Touareg

“ Men of distant tribes in strange garb are also here: some wearing head-dresses of waving plumes, like huge busbys; another, one of the dreaded Touaregs, in dark robes with dark turban, veiled, like a woman, in black or intensely dark blue. These are masked men, fierce and mysterious as the sun they contend with and the desert they rule. ”

“ Hanoteau, A.: Grammaire de la Langue Tamachek. Algiers, 1896. Masquerey, E.: Dictionnaire Français-Touareg. Paris, 1898. —— Essai de Grammaire Touareg. Paris, 1896. de Foucauld, C.: Dictionnaire abrégé Touareg-Français. Two volumes. Algiers, 1918, etc. —— Notes pour servir à un Essai de Grammaire Touaregue. Algiers, 1920. Freeman, H. Stanhope: A Grammatical Sketch of the Temahuq Language. London: Harrison, 1862. Books dealing with the Tuareg and the Anthropology of the Sahara generally
Ripley, W.: The Races of Europe. 1900. Sergi, G.: The Mediterranean Race. London, 1901. ”

“ It has sunk into the Atlas and into the desert, it has filled the mind of every man from the Soudan which it 96controls up northwards to Atlas and throughout this land.
|The Touaregs|
Roaming in the Sahara are bands of men famous for their courage and their isolation. They are called the Touaregs. They are of the same race and the same language as those original Berbers who yet maintain themselves apart in the heights of Aurès or of the Djurdjura. They are the enemies of all outside their tribes, especially of the Arab merchants, upon whose caravans they live by pillage. ”

“ Tavernay was lifted in a litter on to the back of a camel, and the remnant of the geographical expedition began its terrible homeward march. Eight hundred miles lay between Bir-el-Ghiramo and the safety of Ouargla. The Touaregs hung upon the rear of the force, but they did not attack again. They preferred another way. One evening a solitary Arab drove a laden camel into the bivouac. He was conducted to Stretton, and said, "The Touaregs ask pardon and pray for peace. They will molest you no more. ”

“ The Touaregs are impressed on you because, though you never see them, everything recalls them. The town is in ruins, but its wretchedness is overpowered by life and movement. The quays are astir with lively bustle, and encumbered with bales, jars, and sacks in the process of unloading. To travel from Kabara to Timbuctoo, only five miles distant, there is a daily convoy—medley of people, donkeys and camels, attended by twenty tirailleurs with rifles on their shoulders. ”

“ If we go another step westwards we come to the land of the Tuaregs. There, too, we find hilly tracts and hammadas, sandy deserts and oases, and in favourable spots excellent pastures. We have already noticed in Timbuktu this small, sturdy desert people, easily recognised by the veil which hides the lower part of the face. All Tuaregs wear such a veil, and call those who do not "fly-mouths." They are powerfully built, and of dark complexion, being of mixed negro blood from all the slaves they have kidnapped in the Sudan. ”

“ Modern writers agree in ascribing to the Touaricks, a people inhabiting the Desert of Sahara, a considerable degree of civilization. We are informed that in the Sahara, which, by the way, is far less a barren waste than we have been taught to suppose it, "the Touaricks have towns, cities, and an excellent condition of agriculture"; that with them fruit is cultivated with great success and skill. Their method of political organization is democratic and similar in construction and administration to the old Cushite municipalities. ”

“ There is no room for the Tuareg in this new world of bringing trees to the desert, of the great trucks which speed across the erg a score of time the pace of a hejin racing camel, of larger and ever larger oases with their great towns, their schools, their new industries. If the Tuareg remains Tuareg, he cannot fit into this new world, it destroys the old traditions, the old way which is the Tuareg way. ”

“ Until the advent of the French it was considered the legitimate playground for the only international sport known in the desert, the gentle occupation of raid and counter-raid. The flat-topped hills, with scarcely a path worthy of the name to ascend the cliffs, were the citadels of the villages which nestle under their slopes. The huts in the villages are built of straw with conical roofs: neither mud buildings nor walled settlements exist. The inhabitants are Kanuri, sedentary Tuareg, and both nomadic and settled Tebu. ”

