Tuareg

“ The predominant rôle is that of the envied and handsome villain, the noble Tuareg. He is glorious in life and fearless in death.
It is unfortunately impossible for lack of space to discuss the Kanuri or Fulani of Damergu. The latter affect the political life of the country but little. They shift continually to fresh tracts of bush or better water for the sake of their great black cattle, which used to be sold in the far north as well as in Hausaland. They do not mix with the Tuareg, though they are recognised by them, as anyone must [57] recognise them, to be of a noble race. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Tuareg woman is not her husband’s slave; she is his equal, she sits beside him at meals, and can take long journeys alone, for she is not shut up like an Arab woman.
Whilst the man journeys afar with the caravans, or on freebooting expeditions, she remains at home to direct affairs. But this is not all, for she studies old traditions, is highly enlightened, and far in advance of the men in knowledge of old customs and manners, and also of the art of reading and writing the Tuareg language. ”

“ The Tuareg wander as nomads over the country generally, the negroes and sedentary Libyans till the ground, and, in addition to a proportion of all those already enumerated, the towns are inhabited by yet another people of noble origin, whose connection with the ancient Garamantes of classical authors may be assumed if it cannot be proved. With the exception of the Fezzan the Tuareg are now predominant within their own country. It includes two great groups of mountains, Air and Ahaggar, together with certain smaller adjacent massifs. ”

“ But in spite of the number and influence of the Tuareg who used to make Zinder their headquarters, neither Damagarim nor Gure has changed its essentially Sudanese character.
Within a few days’ march of Tessawa on the road north to Gangara in Damergu, several interesting features were observable. At Urufan village the Magazawa Hausa and Kanuri women were wearing the ornament known as the “Agades Cross,” peculiar to the Air Tuareg, in a simple as well as in a conventionalised form. Many of the women exhibited almost Mongolian traits in their eyes and cheek-bones. ”

“ The name “Tuareg” is not their own: it is a term of opprobrium applied to them by their enemies, and connotes certain peculiarities possessed by a number of tribal confederations which have no common name for themselves as a race. The men of this people, after reaching a certain age, wear a strip of thin cloth wound around their heads in such a manner as to form a hood over the eyes and a covering over the mouth and nostrils. Only a narrow slit is left open for the eyes, and no other part of the face is visible. ”

“ The Tuareg of Air differentiate the colouring of people somewhat arbitrarily: they call the pure negro “blue,” [155] but the dark-brown Hausa, “black”; the Arab is always “white,” whatever shade of bronze he happens to be; the Tuareg himself is “red,” [156] which is the most complimentary epithet he can apply to others. Fairness of complexion is much prized and is a social distinction, though when carried to such extremes as among Europeans it is apt to be regarded as strange and odd. Certain tribes in Air are reputed, even among the Tuareg, to be more than usually fair. ”

“ So that, when these circumstances are embraced and weighed in the scale of reasoning, it is not altogether surprising to find that they are, beyond all else, past-masters in cunning war-craft; and that there is no Tuareg, over the age of childhood, who is not fully versed in every detail of a subject that is their primary education. Consequently, whatever the conditions under which they are met, the Tuaregs are, in foremost characteristic, a people skilled and able in war, and every man a disciplined soldier when need arises. ”

“ Every unlikely theory has been advanced, from that of the desire of raiders to conceal their faces in order to escape recognition, to the one which suggests that the Tuareg were the Amazons of the classics, and that the habits adopted by men and women respectively in such a society had become confused. ”

“ Even if we are to admit that the earliest and therefore the best of the [264] rock drawings of North Africa are the work of the ancestors of the Tuareg, it is hardly possible to qualify them as more than interesting or curious. Few of them are beautiful. ”

“ They differentiate the Tuareg sharply from the southern peoples. But even a casual glance at the houses of Agades makes it obvious that they belong to a city of the south. There is plenty of stone all round the city which might have been used for building, yet nearly all the houses are rambling mud constructions like those of Kano or of any of the towns of Nigeria. The number of houses at Agades which reflect the formal Tuareg fashion of planning is small. The characteristics which one learns to associate with the truly Tuareg houses of Air are conspicuously difficult to find. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fundamentally the Tuareg remains the pure nomad even when his habitat has changed and circumstances have obliged him to settle in villages or on the land. In Air all the truest nomads inhabit the Talak plain and the N.W. of the plateau, with the one great exception of the Ifadyen tribe, which during the last generation has moved south to Azawagh and Tegama. The true nomads have no fixed centres of permanent habitation whatsoever, thereby differing considerably from many of the purest Arabian nomads. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We ought to favour the black at the expense of the Tuaregs, because the former are producers as tillers of the soil, and the latter are useless idlers, for the Tuareg is as hard a worker as the negro; he works in a different direction, that is all—breeding flocks and herds instead of growing cereals. When the means of transport [218] are sufficient for it to be easy to get to and from Timbuktu, it will be the Tuareg, whose camels will carry the gum harvest into the town, it will be he who will sell skins and wool; in fact, he will turn out to be the greater producer of the two races after all. ”

