six sisters nominated the eldest as their speaker and the Sultan gave her authority over the rest. She was followed by the next two sisters, and these three are the mothers of the three senior tribes of the Kel Owi, namely, the Kel Owi proper, the Kel Tafidet and the Kel Azañieres.[403]The other three women refused to accept the leadership of the eldest sister and placed themselves under the authority of the Sultan direct; and they were the mothers of the Kel Tadek, Imezegzil and Kel Zilalet.[404]The details of the story are obviously a Kel Owi invention. They are designed to establish nobility and equality of ancestry with the older and more respected tribes. The legend, however, probably also contains certain indications of truth, notably in the allusion to the Imanen women from the north, since there does exist an affinitybetween that tribe and the Itesan, though it must, of course, be understood that the Kel Bagezan of the story were an Itesan sub-tribe, and not the later Kel Bagezan of the Kel Owi group. With these conditions the story becomes intelligible as a legendary or traditional account. It is not meant to be taken as literally true, and is not even a very widely accepted version of the origin of the present social structure in Air, but it is amusing, for it shows how on this as on every other occasion the Kel Owi have attempted to claim antiquity of descent equal to that of the tribes they found on their arrival.Two other traditions which I collected are best summarised by quoting the following extract from my diary, written while at T’imia, a Kel Owi village in the Bagezan mountains. One of the big men in the village was the “’alim” ’Umbellu, a fine figure of a man, old and bald but still powerful and vigorous, with the heavy noble features of a Roman emperor. He used to be the keeper of the old mosque, and is said to be one of the most learned men in the country. I had examined the ruined sanctuary, in which he had not set foot since it was desecrated by the French troops after the Kaossen revolt, and found some fragments of holy books, which I restored to ’Umbellu in the present mosque at T’imia, a shelter of reeds and matting. From him I received the same sort of confused account which others besides myself had heard. “. . . He says that the Kel Owi are not pure Tuareg, but that some Arabsor(sic) Tuareg of the north came down to Northern Air and mixed with the local population, which stock became the Kel Owi Confederation; but whether these people came as raiders or settlers he could not say. He was, however, quite clear that they had come from the Arab country.[405]Then in almost the same breath he told me that the Kel Owi are descended from a woman who came from thenorth and lived in Tamgak, where she mated with one of the local inhabitants and became the mother of all these tribes. He added that she was a Moslem at a time when the Kel Ferwan (a non-Kel Owi tribe, or People of the King, then living in Iferuan) were heathen, but whether Christians or pagan he could not say.”The second story is analogous to that which Barth heard.Generally speaking traditions give the two separate versions, which are rather puzzling. If the account of the woman who settled in Tamgak is taken as a legendary record of the indigenous growth of the Kel Owi tribes, it must be supposed that their forefathers were in Air for much more than two hundred years, and Jean’s date would consequently not be out of the question. Against this must be set the other version, that they arrived quite recently, a view which is supported unanimously by all the other Tuareg. It was, we have seen, confirmed by Barth’s researches and deduced by Rennell from information collected by Hornemann. The compact organisation and the definite division which exists between them and the other tribes in Air would also point to their having a separate origin and being comparatively recent arrivals; they are still organised in an administrative system which has not yet had time to break down and merge into the régime of the other tribes. Furthermore, no mention is made of the Kel Owi by any of the earlier authors, which, if negative evidence, is nevertheless significant in the works of an authority like Leo, especially as, apart from the ethnic distinction which might have been overlooked, the dual government of the King and the Añastafidet is too remarkable a feature to have escaped his discernment. The balance of testimony is therefore in favour of attributing a fairly recent date to their arrival, though perhaps not so late as Barth would have us believe. I myself make no doubt that they were late arrivals: I only differ with the learned traveller in a small matter of the exact date.But what impelled them to migrate it is difficult to say.Barth thought that they could be traced to an earlier habitat in the north-west, and that the nobler portion of them once belonged to the Auraghen tribe, whence their dialect was called Auraghiye. I have no evidence on this point except that of Ahodu, who gave me to understand that the language of the Kel Owi was not different from that of any other Tuareg tribe in the plateau, and he added that he had not heard the name Auraghiye employed to describe it, though he knew that it was applied to the dialect spoken in Ahaggar. Barth’s testimony, otherwise, is acceptable.Jean is of the impression that they are essentially of the same race as the Kel Geres, who were probably Hawara. If this deduction is true, three possibilities require to be considered. The Kel Owi may have been an Auraghen tribe living to the north or north-east of Air among the Azger; or, they may have been among the older Auraghen people, to use this term in its wider sense, namely, of the Auriga-Hawara, represented by the Ahaggaren, to whom, of course, the Azger Auraghen of to-day belong; or, lastly, they may be descended from the Auraghen of the west, from the Tademekkat country. The last is the soundest view in the present state of our knowledge, though the second is also quite probable.The Tademekkat people, we know, were driven from their homes inA.D.1640 by the Aulimmiden. While some of them were driven out to the west, some at least found their way back into the Azger country.[406]It is no less probable that others may have gone to Air by a roundabout route. In that case Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air seems to be at least fifty years too late. During the last half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries they would have been finding their way into Northern Air in small groups. This is not inconsistent with the appearance at Agades of an Amenokal with a Kel Owi mother, if the admittedly tentative date of 1629 given in the Agades Chronicle is placed a decade or so later.I am inclined to regard the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air as having taken place in the latter half of the seventeenth century. According to the Agades Chronicle they were already fighting the Kel Geres at Abattul, west of the Central massif, in 1728, some time before Barth’s date; and this obviously implies an earlier arrival in the north of the plateau, for their entry must have taken place from that direction and not from the south. But a recent date, taken in conjunction with the dominant position which the Kel Owi occupied and their separate political organisation, further implies that they came in considerable numbers, a conclusion which is at variance with one set of native traditions. They could not otherwise in two hundred years have achieved so much as they did by the beginning of the century.THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREGWe know that their coming was followed by an economic disturbance of far-reaching importance. They first occupied North-eastern and Northern Air; the later phase of theirpenetration is recorded in the statement that the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres lived side by side, west and east of the Iferuan-Auderas-Agades road. The eastern plains of Air, according to Ahodu of Auderas and ’Umbellu of T’imia, had by this time been evacuated by the Itesan and the early settlers, but the invasion of the Kel Owi must have led also to the expulsion of the early settlers from the northern marches. The removal of the Kel Ferwan from the Iferuan area, and of the Kel Tadek from their territories north of Tamgak to the west and the south, probably took place in this period. The Kel Owi movement, though accompanied by frequent disturbances, was gradual. At T’imia, where the original inhabitants, according to ’Umbellu, were Kel Geres, they were only displaced in the time of his own grandparents by a mixed band of settlers from various Kel Owi tribes then living in the Ighazar in Northern Air. ’Umbellu is a man of about sixty now, so this event may have been one hundred years ago, at a time, in fact, when we should still expect the southward movement of the Kel Owi to be in progress.More recently still the south-eastern part of the country was distributed among certain of their clans. The large Itesan settlements like those near Tabello had already been abandoned and were never again permanently inhabited; some dwellings were built later by the Kel Owi, but never on so large a scale as in the previous epoch. The extant houses and ruins are mostly of the first period; a few only show a transitional phase to the later Kel Owi type. Sometimes a compact block of contiguous buildings is to be found, possessing the character of a fortified settlement. It would seem that this defensible type of habitation had been evolved during the period after the Itesan were known to have been driven out by Tebu raiding and before the Kel Owi arrived. These dwellings betray certain features alien to the Tuareg, which may be explained by supposing that they were used by the serfs of the Itesan when their lords had retreated west of the Bagezan massif.With the occupation of the eastern part of Air by the Kel Owi, the ancient caravan road which has run from time immemorial by T’intaghoda, Unankara, Mari, Beughqot and Tergulawen fell into their hands. It is the easiest road across the Air plateau, and perhaps for this reason, but more probably because they always had propensities of this sort, they developed such commercial ability that they rapidly made for themselves a dominant place in all trade and transport enterprises between Ghat and the Sudan. But although their efficiency in organisation gave them the control of the road, they certainly did not create it. But they did create a monopoly which deprived the Kel Geres of their legitimate profit.The hostilities which soon broke out between the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres could lead to only one of two possible solutions, the expulsion or extermination of one of the rivals. Such economic problems are, of course, not always realised at the time when they are most urgently felt, and the current record of events to which they give rise is therefore often slightly distorted. Here, however, even the popular version shows that the real cause of the disturbances was an economic one. The Kel Owi began by appropriating the half of a country in which they were new-comers. They proceeded to demand the serfs and slaves whom the Kel Geres had possessed since their subjugation of the negroid peoples of Air. This impossible demand gave rise to considerable strife and was referred for arbitration to the reigning Sultan of Agades. The Hausa elements were supported by the Kel Owi for political reasons and as far as possible abandoned their former masters. The Sultan seems to have maintained the neutrality for which he stood, and even to have prevented the tribes which owed allegiance to him directly and belonged to neither party from taking sides in the dispute.