People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

The Third Immigration

The third wave was that of the Kel Owi. On Barth and Hornemann’s authority they arrived in modern times, while according to Jean they arrived in the ninth century. Barth’s researches, which in all cases are more reliable than those of Jean, who appears usually to have accepted native dates without hesitation, led him to believe that the Kel Owi entered, in fact conquered Air, about A.D. 1740. They are not mentioned by Leo or any other writers before the time of Hornemann (A.D. 1800), who obtained such good information about them that his commentator, Major Rennell, also assumed their arrival to be recent.[398] By the end of the nineteenth century the Kel Owi had already achieved such fame that of all Tuareg known to him, Hornemann only mentions them. He adds in his account that Gober was at this time tributary to Air, a detail consistent with other records. Barth’s very late date[399] for the arrival of the Kel Owi nevertheless presents certain difficulties. It is clear on the one hand that it could not have been the Kel Owi who made the arrangement of Maket n’Ikelan, and that it must therefore have been the Kel Geres or their predecessors, but it is further difficult to see how a people could have entered Air in such numbers as to become the preponderant group within barely one hundred years and to have evicted the firmly rooted Kel Geres tribes so soon. That the Kel Owi should have appropriated the historical credit for the settlement of Maket n’Ikelan is easy to understand, for it was they who held the trade route to the north out of the country, but the early expulsion of the Kel Geres indicates a numerical superiority which, unfortunately, native tradition does not bear out.

It is noteworthy that no Kel Owi tribe is represented in the election of the king, which supports the view that they had not yet reached Air when the local system of government from Agades was devised.

“The vulgar account of the origin of the Kel Owi from the female slave of a Tinylcum who came to Asben where she gave birth to a boy who was the progenitor of the Kel Owi . . . is obviously nothing but a popular tale. . . .”[400]

The story collected by Jean, which purports to explain the two categories of tribes in Air to-day, the Kel Owi confederation and the People of the King, is not more authentic.[401] He tells how, after the arrival of the Sultan in Air, the Kel Geres kept away from his presence, while the Kel Owi ingratiated themselves and secured their own administration under the Añastafidet. The Sultan, however, wishing to create his own tribal group, divided the Kel Owi amongst themselves, and this is the origin of the People of the Añastafidet and the People of the King. In their efforts to ingratiate themselves, the Kel Owi of Bagezan which, as we have seen, was Itesan country at the time, sent as a present to the Sultan a woman named T’iugas with her six daughters of the Imanen tribe of the north; these women had been sent from the north to cement good relations between Air and Azger.[402] The six sisters nominated the eldest as their speaker and the Sultan gave her authority over the rest. She was followed by the next two sisters, and these three are the mothers of the three senior tribes of the Kel Owi, namely, the Kel Owi proper, the Kel Tafidet and the Kel Azañieres.[403] The other three women refused to accept the leadership of the eldest sister and placed themselves under the authority of the Sultan direct; and they were the mothers of the Kel Tadek, Imezegzil and Kel Zilalet.[404] The details of the story are obviously a Kel Owi invention. They are designed to establish nobility and equality of ancestry with the older and more respected tribes. The legend, however, probably also contains certain indications of truth, notably in the allusion to the Imanen women from the north, since there does exist an affinity between that tribe and the Itesan, though it must, of course, be understood that the Kel Bagezan of the story were an Itesan sub-tribe, and not the later Kel Bagezan of the Kel Owi group. With these conditions the story becomes intelligible as a legendary or traditional account. It is not meant to be taken as literally true, and is not even a very widely accepted version of the origin of the present social structure in Air, but it is amusing, for it shows how on this as on every other occasion the Kel Owi have attempted to claim antiquity of descent equal to that of the tribes they found on their arrival.

