The exact ethnic origin of the first negroid inhabitants of Air or their order does not signify very much, once their racial character is established. Although at first sight the presence of negroids might seem to account for the peculiar aspect of the city of Agades, its true explanation, as we have seen, must be sought elsewhere.[363] The date of the foundation of Agades is considerably later than the displacement of the early inhabitants of Air by the advent of the first Tuareg.
In addition to the negroid people of Air, the first Tuareg are said by Bello to have found some Sanhaja in the country, by which term he presumably means some Western Muleththemin, who lived in the first or second of Leo’s zones. This is to some extent confirmed by Ibn Batutah’s accounts of the tribes which he encountered in these parts, but I have been unable to trace their descendants with any degree of certainty. Some of their descendants may probably be found in Azawagh and Damergu;[364] the Mesufa of Ibn Batutah are also quite likely to have been Sanhaja. Another tribe of the same name and origin occurs in North-west Morocco.
The Goberawa capital at this time was T’in Shaman, like the later Agades lying at the southern borders of the country, a site naturally likely to be selected by a people of equatorial origin with homes further south. T’in Shaman or Ansaman is stated by Barth to have been some twenty miles from Agades on the road to Auderas; but I conceive this may be a slip. I was only able to find the name applied in Air to the wells of T’in Shaman, which lie in the direction given, but scarcely two miles from the city, near the site of the present French fort. Although the name appears to be a Libyan form it does not follow that the town was of Tuareg origin or was inhabited by them in early Goberawa days. Record of it has come to us from Tuareg sources, referable to a period when Tuareg and Goberawa were living side by side in Air, but we do not know the Goberawa form of the name. These two folk were both in the area before the first Tuareg immigration, when Libyan influence was already strong in Air, and also after the first immigration, but before the second brought in a sufficient number of Tuareg to effect the expulsion of the Goberawa.[365] A certain degree of civilisation must have existed in Air even in these early days, for several learned men, inhabitants of T’in Shaman, are mentioned by the historians of Negroland.[366] That it was not a Tuareg town is further shown by the information recorded, that when Agades was eventually founded in the fifteenth century A.D., it was from Ir n’Allem and not from T’in Shaman: Ir n’Allem may be doubtfully identified with a site north of Agades well within the defending hills near Solom Solom.[367] Of greater interest perhaps is the close analogy between the names of T’in Shaman or Ansaman and Nasamones, that great tribe of travellers on the Great Syrtis described by Herodotus. There is no doubt that with such caravaneers as we know lived in the north, the influence of the Tuareg in Air and the South generally must have been great for a long time before they settled there.
Into Air, inhabited by negroids and Sanhaja, came the modern Tuareg of Air. What happened to the Goberawa in the process of time as a consequence of this movement can easily be assumed. Whatever may have been the terms of a peaceful settlement, the negroid people were either driven back into Central Africa here as elsewhere, or they became the serfs[368] of the conquerors, and were incorporated into the race as Imghad tribes. The darker element among them must certainly in part be accounted for in this manner.
The modern Tuareg immigrants can broadly be divided into the three categories, of which the exact significance has already become apparent. They are the Kel Owi tribes who came into the country quite recently, the Kel Geres tribes and those septs collectively known as the People of the King. Of these, the Kel Geres, as well as a once separate but now associated tribe, the Itesan, are no longer in Air, but live in an area north of Sokoto, whither they migrated in comparatively recent times. It requires to be established whether the people who came to Air before the Kel Owi, all arrived at much the same time, or in different waves, when the respective movements took place, and who in each case were the immigrants.
PLATE 47
SIDI
The First Immigration
Before attacking these problems, it will be necessary, because relevant to their solution, to consider the direction from which the invasion took place. Tuareg traditions without any exception ascribe a northern home to the race. They maintain that they reached Air from that direction in different waves at different times and by different routes. Ask any Tuareg of the older tribes about the history of his people and he will say, for instance: “My people, the Kel Tadek, have been in the country since the beginning of the world,” but he will add in the same breath: “But we are a people from the north, from far away, not like the niggers of the south.” They have a story to the effect that the Sultan of Stambul, seeing how North Africa was over-populated,[369] ordered the tribes which had taken refuge on the borders of the Libyan desert in the region of Aujila and the Eastern Fezzan to migrate and spread the true religion far afield. The Tuareg, with the Itesan leading, thereupon came into Air. Now, whatever else they were, the Libyans at the time of these early movements were, of course, not Moslems, nor is it likely that any Khalif or Emperor at Constantinople intervened in the way suggested. There is not even any reason to suppose that the migration occurred in the Moslem era, though we are not as yet concerned with dates. Such details as these are picturesque embellishments added in the course of time to popular tradition. I can agree that the Tuareg came from the north; but I am less than certain that they came by the north.