CHAPTER XII

THE HISTORY OF AIR

PART I

THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TUAREG TO AIR

The history of Air is inextricably mixed up with the problems of Tuareg ethnology. It is best to treat the various questions which arise as a whole. Information for all the earlier events is scanty. As has already become apparent in previous chapters, much must be based on deduction, since no early written evidence of the Air people exists but that contained in their rock inscriptions. In later years the practice arose of keeping book records or tribal histories in Arabic; they were designed to establish the nobility of origin of the various clans, a subject of continual dispute among the Tuareg; but most of these precious books, which used to be kept in the mosques or houses of the learned men, were lost when the whole of Air north of the Central massifs was cleared by French Camel patrols after the 1917 rebellion.

For long the avowed policy of the French authorities was to remove the population of the mountains of Air lock, stock and barrel, and settle them in the lands of Damergu and the Sudan. The Tuareg, as may be imagined, took unkindly to living in the plains away from the mountains and desert to which they were used. They cannot be persuaded to settle on the land as agriculturists except after generations of contact with tillers of the soil, and even then they only adopt the new mode of life in a half-hearted fashion or as a result of intermarriage, and as a consequence lose their individuality. Besides embittering relations to an extent which may prove irremediable, the French policy was otherwise disastrous from a local point of view. After being driven out of their homes in the mountains, these people were not content to live in the half-way house of the Damergu plains or in Damagarim. Many of them moved out of French territory altogether into Nigeria, where they had no quarrel with the authorities and where existence was even easier than in the belt between the Sahara and the Sudan. As many as 30,000 Veiled People left Air; most of them settled in the Emirates of Kano and Katsina.

Depopulation in Air allowed the desert to encroach. Wells fell in, gardens went out of tillage, and the live-stock of the country, more especially the camel herds, were reduced to a fraction of what they had been. These factors in turn contributed to make it harder than ever to reopen the old caravan roads, after they had been closed during the Great War. From the economic standpoint the possibility of obtaining any return from the military occupation of this part of the Sahara became more than ever problematical. Finally, the cruel evacuation of Air, for which there was no administrative excuse save that of short-sighted expediency, made it infinitely more difficult to obtain information regarding the origin and habits of a people who are in any case probably doomed to disappear before the advance of civilisation. The records in their mosques were abandoned to be rained on and gradually destroyed. Tradition is being lost among a younger generation in a new environment. In 1922 the policy of the French was reversed and the population was being encouraged to return to their homes, but one is inclined to wonder whether it was not already too late.

In the course of my stay in Air I heard of two books on tribal lore and history. The one which appeared the most important had belonged to the family of Ahodu, chief of Auderas village, and had long been in the possession of his forefathers. In 1917, when the northern villages were cleared, the book was left in a hiding-place, but all my efforts and those of Ahodu to trace it were in vain. Later I heard of another similar work at Agades, but only after I had left the town. It is kept by a woman called Taburgula, and is quoted by the Kel Geres as their authority for the nobility, etc. of the tribes of the south.[356]

Certain extracts from a Chronicle of Air have been collected and translated by H. R. Palmer, Lieut.-Governor of Northern Nigeria. The information was contained in the notes of a Hausa scribe, who seems to have compiled them on the authority of a manuscript which is probably still extant in Air. The compilation is not necessarily accurate, but ranks as good material, and has already been referred to in previous chapters as the Agades Chronicle.[357]

Finally, there is the record of Sultan Bello, Emir of Sokoto, when Denham and Clapperton reached the Sudan in 1824. Bello was a great historian, and probably the most enlightened ruler in Africa of his day. He has left for us a history without which we should find it difficult to piece together the story of Air and the neighbouring countries.[358]

Such information as it was possible to obtain to supplement these authorities and Jean and Barth was derived from numerous conversations with the older men whom I met in Air. By repetition and sifting it acquired sufficient consistency probably to represent, somewhat approximately, the truth. Apart from an inadequate knowledge of the language, I encountered another great difficulty in research. The years 1917 and 1918 were so calamitous for the Tuareg that circumstances obliged them to change many of their habits of life and scattered their traditions. There was always a danger of being misled by assuming that present practices represented historical customs, or that deductions made in 1922 were necessarily as accurate as if the observations had been made in 1850.

The early history of Air may be resolved into the answers to the three problems: When did the Tuareg reach Air? Where did they come from? And, whom did they meet on arrival? We shall deal with the last first, piecing together such scanty evidence as is at our disposal.

The existence at an early date in North Africa of negroid people much further north than their present limit of permanent habitation is generally admitted. It is logical to suppose that Air, which is an eminently habitable land, was therefore originally occupied by a negroid race. In support of this supposition there is the testimony of Muhammad el Bakeir,[359] son of Sultan Muhammad el Addal, to the effect that the Goberawa originally possessed Air, under the leadership of “Kipti” or Copts. Bello adds that the Goberawa were a free people and that they were the noblest of the Hausa-speaking races. It is not clear what the mention of Kipti can mean, except that the influence of the Egyptian Coptic church was spread as far afield as Air;[360] and this is possible, for traces of Christianity from the Nile Valley can probably be found in the Chad area. It may, on the other hand, merely mean that there was a North African element in the racial composition of the Goberawa; and this is certainly true, for the Hausa people are not pure Negroes. Gober was the most northern Hausa state, and later the home of Othman dan Fodio, the founder of the Fulani empire.[361] The Agades Chronicle states that the people of Daura, who are regarded as the purest of the Hausa, whatever this people or race may eventually be proved to be, first ruled in Air; but they grew weak and were conquered by the Kanuri, who in their turn gave place to the Goberawa.

Asben is the name by which Air is still known in the Southland, and the word is probably of the same root as “Abyssinia” and the Arabic “Habesh.” It may also perhaps be found in the name Agisymba Regio, but no significance need be attached to this, for the name seems to have been applied very widely in Africa to countries inhabited by negroid people.[362]

The exact ethnic origin of the first negroid inhabitants of Air or their order does not signify very much, once their racial character is established. Although at first sight the presence of negroids might seem to account for the peculiar aspect of the city of Agades, its true explanation, as we have seen, must be sought elsewhere.[363] The date of the foundation of Agades is considerably later than the displacement of the early inhabitants of Air by the advent of the first Tuareg.

In addition to the negroid people of Air, the first Tuareg are said by Bello to have found some Sanhaja in the country, by which term he presumably means some Western Muleththemin, who lived in the first or second of Leo’s zones. This is to some extent confirmed by Ibn Batutah’s accounts of the tribes which he encountered in these parts, but I have been unable to trace their descendants with any degree of certainty. Some of their descendants may probably be found in Azawagh and Damergu;[364] the Mesufa of Ibn Batutah are also quite likely to have been Sanhaja. Another tribe of the same name and origin occurs in North-west Morocco.

The Goberawa capital at this time was T’in Shaman, like the later Agades lying at the southern borders of the country, a site naturally likely to be selected by a people of equatorial origin with homes further south. T’in Shaman or Ansaman is stated by Barth to have been some twenty miles from Agades on the road to Auderas; but I conceive this may be a slip. I was only able to find the name applied in Air to the wells of T’in Shaman, which lie in the direction given, but scarcely two miles from the city, near the site of the present French fort. Although the name appears to be a Libyan form it does not follow that the town was of Tuareg origin or was inhabited by them in early Goberawa days. Record of it has come to us from Tuareg sources, referable to a period when Tuareg and Goberawa were living side by side in Air, but we do not know the Goberawa form of the name. These two folk were both in the area before the first Tuareg immigration, when Libyan influence was already strong in Air, and also after the first immigration, but before the second brought in a sufficient number of Tuareg to effect the expulsion of the Goberawa.[365] A certain degree of civilisation must have existed in Air even in these early days, for several learned men, inhabitants of T’in Shaman, are mentioned by the historians of Negroland.[366] That it was not a Tuareg town is further shown by the information recorded, that when Agades was eventually founded in the fifteenth century A.D., it was from Ir n’Allem and not from T’in Shaman: Ir n’Allem may be doubtfully identified with a site north of Agades well within the defending hills near Solom Solom.[367] Of greater interest perhaps is the close analogy between the names of T’in Shaman or Ansaman and Nasamones, that great tribe of travellers on the Great Syrtis described by Herodotus. There is no doubt that with such caravaneers as we know lived in the north, the influence of the Tuareg in Air and the South generally must have been great for a long time before they settled there.

