Exploration of Aïr

by Angus Buchanan

Through a deep archway in a thick mud wall you enter the courtyard of the Sultan’s Palace. A small gloomy entrance, wherein one can well imagine lurked the watchmen of the Sultan in time of danger. On the outside of this entrance is a double-leaved, cumbersome door, constructed with palm poles laced securely together with thongs of goat-hide—a door to be closed at night to shut out the dangers of the desert. Do not picture a courtyard within the entrance that is paved and spotless for the reception of the footsteps of royalty or you will be disappointed, for there is nothing but an open space of level sand, with small mud buildings erected in such position that they form a fairly regular square. On the east is the palace; on the south the stall-divided mosque for private prayer; on the west an open shelter, presumably for the reception of travellers waiting audience with the Sultan or his advisers; and on the north the wall wherein the entrance. The palace is deserted—forsaken since the downfall of Tegama—and there is now no pleasant scene within the courtyard, so that one can but imagine those better days when camp-fires sparkled here at eventide surrounded by the hum of camp-fire gossip, and groups of picturesquely clad Tuaregs and reposing camels of wayfarers arrived with news or food from distant parts. Or the scene by day: the courtyard almost empty (as it is now), since the fierce heat of the sun had driven the people to seek shelter within the dark chambers of the palace, and the town, after the early hours of coolness, had witnessed the directing of the business of the day.

To enter the palace from the courtyard you turn to the left, and again you pass within a deep dark entrance. You are then in a gloomy windowless mud-built vestibule or entrance hall, with large fireplaces recessed at either end, while the room is crossed diagonally, to a door in the opposite wall, by a path that has raised margins. No doubt the convenient spaces on either side of the path were loitering places, where servants of the Sultan gossiped, the while they observed all who entered or passed out. Proceeding, one steps from the vestibule through the door in the opposite wall, and is again outdoors in the full daylight (which is most noticeable after the darkness of the den-like interior), having entered a small inner courtyard hemmed in by dwellings on all sides and containing a confusing number of low dark doorways and ascending stairways to dwellings above. Directly opposite the vestibule is the low door which gives entrance to the throne-room, a diminutive chamber with arched ceiling beams, which contains the throne dais, fashioned, like all structure, with the clay-soil from neighbouring pits, and rounded off plainly, but not without some neatness and endeavour at rude design. As to the rest of the chamber, there are a few small niches in the thick walls, and some interesting quaintly primitive scroll ornament, while on the right of the throne there is an exposed mud-built stairway leading up to a second story, wherein are three low-ceilinged rooms lit by small openings in the exterior wall, each room a tiny gloomy shut-in space more like hiding-den or prison than chosen human dwelling. The doors from the inner courtyard lead to many other such apartments, no less diminutive, no less gloomy, and now but the home of swarms of bats and one or two large brown African owls (Bubo africanus cinerasceus). Throughout one finds the same congestion of space, the same rude adaptability to the bare needs of shelter of primitive outdoor people, which is common to every native dwelling in Hausaland or Aïr, or, indeed, anywhere in out-of-the-way places in Africa. The entire dwelling, and many another of the kind in similar country, is a “Palace” only in name and political significance. And this condition of primitiveness and humbleness ought, I think, to be made quite clear, for I have read works which, in my view, were far too apt to lead one astray in forming an overhigh opinion of the royalty and magnificence which is sometimes believed to surround the Emir or Sultan or Saraki of a native community and their dwellings. True, such men are the kings and princes of the land, and have a certain exalted standing; but there is a very wide difference between those chiefs of tribes or districts (who are sometimes not much more than crafty rascals, and seldom to any notable degree better in refinement than their subjects) and the kings of civilised lands. And the great difference in caste between primitive King and cultured King is in no way more clearly reflected than through the medium of their dwellings and environments: in the one case a beautiful palace, rich in architecture, refined, and royally appointed in every inner detail; in the other nothing more important than a group of small bare mud-built dwellings, neither tastefully appointed nor regal in any degree, and entirely wrapped in an atmosphere of humbleness, even poverty, such as surrounds all people of primitive environment and primitive race.

Mosque.

VIEW OF AGADES.

THRONE-ROOM OF THE SULTAN OF AGADES.

The position of the Sultan of Agades is one of greatness in the land, though of a type of local importance which has decided limitations, and one might be forgiven, if, carried away by the weight of rank and reputation, he should expect to find about the Sultan’s abode something in keeping with the name of a sovereign. But that is not so, for we find the throne-room a small dark space, within earthen walls, no larger than a cottage bedroom, and less ornamented; and his private apartments for his own use, and the use of his retinue, no larger, no more attractively or extravagantly constructed, than tiny cellars or pen-like outhouses.

So that the Sultan’s Palace at Agades, like many others in Africa, is a humble place indeed, its virtue not at all in regal magnificence, but in historic value, and in the novelty and quaintness of primitive native architecture of a character of great simplicity and antiquity as if it has remained unchanged through time by any process of civilisation.

The second dwelling I will describe is not in the old town of Agades, nor is it of native design. I write of the European mess-room within the Fort, part of a dwelling of European conception, built with some knowledge of design, and imposing and spacious in comparison with the diminutive buildings of the native town, but, nevertheless, a dwelling rude enough in construction, since, by nature of its wilderness environment, it is, in essentials, impossible to avoid the limitations imposed by primitive labour and primitive material.