PLATE 39
MT. AGGATA: DRAWN BY T. A. EMMET FROM A SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR
I slept quite quietly at Aggata and was disappointed at not hearing the Drums of the Spirits which haunt the mountain. The next day I again marched some thirty miles, around Aggata and T’imuru peaks, where there is an old deep well, now, alas! silted up, and reached Assode, once the most considerable town in Air after Agades. The plain was flat and the going good, even over the scattered rock outcrop. Mirages were showing all the time. The mount of T’in Awak, north of the point I was making for, shone in the dancing air like a chalk hill standing in a blue lake. There was no shade and it was hot. We were all tired and disappointed by the elusive valley which continually crept away beyond another ridge, so when Assode was finally reached we were very glad. The Agoras, or “The Valley” by which the town lies, is not inspiring; and the site is marked by no prominent feature. The position, however, is otherwise interesting. The Agoras rises in the Agalak-T’imia massif and joins the basin of Northern Air not far north of Assode; the low hills on the north bank of the Agoras surround the town like the rim of a saucer. The position is not artificially fortified, but could readily have been defended, were it not that the only well lies some hundreds of yards distant from the houses in the bed of the valley.
Assode is said by Jean[264] to have been built by the Kel Owi for the first Añastafidet, but is certainly older than that. It very possibly dates from the first immigration of Tuareg. The reputed date of its foundation in A.D. 900 is therefore far more probable than that which Jean’s statement implies. Nor is there any reason to follow Barth[265] in setting it down to be of recent origin simply because it is not mentioned by Arabic authors. The superficial extension of the place is considerable, but the settlement belongs to various periods, and not all the 1000 ruined houses were probably ever inhabited at the same time. Although it is completely abandoned to-day, the population, even in Barth’s time, had become scanty, for he heard that only eighty houses were occupied, despite the fact that it was then, as in former and also more recent times, the official place of residence of the Añastafidet.[266]
On a small rise in the middle of the little basin is the mosque, the largest building in Air.[267] The minaret fell many years ago, but the mosque is still well preserved in spite of the rain which, since the evacuation of 1918, has gradually been breaking down the roof. The saucer in which the town lies warrants the construction of a minaret to serve, like the one at Agades, as a watch-tower. The general plan of the building may be gathered from [Plate 32.] The roof is low, as in all the Air mosques. The various outhouses and separate portions were used as khans and as schools. It once boasted a large library, the rotting remains of which I collected. I made up a whole camel load of these manuscripts[268] and took them to Iferuan, where I placed them in charge of the local alim, who turned out to be El Mintaka from Auderas. The books in part proved to be the remains of the private library of El Haj Suliman of Agellal, who possessed over 1000 volumes; he lived in the last century and belonged to the Qadria sect.
North of the mosque was the quarter where the Añastafidet used to live. The houses seemed to be mainly of the “A type.” The dwellings further south were more numerous, and included examples of all types and periods. The houses for the most part were surrounded by low compound walls and lay close together along narrow streets and lanes. No particular details are worth recording except the presence in many of the houses of grain pits, some of which had been used for concealing belongings and might repay investigation.[269]
The most interesting feature of Assode, considering its size, was the absence of all traces of garden or date cultivation. The town was obviously inhabited only by camel-owners and their domestic slaves. It was a trading depot and a metropolis, but not a productive centre, for even the pasture in the neighbourhood is limited. The selection of the place as the residence of the Añastafidet must have been due to its convenience as a centre for the tribes of the Confederation of Kel Owi. It also suited the conditions of their trade, and therefore probably that of their predecessors in the area, the first Tuareg to enter Air. As a strategic position it was admirably located, well within the borders of the plateau, and consequently not liable to be easily raided from without; tactically, also, it was defensible. It is interesting to note that of the thirty to forty wars, most of which were in Air and Tegama, mentioned in the Agades Chronicle, only two are recorded at Assode, whereas Agades was repeatedly involved. Assode was, to my mind, unquestionably the first real capital of the country, before Agades or any town in Tegama assumed an important rôle.