Into Air, inhabited by negroids and Sanhaja, came the modern Tuareg of Air. What happened to the Goberawa in the process of time as a consequence of this movement can easily be assumed. Whatever may have been the terms of a peaceful settlement, the negroid people were either driven back into Central Africa here as elsewhere, or they became the serfs[368] of the conquerors, and were incorporated into the race as Imghad tribes. The darker element among them must certainly in part be accounted for in this manner.

The modern Tuareg immigrants can broadly be divided into the three categories, of which the exact significance has already become apparent. They are the Kel Owi tribes who came into the country quite recently, the Kel Geres tribes and those septs collectively known as the People of the King. Of these, the Kel Geres, as well as a once separate but now associated tribe, the Itesan, are no longer in Air, but live in an area north of Sokoto, whither they migrated in comparatively recent times. It requires to be established whether the people who came to Air before the Kel Owi, all arrived at much the same time, or in different waves, when the respective movements took place, and who in each case were the immigrants.

PLATE 47

[Illustration: SIDI]

THE FIRST IMMIGRATION

Before attacking these problems, it will be necessary, because relevant to their solution, to consider the direction from which the invasion took place. Tuareg traditions without any exception ascribe a northern home to the race. They maintain that they reached Air from that direction in different waves at different times and by different routes. Ask any Tuareg of the older tribes about the history of his people and he will say, for instance: “My people, the Kel Tadek, have been in the country since the beginning of the world,” but he will add in the same breath: “But we are a people from the north, from far away, not like the niggers of the south.” They have a story to the effect that the Sultan of Stambul, seeing how North Africa was over-populated,[369] ordered the tribes which had taken refuge on the borders of the Libyan desert in the region of Aujila and the Eastern Fezzan to migrate and spread the true religion far afield. The Tuareg, with the Itesan leading, thereupon came into Air. Now, whatever else they were, the Libyans at the time of these early movements were, of course, not Moslems, nor is it likely that any Khalif or Emperor at Constantinople intervened in the way suggested. There is not even any reason to suppose that the migration occurred in the Moslem era, though we are not as yet concerned with dates. Such details as these are picturesque embellishments added in the course of time to popular tradition. I can agree that the Tuareg came _from_ the north; but I am less than certain that they came _by_ the north.

North of Air, about half-way between the wells of Asiu and the Valley of T’iyut, there is a small hill called Maket n’Ikelan, which means in Temajegh, “The Mecca (or shrine) of the Slaves.”[370] This is said to have been the northernmost boundary of the old kingdom of Gober. At Maket n’Ikelan the custom was preserved among passing Tuareg caravans of allowing the slaves to make merry and dance and levy a small tribute from their masters. The hill was probably a pagan place of worship, but is important from the historical point of view, because tradition represents, somewhat erroneously as regards details, that there, “when the Kel Owi took possession of old Gober with its capital at T’in Shaman, a compromise was entered into between the Red conquerors and the Black natives, that the latter should not be destroyed and that the principal chief of the Kel Owi should be allowed to marry a black woman.” The story is interesting, though there has evidently been a slight confusion of thought, because there was already a large Tuareg population in Air before the Kel Owi came comparatively late in history; and it is not they who were the first Tuareg in the plateau. The marriage of the red chief with a black slave woman may be an allusion, and perhaps a direct one, to the practice associated with the Sultan of Air.[371]

With the old frontier of Gober at Maket n’Ikelan one might from this story have supposed that the first Tuareg invaders met the original inhabitants of the country there and came to an agreement regarding an occupation of the northern mountains, whence they eventually overran the whole plateau. Although such a conclusion would seem to be borne out by such traditions as I have quoted of a descent from the north, the weight of evidence indicates the south-east as the direction from which the first Tuareg actually came. But this will be seen to be not incompatible with a northern home for the race. The view is only in conflict with the Maket n’Ikelan tradition if the latter is interpreted literally. The terms of the settlement of treaty need only be associated with a point in Northern Air, inasmuch as the site in question marked the frontier of the old kingdom of Gober, which the Tuareg eventually took over in its entirety from its ancient possessors. It need not be supposed that the Treaty was made _at_ Maket n’Ikelan. I regard this old frontier point as merely symbolic of the event.

The testimony of Sultan Bello regarding the first migration of the People of the Veil is most helpful.[372] “Adjoining Bornu, on the south side, is the province of Air (_i.e._ on the south side of Air). It is inhabited by the Tuareg and by some remnants of the Sanhaja and the Sudanese. This province was formerly in the hands of the Sudanese inhabitants of Gober, but five tribes of the Tuareg, called Amakeetan, Tamkak, Sendal, Agdalar, and Ajaraneen, came out of Aowjal[373] and conquered it. They nominated a prince for themselves from the family of Ansatfen, but they quarrelled among themselves and dismissed him.” Bello thereupon goes on to describe the Arabian origin of the Tuareg people.

I agree with Barth[374] that these five tribes probably did not come from Aujila oasis itself, but his remark that one of the five tribes was “the Aujila tribe” is surely a mistake. Bello distinctly speaks of the five tribes by name as having come _from_ Aowjal. Aujila seems never to have been the name of a people. As far back as Herodotus[375] it is already a place name. As for Bello’s reference to the selection of a ruler from a slave family, it is probably an allusion to the practice we have already examined,[376] for Ansatfen, _i.e._ n’Sattafan, means “of the black ones,” from the word “sattaf” = “black.” The fact that according to the Agades Chronicle the ninth Sultan was called Muhammad Sottofé (the Black), who ruled from A.D. 1486-93, and is referred to in Sudanese records, in some measure confirms the accuracy of Bello’s history.

The story that the first Tuareg came from Aujila is nothing more than a reflection of their own tradition that they came from a far country in the north-east, where one of the most important and well-known points was this oasis, whence people had long been in the habit of trading as far afield as Kawar and even Gao. Aujila was a northern caravan terminus. The trade between Aujila and Kawar, as early as the twelfth century, is referred to by Idrisi,[377] and this reference is the more interesting as it indicates, though at a later period than that of the first Tuareg invasion of Air, a steady stream of traffic organised by the North-eastern Tuareg down the Chad road to Bornu and Kanem. This is most significant; it had probably been going on since the days perhaps of the Nasamonian merchant adventurers.

The Agades Chronicle, on the authority of the learned Ibn Assafarani, says that the first Tuareg who came to Air were the Kel Innek, under a ruler called the Agumbulum; and that other Tuareg followed them. Now, Kel Innek means literally “The People of the East”; it is primarily a generic or descriptive term, and not a tribal proper name. Ibn Assafarani wrote from Asben, where the eastern country always and necessarily means the area around Lake Chad. Bello further mentions that when the Kanuri entered Kanem they settled there as strangers under the government of the Amakeetan, one of the five tribes previously mentioned as the first to enter Air. He also refers to the latter by the general name of Kel Innek. Again, one of the two tribes in Elakkos, between Air and Lake Chad, are the Immikitan, while we know from Leo that the Lemta Tuareg occupied an area extending from the north-eastern Fezzan to Kuka on Lake Chad.[378] This evidence, therefore, leads one to the conclusion that the first Tuareg, or at any rate some of the first Tuareg, to enter Air were not migrants from the north, that is to say, from Ghat or Ahaggar, but from Kanem and from Bornu in the south-east, which parts are racially connected with the Fezzan and not with the former areas. In the course of these movements a group of Immikitan remained in Elakkos, which, we have seen on the quite distinct evidence of the Ilagwas, was in any case connected with the Lemta country of the north.

There exists to-day a sub-tribe of the Itesan bearing the name of Kel Innek. On the analogy of what occurred among the Kel Ahamellen, among the Ahaggaren, and in recent years in Air also among the Kel Tafidet, it is almost certain that we have an example here of a name originally applied to a sub-tribe and the whole group simultaneously but now used to differentiate a sub-tribe only. The Itesan of to-day, in spite of their connection with the Kel Geres, were, as will be explained later on, among the original invaders of Air, a fact which might in any case have been deduced from the survival among them, and not among other confederations, of the name Kel Innek.

It appears unnecessary when such an easy interpretation of the available evidence is forthcoming, and above all when some of the names accurately recorded by Bello are still traceable in Air, to assume that they are erroneous. I cannot follow Barth at all when he is dealing with these early tribes. He seems to have created difficulties where they do not exist. It is not necessary to suppose that the five tribes came into Air to form an entrepôt for their trade between Negroland and Aujila or the north-east generally; the suggestion is so far-fetched that even Barth admitted that the whole affair was peculiar.[379]

If an invasion of Air from the south-east took place, what provoked it? In order to establish even an approximate date, which Jean puts at about A.D. 800, without, however, giving his reasons, a digression into the story of Bornu is necessary.

