THE HISTORY OF AIR
PART I
THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TUAREG TO AIR
The history of Air is inextricably mixed up with the problems of Tuareg
ethnology. It is best to treat the various questions which arise as
a whole. Information for all the earlier events is scanty. As has
already become apparent in previous chapters, much must be based on
deduction, since no early written evidence of the Air people exists
but that contained in their rock inscriptions. In later years the
practice arose of keeping book records or tribal histories in Arabic;
they were designed to establish the nobility of origin of the various
clans, a subject of continual dispute among the Tuareg; but most of
these precious books, which used to be kept in the mosques or houses of
the learned men, were lost when the whole of Air north of the Central
massifs was cleared by French Camel patrols after the 1917 rebellion.
For long the avowed policy of the French authorities was to remove
the population of the mountains of Air lock, stock and barrel, and
settle them in the lands of Damergu and the Sudan. The Tuareg, as
may be imagined, took unkindly to living in the plains away from the
mountains and desert to which they were used. They cannot be persuaded
to settle on the land as agriculturists except after generations of
contact with tillers of the soil, and even then they only adopt the new
mode of life in a half-hearted fashion or as a result of intermarriage,
and as a consequence lose their individuality. Besides embittering
relations to an extent which may prove irremediable, the French
policy was otherwise disastrous from a local point of view. After
being driven out of their homes in the mountains, these people were
not content to live in the half-way house of the Damergu plains or
in Damagarim. Many of them moved out of French territory altogether
into Nigeria, where they had no quarrel with the authorities and
where existence was even easier than in the belt between the Sahara
and the Sudan. As many as 30,000 Veiled People left Air; most of them
settled in the Emirates of Kano and Katsina.
Depopulation in Air allowed the desert to encroach. Wells fell in,
gardens went out of tillage, and the live-stock of the country, more
especially the camel herds, were reduced to a fraction of what they
had been. These factors in turn contributed to make it harder than
ever to reopen the old caravan roads, after they had been closed
during the Great War. From the economic standpoint the possibility
of obtaining any return from the military occupation of this part of
the Sahara became more than ever problematical. Finally, the cruel
evacuation of Air, for which there was no administrative excuse save
that of short-sighted expediency, made it infinitely more difficult
to obtain information regarding the origin and habits of a people
who are in any case probably doomed to disappear before the advance
of civilisation. The records in their mosques were abandoned to be
rained on and gradually destroyed. Tradition is being lost among
a younger generation in a new environment. In 1922 the policy of
the French was reversed and the population was being encouraged to
return to their homes, but one is inclined to wonder whether it was
not already too late.
In the course of my stay in Air I heard of two books on tribal lore
and history. The one which appeared the most important had belonged
to the family of Ahodu, chief of Auderas village, and had long been in
the possession of his forefathers. In 1917, when the northern villages
were cleared, the book was left in a hiding-place, but all my efforts
and those of Ahodu to trace it were in vain. Later I heard of another
similar work at Agades, but only after I had left the town. It is
kept by a woman called Taburgula, and is quoted by the Kel Geres as
their authority for the nobility, etc. of the tribes of the south.[356]
Certain extracts from a Chronicle of Air have been collected and
translated by H. R. Palmer, Lieut.-Governor of Northern Nigeria. The
information was contained in the notes of a Hausa scribe, who seems to
have compiled them on the authority of a manuscript which is probably
still extant in Air. The compilation is not necessarily accurate, but
ranks as good material, and has already been referred to in previous
chapters as the Agades Chronicle.[357]
Finally, there is the record of Sultan Bello, Emir of Sokoto, when
Denham and Clapperton reached the Sudan in 1824. Bello was a great
historian, and probably the most enlightened ruler in Africa of his
day. He has left for us a history without which we should find it
difficult to piece together the story of Air and the neighbouring
countries.[358]
Such information as it was possible to obtain to supplement these
authorities and Jean and Barth was derived from numerous conversations
with the older men whom I met in Air. By repetition and sifting
it acquired sufficient consistency probably to represent, somewhat
approximately, the truth. Apart from an inadequate knowledge of the
language, I encountered another great difficulty in research. The years
1917 and 1918 were so calamitous for the Tuareg that circumstances
obliged them to change many of their habits of life and scattered their
traditions. There was always a danger of being misled by assuming that
present practices represented historical customs, or that deductions
made in 1922 were necessarily as accurate as if the observations had
been made in 1850.
The early history of Air may be resolved into the answers to the three
problems: When did the Tuareg reach Air? Where did they come from? And,
whom did they meet on arrival? We shall deal with the last first,
piecing together such scanty evidence as is at our disposal.
The existence at an early date in North Africa of negroid people
much further north than their present limit of permanent habitation
is generally admitted. It is logical to suppose that Air, which is
an eminently habitable land, was therefore originally occupied by a
negroid race. In support of this supposition there is the testimony of
Muhammad el Bakeir,[359] son of Sultan Muhammad el Addal, to the effect
that the Goberawa originally possessed Air, under the leadership of
“Kipti” or Copts. Bello adds that the Goberawa were a free people
and that they were the noblest of the Hausa-speaking races. It is not
clear what the mention of Kipti can mean, except that the influence
of the Egyptian Coptic church was spread as far afield as Air;[360]
and this is possible, for traces of Christianity from the Nile Valley
can probably be found in the Chad area. It may, on the other hand,
merely mean that there was a North African element in the racial
composition of the Goberawa; and this is certainly true, for the Hausa
people are not pure Negroes. Gober was the most northern Hausa state,
and later the home of Othman dan Fodio, the founder of the Fulani
empire.[361] The Agades Chronicle states that the people of Daura,
who are regarded as the purest of the Hausa, whatever this people or
race may eventually be proved to be, first ruled in Air; but they
grew weak and were conquered by the Kanuri, who in their turn gave
place to the Goberawa.
Asben is the name by which Air is still known in the Southland, and
the word is probably of the same root as “Abyssinia” and the Arabic
“Habesh.” It may also perhaps be found in the name Agisymba Regio,
but no significance need be attached to this, for the name seems to
have been applied very widely in Africa to countries inhabited by
negroid people.[362]
The exact ethnic origin of the first negroid inhabitants of Air or
their order does not signify very much, once their racial character
is established. Although at first sight the presence of negroids
might seem to account for the peculiar aspect of the city of Agades,
its true explanation, as we have seen, must be sought elsewhere.[363]
The date of the foundation of Agades is considerably later than the
displacement of the early inhabitants of Air by the advent of the
first Tuareg.
In addition to the negroid people of Air, the first Tuareg are said
by Bello to have found some Sanhaja in the country, by which term he
presumably means some Western Muleththemin, who lived in the first
or second of Leo’s zones. This is to some extent confirmed by Ibn
Batutah’s accounts of the tribes which he encountered in these parts,
but I have been unable to trace their descendants with any degree of
certainty. Some of their descendants may probably be found in Azawagh
and Damergu;[364] the Mesufa of Ibn Batutah are also quite likely to
have been Sanhaja. Another tribe of the same name and origin occurs
in North-west Morocco.
The Goberawa capital at this time was T’in Shaman, like the later
Agades lying at the southern borders of the country, a site naturally
likely to be selected by a people of equatorial origin with homes
further south. T’in Shaman or Ansaman is stated by Barth to have been
some twenty miles from Agades on the road to Auderas; but I conceive
this may be a slip. I was only able to find the name applied in Air
to the wells of T’in Shaman, which lie in the direction given,
but scarcely two miles from the city, near the site of the present
French fort. Although the name appears to be a Libyan form it does not
follow that the town was of Tuareg origin or was inhabited by them in
early Goberawa days. Record of it has come to us from Tuareg sources,
referable to a period when Tuareg and Goberawa were living side by side
in Air, but we do not know the Goberawa form of the name. These two
folk were both in the area before the first Tuareg immigration, when
Libyan influence was already strong in Air, and also after the first
immigration, but before the second brought in a sufficient number of
Tuareg to effect the expulsion of the Goberawa.[365] A certain degree
of civilisation must have existed in Air even in these early days,
for several learned men, inhabitants of T’in Shaman, are mentioned
by the historians of Negroland.[366] That it was not a Tuareg town
is further shown by the information recorded, that when Agades was
eventually founded in the fifteenth century A.D., it was from Ir
n’Allem and not from T’in Shaman: Ir n’Allem may be doubtfully
identified with a site north of Agades well within the defending hills
near Solom Solom.[367] Of greater interest perhaps is the close analogy
between the names of T’in Shaman or Ansaman and Nasamones, that great
tribe of travellers on the Great Syrtis described by Herodotus. There
is no doubt that with such caravaneers as we know lived in the north,
the influence of the Tuareg in Air and the South generally must have
been great for a long time before they settled there.
Into Air, inhabited by negroids and Sanhaja, came the modern Tuareg
of Air. What happened to the Goberawa in the process of time as a
consequence of this movement can easily be assumed. Whatever may
have been the terms of a peaceful settlement, the negroid people
were either driven back into Central Africa here as elsewhere, or
they became the serfs[368] of the conquerors, and were incorporated
into the race as Imghad tribes. The darker element among them must
certainly in part be accounted for in this manner.
The modern Tuareg immigrants can broadly be divided into the three
categories, of which the exact significance has already become
apparent. They are the Kel Owi tribes who came into the country
quite recently, the Kel Geres tribes and those septs collectively
known as the People of the King. Of these, the Kel Geres, as well as
a once separate but now associated tribe, the Itesan, are no longer
in Air, but live in an area north of Sokoto, whither they migrated
in comparatively recent times. It requires to be established whether
the people who came to Air before the Kel Owi, all arrived at much
the same time, or in different waves, when the respective movements
took place, and who in each case were the immigrants.
PLATE 47
[Illustration: SIDI]
THE FIRST IMMIGRATION
Before attacking these problems, it will be necessary, because
relevant to their solution, to consider the direction from which the
invasion took place. Tuareg traditions without any exception ascribe
a northern home to the race. They maintain that they reached Air from
that direction in different waves at different times and by different
routes. Ask any Tuareg of the older tribes about the history of his
people and he will say, for instance: “My people, the Kel Tadek,
have been in the country since the beginning of the world,” but he
will add in the same breath: “But we are a people from the north,
from far away, not like the niggers of the south.” They have a story
to the effect that the Sultan of Stambul, seeing how North Africa was
over-populated,[369] ordered the tribes which had taken refuge on the
borders of the Libyan desert in the region of Aujila and the Eastern
Fezzan to migrate and spread the true religion far afield. The Tuareg,
with the Itesan leading, thereupon came into Air. Now, whatever else
they were, the Libyans at the time of these early movements were,
of course, not Moslems, nor is it likely that any Khalif or Emperor
at Constantinople intervened in the way suggested. There is not even
any reason to suppose that the migration occurred in the Moslem era,
though we are not as yet concerned with dates. Such details as these
are picturesque embellishments added in the course of time to popular
tradition. I can agree that the Tuareg came _from_ the north; but I
am less than certain that they came _by_ the north.
North of Air, about half-way between the wells of Asiu and the Valley
of T’iyut, there is a small hill called Maket n’Ikelan, which
means in Temajegh, “The Mecca (or shrine) of the Slaves.”[370]
This is said to have been the northernmost boundary of the old kingdom
of Gober. At Maket n’Ikelan the custom was preserved among passing
Tuareg caravans of allowing the slaves to make merry and dance and
levy a small tribute from their masters. The hill was probably a pagan
place of worship, but is important from the historical point of view,
because tradition represents, somewhat erroneously as regards details,
that there, “when the Kel Owi took possession of old Gober with
its capital at T’in Shaman, a compromise was entered into between
the Red conquerors and the Black natives, that the latter should not
be destroyed and that the principal chief of the Kel Owi should be
allowed to marry a black woman.” The story is interesting, though
there has evidently been a slight confusion of thought, because
there was already a large Tuareg population in Air before the Kel
Owi came comparatively late in history; and it is not they who were
the first Tuareg in the plateau. The marriage of the red chief with
a black slave woman may be an allusion, and perhaps a direct one,
to the practice associated with the Sultan of Air.[371]
With the old frontier of Gober at Maket n’Ikelan one might from this
story have supposed that the first Tuareg invaders met the original
inhabitants of the country there and came to an agreement regarding an
occupation of the northern mountains, whence they eventually overran
the whole plateau. Although such a conclusion would seem to be borne
out by such traditions as I have quoted of a descent from the north,
the weight of evidence indicates the south-east as the direction
from which the first Tuareg actually came. But this will be seen to
be not incompatible with a northern home for the race. The view is
only in conflict with the Maket n’Ikelan tradition if the latter
is interpreted literally. The terms of the settlement of treaty need
only be associated with a point in Northern Air, inasmuch as the site
in question marked the frontier of the old kingdom of Gober, which
the Tuareg eventually took over in its entirety from its ancient
possessors. It need not be supposed that the Treaty was made _at_
Maket n’Ikelan. I regard this old frontier point as merely symbolic
of the event.
The testimony of Sultan Bello regarding the first migration of
the People of the Veil is most helpful.[372] “Adjoining Bornu,
on the south side, is the province of Air (_i.e._ on the south side
of Air). It is inhabited by the Tuareg and by some remnants of the
Sanhaja and the Sudanese. This province was formerly in the hands
of the Sudanese inhabitants of Gober, but five tribes of the Tuareg,
called Amakeetan, Tamkak, Sendal, Agdalar, and Ajaraneen, came out of
Aowjal[373] and conquered it. They nominated a prince for themselves
from the family of Ansatfen, but they quarrelled among themselves
and dismissed him.” Bello thereupon goes on to describe the Arabian
origin of the Tuareg people.
I agree with Barth[374] that these five tribes probably did not
come from Aujila oasis itself, but his remark that one of the
five tribes was “the Aujila tribe” is surely a mistake. Bello
distinctly speaks of the five tribes by name as having come _from_
Aowjal. Aujila seems never to have been the name of a people. As far
back as Herodotus[375] it is already a place name. As for Bello’s
reference to the selection of a ruler from a slave family, it is
probably an allusion to the practice we have already examined,[376]
for Ansatfen, _i.e._ n’Sattafan, means “of the black ones,” from
the word “sattaf” = “black.” The fact that according to the
Agades Chronicle the ninth Sultan was called Muhammad Sottofé (the
Black), who ruled from A.D. 1486-93, and is referred to in Sudanese
records, in some measure confirms the accuracy of Bello’s history.
The story that the first Tuareg came from Aujila is nothing more than
a reflection of their own tradition that they came from a far country
in the north-east, where one of the most important and well-known
points was this oasis, whence people had long been in the habit of
trading as far afield as Kawar and even Gao. Aujila was a northern
caravan terminus. The trade between Aujila and Kawar, as early as the
twelfth century, is referred to by Idrisi,[377] and this reference
is the more interesting as it indicates, though at a later period
than that of the first Tuareg invasion of Air, a steady stream of
traffic organised by the North-eastern Tuareg down the Chad road to
Bornu and Kanem. This is most significant; it had probably been going
on since the days perhaps of the Nasamonian merchant adventurers.
