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.]