Bello, referring to the people east of Lake Chad, mentions an early invasion from the Yemen as far as Bornu. He calls the invaders “Barbars,”[380] which name, however, he seems later to transfer to the Tuareg, finally, however, reserving it for the Kanuri. Europeans nowadays, adding considerably to the confusion, have called the Libyans “Berbers” and the Kanuri “Beriberi.” The invasion from the Yemen is reported to have taken place under Himyer, but on the showing of El Masa’udi’s history, probably the most valuable for so mythical a period, Himyer has been confused with another hero, Ifrikos. There are other references to an invasion from Arabia across Africa in various authorities, including Ibn Khaldun. Whether the invaders were the Kanuri, as the name “Barbar” given to them by Bello seems to imply, or whether they displaced the Kanuri, causing the latter to move into Kanem and settle as strangers under the rule of the Immikitan, then resident in that region, or whether, in fine, the Kanuri are not a race but a congeries of people, it is both difficult and irrelevant here to determine. In the first case there are no difficulties about the application of the name Barbar to the Kanuri; in the second, the participation of the Kanuri in a movement connected with a people from Arabia might easily lead Bello to a confusion resulting in his identification of the Kanuri with, and his application of Barbar to, the latter. After the settlement of the Kanuri in Kanem and Bornu under the Tuareg, the name Barbar, originally that of the subject people, came to be applied to the inhabitants of the country as a whole, thus including the Tuareg. The persistence of the name is the more easily accounted for by the predominance later on of the people to whom it originally belonged, in spite of their situation in the beginning, for, as we shall see later, the Tuareg, their masters in the early days, were gradually displaced in Kanem and Bornu at a period which might coincide with their invasion of Air.

The history of Kanem and Bornu, at first under a single government, is recorded in a chronicle collected by Barth.[381] It is, of course, not entirely trustworthy, but the salient facts are reasonably correct. The first king of Kanem, Sef, doubtfully referred to about A.D. 850, founded a dynasty and reigned over Berbers,[382] Tebu, and people of Kanem. This dynasty, called Duguwa, after the name of the grandson of Sef, continued until the end of the reign of Abd el Jelil or Selma I, who was succeeded in 1086 by Hume, the first king of the Beni Hume dynasty. Hume was reputed to be the son of Selma I, and the change of name in the ruling dynasty is attributed to the fact that the former was the first Moslem ruler,[383] whereas his predecessors were not. The chronology is confirmed by El Bekri’s statement,[384] written towards the end of the Beni Dugu dynasty, that Arki, the ante-penultimate king of the line in 1067, was a pagan. The dynastic change of name is even more important when the ethnic relation of the kings of the Beni Dugu and the Beni Hume are examined. During the period of the Beni Dugu, Bornu, according to Sultan Bello, was under the rule of the Tuareg. In the Chronicle two of the Duguwa kings are stated to have had mothers of the Temagheri tribe, while another was descended from a woman of the Beni Ghalgha bearing the Libyan name of Tumayu. The name Beni Ghalgha reminds one perhaps only fortuitously of the Kel Ghela,[385] while Temagheri may simply be a variant for Temajegh, which of course is the female form in the Air dialect of Imajegh, meaning a Tuareg noble, though I am told this etymology is unlikely. The importance of the women in the ancestry of these kings, as among all the Tuareg, is emphasised by the mention of their names. With the Beni Hume, on the other hand, the alliances seem to have been contracted, no longer with Tuareg women, but from Hume’s successor, Dunama I, till the reign of Abd el Jelil or Selma II, with Tebu women. In any event there are good reasons to believe that the change in the name of the dynasty at the end of Selma I’s reign in 1086 means more than a mere change in religion; it marks the passing of the power of the Tuareg in Bornu.[386]

The year 1086 may therefore also mark approximately the first wave of the Tuareg migration into Air. The immigration was probably gradual, since tradition records no single event or cataclysm to account for the changes which took place, which have, on the contrary, to be deduced from stories like that of Maket n’Ikelan and the change in the name of a dynasty. But 1086 is probably the latest date of the migration into Air and it may have been earlier. The invaders were the five tribes already mentioned, together with or including others which it would be difficult to trace by name, though one of them was probably the Itesan. All the tribes concerned can be traced among the People of the King, most of them in Air, though the Igdalen are on the south-eastern fringe of the plateau. The Itesan, whose dominant position in Air involved them in the vicissitudes of the Kel Geres, shared in their expulsion from the mountains. But the others belong to the Amenokal, and none of them to that later personage, the Añastafidet.

The Beni Hume dynasty in Bornu may be regarded as a Tebu dynasty or a negroid dynasty with Tebu alliances. The Chronicle makes this line continue until its expulsion from Kanem by the Bulala, a negroid people from east of Lake Chad, early in the fourteenth century, and its final extinction with the Bulala conquest of Bornu itself in the fifteenth century. The Beni Hume line seems in reality to have terminated in 1177, when Abdallah, or Dala, came to the throne. His half-brother, Selma II, is described as the first black king of Bornu, his predecessors having been fair-skinned like the Arabs. It is this reign which really seems to mark the advent to power of the negroid Kanuri, to which Bello makes allusion, even if it is not to be looked for earlier with the rise of the Beni Hume themselves. Bello describes the occurrence in the following terms:[387] “They came to Kanem and settled there as strangers under the government of the Tawarek . . . but they soon rebelled against them and usurped the country.” But I am nevertheless not disposed to consider the Beni Hume negroid Kanuri, so much as a Tebu or similar stock,[388] for, in the reign of Dunama II, the son of Selma II, we find, after a series of marriages with Tebu women, an apparently definite change of policy. No more Tebu women are recorded as the mothers of kings, and instead the great Dunama II, who ruled from 1221 to 1259, waged a war which lasted seven years, seven months and seven days against these people. As the result of this campaign he extended the jurisdiction of the empire of Kanem over the Fezzan, which remained within its borders for over a century.[389]

The fall of the Duguwa in Bornu at the end of the eleventh century was, then, the ultimate reason for the first Tuareg invasion of Air. We should thus have a fairly satisfactory date were it not probably to be regarded only as the latest limiting date, since the overthrow of the Tuareg dynasty probably only marked the culmination in Bornu of a steadily growing ethnic pressure from the east and north. An additional reason for assuming a late date for the invasion of Air is the detail recorded by Bello, that when the Kel Innek arrived they found some Sanhaja tribes already there. Now the true Sanhaja confederation was not brought into being until the beginning of the eleventh century, the most probable period for tribes of this division to have wandered as far afield as Air. It follows that the invasion of the Kel Innek should be placed later than that or towards the end of the century.

There is scarcely any evidence regarding the earliest period at which it might have taken place. It may be possible to arrive at an estimate, when the results of further researches into the history of Bornu have been made public. It would be most interesting to learn, for instance, when the first Tuareg reached Bornu and Kanem. Is their presence there as a ruling caste to be ascribed to the very early days, or are they to be considered as having come in at a comparatively late epoch? It is difficult to reconcile their presence there in the earliest times with their failure to fuse to a greater extent with the local negroid population and their consequent retention of the individuality which they still possessed when they entered Air.

In the four centuries preceding A.D. 850, when the first Beni Dugu king ascended the throne, there are no recorded events in North Africa very likely to have caused extensive emigration of the Tuareg of the Fezzan to Equatoria, other than the Arab conquest; the only other invasion, that of Chosroes with the Persians in A.D. 616, does not seem to have had a far-reaching effect, or to have been accompanied by foreign immigration on a large scale. The first invasion of the Arabs in the seventh century was only small and at first did not cause widespread ethnic disturbances.[390] Okba invaded the Fezzan in A.H. 46 with only a small expeditionary force; the previous expedition of A.H. 26 was probably not larger. Arab pressure only began to become intense in the eighth century, when the conquest of Spain after Tariq’s exploits in A.D. 710 had become an accomplished fact. And then there followed another pause until the Hillalian invasion in the eleventh century took place.

On the other hand, the presence of Tuareg in the earliest days in the lands east of Lake Chad would find some justification in the position recorded of the Temahu in the southern part of the Libyan desert by Egyptian records. They might also explain the mysterious Blemmyes and the Men with Eyes in their Stomachs referred to by the classical authors.

On the whole I prefer not to speculate too much along these lines for fear of plunging into deep waters connected with the people of the upper Nile basin. I shall simply regard the Tuareg of Bornu as a part of the Lemta of the Fezzan, which we may assume from various sources they were. In consequence, however slender the evidence, it becomes difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Tuareg reached Bornu from the north along the Bilma road in the course of the Arab invasions of the eighth century. They remained as rulers of the country until they were driven from there also, in consequence of increasing Arab pressure in the Fezzan and in Equatoria itself, for in the middle of the eleventh century the Hillal and Soleim Arabs are found extending their conquests as far as Central Africa. Their fighting under Abu Zeid el Hillali against the Alamt (Lemta) Tuareg in the Fezzan is still remembered in the traditions of the Equatorial Arab tribes.