The Agades Chronicle, on the authority of the learned Ibn Assafarani,
says that the first Tuareg who came to Air were the Kel Innek,
under a ruler called the Agumbulum; and that other Tuareg followed
them. Now, Kel Innek means literally “The People of the East”;
it is primarily a generic or descriptive term, and not a tribal
proper name. Ibn Assafarani wrote from Asben, where the eastern
country always and necessarily means the area around Lake Chad. Bello
further mentions that when the Kanuri entered Kanem they settled
there as strangers under the government of the Amakeetan, one of
the five tribes previously mentioned as the first to enter Air. He
also refers to the latter by the general name of Kel Innek. Again,
one of the two tribes in Elakkos, between Air and Lake Chad, are the
Immikitan, while we know from Leo that the Lemta Tuareg occupied an
area extending from the north-eastern Fezzan to Kuka on Lake Chad.[378]
This evidence, therefore, leads one to the conclusion that the first
Tuareg, or at any rate some of the first Tuareg, to enter Air were
not migrants from the north, that is to say, from Ghat or Ahaggar,
but from Kanem and from Bornu in the south-east, which parts are
racially connected with the Fezzan and not with the former areas. In
the course of these movements a group of Immikitan remained in Elakkos,
which, we have seen on the quite distinct evidence of the Ilagwas,
was in any case connected with the Lemta country of the north.
There exists to-day a sub-tribe of the Itesan bearing the name of
Kel Innek. On the analogy of what occurred among the Kel Ahamellen,
among the Ahaggaren, and in recent years in Air also among the Kel
Tafidet, it is almost certain that we have an example here of a name
originally applied to a sub-tribe and the whole group simultaneously
but now used to differentiate a sub-tribe only. The Itesan of to-day,
in spite of their connection with the Kel Geres, were, as will be
explained later on, among the original invaders of Air, a fact which
might in any case have been deduced from the survival among them,
and not among other confederations, of the name Kel Innek.
It appears unnecessary when such an easy interpretation of the
available evidence is forthcoming, and above all when some of the
names accurately recorded by Bello are still traceable in Air, to
assume that they are erroneous. I cannot follow Barth at all when
he is dealing with these early tribes. He seems to have created
difficulties where they do not exist. It is not necessary to suppose
that the five tribes came into Air to form an entrepôt for their
trade between Negroland and Aujila or the north-east generally; the
suggestion is so far-fetched that even Barth admitted that the whole
affair was peculiar.[379]
If an invasion of Air from the south-east took place, what provoked
it? In order to establish even an approximate date, which Jean puts
at about A.D. 800, without, however, giving his reasons, a digression
into the story of Bornu is necessary.
Bello, referring to the people east of Lake Chad, mentions an
early invasion from the Yemen as far as Bornu. He calls the invaders
“Barbars,”[380] which name, however, he seems later to transfer to
the Tuareg, finally, however, reserving it for the Kanuri. Europeans
nowadays, adding considerably to the confusion, have called the
Libyans “Berbers” and the Kanuri “Beriberi.” The invasion
from the Yemen is reported to have taken place under Himyer, but on
the showing of El Masa’udi’s history, probably the most valuable
for so mythical a period, Himyer has been confused with another hero,
Ifrikos. There are other references to an invasion from Arabia across
Africa in various authorities, including Ibn Khaldun. Whether the
invaders were the Kanuri, as the name “Barbar” given to them
by Bello seems to imply, or whether they displaced the Kanuri,
causing the latter to move into Kanem and settle as strangers under
the rule of the Immikitan, then resident in that region, or whether,
in fine, the Kanuri are not a race but a congeries of people, it is
both difficult and irrelevant here to determine. In the first case
there are no difficulties about the application of the name Barbar
to the Kanuri; in the second, the participation of the Kanuri in a
movement connected with a people from Arabia might easily lead Bello
to a confusion resulting in his identification of the Kanuri with, and
his application of Barbar to, the latter. After the settlement of the
Kanuri in Kanem and Bornu under the Tuareg, the name Barbar, originally
that of the subject people, came to be applied to the inhabitants of
the country as a whole, thus including the Tuareg. The persistence of
the name is the more easily accounted for by the predominance later
on of the people to whom it originally belonged, in spite of their
situation in the beginning, for, as we shall see later, the Tuareg,
their masters in the early days, were gradually displaced in Kanem
and Bornu at a period which might coincide with their invasion of Air.
The history of Kanem and Bornu, at first under a single government,
is recorded in a chronicle collected by Barth.[381] It is, of course,
not entirely trustworthy, but the salient facts are reasonably
correct. The first king of Kanem, Sef, doubtfully referred to about
A.D. 850, founded a dynasty and reigned over Berbers,[382] Tebu,
and people of Kanem. This dynasty, called Duguwa, after the name of
the grandson of Sef, continued until the end of the reign of Abd el
Jelil or Selma I, who was succeeded in 1086 by Hume, the first king
of the Beni Hume dynasty. Hume was reputed to be the son of Selma I,
and the change of name in the ruling dynasty is attributed to the
fact that the former was the first Moslem ruler,[383] whereas his
predecessors were not. The chronology is confirmed by El Bekri’s
statement,[384] written towards the end of the Beni Dugu dynasty,
that Arki, the ante-penultimate king of the line in 1067, was a
pagan. The dynastic change of name is even more important when the
ethnic relation of the kings of the Beni Dugu and the Beni Hume are
examined. During the period of the Beni Dugu, Bornu, according to
Sultan Bello, was under the rule of the Tuareg. In the Chronicle two
of the Duguwa kings are stated to have had mothers of the Temagheri
tribe, while another was descended from a woman of the Beni Ghalgha
bearing the Libyan name of Tumayu. The name Beni Ghalgha reminds one
perhaps only fortuitously of the Kel Ghela,[385] while Temagheri may
simply be a variant for Temajegh, which of course is the female form
in the Air dialect of Imajegh, meaning a Tuareg noble, though I am
told this etymology is unlikely. The importance of the women in the
ancestry of these kings, as among all the Tuareg, is emphasised by
the mention of their names. With the Beni Hume, on the other hand, the
alliances seem to have been contracted, no longer with Tuareg women,
but from Hume’s successor, Dunama I, till the reign of Abd el Jelil
or Selma II, with Tebu women. In any event there are good reasons
to believe that the change in the name of the dynasty at the end of
Selma I’s reign in 1086 means more than a mere change in religion;
it marks the passing of the power of the Tuareg in Bornu.[386]
The year 1086 may therefore also mark approximately the first wave of
the Tuareg migration into Air. The immigration was probably gradual,
since tradition records no single event or cataclysm to account for
the changes which took place, which have, on the contrary, to be
deduced from stories like that of Maket n’Ikelan and the change
in the name of a dynasty. But 1086 is probably the latest date of
the migration into Air and it may have been earlier. The invaders
were the five tribes already mentioned, together with or including
others which it would be difficult to trace by name, though one of
them was probably the Itesan. All the tribes concerned can be traced
among the People of the King, most of them in Air, though the Igdalen
are on the south-eastern fringe of the plateau. The Itesan, whose
dominant position in Air involved them in the vicissitudes of the Kel
Geres, shared in their expulsion from the mountains. But the others
belong to the Amenokal, and none of them to that later personage,
the Añastafidet.
The Beni Hume dynasty in Bornu may be regarded as a Tebu dynasty or
a negroid dynasty with Tebu alliances. The Chronicle makes this line
continue until its expulsion from Kanem by the Bulala, a negroid
people from east of Lake Chad, early in the fourteenth century,
and its final extinction with the Bulala conquest of Bornu itself in
the fifteenth century. The Beni Hume line seems in reality to have
terminated in 1177, when Abdallah, or Dala, came to the throne. His
half-brother, Selma II, is described as the first black king of
Bornu, his predecessors having been fair-skinned like the Arabs. It
is this reign which really seems to mark the advent to power of the
negroid Kanuri, to which Bello makes allusion, even if it is not to be
looked for earlier with the rise of the Beni Hume themselves. Bello
describes the occurrence in the following terms:[387] “They came
to Kanem and settled there as strangers under the government of
the Tawarek . . . but they soon rebelled against them and usurped
the country.” But I am nevertheless not disposed to consider the
Beni Hume negroid Kanuri, so much as a Tebu or similar stock,[388]
for, in the reign of Dunama II, the son of Selma II, we find, after a
series of marriages with Tebu women, an apparently definite change of
policy. No more Tebu women are recorded as the mothers of kings, and
instead the great Dunama II, who ruled from 1221 to 1259, waged a war
which lasted seven years, seven months and seven days against these
people. As the result of this campaign he extended the jurisdiction
of the empire of Kanem over the Fezzan, which remained within its
borders for over a century.[389]
The fall of the Duguwa in Bornu at the end of the eleventh century was,
then, the ultimate reason for the first Tuareg invasion of Air. We
should thus have a fairly satisfactory date were it not probably to
be regarded only as the latest limiting date, since the overthrow of
the Tuareg dynasty probably only marked the culmination in Bornu of a
steadily growing ethnic pressure from the east and north. An additional
reason for assuming a late date for the invasion of Air is the detail
recorded by Bello, that when the Kel Innek arrived they found some
Sanhaja tribes already there. Now the true Sanhaja confederation was
not brought into being until the beginning of the eleventh century,
the most probable period for tribes of this division to have wandered
as far afield as Air. It follows that the invasion of the Kel Innek
should be placed later than that or towards the end of the century.
There is scarcely any evidence regarding the earliest period at which
it might have taken place. It may be possible to arrive at an estimate,
when the results of further researches into the history of Bornu have
been made public. It would be most interesting to learn, for instance,
when the first Tuareg reached Bornu and Kanem. Is their presence there
as a ruling caste to be ascribed to the very early days, or are they
to be considered as having come in at a comparatively late epoch? It
is difficult to reconcile their presence there in the earliest times
with their failure to fuse to a greater extent with the local negroid
population and their consequent retention of the individuality which
they still possessed when they entered Air.
In the four centuries preceding A.D. 850, when the first Beni Dugu king
ascended the throne, there are no recorded events in North Africa very
likely to have caused extensive emigration of the Tuareg of the Fezzan
to Equatoria, other than the Arab conquest; the only other invasion,
that of Chosroes with the Persians in A.D. 616, does not seem to have
had a far-reaching effect, or to have been accompanied by foreign
immigration on a large scale. The first invasion of the Arabs in the
seventh century was only small and at first did not cause widespread
ethnic disturbances.[390] Okba invaded the Fezzan in A.H. 46 with
only a small expeditionary force; the previous expedition of A.H. 26
was probably not larger. Arab pressure only began to become intense
in the eighth century, when the conquest of Spain after Tariq’s
exploits in A.D. 710 had become an accomplished fact. And then there
followed another pause until the Hillalian invasion in the eleventh
century took place.
On the other hand, the presence of Tuareg in the earliest days in
the lands east of Lake Chad would find some justification in the
position recorded of the Temahu in the southern part of the Libyan
desert by Egyptian records. They might also explain the mysterious
Blemmyes and the Men with Eyes in their Stomachs referred to by the
classical authors.
On the whole I prefer not to speculate too much along these lines for
fear of plunging into deep waters connected with the people of the
upper Nile basin. I shall simply regard the Tuareg of Bornu as a part
of the Lemta of the Fezzan, which we may assume from various sources
they were. In consequence, however slender the evidence, it becomes
difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Tuareg reached Bornu from
the north along the Bilma road in the course of the Arab invasions
of the eighth century. They remained as rulers of the country until
they were driven from there also, in consequence of increasing Arab
pressure in the Fezzan and in Equatoria itself, for in the middle of
the eleventh century the Hillal and Soleim Arabs are found extending
their conquests as far as Central Africa. Their fighting under Abu
Zeid el Hillali against the Alamt (Lemta) Tuareg in the Fezzan is
still remembered in the traditions of the Equatorial Arab tribes.
All we can say with any degree of certainty is that somewhere between
the eighth and eleventh centuries the Lemta Tuareg eventually emigrated
from the Chad countries. In due course the first five tribes reached
Air, with Elakkos and Damergu behind them already occupied. But in
Air they only peopled the whole land later on. Some of the Tuareg
of this emigration never entered Air at all or stayed in Damergu,
but moved still further west to form with other groups from the north
the Tademekkat and Kel el Suk, as well as some of the communities of
Tuareg on the Niger. Subsequent historical events isolated the Air
tribes, and when other waves of Tuareg joined them, their original
relationship with the western Tuareg and the Aulimmiden had been
forgotten. The origin of the latter is to be explained in this wise,
and not by supposing that they arrived from Mauretania, as Barth would
have it.[391] The further westward movement of the Tuareg from Lake
Chad is borne out by a reference in Ibn Khaldun’s works to some
Itesan[392] under the name of Beni Itisan among the Sanhaja.
Tradition represents that the oldest people in Air are those known
to-day as the People of the King and the Itesan to whom the most
evolved handiwork in the plateau, including the deep wells, is
attributed. With the Itesan are associated all the older and more
remarkable houses in Air. The form and construction of these buildings
evidently had a great influence on the subsequent inhabitants,
but as they are all found in an already evolved type, it is clear
that the tradition and experience necessary for building them must
have been brought from elsewhere. In accepting the view that these
houses are the work of the Itesan and not of the later immigrants I
can only follow the unanimous opinion of the natives to-day, who are,
if anything, too prone to attribute anything remarkable to them. It
may, of course, be discovered later that the Itesan had nothing
to do with any of these works, and it is all the more curious that
in their present habitat north of Sokoto they should have shown no
similar architectural propensities. It is also strange that most of
the “Kel names” among the Itesan are derived from places west of
the Central massifs, while most of the large settlements containing
the best so-called “Itesan” houses are on the east side. But the
houses and wells in Air do not seem to be associated with the Kel
Geres, with whom the Itesan now live, and there seems to be no doubt
whatever in the minds of the natives that they are the works of the
latter and not of other immigrants.
The architectural technique shows that the race was in process of
cultural decay when it reached Air, and that under the influence of
new environment the memory and tradition of this civilisation were
lost with remarkable rapidity. The succession of events and the causes
culminating in the migration of the Chad Tuareg are not inconsistent
with such a decline of culture, but only a thorough investigation of
the Fezzan will probably throw any light upon its derivation.
The popular view of the origin of these stone buildings bears out the
separate identity of the Itesan and the Kel Geres. It is obvious that
the two divisions must have entered Air at different times; and since
the Itesan were therefore among the first invaders, the Kel Geres must
have come in later. This traditional version is further consistent with
facts already noticed, in that among the People of the King in Air
and among the Itesan it is possible to trace the names of the first
recorded tribes to enter Air, whereas their names do not occur among
the Kel Geres. Apart from proving the separate origin of the Itesan and
the Kel Geres, these facts leave little room for doubt that the Itesan
formed part of the group that was the first to invade the plateau.