[407]He was nevertheless unsuccessful, and after years of desultory fighting the Kel Geres abandoned Air for Adar and Gober to the west of Damergu and to thenorth of Sokoto. They retained their rights in the election of the Amenokal, to whom they continued to owe nominal allegiance through their chiefs, and were allowed to continue to use certain Air place-names in their tribal nomenclature. In the last century they repeatedly interfered in choice of the Sultan, and they still consider themselves to this day a part of the Air Tuareg, although their hostility against the Kel Owi never died. They evacuated the country with all the slaves and serfs whom they succeeded in retaining. It is possible that a few of the older non-Kel Owi tribes of Air and Damergu went with them.If Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi were accepted, this migration should have occurred in the end of the eighteenth century. But as a matter of fact the movement took place earlier. Jean states that an arrangement for the evacuation was reached in the reign of the Sultan Almoubari or El Mubarak, who ruled thirty-four years, fromA.D.1653 to 1687. If the agreement was made at the end of his reign, the date for the immigration of the Kel Owi in accordance with previous information falls in the neighbourhood of 1640, to which epoch the reign of Sultan Muhammad Attafriya, who was deposed two years after his accession by the Itesan, can be assigned. The Kel Geres did not, however, leave the country directly the arrangement was made, and in the meanwhile continued the struggle. In 1728 the Kel Owi and the Itesan were still fighting in Air, the latter being defeated at Abattul, near Auderas. Halfway through this century the Itesan were fighting in the Southland and attacked Katsina in company with the Zamfarawa. It is at this time that the Kel Geres seem to have obtained a footing in the lands of Adar and Sokoto, though the Itesan still refused to settle there. In 1759 there is recorded a war between the Kel Geres and the Kel Tegama at the cliffs of Tiggedi, in which the latter were defeated. This war was followed by another in 1761 between the Kel Geres and the Aulimmiden, where, however, the former suffered. In the same year the Kel Owiand the Kel Geres fought each other at Agades. In this period the Amenokal Muhammad Hammad, who had come to the throne in 1735, changed places twice with Muhammad Guma, according as the Kel Owi or the Kel Geres faction prevailed. The former, restored to the throne in 1763, undertook an expedition with the men of Air against the King of Gober, and was severely defeated in 1767. In order to avenge the defeat, a truce between the warring Tuareg was finally concluded after a century of fighting. The combined men of Air then marched on, and defeated Dan Gudde and cut off his head. This event may be held to mark the final settlement of the Itesan and Kel Geres in the Southland. Their success accounts for Hornemann’s report that at the end of the nineteenth century the Tuareg were masters of Gober. Internecine hostilities continued, but henceforth the Itesan and the Kel Geres are no longer described as fighting the Kel Owi but the men of Air, as in 1780 and again in 1788, when they made their nominee, Muhammad Dani, Sultan at Agades. In 1835 the Amenokal, Guma, was captured in Damergu by the Kel Geres after a massacre of the Kel Owi. It was only in about 1860 that hostilities, which were in full progress in Barth’s day, finally ceased.Why, it may be asked, did the Itesan and not all the rest of the pre-Kel Geres people of Air leave in consequence of the Kel Owi invasion? The question is not easy to answer, but the surmise is that, as the largest and most important group, they became most involved in the struggle. With their departure and that of the Kel Geres the remaining people became leaderless: having no confederation of their own they clustered around the person of the Sultan, and so came to be known as the People of the King. Yet, on account of their ancestry and nobility, the Kel Owi sought to attack them and arrogate to themselves the principal rôles in history, like the story of the peace of Maket n’Ikelan and that of the Imanen women. These claims are consistent with the characteristic which is felt to-day inrelations with them—the arrogance of the parvenu. The ascendancy of the noble Itesan has continued in the Southland as it existed in Air. They lead the Kel Geres division, with whom fate had made them throw in their lot. They remain primarily responsible for the choice of the Sultan even to-day.Enough—too much perhaps—has been said of the three migrations of the Tuareg people into Air. It would be tedious to continue on that narrow subject. The complexity of the tribal organisation of the Air Tuareg has also been made patent in the earlier attempts to discover their social life. It is unfortunately impossible, even if space were available, to allocate the various clans of whose existence report has reached us to the larger groups or waves of immigration which have been examined. Lists of the tribes which have survived are given inAppendix IIto this work: they have been arranged in such system as was feasible, using the information collected by Barth, and Jean, and by myself. But the classification is unsatisfactory, since there is, in many instances, but little evidence. The organisation of the Kel Owi is, of course, the easiest to ascertain and it was briefly outlined inChapter X,but the People of the King are really more interesting both because they were the earliest arrivals and because of their association with the Itesan culture of the old houses and deep wells. Among the People of the King the most valuable anthropological data are to be collected. They brought such civilisation as Nigeria possessed in the Middle Ages from the Mediterranean, having absorbed and forgotten much of it on the way and since those epochs.Identification of Extant TribesBefore passing on to a brief summary of Central African history as a frame into which to fit the Air migrations, I would like to leave on record for some future student to use such conclusions as I have been able to reach regarding thedescendants of the first invaders of Air recorded by Sultan Bello.The geographical areas of the Kel Owi and People of the King respectively had almost ceased to be distinguishable even before the 1917 revolution added to the prevailing confusion. In so far as it is at all possible to lay down broad definitions, Central and West-central Air belonged to the People of the King, Northern, North-eastern and Eastern Air to the Kel Owi, or People of the Añastafidet, and Southern Air, or, as it is more properly called, Tegama, to the servile tribes. The Talak plain was diversely populated.The first immigrants, the Immikitan, Sendal, Tamgak, Igdalen, Ijaranen and probably Itesan, have for the most part survived in some distinguishable form in or around Air. The survivors are all, of course, as is to be expected, People of the King. The only exceptions are certain nuclei which are known to have been absorbed by the Añastafidet and his people.In addition to the survivors in Air there are some Igdalen north of Tahua, while others are Imghad of the Tarat Mellet[408]tribe of the Ifoghas of the west. These Imghad may have been a part of the Air group of Igdalen captured in war, or may represent a westward emigration of a part of the stock which came on evil days in Damergu. Generally, I regard the presence of these Igdalen in the west as confirming Bello’s account of their early arrival in the Air area from the east; it may also be taken to substantiate my view that the first wave of Tuareg to the El Suk country came from the south-east and not from the north.[409]How far can the tribes which are known to exist to-day or whose names have been recorded by modern travellers be associated with these groups of early immigrants? A critical examination[410]of the tribes reveals at least six maintribal groups of the People of the King in Air itself, that is to say, six groups in which the respective tribes either acknowledge themselves to be, or can be shown to possess, certain affinities pointing to a descent from single stocks; but not all of these can with certainty be identified with Bello’s named clans. These six extant groups are the Kel Ferwan, Kel Tadek, Immikitan, Imezegzil, Imaqoaran and Ifadeyen.Two of them, in some ways the most important, have no proper names of their own at all: both the Kel Ferwan and Kel Tadek are named after places, respectively Iferuan in the Ighazar of Northern Air, and the Tadek valley. Neither of these groups, which have the reputation of great antiquity and nobility, can be affiliated to any of the other four groups; they are indubitably separate clans which in the course of ages have lost their old “I names.” Returning to the five old tribes of Bello we nevertheless find certain points of contact between records and actual conditions, as well as certain differences:Bello’s tribes.Modern groups.Immikitan=⎰⎱Immikitan.Imezegzil.Igdalen=Igdalen.Ijaranen=Ijanarnen (of the Itesan).Sendal=?Tamgak=??=Kel Ferwan.?=Kel Tadek.?=Imaqoaran.?=Ifadeyen.(Itesan)=Itesan.In discussing tribal origins in Air and comparing my results with those of Jean, I found the greatest difficulty in sorting out the tribes of the Immikitan and Imezegzil groups: so much so that I am inclined to think that bothclans represent the old Immikitan stock which split into two main branches some time ago. The widespread use of the name Immikitan for Tuareg makes it possible that the original stock of the People of the King was Immikitan in the first instance; in that event, on the analogy of other Tuareg tribes, when one clan grew unmanageable in size, new groups were formed, only one of which retained the original nomenclature as a proper or individual name—a process which no doubt occurred before any migration out of the Chad area took place. But that is too far back to consider.Leaving the Ifadeyen out of account for the moment we are left with the Kel Ferwan, the Kel Tadek and the Imaqoaran to compete for the right of descent from the Tamgak and Sendal. A remote ancestry is indicated by their undoubted nobility and antiquity. The original home of the Kel Tadek in a valley flowing out of Tamgak and the association of the Tamgak tribe with the Tamgak massif suggest that these groups may be identified, in which case the Sendal might be the ancestors of the Kel Ferwan. Nevertheless there is also a possibility that the descendants of the Sendal are the old tribes of Damergu. That the descendants of the Sendal are to be sought for south of, rather than in Air proper, is further indicated by the record of a war between the People of Air against the Sendal in Elakkos as late as 1727.[411]The Kel Ferwan, would, thus, be descended from the Damergu-Elakkos Tuareg directly, and from the Sendal therefore only indirectly, if their origin indeed is to be sought in this early wave of immigration at all.The selection of the Sultan of Agades being in the hands of the tribes who traditionally sent the deputation to Constantinople after the arrival of the Kel Geres in Air, and the object of the mission being to settle a dispute as to who should be king, it would be natural to find all the contestant groups represented on the delegation. The Kel Owi would,of course, not figure among them, for they had not at that time reached Air. Now the names of tribes charged with sending the delegation is given by Jean, and I accept his version because all the information which I procured on the subject was very contradictory; and the list is most interesting. It is given as: the Itesan and the Dzianara of the modern Itesan-Kel Geres group, and the Izagaran, Ifadalen, Imaqoaran and Immikitan of the other Tuareg. The Itesan we know about; the Dzianara were a noble part of the Kel Geres but are now extinct: it is natural that both these should be represented. The Izagaran and Ifadalen survive as names of noble Damergu tribes, while the Immikitan and Imaqoaran represent the older clans of Air proper, all four, of course, owing allegiance to the King. From their “I names” these tribes all seem to be old; we have no reason from any other evidence to believe that any recent arrivals are represented in the list. The very choice of representatives from each of three groups may consequently be taken to indicate that these tribes were regarded as the oldest or most important units in each division. It is tempting, therefore, to suppose that the Izagaran and Ifadalen are the descendants of one of the tribes in the first wave of Tuareg which came from the south-east, and therefore perhaps of Bello’s Sendal.Another version of the method adopted to select the first Amenokal is recorded in the Agades Chronicle, which states that the persons responsible for the task were the Agoalla[412]T’Sidderak, Agoalla Mafinet and Agoalla Kel Tagei. The story relates how the Agumbulum, the title of the ruler of the first Tuareg to enter Air, namely the Kel Innek, desired to settle the differences which had arisen in regard to the government, but was unable to find anyone to send to Stambul until an old woman called Tagirit offered to send her grandsons, who were the chieftains in question. The story emphasises what will have been noticed on the subject of the origin of the Kel Owi, namely, that the tribes of Airgenerally claim a woman either as ancestress or as a prominent head. The first two names are those of certain Itesan sub-tribes who, from residence in these mountain areas, which still bear the same names in Central Air, had adopted geographical Kel names, and conserve them to this day in their modern habitats in the Southland. The Kel Tagei is another subdivision of the Itesan, and, though a servile tribe of this name exists in the Imarsutan section of the Kel Owi, it is probably a portion of the former enslaved during the later civil wars of Air.