All we can say with any degree of certainty is that somewhere between the eighth and eleventh centuries the Lemta Tuareg eventually emigrated from the Chad countries. In due course the first five tribes reached Air, with Elakkos and Damergu behind them already occupied. But in Air they only peopled the whole land later on. Some of the Tuareg of this emigration never entered Air at all or stayed in Damergu, but moved still further west to form with other groups from the north the Tademekkat and Kel el Suk, as well as some of the communities of Tuareg on the Niger. Subsequent historical events isolated the Air tribes, and when other waves of Tuareg joined them, their original relationship with the western Tuareg and the Aulimmiden had been forgotten. The origin of the latter is to be explained in this wise, and not by supposing that they arrived from Mauretania, as Barth would have it.[391] The further westward movement of the Tuareg from Lake Chad is borne out by a reference in Ibn Khaldun’s works to some Itesan[392] under the name of Beni Itisan among the Sanhaja.

Tradition represents that the oldest people in Air are those known to-day as the People of the King and the Itesan to whom the most evolved handiwork in the plateau, including the deep wells, is attributed. With the Itesan are associated all the older and more remarkable houses in Air. The form and construction of these buildings evidently had a great influence on the subsequent inhabitants, but as they are all found in an already evolved type, it is clear that the tradition and experience necessary for building them must have been brought from elsewhere. In accepting the view that these houses are the work of the Itesan and not of the later immigrants I can only follow the unanimous opinion of the natives to-day, who are, if anything, too prone to attribute anything remarkable to them. It may, of course, be discovered later that the Itesan had nothing to do with any of these works, and it is all the more curious that in their present habitat north of Sokoto they should have shown no similar architectural propensities. It is also strange that most of the “Kel names” among the Itesan are derived from places west of the Central massifs, while most of the large settlements containing the best so-called “Itesan” houses are on the east side. But the houses and wells in Air do not seem to be associated with the Kel Geres, with whom the Itesan now live, and there seems to be no doubt whatever in the minds of the natives that they are the works of the latter and not of other immigrants.

The architectural technique shows that the race was in process of cultural decay when it reached Air, and that under the influence of new environment the memory and tradition of this civilisation were lost with remarkable rapidity. The succession of events and the causes culminating in the migration of the Chad Tuareg are not inconsistent with such a decline of culture, but only a thorough investigation of the Fezzan will probably throw any light upon its derivation.

The popular view of the origin of these stone buildings bears out the separate identity of the Itesan and the Kel Geres. It is obvious that the two divisions must have entered Air at different times; and since the Itesan were therefore among the first invaders, the Kel Geres must have come in later. This traditional version is further consistent with facts already noticed, in that among the People of the King in Air and among the Itesan it is possible to trace the names of the first recorded tribes to enter Air, whereas their names do not occur among the Kel Geres. Apart from proving the separate origin of the Itesan and the Kel Geres, these facts leave little room for doubt that the Itesan formed part of the group that was the first to invade the plateau.

The names of the five tribes, mentioned by Bello in his history, were, as we have seen above, the Immikitan, the Igdalen, the Ijaranen, the Tamgak, and the Sendal. Of these the Immikitan are found with the Igdalen among the People of the King in Air to-day, while the Ijaranen survive among the Itesan tribes who now live in the south. The Sendal and the Tamgak are mentioned as late as 1850 in the Agades Chronicle, when there is no doubt that they were a people of the king, since they are referred to as the allies of the Sultan Abd el Qader in a war against the Kel Geres.

The first Tuareg lived in Air as a minority and as foreigners. It is possible they represented only a fraction of the Tuareg who were moving and that the greater part went on into the west. The Agades Chronicle, describing the advent of the Itesan, records that they “. . . . said to the Goberawa, ‘We want a place in your town to settle.’ The Goberawa refused at first to give them a place, but in the end agreed. The Itesan refused the place as a gift, but bought a house for 1000 dinars. Into this house they led their chief, and from there he ruled the Tuareg of the desert. War, however, soon ensued between the Goberawa, supported by the Abalkoran, and the Itesan. The result of this war was that the Goberawa went back into Hausaland, while the Abalkoran went west into the land of the Aulimmiden.” The Abalkoran had just before in the Chronicle been described as a priestly caste associated with the Goberawa, but among the Air Tuareg the name Iberkoran or Abalkoran is the name of the Aulimmiden themselves. The record has suffered chronological compression, but clearly implies that the Goberawa were still in South Air at a time when the Aulimmiden had already reached their habitat west of the mountains. The latter is an event which some authorities consider fairly recent, but my view, already put forward elsewhere, is that the Aulimmiden are not a group of Hawara people who left the Fezzan some time between 1200 and 1300, as Ibn Khaldun suggests, nor yet people from Mauretania; I prefer to believe that they are Lemta who originally migrated to their present habitat from the Chad regions at much the same time as the first Tuareg invasion of Air took place.

The statement that the Abalkoran left Air to join the Aulimmiden tends to support the view that this Air invasion was only part of a general westerly movement.

THE SECOND IMMIGRATION

The second wave of immigration was that of the Kel Geres. Jean believed that the Kel Geres were among the first arrivals because he wrongly assumed that they were identical with the Itesan. An examination of the names of the various groups[393] discloses the fact that whereas many Itesan tribes have “Kel names” derived from known localities in Central Air, for the most part in the Auderas neighbourhood, of the Kel Geres tribes only the Kel Garet, Kel Anigara and the Kel Agellal have names similarly derived.[394] Traditionally the Kel Geres reached Air by way of the north. They also are associated with the story of over-population in the Mediterranean lands. They arrived, according to Jean, in considerable numbers, and settled in the part of Air which is west of the road from Iferuan to Agades by way of Assode and Auderas.[395] East of this line in later days lived the Kel Owi, and presumably, at this early period, the original five tribes. The assumption is confirmed by certain evidence, for although the Itesan tribe names refer to an area lying across this line, the only territorial Kel Geres tribe names refer to an area west of it; the country, on the other hand, known to have been occupied by some of the first immigrants is, as would be expected, to the east. With the exception of the Igdalen, who moved in recent years, most of the older People of the King were also east of this line, before the Kel Owi scattered them.

The present Itesan-Kel Geres group in the Southland is said to number forty-seven tribes divided as follows:[396]

Itesan 6 tribes of the Itesan.

Kel Geres 12 „ „ Tetmokarak.

6 „ „ Kel Unnar.

5 „ „ Kel Anigara.

6 „ „ Kel Garet.

12 „ „ Tadadawa and Kel Tatenei.

The principal tribal names of the Itesan which retain the more familiar place names of Air are the Kel Mafinet, Kel T’sidderak, Kel Dogam and Kel Bagezan or Maghzen, all of them derived from places in the neighbourhood of Auderas.[397] Among the Kel Geres the name of the Kel Garet records a habitat somewhat further north, the Kel Agellal of the Kel Unnar probably came from Agellal, and the Kel Anigara from an area still further north.

It is difficult to accept the view that the first Tuareg to enter Air arrived in the eighth century, even if it is only for the reason that the surviving “Itesan” houses could not for so long a time have remained in the state of preservation in which some of them are now found. I am personally not disposed to regard the first immigration as having taken place much before the latest date previously suggested as a limit, namely, the end of the eleventh century.

The invasion of the first tribes left the mountains with a mixed population of Tuareg and Goberawa; the disappearance of the latter as a separate race was only accomplished when the second or Kel Geres invasion took place. The Kel Geres so added to the Tuareg population in Air that henceforward the country must be regarded as essentially Tuareg, and this probably accounts for the tradition that the Kel Geres conquered the country, and as they came in both from the north and by the north, it doubtless gave rise to legends such as that of Maket n’Ikelan.

Failing more definite evidence than we now possess, I regard the Kel Geres movement as a part of a Hawara-Auriga emigration from the north to which Ibn Khaldun alludes. This does not exclude the possibility of some nuclei of Hawara having gone west of Air to join either the Aulimmiden or the Tademekkat or both groups. In fact, such a course of events would explain the distant affinity with, yet independence of, the Aulimmiden which is insisted upon by many authorities. We know that by the time Leo was writing he regarded both Ahaggar and Air as inhabited by Targa, while the Fezzan and the Chad road were inhabited by Lemta. The Ahaggaren I have previously tried to show were, in the main, Hawara. Now the advent in Air of a large mass from this division under the name of Kel Geres would warrant his grouping of both plateaux under one ethnic heading. The Hawara movement from the Western Fezzan and between Ghat and Ahaggar may be placed in the twelfth century, and therefore not so very far removed from the first immigration into Air from the south-east. It can also be accounted for by similar causes, namely, the growing pressure of the Arabs, perhaps as a sequel to the Hillalian invasion.