The names of the five tribes, mentioned by Bello in his history,
were, as we have seen above, the Immikitan, the Igdalen, the Ijaranen,
the Tamgak, and the Sendal. Of these the Immikitan are found with the
Igdalen among the People of the King in Air to-day, while the Ijaranen
survive among the Itesan tribes who now live in the south. The Sendal
and the Tamgak are mentioned as late as 1850 in the Agades Chronicle,
when there is no doubt that they were a people of the king, since
they are referred to as the allies of the Sultan Abd el Qader in a
war against the Kel Geres.
The first Tuareg lived in Air as a minority and as foreigners. It
is possible they represented only a fraction of the Tuareg who were
moving and that the greater part went on into the west. The Agades
Chronicle, describing the advent of the Itesan, records that they
“. . . . said to the Goberawa, ‘We want a place in your town to
settle.’ The Goberawa refused at first to give them a place, but in
the end agreed. The Itesan refused the place as a gift, but bought a
house for 1000 dinars. Into this house they led their chief, and from
there he ruled the Tuareg of the desert. War, however, soon ensued
between the Goberawa, supported by the Abalkoran, and the Itesan. The
result of this war was that the Goberawa went back into Hausaland,
while the Abalkoran went west into the land of the Aulimmiden.”
The Abalkoran had just before in the Chronicle been described as
a priestly caste associated with the Goberawa, but among the Air
Tuareg the name Iberkoran or Abalkoran is the name of the Aulimmiden
themselves. The record has suffered chronological compression, but
clearly implies that the Goberawa were still in South Air at a time
when the Aulimmiden had already reached their habitat west of the
mountains. The latter is an event which some authorities consider
fairly recent, but my view, already put forward elsewhere, is that
the Aulimmiden are not a group of Hawara people who left the Fezzan
some time between 1200 and 1300, as Ibn Khaldun suggests, nor yet
people from Mauretania; I prefer to believe that they are Lemta who
originally migrated to their present habitat from the Chad regions
at much the same time as the first Tuareg invasion of Air took place.
The statement that the Abalkoran left Air to join the Aulimmiden
tends to support the view that this Air invasion was only part of a
general westerly movement.
THE SECOND IMMIGRATION
The second wave of immigration was that of the Kel Geres. Jean believed
that the Kel Geres were among the first arrivals because he wrongly
assumed that they were identical with the Itesan. An examination of
the names of the various groups[393] discloses the fact that whereas
many Itesan tribes have “Kel names” derived from known localities
in Central Air, for the most part in the Auderas neighbourhood,
of the Kel Geres tribes only the Kel Garet, Kel Anigara and the Kel
Agellal have names similarly derived.[394] Traditionally the Kel Geres
reached Air by way of the north. They also are associated with the
story of over-population in the Mediterranean lands. They arrived,
according to Jean, in considerable numbers, and settled in the part
of Air which is west of the road from Iferuan to Agades by way of
Assode and Auderas.[395] East of this line in later days lived the
Kel Owi, and presumably, at this early period, the original five
tribes. The assumption is confirmed by certain evidence, for although
the Itesan tribe names refer to an area lying across this line, the
only territorial Kel Geres tribe names refer to an area west of it;
the country, on the other hand, known to have been occupied by some
of the first immigrants is, as would be expected, to the east. With
the exception of the Igdalen, who moved in recent years, most of the
older People of the King were also east of this line, before the Kel
Owi scattered them.
The present Itesan-Kel Geres group in the Southland is said to number
forty-seven tribes divided as follows:[396]
Itesan 6 tribes of the Itesan.
Kel Geres 12 „ „ Tetmokarak.
6 „ „ Kel Unnar.
5 „ „ Kel Anigara.
6 „ „ Kel Garet.
12 „ „ Tadadawa and Kel Tatenei.
The principal tribal names of the Itesan which retain the more familiar
place names of Air are the Kel Mafinet, Kel T’sidderak, Kel Dogam
and Kel Bagezan or Maghzen, all of them derived from places in the
neighbourhood of Auderas.[397] Among the Kel Geres the name of the
Kel Garet records a habitat somewhat further north, the Kel Agellal
of the Kel Unnar probably came from Agellal, and the Kel Anigara from
an area still further north.
It is difficult to accept the view that the first Tuareg to enter Air
arrived in the eighth century, even if it is only for the reason that
the surviving “Itesan” houses could not for so long a time have
remained in the state of preservation in which some of them are now
found. I am personally not disposed to regard the first immigration
as having taken place much before the latest date previously suggested
as a limit, namely, the end of the eleventh century.
The invasion of the first tribes left the mountains with a mixed
population of Tuareg and Goberawa; the disappearance of the latter
as a separate race was only accomplished when the second or Kel Geres
invasion took place. The Kel Geres so added to the Tuareg population
in Air that henceforward the country must be regarded as essentially
Tuareg, and this probably accounts for the tradition that the Kel
Geres conquered the country, and as they came in both from the north
and by the north, it doubtless gave rise to legends such as that of
Maket n’Ikelan.
Failing more definite evidence than we now possess, I regard the Kel
Geres movement as a part of a Hawara-Auriga emigration from the north
to which Ibn Khaldun alludes. This does not exclude the possibility
of some nuclei of Hawara having gone west of Air to join either the
Aulimmiden or the Tademekkat or both groups. In fact, such a course
of events would explain the distant affinity with, yet independence
of, the Aulimmiden which is insisted upon by many authorities. We
know that by the time Leo was writing he regarded both Ahaggar and
Air as inhabited by Targa, while the Fezzan and the Chad road were
inhabited by Lemta. The Ahaggaren I have previously tried to show
were, in the main, Hawara. Now the advent in Air of a large mass from
this division under the name of Kel Geres would warrant his grouping
of both plateaux under one ethnic heading. The Hawara movement from
the Western Fezzan and between Ghat and Ahaggar may be placed in the
twelfth century, and therefore not so very far removed from the first
immigration into Air from the south-east. It can also be accounted
for by similar causes, namely, the growing pressure of the Arabs,
perhaps as a sequel to the Hillalian invasion.
Following the two initial migrations, it may be assumed that small
nuclei of Tuareg continued to reach Air. These would to-day be
represented by such of the People of the King as are not to be
connected with either the first five tribes or with the Kel Geres.
THE THIRD IMMIGRATION
The third wave was that of the Kel Owi. On Barth and Hornemann’s
authority they arrived in modern times, while according to Jean they
arrived in the ninth century. Barth’s researches, which in all cases
are more reliable than those of Jean, who appears usually to have
accepted native dates without hesitation, led him to believe that
the Kel Owi entered, in fact conquered Air, about A.D. 1740. They
are not mentioned by Leo or any other writers before the time of
Hornemann (A.D. 1800), who obtained such good information about them
that his commentator, Major Rennell, also assumed their arrival to
be recent.[398] By the end of the nineteenth century the Kel Owi
had already achieved such fame that of all Tuareg known to him,
Hornemann only mentions them. He adds in his account that Gober
was at this time tributary to Air, a detail consistent with other
records. Barth’s very late date[399] for the arrival of the Kel
Owi nevertheless presents certain difficulties. It is clear on
the one hand that it could not have been the Kel Owi who made the
arrangement of Maket n’Ikelan, and that it must therefore have been
the Kel Geres or their predecessors, but it is further difficult to
see how a people could have entered Air in such numbers as to become
the preponderant group within barely one hundred years and to have
evicted the firmly rooted Kel Geres tribes so soon. That the Kel Owi
should have appropriated the historical credit for the settlement of
Maket n’Ikelan is easy to understand, for it was they who held the
trade route to the north out of the country, but the early expulsion of
the Kel Geres indicates a numerical superiority which, unfortunately,
native tradition does not bear out.
It is noteworthy that no Kel Owi tribe is represented in the election
of the king, which supports the view that they had not yet reached
Air when the local system of government from Agades was devised.
“The vulgar account of the origin of the Kel Owi from the female
slave of a Tinylcum who came to Asben where she gave birth to a boy
who was the progenitor of the Kel Owi . . . is obviously nothing but
a popular tale. . . .”[400]
The story collected by Jean, which purports to explain the two
categories of tribes in Air to-day, the Kel Owi confederation and
the People of the King, is not more authentic.[401] He tells how,
after the arrival of the Sultan in Air, the Kel Geres kept away from
his presence, while the Kel Owi ingratiated themselves and secured
their own administration under the Añastafidet. The Sultan, however,
wishing to create his own tribal group, divided the Kel Owi amongst
themselves, and this is the origin of the People of the Añastafidet
and the People of the King. In their efforts to ingratiate themselves,
the Kel Owi of Bagezan which, as we have seen, was Itesan country
at the time, sent as a present to the Sultan a woman named T’iugas
with her six daughters of the Imanen tribe of the north; these women
had been sent from the north to cement good relations between Air and
Azger.[402] The six sisters nominated the eldest as their speaker and
the Sultan gave her authority over the rest. She was followed by the
next two sisters, and these three are the mothers of the three senior
tribes of the Kel Owi, namely, the Kel Owi proper, the Kel Tafidet
and the Kel Azañieres.[403] The other three women refused to accept
the leadership of the eldest sister and placed themselves under the
authority of the Sultan direct; and they were the mothers of the
Kel Tadek, Imezegzil and Kel Zilalet.[404] The details of the story
are obviously a Kel Owi invention. They are designed to establish
nobility and equality of ancestry with the older and more respected
tribes. The legend, however, probably also contains certain indications
of truth, notably in the allusion to the Imanen women from the north,
since there does exist an affinity between that tribe and the Itesan,
though it must, of course, be understood that the Kel Bagezan of the
story were an Itesan sub-tribe, and not the later Kel Bagezan of the
Kel Owi group. With these conditions the story becomes intelligible
as a legendary or traditional account. It is not meant to be taken
as literally true, and is not even a very widely accepted version of
the origin of the present social structure in Air, but it is amusing,
for it shows how on this as on every other occasion the Kel Owi have
attempted to claim antiquity of descent equal to that of the tribes
they found on their arrival.
Two other traditions which I collected are best summarised by quoting
the following extract from my diary, written while at T’imia,
a Kel Owi village in the Bagezan mountains. One of the big men in
the village was the “’alim” ’Umbellu, a fine figure of a
man, old and bald but still powerful and vigorous, with the heavy
noble features of a Roman emperor. He used to be the keeper of the
old mosque, and is said to be one of the most learned men in the
country. I had examined the ruined sanctuary, in which he had not set
foot since it was desecrated by the French troops after the Kaossen
revolt, and found some fragments of holy books, which I restored to
’Umbellu in the present mosque at T’imia, a shelter of reeds and
matting. From him I received the same sort of confused account which
others besides myself had heard. “. . . He says that the Kel Owi
are not pure Tuareg, but that some Arabs _or_ (_sic_) Tuareg of the
north came down to Northern Air and mixed with the local population,
which stock became the Kel Owi Confederation; but whether these people
came as raiders or settlers he could not say. He was, however, quite
clear that they had come from the Arab country.[405] Then in almost
the same breath he told me that the Kel Owi are descended from a
woman who came from the north and lived in Tamgak, where she mated
with one of the local inhabitants and became the mother of all these
tribes. He added that she was a Moslem at a time when the Kel Ferwan
(a non-Kel Owi tribe, or People of the King, then living in Iferuan)
were heathen, but whether Christians or pagan he could not say.”
The second story is analogous to that which Barth heard.
Generally speaking traditions give the two separate versions, which
are rather puzzling. If the account of the woman who settled in Tamgak
is taken as a legendary record of the indigenous growth of the Kel Owi
tribes, it must be supposed that their forefathers were in Air for much
more than two hundred years, and Jean’s date would consequently not
be out of the question. Against this must be set the other version,
that they arrived quite recently, a view which is supported unanimously
by all the other Tuareg. It was, we have seen, confirmed by Barth’s
researches and deduced by Rennell from information collected by
Hornemann. The compact organisation and the definite division which
exists between them and the other tribes in Air would also point
to their having a separate origin and being comparatively recent
arrivals; they are still organised in an administrative system which
has not yet had time to break down and merge into the régime of the
other tribes. Furthermore, no mention is made of the Kel Owi by any
of the earlier authors, which, if negative evidence, is nevertheless
significant in the works of an authority like Leo, especially as,
apart from the ethnic distinction which might have been overlooked,
the dual government of the King and the Añastafidet is too remarkable
a feature to have escaped his discernment. The balance of testimony
is therefore in favour of attributing a fairly recent date to their
arrival, though perhaps not so late as Barth would have us believe. I
myself make no doubt that they were late arrivals: I only differ with
the learned traveller in a small matter of the exact date.
But what impelled them to migrate it is difficult to say. Barth thought
that they could be traced to an earlier habitat in the north-west,
and that the nobler portion of them once belonged to the Auraghen
tribe, whence their dialect was called Auraghiye. I have no evidence
on this point except that of Ahodu, who gave me to understand that
the language of the Kel Owi was not different from that of any other
Tuareg tribe in the plateau, and he added that he had not heard
the name Auraghiye employed to describe it, though he knew that it
was applied to the dialect spoken in Ahaggar. Barth’s testimony,
otherwise, is acceptable.
Jean is of the impression that they are essentially of the same race
as the Kel Geres, who were probably Hawara. If this deduction is true,
three possibilities require to be considered. The Kel Owi may have
been an Auraghen tribe living to the north or north-east of Air among
the Azger; or, they may have been among the older Auraghen people,
to use this term in its wider sense, namely, of the Auriga-Hawara,
represented by the Ahaggaren, to whom, of course, the Azger Auraghen
of to-day belong; or, lastly, they may be descended from the Auraghen
of the west, from the Tademekkat country. The last is the soundest
view in the present state of our knowledge, though the second is also
quite probable.
The Tademekkat people, we know, were driven from their homes in
A.D. 1640 by the Aulimmiden. While some of them were driven out to the
west, some at least found their way back into the Azger country.[406]
It is no less probable that others may have gone to Air by a roundabout
route. In that case Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi
in Air seems to be at least fifty years too late. During the last
half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries they would have
been finding their way into Northern Air in small groups. This is
not inconsistent with the appearance at Agades of an Amenokal with
a Kel Owi mother, if the admittedly tentative date of 1629 given in
the Agades Chronicle is placed a decade or so later.
I am inclined to regard the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air as having
taken place in the latter half of the seventeenth century. According
to the Agades Chronicle they were already fighting the Kel Geres
at Abattul, west of the Central massif, in 1728, some time before
Barth’s date; and this obviously implies an earlier arrival in
the north of the plateau, for their entry must have taken place from
that direction and not from the south. But a recent date, taken in
conjunction with the dominant position which the Kel Owi occupied and
their separate political organisation, further implies that they came
in considerable numbers, a conclusion which is at variance with one
set of native traditions. They could not otherwise in two hundred years
have achieved so much as they did by the beginning of the century.