[413]This alternative story is not necessarily contradictory to the first version of the deputation to Stambul, even though it does not allow the remaining tribes of the People of the King to have a share in the election. Since, however, the Itesan were certainly the dominant tribe in Air until the arrival of the Kel Owi, the omission is comprehensible; it is a statement of a part for the whole. If it has any significance it tends to support the view that the Itesan were, in fact, a tribe of the Kel Innek from the Chad lands, as I have supposed, and not a part of the Kel Geres group.The Imaqoaran and Kel Ferwan, however, remain a difficult problem. The latter are in many ways peculiar and seem to differ in many ways so much from their other friends in the division of the People of the King, that although I have no direct evidence on the subject, I half suspect them of having come to Air from some other part than the south-east and at a later period than the first wave. Certain it is that they specialised in raiding westward, where they obtained their numerous dependent Imghad. Furthermore, in Cortier’s account of the history of the Ifoghas n’Adghar there are stories of the formation of this western group of Tuareg tending to show that while a part of the division probably came from the north, the bulk of the immigration was from the east. He says that after the Kelel Suk reached the southern parts of the Sahara, they divided into two groups. The two groups fought, and one section, which had apparently settled in Air, was victorious, whereupon a part migrated into the Adghar, where the other section had already established itself and had founded the town of Tademekka. In the fighting, which continued, there seems to have been considerable movement between the two mountain groups; the Kel Ferwan portion of the People of the King in Air may therefore be more nearly related to the western group than to the other Air folk.The Ifadeyen are associated with Fadé, which is the northernmost part of the Air plateau. To-day they are very friendly with the Kel Tadek, and some people have even suggested that they were of the same stock. There is, however, another tribe, the Kel Fadé, the similarity of whose name suggests, quite erroneously, an identification. The Ifadeyen are known to be a very old tribe, while the Kel Fadé are known to have been formed at about the time of the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air and to have lived in the Fadé mountains, whence the Ifadeyen were already moving south. Barth speaks of the Kel Fadé as a collection of brigands and vagabonds, and implies that they were mainly outlaws of mixed parentage. A part of them is certainly Kel Owi and composed of those elements which went on living in the northern mountains when the main body entered Air, while another part is almost certainly Ifadeyen; as a whole they remained outside the Kel Owi Confederation as People of the King. Until about thirty years ago the Kel Fadé used to maintain that the Ifadeyen were their serfs; after many disputes the matter was referred to the paramount chief of the Kel Owi, who, after consulting various authorities, decided that the Ifadeyen were noble and free. Their chief, Matali, nevertheless preferred to evacuate the northern mountains completely in favour of the Kel Fadé in order to avoid further friction, and since then, a full generation ago, they have been gradually moving south to the Azawagh, where they pasture in the winter,withdrawing to Damergu in the dry season. Their original history might have been easier to ascertain had it not been for the fact that despite its “I form” their name is a placename, though it is possible that they gave their name to Fadé and did not take it from their habitat. The presence of the Ifadeyen in an area west and north of country which we know the Kel Tadek held, and their association with the latter, render it likely that we are, in fact, dealing with one and the same stock, namely, the descendants of the Tamgak.The Ifadeyen are renowned all over Air for their pure nomadism, and above all for the fact that they are almost the last of the Tuareg in the Southern Sahara to retain the current use of the T’ifingh script with a knowledge of reading and writing it. This learning, as is usual among Imajeghan tribes, reposes with the women-folk, one of whose principal functions is to educate the children; it is consistent with their supposed origin as one of the oldest and purest of all the tribes in Air.As a result of the foregoing argument the following suggestions for the main tribes of the People of the King hitherto mentioned can be made:Tribes of the King(Division I).[414]Bello’s five tribes generically calledKel Innek, originally from the Fezzan, where theImanenare also found.Immikitan⎰⎱Immikitan,Imezegzil.IgdalenIgdalen (Damergu: Division IV).TamgakRepresented by the Kel Tadek and ? Ifadeyen.IjaranenRepresenting the Itesan, which includes:(Itesan)Ijaranen,Kel Innek,Kel Manen (Imanen).SendalRepresented by the Damergu and Elakkos Tuareg, who include:Izagaran,Ifadalen.?Imaqoaran.?Western TuaregKel Ferwan.MixedKel Fadé.PLATE 48EGHALGAWEN POOLTIZRAET POOL[356]Letter to the author from G. W. Webster, Resident at Sokoto, dated 20/6/1923.[357]Journal of the African Society, No. XXXVI. Vol. IX. July 1910. Further references in this chapter will be omitted.[358]Denham and Clapperton:Account of the First Expedition(Murray), 1826. Vol. II. p. 38 seq.; App. XII.[359]As reported by Bello, Denham and Clapperton,loc. cit.[360]It is to these doubtless that Jean is referring when he speaks of Egyptian influence in Air. Jean,op. cit., p. 86.[361]Cf. Leo,op. cit., Vol. III. p. 828.[362]Cf. also Asbytæ and Esbet with references in Bates,op. cit., passim. The root is probably, if a generalisation is at all permitted, applicable to the earliest negroid, or Grimaldi race survivors, in North Africa.[363]Vide supra,Chap. III.[364]Cf.supra,Chap. II.[365]Cf.infra.[366]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 337.[367]Vide supra,Chap. IV.[368]But not necessarily the slaves.[369]As was the case, for instance, in the days of the Eighth and Ninth Dynasties of Egypt.[370]“Akel” (plu.ikelan) primarily means “negro,” and from that “a slave.”[371]Vide supra,Chap. III.[372]Denham and Clapperton,loc. cit.[373]I.e.Aujila.[374]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 460.[375]Herodotus, IV. 172.[376]InChap. III.[377]Idrisi: ed. Jaubert, Vol. I. p. 238.[378]Cf.Chap. X.[379]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 460.[380]To adopt Clapperton’s spelling.[381]Barth,op. cit., Vol. IV. App. IX and Vol. II.[382]I.e.Libyans, and not, at this period or in this context, Kanuri.[383]According to MaqriziapudBarth, Vol. II. pp. 635 and 265.[384]El Bekri,op. cit., p. 456.[385]A tribe of the Ahaggaren.[386]In a communication to the author, Mr. H. R. Palmer, Resident in Bornu, writes: “After hearing probably all the extant tradition on the subject of the early rulers of Kanem, my belief is that the so-called Dugawa were Tuareg of some kind, and that the appellation Beri-beri applied originally to them and not to the Teda element which later on preponderated and gave the resulting Kanemi empire its language,i.e.Kanuri.”[387]Denham and Clapperton,op. cit., Vol. II. p. 396.[388]Though the Tebu are probably themselves a Kanuri stock, a distinction may be drawn between them and the more negroid Kanuri of Bornu and the Chad lands.[389]See Abul Fida (French ed.), pp. 127-8 and 245; El Idrisi (ed. Jaubert), p. 288. At the time of El Maqrizi the empire of Kanem extended from Zella (Sella), south of the Great Syrtis, to Gogo (Gao) on the Niger. El Maqrizi lived from 1365 to 1442: Abul Fida died in 1331 writing his history, which was finished down to the yearA.D.1329.[390]Other than a wholesale emigration of Franks and Byzantines to Europe.[391]Cf.Chap. XI.supra.[392]SeeAppendix II.and elsewhere in this chapter, also Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., Vol. II. p. 3.[393]InAppendix II.[394]Consider the proportion of such names in the Itesan group, and in the forty-six Kel Geres tribes, respectively. Cf.Appendix II.[395]Jean,op. cit., p. 86.[396]Jean,op. cit., p. 113, and Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 356, alsoAppendix II.to this volume.[397]Cf.Appendix II.Tribes having the same place names now in Air are not related to these clans; their history is independently established.[398]Hornemann’sJournal, French ed. p. 102 seq.[399]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 339.[400]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 343. The Tinylcum (T’inalkum) is an Azger Imghad tribe: cf.Chap. XI.[401]Jean,op. cit., pp. 90-1.[402]Jean calls them Ahaggaren, but only because all the northern Tuareg are in Air called Ahaggaren irrespective of whether they come from the Azger, Ahaggar or Ahnet divisions. In addition to these Imanen among the Azger and Itesan, there are also some on the Niger who are probably the product of the same early migrations which took the five tribes, including the Itesan, into Air.[403]Compare the grouping inAppendix II.and the comments inChap X.[404]SeeAppendix II.All these three tribes are People of the King, though the Kel Zilalet are rather mixed, being sedentaries.[405]This in Air means the west or north-west. The reference may be to the Hawara, regarding whom this type of confusion has always obtained: cf. Arab-Tuareg elements in Hawara group,videChap. XI.[406]Cf.Chap. XI.with reference to Duveyrier’s information.[407]Jean,op. cit., pp. 92-3.[408]Meaning “The White Goat.” Perhaps a survival of Totemism.[409]Vide supra,Chap. XI.[410]SeeAppendix II.Division I. for details of People of the King in Air, and Division IV. for the Damergu Tuareg.[411]Agades Chronicle.[412]I.e.chief of a tribal group.[413]The Imarsutan Kel Tagei may also have merely fortuitously acquired this name, which only means the People of the Dûm Palm, and is therefore not very individual.[414]InAppendix II.CHAPTER XIIITHE HISTORY OF AIR (continued)Part IIThe Vicissitudes of the Tuareg in AirAsa division of Tuareg the people of Air cannot be said to have achieved great deeds in the history of the world as did the Sanhaja; but as a part of the race they can justly claim to share in its glory. That they brought culture and the amenities of civilisation from the Mediterranean to Central Africa has been mentioned several times. This progress in the past was responsible for the prosperity of Nigeria to-day.The People of Air are a small and insignificant group of human beings considered by themselves alone. It may only be when that characteristic of the Englishman displays itself and he seeks to extol the virtues, charm and history of some obscure race, that such a people assumes, in his eyes at least, an importance which to the rest of the world may seem unjustified. There is probably no race so vile, so dull or so unimpressive but that some Briton will arise as its defender, and aver that if properly treated it is the salt of the earth. I am not unconscious of the dangers of this frame of mind, but being acutely aware of the mentality, I trust that this characteristic will not have led me over-much to conceal the unpleasant or unfavourable.A chapter which attempts to deal summarily with the history of the Air Tuareg[415]set in its appropriate frame of Central African history must inevitably seem in some measure a justification for the trouble taken to piece togetheran obscure and complex collection of facts relating to the country and its people. But the darkness surrounding the arguments contained in the preceding account of the migrations of the Air tribes has seemed so impenetrable that instead of closing the book at this point, I have felt moved to give the reader some rather less indigestible matter with which to conclude.To obviate the accusation of attaching unwarrantable importance to the People of Air, it may be well to state that the population of the country is small. It was never very large. Perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 souls, including the Kel Geres and the other clans in the Southland, would have been a conservative estimate in 1904. At that time Jean, numbering only the People of Air and some of the Tuareg of Elakkos and Damergu, arrived at a tentative figure of 25-27,000 inhabitants, but he was certainly misled by his local informants into thinking that the tribes were smaller than they really were. Nor did he take all the septs of Air and the Southland into account. His estimate included somewhat over 8000 People of the King, rather more than 8500 People of the Añastafidet, 4-5000 Irawellan, 2000 slaves and 2500-3000 mixed sedentaries in Agades and In Gall.[416]At the time of the prosperity of Agades the population of these countries, not including detached sedentaries and other groups lying far afield, may have attained a maximum of 100,000.It is impossible to estimate the total numbers of Tuareg in North Africa with any accuracy. It would be interesting to make a serious study of the numbers and general state even of those in French territories.The internecine struggles of the Air Tuareg are hardly interesting, and have only been mentioned where relevant to the origin and movements of the three immigrations. The wars between the different divisions, like the Ahaggaren and the Azger, are not really more valuable in a general survey. But even to summarise the principal events in Airin the broad outlines is easier than to describe in a few words the events which took place in the Central Sahara and the Central Sudan during the 1000 years of history which have elapsed since first, in my view at least, the Tuareg reached these mountains from their more ancient northern home.In early times the Tuareg were already in North Africa. They can be distinguished probably as early as the Fifth, and certainly as early as the Twelfth, Dynasty in Egypt. We can follow much of what they were doing and trace where they were living in Roman times, but it is less easy to discern the groups which composed the immigrant waves of humanity into Air until about the time when the first of them came to the south, and even then the picture is obscure.When Air was first invaded by the Tuareg it was called Asben and was part of the kingdom of Gober, a country of negroid people who lived both in the mountains and to the south. But before the first invasion took place there was already Libyan influence in the country, both due to the northern trade which had gone on since the earliest times conceivable, and also on account of the Sanhaja Tuareg, whose power and glory had extended thus far eastwards.The first invasion consisted of tribes who had formed part of a mass of Tuareg of the Lemta division originally from, and now still settled in, the Fezzan and Ghat areas. These people had descended the Kawar road to Lake Chad. They had occupied Bornu, perhaps in the early ninth centuryA.D., or even before. The Goberawa of Air or Asben seem to have received a slight admixture of Libyan blood derived from the northerners who travelled down the caravan road to the Sudan; the people of Bornu were more purely negroid, and more so than their northern neighbours and probably kinsfolk, the Tebu of Tibesti. The Tuareg who were settled in Bornu were subjected to pressure from the east and north, at the hands of the Kanuri from east of Lake Chad, and of the Arabs. In due course, after being kingsof Bornu for many generations the Tuareg began to move westwards. Some of them reached Air, leaving settlers, or having previously settled the regions of Elakkos and Damergu. The date of this movement cannot be fixed with any accuracy; it is probably not as early at the eighth century, but is certainly anterior to the great Kanuri expansion of the thirteenth century. An early date is suggested by Barth and accepted by Jean, probably merely on account of the incidence of the first Arab invasion of North Africa, though as a matter of fact the forces of Islam for the sixty years which elapsed after the conquest of Egypt were not really sufficiently numerous to occasion great ethnic movements. The six centuries betweenA.D.700 andA.D.1300 are very obscure; but if any reason must be assigned for the first invasion of Air by the Bornu Tuareg, it was probably due to the Hillalian invasion of Africa. For this and other reasons it may, therefore, be placed in the eleventh century.With the opening of the Muhammadan era we find a kingdom at Ghana in Western Negroland with a ruling family of “white people” and the Libyan dynasty of Za Alayamin (Za el Yemani) installed at Kukia.