North of Air, about half-way between the wells of Asiu and the Valley of T’iyut, there is a small hill called Maket n’Ikelan, which means in Temajegh, “The Mecca (or shrine) of the Slaves.”[370] This is said to have been the northernmost boundary of the old kingdom of Gober. At Maket n’Ikelan the custom was preserved among passing Tuareg caravans of allowing the slaves to make merry and dance and levy a small tribute from their masters. The hill was probably a pagan place of worship, but is important from the historical point of view, because tradition represents, somewhat erroneously as regards details, that there, “when the Kel Owi took possession of old Gober with its capital at T’in Shaman, a compromise was entered into between the Red conquerors and the Black natives, that the latter should not be destroyed and that the principal chief of the Kel Owi should be allowed to marry a black woman.” The story is interesting, though there has evidently been a slight confusion of thought, because there was already a large Tuareg population in Air before the Kel Owi came comparatively late in history; and it is not they who were the first Tuareg in the plateau. The marriage of the red chief with a black slave woman may be an allusion, and perhaps a direct one, to the practice associated with the Sultan of Air.[371]
With the old frontier of Gober at Maket n’Ikelan one might from this story have supposed that the first Tuareg invaders met the original inhabitants of the country there and came to an agreement regarding an occupation of the northern mountains, whence they eventually overran the whole plateau. Although such a conclusion would seem to be borne out by such traditions as I have quoted of a descent from the north, the weight of evidence indicates the south-east as the direction from which the first Tuareg actually came. But this will be seen to be not incompatible with a northern home for the race. The view is only in conflict with the Maket n’Ikelan tradition if the latter is interpreted literally. The terms of the settlement of treaty need only be associated with a point in Northern Air, inasmuch as the site in question marked the frontier of the old kingdom of Gober, which the Tuareg eventually took over in its entirety from its ancient possessors. It need not be supposed that the Treaty was made at Maket n’Ikelan. I regard this old frontier point as merely symbolic of the event.
The testimony of Sultan Bello regarding the first migration of the People of the Veil is most helpful.[372] “Adjoining Bornu, on the south side, is the province of Air (i.e. on the south side of Air). It is inhabited by the Tuareg and by some remnants of the Sanhaja and the Sudanese. This province was formerly in the hands of the Sudanese inhabitants of Gober, but five tribes of the Tuareg, called Amakeetan, Tamkak, Sendal, Agdalar, and Ajaraneen, came out of Aowjal[373] and conquered it. They nominated a prince for themselves from the family of Ansatfen, but they quarrelled among themselves and dismissed him.” Bello thereupon goes on to describe the Arabian origin of the Tuareg people.
I agree with Barth[374] that these five tribes probably did not come from Aujila oasis itself, but his remark that one of the five tribes was “the Aujila tribe” is surely a mistake. Bello distinctly speaks of the five tribes by name as having come from Aowjal. Aujila seems never to have been the name of a people. As far back as Herodotus[375] it is already a place name. As for Bello’s reference to the selection of a ruler from a slave family, it is probably an allusion to the practice we have already examined,[376] for Ansatfen, i.e. n’Sattafan, means “of the black ones,” from the word “sattaf” = “black.” The fact that according to the Agades Chronicle the ninth Sultan was called Muhammad Sottofé (the Black), who ruled from A.D. 1486-93, and is referred to in Sudanese records, in some measure confirms the accuracy of Bello’s history.
The story that the first Tuareg came from Aujila is nothing more than a reflection of their own tradition that they came from a far country in the north-east, where one of the most important and well-known points was this oasis, whence people had long been in the habit of trading as far afield as Kawar and even Gao. Aujila was a northern caravan terminus. The trade between Aujila and Kawar, as early as the twelfth century, is referred to by Idrisi,[377] and this reference is the more interesting as it indicates, though at a later period than that of the first Tuareg invasion of Air, a steady stream of traffic organised by the North-eastern Tuareg down the Chad road to Bornu and Kanem. This is most significant; it had probably been going on since the days perhaps of the Nasamonian merchant adventurers.