Following the two initial migrations, it may be assumed that small nuclei of Tuareg continued to reach Air. These would to-day be represented by such of the People of the King as are not to be connected with either the first five tribes or with the Kel Geres.

THE THIRD IMMIGRATION

The third wave was that of the Kel Owi. On Barth and Hornemann’s authority they arrived in modern times, while according to Jean they arrived in the ninth century. Barth’s researches, which in all cases are more reliable than those of Jean, who appears usually to have accepted native dates without hesitation, led him to believe that the Kel Owi entered, in fact conquered Air, about A.D. 1740. They are not mentioned by Leo or any other writers before the time of Hornemann (A.D. 1800), who obtained such good information about them that his commentator, Major Rennell, also assumed their arrival to be recent.[398] By the end of the nineteenth century the Kel Owi had already achieved such fame that of all Tuareg known to him, Hornemann only mentions them. He adds in his account that Gober was at this time tributary to Air, a detail consistent with other records. Barth’s very late date[399] for the arrival of the Kel Owi nevertheless presents certain difficulties. It is clear on the one hand that it could not have been the Kel Owi who made the arrangement of Maket n’Ikelan, and that it must therefore have been the Kel Geres or their predecessors, but it is further difficult to see how a people could have entered Air in such numbers as to become the preponderant group within barely one hundred years and to have evicted the firmly rooted Kel Geres tribes so soon. That the Kel Owi should have appropriated the historical credit for the settlement of Maket n’Ikelan is easy to understand, for it was they who held the trade route to the north out of the country, but the early expulsion of the Kel Geres indicates a numerical superiority which, unfortunately, native tradition does not bear out.

It is noteworthy that no Kel Owi tribe is represented in the election of the king, which supports the view that they had not yet reached Air when the local system of government from Agades was devised.

“The vulgar account of the origin of the Kel Owi from the female slave of a Tinylcum who came to Asben where she gave birth to a boy who was the progenitor of the Kel Owi . . . is obviously nothing but a popular tale. . . .”[400]

The story collected by Jean, which purports to explain the two categories of tribes in Air to-day, the Kel Owi confederation and the People of the King, is not more authentic.[401] He tells how, after the arrival of the Sultan in Air, the Kel Geres kept away from his presence, while the Kel Owi ingratiated themselves and secured their own administration under the Añastafidet. The Sultan, however, wishing to create his own tribal group, divided the Kel Owi amongst themselves, and this is the origin of the People of the Añastafidet and the People of the King. In their efforts to ingratiate themselves, the Kel Owi of Bagezan which, as we have seen, was Itesan country at the time, sent as a present to the Sultan a woman named T’iugas with her six daughters of the Imanen tribe of the north; these women had been sent from the north to cement good relations between Air and Azger.[402] The six sisters nominated the eldest as their speaker and the Sultan gave her authority over the rest. She was followed by the next two sisters, and these three are the mothers of the three senior tribes of the Kel Owi, namely, the Kel Owi proper, the Kel Tafidet and the Kel Azañieres.[403] The other three women refused to accept the leadership of the eldest sister and placed themselves under the authority of the Sultan direct; and they were the mothers of the Kel Tadek, Imezegzil and Kel Zilalet.[404] The details of the story are obviously a Kel Owi invention. They are designed to establish nobility and equality of ancestry with the older and more respected tribes. The legend, however, probably also contains certain indications of truth, notably in the allusion to the Imanen women from the north, since there does exist an affinity between that tribe and the Itesan, though it must, of course, be understood that the Kel Bagezan of the story were an Itesan sub-tribe, and not the later Kel Bagezan of the Kel Owi group. With these conditions the story becomes intelligible as a legendary or traditional account. It is not meant to be taken as literally true, and is not even a very widely accepted version of the origin of the present social structure in Air, but it is amusing, for it shows how on this as on every other occasion the Kel Owi have attempted to claim antiquity of descent equal to that of the tribes they found on their arrival.

Two other traditions which I collected are best summarised by quoting the following extract from my diary, written while at T’imia, a Kel Owi village in the Bagezan mountains. One of the big men in the village was the “’alim” ’Umbellu, a fine figure of a man, old and bald but still powerful and vigorous, with the heavy noble features of a Roman emperor. He used to be the keeper of the old mosque, and is said to be one of the most learned men in the country. I had examined the ruined sanctuary, in which he had not set foot since it was desecrated by the French troops after the Kaossen revolt, and found some fragments of holy books, which I restored to ’Umbellu in the present mosque at T’imia, a shelter of reeds and matting. From him I received the same sort of confused account which others besides myself had heard. “. . . He says that the Kel Owi are not pure Tuareg, but that some Arabs _or_ (_sic_) Tuareg of the north came down to Northern Air and mixed with the local population, which stock became the Kel Owi Confederation; but whether these people came as raiders or settlers he could not say. He was, however, quite clear that they had come from the Arab country.[405] Then in almost the same breath he told me that the Kel Owi are descended from a woman who came from the north and lived in Tamgak, where she mated with one of the local inhabitants and became the mother of all these tribes. He added that she was a Moslem at a time when the Kel Ferwan (a non-Kel Owi tribe, or People of the King, then living in Iferuan) were heathen, but whether Christians or pagan he could not say.”

The second story is analogous to that which Barth heard.

Generally speaking traditions give the two separate versions, which are rather puzzling. If the account of the woman who settled in Tamgak is taken as a legendary record of the indigenous growth of the Kel Owi tribes, it must be supposed that their forefathers were in Air for much more than two hundred years, and Jean’s date would consequently not be out of the question. Against this must be set the other version, that they arrived quite recently, a view which is supported unanimously by all the other Tuareg. It was, we have seen, confirmed by Barth’s researches and deduced by Rennell from information collected by Hornemann. The compact organisation and the definite division which exists between them and the other tribes in Air would also point to their having a separate origin and being comparatively recent arrivals; they are still organised in an administrative system which has not yet had time to break down and merge into the régime of the other tribes. Furthermore, no mention is made of the Kel Owi by any of the earlier authors, which, if negative evidence, is nevertheless significant in the works of an authority like Leo, especially as, apart from the ethnic distinction which might have been overlooked, the dual government of the King and the Añastafidet is too remarkable a feature to have escaped his discernment. The balance of testimony is therefore in favour of attributing a fairly recent date to their arrival, though perhaps not so late as Barth would have us believe. I myself make no doubt that they were late arrivals: I only differ with the learned traveller in a small matter of the exact date.

But what impelled them to migrate it is difficult to say. Barth thought that they could be traced to an earlier habitat in the north-west, and that the nobler portion of them once belonged to the Auraghen tribe, whence their dialect was called Auraghiye. I have no evidence on this point except that of Ahodu, who gave me to understand that the language of the Kel Owi was not different from that of any other Tuareg tribe in the plateau, and he added that he had not heard the name Auraghiye employed to describe it, though he knew that it was applied to the dialect spoken in Ahaggar. Barth’s testimony, otherwise, is acceptable.

Jean is of the impression that they are essentially of the same race as the Kel Geres, who were probably Hawara. If this deduction is true, three possibilities require to be considered. The Kel Owi may have been an Auraghen tribe living to the north or north-east of Air among the Azger; or, they may have been among the older Auraghen people, to use this term in its wider sense, namely, of the Auriga-Hawara, represented by the Ahaggaren, to whom, of course, the Azger Auraghen of to-day belong; or, lastly, they may be descended from the Auraghen of the west, from the Tademekkat country. The last is the soundest view in the present state of our knowledge, though the second is also quite probable.

The Tademekkat people, we know, were driven from their homes in A.D. 1640 by the Aulimmiden. While some of them were driven out to the west, some at least found their way back into the Azger country.[406] It is no less probable that others may have gone to Air by a roundabout route. In that case Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air seems to be at least fifty years too late. During the last half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries they would have been finding their way into Northern Air in small groups. This is not inconsistent with the appearance at Agades of an Amenokal with a Kel Owi mother, if the admittedly tentative date of 1629 given in the Agades Chronicle is placed a decade or so later.