[417]Gao, on the Niger, was already an important commercial centre at the southern end of the trade road from Algeria. InA.D.837 we read of the death of Tilutan, a Tuareg of the Lemtuna,[418]who was very powerful in the Sahara; he was succeeded by Ilettan, who died in 900; the latter was followed by T’in Yerutan as lord of the Western Sahara. He was established at Audaghost,[419]an outpost of the Sanhaja, who appear at this time to have dominated Western Negroland, includingeven the great city of Ghana,[420]and to have carried on active intercourse between the Southland and Sijilmasa in Morocco. This and the succeeding century are notable for the influence of the Libyan tribes, in the first instance through the Libyan kings of Audaghost, and later, at the beginning of the eleventh century, by the desert confederation which Abu Abdallah, called Naresht, the son of Tifaut, had brought into being. It was at this time that the preacher and reformer, Abdallah ibn Yasin, arose and collected in the Sahara his band of Holy Men called the “Merabtin,” who were destined to play such a large rôle in the history of the world under the name of Almoravid in Morocco and in Spain. Throughout the latter part of the eleventh century and in the whole of the twelfth, the really important element in all the Western Sahara and Sudan was the Sanhaja division of the Tuareg of the west, and though nothing is heard of the effects of their rule on Air, they must nevertheless have been considerable. The Mesufa branch of the Sanhaja were, according to Ibn Batutah, established in Gober, south of Air; the influence of the Sanhaja in Air itself as well as in Damergu is also recorded. West of Air was the city of Tademekka, nine days northwards from Gao. We also hear of the Libyan towns of Tirekka, between the Tademekka and Walata, and Tautek six days beyond Tirekka; all these appear to have sprung up under the Sanhaja dominion as commercial centres in the same way as the later city of Timbuctoo. Agades, at this time, had not yet been founded.At the beginning of the thirteenth or end of the twelfth century the second invasion of Air took place. Until now the Tuareg immigrants had lived side by side with the Goberawa despite the assistance which the former must have derived from the Sanhaja influence in the land. The new invaders were the Kel Geres, and their advent led to the expulsion or absorption of the negroid people. Together with the former inhabitants and under the leadership of thedominant Itesan tribe, the Tuareg consolidated their independence in Air. This might never have been achieved had it not been for the Sanhaja empire in the west; there is no doubt that the success of the latter contributed directly to the Bornu and Air movements.By the time Ibn Batutah made his journey through Negroland inA.D.1353, Tekadda, some days south of the mountains, as well as Air itself were wholly Tuareg.Between Gao and Tekadda he had journeyed through the land of the “Bardamah, a nomad Berber tribe,”[421]whose tents and dietary are described in a manner which makes it clear that we are dealing with typical nomadic Tuareg. The Bardamah women, incidentally, are said to have been very beautiful and to have been endowed with that particular fatness which so struck Barth. At Tekadda the Sultan was a “Berber” (Libyan) called Izar.[422]There was also another prince of the same race called “the Tekerkeri,” though further on Ibn Batutah refers to him somewhat differently, saying, “We arrived in Kahir, which is part of the domains of the Sultan Kerkeri.” From this Barth deduces that the name of the ruler’s kingdom, which included Air but apparently not Tekadda, was “Kerker,” but we have seen that the chief minister of the Sultan of the Tuareg is called the Kokoi Geregeri, and it is to this title that I think Ibn Batutah is referring. Nevertheless, as a branch of the Aulimmiden in the west is also called Takarkari, this may signify that the plateau was at this period under the influence of those western Tuareg who have in history often exerted a preponderating part in the history of Southern Air.
The statement that the Abalkoran left Air to join the Aulimmiden tends to support the view that this Air invasion was only part of a general westerly movement.
Thesecond wave of immigration was that of the Kel Geres. Jean believed that the Kel Geres were among the first arrivals because he wrongly assumed that they were identical with the Itesan. An examination of the names of the various groups[393]discloses the fact that whereas many Itesan tribes have “Kel names” derived from known localities in Central Air, for the most part in the Auderas neighbourhood, of the Kel Geres tribes only the Kel Garet, Kel Anigara and the Kel Agellal have names similarly derived.[394]Traditionally the Kel Geres reached Air by way of the north. They also are associated with the story of over-population in the Mediterranean lands. They arrived, according to Jean, in considerable numbers, and settled in the part of Air which is west of the road from Iferuan to Agades by way of Assode and Auderas.[395]East of this line in later days lived the Kel Owi, and presumably, at this early period, the original five tribes. The assumption is confirmed by certain evidence, for although the Itesan tribe names refer to an area lying across this line, the only territorial Kel Geres tribe names refer to an area west of it; the country, on the other hand, known to have been occupied by some of the first immigrants is, as would be expected, to the east. With the exception of the Igdalen, who moved in recent years, most of the older People of the King were also east of this line, before the Kel Owi scattered them.
The present Itesan-Kel Geres group in the Southland is said to number forty-seven tribes divided as follows:[396]
The principal tribal names of the Itesan which retain the more familiar place names of Air are the Kel Mafinet, Kel T’sidderak, Kel Dogam and Kel Bagezan or Maghzen, all of them derived from places in the neighbourhood of Auderas.[397]Among the Kel Geres the name of the Kel Garet records a habitat somewhat further north, the Kel Agellal of the Kel Unnar probably came from Agellal, and the Kel Anigara from an area still further north.
It is difficult to accept the view that the first Tuareg to enter Air arrived in the eighth century, even if it is only for the reason that the surviving “Itesan” houses could not for so long a time have remained in the state of preservation in which some of them are now found. I am personally not disposed to regard the first immigration as having taken place much before the latest date previously suggested as a limit, namely, the end of the eleventh century.
The invasion of the first tribes left the mountains with a mixed population of Tuareg and Goberawa; the disappearance of the latter as a separate race was only accomplished when the second or Kel Geres invasion took place. The Kel Geres so added to the Tuareg population in Air that henceforward the country must be regarded as essentially Tuareg, and this probably accounts for the tradition that the Kel Geres conquered the country, and as they came in both from the north and by the north, it doubtless gave rise to legends such as that of Maket n’Ikelan.
Failing more definite evidence than we now possess, I regard the Kel Geres movement as a part of a Hawara-Auriga emigration from the north to which Ibn Khaldun alludes. This does not exclude the possibility of some nuclei of Hawara having gone west of Air to join either the Aulimmiden or the Tademekkat or both groups. In fact, such a course of events would explain the distant affinity with, yet independence of, the Aulimmiden which is insisted upon by many authorities. We know that by the time Leo was writing he regarded both Ahaggar and Air as inhabited by Targa, while the Fezzan and the Chad road were inhabited by Lemta. The Ahaggaren I have previously tried to show were, in the main, Hawara. Now the advent in Air of a large mass from this division under the name of Kel Geres would warrant his grouping of both plateaux under one ethnic heading. The Hawara movement from the Western Fezzan and between Ghat and Ahaggar may be placed in the twelfth century, and therefore not so very far removed from the first immigration into Air from the south-east. It can also be accounted for by similar causes, namely, the growing pressure of the Arabs, perhaps as a sequel to the Hillalian invasion.
Following the two initial migrations, it may be assumed that small nuclei of Tuareg continued to reach Air. These would to-day be represented by such of the People of the King as are not to be connected with either the first five tribes or with the Kel Geres.
The third wave was that of the Kel Owi. On Barth and Hornemann’s authority they arrived in modern times, while according to Jean they arrived in the ninth century. Barth’s researches, which in all cases are more reliable than those of Jean, who appears usually to have accepted native dates without hesitation, led him to believe that the Kel Owientered, in fact conquered Air, aboutA.D.1740. They are not mentioned by Leo or any other writers before the time of Hornemann (A.D.1800), who obtained such good information about them that his commentator, Major Rennell, also assumed their arrival to be recent.[398]By the end of the nineteenth century the Kel Owi had already achieved such fame that of all Tuareg known to him, Hornemann only mentions them. He adds in his account that Gober was at this time tributary to Air, a detail consistent with other records. Barth’s very late date[399]for the arrival of the Kel Owi nevertheless presents certain difficulties. It is clear on the one hand that it could not have been the Kel Owi who made the arrangement of Maket n’Ikelan, and that it must therefore have been the Kel Geres or their predecessors, but it is further difficult to see how a people could have entered Air in such numbers as to become the preponderant group within barely one hundred years and to have evicted the firmly rooted Kel Geres tribes so soon. That the Kel Owi should have appropriated the historical credit for the settlement of Maket n’Ikelan is easy to understand, for it was they who held the trade route to the north out of the country, but the early expulsion of the Kel Geres indicates a numerical superiority which, unfortunately, native tradition does not bear out.
It is noteworthy that no Kel Owi tribe is represented in the election of the king, which supports the view that they had not yet reached Air when the local system of government from Agades was devised.
“The vulgar account of the origin of the Kel Owi from the female slave of a Tinylcum who came to Asben where she gave birth to a boy who was the progenitor of the Kel Owi . . . is obviously nothing but a popular tale. . . .”[400]
The story collected by Jean, which purports to explainthe two categories of tribes in Air to-day, the Kel Owi confederation and the People of the King, is not more authentic.[401]He tells how, after the arrival of the Sultan in Air, the Kel Geres kept away from his presence, while the Kel Owi ingratiated themselves and secured their own administration under the Añastafidet. The Sultan, however, wishing to create his own tribal group, divided the Kel Owi amongst themselves, and this is the origin of the People of the Añastafidet and the People of the King. In their efforts to ingratiate themselves, the Kel Owi of Bagezan which, as we have seen, was Itesan country at the time, sent as a present to the Sultan a woman named T’iugas with her six daughters of the Imanen tribe of the north; these women had been sent from the north to cement good relations between Air and Azger.[402]The six sisters nominated the eldest as their speaker and the Sultan gave her authority over the rest. She was followed by the next two sisters, and these three are the mothers of the three senior tribes of the Kel Owi, namely, the Kel Owi proper, the Kel Tafidet and the Kel Azañieres.[403]The other three women refused to accept the leadership of the eldest sister and placed themselves under the authority of the Sultan direct; and they were the mothers of the Kel Tadek, Imezegzil and Kel Zilalet.[404]The details of the story are obviously a Kel Owi invention. They are designed to establish nobility and equality of ancestry with the older and more respected tribes. The legend, however, probably also contains certain indications of truth, notably in the allusion to the Imanen women from the north, since there does exist an affinitybetween that tribe and the Itesan, though it must, of course, be understood that the Kel Bagezan of the story were an Itesan sub-tribe, and not the later Kel Bagezan of the Kel Owi group. With these conditions the story becomes intelligible as a legendary or traditional account. It is not meant to be taken as literally true, and is not even a very widely accepted version of the origin of the present social structure in Air, but it is amusing, for it shows how on this as on every other occasion the Kel Owi have attempted to claim antiquity of descent equal to that of the tribes they found on their arrival.
