People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

The second story is analogous to that which Barth heard.

Generally speaking traditions give the two separate versions, which are rather puzzling. If the account of the woman who settled in Tamgak is taken as a legendary record of the indigenous growth of the Kel Owi tribes, it must be supposed that their forefathers were in Air for much more than two hundred years, and Jean’s date would consequently not be out of the question. Against this must be set the other version, that they arrived quite recently, a view which is supported unanimously by all the other Tuareg. It was, we have seen, confirmed by Barth’s researches and deduced by Rennell from information collected by Hornemann. The compact organisation and the definite division which exists between them and the other tribes in Air would also point to their having a separate origin and being comparatively recent arrivals; they are still organised in an administrative system which has not yet had time to break down and merge into the régime of the other tribes. Furthermore, no mention is made of the Kel Owi by any of the earlier authors, which, if negative evidence, is nevertheless significant in the works of an authority like Leo, especially as, apart from the ethnic distinction which might have been overlooked, the dual government of the King and the Añastafidet is too remarkable a feature to have escaped his discernment. The balance of testimony is therefore in favour of attributing a fairly recent date to their arrival, though perhaps not so late as Barth would have us believe. I myself make no doubt that they were late arrivals: I only differ with the learned traveller in a small matter of the exact date.

But what impelled them to migrate it is difficult to say. Barth thought that they could be traced to an earlier habitat in the north-west, and that the nobler portion of them once belonged to the Auraghen tribe, whence their dialect was called Auraghiye. I have no evidence on this point except that of Ahodu, who gave me to understand that the language of the Kel Owi was not different from that of any other Tuareg tribe in the plateau, and he added that he had not heard the name Auraghiye employed to describe it, though he knew that it was applied to the dialect spoken in Ahaggar. Barth’s testimony, otherwise, is acceptable.

Jean is of the impression that they are essentially of the same race as the Kel Geres, who were probably Hawara. If this deduction is true, three possibilities require to be considered. The Kel Owi may have been an Auraghen tribe living to the north or north-east of Air among the Azger; or, they may have been among the older Auraghen people, to use this term in its wider sense, namely, of the Auriga-Hawara, represented by the Ahaggaren, to whom, of course, the Azger Auraghen of to-day belong; or, lastly, they may be descended from the Auraghen of the west, from the Tademekkat country. The last is the soundest view in the present state of our knowledge, though the second is also quite probable.

The Tademekkat people, we know, were driven from their homes in A.D. 1640 by the Aulimmiden. While some of them were driven out to the west, some at least found their way back into the Azger country.[406] It is no less probable that others may have gone to Air by a roundabout route. In that case Barth’s date for the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air seems to be at least fifty years too late. During the last half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries they would have been finding their way into Northern Air in small groups. This is not inconsistent with the appearance at Agades of an Amenokal with a Kel Owi mother, if the admittedly tentative date of 1629 given in the Agades Chronicle is placed a decade or so later.

I am inclined to regard the arrival of the Kel Owi in Air as having taken place in the latter half of the seventeenth century. According to the Agades Chronicle they were already fighting the Kel Geres at Abattul, west of the Central massif, in 1728, some time before Barth’s date; and this obviously implies an earlier arrival in the north of the plateau, for their entry must have taken place from that direction and not from the south. But a recent date, taken in conjunction with the dominant position which the Kel Owi occupied and their separate political organisation, further implies that they came in considerable numbers, a conclusion which is at variance with one set of native traditions. They could not otherwise in two hundred years have achieved so much as they did by the beginning of the century.

THE MIGRATIONS OF THE AIR TUAREG

We know that their coming was followed by an economic disturbance of far-reaching importance. They first occupied North-eastern and Northern Air; the later phase of their penetration is recorded in the statement that the Kel Owi and the Kel Geres lived side by side, west and east of the Iferuan-Auderas-Agades road. The eastern plains of Air, according to Ahodu of Auderas and ’Umbellu of T’imia, had by this time been evacuated by the Itesan and the early settlers, but the invasion of the Kel Owi must have led also to the expulsion of the early settlers from the northern marches. The removal of the Kel Ferwan from the Iferuan area, and of the Kel Tadek from their territories north of Tamgak to the west and the south, probably took place in this period. The Kel Owi movement, though accompanied by frequent disturbances, was gradual. At T’imia, where the original inhabitants, according to ’Umbellu, were Kel Geres, they were only displaced in the time of his own grandparents by a mixed band of settlers from various Kel Owi tribes then living in the Ighazar in Northern Air. ’Umbellu is a man of about sixty now, so this event may have been one hundred years ago, at a time, in fact, when we should still expect the southward movement of the Kel Owi to be in progress.

More recently still the south-eastern part of the country was distributed among certain of their clans. The large Itesan settlements like those near Tabello had already been abandoned and were never again permanently inhabited; some dwellings were built later by the Kel Owi, but never on so large a scale as in the previous epoch. The extant houses and ruins are mostly of the first period; a few only show a transitional phase to the later Kel Owi type. Sometimes a compact block of contiguous buildings is to be found, possessing the character of a fortified settlement. It would seem that this defensible type of habitation had been evolved during the period after the Itesan were known to have been driven out by Tebu raiding and before the Kel Owi arrived. These dwellings betray certain features alien to the Tuareg, which may be explained by supposing that they were used by the serfs of the Itesan when their lords had retreated west of the Bagezan massif.