Nearly all the Azger tribes have dependent servile tribes in addition to slaves, but there are two classes in the confederation described as neither noble nor servile but mixed in caste. These are the Kel T’inalkum[345] (the Tinylkum of Barth) and the Ilemtin tribes, and two tribes of Inisilman or Holy Men, the Ifoghas and the Ihehawen. These are accorded the privileges of nobles.[346]
The name of the “Ilemtin” is interesting. It is another form of “Aulimmiden,” the Tuareg who live in the steppe west of Air, and is, of course, identical with “Lemta.” Moreover, the Ilemtin are in the very area where Leo had placed the northern part of the Lemta division. With their kindred the Kel T’inalkum, who also are neither noble nor servile, and perhaps with the Ihehawen, they represent the old parent stock of the Azger-Lemta. Their very antiquity, together with their tradition of nobility among the other tribes in the confederation, may be held to account by progressive deterioration for their curious caste. The Ifoghas and the Kel Ishaban are said to have been of the Kel el Suk or Tademekkat Tuareg: in the case of the former, at least, I do not think that this is so. They are a very widespread tribe in the Sahara, but indications will be given later showing that they too are probably Lemta. Their association with Tademekka is doubtless due to a part of them being found in a region to which they presumably migrated when the other Lemta people invaded Air from the south-east and also formed the Aulimmiden group.[347]
In late classical times the northern part of the Lemta area of Leo was occupied by the Garamantian kingdom and by the nomadic Ausuriani, Mazices and Ifuraces.[348] The Ausuriani and Mazices were people of considerable importance and behaved like true Tuareg, raiding in company with one another into Cyrenaica and Egypt. The Maxyes, Mazices, etc., people with names of the MZGh root, seem to be the Meshwesh of Egyptian records. They are probably some of the ancestors of the Tuareg, and may be assumed to have been related to the Ausuriani, with whom they were always associated. The latter, who are also called Austuriani, are described by Synesius as one of the native people of Libya, in contrast with other Libyans whom he knew to have arrived at a later date.[349] Bates[350] thinks that the Ausuriani may be the Arzuges of Orosius. Now the form of the name Arzuges, and more remotely that of Ausuriani or Austuriani, points to an identification with the Azger. But that is not all. The position of the Ausuriani in late classical times agrees well with that given by Ammianus for the home of the Astacures, who are also mentioned by Ptolemy.[351] This name is intermediate between “Ausuriani” and “Arzuges,” and again is similar to “Azger.” Duveyrier[352] has come to the independent conclusion that these people under various but similar names must be identified with the Azger, who therefore for the last fourteen centuries appear to have occupied the same area in part that they do now. Their northern limit, it is true, has been driven south as a result of the Arab and other invasions of the Mediterranean littoral, and their southern territory has been lost to them, but in the main their zone has hardly changed.
One may, however, adduce further evidence. Among the Lemta-Azger are the Ifoghas, a tribe of Holy Men. There is little doubt that these people are the Ifuraces of Corippus and others, whose position east of the Ausuriani is only a little north of where their descendants still live.[353] Incidentally both the area in which they live and the area in which they were reported in classical times may be held to be well within the boundaries of Leo’s Lemta zone. Last of all, there arises the question of the Ilaguantan or Laguatan of Corippus, who are not, I think, to be identified with the Levata or Louata, but are the people who gave the name to the country now called Elakkos, or Alagwas, or Elakwas, to the east of Damergu and south-east of Air, at the southern end of the Lemta area of Leo. In view of the course taken by the migration of the Lemta southwards there is nothing inherently improbable in the people, who in late classical times appear in the north, having migrated to a new habitat near the Sudan.
The migration of the Lemta is intimately connected with the history of the Tuareg of Air, and accounts for the position of the Aulimmiden west of the latter country. In commenting on the organisation of the south-western division of the Tuareg, Barth[354] says that the whole group is designated by the name of Awelimmid, Welimmid or Aulimmiden (as they are known in Air), from the dominating tribe whose supremacy is recognised in some form or other by the remainder, “and in that respect even (the Tademmekat or) Tademekkat are included among the Aulimmiden;[355] but the real stock of Aulimmiden is very small.” He goes on to make the statement, which is obviously correct, and which my deductions absolutely confirm, that “the original group of the Aulimmiden (Ulmdn is the way the name is expressed in T’ifinagh) are identical with the Lemta,” the name probably signifying literally “the Children of Lemta, or rather ‘Limmid,’ or the name may originally have been an adjective.” As already stated, I do not agree with him that the Lemta, who became the Aulimmiden, descended from the Igidi in the north and drove out the Tademekkat, for I believe that the people in the north were the Lemtuna, living near the Walad Delim or Morocco, and that they were therefore a Sanhaja and not a Lemta tribe. If the Lemta had been in the area where Barth would have them, as opposed to where Leo placed them, it means that the latter’s account is fundamentally wrong. Nor would there be any adequate explanation of several phenomena just now indicated such as the westward movements of the Tademekkat and the presence of the Ilemtin in the Azger country.
The vicissitudes of the Lemta and Auriga in the history of Air may be summarised as follows:—The Azger represent the old Lemta stock in the northern part of the area which Leo allocated to them. They are identical with the Ausuriani, Asturiani, Arzuges or Astacuri, and included the Ifoghas (Ifuraces) and Elakkos people (Ilaguantan). The Mazices are probably also in the same Lemta-Azger group, but I can find only circumstantial evidence for this supposition. The southern end of the Lemta area, which reached the Sudan between Lake Chad and Damergu, was lost to the Tuareg under pressure from the east. They were driven out of Bornu, where we shall see the Central African histories placed them in the early days. This part, as well as the Kawar road down which they came from the north, and the steppe north of Chad, was cleared of Tuareg by the Kanuri and Tebu from the east. In Elakkos, the country named by the tribe which in classical times was in Tripolitania, is the boundary to-day between Tebu and Tuareg. Progressive ethnic pressure from the east drove the eastern boundary of the Tuareg westwards, but it also forced the Lemta to find room in the west for their expansion. Some of the latter, as we shall see, entered Air from the south; others went on to occupy Tademekka and drove the inhabitants westward. The Lemta movement was of long duration and directly involved the first invasion of Air by the Tuareg: it took place south and then west, not, as Barth and others would have it, south-eastwards from North-west Africa. Before these movements took place Ahaggar was held by a Hawara stock which later received an admixture of Azger by the Kel Ahamellen who had split off from the latter. Air, which had first been occupied by a group of Lemta from the south-east, was then invaded by another wave of Tuareg from the north. They were almost certainly a Hawarid stock. By the time Leo wrote Air was therefore in a large measure occupied by the same race and group as Ahaggar, and like the latter was therefore rightly described as held by the “Targa popolo.”
[297]The works of Leo Africanus were published by the Hakluyt Society in three volumes in 1896.
[298]Leo, III. p. 820.
[299]The learned editor of the Hakluyt Society calls one of these nations the Tuareg. In my view all five nations were Tuareg, which term I have throughout used as equivalent to Muleththemin. Of these five nations, one apparently had Targa as a proper name.
[300]Leo, III. p. 797.