Two other traditions which I collected are best summarised by quoting the following extract from my diary, written while at T’imia, a Kel Owi village in the Bagezan mountains. One of the big men in the village was the “’alim” ’Umbellu, a fine figure of a man, old and bald but still powerful and vigorous, with the heavy noble features of a Roman emperor. He used to be the keeper of the old mosque, and is said to be one of the most learned men in the country. I had examined the ruined sanctuary, in which he had not set foot since it was desecrated by the French troops after the Kaossen revolt, and found some fragments of holy books, which I restored to ’Umbellu in the present mosque at T’imia, a shelter of reeds and matting. From him I received the same sort of confused account which others besides myself had heard. “. . . He says that the Kel Owi are not pure Tuareg, but that some Arabsor(sic) Tuareg of the north came down to Northern Air and mixed with the local population, which stock became the Kel Owi Confederation; but whether these people came as raiders or settlers he could not say. He was, however, quite clear that they had come from the Arab country.[405]Then in almost the same breath he told me that the Kel Owi are descended from a woman who came from thenorth and lived in Tamgak, where she mated with one of the local inhabitants and became the mother of all these tribes. He added that she was a Moslem at a time when the Kel Ferwan (a non-Kel Owi tribe, or People of the King, then living in Iferuan) were heathen, but whether Christians or pagan he could not say.”
The second story is analogous to that which Barth heard.
Generally speaking traditions give the two separate versions, which are rather puzzling. If the account of the woman who settled in Tamgak is taken as a legendary record of the indigenous growth of the Kel Owi tribes, it must be supposed that their forefathers were in Air for much more than two hundred years, and Jean’s date would consequently not be out of the question. Against this must be set the other version, that they arrived quite recently, a view which is supported unanimously by all the other Tuareg. It was, we have seen, confirmed by Barth’s researches and deduced by Rennell from information collected by Hornemann. The compact organisation and the definite division which exists between them and the other tribes in Air would also point to their having a separate origin and being comparatively recent arrivals; they are still organised in an administrative system which has not yet had time to break down and merge into the régime of the other tribes. Furthermore, no mention is made of the Kel Owi by any of the earlier authors, which, if negative evidence, is nevertheless significant in the works of an authority like Leo, especially as, apart from the ethnic distinction which might have been overlooked, the dual government of the King and the Añastafidet is too remarkable a feature to have escaped his discernment. The balance of testimony is therefore in favour of attributing a fairly recent date to their arrival, though perhaps not so late as Barth would have us believe. I myself make no doubt that they were late arrivals: I only differ with the learned traveller in a small matter of the exact date.
But what impelled them to migrate it is difficult to say.Barth thought that they could be traced to an earlier habitat in the north-west, and that the nobler portion of them once belonged to the Auraghen tribe, whence their dialect was called Auraghiye. I have no evidence on this point except that of Ahodu, who gave me to understand that the language of the Kel Owi was not different from that of any other Tuareg tribe in the plateau, and he added that he had not heard the name Auraghiye employed to describe it, though he knew that it was applied to the dialect spoken in Ahaggar. Barth’s testimony, otherwise, is acceptable.
Jean is of the impression that they are essentially of the same race as the Kel Geres, who were probably Hawara. If this deduction is true, three possibilities require to be considered. The Kel Owi may have been an Auraghen tribe living to the north or north-east of Air among the Azger; or, they may have been among the older Auraghen people, to use this term in its wider sense, namely, of the Auriga-Hawara, represented by the Ahaggaren, to whom, of course, the Azger Auraghen of to-day belong; or, lastly, they may be descended from the Auraghen of the west, from the Tademekkat country. The last is the soundest view in the present state of our knowledge, though the second is also quite probable.
The Tademekkat people, we know, were driven from their homes inA.D.1640 by the Aulimmiden. While some of them were driven out to the west, some at least found their way back into the Azger country.[406]It is no less probable that others may have gone to Air by a roundabout route. In that case Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air seems to be at least fifty years too late. During the last half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries they would have been finding their way into Northern Air in small groups. This is not inconsistent with the appearance at Agades of an Amenokal with a Kel Owi mother, if the admittedly tentative date of 1629 given in the Agades Chronicle is placed a decade or so later.
I am inclined to regard the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air as having taken place in the latter half of the seventeenth century. According to the Agades Chronicle they were already fighting the Kel Geres at Abattul, west of the Central massif, in 1728, some time before Barth’s date; and this obviously implies an earlier arrival in the north of the plateau, for their entry must have taken place from that direction and not from the south. But a recent date, taken in conjunction with the dominant position which the Kel Owi occupied and their separate political organisation, further implies that they came in considerable numbers, a conclusion which is at variance with one set of native traditions. They could not otherwise in two hundred years have achieved so much as they did by the beginning of the century.
THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREG
THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREG
THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREG
We know that their coming was followed by an economic disturbance of far-reaching importance. They first occupied North-eastern and Northern Air; the later phase of theirpenetration is recorded in the statement that the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres lived side by side, west and east of the Iferuan-Auderas-Agades road. The eastern plains of Air, according to Ahodu of Auderas and ’Umbellu of T’imia, had by this time been evacuated by the Itesan and the early settlers, but the invasion of the Kel Owi must have led also to the expulsion of the early settlers from the northern marches. The removal of the Kel Ferwan from the Iferuan area, and of the Kel Tadek from their territories north of Tamgak to the west and the south, probably took place in this period. The Kel Owi movement, though accompanied by frequent disturbances, was gradual. At T’imia, where the original inhabitants, according to ’Umbellu, were Kel Geres, they were only displaced in the time of his own grandparents by a mixed band of settlers from various Kel Owi tribes then living in the Ighazar in Northern Air. ’Umbellu is a man of about sixty now, so this event may have been one hundred years ago, at a time, in fact, when we should still expect the southward movement of the Kel Owi to be in progress.
More recently still the south-eastern part of the country was distributed among certain of their clans. The large Itesan settlements like those near Tabello had already been abandoned and were never again permanently inhabited; some dwellings were built later by the Kel Owi, but never on so large a scale as in the previous epoch. The extant houses and ruins are mostly of the first period; a few only show a transitional phase to the later Kel Owi type. Sometimes a compact block of contiguous buildings is to be found, possessing the character of a fortified settlement. It would seem that this defensible type of habitation had been evolved during the period after the Itesan were known to have been driven out by Tebu raiding and before the Kel Owi arrived. These dwellings betray certain features alien to the Tuareg, which may be explained by supposing that they were used by the serfs of the Itesan when their lords had retreated west of the Bagezan massif.
With the occupation of the eastern part of Air by the Kel Owi, the ancient caravan road which has run from time immemorial by T’intaghoda, Unankara, Mari, Beughqot and Tergulawen fell into their hands. It is the easiest road across the Air plateau, and perhaps for this reason, but more probably because they always had propensities of this sort, they developed such commercial ability that they rapidly made for themselves a dominant place in all trade and transport enterprises between Ghat and the Sudan. But although their efficiency in organisation gave them the control of the road, they certainly did not create it. But they did create a monopoly which deprived the Kel Geres of their legitimate profit.
The hostilities which soon broke out between the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres could lead to only one of two possible solutions, the expulsion or extermination of one of the rivals. Such economic problems are, of course, not always realised at the time when they are most urgently felt, and the current record of events to which they give rise is therefore often slightly distorted. Here, however, even the popular version shows that the real cause of the disturbances was an economic one. The Kel Owi began by appropriating the half of a country in which they were new-comers. They proceeded to demand the serfs and slaves whom the Kel Geres had possessed since their subjugation of the negroid peoples of Air. This impossible demand gave rise to considerable strife and was referred for arbitration to the reigning Sultan of Agades. The Hausa elements were supported by the Kel Owi for political reasons and as far as possible abandoned their former masters. The Sultan seems to have maintained the neutrality for which he stood, and even to have prevented the tribes which owed allegiance to him directly and belonged to neither party from taking sides in the dispute.[407]He was nevertheless unsuccessful, and after years of desultory fighting the Kel Geres abandoned Air for Adar and Gober to the west of Damergu and to thenorth of Sokoto. They retained their rights in the election of the Amenokal, to whom they continued to owe nominal allegiance through their chiefs, and were allowed to continue to use certain Air place-names in their tribal nomenclature. In the last century they repeatedly interfered in choice of the Sultan, and they still consider themselves to this day a part of the Air Tuareg, although their hostility against the Kel Owi never died. They evacuated the country with all the slaves and serfs whom they succeeded in retaining. It is possible that a few of the older non-Kel Owi tribes of Air and Damergu went with them.
If Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi were accepted, this migration should have occurred in the end of the eighteenth century. But as a matter of fact the movement took place earlier. Jean states that an arrangement for the evacuation was reached in the reign of the Sultan Almoubari or El Mubarak, who ruled thirty-four years, fromA.D.1653 to 1687. If the agreement was made at the end of his reign, the date for the immigration of the Kel Owi in accordance with previous information falls in the neighbourhood of 1640, to which epoch the reign of Sultan Muhammad Attafriya, who was deposed two years after his accession by the Itesan, can be assigned. The Kel Geres did not, however, leave the country directly the arrangement was made, and in the meanwhile continued the struggle. In 1728 the Kel Owi and the Itesan were still fighting in Air, the latter being defeated at Abattul, near Auderas. Halfway through this century the Itesan were fighting in the Southland and attacked Katsina in company with the Zamfarawa. It is at this time that the Kel Geres seem to have obtained a footing in the lands of Adar and Sokoto, though the Itesan still refused to settle there. In 1759 there is recorded a war between the Kel Geres and the Kel Tegama at the cliffs of Tiggedi, in which the latter were defeated. This war was followed by another in 1761 between the Kel Geres and the Aulimmiden, where, however, the former suffered. In the same year the Kel Owiand the Kel Geres fought each other at Agades. In this period the Amenokal Muhammad Hammad, who had come to the throne in 1735, changed places twice with Muhammad Guma, according as the Kel Owi or the Kel Geres faction prevailed. The former, restored to the throne in 1763, undertook an expedition with the men of Air against the King of Gober, and was severely defeated in 1767. In order to avenge the defeat, a truce between the warring Tuareg was finally concluded after a century of fighting. The combined men of Air then marched on, and defeated Dan Gudde and cut off his head. This event may be held to mark the final settlement of the Itesan and Kel Geres in the Southland. Their success accounts for Hornemann’s report that at the end of the nineteenth century the Tuareg were masters of Gober. Internecine hostilities continued, but henceforth the Itesan and the Kel Geres are no longer described as fighting the Kel Owi but the men of Air, as in 1780 and again in 1788, when they made their nominee, Muhammad Dani, Sultan at Agades. In 1835 the Amenokal, Guma, was captured in Damergu by the Kel Geres after a massacre of the Kel Owi. It was only in about 1860 that hostilities, which were in full progress in Barth’s day, finally ceased.
Why, it may be asked, did the Itesan and not all the rest of the pre-Kel Geres people of Air leave in consequence of the Kel Owi invasion? The question is not easy to answer, but the surmise is that, as the largest and most important group, they became most involved in the struggle. With their departure and that of the Kel Geres the remaining people became leaderless: having no confederation of their own they clustered around the person of the Sultan, and so came to be known as the People of the King. Yet, on account of their ancestry and nobility, the Kel Owi sought to attack them and arrogate to themselves the principal rôles in history, like the story of the peace of Maket n’Ikelan and that of the Imanen women. These claims are consistent with the characteristic which is felt to-day inrelations with them—the arrogance of the parvenu. The ascendancy of the noble Itesan has continued in the Southland as it existed in Air. They lead the Kel Geres division, with whom fate had made them throw in their lot. They remain primarily responsible for the choice of the Sultan even to-day.