[Illustration: THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREG]
We know that their coming was followed by an economic disturbance
of far-reaching importance. They first occupied North-eastern and
Northern Air; the later phase of their penetration is recorded in
the statement that the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres lived side by side,
west and east of the Iferuan-Auderas-Agades road. The eastern plains
of Air, according to Ahodu of Auderas and ’Umbellu of T’imia,
had by this time been evacuated by the Itesan and the early settlers,
but the invasion of the Kel Owi must have led also to the expulsion
of the early settlers from the northern marches. The removal of the
Kel Ferwan from the Iferuan area, and of the Kel Tadek from their
territories north of Tamgak to the west and the south, probably took
place in this period. The Kel Owi movement, though accompanied by
frequent disturbances, was gradual. At T’imia, where the original
inhabitants, according to ’Umbellu, were Kel Geres, they were only
displaced in the time of his own grandparents by a mixed band of
settlers from various Kel Owi tribes then living in the Ighazar in
Northern Air. ’Umbellu is a man of about sixty now, so this event
may have been one hundred years ago, at a time, in fact, when we should
still expect the southward movement of the Kel Owi to be in progress.
More recently still the south-eastern part of the country was
distributed among certain of their clans. The large Itesan settlements
like those near Tabello had already been abandoned and were never again
permanently inhabited; some dwellings were built later by the Kel Owi,
but never on so large a scale as in the previous epoch. The extant
houses and ruins are mostly of the first period; a few only show
a transitional phase to the later Kel Owi type. Sometimes a compact
block of contiguous buildings is to be found, possessing the character
of a fortified settlement. It would seem that this defensible type of
habitation had been evolved during the period after the Itesan were
known to have been driven out by Tebu raiding and before the Kel Owi
arrived. These dwellings betray certain features alien to the Tuareg,
which may be explained by supposing that they were used by the serfs of
the Itesan when their lords had retreated west of the Bagezan massif.
With the occupation of the eastern part of Air by the Kel Owi,
the ancient caravan road which has run from time immemorial by
T’intaghoda, Unankara, Mari, Beughqot and Tergulawen fell into
their hands. It is the easiest road across the Air plateau, and
perhaps for this reason, but more probably because they always had
propensities of this sort, they developed such commercial ability
that they rapidly made for themselves a dominant place in all trade
and transport enterprises between Ghat and the Sudan. But although
their efficiency in organisation gave them the control of the road,
they certainly did not create it. But they did create a monopoly
which deprived the Kel Geres of their legitimate profit.
The hostilities which soon broke out between the Kel Owi and
the Kel Geres could lead to only one of two possible solutions,
the expulsion or extermination of one of the rivals. Such economic
problems are, of course, not always realised at the time when they
are most urgently felt, and the current record of events to which
they give rise is therefore often slightly distorted. Here, however,
even the popular version shows that the real cause of the disturbances
was an economic one. The Kel Owi began by appropriating the half of
a country in which they were new-comers. They proceeded to demand
the serfs and slaves whom the Kel Geres had possessed since their
subjugation of the negroid peoples of Air. This impossible demand gave
rise to considerable strife and was referred for arbitration to the
reigning Sultan of Agades. The Hausa elements were supported by the
Kel Owi for political reasons and as far as possible abandoned their
former masters. The Sultan seems to have maintained the neutrality
for which he stood, and even to have prevented the tribes which
owed allegiance to him directly and belonged to neither party from
taking sides in the dispute.[407] He was nevertheless unsuccessful,
and after years of desultory fighting the Kel Geres abandoned
Air for Adar and Gober to the west of Damergu and to the north of
Sokoto. They retained their rights in the election of the Amenokal,
to whom they continued to owe nominal allegiance through their chiefs,
and were allowed to continue to use certain Air place-names in their
tribal nomenclature. In the last century they repeatedly interfered
in choice of the Sultan, and they still consider themselves to this
day a part of the Air Tuareg, although their hostility against the
Kel Owi never died. They evacuated the country with all the slaves
and serfs whom they succeeded in retaining. It is possible that a
few of the older non-Kel Owi tribes of Air and Damergu went with them.
If Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi were accepted,
this migration should have occurred in the end of the eighteenth
century. But as a matter of fact the movement took place earlier. Jean
states that an arrangement for the evacuation was reached in the reign
of the Sultan Almoubari or El Mubarak, who ruled thirty-four years,
from A.D. 1653 to 1687. If the agreement was made at the end of his
reign, the date for the immigration of the Kel Owi in accordance with
previous information falls in the neighbourhood of 1640, to which
epoch the reign of Sultan Muhammad Attafriya, who was deposed two
years after his accession by the Itesan, can be assigned. The Kel
Geres did not, however, leave the country directly the arrangement
was made, and in the meanwhile continued the struggle. In 1728 the
Kel Owi and the Itesan were still fighting in Air, the latter being
defeated at Abattul, near Auderas. Halfway through this century the
Itesan were fighting in the Southland and attacked Katsina in company
with the Zamfarawa. It is at this time that the Kel Geres seem to
have obtained a footing in the lands of Adar and Sokoto, though the
Itesan still refused to settle there. In 1759 there is recorded a war
between the Kel Geres and the Kel Tegama at the cliffs of Tiggedi,
in which the latter were defeated. This war was followed by another
in 1761 between the Kel Geres and the Aulimmiden, where, however, the
former suffered. In the same year the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres fought
each other at Agades. In this period the Amenokal Muhammad Hammad,
who had come to the throne in 1735, changed places twice with Muhammad
Guma, according as the Kel Owi or the Kel Geres faction prevailed. The
former, restored to the throne in 1763, undertook an expedition with
the men of Air against the King of Gober, and was severely defeated
in 1767. In order to avenge the defeat, a truce between the warring
Tuareg was finally concluded after a century of fighting. The combined
men of Air then marched on, and defeated Dan Gudde and cut off his
head. This event may be held to mark the final settlement of the
Itesan and Kel Geres in the Southland. Their success accounts for
Hornemann’s report that at the end of the nineteenth century the
Tuareg were masters of Gober. Internecine hostilities continued, but
henceforth the Itesan and the Kel Geres are no longer described as
fighting the Kel Owi but the men of Air, as in 1780 and again in 1788,
when they made their nominee, Muhammad Dani, Sultan at Agades. In 1835
the Amenokal, Guma, was captured in Damergu by the Kel Geres after a
massacre of the Kel Owi. It was only in about 1860 that hostilities,
which were in full progress in Barth’s day, finally ceased.
Why, it may be asked, did the Itesan and not all the rest of the
pre-Kel Geres people of Air leave in consequence of the Kel Owi
invasion? The question is not easy to answer, but the surmise is that,
as the largest and most important group, they became most involved
in the struggle. With their departure and that of the Kel Geres
the remaining people became leaderless: having no confederation
of their own they clustered around the person of the Sultan, and
so came to be known as the People of the King. Yet, on account of
their ancestry and nobility, the Kel Owi sought to attack them and
arrogate to themselves the principal rôles in history, like the story
of the peace of Maket n’Ikelan and that of the Imanen women. These
claims are consistent with the characteristic which is felt to-day in
relations with them—the arrogance of the parvenu. The ascendancy
of the noble Itesan has continued in the Southland as it existed in
Air. They lead the Kel Geres division, with whom fate had made them
throw in their lot. They remain primarily responsible for the choice
of the Sultan even to-day.
Enough—too much perhaps—has been said of the three migrations of
the Tuareg people into Air. It would be tedious to continue on that
narrow subject. The complexity of the tribal organisation of the Air
Tuareg has also been made patent in the earlier attempts to discover
their social life. It is unfortunately impossible, even if space were
available, to allocate the various clans of whose existence report
has reached us to the larger groups or waves of immigration which
have been examined. Lists of the tribes which have survived are given
in Appendix II to this work: they have been arranged in such system
as was feasible, using the information collected by Barth, and Jean,
and by myself. But the classification is unsatisfactory, since there
is, in many instances, but little evidence. The organisation of the
Kel Owi is, of course, the easiest to ascertain and it was briefly
outlined in Chapter X, but the People of the King are really more
interesting both because they were the earliest arrivals and because of
their association with the Itesan culture of the old houses and deep
wells. Among the People of the King the most valuable anthropological
data are to be collected. They brought such civilisation as Nigeria
possessed in the Middle Ages from the Mediterranean, having absorbed
and forgotten much of it on the way and since those epochs.
IDENTIFICATION OF EXTANT TRIBES
Before passing on to a brief summary of Central African history as
a frame into which to fit the Air migrations, I would like to leave
on record for some future student to use such conclusions as I have
been able to reach regarding the descendants of the first invaders
of Air recorded by Sultan Bello.
The geographical areas of the Kel Owi and People of the King
respectively had almost ceased to be distinguishable even before
the 1917 revolution added to the prevailing confusion. In so far
as it is at all possible to lay down broad definitions, Central
and West-central Air belonged to the People of the King, Northern,
North-eastern and Eastern Air to the Kel Owi, or People of the
Añastafidet, and Southern Air, or, as it is more properly called,
Tegama, to the servile tribes. The Talak plain was diversely populated.
The first immigrants, the Immikitan, Sendal, Tamgak, Igdalen,
Ijaranen and probably Itesan, have for the most part survived
in some distinguishable form in or around Air. The survivors are
all, of course, as is to be expected, People of the King. The only
exceptions are certain nuclei which are known to have been absorbed
by the Añastafidet and his people.
In addition to the survivors in Air there are some Igdalen north of
Tahua, while others are Imghad of the Tarat Mellet[408] tribe of the
Ifoghas of the west. These Imghad may have been a part of the Air group
of Igdalen captured in war, or may represent a westward emigration of
a part of the stock which came on evil days in Damergu. Generally,
I regard the presence of these Igdalen in the west as confirming
Bello’s account of their early arrival in the Air area from the east;
it may also be taken to substantiate my view that the first wave of
Tuareg to the El Suk country came from the south-east and not from
the north.[409]
How far can the tribes which are known to exist to-day or whose names
have been recorded by modern travellers be associated with these
groups of early immigrants? A critical examination[410] of the tribes
reveals at least six main tribal groups of the People of the King in
Air itself, that is to say, six groups in which the respective tribes
either acknowledge themselves to be, or can be shown to possess,
certain affinities pointing to a descent from single stocks; but
not all of these can with certainty be identified with Bello’s
named clans. These six extant groups are the Kel Ferwan, Kel Tadek,
Immikitan, Imezegzil, Imaqoaran and Ifadeyen.
Two of them, in some ways the most important, have no proper names of
their own at all: both the Kel Ferwan and Kel Tadek are named after
places, respectively Iferuan in the Ighazar of Northern Air, and the
Tadek valley. Neither of these groups, which have the reputation of
great antiquity and nobility, can be affiliated to any of the other
four groups; they are indubitably separate clans which in the course
of ages have lost their old “I names.” Returning to the five
old tribes of Bello we nevertheless find certain points of contact
between records and actual conditions, as well as certain differences:
_Bello’s tribes._ _Modern groups._
{ Immikitan.
Immikitan = {
{ Imezegzil.
Igdalen = Igdalen.
Ijaranen = Ijanarnen (of the Itesan).
Sendal = ?
Tamgak = ?
? = Kel Ferwan.
? = Kel Tadek.
? = Imaqoaran.
? = Ifadeyen.
(Itesan) = Itesan.
In discussing tribal origins in Air and comparing my results with
those of Jean, I found the greatest difficulty in sorting out the
tribes of the Immikitan and Imezegzil groups: so much so that I am
inclined to think that both clans represent the old Immikitan stock
which split into two main branches some time ago. The widespread use
of the name Immikitan for Tuareg makes it possible that the original
stock of the People of the King was Immikitan in the first instance;
in that event, on the analogy of other Tuareg tribes, when one clan
grew unmanageable in size, new groups were formed, only one of which
retained the original nomenclature as a proper or individual name—a
process which no doubt occurred before any migration out of the Chad
area took place. But that is too far back to consider.
Leaving the Ifadeyen out of account for the moment we are left with the
Kel Ferwan, the Kel Tadek and the Imaqoaran to compete for the right
of descent from the Tamgak and Sendal. A remote ancestry is indicated
by their undoubted nobility and antiquity. The original home of the
Kel Tadek in a valley flowing out of Tamgak and the association of the
Tamgak tribe with the Tamgak massif suggest that these groups may be
identified, in which case the Sendal might be the ancestors of the Kel
Ferwan. Nevertheless there is also a possibility that the descendants
of the Sendal are the old tribes of Damergu. That the descendants of
the Sendal are to be sought for south of, rather than in Air proper,
is further indicated by the record of a war between the People of Air
against the Sendal in Elakkos as late as 1727.[411] The Kel Ferwan,
would, thus, be descended from the Damergu-Elakkos Tuareg directly,
and from the Sendal therefore only indirectly, if their origin indeed
is to be sought in this early wave of immigration at all.
The selection of the Sultan of Agades being in the hands of the tribes
who traditionally sent the deputation to Constantinople after the
arrival of the Kel Geres in Air, and the object of the mission being
to settle a dispute as to who should be king, it would be natural to
find all the contestant groups represented on the delegation. The Kel
Owi would, of course, not figure among them, for they had not at that
time reached Air. Now the names of tribes charged with sending the
delegation is given by Jean, and I accept his version because all the
information which I procured on the subject was very contradictory;
and the list is most interesting. It is given as: the Itesan and
the Dzianara of the modern Itesan-Kel Geres group, and the Izagaran,
Ifadalen, Imaqoaran and Immikitan of the other Tuareg. The Itesan we
know about; the Dzianara were a noble part of the Kel Geres but are
now extinct: it is natural that both these should be represented. The
Izagaran and Ifadalen survive as names of noble Damergu tribes, while
the Immikitan and Imaqoaran represent the older clans of Air proper,
all four, of course, owing allegiance to the King. From their “I
names” these tribes all seem to be old; we have no reason from any
other evidence to believe that any recent arrivals are represented
in the list. The very choice of representatives from each of three
groups may consequently be taken to indicate that these tribes were
regarded as the oldest or most important units in each division. It
is tempting, therefore, to suppose that the Izagaran and Ifadalen are
the descendants of one of the tribes in the first wave of Tuareg which
came from the south-east, and therefore perhaps of Bello’s Sendal.