Two other traditions which I collected are best summarised by quoting the following extract from my diary, written while at T’imia, a Kel Owi village in the Bagezan mountains. One of the big men in the village was the “’alim” ’Umbellu, a fine figure of a man, old and bald but still powerful and vigorous, with the heavy noble features of a Roman emperor. He used to be the keeper of the old mosque, and is said to be one of the most learned men in the country. I had examined the ruined sanctuary, in which he had not set foot since it was desecrated by the French troops after the Kaossen revolt, and found some fragments of holy books, which I restored to ’Umbellu in the present mosque at T’imia, a shelter of reeds and matting. From him I received the same sort of confused account which others besides myself had heard. “. . . He says that the Kel Owi are not pure Tuareg, but that some Arabs or (sic) Tuareg of the north came down to Northern Air and mixed with the local population, which stock became the Kel Owi Confederation; but whether these people came as raiders or settlers he could not say. He was, however, quite clear that they had come from the Arab country.[405] Then in almost the same breath he told me that the Kel Owi are descended from a woman who came from the north and lived in Tamgak, where she mated with one of the local inhabitants and became the mother of all these tribes. He added that she was a Moslem at a time when the Kel Ferwan (a non-Kel Owi tribe, or People of the King, then living in Iferuan) were heathen, but whether Christians or pagan he could not say.”

The second story is analogous to that which Barth heard.

Generally speaking traditions give the two separate versions, which are rather puzzling. If the account of the woman who settled in Tamgak is taken as a legendary record of the indigenous growth of the Kel Owi tribes, it must be supposed that their forefathers were in Air for much more than two hundred years, and Jean’s date would consequently not be out of the question. Against this must be set the other version, that they arrived quite recently, a view which is supported unanimously by all the other Tuareg. It was, we have seen, confirmed by Barth’s researches and deduced by Rennell from information collected by Hornemann. The compact organisation and the definite division which exists between them and the other tribes in Air would also point to their having a separate origin and being comparatively recent arrivals; they are still organised in an administrative system which has not yet had time to break down and merge into the régime of the other tribes. Furthermore, no mention is made of the Kel Owi by any of the earlier authors, which, if negative evidence, is nevertheless significant in the works of an authority like Leo, especially as, apart from the ethnic distinction which might have been overlooked, the dual government of the King and the Añastafidet is too remarkable a feature to have escaped his discernment. The balance of testimony is therefore in favour of attributing a fairly recent date to their arrival, though perhaps not so late as Barth would have us believe. I myself make no doubt that they were late arrivals: I only differ with the learned traveller in a small matter of the exact date.

But what impelled them to migrate it is difficult to say. Barth thought that they could be traced to an earlier habitat in the north-west, and that the nobler portion of them once belonged to the Auraghen tribe, whence their dialect was called Auraghiye. I have no evidence on this point except that of Ahodu, who gave me to understand that the language of the Kel Owi was not different from that of any other Tuareg tribe in the plateau, and he added that he had not heard the name Auraghiye employed to describe it, though he knew that it was applied to the dialect spoken in Ahaggar. Barth’s testimony, otherwise, is acceptable.

Jean is of the impression that they are essentially of the same race as the Kel Geres, who were probably Hawara. If this deduction is true, three possibilities require to be considered. The Kel Owi may have been an Auraghen tribe living to the north or north-east of Air among the Azger; or, they may have been among the older Auraghen people, to use this term in its wider sense, namely, of the Auriga-Hawara, represented by the Ahaggaren, to whom, of course, the Azger Auraghen of to-day belong; or, lastly, they may be descended from the Auraghen of the west, from the Tademekkat country. The last is the soundest view in the present state of our knowledge, though the second is also quite probable.

The Tademekkat people, we know, were driven from their homes in A.D. 1640 by the Aulimmiden. While some of them were driven out to the west, some at least found their way back into the Azger country.[406] It is no less probable that others may have gone to Air by a roundabout route. In that case Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air seems to be at least fifty years too late. During the last half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries they would have been finding their way into Northern Air in small groups. This is not inconsistent with the appearance at Agades of an Amenokal with a Kel Owi mother, if the admittedly tentative date of 1629 given in the Agades Chronicle is placed a decade or so later.

I am inclined to regard the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air as having taken place in the latter half of the seventeenth century. According to the Agades Chronicle they were already fighting the Kel Geres at Abattul, west of the Central massif, in 1728, some time before Barth’s date; and this obviously implies an earlier arrival in the north of the plateau, for their entry must have taken place from that direction and not from the south. But a recent date, taken in conjunction with the dominant position which the Kel Owi occupied and their separate political organisation, further implies that they came in considerable numbers, a conclusion which is at variance with one set of native traditions. They could not otherwise in two hundred years have achieved so much as they did by the beginning of the century.

THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREG

We know that their coming was followed by an economic disturbance of far-reaching importance. They first occupied North-eastern and Northern Air; the later phase of their penetration is recorded in the statement that the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres lived side by side, west and east of the Iferuan-Auderas-Agades road. The eastern plains of Air, according to Ahodu of Auderas and ’Umbellu of T’imia, had by this time been evacuated by the Itesan and the early settlers, but the invasion of the Kel Owi must have led also to the expulsion of the early settlers from the northern marches. The removal of the Kel Ferwan from the Iferuan area, and of the Kel Tadek from their territories north of Tamgak to the west and the south, probably took place in this period. The Kel Owi movement, though accompanied by frequent disturbances, was gradual. At T’imia, where the original inhabitants, according to ’Umbellu, were Kel Geres, they were only displaced in the time of his own grandparents by a mixed band of settlers from various Kel Owi tribes then living in the Ighazar in Northern Air. ’Umbellu is a man of about sixty now, so this event may have been one hundred years ago, at a time, in fact, when we should still expect the southward movement of the Kel Owi to be in progress.

More recently still the south-eastern part of the country was distributed among certain of their clans. The large Itesan settlements like those near Tabello had already been abandoned and were never again permanently inhabited; some dwellings were built later by the Kel Owi, but never on so large a scale as in the previous epoch. The extant houses and ruins are mostly of the first period; a few only show a transitional phase to the later Kel Owi type. Sometimes a compact block of contiguous buildings is to be found, possessing the character of a fortified settlement. It would seem that this defensible type of habitation had been evolved during the period after the Itesan were known to have been driven out by Tebu raiding and before the Kel Owi arrived. These dwellings betray certain features alien to the Tuareg, which may be explained by supposing that they were used by the serfs of the Itesan when their lords had retreated west of the Bagezan massif.

With the occupation of the eastern part of Air by the Kel Owi, the ancient caravan road which has run from time immemorial by T’intaghoda, Unankara, Mari, Beughqot and Tergulawen fell into their hands. It is the easiest road across the Air plateau, and perhaps for this reason, but more probably because they always had propensities of this sort, they developed such commercial ability that they rapidly made for themselves a dominant place in all trade and transport enterprises between Ghat and the Sudan. But although their efficiency in organisation gave them the control of the road, they certainly did not create it. But they did create a monopoly which deprived the Kel Geres of their legitimate profit.

The hostilities which soon broke out between the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres could lead to only one of two possible solutions, the expulsion or extermination of one of the rivals. Such economic problems are, of course, not always realised at the time when they are most urgently felt, and the current record of events to which they give rise is therefore often slightly distorted. Here, however, even the popular version shows that the real cause of the disturbances was an economic one. The Kel Owi began by appropriating the half of a country in which they were new-comers. They proceeded to demand the serfs and slaves whom the Kel Geres had possessed since their subjugation of the negroid peoples of Air. This impossible demand gave rise to considerable strife and was referred for arbitration to the reigning Sultan of Agades. The Hausa elements were supported by the Kel Owi for political reasons and as far as possible abandoned their former masters. The Sultan seems to have maintained the neutrality for which he stood, and even to have prevented the tribes which owed allegiance to him directly and belonged to neither party from taking sides in the dispute.[407] He was nevertheless unsuccessful, and after years of desultory fighting the Kel Geres abandoned Air for Adar and Gober to the west of Damergu and to the north of Sokoto. They retained their rights in the election of the Amenokal, to whom they continued to owe nominal allegiance through their chiefs, and were allowed to continue to use certain Air place-names in their tribal nomenclature. In the last century they repeatedly interfered in choice of the Sultan, and they still consider themselves to this day a part of the Air Tuareg, although their hostility against the Kel Owi never died. They evacuated the country with all the slaves and serfs whom they succeeded in retaining. It is possible that a few of the older non-Kel Owi tribes of Air and Damergu went with them.

If Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi were accepted, this migration should have occurred in the end of the eighteenth century. But as a matter of fact the movement took place earlier. Jean states that an arrangement for the evacuation was reached in the reign of the Sultan Almoubari or El Mubarak, who ruled thirty-four years, from A.D. 1653 to 1687. If the agreement was made at the end of his reign, the date for the immigration of the Kel Owi in accordance with previous information falls in the neighbourhood of 1640, to which epoch the reign of Sultan Muhammad Attafriya, who was deposed two years after his accession by the Itesan, can be assigned. The Kel Geres did not, however, leave the country directly the arrangement was made, and in the meanwhile continued the struggle. In 1728 the Kel Owi and the Itesan were still fighting in Air, the latter being defeated at Abattul, near Auderas. Halfway through this century the Itesan were fighting in the Southland and attacked Katsina in company with the Zamfarawa. It is at this time that the Kel Geres seem to have obtained a footing in the lands of Adar and Sokoto, though the Itesan still refused to settle there. In 1759 there is recorded a war between the Kel Geres and the Kel Tegama at the cliffs of Tiggedi, in which the latter were defeated. This war was followed by another in 1761 between the Kel Geres and the Aulimmiden, where, however, the former suffered. In the same year the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres fought each other at Agades. In this period the Amenokal Muhammad Hammad, who had come to the throne in 1735, changed places twice with Muhammad Guma, according as the Kel Owi or the Kel Geres faction prevailed. The former, restored to the throne in 1763, undertook an expedition with the men of Air against the King of Gober, and was severely defeated in 1767. In order to avenge the defeat, a truce between the warring Tuareg was finally concluded after a century of fighting. The combined men of Air then marched on, and defeated Dan Gudde and cut off his head. This event may be held to mark the final settlement of the Itesan and Kel Geres in the Southland. Their success accounts for Hornemann’s report that at the end of the nineteenth century the Tuareg were masters of Gober. Internecine hostilities continued, but henceforth the Itesan and the Kel Geres are no longer described as fighting the Kel Owi but the men of Air, as in 1780 and again in 1788, when they made their nominee, Muhammad Dani, Sultan at Agades. In 1835 the Amenokal, Guma, was captured in Damergu by the Kel Geres after a massacre of the Kel Owi. It was only in about 1860 that hostilities, which were in full progress in Barth’s day, finally ceased.

Why, it may be asked, did the Itesan and not all the rest of the pre-Kel Geres people of Air leave in consequence of the Kel Owi invasion? The question is not easy to answer, but the surmise is that, as the largest and most important group, they became most involved in the struggle. With their departure and that of the Kel Geres the remaining people became leaderless: having no confederation of their own they clustered around the person of the Sultan, and so came to be known as the People of the King. Yet, on account of their ancestry and nobility, the Kel Owi sought to attack them and arrogate to themselves the principal rôles in history, like the story of the peace of Maket n’Ikelan and that of the Imanen women. These claims are consistent with the characteristic which is felt to-day in relations with them—the arrogance of the parvenu. The ascendancy of the noble Itesan has continued in the Southland as it existed in Air. They lead the Kel Geres division, with whom fate had made them throw in their lot. They remain primarily responsible for the choice of the Sultan even to-day.

Enough—too much perhaps—has been said of the three migrations of the Tuareg people into Air. It would be tedious to continue on that narrow subject. The complexity of the tribal organisation of the Air Tuareg has also been made patent in the earlier attempts to discover their social life. It is unfortunately impossible, even if space were available, to allocate the various clans of whose existence report has reached us to the larger groups or waves of immigration which have been examined. Lists of the tribes which have survived are given in [Appendix II] to this work: they have been arranged in such system as was feasible, using the information collected by Barth, and Jean, and by myself. But the classification is unsatisfactory, since there is, in many instances, but little evidence. The organisation of the Kel Owi is, of course, the easiest to ascertain and it was briefly outlined in [Chapter X,] but the People of the King are really more interesting both because they were the earliest arrivals and because of their association with the Itesan culture of the old houses and deep wells. Among the People of the King the most valuable anthropological data are to be collected. They brought such civilisation as Nigeria possessed in the Middle Ages from the Mediterranean, having absorbed and forgotten much of it on the way and since those epochs.