Enough—too much perhaps—has been said of the three migrations of the Tuareg people into Air. It would be tedious to continue on that narrow subject. The complexity of the tribal organisation of the Air Tuareg has also been made patent in the earlier attempts to discover their social life. It is unfortunately impossible, even if space were available, to allocate the various clans of whose existence report has reached us to the larger groups or waves of immigration which have been examined. Lists of the tribes which have survived are given inAppendix IIto this work: they have been arranged in such system as was feasible, using the information collected by Barth, and Jean, and by myself. But the classification is unsatisfactory, since there is, in many instances, but little evidence. The organisation of the Kel Owi is, of course, the easiest to ascertain and it was briefly outlined inChapter X,but the People of the King are really more interesting both because they were the earliest arrivals and because of their association with the Itesan culture of the old houses and deep wells. Among the People of the King the most valuable anthropological data are to be collected. They brought such civilisation as Nigeria possessed in the Middle Ages from the Mediterranean, having absorbed and forgotten much of it on the way and since those epochs.
Before passing on to a brief summary of Central African history as a frame into which to fit the Air migrations, I would like to leave on record for some future student to use such conclusions as I have been able to reach regarding thedescendants of the first invaders of Air recorded by Sultan Bello.
The geographical areas of the Kel Owi and People of the King respectively had almost ceased to be distinguishable even before the 1917 revolution added to the prevailing confusion. In so far as it is at all possible to lay down broad definitions, Central and West-central Air belonged to the People of the King, Northern, North-eastern and Eastern Air to the Kel Owi, or People of the Añastafidet, and Southern Air, or, as it is more properly called, Tegama, to the servile tribes. The Talak plain was diversely populated.
The first immigrants, the Immikitan, Sendal, Tamgak, Igdalen, Ijaranen and probably Itesan, have for the most part survived in some distinguishable form in or around Air. The survivors are all, of course, as is to be expected, People of the King. The only exceptions are certain nuclei which are known to have been absorbed by the Añastafidet and his people.
In addition to the survivors in Air there are some Igdalen north of Tahua, while others are Imghad of the Tarat Mellet[408]tribe of the Ifoghas of the west. These Imghad may have been a part of the Air group of Igdalen captured in war, or may represent a westward emigration of a part of the stock which came on evil days in Damergu. Generally, I regard the presence of these Igdalen in the west as confirming Bello’s account of their early arrival in the Air area from the east; it may also be taken to substantiate my view that the first wave of Tuareg to the El Suk country came from the south-east and not from the north.[409]
How far can the tribes which are known to exist to-day or whose names have been recorded by modern travellers be associated with these groups of early immigrants? A critical examination[410]of the tribes reveals at least six maintribal groups of the People of the King in Air itself, that is to say, six groups in which the respective tribes either acknowledge themselves to be, or can be shown to possess, certain affinities pointing to a descent from single stocks; but not all of these can with certainty be identified with Bello’s named clans. These six extant groups are the Kel Ferwan, Kel Tadek, Immikitan, Imezegzil, Imaqoaran and Ifadeyen.
Two of them, in some ways the most important, have no proper names of their own at all: both the Kel Ferwan and Kel Tadek are named after places, respectively Iferuan in the Ighazar of Northern Air, and the Tadek valley. Neither of these groups, which have the reputation of great antiquity and nobility, can be affiliated to any of the other four groups; they are indubitably separate clans which in the course of ages have lost their old “I names.” Returning to the five old tribes of Bello we nevertheless find certain points of contact between records and actual conditions, as well as certain differences:
In discussing tribal origins in Air and comparing my results with those of Jean, I found the greatest difficulty in sorting out the tribes of the Immikitan and Imezegzil groups: so much so that I am inclined to think that bothclans represent the old Immikitan stock which split into two main branches some time ago. The widespread use of the name Immikitan for Tuareg makes it possible that the original stock of the People of the King was Immikitan in the first instance; in that event, on the analogy of other Tuareg tribes, when one clan grew unmanageable in size, new groups were formed, only one of which retained the original nomenclature as a proper or individual name—a process which no doubt occurred before any migration out of the Chad area took place. But that is too far back to consider.
Leaving the Ifadeyen out of account for the moment we are left with the Kel Ferwan, the Kel Tadek and the Imaqoaran to compete for the right of descent from the Tamgak and Sendal. A remote ancestry is indicated by their undoubted nobility and antiquity. The original home of the Kel Tadek in a valley flowing out of Tamgak and the association of the Tamgak tribe with the Tamgak massif suggest that these groups may be identified, in which case the Sendal might be the ancestors of the Kel Ferwan. Nevertheless there is also a possibility that the descendants of the Sendal are the old tribes of Damergu. That the descendants of the Sendal are to be sought for south of, rather than in Air proper, is further indicated by the record of a war between the People of Air against the Sendal in Elakkos as late as 1727.[411]The Kel Ferwan, would, thus, be descended from the Damergu-Elakkos Tuareg directly, and from the Sendal therefore only indirectly, if their origin indeed is to be sought in this early wave of immigration at all.
The selection of the Sultan of Agades being in the hands of the tribes who traditionally sent the deputation to Constantinople after the arrival of the Kel Geres in Air, and the object of the mission being to settle a dispute as to who should be king, it would be natural to find all the contestant groups represented on the delegation. The Kel Owi would,of course, not figure among them, for they had not at that time reached Air. Now the names of tribes charged with sending the delegation is given by Jean, and I accept his version because all the information which I procured on the subject was very contradictory; and the list is most interesting. It is given as: the Itesan and the Dzianara of the modern Itesan-Kel Geres group, and the Izagaran, Ifadalen, Imaqoaran and Immikitan of the other Tuareg. The Itesan we know about; the Dzianara were a noble part of the Kel Geres but are now extinct: it is natural that both these should be represented. The Izagaran and Ifadalen survive as names of noble Damergu tribes, while the Immikitan and Imaqoaran represent the older clans of Air proper, all four, of course, owing allegiance to the King. From their “I names” these tribes all seem to be old; we have no reason from any other evidence to believe that any recent arrivals are represented in the list. The very choice of representatives from each of three groups may consequently be taken to indicate that these tribes were regarded as the oldest or most important units in each division. It is tempting, therefore, to suppose that the Izagaran and Ifadalen are the descendants of one of the tribes in the first wave of Tuareg which came from the south-east, and therefore perhaps of Bello’s Sendal.
Another version of the method adopted to select the first Amenokal is recorded in the Agades Chronicle, which states that the persons responsible for the task were the Agoalla[412]T’Sidderak, Agoalla Mafinet and Agoalla Kel Tagei. The story relates how the Agumbulum, the title of the ruler of the first Tuareg to enter Air, namely the Kel Innek, desired to settle the differences which had arisen in regard to the government, but was unable to find anyone to send to Stambul until an old woman called Tagirit offered to send her grandsons, who were the chieftains in question. The story emphasises what will have been noticed on the subject of the origin of the Kel Owi, namely, that the tribes of Airgenerally claim a woman either as ancestress or as a prominent head. The first two names are those of certain Itesan sub-tribes who, from residence in these mountain areas, which still bear the same names in Central Air, had adopted geographical Kel names, and conserve them to this day in their modern habitats in the Southland. The Kel Tagei is another subdivision of the Itesan, and, though a servile tribe of this name exists in the Imarsutan section of the Kel Owi, it is probably a portion of the former enslaved during the later civil wars of Air.[413]
This alternative story is not necessarily contradictory to the first version of the deputation to Stambul, even though it does not allow the remaining tribes of the People of the King to have a share in the election. Since, however, the Itesan were certainly the dominant tribe in Air until the arrival of the Kel Owi, the omission is comprehensible; it is a statement of a part for the whole. If it has any significance it tends to support the view that the Itesan were, in fact, a tribe of the Kel Innek from the Chad lands, as I have supposed, and not a part of the Kel Geres group.
The Imaqoaran and Kel Ferwan, however, remain a difficult problem. The latter are in many ways peculiar and seem to differ in many ways so much from their other friends in the division of the People of the King, that although I have no direct evidence on the subject, I half suspect them of having come to Air from some other part than the south-east and at a later period than the first wave. Certain it is that they specialised in raiding westward, where they obtained their numerous dependent Imghad. Furthermore, in Cortier’s account of the history of the Ifoghas n’Adghar there are stories of the formation of this western group of Tuareg tending to show that while a part of the division probably came from the north, the bulk of the immigration was from the east. He says that after the Kelel Suk reached the southern parts of the Sahara, they divided into two groups. The two groups fought, and one section, which had apparently settled in Air, was victorious, whereupon a part migrated into the Adghar, where the other section had already established itself and had founded the town of Tademekka. In the fighting, which continued, there seems to have been considerable movement between the two mountain groups; the Kel Ferwan portion of the People of the King in Air may therefore be more nearly related to the western group than to the other Air folk.
The Ifadeyen are associated with Fadé, which is the northernmost part of the Air plateau. To-day they are very friendly with the Kel Tadek, and some people have even suggested that they were of the same stock. There is, however, another tribe, the Kel Fadé, the similarity of whose name suggests, quite erroneously, an identification. The Ifadeyen are known to be a very old tribe, while the Kel Fadé are known to have been formed at about the time of the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air and to have lived in the Fadé mountains, whence the Ifadeyen were already moving south. Barth speaks of the Kel Fadé as a collection of brigands and vagabonds, and implies that they were mainly outlaws of mixed parentage. A part of them is certainly Kel Owi and composed of those elements which went on living in the northern mountains when the main body entered Air, while another part is almost certainly Ifadeyen; as a whole they remained outside the Kel Owi Confederation as People of the King. Until about thirty years ago the Kel Fadé used to maintain that the Ifadeyen were their serfs; after many disputes the matter was referred to the paramount chief of the Kel Owi, who, after consulting various authorities, decided that the Ifadeyen were noble and free. Their chief, Matali, nevertheless preferred to evacuate the northern mountains completely in favour of the Kel Fadé in order to avoid further friction, and since then, a full generation ago, they have been gradually moving south to the Azawagh, where they pasture in the winter,withdrawing to Damergu in the dry season. Their original history might have been easier to ascertain had it not been for the fact that despite its “I form” their name is a placename, though it is possible that they gave their name to Fadé and did not take it from their habitat. The presence of the Ifadeyen in an area west and north of country which we know the Kel Tadek held, and their association with the latter, render it likely that we are, in fact, dealing with one and the same stock, namely, the descendants of the Tamgak.
The Ifadeyen are renowned all over Air for their pure nomadism, and above all for the fact that they are almost the last of the Tuareg in the Southern Sahara to retain the current use of the T’ifingh script with a knowledge of reading and writing it. This learning, as is usual among Imajeghan tribes, reposes with the women-folk, one of whose principal functions is to educate the children; it is consistent with their supposed origin as one of the oldest and purest of all the tribes in Air.