Another version of the method adopted to select the first Amenokal
is recorded in the Agades Chronicle, which states that the persons
responsible for the task were the Agoalla[412] T’Sidderak, Agoalla
Mafinet and Agoalla Kel Tagei. The story relates how the Agumbulum,
the title of the ruler of the first Tuareg to enter Air, namely the Kel
Innek, desired to settle the differences which had arisen in regard
to the government, but was unable to find anyone to send to Stambul
until an old woman called Tagirit offered to send her grandsons,
who were the chieftains in question. The story emphasises what will
have been noticed on the subject of the origin of the Kel Owi, namely,
that the tribes of Air generally claim a woman either as ancestress or
as a prominent head. The first two names are those of certain Itesan
sub-tribes who, from residence in these mountain areas, which still
bear the same names in Central Air, had adopted geographical Kel
names, and conserve them to this day in their modern habitats in the
Southland. The Kel Tagei is another subdivision of the Itesan, and,
though a servile tribe of this name exists in the Imarsutan section
of the Kel Owi, it is probably a portion of the former enslaved during
the later civil wars of Air.[413]
This alternative story is not necessarily contradictory to the
first version of the deputation to Stambul, even though it does
not allow the remaining tribes of the People of the King to have a
share in the election. Since, however, the Itesan were certainly the
dominant tribe in Air until the arrival of the Kel Owi, the omission
is comprehensible; it is a statement of a part for the whole. If it
has any significance it tends to support the view that the Itesan
were, in fact, a tribe of the Kel Innek from the Chad lands, as I
have supposed, and not a part of the Kel Geres group.
The Imaqoaran and Kel Ferwan, however, remain a difficult problem. The
latter are in many ways peculiar and seem to differ in many ways
so much from their other friends in the division of the People of
the King, that although I have no direct evidence on the subject, I
half suspect them of having come to Air from some other part than the
south-east and at a later period than the first wave. Certain it is
that they specialised in raiding westward, where they obtained their
numerous dependent Imghad. Furthermore, in Cortier’s account of the
history of the Ifoghas n’Adghar there are stories of the formation of
this western group of Tuareg tending to show that while a part of the
division probably came from the north, the bulk of the immigration
was from the east. He says that after the Kel el Suk reached the
southern parts of the Sahara, they divided into two groups. The two
groups fought, and one section, which had apparently settled in Air,
was victorious, whereupon a part migrated into the Adghar, where the
other section had already established itself and had founded the town
of Tademekka. In the fighting, which continued, there seems to have
been considerable movement between the two mountain groups; the Kel
Ferwan portion of the People of the King in Air may therefore be more
nearly related to the western group than to the other Air folk.
The Ifadeyen are associated with Fadé, which is the northernmost
part of the Air plateau. To-day they are very friendly with the Kel
Tadek, and some people have even suggested that they were of the same
stock. There is, however, another tribe, the Kel Fadé, the similarity
of whose name suggests, quite erroneously, an identification. The
Ifadeyen are known to be a very old tribe, while the Kel Fadé are
known to have been formed at about the time of the arrival of the
Kel Owi in Air and to have lived in the Fadé mountains, whence the
Ifadeyen were already moving south. Barth speaks of the Kel Fadé
as a collection of brigands and vagabonds, and implies that they
were mainly outlaws of mixed parentage. A part of them is certainly
Kel Owi and composed of those elements which went on living in the
northern mountains when the main body entered Air, while another
part is almost certainly Ifadeyen; as a whole they remained outside
the Kel Owi Confederation as People of the King. Until about thirty
years ago the Kel Fadé used to maintain that the Ifadeyen were their
serfs; after many disputes the matter was referred to the paramount
chief of the Kel Owi, who, after consulting various authorities,
decided that the Ifadeyen were noble and free. Their chief, Matali,
nevertheless preferred to evacuate the northern mountains completely
in favour of the Kel Fadé in order to avoid further friction, and
since then, a full generation ago, they have been gradually moving
south to the Azawagh, where they pasture in the winter, withdrawing
to Damergu in the dry season. Their original history might have been
easier to ascertain had it not been for the fact that despite its “I
form” their name is a placename, though it is possible that they
gave their name to Fadé and did not take it from their habitat. The
presence of the Ifadeyen in an area west and north of country which
we know the Kel Tadek held, and their association with the latter,
render it likely that we are, in fact, dealing with one and the same
stock, namely, the descendants of the Tamgak.
The Ifadeyen are renowned all over Air for their pure nomadism, and
above all for the fact that they are almost the last of the Tuareg
in the Southern Sahara to retain the current use of the T’ifingh
script with a knowledge of reading and writing it. This learning,
as is usual among Imajeghan tribes, reposes with the women-folk,
one of whose principal functions is to educate the children; it is
consistent with their supposed origin as one of the oldest and purest
of all the tribes in Air.
As a result of the foregoing argument the following suggestions for the
main tribes of the People of the King hitherto mentioned can be made:
_Tribes of the King_ (_Division I_).[414]
{ { Immikitan,
{ Immikitan {
{ { Imezegzil.
{
{ Igdalen Igdalen (Damergu:
{ Division IV).
{
Bello’s five tribes { Tamgak Represented by the Kel
generically called { Tadek and ? Ifadeyen.
_Kel Innek_, {
originally from the { Ijaranen Representing the Itesan,
Fezzan, where the { which includes:
_Imanen_ are also {
found. { (Itesan) Ijaranen,
{
{ _Kel Innek_,
{
{ _Kel Manen (Imanen)_.
{
{ Sendal Represented by the Damergu
{ and Elakkos Tuareg, who
{ include:
{
{ Izagaran,
{
{ Ifadalen.
? Imaqoaran.
?Western Tuareg Kel Ferwan.
Mixed Kel Fadé.
PLATE 48
[Illustration: EGHALGAWEN POOL]
[Illustration: TIZRAET POOL]
[Footnote 356: Letter to the author from G. W. Webster, Resident at
Sokoto, dated 20/6/1923.]
[Footnote 357: _Journal of the African Society_,
No. XXXVI. Vol. IX. July 1910. Further references in this chapter
will be omitted.]
[Footnote 358: Denham and Clapperton: _Account of the First Expedition_
(Murray), 1826. Vol. II. p. 38 seq.; App. XII.]
[Footnote 359: As reported by Bello, Denham and Clapperton,
_loc. cit._]
[Footnote 360: It is to these doubtless that Jean is referring when
he speaks of Egyptian influence in Air. Jean, _op. cit._, p. 86.]
[Footnote 361: Cf. Leo, _op. cit._, Vol. III. p. 828.]
[Footnote 362: Cf. also Asbytæ and Esbet with references in Bates,
_op. cit._, passim. The root is probably, if a generalisation is at
all permitted, applicable to the earliest negroid, or Grimaldi race
survivors, in North Africa.]
[Footnote 363: _Vide supra_, Chap. III.]
[Footnote 364: Cf. _supra_, Chap. II.]
[Footnote 365: Cf. _infra_.]
[Footnote 366: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 337.]
[Footnote 367: _Vide supra_, Chap. IV.]
[Footnote 368: But not necessarily the slaves.]
[Footnote 369: As was the case, for instance, in the days of the
Eighth and Ninth Dynasties of Egypt.]
[Footnote 370: “Akel” (plu. _ikelan_) primarily means “negro,”
and from that “a slave.”]
[Footnote 371: _Vide supra_, Chap. III.]
[Footnote 372: Denham and Clapperton, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 373: _I.e._ Aujila.]
[Footnote 374: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 460.]
[Footnote 375: Herodotus, IV. 172.]
[Footnote 376: In Chap. III.]
[Footnote 377: Idrisi: ed. Jaubert, Vol. I. p. 238.]
[Footnote 378: Cf. Chap. X.]
[Footnote 379: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 460.]
[Footnote 380: To adopt Clapperton’s spelling.]
[Footnote 381: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. IV. App. IX and Vol. II.]
[Footnote 382: _I.e._ Libyans, and not, at this period or in this
context, Kanuri.]
[Footnote 383: According to Maqrizi _apud_ Barth, Vol. II. pp. 635
and 265.]
[Footnote 384: El Bekri, _op. cit._, p. 456.]
[Footnote 385: A tribe of the Ahaggaren.]
[Footnote 386: In a communication to the author, Mr. H. R. Palmer,
Resident in Bornu, writes: “After hearing probably all the extant
tradition on the subject of the early rulers of Kanem, my belief
is that the so-called Dugawa were Tuareg of some kind, and that the
appellation Beri-beri applied originally to them and not to the Teda
element which later on preponderated and gave the resulting Kanemi
empire its language, _i.e._ Kanuri.”]
[Footnote 387: Denham and Clapperton, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 396.]
[Footnote 388: Though the Tebu are probably themselves a Kanuri stock,
a distinction may be drawn between them and the more negroid Kanuri
of Bornu and the Chad lands.]
[Footnote 389: See Abul Fida (French ed.), pp. 127-8 and 245; El
Idrisi (ed. Jaubert), p. 288. At the time of El Maqrizi the empire
of Kanem extended from Zella (Sella), south of the Great Syrtis,
to Gogo (Gao) on the Niger. El Maqrizi lived from 1365 to 1442:
Abul Fida died in 1331 writing his history, which was finished down
to the year A.D. 1329.]
[Footnote 390: Other than a wholesale emigration of Franks and
Byzantines to Europe.]
[Footnote 391: Cf. Chap. XI. _supra_.]
[Footnote 392: See Appendix II. and elsewhere in this chapter, also
Ibn Khaldun, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 3.]
[Footnote 393: In Appendix II.]
[Footnote 394: Consider the proportion of such names in
the Itesan group, and in the forty-six Kel Geres tribes,
respectively. Cf. Appendix II.]
[Footnote 395: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 86.]
[Footnote 396: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 113, and Barth, _op. cit._,
Vol. I. p. 356, also Appendix II. to this volume.]
[Footnote 397: Cf. Appendix II. Tribes having the same place names now
in Air are not related to these clans; their history is independently
established.]
[Footnote 398: Hornemann’s _Journal_, French ed. p. 102 seq.]
[Footnote 399: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 339.]
[Footnote 400: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 343. The Tinylcum
(T’inalkum) is an Azger Imghad tribe: cf. Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 401: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 90-1.]
[Footnote 402: Jean calls them Ahaggaren, but only because all the
northern Tuareg are in Air called Ahaggaren irrespective of whether
they come from the Azger, Ahaggar or Ahnet divisions. In addition
to these Imanen among the Azger and Itesan, there are also some on
the Niger who are probably the product of the same early migrations
which took the five tribes, including the Itesan, into Air.]
[Footnote 403: Compare the grouping in Appendix II. and the comments
in Chap X.]
[Footnote 404: See Appendix II. All these three tribes are People of
the King, though the Kel Zilalet are rather mixed, being sedentaries.]
[Footnote 405: This in Air means the west or north-west. The reference
may be to the Hawara, regarding whom this type of confusion has always
obtained: cf. Arab-Tuareg elements in Hawara group, _vide_ Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 406: Cf. Chap. XI. with reference to Duveyrier’s
information.]
[Footnote 407: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 92-3.]
[Footnote 408: Meaning “The White Goat.” Perhaps a survival
of Totemism.]
[Footnote 409: _Vide supra_, Chap. XI.]
[Footnote 410: See Appendix II. Division I. for details of People of
the King in Air, and Division IV. for the Damergu Tuareg.]
[Footnote 411: Agades Chronicle.]
[Footnote 412: _I.e._ chief of a tribal group.]
[Footnote 413: The Imarsutan Kel Tagei may also have merely
fortuitously acquired this name, which only means the People of the
Dûm Palm, and is therefore not very individual.]
[Footnote 414: In Appendix II.]
CHAPTER XIII
THE HISTORY OF AIR (_continued_)
PART II
THE VICISSITUDES OF THE TUAREG IN AIR
As a division of Tuareg the people of Air cannot be said to have
achieved great deeds in the history of the world as did the Sanhaja;
but as a part of the race they can justly claim to share in its
glory. That they brought culture and the amenities of civilisation
from the Mediterranean to Central Africa has been mentioned several
times. This progress in the past was responsible for the prosperity
of Nigeria to-day.
The People of Air are a small and insignificant group of human beings
considered by themselves alone. It may only be when that characteristic
of the Englishman displays itself and he seeks to extol the virtues,
charm and history of some obscure race, that such a people assumes,
in his eyes at least, an importance which to the rest of the world
may seem unjustified. There is probably no race so vile, so dull or
so unimpressive but that some Briton will arise as its defender, and
aver that if properly treated it is the salt of the earth. I am not
unconscious of the dangers of this frame of mind, but being acutely
aware of the mentality, I trust that this characteristic will not
have led me over-much to conceal the unpleasant or unfavourable.
A chapter which attempts to deal summarily with the history of the Air
Tuareg[415] set in its appropriate frame of Central African history
must inevitably seem in some measure a justification for the trouble
taken to piece together an obscure and complex collection of facts
relating to the country and its people. But the darkness surrounding
the arguments contained in the preceding account of the migrations of
the Air tribes has seemed so impenetrable that instead of closing the
book at this point, I have felt moved to give the reader some rather
less indigestible matter with which to conclude.
To obviate the accusation of attaching unwarrantable importance to
the People of Air, it may be well to state that the population of the
country is small. It was never very large. Perhaps 50,000 to 60,000
souls, including the Kel Geres and the other clans in the Southland,
would have been a conservative estimate in 1904. At that time Jean,
numbering only the People of Air and some of the Tuareg of Elakkos
and Damergu, arrived at a tentative figure of 25-27,000 inhabitants,
but he was certainly misled by his local informants into thinking
that the tribes were smaller than they really were. Nor did he take
all the septs of Air and the Southland into account. His estimate
included somewhat over 8000 People of the King, rather more than
8500 People of the Añastafidet, 4-5000 Irawellan, 2000 slaves and
2500-3000 mixed sedentaries in Agades and In Gall.[416] At the time
of the prosperity of Agades the population of these countries, not
including detached sedentaries and other groups lying far afield,
may have attained a maximum of 100,000.
It is impossible to estimate the total numbers of Tuareg in North
Africa with any accuracy. It would be interesting to make a serious
study of the numbers and general state even of those in French
territories.
The internecine struggles of the Air Tuareg are hardly interesting,
and have only been mentioned where relevant to the origin and movements
of the three immigrations. The wars between the different divisions,
like the Ahaggaren and the Azger, are not really more valuable in
a general survey. But even to summarise the principal events in Air
in the broad outlines is easier than to describe in a few words the
events which took place in the Central Sahara and the Central Sudan
during the 1000 years of history which have elapsed since first,
in my view at least, the Tuareg reached these mountains from their
more ancient northern home.
In early times the Tuareg were already in North Africa. They can be
distinguished probably as early as the Fifth, and certainly as early
as the Twelfth, Dynasty in Egypt. We can follow much of what they
were doing and trace where they were living in Roman times, but it
is less easy to discern the groups which composed the immigrant waves
of humanity into Air until about the time when the first of them came
to the south, and even then the picture is obscure.
When Air was first invaded by the Tuareg it was called Asben and was
part of the kingdom of Gober, a country of negroid people who lived
both in the mountains and to the south. But before the first invasion
took place there was already Libyan influence in the country, both
due to the northern trade which had gone on since the earliest times
conceivable, and also on account of the Sanhaja Tuareg, whose power
and glory had extended thus far eastwards.