The great Kel Owi tribes in modern times are the Kel Azañieres, the Kel Tafidet and the Ikazkazan. The major part of the confederation lived in North and North-eastern Air; the Ikazkazan alone were in the west with sections ranging as far afield as Damergu and Elakkos. A little research makes it clear that both the Kel Azañieres and the Kel Tafidet are “Kel name” sections of older “I name” tribes; in the course of time they became so powerful and numerous that their parent stems were obscured. Of the latter three main stocks can still be traced, in addition to the Ikazkazan, certain unattached Imghad tribes, and several settled communities. The three parent tribes bear the names of Imaslagha, Igermaden, and Imasrodang.
The Imaslagha include the important Kel Azañieres tribes of the Azañieres mountains in the extreme north-west of Air, as well as the Kel Assarara of the north-eastern plain. When the Kel Owi entered Air, this stock occupied the area of the Immikitan and Imezegzil tribes of earlier Tuareg known as the People of the King.[270] It contains several ancient “I name” sections which might also be considered as separate stocks, were it not that on the one hand they never split up into “Kel name” tribes associated with definite localities, and, on the other, that they continued to be traditionally connected with the parent Imaslagha stems until to-day. These “I tribes” are the Izeyyakan, who are also said to be People of the King and may in fact have been a part of the latter division absorbed by the Kel Owi, the Imarsutan, and the now almost extinct Igururan, represented by one surviving section, the Kel Fares, who take their name from Fares water and pasture in the far north of North-eastern Air on the edge of the desert. If the Izeyyakan were originally People of the King, their absorption would afford a precedent for a similar process which can be observed in progress among the Immikitan who have fallen under the political influence of the Imaslagha stock of tribes. The Imarsutan are said to have come from an unidentified place called Arsu, which is presumed not to be in Air. In popular parlance all these tribes have collectively come to be known as the Kel Azañieres, but, although of the same Imaslagha stock, the Kel Assarara are usually not included under this head. The Kel Assarara with the subdivision, Kel Agwau and Kel Igululof, were the people of Annur, the paramount chief of Air in Barth’s day. Their villages are along the great valley of North-eastern Air, for which the Tuareg have no one name. They call the valley after the various villages on its banks, and these in turn are named from the neighbouring tributaries. It is into this basin that the Assode Agoras flows. The Kel Assarara fall into a somewhat separate category from the Kel Azañieres because Annur had made them into a powerful people, his own position being in reality far greater than either that of the Amenokal or the Añastafidet. It was due to him that his tribe acquired independent status in genealogical systems. Barth gives a good picture of the chief, and it is worth reproducing as the impression of a traveller who had no reason to be prejudiced in favour of the Air Tuareg, having at that time recently been attacked and nearly massacred by them.[271] “We saw the old chief on the day following our arrival. He received us in a straightforward and kindly manner, observing very simply that even if, as Christians, we had come to his country stained with guilt, the many dangers and difficulties we had gone through would have sufficed to wash us clean, and that we had nothing to fear but the climate and the thieves. The presents we spread out before him he received graciously, but without saying a single word. Of hospitality he showed no sign. All this was characteristic. We soon received further explanations. Some days afterwards he sent us the simple and unmistakable message that if we wished to proceed to the Sudan at our own risk, he would place no obstacle in our way; but if we wanted him to go with us and protect us, we ought to pay him a considerable sum. In stating these plain terms he made use of a very expressive simile saying that as the ‘leffa’ (or snake) killed everything she touched, so his word, when it had once escaped his lips, had terminated the matter in question—there was nothing more to be said. . . . Having observed Annur’s dealings to the very last, and having arrived under his protection safely at Katsena, I must pronounce him a straightforward and trustworthy man, who stated his terms plainly and dryly, but stuck to them with scrupulosity (sic); and as he did not treat us, neither did he ask anything from us, nor allowed his people to do so. I shall never forgive him for his niggardliness in not offering me so much as a drink of ‘fura’ or ‘ghussub water’ when I visited him, in the heat of the day, on his little estate near Tasawa, but I cannot withhold from him my esteem both as a great politician in his curious little empire, and as a man remarkable for singleness of word and purpose.”