As a result of the foregoing argument the following suggestions for the main tribes of the People of the King hitherto mentioned can be made:
PLATE 48EGHALGAWEN POOLTIZRAET POOL
PLATE 48
EGHALGAWEN POOL
EGHALGAWEN POOL
EGHALGAWEN POOL
TIZRAET POOL
TIZRAET POOL
TIZRAET POOL
[356]Letter to the author from G. W. Webster, Resident at Sokoto, dated 20/6/1923.[357]Journal of the African Society, No. XXXVI. Vol. IX. July 1910. Further references in this chapter will be omitted.[358]Denham and Clapperton:Account of the First Expedition(Murray), 1826. Vol. II. p. 38 seq.; App. XII.[359]As reported by Bello, Denham and Clapperton,loc. cit.[360]It is to these doubtless that Jean is referring when he speaks of Egyptian influence in Air. Jean,op. cit., p. 86.[361]Cf. Leo,op. cit., Vol. III. p. 828.[362]Cf. also Asbytæ and Esbet with references in Bates,op. cit., passim. The root is probably, if a generalisation is at all permitted, applicable to the earliest negroid, or Grimaldi race survivors, in North Africa.[363]Vide supra,Chap. III.[364]Cf.supra,Chap. II.[365]Cf.infra.[366]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 337.[367]Vide supra,Chap. IV.[368]But not necessarily the slaves.[369]As was the case, for instance, in the days of the Eighth and Ninth Dynasties of Egypt.[370]“Akel” (plu.ikelan) primarily means “negro,” and from that “a slave.”[371]Vide supra,Chap. III.[372]Denham and Clapperton,loc. cit.[373]I.e.Aujila.[374]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 460.[375]Herodotus, IV. 172.[376]InChap. III.[377]Idrisi: ed. Jaubert, Vol. I. p. 238.[378]Cf.Chap. X.[379]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 460.[380]To adopt Clapperton’s spelling.[381]Barth,op. cit., Vol. IV. App. IX and Vol. II.[382]I.e.Libyans, and not, at this period or in this context, Kanuri.[383]According to MaqriziapudBarth, Vol. II. pp. 635 and 265.[384]El Bekri,op. cit., p. 456.[385]A tribe of the Ahaggaren.[386]In a communication to the author, Mr. H. R. Palmer, Resident in Bornu, writes: “After hearing probably all the extant tradition on the subject of the early rulers of Kanem, my belief is that the so-called Dugawa were Tuareg of some kind, and that the appellation Beri-beri applied originally to them and not to the Teda element which later on preponderated and gave the resulting Kanemi empire its language,i.e.Kanuri.”[387]Denham and Clapperton,op. cit., Vol. II. p. 396.[388]Though the Tebu are probably themselves a Kanuri stock, a distinction may be drawn between them and the more negroid Kanuri of Bornu and the Chad lands.[389]See Abul Fida (French ed.), pp. 127-8 and 245; El Idrisi (ed. Jaubert), p. 288. At the time of El Maqrizi the empire of Kanem extended from Zella (Sella), south of the Great Syrtis, to Gogo (Gao) on the Niger. El Maqrizi lived from 1365 to 1442: Abul Fida died in 1331 writing his history, which was finished down to the yearA.D.1329.[390]Other than a wholesale emigration of Franks and Byzantines to Europe.[391]Cf.Chap. XI.supra.[392]SeeAppendix II.and elsewhere in this chapter, also Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., Vol. II. p. 3.[393]InAppendix II.[394]Consider the proportion of such names in the Itesan group, and in the forty-six Kel Geres tribes, respectively. Cf.Appendix II.[395]Jean,op. cit., p. 86.[396]Jean,op. cit., p. 113, and Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 356, alsoAppendix II.to this volume.[397]Cf.Appendix II.Tribes having the same place names now in Air are not related to these clans; their history is independently established.[398]Hornemann’sJournal, French ed. p. 102 seq.[399]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 339.[400]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 343. The Tinylcum (T’inalkum) is an Azger Imghad tribe: cf.Chap. XI.[401]Jean,op. cit., pp. 90-1.[402]Jean calls them Ahaggaren, but only because all the northern Tuareg are in Air called Ahaggaren irrespective of whether they come from the Azger, Ahaggar or Ahnet divisions. In addition to these Imanen among the Azger and Itesan, there are also some on the Niger who are probably the product of the same early migrations which took the five tribes, including the Itesan, into Air.[403]Compare the grouping inAppendix II.and the comments inChap X.[404]SeeAppendix II.All these three tribes are People of the King, though the Kel Zilalet are rather mixed, being sedentaries.[405]This in Air means the west or north-west. The reference may be to the Hawara, regarding whom this type of confusion has always obtained: cf. Arab-Tuareg elements in Hawara group,videChap. XI.[406]Cf.Chap. XI.with reference to Duveyrier’s information.[407]Jean,op. cit., pp. 92-3.[408]Meaning “The White Goat.” Perhaps a survival of Totemism.[409]Vide supra,Chap. XI.[410]SeeAppendix II.Division I. for details of People of the King in Air, and Division IV. for the Damergu Tuareg.[411]Agades Chronicle.[412]I.e.chief of a tribal group.[413]The Imarsutan Kel Tagei may also have merely fortuitously acquired this name, which only means the People of the Dûm Palm, and is therefore not very individual.[414]InAppendix II.
[356]Letter to the author from G. W. Webster, Resident at Sokoto, dated 20/6/1923.
[356]Letter to the author from G. W. Webster, Resident at Sokoto, dated 20/6/1923.
[357]Journal of the African Society, No. XXXVI. Vol. IX. July 1910. Further references in this chapter will be omitted.
[357]Journal of the African Society, No. XXXVI. Vol. IX. July 1910. Further references in this chapter will be omitted.
[358]Denham and Clapperton:Account of the First Expedition(Murray), 1826. Vol. II. p. 38 seq.; App. XII.
[358]Denham and Clapperton:Account of the First Expedition(Murray), 1826. Vol. II. p. 38 seq.; App. XII.
[359]As reported by Bello, Denham and Clapperton,loc. cit.
[359]As reported by Bello, Denham and Clapperton,loc. cit.
[360]It is to these doubtless that Jean is referring when he speaks of Egyptian influence in Air. Jean,op. cit., p. 86.
[360]It is to these doubtless that Jean is referring when he speaks of Egyptian influence in Air. Jean,op. cit., p. 86.
[361]Cf. Leo,op. cit., Vol. III. p. 828.
[361]Cf. Leo,op. cit., Vol. III. p. 828.
[362]Cf. also Asbytæ and Esbet with references in Bates,op. cit., passim. The root is probably, if a generalisation is at all permitted, applicable to the earliest negroid, or Grimaldi race survivors, in North Africa.
[362]Cf. also Asbytæ and Esbet with references in Bates,op. cit., passim. The root is probably, if a generalisation is at all permitted, applicable to the earliest negroid, or Grimaldi race survivors, in North Africa.
[363]Vide supra,Chap. III.
[363]Vide supra,Chap. III.
[364]Cf.supra,Chap. II.
[364]Cf.supra,Chap. II.
[365]Cf.infra.
[365]Cf.infra.
[366]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 337.
[366]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 337.
[367]Vide supra,Chap. IV.
[367]Vide supra,Chap. IV.
[368]But not necessarily the slaves.
[368]But not necessarily the slaves.
[369]As was the case, for instance, in the days of the Eighth and Ninth Dynasties of Egypt.
[369]As was the case, for instance, in the days of the Eighth and Ninth Dynasties of Egypt.
[370]“Akel” (plu.ikelan) primarily means “negro,” and from that “a slave.”
[370]“Akel” (plu.ikelan) primarily means “negro,” and from that “a slave.”
[371]Vide supra,Chap. III.
[371]Vide supra,Chap. III.
[372]Denham and Clapperton,loc. cit.
[372]Denham and Clapperton,loc. cit.
[373]I.e.Aujila.
[373]I.e.Aujila.
[374]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 460.
[374]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 460.
[375]Herodotus, IV. 172.
[375]Herodotus, IV. 172.
[376]InChap. III.
[376]InChap. III.
[377]Idrisi: ed. Jaubert, Vol. I. p. 238.
[377]Idrisi: ed. Jaubert, Vol. I. p. 238.
[378]Cf.Chap. X.
[378]Cf.Chap. X.
[379]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 460.
[379]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 460.
[380]To adopt Clapperton’s spelling.
[380]To adopt Clapperton’s spelling.
[381]Barth,op. cit., Vol. IV. App. IX and Vol. II.
[381]Barth,op. cit., Vol. IV. App. IX and Vol. II.
[382]I.e.Libyans, and not, at this period or in this context, Kanuri.
[382]I.e.Libyans, and not, at this period or in this context, Kanuri.
[383]According to MaqriziapudBarth, Vol. II. pp. 635 and 265.
[383]According to MaqriziapudBarth, Vol. II. pp. 635 and 265.
[384]El Bekri,op. cit., p. 456.
[384]El Bekri,op. cit., p. 456.
[385]A tribe of the Ahaggaren.
[385]A tribe of the Ahaggaren.
[386]In a communication to the author, Mr. H. R. Palmer, Resident in Bornu, writes: “After hearing probably all the extant tradition on the subject of the early rulers of Kanem, my belief is that the so-called Dugawa were Tuareg of some kind, and that the appellation Beri-beri applied originally to them and not to the Teda element which later on preponderated and gave the resulting Kanemi empire its language,i.e.Kanuri.”
[386]In a communication to the author, Mr. H. R. Palmer, Resident in Bornu, writes: “After hearing probably all the extant tradition on the subject of the early rulers of Kanem, my belief is that the so-called Dugawa were Tuareg of some kind, and that the appellation Beri-beri applied originally to them and not to the Teda element which later on preponderated and gave the resulting Kanemi empire its language,i.e.Kanuri.”
[387]Denham and Clapperton,op. cit., Vol. II. p. 396.
[387]Denham and Clapperton,op. cit., Vol. II. p. 396.
[388]Though the Tebu are probably themselves a Kanuri stock, a distinction may be drawn between them and the more negroid Kanuri of Bornu and the Chad lands.
[388]Though the Tebu are probably themselves a Kanuri stock, a distinction may be drawn between them and the more negroid Kanuri of Bornu and the Chad lands.
[389]See Abul Fida (French ed.), pp. 127-8 and 245; El Idrisi (ed. Jaubert), p. 288. At the time of El Maqrizi the empire of Kanem extended from Zella (Sella), south of the Great Syrtis, to Gogo (Gao) on the Niger. El Maqrizi lived from 1365 to 1442: Abul Fida died in 1331 writing his history, which was finished down to the yearA.D.1329.
[389]See Abul Fida (French ed.), pp. 127-8 and 245; El Idrisi (ed. Jaubert), p. 288. At the time of El Maqrizi the empire of Kanem extended from Zella (Sella), south of the Great Syrtis, to Gogo (Gao) on the Niger. El Maqrizi lived from 1365 to 1442: Abul Fida died in 1331 writing his history, which was finished down to the yearA.D.1329.
[390]Other than a wholesale emigration of Franks and Byzantines to Europe.
[390]Other than a wholesale emigration of Franks and Byzantines to Europe.
[391]Cf.Chap. XI.supra.
[391]Cf.Chap. XI.supra.
[392]SeeAppendix II.and elsewhere in this chapter, also Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., Vol. II. p. 3.
[392]SeeAppendix II.and elsewhere in this chapter, also Ibn Khaldun,op. cit., Vol. II. p. 3.
[393]InAppendix II.
[393]InAppendix II.
[394]Consider the proportion of such names in the Itesan group, and in the forty-six Kel Geres tribes, respectively. Cf.Appendix II.
[394]Consider the proportion of such names in the Itesan group, and in the forty-six Kel Geres tribes, respectively. Cf.Appendix II.
[395]Jean,op. cit., p. 86.
[395]Jean,op. cit., p. 86.
[396]Jean,op. cit., p. 113, and Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 356, alsoAppendix II.to this volume.
[396]Jean,op. cit., p. 113, and Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 356, alsoAppendix II.to this volume.
[397]Cf.Appendix II.Tribes having the same place names now in Air are not related to these clans; their history is independently established.
[397]Cf.Appendix II.Tribes having the same place names now in Air are not related to these clans; their history is independently established.
[398]Hornemann’sJournal, French ed. p. 102 seq.
[398]Hornemann’sJournal, French ed. p. 102 seq.
[399]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 339.
[399]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 339.
[400]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 343. The Tinylcum (T’inalkum) is an Azger Imghad tribe: cf.Chap. XI.