I am inclined to regard the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air as having taken place in the latter half of the seventeenth century. According to the Agades Chronicle they were already fighting the Kel Geres at Abattul, west of the Central massif, in 1728, some time before Barth’s date; and this obviously implies an earlier arrival in the north of the plateau, for their entry must have taken place from that direction and not from the south. But a recent date, taken in conjunction with the dominant position which the Kel Owi occupied and their separate political organisation, further implies that they came in considerable numbers, a conclusion which is at variance with one set of native traditions. They could not otherwise in two hundred years have achieved so much as they did by the beginning of the century.

[Illustration: THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREG]

We know that their coming was followed by an economic disturbance of far-reaching importance. They first occupied North-eastern and Northern Air; the later phase of their penetration is recorded in the statement that the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres lived side by side, west and east of the Iferuan-Auderas-Agades road. The eastern plains of Air, according to Ahodu of Auderas and ’Umbellu of T’imia, had by this time been evacuated by the Itesan and the early settlers, but the invasion of the Kel Owi must have led also to the expulsion of the early settlers from the northern marches. The removal of the Kel Ferwan from the Iferuan area, and of the Kel Tadek from their territories north of Tamgak to the west and the south, probably took place in this period. The Kel Owi movement, though accompanied by frequent disturbances, was gradual. At T’imia, where the original inhabitants, according to ’Umbellu, were Kel Geres, they were only displaced in the time of his own grandparents by a mixed band of settlers from various Kel Owi tribes then living in the Ighazar in Northern Air. ’Umbellu is a man of about sixty now, so this event may have been one hundred years ago, at a time, in fact, when we should still expect the southward movement of the Kel Owi to be in progress.

More recently still the south-eastern part of the country was distributed among certain of their clans. The large Itesan settlements like those near Tabello had already been abandoned and were never again permanently inhabited; some dwellings were built later by the Kel Owi, but never on so large a scale as in the previous epoch. The extant houses and ruins are mostly of the first period; a few only show a transitional phase to the later Kel Owi type. Sometimes a compact block of contiguous buildings is to be found, possessing the character of a fortified settlement. It would seem that this defensible type of habitation had been evolved during the period after the Itesan were known to have been driven out by Tebu raiding and before the Kel Owi arrived. These dwellings betray certain features alien to the Tuareg, which may be explained by supposing that they were used by the serfs of the Itesan when their lords had retreated west of the Bagezan massif.

With the occupation of the eastern part of Air by the Kel Owi, the ancient caravan road which has run from time immemorial by T’intaghoda, Unankara, Mari, Beughqot and Tergulawen fell into their hands. It is the easiest road across the Air plateau, and perhaps for this reason, but more probably because they always had propensities of this sort, they developed such commercial ability that they rapidly made for themselves a dominant place in all trade and transport enterprises between Ghat and the Sudan. But although their efficiency in organisation gave them the control of the road, they certainly did not create it. But they did create a monopoly which deprived the Kel Geres of their legitimate profit.

The hostilities which soon broke out between the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres could lead to only one of two possible solutions, the expulsion or extermination of one of the rivals. Such economic problems are, of course, not always realised at the time when they are most urgently felt, and the current record of events to which they give rise is therefore often slightly distorted. Here, however, even the popular version shows that the real cause of the disturbances was an economic one. The Kel Owi began by appropriating the half of a country in which they were new-comers. They proceeded to demand the serfs and slaves whom the Kel Geres had possessed since their subjugation of the negroid peoples of Air. This impossible demand gave rise to considerable strife and was referred for arbitration to the reigning Sultan of Agades. The Hausa elements were supported by the Kel Owi for political reasons and as far as possible abandoned their former masters. The Sultan seems to have maintained the neutrality for which he stood, and even to have prevented the tribes which owed allegiance to him directly and belonged to neither party from taking sides in the dispute.[407] He was nevertheless unsuccessful, and after years of desultory fighting the Kel Geres abandoned Air for Adar and Gober to the west of Damergu and to the north of Sokoto. They retained their rights in the election of the Amenokal, to whom they continued to owe nominal allegiance through their chiefs, and were allowed to continue to use certain Air place-names in their tribal nomenclature. In the last century they repeatedly interfered in choice of the Sultan, and they still consider themselves to this day a part of the Air Tuareg, although their hostility against the Kel Owi never died. They evacuated the country with all the slaves and serfs whom they succeeded in retaining. It is possible that a few of the older non-Kel Owi tribes of Air and Damergu went with them.

If Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi were accepted, this migration should have occurred in the end of the eighteenth century. But as a matter of fact the movement took place earlier. Jean states that an arrangement for the evacuation was reached in the reign of the Sultan Almoubari or El Mubarak, who ruled thirty-four years, from A.D. 1653 to 1687. If the agreement was made at the end of his reign, the date for the immigration of the Kel Owi in accordance with previous information falls in the neighbourhood of 1640, to which epoch the reign of Sultan Muhammad Attafriya, who was deposed two years after his accession by the Itesan, can be assigned. The Kel Geres did not, however, leave the country directly the arrangement was made, and in the meanwhile continued the struggle. In 1728 the Kel Owi and the Itesan were still fighting in Air, the latter being defeated at Abattul, near Auderas. Halfway through this century the Itesan were fighting in the Southland and attacked Katsina in company with the Zamfarawa. It is at this time that the Kel Geres seem to have obtained a footing in the lands of Adar and Sokoto, though the Itesan still refused to settle there. In 1759 there is recorded a war between the Kel Geres and the Kel Tegama at the cliffs of Tiggedi, in which the latter were defeated. This war was followed by another in 1761 between the Kel Geres and the Aulimmiden, where, however, the former suffered. In the same year the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres fought each other at Agades. In this period the Amenokal Muhammad Hammad, who had come to the throne in 1735, changed places twice with Muhammad Guma, according as the Kel Owi or the Kel Geres faction prevailed. The former, restored to the throne in 1763, undertook an expedition with the men of Air against the King of Gober, and was severely defeated in 1767. In order to avenge the defeat, a truce between the warring Tuareg was finally concluded after a century of fighting. The combined men of Air then marched on, and defeated Dan Gudde and cut off his head. This event may be held to mark the final settlement of the Itesan and Kel Geres in the Southland. Their success accounts for Hornemann’s report that at the end of the nineteenth century the Tuareg were masters of Gober. Internecine hostilities continued, but henceforth the Itesan and the Kel Geres are no longer described as fighting the Kel Owi but the men of Air, as in 1780 and again in 1788, when they made their nominee, Muhammad Dani, Sultan at Agades. In 1835 the Amenokal, Guma, was captured in Damergu by the Kel Geres after a massacre of the Kel Owi. It was only in about 1860 that hostilities, which were in full progress in Barth’s day, finally ceased.

Why, it may be asked, did the Itesan and not all the rest of the pre-Kel Geres people of Air leave in consequence of the Kel Owi invasion? The question is not easy to answer, but the surmise is that, as the largest and most important group, they became most involved in the struggle. With their departure and that of the Kel Geres the remaining people became leaderless: having no confederation of their own they clustered around the person of the Sultan, and so came to be known as the People of the King. Yet, on account of their ancestry and nobility, the Kel Owi sought to attack them and arrogate to themselves the principal rôles in history, like the story of the peace of Maket n’Ikelan and that of the Imanen women. These claims are consistent with the characteristic which is felt to-day in relations with them—the arrogance of the parvenu. The ascendancy of the noble Itesan has continued in the Southland as it existed in Air. They lead the Kel Geres division, with whom fate had made them throw in their lot. They remain primarily responsible for the choice of the Sultan even to-day.

Enough—too much perhaps—has been said of the three migrations of the Tuareg people into Air. It would be tedious to continue on that narrow subject. The complexity of the tribal organisation of the Air Tuareg has also been made patent in the earlier attempts to discover their social life. It is unfortunately impossible, even if space were available, to allocate the various clans of whose existence report has reached us to the larger groups or waves of immigration which have been examined. Lists of the tribes which have survived are given in Appendix II to this work: they have been arranged in such system as was feasible, using the information collected by Barth, and Jean, and by myself. But the classification is unsatisfactory, since there is, in many instances, but little evidence. The organisation of the Kel Owi is, of course, the easiest to ascertain and it was briefly outlined in Chapter X, but the People of the King are really more interesting both because they were the earliest arrivals and because of their association with the Itesan culture of the old houses and deep wells. Among the People of the King the most valuable anthropological data are to be collected. They brought such civilisation as Nigeria possessed in the Middle Ages from the Mediterranean, having absorbed and forgotten much of it on the way and since those epochs.

