The Ikazkazan group are the junior partners of the Kel Owi, but probably the most numerous group in the Confederation of the Children of Tafidet. They range as far south as Elakkos, which sometimes makes one wonder if they are perhaps a non-Kel Owi tribe which threw in its lot with these people when they entered Air. Their many tribes are grouped into two main divisions, the Kel Tamat (the People of the Acacia) in the north, and the Kel Ulli (the People of the Goats) in the south, both of which appellations are in the nature of distinctive nicknames to distinguish the two geographical units. The names may have a totemic significance, in which case the Kel Tagei (the People of the Dûm Palm) and Kel Intirza (the People of the Asclepias) could be cited as other examples of the practice. There is no particular reason for calling the People of the Goats by this name, since they own as many camels as do the other Tuareg and are not in any way the only tribe to keep goats. Their occupation of Elakkos is reputed, probably rightly, to be fairly recent. The most important tribe of the northern section is the Kel Gharus (the People of the Deep Well) in Talak—with their dependent Imghad, the Ahaggaren.

Such, briefly, is the Kel Owi tribal system. From Assode I determined to examine their country in the great north-eastern basin of Air contained between the mountain groups of Afis, Taghmeurt, Azañieres and Tafidet. Somewhere in this area clearly was the village and valley of T’intellust where Annur lived and where Barth’s expedition made its head-quarters in Air. The name does not figure on the French maps, and since such indications as I had received from native sources seemed to be confused, I was determined to find it for myself.

The country east of Assode was a broken plain, out of which only one small massif emerged, the Gundai[272] hills, standing isolated and compact against the background of the eastern mountains. Between Gundai and T’imia the country is drained by the Unankara valley, which is crossed by the trans-Saharan caravan road on its way from the Ighazar to Mount Mari. The watering-point of Unankara lies below Gundai opposite the Talat Mellen hills: from there a branch off the Tarei tan Kel Owi runs up to T’imia village by a very difficult road along a watercourse which is the upper part of the Assode Agoras. Whenever in the south-eastern plain I crossed the main Kel Owi road and plotted the point on a map compiled from my compass traverse, I was impressed by the directness and straightness of its course across country. From Mount Mari southward the line was almost due north and south; at that point a change of direction takes place, and a line drawn somewhat west of north from Mount Mari to Unankara and produced, would, as the road does, pass within a short distance of Assatartar and enter the Ighazar between T’intaghoda and Iferuan. The upper part of the great caravan road in Air is as straight as the southern section across the Azawagh and Damergu. Great age alone can account for the directness of the road and the worn tracks on the rocky ground. Its conquest and tenure by the Kel Owi is only an episode in the history of one of the oldest roads in the world.

Leaving three men with my baggage at Assode to take care of themselves, Sidi and I on two camels set out to look for T’intellust, which he had often visited in his younger days. I passed one or two small settlements of stone houses, including Assadoragan, near Assode, and T’in Wansa, and reached Igululof after crossing or ascending a number of small valleys which flowed from Gundai into the Agoras. Igululof is a largish village with a date grove and the remains of some gardens; the houses were nearly all of the “B type” and were still filled with the household effects of the inhabitants who had evacuated the country in 1918. Apart from the usual collections of skins for water and grain, mortars, saddle-stone querns and pottery, the frequent occurrence of beds and furniture deserves mention as indicating the prosperity of the communities in the past. One also saw here, as elsewhere in these northern villages, swinging doors hewn out of one piece of wood set in stone sockets. The trees from which they were cut must certainly have been four feet in diameter, a few such were still to be seen in all the larger valleys. In one house I remarked a wooden bridle stand with a broadening top like the capital of a column surmounted by four wooden horns, on which were hung looped bridle ropes and halters. There were examples of low kidney-shaped or rectangular seats standing not four inches from the ground cut out of blocks of wood: they were used by the women when preparing food, and constituted the nearest approach to a chair in a country where it is the universal custom to sit on mats on the ground. Many of the houses had long rectangular racks of palm ribs up to 10 ft. × 5 ft. × 1 ft. deep slung from the roof, with the household effects, which they were intended to contain, still in their places. The niches were filled with the pots and skins and trinkets of the former owners. The spectacle of desolation produced by these pathetic human remains made one sympathise profoundly with the unfortunate people who had had no time even to save their few worldly goods.

By far the most important household implement appeared to be the double luggage rest which was conspicuous in all the houses. It consists of a pair of U-shaped wooden crutches on a short round pole, which is planted in the ground. The upper or U-part of these rests, in the ordinary variety, has plain flat surfaces some four inches broad by a half-inch thick. The elaborate variety has a broader front member which spreads gradually from some four inches at the base, where it joins the round pole or leg, to a breadth of twelve to fifteen inches. The tops of these members are flat or stepped down in the centre, so as to make the corners appear like wide projecting horns. Their front surfaces were very elaborately ornamented with brass ribs and silver, lead or zinc studs. The brass was nailed on or hammered into the surface of the wood as an inlay. Brass sheet fretted in patterns with green leather or red stuff behind it covered the larger spaces. The designs were geometrical and somewhat analogous to the ornamentation on the camel saddles, but rather more varied. The workmanship was excellent and displayed the most finished craft in Air. These rests were traditionally used in pairs on the march to keep valuable merchandise and baggage out of the wet. Their great weight—as they measure up to 5 ft. high and 2 ft. 6 in. between tops of the arms, and are always cut in one piece from a log of hard wood—in practice rendered it impossible to use them much on the road, and they have consequently become articles of household furniture. So far as I know, both the shape of the objects themselves and the designs which ornament them are traditional and peculiar to the Tuareg.

PLATE 42

ORNAMENTED BAGGAGE RESTS

In view of their having been so recently inhabited and being at the same time so similar to the older “A type” houses, these houses were very interesting, as they showed the mode of life of the earlier Tuareg. Within, the floors were neatly sprinkled with sand or small quartz gravel; two rings of stones containing coarser pebbles marked the places where personal ablutions were performed or where rubbish was collected. A group of large stones represented the hearth. The absence of windows and the lower roofs and doors make the more recent houses seem rather dark, but otherwise they are quite pleasant dwellings. The older houses must have been most comfortable. Their cleanliness, as early travellers remarked, depended on the owners: judging by the state of their present-day huts they were very well kept.

Crossing to the north of the broad Igululof valley, Sidi and I entered a very rough plateau covered with large ochreous and brown boulders; it was intersected by numerous small valleys and gullies flowing north into the main basin. We climbed laboriously over a steep ravine and up a pass between two hillocks where there was a way down into the further valley of Anu Samed.[273] It was already late in the evening and the sun was setting on our left: in front the whole plain of the basin of North-eastern Air was spread out with a great green and white snake of a bed winding through it. In the distance along the horizon were the fantastic purple mountains which reach from Tamgak to Tafidet along the edge of the desert. We descended slowly in the dusk into the Anu Samed ravine, and lay down to sleep where this tributary enters the stream bed of the nameless basin. Night came on immediately. I made some cocoa, but we had to put out the fire as soon as possible, for this is the way by which raiding parties enter Air from the east. There is no permanent habitation nearer than T’imia or Iferuan, fifty miles away to the south and west respectively. The country was impressive and rather frightening.