[400]Barth,op. cit., Vol. I. p. 343. The Tinylcum (T’inalkum) is an Azger Imghad tribe: cf.Chap. XI.
[401]Jean,op. cit., pp. 90-1.
[401]Jean,op. cit., pp. 90-1.
[402]Jean calls them Ahaggaren, but only because all the northern Tuareg are in Air called Ahaggaren irrespective of whether they come from the Azger, Ahaggar or Ahnet divisions. In addition to these Imanen among the Azger and Itesan, there are also some on the Niger who are probably the product of the same early migrations which took the five tribes, including the Itesan, into Air.
[402]Jean calls them Ahaggaren, but only because all the northern Tuareg are in Air called Ahaggaren irrespective of whether they come from the Azger, Ahaggar or Ahnet divisions. In addition to these Imanen among the Azger and Itesan, there are also some on the Niger who are probably the product of the same early migrations which took the five tribes, including the Itesan, into Air.
[403]Compare the grouping inAppendix II.and the comments inChap X.
[403]Compare the grouping inAppendix II.and the comments inChap X.
[404]SeeAppendix II.All these three tribes are People of the King, though the Kel Zilalet are rather mixed, being sedentaries.
[404]SeeAppendix II.All these three tribes are People of the King, though the Kel Zilalet are rather mixed, being sedentaries.
[405]This in Air means the west or north-west. The reference may be to the Hawara, regarding whom this type of confusion has always obtained: cf. Arab-Tuareg elements in Hawara group,videChap. XI.
[405]This in Air means the west or north-west. The reference may be to the Hawara, regarding whom this type of confusion has always obtained: cf. Arab-Tuareg elements in Hawara group,videChap. XI.
[406]Cf.Chap. XI.with reference to Duveyrier’s information.
[406]Cf.Chap. XI.with reference to Duveyrier’s information.
[407]Jean,op. cit., pp. 92-3.
[407]Jean,op. cit., pp. 92-3.
[408]Meaning “The White Goat.” Perhaps a survival of Totemism.
[408]Meaning “The White Goat.” Perhaps a survival of Totemism.
[409]Vide supra,Chap. XI.
[409]Vide supra,Chap. XI.
[410]SeeAppendix II.Division I. for details of People of the King in Air, and Division IV. for the Damergu Tuareg.
[410]SeeAppendix II.Division I. for details of People of the King in Air, and Division IV. for the Damergu Tuareg.
[411]Agades Chronicle.
[411]Agades Chronicle.
[412]I.e.chief of a tribal group.
[412]I.e.chief of a tribal group.
[413]The Imarsutan Kel Tagei may also have merely fortuitously acquired this name, which only means the People of the Dûm Palm, and is therefore not very individual.
[413]The Imarsutan Kel Tagei may also have merely fortuitously acquired this name, which only means the People of the Dûm Palm, and is therefore not very individual.
[414]InAppendix II.
[414]InAppendix II.
THE HISTORY OF AIR (continued)
Part II
The Vicissitudes of the Tuareg in Air
Asa division of Tuareg the people of Air cannot be said to have achieved great deeds in the history of the world as did the Sanhaja; but as a part of the race they can justly claim to share in its glory. That they brought culture and the amenities of civilisation from the Mediterranean to Central Africa has been mentioned several times. This progress in the past was responsible for the prosperity of Nigeria to-day.
The People of Air are a small and insignificant group of human beings considered by themselves alone. It may only be when that characteristic of the Englishman displays itself and he seeks to extol the virtues, charm and history of some obscure race, that such a people assumes, in his eyes at least, an importance which to the rest of the world may seem unjustified. There is probably no race so vile, so dull or so unimpressive but that some Briton will arise as its defender, and aver that if properly treated it is the salt of the earth. I am not unconscious of the dangers of this frame of mind, but being acutely aware of the mentality, I trust that this characteristic will not have led me over-much to conceal the unpleasant or unfavourable.
A chapter which attempts to deal summarily with the history of the Air Tuareg[415]set in its appropriate frame of Central African history must inevitably seem in some measure a justification for the trouble taken to piece togetheran obscure and complex collection of facts relating to the country and its people. But the darkness surrounding the arguments contained in the preceding account of the migrations of the Air tribes has seemed so impenetrable that instead of closing the book at this point, I have felt moved to give the reader some rather less indigestible matter with which to conclude.
To obviate the accusation of attaching unwarrantable importance to the People of Air, it may be well to state that the population of the country is small. It was never very large. Perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 souls, including the Kel Geres and the other clans in the Southland, would have been a conservative estimate in 1904. At that time Jean, numbering only the People of Air and some of the Tuareg of Elakkos and Damergu, arrived at a tentative figure of 25-27,000 inhabitants, but he was certainly misled by his local informants into thinking that the tribes were smaller than they really were. Nor did he take all the septs of Air and the Southland into account. His estimate included somewhat over 8000 People of the King, rather more than 8500 People of the Añastafidet, 4-5000 Irawellan, 2000 slaves and 2500-3000 mixed sedentaries in Agades and In Gall.[416]At the time of the prosperity of Agades the population of these countries, not including detached sedentaries and other groups lying far afield, may have attained a maximum of 100,000.
It is impossible to estimate the total numbers of Tuareg in North Africa with any accuracy. It would be interesting to make a serious study of the numbers and general state even of those in French territories.
The internecine struggles of the Air Tuareg are hardly interesting, and have only been mentioned where relevant to the origin and movements of the three immigrations. The wars between the different divisions, like the Ahaggaren and the Azger, are not really more valuable in a general survey. But even to summarise the principal events in Airin the broad outlines is easier than to describe in a few words the events which took place in the Central Sahara and the Central Sudan during the 1000 years of history which have elapsed since first, in my view at least, the Tuareg reached these mountains from their more ancient northern home.
In early times the Tuareg were already in North Africa. They can be distinguished probably as early as the Fifth, and certainly as early as the Twelfth, Dynasty in Egypt. We can follow much of what they were doing and trace where they were living in Roman times, but it is less easy to discern the groups which composed the immigrant waves of humanity into Air until about the time when the first of them came to the south, and even then the picture is obscure.
When Air was first invaded by the Tuareg it was called Asben and was part of the kingdom of Gober, a country of negroid people who lived both in the mountains and to the south. But before the first invasion took place there was already Libyan influence in the country, both due to the northern trade which had gone on since the earliest times conceivable, and also on account of the Sanhaja Tuareg, whose power and glory had extended thus far eastwards.
The first invasion consisted of tribes who had formed part of a mass of Tuareg of the Lemta division originally from, and now still settled in, the Fezzan and Ghat areas. These people had descended the Kawar road to Lake Chad. They had occupied Bornu, perhaps in the early ninth centuryA.D., or even before. The Goberawa of Air or Asben seem to have received a slight admixture of Libyan blood derived from the northerners who travelled down the caravan road to the Sudan; the people of Bornu were more purely negroid, and more so than their northern neighbours and probably kinsfolk, the Tebu of Tibesti. The Tuareg who were settled in Bornu were subjected to pressure from the east and north, at the hands of the Kanuri from east of Lake Chad, and of the Arabs. In due course, after being kingsof Bornu for many generations the Tuareg began to move westwards. Some of them reached Air, leaving settlers, or having previously settled the regions of Elakkos and Damergu. The date of this movement cannot be fixed with any accuracy; it is probably not as early at the eighth century, but is certainly anterior to the great Kanuri expansion of the thirteenth century. An early date is suggested by Barth and accepted by Jean, probably merely on account of the incidence of the first Arab invasion of North Africa, though as a matter of fact the forces of Islam for the sixty years which elapsed after the conquest of Egypt were not really sufficiently numerous to occasion great ethnic movements. The six centuries betweenA.D.700 andA.D.1300 are very obscure; but if any reason must be assigned for the first invasion of Air by the Bornu Tuareg, it was probably due to the Hillalian invasion of Africa. For this and other reasons it may, therefore, be placed in the eleventh century.
With the opening of the Muhammadan era we find a kingdom at Ghana in Western Negroland with a ruling family of “white people” and the Libyan dynasty of Za Alayamin (Za el Yemani) installed at Kukia.[417]Gao, on the Niger, was already an important commercial centre at the southern end of the trade road from Algeria. InA.D.837 we read of the death of Tilutan, a Tuareg of the Lemtuna,[418]who was very powerful in the Sahara; he was succeeded by Ilettan, who died in 900; the latter was followed by T’in Yerutan as lord of the Western Sahara. He was established at Audaghost,[419]an outpost of the Sanhaja, who appear at this time to have dominated Western Negroland, includingeven the great city of Ghana,[420]and to have carried on active intercourse between the Southland and Sijilmasa in Morocco. This and the succeeding century are notable for the influence of the Libyan tribes, in the first instance through the Libyan kings of Audaghost, and later, at the beginning of the eleventh century, by the desert confederation which Abu Abdallah, called Naresht, the son of Tifaut, had brought into being. It was at this time that the preacher and reformer, Abdallah ibn Yasin, arose and collected in the Sahara his band of Holy Men called the “Merabtin,” who were destined to play such a large rôle in the history of the world under the name of Almoravid in Morocco and in Spain. Throughout the latter part of the eleventh century and in the whole of the twelfth, the really important element in all the Western Sahara and Sudan was the Sanhaja division of the Tuareg of the west, and though nothing is heard of the effects of their rule on Air, they must nevertheless have been considerable. The Mesufa branch of the Sanhaja were, according to Ibn Batutah, established in Gober, south of Air; the influence of the Sanhaja in Air itself as well as in Damergu is also recorded. West of Air was the city of Tademekka, nine days northwards from Gao. We also hear of the Libyan towns of Tirekka, between the Tademekka and Walata, and Tautek six days beyond Tirekka; all these appear to have sprung up under the Sanhaja dominion as commercial centres in the same way as the later city of Timbuctoo. Agades, at this time, had not yet been founded.
At the beginning of the thirteenth or end of the twelfth century the second invasion of Air took place. Until now the Tuareg immigrants had lived side by side with the Goberawa despite the assistance which the former must have derived from the Sanhaja influence in the land. The new invaders were the Kel Geres, and their advent led to the expulsion or absorption of the negroid people. Together with the former inhabitants and under the leadership of thedominant Itesan tribe, the Tuareg consolidated their independence in Air. This might never have been achieved had it not been for the Sanhaja empire in the west; there is no doubt that the success of the latter contributed directly to the Bornu and Air movements.
By the time Ibn Batutah made his journey through Negroland inA.D.1353, Tekadda, some days south of the mountains, as well as Air itself were wholly Tuareg.
Between Gao and Tekadda he had journeyed through the land of the “Bardamah, a nomad Berber tribe,”[421]whose tents and dietary are described in a manner which makes it clear that we are dealing with typical nomadic Tuareg. The Bardamah women, incidentally, are said to have been very beautiful and to have been endowed with that particular fatness which so struck Barth. At Tekadda the Sultan was a “Berber” (Libyan) called Izar.[422]There was also another prince of the same race called “the Tekerkeri,” though further on Ibn Batutah refers to him somewhat differently, saying, “We arrived in Kahir, which is part of the domains of the Sultan Kerkeri.” From this Barth deduces that the name of the ruler’s kingdom, which included Air but apparently not Tekadda, was “Kerker,” but we have seen that the chief minister of the Sultan of the Tuareg is called the Kokoi Geregeri, and it is to this title that I think Ibn Batutah is referring. Nevertheless, as a branch of the Aulimmiden in the west is also called Takarkari, this may signify that the plateau was at this period under the influence of those western Tuareg who have in history often exerted a preponderating part in the history of Southern Air.