People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

The Second Immigration

The second wave of immigration was that of the Kel Geres. Jean believed that the Kel Geres were among the first arrivals because he wrongly assumed that they were identical with the Itesan. An examination of the names of the various groups[393] discloses the fact that whereas many Itesan tribes have “Kel names” derived from known localities in Central Air, for the most part in the Auderas neighbourhood, of the Kel Geres tribes only the Kel Garet, Kel Anigara and the Kel Agellal have names similarly derived.[394] Traditionally the Kel Geres reached Air by way of the north. They also are associated with the story of over-population in the Mediterranean lands. They arrived, according to Jean, in considerable numbers, and settled in the part of Air which is west of the road from Iferuan to Agades by way of Assode and Auderas.[395] East of this line in later days lived the Kel Owi, and presumably, at this early period, the original five tribes. The assumption is confirmed by certain evidence, for although the Itesan tribe names refer to an area lying across this line, the only territorial Kel Geres tribe names refer to an area west of it; the country, on the other hand, known to have been occupied by some of the first immigrants is, as would be expected, to the east. With the exception of the Igdalen, who moved in recent years, most of the older People of the King were also east of this line, before the Kel Owi scattered them.

The present Itesan-Kel Geres group in the Southland is said to number forty-seven tribes divided as follows:[396]

Itesan	6	tribes of the	Itesan.
Kel Geres	12	„ „	Tetmokarak.
	6	„ „	Kel Unnar.
	5	„ „	Kel Anigara.
	6	„ „	Kel Garet.
	12	„ „	Tadadawa and Kel Tatenei.

The principal tribal names of the Itesan which retain the more familiar place names of Air are the Kel Mafinet, Kel T’sidderak, Kel Dogam and Kel Bagezan or Maghzen, all of them derived from places in the neighbourhood of Auderas.[397] Among the Kel Geres the name of the Kel Garet records a habitat somewhat further north, the Kel Agellal of the Kel Unnar probably came from Agellal, and the Kel Anigara from an area still further north.

It is difficult to accept the view that the first Tuareg to enter Air arrived in the eighth century, even if it is only for the reason that the surviving “Itesan” houses could not for so long a time have remained in the state of preservation in which some of them are now found. I am personally not disposed to regard the first immigration as having taken place much before the latest date previously suggested as a limit, namely, the end of the eleventh century.

The invasion of the first tribes left the mountains with a mixed population of Tuareg and Goberawa; the disappearance of the latter as a separate race was only accomplished when the second or Kel Geres invasion took place. The Kel Geres so added to the Tuareg population in Air that henceforward the country must be regarded as essentially Tuareg, and this probably accounts for the tradition that the Kel Geres conquered the country, and as they came in both from the north and by the north, it doubtless gave rise to legends such as that of Maket n’Ikelan.

Failing more definite evidence than we now possess, I regard the Kel Geres movement as a part of a Hawara-Auriga emigration from the north to which Ibn Khaldun alludes. This does not exclude the possibility of some nuclei of Hawara having gone west of Air to join either the Aulimmiden or the Tademekkat or both groups. In fact, such a course of events would explain the distant affinity with, yet independence of, the Aulimmiden which is insisted upon by many authorities. We know that by the time Leo was writing he regarded both Ahaggar and Air as inhabited by Targa, while the Fezzan and the Chad road were inhabited by Lemta. The Ahaggaren I have previously tried to show were, in the main, Hawara. Now the advent in Air of a large mass from this division under the name of Kel Geres would warrant his grouping of both plateaux under one ethnic heading. The Hawara movement from the Western Fezzan and between Ghat and Ahaggar may be placed in the twelfth century, and therefore not so very far removed from the first immigration into Air from the south-east. It can also be accounted for by similar causes, namely, the growing pressure of the Arabs, perhaps as a sequel to the Hillalian invasion.

Following the two initial migrations, it may be assumed that small nuclei of Tuareg continued to reach Air. These would to-day be represented by such of the People of the King as are not to be connected with either the first five tribes or with the Kel Geres.