People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

The first invasion consisted of tribes who had formed part of a mass of Tuareg of the Lemta division originally from, and now still settled in, the Fezzan and Ghat areas. These people had descended the Kawar road to Lake Chad. They had occupied Bornu, perhaps in the early ninth century A.D., or even before. The Goberawa of Air or Asben seem to have received a slight admixture of Libyan blood derived from the northerners who travelled down the caravan road to the Sudan; the people of Bornu were more purely negroid, and more so than their northern neighbours and probably kinsfolk, the Tebu of Tibesti. The Tuareg who were settled in Bornu were subjected to pressure from the east and north, at the hands of the Kanuri from east of Lake Chad, and of the Arabs. In due course, after being kings of Bornu for many generations the Tuareg began to move westwards. Some of them reached Air, leaving settlers, or having previously settled the regions of Elakkos and Damergu. The date of this movement cannot be fixed with any accuracy; it is probably not as early at the eighth century, but is certainly anterior to the great Kanuri expansion of the thirteenth century. An early date is suggested by Barth and accepted by Jean, probably merely on account of the incidence of the first Arab invasion of North Africa, though as a matter of fact the forces of Islam for the sixty years which elapsed after the conquest of Egypt were not really sufficiently numerous to occasion great ethnic movements. The six centuries between A.D. 700 and A.D. 1300 are very obscure; but if any reason must be assigned for the first invasion of Air by the Bornu Tuareg, it was probably due to the Hillalian invasion of Africa. For this and other reasons it may, therefore, be placed in the eleventh century.

With the opening of the Muhammadan era we find a kingdom at Ghana in Western Negroland with a ruling family of “white people” and the Libyan dynasty of Za Alayamin (Za el Yemani) installed at Kukia.[417] Gao, on the Niger, was already an important commercial centre at the southern end of the trade road from Algeria. In A.D. 837 we read of the death of Tilutan, a Tuareg of the Lemtuna,[418] who was very powerful in the Sahara; he was succeeded by Ilettan, who died in 900; the latter was followed by T’in Yerutan as lord of the Western Sahara. He was established at Audaghost,[419] an outpost of the Sanhaja, who appear at this time to have dominated Western Negroland, including even the great city of Ghana,[420] and to have carried on active intercourse between the Southland and Sijilmasa in Morocco. This and the succeeding century are notable for the influence of the Libyan tribes, in the first instance through the Libyan kings of Audaghost, and later, at the beginning of the eleventh century, by the desert confederation which Abu Abdallah, called Naresht, the son of Tifaut, had brought into being. It was at this time that the preacher and reformer, Abdallah ibn Yasin, arose and collected in the Sahara his band of Holy Men called the “Merabtin,” who were destined to play such a large rôle in the history of the world under the name of Almoravid in Morocco and in Spain. Throughout the latter part of the eleventh century and in the whole of the twelfth, the really important element in all the Western Sahara and Sudan was the Sanhaja division of the Tuareg of the west, and though nothing is heard of the effects of their rule on Air, they must nevertheless have been considerable. The Mesufa branch of the Sanhaja were, according to Ibn Batutah, established in Gober, south of Air; the influence of the Sanhaja in Air itself as well as in Damergu is also recorded. West of Air was the city of Tademekka, nine days northwards from Gao. We also hear of the Libyan towns of Tirekka, between the Tademekka and Walata, and Tautek six days beyond Tirekka; all these appear to have sprung up under the Sanhaja dominion as commercial centres in the same way as the later city of Timbuctoo. Agades, at this time, had not yet been founded.

At the beginning of the thirteenth or end of the twelfth century the second invasion of Air took place. Until now the Tuareg immigrants had lived side by side with the Goberawa despite the assistance which the former must have derived from the Sanhaja influence in the land. The new invaders were the Kel Geres, and their advent led to the expulsion or absorption of the negroid people. Together with the former inhabitants and under the leadership of the dominant Itesan tribe, the Tuareg consolidated their independence in Air. This might never have been achieved had it not been for the Sanhaja empire in the west; there is no doubt that the success of the latter contributed directly to the Bornu and Air movements.

By the time Ibn Batutah made his journey through Negroland in A.D. 1353, Tekadda, some days south of the mountains, as well as Air itself were wholly Tuareg.