“ The Tuaregs, on the other hand, owned sheep and goats, which seemed to thrive in a marvellous manner on the poor provender found in the sandy waste surrounding them. A coarse-looking grass, or mimosa scrub, formed their fare.
These Tuaregs are hardly the same class of that tribe as are found in the desert proper on the other side of the Niger. They are nomads, preferring the isolated life away from villages, it is true, but at the same time they do not so utterly shun all contact with mankind as do their brethren of the Sahara. ”

“ The Tuareg men and women are not like the other inhabitants of North Africa. But Ibn Batutah must have been none the less shocked, because, though Abu Muhammad invited him to visit him again, he did not go.
Conditions have not changed since those days among the People of the Veil, but habits which would be considered natural in America or in England admittedly seem strange in Africa. They are all summed up in the Tuareg proverb which says: “Men and women towards each other are for the eyes and for the heart, and not only for the bed,” as among the Arabs. ”

“ Thus spoke those grave Tuareg men, revealing the inherent melancholy of their race, and the remnants of nobility of character that spring forth like gleams of light on occasions of deep emotion, but quickly die out in the willy-nilly idling of careless, aimless lives. For in their camps the Tuaregs of to-day may be likened to the lizards on the stones by their hut-doors: creatures content to idle and bask in the sun, contemplative, perhaps, but making no great exertion to do aught but eat and sleep and exist at freedom in the languishing temperature of African climate. ”

“ It is unfortunately not possible to deal with Air in history nor with the Tuareg of Air, by considering the mountains and their inhabitants alone. The migrations of the Tuareg of Air have been so intimately connected with that part of the Sudan which we now call Nigeria that the northern fringe of the area and the country intervening between it and Air must receive attention. This intervening steppe and desert, largely overrun by Tuareg, lie on the way which I followed to reach the mountains. ”

“ Abdul said. "If we go out now, they will not only chase us; they will catch us, for they are able to see very well in the dark."
"Who will catch us?"
"These people. They are worse than Tuaregs. For all I know, they may be descended from the Tuaregs, and everyone knows that a Tuareg would as soon cut a man's throat as kiss the hem of his burnoose."
"So now they are Tuaregs." Colonel Glinka nodded, with a slow, ferocious smile. "Yet you have hinted that they are the spawn of Comrade Stefanik's genius, the children of genetical science, stamped with 'Made in the Seychelles' upon their bottoms. ”

“ In appearance the Tuaregs are tall, slender, and well formed. In disposition they are grave, silent, impassive, and affect an indifference to their surroundings. In character they are proud, cunning, quarrelsome, and tenacious. They are very excitable, brave, and enduring, and no privation nor fatigue can dishearten them. In their intercourse with others their hatred knows no pity, their vengeance no mercy.
They are the terror of the caravans that cross the desert, where every living being is an enemy. Whenever a solitary man appears on the dim horizon, the caravan makes ready for battle. ”

“ None of the considerations governing the site of other desert cities applies to Agades. It lies on the southernmost foothills of the Air mountains, and in the history of the country there has never been any danger of invasion except from the south. Some of the Tuareg, it is true, gradually penetrated Air from the north, and pushed south by the progressive occupation of the northern mountains, which the original population may not have been sufficiently interested or numerous to occupy and defend. ”

“ The population of the Sahara is very diverse and the affinities of the various elements afford many interesting problems for study; but in the present work we shall be concerned with the one race alone.
The Tuareg country may roughly be described as extending from the eastern edge of the Central Sahara, which is bounded by the Fezzan-Murzuk-Kawar-Lake Chad caravan road, to the far edge of the western deserts of North Africa before the Atlantic zone begins, and from Southern Algeria in the north to the Niger and the Equatorial belt between the river and Lake Chad in the south. ”

“ The Touaricks of Timbuctoo are the more faithless and sanguinary in their disposition, and less addicted to commerce or a regular mode of life. Those of Ghat represent the Touarghee character in its most original type, these tribes being a brave and hardy people, reserved and using few words in speech, of a noble chivalric disposition, and carrying on some commerce. Those of Touat, I imagine, are the same style of people, from what few of them I saw at Ghadames; but those of Aheer are more effeminate and milder in their manners, and are a good deal mixed with the Negro nations of Soudan. ”