The Agades Chronicle, on the authority of the learned Ibn Assafarani, says that the first Tuareg who came to Air were the Kel Innek, under a ruler called the Agumbulum; and that other Tuareg followed them. Now, Kel Innek means literally “The People of the East”; it is primarily a generic or descriptive term, and not a tribal proper name. Ibn Assafarani wrote from Asben, where the eastern country always and necessarily means the area around Lake Chad. Bello further mentions that when the Kanuri entered Kanem they settled there as strangers under the government of the Amakeetan, one of the five tribes previously mentioned as the first to enter Air. He also refers to the latter by the general name of Kel Innek. Again, one of the two tribes in Elakkos, between Air and Lake Chad, are the Immikitan, while we know from Leo that the Lemta Tuareg occupied an area extending from the north-eastern Fezzan to Kuka on Lake Chad.[378] This evidence, therefore, leads one to the conclusion that the first Tuareg, or at any rate some of the first Tuareg, to enter Air were not migrants from the north, that is to say, from Ghat or Ahaggar, but from Kanem and from Bornu in the south-east, which parts are racially connected with the Fezzan and not with the former areas. In the course of these movements a group of Immikitan remained in Elakkos, which, we have seen on the quite distinct evidence of the Ilagwas, was in any case connected with the Lemta country of the north.
There exists to-day a sub-tribe of the Itesan bearing the name of Kel Innek. On the analogy of what occurred among the Kel Ahamellen, among the Ahaggaren, and in recent years in Air also among the Kel Tafidet, it is almost certain that we have an example here of a name originally applied to a sub-tribe and the whole group simultaneously but now used to differentiate a sub-tribe only. The Itesan of to-day, in spite of their connection with the Kel Geres, were, as will be explained later on, among the original invaders of Air, a fact which might in any case have been deduced from the survival among them, and not among other confederations, of the name Kel Innek.
It appears unnecessary when such an easy interpretation of the available evidence is forthcoming, and above all when some of the names accurately recorded by Bello are still traceable in Air, to assume that they are erroneous. I cannot follow Barth at all when he is dealing with these early tribes. He seems to have created difficulties where they do not exist. It is not necessary to suppose that the five tribes came into Air to form an entrepôt for their trade between Negroland and Aujila or the north-east generally; the suggestion is so far-fetched that even Barth admitted that the whole affair was peculiar.[379]
If an invasion of Air from the south-east took place, what provoked it? In order to establish even an approximate date, which Jean puts at about A.D. 800, without, however, giving his reasons, a digression into the story of Bornu is necessary.
Bello, referring to the people east of Lake Chad, mentions an early invasion from the Yemen as far as Bornu. He calls the invaders “Barbars,”[380] which name, however, he seems later to transfer to the Tuareg, finally, however, reserving it for the Kanuri. Europeans nowadays, adding considerably to the confusion, have called the Libyans “Berbers” and the Kanuri “Beriberi.” The invasion from the Yemen is reported to have taken place under Himyer, but on the showing of El Masa’udi’s history, probably the most valuable for so mythical a period, Himyer has been confused with another hero, Ifrikos. There are other references to an invasion from Arabia across Africa in various authorities, including Ibn Khaldun. Whether the invaders were the Kanuri, as the name “Barbar” given to them by Bello seems to imply, or whether they displaced the Kanuri, causing the latter to move into Kanem and settle as strangers under the rule of the Immikitan, then resident in that region, or whether, in fine, the Kanuri are not a race but a congeries of people, it is both difficult and irrelevant here to determine. In the first case there are no difficulties about the application of the name Barbar to the Kanuri; in the second, the participation of the Kanuri in a movement connected with a people from Arabia might easily lead Bello to a confusion resulting in his identification of the Kanuri with, and his application of Barbar to, the latter. After the settlement of the Kanuri in Kanem and Bornu under the Tuareg, the name Barbar, originally that of the subject people, came to be applied to the inhabitants of the country as a whole, thus including the Tuareg. The persistence of the name is the more easily accounted for by the predominance later on of the people to whom it originally belonged, in spite of their situation in the beginning, for, as we shall see later, the Tuareg, their masters in the early days, were gradually displaced in Kanem and Bornu at a period which might coincide with their invasion of Air.