Between Gao and Tekadda he had journeyed through the land of the “Bardamah, a nomad Berber tribe,”[421] whose tents and dietary are described in a manner which makes it clear that we are dealing with typical nomadic Tuareg. The Bardamah women, incidentally, are said to have been very beautiful and to have been endowed with that particular fatness which so struck Barth. At Tekadda the Sultan was a “Berber” (Libyan) called Izar.[422] There was also another prince of the same race called “the Tekerkeri,” though further on Ibn Batutah refers to him somewhat differently, saying, “We arrived in Kahir, which is part of the domains of the Sultan Kerkeri.” From this Barth deduces that the name of the ruler’s kingdom, which included Air but apparently not Tekadda, was “Kerker,” but we have seen that the chief minister of the Sultan of the Tuareg is called the Kokoi Geregeri, and it is to this title that I think Ibn Batutah is referring. Nevertheless, as a branch of the Aulimmiden in the west is also called Takarkari, this may signify that the plateau was at this period under the influence of those western Tuareg who have in history often exerted a preponderating part in the history of Southern Air.

The expansion of Bornu under Dunama II in the thirteenth century had, in the course of the conquest of the Fezzan, brought about the occupation of Kawar and other points on the Murzuk-Chad road. This could not but have had a serious effect on the economics of Air on account of the Bilma salt trade, and there is a tradition of a war with Bornu in about A.D. 1300. Raiding on a large scale across the desert no doubt also took place. By the middle of the fourteenth century, however, the greatness of Bornu had commenced to decline; the reigning dynasty was suffering severely at the hands of the “Sô people,” who were the original pagan inhabitants of the country. They had succeeded in defeating and killing four successive Kanuri rulers, and only twenty years after Ibn Batutah’s journey there were sown in the reign of Daud the germs of that internal strife which led to the complete expulsion of the Bornu dynasty from Kanem and continuous warfare between these two countries.

In the west, on the other hand, the power of the empire of Melle was still, if not quite at its height, at least unmenaced by any serious rival. With the death of Ibn Ghania in A.D. 1233 the Sanhaja Confederation had come to an end. There then arose on the Upper Niger a leader called Mari Jatah I. After making himself master of two of the greatest negroid peoples of the west, he was succeeded by Mansa Musa, the founder of the empire of Melle. Mansa Musa, or, as he was also called, Mansa Kunkur Musa, after adding to his dominions all the famous countries of Western Sudan, turned eastwards and conquered Gao, on the Middle Niger. He also subjected Timbuctoo, which had been founded about the year A.D. 1000 by the Tuareg of the Idenan and Immedideren tribes during the Sanhaja period, but its conquest only served to increase its prosperity as a trading centre. It was visited and inhabited by merchants from all over North Africa.

It is interesting, in considering the history of Melle, to observe an attempt which was made at this early period, in a country so long considered by Europeans as savage and barbarous, to solve a problem of government on more rational lines than has ever been tried in modern Europe. A dual system of administration was organised to deal with races foreign to the authority of the central government. There was a national and a territorial bureaucracy: the feature of the government was that Melle was divided territorially into two provinces, or vice-royalties, concurrently with which there were three separate ethnic or national administrations. It almost goes without saying that the military administration was kept strictly apart from the civil.

With the death of Mansa Musa and the succession of his son Mansa Magha, in 1331, the fabric of the empire began to fall in pieces. Timbuctoo had been successfully attacked in 1329 by the King of Mosi, who expelled the Melle garrison. A little later the prince, Ali Killun, son of Za Yasebi, of the original Songhai dynasty of Gao, escaped with his brother from the court of Mansa Magha, where they had been living as political prisoners in the guise of pages. They acquired some measure of independence and, though again subjected by the succeeding king of Melle, Mansa Suleiman, in about 1336 commenced to lay the foundations of the later Songhai empire on the Middle Niger. Mansa Suleiman recaptured Timbuctoo, which at this time, inhabited by the Mesufa, had begun to take the place of the older Tuareg centre, Tademekka, further east. The Mesufa, whom we last saw south of Air, were doubtless being pushed back west again by the pressure of the Aulimmiden and migrants from the East.

In 1373 the Vizier of Melle, another Mari Jatah, usurped the power from the grandson of Mansa Magha and reconquered Tekadda, but it was the last flicker of life in the old empire. The opening years of the fourteenth century saw a succession of weak kings and powerful governors who were not strong enough to resist the incursions of the Tuareg from the desert. Timbuctoo was conquered in 1433 from the Mesufa by some other Tuareg, probably from the west or north-west, under Akil (Ag Malwal), who declined to abandon his nomadic life and installed as governor Muhammad Nasr el Senhaji from Shingit in Mauretania. The Tuareg at this time were everywhere victorious but destructive. They never succeeded in consolidating their power into an empire. In this era of their ascendancy Agades was founded in about the year 1460, just as Sunni Ali, the son of Sunni Muhammad Dau, ascended the throne of Gao and changed the whole political map of North Africa by prostrating the small surviving kingdom of Melle and finally setting up in its place the Songhai empire.