“ It is with something of a thrill that the tourist in Tunis or Algiers learns from a mendacious guide that a poor Arab half-caste sitting muffled in a cloak is one of the fabled People of the Veil. It is long, in fact, since any of them have visited the Mediterranean coast, for they do not care for Europeans very much. Before the Italo-Turkish War, occasional Tuareg used to reach the coast at Tripoli at the end of the long caravan road from Central Africa; even then they more usually stopped at Ghadames or Murzuk. ”

“ They jump up on to the neck of the camel after pulling its head down and so reach the top, but they never kneel a camel after it has started on the march until the day’s journey is over, unless the load has been thrown or has slipped very badly. The guide takes the head of the caravan and the march starts. The Tuareg of Air know their mountains as well as the average Londoner knows London: they can find their way along the more important tracks. ”

“ We have the three principal cities of Ghat, Aheer, and Aghadez, besides numerous villages, in Western Sahara, entirely under the authority of the Touaricks. Everywhere they [140] inhabit the agricultural districts of the open desert. I have not heard of Touaricks on the western line of the Atlantic Ocean. Captain Riley speaks only of wandering Arabs, almost in a wild state. On the eastern line of The Desert, they do not extend beyond the western limits of the oases of Fezzan, and the southern Tibboo countries. ”

“ The Arab and Moorish writers of the middle ages, as well as the latest Saharan pilgrims, who have travelled The Desert from the shores of the Atlantic to the banks of the Nile, have all given us brief notices of the Touarick nations; but they have sometimes confounded Touaricks with strictly Berber tribes, and indeed, not without reason, for apparently the Touarick and Berber tribes are descended from one original family, or stock of people. The fairest conclusion is, that they are the descendants of the ancient Numidian tribes. ”

“ But before the rains begin they move north again to the steppe and desert, for flooded rivers and excessive damp are conditions which the camels of the Veiled People do not relish. Quite large colonies of Tuareg have settled in some of these cities and have adopted a semi-sedentary life, maintaining their [39] characteristics in inverse measure as intermarriage with the negroid peoples has become more frequent. The influx of Tuareg into Nigeria after the 1917 revolution in Air added considerably to the numbers living permanently under British rule. ”

“ The merchants of Ghadames and Tripoli try to shut out the Touaricks as much as possible all times of the day, and especially just at supper-time, for this is the hour when the Touaricks prowl about for their evening meal, like famished evening wolves, seeking whom and what they can devour. Prowling for food is an absolute necessity with them, for generally they have no food; they bring only a very small quantity from their native districts, when they leave to spend some weeks at the Souk. ”

“ I would say of the Tuareg men that they are adventurers of the road; seen at a disadvantage in their villages, but active and able when away with their caravans—superb camel-riders, observant trackers, and endowed with that marvellous second sense of direction which belongs only to natives. ”

“ It is possible to trace in Roman records the names of certain well-known Tuareg tribes. The description which Corippus gives of the Ifuraces, the Ifoghas tribe of the Southern Tuareg, corresponds accurately with that of the present-day camel riders of the Sahara. In a description of an encounter with the Byzantine forces under John, the general himself cuts down a camel with his sword and the rider falls with the accoutrements and paraphernalia, which are those of a Tuareg on campaign or in battle to-day. ”

“ When all has been said of the European penetration of the Tuareg country, it is not very much. The world outside the society of those white men who, during the last fifty years, have spent their lives in the Sahara, can know but little of this race or of their country. The modern literature on the subject is small, even in French; in English it is almost non-existent. On the Tuareg of Air there are only two works of any value: the one by a French officer is recent in date and sadly superficial ”

“ In constant conflict with each other, and with the Arab and Negro tribes who dispute with them the scanty means of subsistence that Nature here provides, they appear on the whole to predominate over their competitors. The Touarecks, scattered over a territory as large as half of Europe, from Algeria to Soudan, form a separate branch of the same stock; while we learn from Gerhard Rohlfs that the predatory tribes of the desert south of Marocco are merely Shelluhs who have changed their habits and manner of life to suit altered conditions of existence. ”