The first invasion consisted of tribes who had formed part of a mass of
Tuareg of the Lemta division originally from, and now still settled in,
the Fezzan and Ghat areas. These people had descended the Kawar road
to Lake Chad. They had occupied Bornu, perhaps in the early ninth
century A.D., or even before. The Goberawa of Air or Asben seem
to have received a slight admixture of Libyan blood derived from
the northerners who travelled down the caravan road to the Sudan;
the people of Bornu were more purely negroid, and more so than their
northern neighbours and probably kinsfolk, the Tebu of Tibesti. The
Tuareg who were settled in Bornu were subjected to pressure from the
east and north, at the hands of the Kanuri from east of Lake Chad,
and of the Arabs. In due course, after being kings of Bornu for many
generations the Tuareg began to move westwards. Some of them reached
Air, leaving settlers, or having previously settled the regions of
Elakkos and Damergu. The date of this movement cannot be fixed with
any accuracy; it is probably not as early at the eighth century, but
is certainly anterior to the great Kanuri expansion of the thirteenth
century. An early date is suggested by Barth and accepted by Jean,
probably merely on account of the incidence of the first Arab invasion
of North Africa, though as a matter of fact the forces of Islam for
the sixty years which elapsed after the conquest of Egypt were not
really sufficiently numerous to occasion great ethnic movements. The
six centuries between A.D. 700 and A.D. 1300 are very obscure;
but if any reason must be assigned for the first invasion of Air by
the Bornu Tuareg, it was probably due to the Hillalian invasion of
Africa. For this and other reasons it may, therefore, be placed in
the eleventh century.
With the opening of the Muhammadan era we find a kingdom at Ghana in
Western Negroland with a ruling family of “white people” and the
Libyan dynasty of Za Alayamin (Za el Yemani) installed at Kukia.[417]
Gao, on the Niger, was already an important commercial centre at
the southern end of the trade road from Algeria. In A.D. 837 we
read of the death of Tilutan, a Tuareg of the Lemtuna,[418] who was
very powerful in the Sahara; he was succeeded by Ilettan, who died
in 900; the latter was followed by T’in Yerutan as lord of the
Western Sahara. He was established at Audaghost,[419] an outpost
of the Sanhaja, who appear at this time to have dominated Western
Negroland, including even the great city of Ghana,[420] and to have
carried on active intercourse between the Southland and Sijilmasa in
Morocco. This and the succeeding century are notable for the influence
of the Libyan tribes, in the first instance through the Libyan kings
of Audaghost, and later, at the beginning of the eleventh century,
by the desert confederation which Abu Abdallah, called Naresht,
the son of Tifaut, had brought into being. It was at this time that
the preacher and reformer, Abdallah ibn Yasin, arose and collected
in the Sahara his band of Holy Men called the “Merabtin,” who
were destined to play such a large rôle in the history of the world
under the name of Almoravid in Morocco and in Spain. Throughout the
latter part of the eleventh century and in the whole of the twelfth,
the really important element in all the Western Sahara and Sudan was
the Sanhaja division of the Tuareg of the west, and though nothing is
heard of the effects of their rule on Air, they must nevertheless have
been considerable. The Mesufa branch of the Sanhaja were, according to
Ibn Batutah, established in Gober, south of Air; the influence of the
Sanhaja in Air itself as well as in Damergu is also recorded. West of
Air was the city of Tademekka, nine days northwards from Gao. We also
hear of the Libyan towns of Tirekka, between the Tademekka and Walata,
and Tautek six days beyond Tirekka; all these appear to have sprung
up under the Sanhaja dominion as commercial centres in the same way
as the later city of Timbuctoo. Agades, at this time, had not yet
been founded.
At the beginning of the thirteenth or end of the twelfth century the
second invasion of Air took place. Until now the Tuareg immigrants
had lived side by side with the Goberawa despite the assistance
which the former must have derived from the Sanhaja influence in the
land. The new invaders were the Kel Geres, and their advent led to the
expulsion or absorption of the negroid people. Together with the former
inhabitants and under the leadership of the dominant Itesan tribe,
the Tuareg consolidated their independence in Air. This might never
have been achieved had it not been for the Sanhaja empire in the west;
there is no doubt that the success of the latter contributed directly
to the Bornu and Air movements.
By the time Ibn Batutah made his journey through Negroland in
A.D. 1353, Tekadda, some days south of the mountains, as well as Air
itself were wholly Tuareg.
Between Gao and Tekadda he had journeyed through the land of the
“Bardamah, a nomad Berber tribe,”[421] whose tents and dietary
are described in a manner which makes it clear that we are dealing
with typical nomadic Tuareg. The Bardamah women, incidentally, are
said to have been very beautiful and to have been endowed with that
particular fatness which so struck Barth. At Tekadda the Sultan was a
“Berber” (Libyan) called Izar.[422] There was also another prince
of the same race called “the Tekerkeri,” though further on Ibn
Batutah refers to him somewhat differently, saying, “We arrived in
Kahir, which is part of the domains of the Sultan Kerkeri.” From this
Barth deduces that the name of the ruler’s kingdom, which included
Air but apparently not Tekadda, was “Kerker,” but we have seen
that the chief minister of the Sultan of the Tuareg is called the
Kokoi Geregeri, and it is to this title that I think Ibn Batutah is
referring. Nevertheless, as a branch of the Aulimmiden in the west is
also called Takarkari, this may signify that the plateau was at this
period under the influence of those western Tuareg who have in history
often exerted a preponderating part in the history of Southern Air.
The expansion of Bornu under Dunama II in the thirteenth century
had, in the course of the conquest of the Fezzan, brought about the
occupation of Kawar and other points on the Murzuk-Chad road. This
could not but have had a serious effect on the economics of Air on
account of the Bilma salt trade, and there is a tradition of a war
with Bornu in about A.D. 1300. Raiding on a large scale across the
desert no doubt also took place. By the middle of the fourteenth
century, however, the greatness of Bornu had commenced to decline;
the reigning dynasty was suffering severely at the hands of the “Sô
people,” who were the original pagan inhabitants of the country. They
had succeeded in defeating and killing four successive Kanuri rulers,
and only twenty years after Ibn Batutah’s journey there were sown
in the reign of Daud the germs of that internal strife which led to
the complete expulsion of the Bornu dynasty from Kanem and continuous
warfare between these two countries.
In the west, on the other hand, the power of the empire of Melle
was still, if not quite at its height, at least unmenaced by any
serious rival. With the death of Ibn Ghania in A.D. 1233 the Sanhaja
Confederation had come to an end. There then arose on the Upper Niger
a leader called Mari Jatah I. After making himself master of two of
the greatest negroid peoples of the west, he was succeeded by Mansa
Musa, the founder of the empire of Melle. Mansa Musa, or, as he was
also called, Mansa Kunkur Musa, after adding to his dominions all the
famous countries of Western Sudan, turned eastwards and conquered
Gao, on the Middle Niger. He also subjected Timbuctoo, which had
been founded about the year A.D. 1000 by the Tuareg of the Idenan
and Immedideren tribes during the Sanhaja period, but its conquest
only served to increase its prosperity as a trading centre. It was
visited and inhabited by merchants from all over North Africa.
It is interesting, in considering the history of Melle, to observe
an attempt which was made at this early period, in a country so long
considered by Europeans as savage and barbarous, to solve a problem
of government on more rational lines than has ever been tried in
modern Europe. A dual system of administration was organised to deal
with races foreign to the authority of the central government. There
was a national and a territorial bureaucracy: the feature of the
government was that Melle was divided territorially into two provinces,
or vice-royalties, concurrently with which there were three separate
ethnic or national administrations. It almost goes without saying that
the military administration was kept strictly apart from the civil.
With the death of Mansa Musa and the succession of his son Mansa Magha,
in 1331, the fabric of the empire began to fall in pieces. Timbuctoo
had been successfully attacked in 1329 by the King of Mosi, who
expelled the Melle garrison. A little later the prince, Ali Killun,
son of Za Yasebi, of the original Songhai dynasty of Gao, escaped
with his brother from the court of Mansa Magha, where they had been
living as political prisoners in the guise of pages. They acquired some
measure of independence and, though again subjected by the succeeding
king of Melle, Mansa Suleiman, in about 1336 commenced to lay the
foundations of the later Songhai empire on the Middle Niger. Mansa
Suleiman recaptured Timbuctoo, which at this time, inhabited by
the Mesufa, had begun to take the place of the older Tuareg centre,
Tademekka, further east. The Mesufa, whom we last saw south of Air,
were doubtless being pushed back west again by the pressure of the
Aulimmiden and migrants from the East.
In 1373 the Vizier of Melle, another Mari Jatah, usurped the power
from the grandson of Mansa Magha and reconquered Tekadda, but it
was the last flicker of life in the old empire. The opening years of
the fourteenth century saw a succession of weak kings and powerful
governors who were not strong enough to resist the incursions of
the Tuareg from the desert. Timbuctoo was conquered in 1433 from the
Mesufa by some other Tuareg, probably from the west or north-west,
under Akil (Ag Malwal), who declined to abandon his nomadic life
and installed as governor Muhammad Nasr el Senhaji from Shingit in
Mauretania. The Tuareg at this time were everywhere victorious but
destructive. They never succeeded in consolidating their power into
an empire. In this era of their ascendancy Agades was founded in
about the year 1460, just as Sunni Ali, the son of Sunni Muhammad
Dau, ascended the throne of Gao and changed the whole political map
of North Africa by prostrating the small surviving kingdom of Melle
and finally setting up in its place the Songhai empire.
The incessant bickering and local feuds had driven the Tuareg of
Air to come to some arrangement by which, nominally at least, they
could consolidate themselves against the powers of the Sudan. They had
agreed to have a Sultan, and he was installed, and not long afterwards
the Amenokalate was set up in Agades, at a most eventful period in
Central African history. The empire of Songhai on the Niger seemed
invincible. By 1468 Timbuctoo had been overwhelmed and the governor
driven out; Akil, the Tuareg, was forced to flee westwards. The city
was plundered and the occupation of Western Negroland commenced. In
the meanwhile the Portuguese had planted the factory of Elmina on
the Guinea coast, and Alfonso V was succeeded by João II, who sent
an embassy to Sunni Ali.
Sunni Ali met his death by drowning in 1492, and was followed by his
son Abu Bakr Dau, and at a short interval by Muhammad ben Abu Bakr,
called Muhammad Askia, the greatest of all the kings of the Sudan,
and one of the greatest monarchs in the world of the fifteenth
century. He appears to have ruled with great wisdom, depending
on careful administration rather than on force to maintain his
prestige. In addition to Melle itself and Jenne, which had already
fallen, Ghana and Mosi in the far west were added to Songhai. After a
pilgrimage of great pomp across Africa and through Egypt, Haj Muhammad
Askia turned his attentions to the east. Katsina was occupied in
1513 as well as the whole of Gober and the rest of Hausaland. It was
inevitable, to stop the Tuareg raiding down in the settled country,
that Air should be added to his dominion as well.
In 1515 Askia marched against Al Adalet, or Adil, one of the twin
co-Sultans of Agades, and drove out the Tuareg tribes living in the
town,[423] replacing them with his own Songhai people, a colonisation
from which the city has not recovered to this day. He remained in
occupation a year, and was called the “Cursed.” The conquest
is unfortunately not mentioned by Leo,[424] who only refers to
the expedition against Kano and Katsina; and this is all the more
unpardonable, for he had accompanied his uncle on an official visit to
Askia himself. Leo clearly regards Agades at the time he was writing
as a negro settlement. According to traditions current in the city,
numbers of Tuareg were massacred by Askia’s men, but however many
Songhai may have been planted there, and however many Tuareg expelled,
there is no doubt that considerable numbers remained behind to mix
with the southerners and form the present Emagadesi people. The
town must have been in a very flourishing state at that time:
“the greatest part of the citizens are forren merchants” who
paid “. . . large custom to the king . . . on their merchandise
out of other places.” But apart from the yearly tribute of 150,000
ducats due to the King of Gao, the conquest of Air does not seem to
have affected the independence of the Tuareg, as no mention is made
of a Songhai governor, while the King of Agades, already within a
few years of the time of Leo’s journey, is reported to have kept
a military force of his own.
The contemporaries of Askia in Kanem and Bornu were Ali, the son
of another Dunama, and later, Ali’s son, Idris, both kings of
such renown that their country appears on European maps as early as
1489. Not to be outdone by the Songhai kings, whose emissaries had
reached Portugal, Idris sent an embassy to Tripoli in 1512. Under the
son of Idris, Muhammad, who ruled from 1526 to 1545, the kingdom of
Bornu reached the summit of its greatness. This remarkable century
in Central Africa deserves examination in greater detail, but lack
of space makes it impossible.
Agades was perhaps at the height of its prosperity before and
immediately after the conquest of Muhammad Askia. The scale of life
in which Air shared is shown by the description of Muhammad Askia’s
pilgrimage in 1495. He was accompanied by 1000 men on foot and 500
on horseback, and in the course of which he spent 300,100 mithkal
of gold. The prosperity of Agades continued until the commencement
of the nineteenth century, but in a form far different from what
it must have been in the sixteenth century, when it served as an
advanced trading-post or entrepôt for Gao, at that time the centre
of the gold trade of the Sudan and probably the most flourishing
commercial city in Central Africa. The gradual desertion of Agades,
almost complete by 1790, when the bulk of the population migrated to
Katsina, Tasawa, Maradi and Kano, commenced in 1591, at which date
Gao, the parent city from the commercial point of view, had fallen
to be a province of the Moroccan empire.
The heritage of Muhammad Askia was beyond the power of his successors
to maintain. Intestine wars and intrigues broke down the authority of
the central government. Revolts took place in Melle, and the covetous
eyes of Mulai Ahmed, the Sultan of Morocco, in 1549, were turned
towards Negroland. He demanded the cession of the Tegaza salt-mines,
and though this insult was avenged by an army of 2000 Tuareg invading
Morocco in 1586, Tegaza was captured by the Moors soon afterwards and
the deposits of Taodenit, north of Timbuctoo, were opened instead. The
final blow fell three years later, when Gao was entered by Basha
Jodar, the eunuch-general of Mulai Hamed, with a Moroccan army. The
final struggles of Ishak Askia in 1591 were unavailing. Henceforth
Moroccan governors reigned over the Western Sudan with garrisons in
Jenne, Timbuctoo, Gao and elsewhere. In 1603 Mulai Hamed el Mansur
of Morocco died, with the whole of Western Africa under his rule.
