People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

TERMIT PEAK AND WELL

Lying between the desert and the Sudan, Elakkos has suffered greatly. It has been a field of battle where the Tuareg of Air, the Tebu from the north-east and the people of Bornu have met one another in order to do battle. Until the advent of the French it was considered the legitimate playground for the only international sport known in the desert, the gentle occupation of raid and counter-raid. The flat-topped hills, with scarcely a path worthy of the name to ascend the cliffs, were the citadels of the villages which nestle under their slopes. The huts in the villages are built of straw with conical roofs: neither mud buildings nor walled settlements exist. The inhabitants are Kanuri, sedentary Tuareg, and both nomadic and settled Tebu.

While the Tuareg and Tebu live side by side with the Kanuri, the first two are such uncompromising enemies that they never adventure themselves into each other’s territory. The dividing line between them in Elakkos is sharp and clearly defined; it runs just west of the village group of Bultum, which is the last permanent settlement on the caravan road from Damagarim to Kawar by the wells of Termit, where twice a year pass caravans to fetch salt in the east. They leave at the same seasons when the people of Air, whom they join at Fashi, also cross the desert.

The Tuareg of Elakkos to-day are sedentary, but their tribal names, Ikazkazan and Immikitan, belong to noble Air clans of confirmed nomadic habits. As in Damergu, they are the ruling class. Barth,[440] basing himself on hearsay information sixty years earlier than Jean, stated that they were akin to the Tegama people.[441] The Ikazkazan of Garazu in Elakkos, however, according to tradition, are late arrivals, certainly later than the Immikitan, who live rather further east. The latter seem to have come when the first Tuareg arrived from the east and installed themselves in Air. It is not clear which of the two tribal groups Barth proposed to classify as akin to the Tegama, but presumably he meant the Immikitan.

The Ikazkazan of Garazu are grouped by Jean[442] as a sub-tribe of the Kel Tafidet, probably the, if not actually the, principal tribe of the Kel Owi Confederation. While I had no opportunity during my only too short sojourn in Elakkos, in the course of a rapid march to Termit, to collect information on the ethnology of the Tuareg in this area, my experience in Air leads me to doubt the accuracy of Jean’s attribution. It is very improbable that a section of so important a tribe as the Ikazkazan could in any circumstances have come under the control of another tribe within the same Kel Owi Confederation, like the Kel Tafidet, least of all when it had moved so far afield as Elakkos.

Both from Barth’s description of the “Principality of Elakkos,” that “sequestered haunt of robbers and freebooters,” as well as from other indications, there seem to have been more People of the Veil in this area in former days than now. The decrease may be accounted for by a general movement westwards, as a consequence of the encroachments of the Kanuri from Bornu, who were themselves constantly being driven onwards by pressure from the east, by the advent in the Chad area of the Arab tribes from the north, and by raids of the Tebu from Tibesti.[443]

Barth records that Elakkos was celebrated among the hungry people of the desert on account of its grain. The same reputation and source of wealth continue to the present time. More millet is grown in a limited area on the sandy plains of this country than in almost any other part of the belt which marks the transition between the Desert and the Sown. But Elakkos is especially celebrated among the Tuareg all over North Africa for the shields which are used by the People of the Veil and are made in this country. The hide of the white oryx, which with much other game lives in the bush along the border of the desert, is used for their manufacture. Their reputation in Temajegh speech and poetry points to the country of Elakkos having long been essentially Tuareg, for the traditional shape and technique are not found among the neighbouring peoples.

The strong circumstantial evidence regarding the essentially Tuareg character of the country, is further borne out by a reference in Leo to the Lemta Tuareg. This people, we are told, extended over all that part of North Africa which lay immediately east of the Targa people, from the Fezzan as far as Kawkaw. The latter, for reasons which have been discussed, was not Gao or Gago on the Niger, but Kuka on Lake Chad.[444] But there is more than this, Elakkos is alternatively spelt Alakkos, Alakwas, and Ilagwas, which cannot be denied to bear a marked resemblance to the name of the Ilasgwas people of Corippus, who in Byzantine times were fighting in the Fezzan, or in other words in an area, according to Leo, occupied by the Lemta Tuareg. One would in any case have been inclined to accept the tradition that the early Tuareg in Elakkos were formerly more numerous than now, but in the light of this additional evidence I am satisfied that they are identical with the very Ilasgwas who came from the north, and therefore of the same stock as the Tuareg in the Fezzan. It follows that they were of the old Aulimmiden-Lemta stock and that they were a part of the latter group which entered the Chad area from the north and then moved westwards. I further believe that the Ilasgwas gave their name to Elakkos, where some of them stayed while the rest of the Lemta tribes went on, some of them into Air and some of them further west. The origin both of the Immikitan in Elakkos and in Air is due to this movement.

Elakkos is well supplied with water at all times of the year. Tropical summer rains fall in abundance, leaving pools in the depressions, to which most of the inhabitants of the villages migrate for the few weeks which elapse between sowing and reaping the millet, during and directly after the annual break of the weather. As the pools dry up, leaving a luxuriant Sudanese vegetation around the edges, recourse again becomes necessary to the numerous village wells. They are all of considerable depth, and surrounded by large spoil heaps, but the output is not very copious, or rather not sufficiently large to supply numerous thirsty camels in hot weather, when each animal may drink ten gallons or more. I travelled through Elakkos in June 1922 with a section of French Camel Corps, and we found watering a very tedious operation. The wells we used were 150 to 220 feet deep, and in order that the fastidious animals should drink copiously, the water had to be drawn at noon in a “shade temperature” ranging from 105° to 110° Fahr. in places where invariably there was no real shade to be seen.

After leaving the Bultum group of three Kanuri and Tebu hamlets, the road from Damagarim to Kawar crosses a low scarp and plunges into the belt of thick green bush which merges imperceptibly into small thorn scrub and divides the Southland from the desert. The vegetation in this zone ranges from small thorns to largish trees. It is part of the same belt of bush which surrounds Damergu, with this difference, that the latter immediately south of Air extends considerably further north and forms a salient of vegetation into the desert. The Elakkos bush is luxuriant even in the dry season, and abounds in game. If a few more wells were made available it would soon be thickly inhabited by pastoral tribes, now that immunity from the northern raiding parties has more or less been assured. It is a sanctuary for large herds of various species of gazelle, for the white oryx and addax antelope, as well as for numerous ostriches and some giraffes. There are excellent pastures for cattle, goats and camels, but although some of the Damergu Tuareg use the western part for their flocks and a few Tebu use the eastern side, there are few inhabitants in the country at any time of year. The surface of old fixed dunes is undulating, and in the occasional deep hollows are a few wells like those of Tasr[445] and Teshkar[446] on the Termit road, and Bullum Babá and others to the west. The wells belong to the Tebu, who visit them with their cattle in the summer. Immediately around them the vegetation has been eaten bare and the whitish downs under which they lie show up some distance away. The three wells at Tasr are twenty-seven feet deep; they are the last water before the Termit wells are reached, forty hours’ fast marching further on into the desert. The road, it is true, passes by Teshkar, but the output of the single well there, forty-five feet deep, is insufficient for more than a few animals at a time.