IDENTIFICATION OF EXTANT TRIBES

Before passing on to a brief summary of Central African history as a frame into which to fit the Air migrations, I would like to leave on record for some future student to use such conclusions as I have been able to reach regarding the descendants of the first invaders of Air recorded by Sultan Bello.

The geographical areas of the Kel Owi and People of the King respectively had almost ceased to be distinguishable even before the 1917 revolution added to the prevailing confusion. In so far as it is at all possible to lay down broad definitions, Central and West-central Air belonged to the People of the King, Northern, North-eastern and Eastern Air to the Kel Owi, or People of the Añastafidet, and Southern Air, or, as it is more properly called, Tegama, to the servile tribes. The Talak plain was diversely populated.

The first immigrants, the Immikitan, Sendal, Tamgak, Igdalen, Ijaranen and probably Itesan, have for the most part survived in some distinguishable form in or around Air. The survivors are all, of course, as is to be expected, People of the King. The only exceptions are certain nuclei which are known to have been absorbed by the Añastafidet and his people.

In addition to the survivors in Air there are some Igdalen north of Tahua, while others are Imghad of the Tarat Mellet[408] tribe of the Ifoghas of the west. These Imghad may have been a part of the Air group of Igdalen captured in war, or may represent a westward emigration of a part of the stock which came on evil days in Damergu. Generally, I regard the presence of these Igdalen in the west as confirming Bello’s account of their early arrival in the Air area from the east; it may also be taken to substantiate my view that the first wave of Tuareg to the El Suk country came from the south-east and not from the north.[409]

How far can the tribes which are known to exist to-day or whose names have been recorded by modern travellers be associated with these groups of early immigrants? A critical examination[410] of the tribes reveals at least six main tribal groups of the People of the King in Air itself, that is to say, six groups in which the respective tribes either acknowledge themselves to be, or can be shown to possess, certain affinities pointing to a descent from single stocks; but not all of these can with certainty be identified with Bello’s named clans. These six extant groups are the Kel Ferwan, Kel Tadek, Immikitan, Imezegzil, Imaqoaran and Ifadeyen.

Two of them, in some ways the most important, have no proper names of their own at all: both the Kel Ferwan and Kel Tadek are named after places, respectively Iferuan in the Ighazar of Northern Air, and the Tadek valley. Neither of these groups, which have the reputation of great antiquity and nobility, can be affiliated to any of the other four groups; they are indubitably separate clans which in the course of ages have lost their old “I names.” Returning to the five old tribes of Bello we nevertheless find certain points of contact between records and actual conditions, as well as certain differences:

_Bello’s tribes._ _Modern groups._

{ Immikitan. Immikitan = { { Imezegzil.

Igdalen = Igdalen.

Ijaranen = Ijanarnen (of the Itesan).

Sendal = ?

Tamgak = ?

? = Kel Ferwan.

? = Kel Tadek.

? = Imaqoaran.

? = Ifadeyen.

(Itesan) = Itesan.

In discussing tribal origins in Air and comparing my results with those of Jean, I found the greatest difficulty in sorting out the tribes of the Immikitan and Imezegzil groups: so much so that I am inclined to think that both clans represent the old Immikitan stock which split into two main branches some time ago. The widespread use of the name Immikitan for Tuareg makes it possible that the original stock of the People of the King was Immikitan in the first instance; in that event, on the analogy of other Tuareg tribes, when one clan grew unmanageable in size, new groups were formed, only one of which retained the original nomenclature as a proper or individual name—a process which no doubt occurred before any migration out of the Chad area took place. But that is too far back to consider.

Leaving the Ifadeyen out of account for the moment we are left with the Kel Ferwan, the Kel Tadek and the Imaqoaran to compete for the right of descent from the Tamgak and Sendal. A remote ancestry is indicated by their undoubted nobility and antiquity. The original home of the Kel Tadek in a valley flowing out of Tamgak and the association of the Tamgak tribe with the Tamgak massif suggest that these groups may be identified, in which case the Sendal might be the ancestors of the Kel Ferwan. Nevertheless there is also a possibility that the descendants of the Sendal are the old tribes of Damergu. That the descendants of the Sendal are to be sought for south of, rather than in Air proper, is further indicated by the record of a war between the People of Air against the Sendal in Elakkos as late as 1727.[411] The Kel Ferwan, would, thus, be descended from the Damergu-Elakkos Tuareg directly, and from the Sendal therefore only indirectly, if their origin indeed is to be sought in this early wave of immigration at all.

The selection of the Sultan of Agades being in the hands of the tribes who traditionally sent the deputation to Constantinople after the arrival of the Kel Geres in Air, and the object of the mission being to settle a dispute as to who should be king, it would be natural to find all the contestant groups represented on the delegation. The Kel Owi would, of course, not figure among them, for they had not at that time reached Air. Now the names of tribes charged with sending the delegation is given by Jean, and I accept his version because all the information which I procured on the subject was very contradictory; and the list is most interesting. It is given as: the Itesan and the Dzianara of the modern Itesan-Kel Geres group, and the Izagaran, Ifadalen, Imaqoaran and Immikitan of the other Tuareg. The Itesan we know about; the Dzianara were a noble part of the Kel Geres but are now extinct: it is natural that both these should be represented. The Izagaran and Ifadalen survive as names of noble Damergu tribes, while the Immikitan and Imaqoaran represent the older clans of Air proper, all four, of course, owing allegiance to the King. From their “I names” these tribes all seem to be old; we have no reason from any other evidence to believe that any recent arrivals are represented in the list. The very choice of representatives from each of three groups may consequently be taken to indicate that these tribes were regarded as the oldest or most important units in each division. It is tempting, therefore, to suppose that the Izagaran and Ifadalen are the descendants of one of the tribes in the first wave of Tuareg which came from the south-east, and therefore perhaps of Bello’s Sendal.

Another version of the method adopted to select the first Amenokal is recorded in the Agades Chronicle, which states that the persons responsible for the task were the Agoalla[412] T’Sidderak, Agoalla Mafinet and Agoalla Kel Tagei. The story relates how the Agumbulum, the title of the ruler of the first Tuareg to enter Air, namely the Kel Innek, desired to settle the differences which had arisen in regard to the government, but was unable to find anyone to send to Stambul until an old woman called Tagirit offered to send her grandsons, who were the chieftains in question. The story emphasises what will have been noticed on the subject of the origin of the Kel Owi, namely, that the tribes of Air generally claim a woman either as ancestress or as a prominent head. The first two names are those of certain Itesan sub-tribes who, from residence in these mountain areas, which still bear the same names in Central Air, had adopted geographical Kel names, and conserve them to this day in their modern habitats in the Southland. The Kel Tagei is another subdivision of the Itesan, and, though a servile tribe of this name exists in the Imarsutan section of the Kel Owi, it is probably a portion of the former enslaved during the later civil wars of Air.[413]

This alternative story is not necessarily contradictory to the first version of the deputation to Stambul, even though it does not allow the remaining tribes of the People of the King to have a share in the election. Since, however, the Itesan were certainly the dominant tribe in Air until the arrival of the Kel Owi, the omission is comprehensible; it is a statement of a part for the whole. If it has any significance it tends to support the view that the Itesan were, in fact, a tribe of the Kel Innek from the Chad lands, as I have supposed, and not a part of the Kel Geres group.

The Imaqoaran and Kel Ferwan, however, remain a difficult problem. The latter are in many ways peculiar and seem to differ in many ways so much from their other friends in the division of the People of the King, that although I have no direct evidence on the subject, I half suspect them of having come to Air from some other part than the south-east and at a later period than the first wave. Certain it is that they specialised in raiding westward, where they obtained their numerous dependent Imghad. Furthermore, in Cortier’s account of the history of the Ifoghas n’Adghar there are stories of the formation of this western group of Tuareg tending to show that while a part of the division probably came from the north, the bulk of the immigration was from the east. He says that after the Kel el Suk reached the southern parts of the Sahara, they divided into two groups. The two groups fought, and one section, which had apparently settled in Air, was victorious, whereupon a part migrated into the Adghar, where the other section had already established itself and had founded the town of Tademekka. In the fighting, which continued, there seems to have been considerable movement between the two mountain groups; the Kel Ferwan portion of the People of the King in Air may therefore be more nearly related to the western group than to the other Air folk.