Power in the west thus passed once more from the negroid to the
northern people, but traditions of empire persisted in the centre. In
1571 there came to the throne of Bornu, Idris Ansami, known more
usually from the place of his burial as Idris Alawoma. His mother seems
from her name—’Aisha-Kel Eghrarmar—to have been a Tuareg; she
had the reputation of great beauty. After consolidating his empire to
the east, Idris conquered Hausaland as far west as and including Kano,
where he must have come into contact with the Songhai empire, just then
in process of passing under the rule of Morocco. So Idris Alawoma[425]
turned his attention to the north-west, and undertook three expeditions
against the Tuareg, the last one of which was against Air itself,
the first two presumably being against more southern tribes. The
chronicle of Idris’ expeditions is not clear enough to identify
the exact areas of his operations. The first one was described as a
raid, and the second, an expedition against a tribe. The operations
against Air started from Atrebisa and passed Ghamarama, doubtfully
identified with Gamram in Northern Damergu, after which a host of
Tuareg was overtaken in the open desert between the town, Tadsa,
and Air, and many were slaughtered. Idris returned to Munio by way
of Zibduwa and Susubaki. At an earlier date than these expeditions
his vizier had fought a battle with the Tuareg, who had come with a
numerous host of Tildhin (?)[426] and others to attack him at Aghalwen,
which is Eghalgawen in Southern Air, on the road to the Southland.
Having broken the power of the Air Tuareg, Idris Alawoma ordered
the Kel Yiti, or Kel Wati, who were living in his dominions, to
raid north and north-west in order to keep the tribes in a properly
chastened frame of mind, until they were obliged to sue for peace and
acknowledge their allegiance to the kingdom of Bornu. Barth thinks the
Kel Wati are to be identified with the Kel Eti, or Jokto, a mixed Tebu
and Tuareg people in the parts near Lake Chad. This is probably the
period of raids in South-eastern Air, previously referred to, which
obliged the Itesan to abandon their eastern settlements and move west
into the heart of the mountains. The supposition is borne out by the
record of Idris’ expedition against the Tebu of Dirki and Agram,
or Fashi, which was followed by a long stay at Bilma and the opening
up of relations with the north. All these events fall into the first
twelve years of Idris Alawoma’s reign: of the last twenty-one we
know little.
In 1601 at Agades, Muhammad ben Mubarak ibn el Guddala, or Ghodala,
deposed the Amenokal Yussif ben el Haj Ahmed ibn el Haj Abeshan,
and reigned in his stead for four months. Yussif recaptured the
power and ben Mubarak fled to Katsina and Kano, but returning to Air
entered Agades with a body of men from Bornu. He went on to Assode,
and then retired within a short time to Gamram in Damergu. Yussif
in the meanwhile had collected men in the Southland of Kebbi and
returned to the charge. Ben Mubarak again fled to Bornu, but was
later captured, and died in prison. This period of hostility between
Air and Bornu led Idris Alawoma’s grandson Ali ben el Haj Omar ben
Idris to wage several wars against the Sultan of Agades, though he
was once himself besieged in his own capital by the Tuareg and their
allies. To the wars in this reign, lasting from 1645 to 1684 or 1685,
belong the events which Jean has recorded incorrectly as occurring
in 1300,[427] in the reign of the eighth Sultan before Lamini.[428]
The latter is, of course, the famous Muhammad el Amin el Kanemi of
Denham and Clapperton’s expedition, who was, in fact, the eighth
Sultan before Ali ben Idris.
Tradition in Air and the Agades Chronicle at this point agree tolerably
well with the Bornu Chronicle. The Bornu king laid siege to Agades,
where Muhammad Mubaraki (1653-87) was reigning, and defeated the
Tuareg, who, after a number of engagements in the Telwa valley,
retired to the fastness of Bagezan. Their resources enabled them
to hold out for three years against the Bornuwi forces, who were
starving in the lowlands. The war of 1685 is called in the Agades
Chronicle the War of Famine. The people of Bornu eventually withdrew
eastwards over the desert, hotly pursued by the Tuareg all the way to
the well of Ashegur, north of Fashi, which, as will be remembered, had
previously been occupied by Idris Alawoma. Deserted by their Sultan,
the Bornuwi were surprised, and left 300-400 prisoners in the hands
of the Tuareg, who, from now on to the present day, have exercised a
paramount influence over these oases, where they developed the salt
trade with the Sudan[429] through Air. The gold trade of Songhai,
at one time so important in Agades that it had its own standard
weight for the metal, which long after its disappearance continued
to regulate the circulating medium of exchange, was replaced by the
salt traffic as an asset of much value.[430]
The campaigns of Idris Alawoma and of Ali repeated the effects of the
earlier Kanuri pressure on the west. Evidence of the tendency of the
southern Tuareg to move west has been noticed on several occasions. The
effect of the Bornu campaigns was to exert pressure on the Aulimmiden,
which culminated in their attacks on the Tademekkat people and
eventually in the Kel Owi immigration into Air. The sequence of events
in Air has already been related; the successes of the Aulimmiden
contributed directly and indirectly to the decline of Agades as a
commercial centre. By 1770 they had captured Gao. Under Kawa, in 1780,
they established a dominion over the north bank of the Niger at Ausa;
these were doubtless some factors which influenced the Kel Geres in
their decision to abandon Air as a result of the arrival of the Kel
Owi. The westward move of the Aulimmiden before the Kanuri of Bornu,
who were suffering from the reaction which follows greatness, had left
an area correspondingly free for the Kel Geres to occupy. The middle
of the century had been taken up in desultory fighting between Air and
the south. The next notable event had been in 1761—an attack on Kano
by the Kel Owi and the defeat of the Kel Geres by the Aulimmiden in the
same year. The inroads of the Fulani into Hausaland had commenced, but
as yet Othman dan Fodio had not established himself in Sokoto, or the
ruling families of Fulani in all the large towns of the Central Sudan.
PLATE 49
[Illustration: EGHALGAWEN AND THE LAST HILLS OF AIR]
The protection of the salt trade led to continual struggles between Air
and Bornu. An expedition by the Sultan of Agades, in about 1760,[431]
to Kuka on Lake Chad is probably part of the war of Bilma in 1759
referred to in the Agades Chronicle as having been made by Muhammad
Guma, the son of Mubarak. The Sultan was accompanied by the Kel Ferwan,
and returned with a war indemnity of 2000 head of cattle and a promise
that trade would not be subjected to interference.
The occupation of part of Damergu by the Kel Owi Tuareg is of course
recent, though it had been seized by the earlier immigrants at the
same time as Air, with this difference, that the negroid inhabitants
were never driven out or absorbed as in the mountains. The Kel Owi
interference and immigration took the form of successful raiding or
warfare to keep open the caravan road into the south. The fate of
Damergu in all this long period of history was to be squeezed between
the Tuareg on two sides and the Sudan empires on the other two.[432]
The modern period commences with the passage through Air of the
Foureau-Lamy Mission. Beyond what has already been said, it is
impossible to discuss this phase, as it is still too recent, but the
French version is contained in Lieut. Jean’s admirable review of
French colonial policy in the _Territoires du Niger_.
[Footnote 415: Some notes on the early history and the origins of the
Tuareg race will be found in a paper by the author in the Journal of
the R.G.S. for Jan. 1926.]
[Footnote 416: Jean: _op. cit._, Chap. XIII; and Chudeau: _Le Sahara
Soudanais_, p. 72.]
[Footnote 417: Fifteen days east of Ghana in the Upper Niger
country. Not to be confused with Kuka on Lake Chad, or with Gao (Gago)
on the Middle Niger. Kukia is called Kugha in el Bekri and Cochia by
Ca’ da Mosto (Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. IV., pp. 583-4).]
[Footnote 418: As we have seen, a section of the Sanhaja, and nothing
to do with the Lemta.]
[Footnote 419: Audaghost was for long confused by European geographers
with Agades, or, as soon as the first news of Air was received,
with Auderas. Audaghost was in Mauretania between Tegaza and Walata.]
[Footnote 420: South-west of Walata and west of Timbuctoo: for all
these places see Map I in Vol. I. of the Hakluyt Soc., edition of
Leo Africanus.]
[Footnote 421: Ibn Batutah, French ed., IV. p. 437.]
[Footnote 422: Variant, Iraz, French ed., IV. pp. 442, 445.]
[Footnote 423: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. IV. p. 603; Vol. I. p. 461.]
[Footnote 424: Leo, _op. cit._, Vol. III. pp. 829 seq. and 846.]
[Footnote 425: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 653.]
[Footnote 426: The word may be a corruption of Kindin, the Kanuri
name for the Tuareg.]
[Footnote 427: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 115.]
[Footnote 428: Who did not die 400 years, but barely 100 years, ago,
in 1835.]
[Footnote 429: Jean is, of course, quite unjustified in dragging in
the Kel Owi. His information, owing to the fact that the Kel Owi had
always favoured the French expansion both during the Foureau-Lamy
expedition and when Jean occupied Air, seems to be derived largely
from this source, which is as prejudiced as the accounts given by
all parvenus in the world when discussing history in which they have
not been, but would have liked to have been, involved. A parallel
unjustified assumption of historical responsibility is found in the
Maket n’Ikelan story.]
[Footnote 430: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 467.]
[Footnote 431: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 121.]
[Footnote 432: I cannot agree with Jean that the first occupation of
Damergu, Elakkos and Damagarim by the earlier Tuareg is at all recent
(_op. cit._, pp. 121-2). Some of the events he records are recent,
but not the earlier movements of the tribes.]
CHAPTER XIV
VALEDICTORY
Here my account of the Air Tuareg must close. No one can be better
aware than myself of the shortcomings and discrepancies of my
story. The task would have been easier had a general survey of an
unprejudiced character of the history and ethnology of North Africa
existed. Where my account has wandered from the field of the Tuareg
of Air, it has had to build both a general and a particular foundation
for itself, and I am conscious that the result is not as satisfactory
as it should be. The subjects of script and of language have scarcely
been touched upon at all; they are too large and specialised matters
for this volume. If ever there should come a period of leisure for me,
they might be made the subject of a separate study.
I cannot conceal the pleasure that writing this account has afforded
me in the course of my researches, by making the scenes which I
enjoyed in Air live again before my eyes. Had the time available both
in Africa and since my return been commensurate with my interest in
the subject, the result would have been better. Intended originally
as a book of travel, it has in places become complicated, obscure
and overladen with some of the fruits of inquiry in a vast field,
namely, the origin and nature of all the peoples of North Africa. I
shall feel amply rewarded if another student will allow his curiosity
to be sufficiently stimulated to continue the work.
As the writer of a book of travel I must complete the tale of the
journey. I came to an end of my wanderings where I had begun them,
in Northern Nigeria. My two friends and I had started from there
on 27th April, 1922; I returned there alone on the 29th December of
the same year. After my tour in Northern Air it became apparent that
the time at my disposal must prove too short to achieve the object
of crossing the Sahara to the Mediterranean with my companions. At
Iferuan I regretfully decided to return home by way of Nigeria. At the
commencement of December I turned south and marched to Agellal, a large
village of stone houses under a singularly beautiful mountain. From
there I went to Tefis to see the mosque, and camped at Anu Wisheran,
which means “The Old Well.” There were small deserted settlements
at both places. After another camp at Garet I descended into the basin
of Central Air, over a barren slope intersected by numerous north and
south rivulets between bare stony ridges. I halted in the Anu Maqaran
valley near the boulder on which I discovered the chariot drawing. The
site of my camp had been purely adventitious, but that obscure rock may
well prove to be the most important observation of my whole journey. On
the following day, Bila was reached at the spur of the Azamkoran
mountains, and then we passed by the sugar-loaf hill of Sampfotchi
into the Arwa Mellen and familiar Assada valleys. After a long march
from the Tamenzaret wells I came again to Auderas, where I rejoined
my companions, but only for a day or two, to sort our belongings and
part company, I to return south, they to go on north and after many
tedious delays to reach Algiers. The pleasant people of Auderas came
to say good-bye. My companions walked a mile or so along my road,
over the valley and hill, till we reached the plain sloping down to
Taruaji. There they turned back. With me were only Sidi my guide,
Amadu my servant, and one camel boy. Sidi had not been to Nigeria for
many years and I was anxious for him to see modern Kano. We travelled
fast, stopping only one day on the way in order to try to save a
camel which had caught pneumonia during the bitterly cold nights
in Azawagh. We went by Inwatza, the pool of Tizraet near Turayet,
Akaraq, Eghalgawen, Milen, Hannekar and Tanut, and then straight into
Nigeria without going to Zinder. On 29th December, the thirty-third
day after leaving Iferuan, I reached Kano again after a journey of
some 550 miles in twenty-nine marches. Even the Tuareg admitted that
it was fast travelling. The camels arrived very fit indeed and were
sold. A fortnight later I was embarking at Lagos for England.
PLATE 50
[Illustration: MT. BILA AT SUNSET]
My guide, Sidi, was astonished at the prosperity and development of
Kano. I gave him some small presents and a few things to take back
to Ahodu of Auderas. He left Kano before I did, as he had found a
caravan returning north and did not want to miss the opportunity of
travelling with friends. He came to see me in the morning of the day
he was due to leave, and we walked round the European quarter of Kano
together. I happened to be with a French officer at the time. We met
Sidi waiting where I had told him to be, under a certain tree in front
of a well-known merchant’s store in the European town of Kano. Sidi
got up and greeted me. His hand and mine brushed over one another’s,
the fingers being withdrawn with a closing snap. I gave him the usual
greeting: “Ma’-tt-uli,” and he replied very solemnly, “El
Kheir ’Ras”; which mean, “How do you fare?” and “Naught but
good.” When Tuareg meet these hand-clasps and greetings continue to
punctuate their conversation for a long time. They are varied with the
question, “Iselan?” meaning, “What news?” to which the right
answer is, “Kalá, kalá,” “No, no!” since for them any news
must be bad news. Then, as I have said, Sidi and I and the Frenchman
walked together; the latter looked wonderingly at the demeanour
of my friend, whom he did not know. At last it was time for Sidi
to join the camels of his caravan. Their number had been increased
by one camel which I had given to him. He turned to say good-bye,
but did not speak at all. He took my hand and held it with both of
his, and then bowed his forehead till his veil touched my fingers. I
gave him the thanks of the Lord in Arabic, and he murmured something
incomprehensible. My French friend looked on curiously. And then Sidi
without glancing at him turned quickly and walked away like a Prince
of the Earth striding over the land. He walked erect and swiftly till
I lost him to sight. He never turned his head again.
He was in many ways rather a ruffian, but, like his folk, patient,
long-suffering and unforgiving. He was a true specimen of the Tuareg
race.
