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.