People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

The Targa who inhabited the third area of Leo concern this volume most particularly, as their zone includes Air as well as Ahaggar. So long as the Tuareg were believed to be only a tribe they were identified with the Targa, but when the former term was discovered to have a wider or racial significance it was not clear, unless it was a proper name, why Leo used it of any one section of the Muleththemin. The exact significance only appears when Ibn Khaldun’s narrative is considered.

In his History of the Berbers Ibn Khaldun attempted to make a comprehensive classification of the Libyans. After working out a comparatively simple system which emphasises both the obvious diversity as well as the superficial appearance of unity[320] of the population of North Africa, he proceeds to elaborate more complex schemes of classification which are difficult to reconcile with one another. He seems throughout to have derived his information from two or more sources which he was himself unable to co-ordinate.

Ibn Khaldun divides the Libyans into two families descended from the eponymous heroes, Branes and Madghis, a theory which recognises the difficulties involved by the assumption that they all belonged to a single stock. The division may be traced even to-day. In many Libyan villages the inhabitants are divided into two factions which, without being hostile, are conscious of being different. The factions are not found among the nomadic tribes, where opportunities for living in separate places are greater than in the sedentary districts, but their existence among the latter, however, is hardly otherwise explicable than by the assumption of separate racial origins. This view is suggested by Ibn Khaldun’s classification, and also by the result of a detailed examination of the different constituent elements of the Libyan population. Among the Tuareg, whom I consider belong to a single stock, different from that of the various races which composed the other Libyans, these factions do not exist even in the villages where tribal organisation is in process of breaking down and people of different clans live together under one headman.

Out of deference to the patriarchal system of the Arabs—a habit of mind which pervades their life and often distorts their historical perception—Ibn Khaldun has given to the two Libyan families of Branes and Madghis a common ancestor called Mazigh. Both “Madghis” and “Mazigh” are probably derived from the common MZGh root found to be so widespread in North African names.[321] All three are almost certainly mythical personages. The selection of Mazigh as the common ancestor points to an attempt having been made, in accordance with patriarchal custom, to explain the one characteristic which is really common to all the Libyans including the Tuareg, namely, their language. While the MZGh root is not at all universally used as the root of a national appellation, its occurrence in various parts of North Africa might well allow one to talk of “Mazigh-speaking People,” or, as we might more comprehensibly say, “Berber-speaking People.” And so I would confine the use of both “Berber” and “Mazigh” to a linguistic signification, analogous to that of the word “Aryan,” which simply denotes people, not necessarily of the same racial stock, speaking one of the Aryan group of languages.[322]

Ibn Khaldun places the home of most of the divisions of the Beranes and Madghis Libyans in Syria. They were, he says, the sons of Mazigh, the son of Canaan, the son of Ham, and consequently related to the Philistines and Gergesenes, who did not leave the east when their kinsmen came to Africa. All Moslems possess a form of snobbishness which is displayed in their attempt to establish some connection, direct or indirect, with an Arabian tribe related to the people of the Prophet Muhammad. In Morocco this feeling is so strong that it is common to find Libyan families free from all admixture with the Arab invaders, boasting ancestral trees descended from the Prophet. The Maghreb is full of pseudo-Ashraf; a term in the Moslem world which is properly reserved for the descendants of the Leader of Islam. The same occurs in Central Africa. Much of the legendary history of the Libyans relating to an eastern home may therefore be discounted as attempts on the part of Moslem historians to connect them with the lands and race of Islam. Nevertheless, even when all allowances have been made for this factor there remains to be explained a strong tradition of some connection between North Africa and the Arab countries. Not only is it commented upon in all the early histories, but it is to some extent still current to-day among the people. I am not convinced that it cannot be explained by the presence among the Libyans of one element which certainly did come from the East in the period preceding and during the invasions of Egypt, when the people of the Eastern Mediterranean co-operated with the Africans in their attacks on the Nile Valley. The undoubted occurrence of migrations within the historical period both from Syria and from the east coast of the Red Sea are alone sufficient, if the characteristic of Moslem snobbishness is taken into account, to account for such traditions regarding their home. It is unnecessary to attribute these stories to the original appearance of the Libyans proper in Africa even if their cradle is to be looked for in the East. This may be inherently probable, but must be placed at so remote a date as to ensure that traditions connected therewith were certainly by now forgotten.

Ibn Khaldun divides the families of Branes and Madghis respectively into ten and four divisions. Four of the ten Beranes people, the Lemta, Sanhaja, Ketama and Auriga, are called the Muleththemin, or People of the Veil.[323] The descendants of Madghis, with whom we are not concerned, include the Louata or Levata. The hypothesis previously brought forward for their non-Tuareg origin gains support from the fact that in Ibn Khaldun’s classification they are not placed in the same family as the People of the Veil.

We now come to Ibn Khaldun’s views regarding the origin of the Muleththemin. The four divisions of Lemta, Sanhaja, Ketama and Auriga, though in the Beranes group, he regarded as of a different origin to the other six sections. The inconsistency of the patriarchal classification is apparent. He states that certain traditions which he is inclined to accept as true connect the Sanhaja and the Ketama with the Yemen.[324] They were Himyarite tribes which came from the east coast of the Red Sea to Africa under the leadership of Ifrikos, the hero who gave his name to Ifrikiya, which is now called Tunisia. In examining the organisation and history of the Aulimmiden Tuareg who live between the Air mountains and the Niger bend, Barth[325] found that they also claimed to be descended from Himyer. Now the Aulimmiden in name and history are a part of the Lemta who migrated from the area in North Africa where the rest of the section still lives under the name of Azger, and where we are first able to identify them from our records. What is true in this respect of a part is true of the whole, and three out of the four divisions of the Muleththemin thus seem to be racially different from the other six Beranes divisions, the fourth section in question being the Auriga people, who are also called Hawara. The latter present one of the most difficult problems in the early history of North Africa. Suffice it here to state that in the course of the early Arab invasions many of them lost so much of their individuality that we must rely largely on Ibn Khaldun’s classification of them among the four divisions of the Tuareg for their early identity.

There are then, according to Ibn Khaldun, two separate families of Libyans, and in one of these is a group apparently different racially from the remainder of the two families.

It is a complicated classification which attempts to establish some sort of unity among all the Libyans, and at the same time indicates without room for doubt that the learned historian felt he was dealing with a mixed population. His difficulties are clear. His statements support the view that the Tuareg are separate from the rest of the people called Libyans, who are themselves composed of at least two stocks, though more than this regarding the origin of the Tuareg I should not yet feel entitled to deduce from his account.