The Ifadeyen are associated with Fadé, which is the northernmost part of the Air plateau. To-day they are very friendly with the Kel Tadek, and some people have even suggested that they were of the same stock. There is, however, another tribe, the Kel Fadé, the similarity of whose name suggests, quite erroneously, an identification. The Ifadeyen are known to be a very old tribe, while the Kel Fadé are known to have been formed at about the time of the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air and to have lived in the Fadé mountains, whence the Ifadeyen were already moving south. Barth speaks of the Kel Fadé as a collection of brigands and vagabonds, and implies that they were mainly outlaws of mixed parentage. A part of them is certainly Kel Owi and composed of those elements which went on living in the northern mountains when the main body entered Air, while another part is almost certainly Ifadeyen; as a whole they remained outside the Kel Owi Confederation as People of the King. Until about thirty years ago the Kel Fadé used to maintain that the Ifadeyen were their serfs; after many disputes the matter was referred to the paramount chief of the Kel Owi, who, after consulting various authorities, decided that the Ifadeyen were noble and free. Their chief, Matali, nevertheless preferred to evacuate the northern mountains completely in favour of the Kel Fadé in order to avoid further friction, and since then, a full generation ago, they have been gradually moving south to the Azawagh, where they pasture in the winter, withdrawing to Damergu in the dry season. Their original history might have been easier to ascertain had it not been for the fact that despite its “I form” their name is a placename, though it is possible that they gave their name to Fadé and did not take it from their habitat. The presence of the Ifadeyen in an area west and north of country which we know the Kel Tadek held, and their association with the latter, render it likely that we are, in fact, dealing with one and the same stock, namely, the descendants of the Tamgak.

The Ifadeyen are renowned all over Air for their pure nomadism, and above all for the fact that they are almost the last of the Tuareg in the Southern Sahara to retain the current use of the T’ifingh script with a knowledge of reading and writing it. This learning, as is usual among Imajeghan tribes, reposes with the women-folk, one of whose principal functions is to educate the children; it is consistent with their supposed origin as one of the oldest and purest of all the tribes in Air.

As a result of the foregoing argument the following suggestions for the main tribes of the People of the King hitherto mentioned can be made:

_Tribes of the King_ (_Division I_).[414]

{ { Immikitan, { Immikitan { { { Imezegzil. { { Igdalen Igdalen (Damergu: { Division IV). { Bello’s five tribes { Tamgak Represented by the Kel generically called { Tadek and ? Ifadeyen. _Kel Innek_, { originally from the { Ijaranen Representing the Itesan, Fezzan, where the { which includes: _Imanen_ are also { found. { (Itesan) Ijaranen, { { _Kel Innek_, { { _Kel Manen (Imanen)_. { { Sendal Represented by the Damergu { and Elakkos Tuareg, who { include: { { Izagaran, { { Ifadalen.

? Imaqoaran.

?Western Tuareg Kel Ferwan.

Mixed Kel Fadé.

PLATE 48

[Illustration: EGHALGAWEN POOL]

[Illustration: TIZRAET POOL]

[Footnote 356: Letter to the author from G. W. Webster, Resident at Sokoto, dated 20/6/1923.]

[Footnote 357: _Journal of the African Society_, No. XXXVI. Vol. IX. July 1910. Further references in this chapter will be omitted.]

[Footnote 358: Denham and Clapperton: _Account of the First Expedition_ (Murray), 1826. Vol. II. p. 38 seq.; App. XII.]

[Footnote 359: As reported by Bello, Denham and Clapperton, _loc. cit._]

[Footnote 360: It is to these doubtless that Jean is referring when he speaks of Egyptian influence in Air. Jean, _op. cit._, p. 86.]

[Footnote 361: Cf. Leo, _op. cit._, Vol. III. p. 828.]

[Footnote 362: Cf. also Asbytæ and Esbet with references in Bates, _op. cit._, passim. The root is probably, if a generalisation is at all permitted, applicable to the earliest negroid, or Grimaldi race survivors, in North Africa.]

[Footnote 363: _Vide supra_, Chap. III.]

[Footnote 364: Cf. _supra_, Chap. II.]

[Footnote 365: Cf. _infra_.]

[Footnote 366: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 337.]

[Footnote 367: _Vide supra_, Chap. IV.]

[Footnote 368: But not necessarily the slaves.]

[Footnote 369: As was the case, for instance, in the days of the Eighth and Ninth Dynasties of Egypt.]

[Footnote 370: “Akel” (plu. _ikelan_) primarily means “negro,” and from that “a slave.”]

[Footnote 371: _Vide supra_, Chap. III.]

[Footnote 372: Denham and Clapperton, _loc. cit._]

[Footnote 373: _I.e._ Aujila.]

[Footnote 374: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 460.]

[Footnote 375: Herodotus, IV. 172.]

[Footnote 376: In Chap. III.]

[Footnote 377: Idrisi: ed. Jaubert, Vol. I. p. 238.]

[Footnote 378: Cf. Chap. X.]

[Footnote 379: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 460.]

[Footnote 380: To adopt Clapperton’s spelling.]

[Footnote 381: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. IV. App. IX and Vol. II.]

[Footnote 382: _I.e._ Libyans, and not, at this period or in this context, Kanuri.]

[Footnote 383: According to Maqrizi _apud_ Barth, Vol. II. pp. 635 and 265.]

[Footnote 384: El Bekri, _op. cit._, p. 456.]

[Footnote 385: A tribe of the Ahaggaren.]

[Footnote 386: In a communication to the author, Mr. H. R. Palmer, Resident in Bornu, writes: “After hearing probably all the extant tradition on the subject of the early rulers of Kanem, my belief is that the so-called Dugawa were Tuareg of some kind, and that the appellation Beri-beri applied originally to them and not to the Teda element which later on preponderated and gave the resulting Kanemi empire its language, _i.e._ Kanuri.”]

[Footnote 387: Denham and Clapperton, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 396.]

[Footnote 388: Though the Tebu are probably themselves a Kanuri stock, a distinction may be drawn between them and the more negroid Kanuri of Bornu and the Chad lands.]

[Footnote 389: See Abul Fida (French ed.), pp. 127-8 and 245; El Idrisi (ed. Jaubert), p. 288. At the time of El Maqrizi the empire of Kanem extended from Zella (Sella), south of the Great Syrtis, to Gogo (Gao) on the Niger. El Maqrizi lived from 1365 to 1442: Abul Fida died in 1331 writing his history, which was finished down to the year A.D. 1329.]

[Footnote 390: Other than a wholesale emigration of Franks and Byzantines to Europe.]

[Footnote 391: Cf. Chap. XI. _supra_.]

[Footnote 392: See Appendix II. and elsewhere in this chapter, also Ibn Khaldun, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 3.]

[Footnote 393: In Appendix II.]

[Footnote 394: Consider the proportion of such names in the Itesan group, and in the forty-six Kel Geres tribes, respectively. Cf. Appendix II.]

[Footnote 395: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 86.]

[Footnote 396: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 113, and Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 356, also Appendix II. to this volume.]

[Footnote 397: Cf. Appendix II. Tribes having the same place names now in Air are not related to these clans; their history is independently established.]

[Footnote 398: Hornemann’s _Journal_, French ed. p. 102 seq.]

[Footnote 399: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 339.]

[Footnote 400: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. p. 343. The Tinylcum (T’inalkum) is an Azger Imghad tribe: cf. Chap. XI.]

[Footnote 401: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 90-1.]

[Footnote 402: Jean calls them Ahaggaren, but only because all the northern Tuareg are in Air called Ahaggaren irrespective of whether they come from the Azger, Ahaggar or Ahnet divisions. In addition to these Imanen among the Azger and Itesan, there are also some on the Niger who are probably the product of the same early migrations which took the five tribes, including the Itesan, into Air.]

[Footnote 403: Compare the grouping in Appendix II. and the comments in Chap X.]

[Footnote 404: See Appendix II. All these three tribes are People of the King, though the Kel Zilalet are rather mixed, being sedentaries.]

[Footnote 405: This in Air means the west or north-west. The reference may be to the Hawara, regarding whom this type of confusion has always obtained: cf. Arab-Tuareg elements in Hawara group, _vide_ Chap. XI.]

[Footnote 406: Cf. Chap. XI. with reference to Duveyrier’s information.]

[Footnote 407: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 92-3.]

[Footnote 408: Meaning “The White Goat.” Perhaps a survival of Totemism.]

[Footnote 409: _Vide supra_, Chap. XI.]

[Footnote 410: See Appendix II. Division I. for details of People of the King in Air, and Division IV. for the Damergu Tuareg.]

[Footnote 411: Agades Chronicle.]

[Footnote 412: _I.e._ chief of a tribal group.]

[Footnote 413: The Imarsutan Kel Tagei may also have merely fortuitously acquired this name, which only means the People of the Dûm Palm, and is therefore not very individual.]

[Footnote 414: In Appendix II.]