The architectural technique shows that the race was in process of cultural decay when it reached Air, and that under the influence of new environment the memory and tradition of this civilisation were lost with remarkable rapidity. The succession of events and the causes culminating in the migration of the Chad Tuareg are not inconsistent with such a decline of culture, but only a thorough investigation of the Fezzan will probably throw any light upon its derivation.
The popular view of the origin of these stone buildings bears out the separate identity of the Itesan and the Kel Geres. It is obvious that the two divisions must have entered Air at different times; and since the Itesan were therefore among the first invaders, the Kel Geres must have come in later. This traditional version is further consistent with facts already noticed, in that among the People of the King in Air and among the Itesan it is possible to trace the names of the first recorded tribes to enter Air, whereas their names do not occur among the Kel Geres. Apart from proving the separate origin of the Itesan and the Kel Geres, these facts leave little room for doubt that the Itesan formed part of the group that was the first to invade the plateau.
The names of the five tribes, mentioned by Bello in his history, were, as we have seen above, the Immikitan, the Igdalen, the Ijaranen, the Tamgak, and the Sendal. Of these the Immikitan are found with the Igdalen among the People of the King in Air to-day, while the Ijaranen survive among the Itesan tribes who now live in the south. The Sendal and the Tamgak are mentioned as late as 1850 in the Agades Chronicle, when there is no doubt that they were a people of the king, since they are referred to as the allies of the Sultan Abd el Qader in a war against the Kel Geres.
The first Tuareg lived in Air as a minority and as foreigners. It is possible they represented only a fraction of the Tuareg who were moving and that the greater part went on into the west. The Agades Chronicle, describing the advent of the Itesan, records that they “. . . . said to the Goberawa, ‘We want a place in your town to settle.’ The Goberawa refused at first to give them a place, but in the end agreed. The Itesan refused the place as a gift, but bought a house for 1000 dinars. Into this house they led their chief, and from there he ruled the Tuareg of the desert. War, however, soon ensued between the Goberawa, supported by the Abalkoran, and the Itesan. The result of this war was that the Goberawa went back into Hausaland, while the Abalkoran went west into the land of the Aulimmiden.” The Abalkoran had just before in the Chronicle been described as a priestly caste associated with the Goberawa, but among the Air Tuareg the name Iberkoran or Abalkoran is the name of the Aulimmiden themselves. The record has suffered chronological compression, but clearly implies that the Goberawa were still in South Air at a time when the Aulimmiden had already reached their habitat west of the mountains. The latter is an event which some authorities consider fairly recent, but my view, already put forward elsewhere, is that the Aulimmiden are not a group of Hawara people who left the Fezzan some time between 1200 and 1300, as Ibn Khaldun suggests, nor yet people from Mauretania; I prefer to believe that they are Lemta who originally migrated to their present habitat from the Chad regions at much the same time as the first Tuareg invasion of Air took place.
The statement that the Abalkoran left Air to join the Aulimmiden tends to support the view that this Air invasion was only part of a general westerly movement.
The Second Immigration
The second wave of immigration was that of the Kel Geres. Jean believed that the Kel Geres were among the first arrivals because he wrongly assumed that they were identical with the Itesan. An examination of the names of the various groups[393] discloses the fact that whereas many Itesan tribes have “Kel names” derived from known localities in Central Air, for the most part in the Auderas neighbourhood, of the Kel Geres tribes only the Kel Garet, Kel Anigara and the Kel Agellal have names similarly derived.[394] Traditionally the Kel Geres reached Air by way of the north. They also are associated with the story of over-population in the Mediterranean lands. They arrived, according to Jean, in considerable numbers, and settled in the part of Air which is west of the road from Iferuan to Agades by way of Assode and Auderas.[395] East of this line in later days lived the Kel Owi, and presumably, at this early period, the original five tribes. The assumption is confirmed by certain evidence, for although the Itesan tribe names refer to an area lying across this line, the only territorial Kel Geres tribe names refer to an area west of it; the country, on the other hand, known to have been occupied by some of the first immigrants is, as would be expected, to the east. With the exception of the Igdalen, who moved in recent years, most of the older People of the King were also east of this line, before the Kel Owi scattered them.
The present Itesan-Kel Geres group in the Southland is said to number forty-seven tribes divided as follows:[396]
| Itesan | 6 | tribes of the | Itesan. |
| Kel Geres | 12 | „ „ | Tetmokarak. |
| 6 | „ „ | Kel Unnar. | |
| 5 | „ „ | Kel Anigara. | |
| 6 | „ „ | Kel Garet. | |
| 12 | „ „ | Tadadawa and Kel Tatenei. |
The principal tribal names of the Itesan which retain the more familiar place names of Air are the Kel Mafinet, Kel T’sidderak, Kel Dogam and Kel Bagezan or Maghzen, all of them derived from places in the neighbourhood of Auderas.[397] Among the Kel Geres the name of the Kel Garet records a habitat somewhat further north, the Kel Agellal of the Kel Unnar probably came from Agellal, and the Kel Anigara from an area still further north.