“ The beauty and grace of their bodies are the principal characteristics of the Tuareg. They are tall, more commonly in the neighbourhood of six feet than shorter. They look much taller owing to their flowing robes. When at rest they have little superficial muscular development; their bodies are not corrugated and knobbly like the powerfully built Latin: they are more like Nordic folk in that their limbs and backs are smooth until exerted, when the muscles stand up hard and tough. ”

“ A morning rainbow “Tufakoret” was seen in Air shortly before the late European war broke out. An ordinary rainbow in wet weather is a good omen.
The two most noticeable virtues among the Tuareg, that of patience and of a sense of honour, have not come to them from Islam. They are attributable to something older. Their patience is not that of quietism or of fatalism. It is rather the faculty of being content to seek in the morrow what has been denied in the present. They take the long view of life and are not querulous; they are of the optimistic school of thought. ”

“ There are a number of desert monasteries, huge camps pitched in a circle. Here the marabout lives surrounded by his followers, shifting the “monastery” as the requirements of his flocks compel. In these monasteries many Tuareg children receive their education.
Socially the Tuareg are divided into five classes, viz.: Thaggaren or nobles; Marabouts or priests; Imghad or serfs; Ireghenaten or cross-breeds; and the slaves. The nobles are all pure-blooded, and provide the tribal chiefs. ”

“ On the subject of the Tuareg, or Muleththemin as he calls them, the work is perhaps a little disappointing, for the author seems to have drawn his material from several sources; he is not wholly free from contradictions. To avoid, however, adding unduly to the complications attending a study of the divisions of the Tuareg in the Central Sahara, it will be preferable in the first instance to examine the account of another historian, Leo Africanus. ”

“ There would therefore be absolutely nothing to prevent a Tuareg who should chance to be in want of money or of clothes to go and seize one or more of the Gabibi, as the negroes of the villages are called, and sell him or them for slaves at Timbuktu. In fact, it would be quite as simple a matter as to choose an ox out of his own herds and send it to market. Yet never has a Tuareg been known to do such a thing. I have made sure of this by cross-questioning [217] many negroes, and their answers have always been the same. ”

“ From the Tuareg point of view she must have been a splendid woman, for amongst this tribe weight counts as beauty. The desired corpulence is obtained by eating quantities of a mixture of which curdled milk is the chief ingredient, in fact, they fatten themselves up much as the French do the geese which are to produce paté de foie gras.
POLITICAL ANXIETIES.
Clouds were now beginning to gather on our political horizon. Our prolonged sojourn at Rhergo, where we [120] waited in vain for letters from Abiddin, must have seemed very strange to the Tuaregs, who can have had no inkling of the reason. ”

“ Their women have position and prerogatives not yet achieved by their sisters in many of those countries which we term “civilised.” The Tuareg women are strong-minded, gifted and intelligent. They have their share in public life ”

“ The last-named tribe is of Arab origin descended from a Bedawi stock of the Wadi el Shati in the Fezzan. Its members are the fighting troops of the Imanen and have come to be regarded as Noble Tuareg. Though the People of the Veil recognise nobility or servility of other races, I know of no other instance where a foreign stock has achieved complete recognition among these people as Imajegh or Noble. In all other cases foreign stocks, even of noble caste according to the standards of the Tuareg, technically become servile when conquered or absorbed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their bones are small. They have wrists and ankles as slender as a woman’s; it is noteworthy that whatever the degree of negro admixture this sign of high breeding is the last to disappear. It is a most infallible mark of pure Tuareg parentage. With it, of course, go slenderness and refinement of hands and fingers. The men never grow fat: they are hard and fit and dry like the nerve of a bow, or a spring in tension. Of all their characteristics the one I have most vividly in mind is their grace of carriage. ”

“ In general the young Tuareg women are handsome and possessed of considerable charm. They are smaller in build than the men, but when their parentage is reasonably pure, they possess the same aristocratic features and proportions. Their demeanour is modest and dignified. In this Ahodu’s wife resembled them. ”

“ Such development is only found in societies, whether Christian, Moslem or otherwise, which have for long been evolving under the guidance of a few men who have learnt much and taught much. Yet the feet of the Tuareg are not now kept in this way; their conduct is unconscious. They are no community of philosophers seeking by choice to live in primitive conditions for the betterment of their souls. They hold what they have as an inheritance of grace from bygone generations. ”

“ 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. ”