These people never become angry or speak loud: I have rarely seen them
excited, but they have an indomitable spirit and for that reason will
perhaps survive. They say, “Kiss the hand you cannot cut off,” and
again, “The path, though it be winding, and the King, though he be
old.” So they may have patience after all to wait for the fulfilment
of their fate and not throw themselves fruitlessly again on rifles or
machine-guns. I remember sitting at Gamram one evening on the ruins of
the walls of the town where once their rulers lived as wardens of the
marches of the desert on that great Saharan road. In my diary I wrote:
“Last night I sat on the old walls looking west towards the yellow
sunset under a blue-black cloud of rain hanging low in the sky. A man
had lit a fire which smoked very much, and the west wind was carrying
the smoke away over the wall in a horizontal streak between me and
the sunset. They have gone, the Tuareg, from history like that streak
of smoke. Even the Almoravids are only a name. I wonder why. They
have fought with a losing hand so long. They were driven down from
the north by the Arabs and by Europe, and harried by everyone. They
have also harried others well. Finally, the French have come and have
occupied their country. For long it was thought that the Tuareg would
be untamable. They fought well and hard. The fire of old remained. In
Air it broke again into flame in 1917 with Kaossen’s revolt, but in
the end the force of European arms prevailed. The French killed many
and punished the people of Air very hardly, too hardly as some of
their own officers think, in dealing with a people which is already
so small and tending to die out. But though calm and peaceful to-day
like the smoke carried away from the fire by the walls of Gamram,
the point of flame remains. I could see the heart of the fire from
which the smoke was coming. I wonder if the flame will burst forth
again. You have fought well, you people. You would not bow your necks,
so they have been broken, but perhaps your day may come again. It
grew dark on the walls of Gamram and the sunset of rain faded away;
the fire continued to burn, but my thoughts turned elsewhere, to
my journey, to my riding camel (wondering whether it would survive:
I gave it some millet that night as extra fodder), to England, and to
what I should have to eat there. I had an omelette which I made myself,
and some fresh milk for supper that evening. Thence my thoughts turned
to other things as well. . . .”
And here it is better that I close. It is on the knees of the gods how
they achieve their destiny. I hope that the gods will be good to them.
They were my very good friends, and I was very pleased to live with
them, for they were very agreeable. Perhaps we shall meet again and
travel together once more. And so their proverb, which has seemed to
me very true, will be fulfilled for them and for me. They say that:
“LIVING PEOPLE OFTEN MEET.”
APPENDIX I
A LIST OF THE ASTRONOMICALLY DETERMINED POINTS IN AIR
The positions given in the following table have been collected from
the record of the proceedings of the Foureau-Lamy Mission, from the
list given on the second sheet of the “Carte de l’Air” prepared
by the Mission Cortier and others on a scale of 1/500,000, and from
the observations by the author. Two positions given in Lieut. Jean’s
_Les Touareg du Sud-Est_ are also included. The French longitudes have
been converted into longitudes east of Greenwich by the addition 2°
20′ 14″.
The author’s observations were carried out with a three-inch
transit theodolite by Cary and Porter, and were in all cases stellar
sights. The latitudes were in all cases determined from pairs of
north and south circum-meridian stars, or from altitudes of Polaris
and one south star. The longitudes were determined by calculations
based on local mean time derived from pairs of east and west stars,
and chronometric differences from points which had previously been
determined by French travellers. Where the author’s longitudes for
points previously determined by French observers are also given,
they are the result of chronometric differences from other points
previously or successively visited. The author, however, has not used
his own longitudes for determining intermediate points when French
observations were available, and his co-ordinates in these instances
are only reproduced for purposes of comparison.
The data for the Foureau-Lamy observations are described in the
record of the proceedings of the expedition. The source of the
positions given on the Cortier map is not stated. The data for
Colonel Tilho’s positions are in the record of the delimitation of
the northern boundary of Nigeria. The author’s computations are in
the records of the Royal Geographical Society in London, where are
also the original route reports and prismatic compass traverses made
throughout the journey.
Where possible the author’s chronometric differences were checked by
opening and closing a series of observations on points previously fixed
by French observers. In one unfortunate case, however, the author’s
watches stopped as a result of his camels going astray and the series
was consequently broken. His watches again stopped at Auderas, where,
however, he stayed a sufficient length of time to re-rate them. At
this place a number of local mean time observations were taken over
a long period.
The author’s longitude observations were carried out as follows:
Series A opened at Fanisau camp near Kano from a position supplied by
the Survey school—closed at Tessawa— Dan Kaba (unreliable),
intermediate position.
Series B opened at Tessawa—_not_ closed: Urufan-Gangara-Tanut,
intermediate positions.
Series C _not_ opened—closed at T’in Wana: Termit—Teskar-Guliski,
intermediate positions.
Series D opened at T’in Wana—closed at Auderas.
Series E opened at Auderas—watches rated—closed at Auderas.
Series F opened at Auderas—closed at Auderas: Abarakan-Teginjir-Telia-
Teloas, intermediate positions.
Series G opened at Auderas—closed at Auderas: Aggata-Assode-Afis-
Iferuan, intermediate positions.
The author’s meteorological record, which was kept for nine months,
has not been reproduced. It consists of daily maximum and minimum,
actual (twice daily), and wet and dry bulb temperatures; aneroid
readings; wind and rainfall, and sunset and sunrise notes. It is at
any student’s disposal to consult.
The following abbreviations are used in the ensuing table:
F—Foureau; Ch—Chambrun (see Record of Foureau-Lamy expedition);
R—Rodd; T—Tilho; C—Cortier’s Map of Air; J—Jean’s _Touareg
du Sud-Est_.
------------------+--------------+----------+-----------+----------
| |Latitude, | Longitude |
Place. | Area. | north. | (east of |Authority.
| | |Greenwich).|
------------------+--------------+----------+-----------+----------
| | ° ′ ″ | ° ′ ″ |
| | | |
DAN KABA[433] |Nigeria | 13-12-40 | 7-44-30 | R
| | | |
TESSAWA |Tessawa |13-45-20·5| 7-59-12·6| T
| | | |
| | 13-45-50 | 7-59-15 | R
| | | |
URUFAN |Tessawa | 14-04-50 | 8-06-25 | R
| | | |
GANGARA |Damergu | 14-36-30 | 8-27-32 | F
| | | |
| | 14-36-42 | — | Ch
| | | |
| | 14-36-50 | 8-25-40 | R
| | | |
TANUT[434] |Damergu | 14-58-20 | 8-47-50 | R
| | | |
GULISKI |Damergu | 15-00-50 | 9-06-20 | R
| | | |
TESHKAR |Elakkos | 15-07-40 | 10-35-10 | R
| | | |
TERMIT |Eastern Desert| 16-04-10 | 11-04-50 | R
| | | |
ABELLAMA |Tegama-Azawagh| 16-16-32 | 7-47-19 | C
| | | |
MARANDET |Tegama-Azawagh| 16-22-20 | 7-24-14 | C
| | | |
AIN IRHAYEN |Tegama-Azawagh| 16-26-40 | 7-55-22 | C
| | | |
TABZAGUR |Tegama-Azawagh| 16-36-57 | 7-08-17 | C
| | | |
TIN WANA |S. Air | 16-42-32 | 8-25-19 | C
(T’in-Nouana) | | | |
| | | |
| | 16-42-55 | 8-25-15 | R
| | | |
IN GALL |S.W. Air | 16-47-08 | 6-54-15 | C
| | | |
TEBEHIC | S. Air | 16-47-32 | 8-21-14 | C
| | | |
EGHALGAWEN | S. Air | 16-48-21 | 8-31-19 | C
| | | |
AGADES (Post) | S. Air | 16-59-19 | 7-57-15 | C
| | | |
„ (T’in | S. Air | 16-59-02 | (8-24-18) | J
Shaman[435]) | | | |
| | | |
TIN DAWIN | S. Air | 17-00-07 | 8-26-19 | C
| | | |
TIN TABORAQ | S. Air | 17-01-50 | 8-08-19 | C
| | | |
TAGIDDA N’ADRAR | W. Air | 17-04-13 | 7-22-21 | C
| | | |
ANU ARERAN | W. Air | 17-15-27 | 7-43-20 | C
| | | |
FAGOSHIA | W. Air | 17-16-01 | 6-57-17 | C
| | | |
TAFADEK | S. Air | 17-23-32 | 7-55-19 | C
| | | |
TAGIDDA N’T’ISEMT | W. Air | 17-25-38 | 6-34-33 | C
| | | |
TINIEN | S. Air | 17-26-54 | 8-09-02 | F
| | | |
| | 17-26-24 | — | Ch
| | | |
IDIKEL | W. Air | 17-29-42 | 7-37-23 | C
| | | |
TELOAS-TABELLO | E. Air | 17-34-40 | 8-49-30 | R
| | | |
EGERUEN |S.W. Air | 17-35-15 | 7-54-22 | C
| | | |
AUDERAS[436] | C. Air | 17-37-50 | 8-19-00 | R
| | | |
| | 17-38-00 | 8-18-14 | F
| | | |
| | 17-37-48 | 8-19-30 | (C)
| | | |
TELIA | E. Air | 17-47-30 | 8-49-20 | R
| | | |
IN KAKKAN | W. Air | 17-49-22 | 7-48-23 | C
| | | |
IN ABBAGARIT |Western Desert| 17-53-47 | 5-59-15 | C
| | | |
TAMET TEDDERET |Western Desert| 17-54-04 | 6-36-18 | C
| | | |
ANU N’AGERUF | W. Air | 17-54-46 | 7-24-22 | C
| | | |
AURERAN | C. Air | 17-56-54 | 8-23-17 | F
| | | |
| | 17-56-42 | — | Ch
| | | |
TEGINJIR | C. Air | 17-59-20 | — | R
| | | |
ABARAKAN | C. Air | 18-03-30 | 8-39-20 | R
| | | |
AGGATA | C. Air | 18-09-00 | 8-26-40 | R
| | | |
UFA ATIKIN | W. Air | 18-09-26 | 7-12-21 | C
| | | |
IN ALLARAM |Western Desert| 18-16-12 | 6-15-19 | C
| | | |
TAMADALT TAN | W. Air | 18-16-23 | 7-49-18 | C
ATARAM | | | |
| | | |
AFASTO | W. Air | 18-17-08 | 7-17-22 | C
| | | |
ZILALET | W. Air | 18-23-19 | 7-51-21 | C
| | | |
ASSODE | C. Air | 18-27-00 | 8-26-50 | R
| | | |
SIDAWET | C. Air | 18-30-54 | 8-02-20 | C
| | | |
AFIS | N. Air | 18-37-30 | 8-35-40 | R
| | | |
AGELLAL | N. Air | 18-43-02 | 8-07-17 | C
| | | |
| | 18-43-00 | 8-10-02 | F
| | | |
| | 18-43-00 | 8-07-14 | Ch
| | | |
FAODET | N. Air | 18-47-20 | 8-34-50 | R
| | | |
IFERUAN[437] | N. Air | 19-04-10 | 8-22-45 | R
| | | |
| | 19-04-28 | 8-22-22 | C
| | | |
| | 19-04-18 | 8-24-32 | F
| | | |
| | 19-04-12 | 8-21-20 | Ch
| | | |
| | 19-04-03 | 8-24-24 | J
| | | |
ZURIKA | N. Air | 19-14-35 | 7-50-15 | C
| | | |
URAREN |Western Desert| 19-31-44 | 7-08-17 | C
| | | |
IN GEZZAM |Western Desert| 19-33-10 | 5-44-20 | C
------------------+--------------+----------+-----------+----------
HEIGHTS ABOVE SEA LEVEL.[438]
IFERUAN 681 metres (F)
673 „ (C)
URAREN 485 „ (C)
SIDAWET 554 „ (C)
AGELLAL 613 „ (C)
604 „ (F)
AUDERAS 798 „ (F)
AGADES (T’in Shaman) 500 „ (F)
IN GEZZAM 374 „ (C)
ZILALET 557 „ (C)
NOTE.—The exact positions of the observations in the same localities
are not identical in the case of all observers, which accounts for
some of the apparent discrepancies.
[Footnote 433: The Dankaba observation is of somewhat doubtful
accuracy.]
[Footnote 434: The Tanut longitude depends on only one stellar
observation for L.M.T.]
[Footnote 435: Jean’s longitude for T’in Shaman, which is the
site of the French post and therefore also of the rest-house where the
Cortier observation was taken, differs so materially from the latter
that it cannot be accepted. It is described (like the position he
gives for Iferuan) as “d’après F. Foureau,” but I can find no
record in the account of the proceedings of the Foureau-Lamy Mission
to justify this statement.]
[Footnote 436: My camp at Auderas was situated about 400 yards east
of the camp site which the Foureau-Lamy Mission occupied and where,
therefore, Foureau’s observation was probably made. This difference
accounts for the discrepancy in our longitudes. The Cortier map shows
an astronomically fixed point at Auderas which, when measured on
the copy in my possession, gives these co-ordinates, but they are
not recorded in the table on the second sheet of the map, as are
the other positions in Air. Foureau’s latitude is based upon five
observations, one of which is appreciably smaller than the other four;
if this result is omitted from the average, the latitude becomes even
higher than it is given in the table.]
[Footnote 437: Foureau’s latitude for Iferuan is based upon five
observations, one of which is appreciably higher than the other four;
if this result is omitted the average practically coincides with my
observation, which was taken on the identical spot.]
[Footnote 438: The altitudes obtained by me from boiling-point
observations and aneroid readings are not given; they are numerous
but have not been fully worked out.]
APPENDIX II
THE TRIBAL ORGANISATION OF THE TUAREG OF AIR
DIVISION I. The People of the King.
DIVISION II. The Itesan and Kel Geres.
DIVISION III. The Kel Owi.
DIVISION IV. The Tuareg of Damergu.
DIVISION V. Unidentified tribes, generic names, etc.
The work of Barth and Jean has been incorporated in these tables;
further reference to these authors is therefore omitted. Alternative
name forms from these and other sources are given in brackets below
the spelling which has been adopted to conform as far as possible with
the rules of the Royal Geographical Society’s Committee on names.
(N) and (S) respectively signify “noble” and “servile” tribes.
In many cases no territorial identification is given, as tribes have
changed their areas very greatly since 1917-18, nor have they settled
down permanently to occupy other ranges since then. When Northern
Air was cleared by the French patrols, the tribes were moved south,
and for the most part they are therefore now in the neighbourhood
of Agades, or in the Azawagh or even further south. But they are
arranged in a disorderly fashion and are always moving from place to
place; any attempt to give their present areas would be fruitless,
since they will probably prove to be only temporary. The process
of returning north had already commenced in 1922 and has presumably
continued since then. Such locations as are given in the tables refer
to periods prior to 1917 unless the contrary is stated.
The left-hand column gives the name of the original tribal stock so far
as it has been possible to trace one. The next column gives the names
of the tribes and sub-tribes formed by the original group. It is often
impossible to state for certain whether large tribes are still to be
described as such, or whether they have become independent tribes with
subsidiary clans. Thus the whole classification must be considered
approximate. It is designed to carry one stage further the system
commenced by Barth, and continued by Jean. Where these two authorities
are stated to have made mistakes or to have been inaccurate, the
brevity of such phrases, occasioned as it has been by the use of a
tabular form of arrangement, does not denote more than an expression
of different opinion. It is intended to convey no disparagement,
but merely to obviate circumlocution. The remarks in the right-hand
column are intended to be read in conjunction with the relevant parts
of the text of this book to which they are supplementary.
DIVISION I. THE PEOPLE OF THE KING.