The campaigns of Idris Alawoma and of Ali repeated the effects of the earlier Kanuri pressure on the west. Evidence of the tendency of the southern Tuareg to move west has been noticed on several occasions. The effect of the Bornu campaigns was to exert pressure on the Aulimmiden, which culminated in their attacks on the Tademekkat people and eventually in the Kel Owi immigration into Air. The sequence of events in Air has already been related; the successes of the Aulimmiden contributed directly and indirectly to the decline of Agades as a commercial centre. By 1770 they had captured Gao. Under Kawa, in 1780, they established a dominion over the north bank of the Niger at Ausa; these were doubtless some factors which influenced the Kel Geres in their decision to abandon Air as a result of the arrival of the Kel Owi. The westward move of the Aulimmiden before the Kanuri of Bornu, who were suffering from the reaction which follows greatness, had left an area correspondingly free for the Kel Geres to occupy. The middle of the century had been taken up in desultory fighting between Air and the south. The next notable event had been in 1761—an attack on Kano by the Kel Owi and the defeat of the Kel Geres by the Aulimmiden in the same year. The inroads of the Fulani into Hausaland had commenced, but as yet Othman dan Fodio had not established himself in Sokoto, or the ruling families of Fulani in all the large towns of the Central Sudan.
PLATE 49
EGHALGAWEN AND THE LAST HILLS OF AIR
The protection of the salt trade led to continual struggles between Air and Bornu. An expedition by the Sultan of Agades, in about 1760,[431] to Kuka on Lake Chad is probably part of the war of Bilma in 1759 referred to in the Agades Chronicle as having been made by Muhammad Guma, the son of Mubarak. The Sultan was accompanied by the Kel Ferwan, and returned with a war indemnity of 2000 head of cattle and a promise that trade would not be subjected to interference.
The occupation of part of Damergu by the Kel Owi Tuareg is of course recent, though it had been seized by the earlier immigrants at the same time as Air, with this difference, that the negroid inhabitants were never driven out or absorbed as in the mountains. The Kel Owi interference and immigration took the form of successful raiding or warfare to keep open the caravan road into the south. The fate of Damergu in all this long period of history was to be squeezed between the Tuareg on two sides and the Sudan empires on the other two.[432]
The modern period commences with the passage through Air of the Foureau-Lamy Mission. Beyond what has already been said, it is impossible to discuss this phase, as it is still too recent, but the French version is contained in Lieut. Jean’s admirable review of French colonial policy in the Territoires du Niger.
[415]Some notes on the early history and the origins of the Tuareg race will be found in a paper by the author in the Journal of the R.G.S. for Jan. 1926.
[416]Jean: op. cit., Chap. XIII; and Chudeau: Le Sahara Soudanais, p. 72.
[417]Fifteen days east of Ghana in the Upper Niger country. Not to be confused with Kuka on Lake Chad, or with Gao (Gago) on the Middle Niger. Kukia is called Kugha in el Bekri and Cochia by Ca’ da Mosto (Barth, op. cit., Vol. IV., pp. 583-4).