PLATE 40
ROCK DRAWINGS.
Annur was killed in 1856 by raiders from Bilma, which he had frequently attacked. As another example of a similar type of chief, I will copy the entry made in my diary when Ahodu and Sidi described to me Annur’s successor, Belkho of Ajiru, chief of the Igermaden during the last years of the nineteenth century. “He was the last independent ruler of Air. He was small and rather hunched, but with authority unquestioned from Ghat to the Sudan. His raids were swift, well planned and executed in a manner which betrayed imagination. He had a great reputation for generosity, combined with personal magnetism of such a remarkable nature that his power was believed to be derived from communing with the spirits. ‘We used,’ said Sidi, ‘to see him sitting near the fire at night when he was travelling or raiding, crouched with his back turned on his companions, saying no word, but looking into the darkness with the firelight flickering on his small form, casting shadows in the distance, where his friends among the spirits sat and conferred with him!’”
Belkho’s people, the Igermaden, are the parent stock of the Kel Tafidet, who not only became the most distinguished tribe in the Confederation, but also gave their name to the administrative ruler of the Kel Owi and the Confederation generally. They inherited the Tafidet mountains in the easternmost parts of Air and include an old “I name” tribe, the Igademawen. The name Igermaden seems to associate them with Jerma or Garama in the Fezzan, but I am aware of no particular reasons for supposing that they came to Air from there, though it may once have been theirs in the remote past. There are, incidentally, numerous names of places in Air containing the root ‘Germa’ in their composition.
The third group of the Kel Owi, the Imasrodang, occupied the Ighazar valley and villages, whence they drove the Kel Ferwan. Certain small nuclei of People of the King, however, remained in this area, as we have seen also occurred elsewhere. The Imasrodang deserve no particular comment except that a section, the Kel T’intaghoda, is reputed to be “holy.” There is no justification in their conduct for the description. They are the lords of the servile people of Tamgak, as well as of the so-called “Wild Men of Air.”
I never succeeded in seeing these curious people. Their origin is a deep mystery. Buchanan on his first journey ran across a party of them in Northern Air, but they come down very seldom from Tamgak and betray the utmost nervousness of any strangers. The Tuareg call them Immedideran and admit that they are noble, though not of their own race. They emphatically deny that these people are negroid. They are said to speak a language which the Tuareg do not understand. When they meet any Tuareg they are reputed, probably quite untruly, to hold their noses as if to indicate that they smelled a bad or at any rate a curious smell. According to Sidi, who has seen them, they live in Tamgak in a very primitive state, wearing hardly any clothes except a few rags or skins. They nevertheless all affect the Veil, but although they possess many sheep and goats, the camel seems strange and unfamiliar to them when they come down to the valleys to sell their animals. They live neither in houses nor in huts nor in tents, but in very low shelters made of three uprights of stone or wood, with a fire in front and a roof of skins or grass. The Tuareg know nothing of their origin, but say that they were there before the Veiled People came. They are apparently as fair as the Tuareg themselves, and not negroid in type, but who they are it is not possible even to surmise, unless they are the Leucæthiopians of the classics.
PLATE 41
ROCK DRAWINGS.
