“ Lying on the tract of the great caravan route between Fezzan and Lake Chad, the Tibbu have always been a predatory race, levying blackmail on the convoys passing through their territory, maintaining inter-tribal feuds and carrying on constant warfare with the surrounding Berber and Sudanese populations. The tribal organization embraces dardai or headmen, maina or nobles, and the common folk, while the unwritten law of custom rules supreme over all classes. ”

“ The common germ has long since perished, or can no longer be detected, and the Tibbu and Berber languages stand side by side as fundamentally distinct, while the two races remain physically one. The Tibbu are therefore a Berber people, who in their secluded homes have had time to evolve an independent form of speech, which southwards has become largely assimilated to the Sudanese negro dialects. ”

“ There can be little doubt that the Teda, or true Tibbu, probably identical with the Tedamansii, a branch of the Garamantes, placed by Ptolemy south of the Samamycii in Tripolitana, [3] physically resemble their western Tuareg neighbours. They are a pure homogeneous race, who have for ages undergone no perceptible change in their rocky homes, and are still distinguished by the regular features, long black ringlety hair, haughty bearing and fierce expression common to so many of the Berber peoples. ”