An examination of the times assigned to the various stages of the journey makes it apparent that in the first part he actually marched rather faster than an ordinary commercial caravan. Considering the actual times he employed, we find that he took one month crossing Ahaggar to Tuat; the usual time for this section on the Agades In Salah road is twenty marching days, and Ibn Batutah probably took about that time, making thirty days with halts. We next find that it took ten days from Hakar (Ahaggar) to the place where the roads to Egypt and Tuat divided. This point is at the wells of In Azawa or Asiu, which are close together on the northern boundary of Air; the distance between them and Ahaggar is in fact ten days’ marching. It is reasonable to assume that Ibn Batutah’s point where the roads divide is, in fact, In Azawa or Asiu, and has therefore remained unchanged for over four centuries. South of these wells he had spent fifteen days in a country which was barren but had numerous watering-points—a good description of Air by a traveller who was used to the fertile and populous Sudan; the period of fifteen days corresponds accurately with the number of stages between In Azawa and Agades by any of the routes through Air.[460] As Agades was probably not founded at this date, Ibn Batutah in coming from the Niger would have no reason to travel as far as the site of the city and probably therefore kept west of the Central massifs and counted this stage from some point west of Agades like In Gall, though the exact locality is immaterial. South of this stage he crossed a desert where there is no water for three days: this is clearly the sterile tract separating Air from the Southland. The total of these times is fifty-eight days, even counting thirty days in Ahaggar instead of twenty; this, at a generous estimate, may be called sixty, from the northern edge of the Southland across Air and Ahaggar to Tuat, and this reckoning coincides with the usual forty-five caravan marching stages to which previous reference has been made. There are, therefore, still at least ten days to be accounted for, and they are referred to in the passage in which he simply states that he left Tekadda and marched for an indefinite time, making no mention of the number of days employed till he reached the domains of the Sultan of Kerker. I would be inclined to look for Tekadda not at any of the Tagiddas, which are rather north of the River of Agades and consequently north of the three days’ desert travelling, but at some point in the direction of Gao, thirteen days’ journey from the southernmost part of Air, or ten days from the northern fringe of the Southland below the desert belt. I have unfortunately no knowledge of the country west of Damergu to suggest an identification, but am convinced that no place in or just west of Air is intended by the description of Tekadda.
[449]Sijilmasa (Sigilmasiyah) was the capital of the Tafilelt area in Morocco south of the Atlas. Its ruins in the Wadi Ifli are now called Medinet el ’Amira.
[450]The salt mines of Tegaza were referred to in [Chap. XII.] They were abandoned in A.D. 1586, and those of Taodenit, where caravans still go from Timbuctoo to fetch salt for the Upper Niger, were opened instead. Vide Barth, op. cit., Vol. V. p. 612, and Map No. 14 (Western Sheet) in Vol. V.
[451]Ibn Batutah: by Lee in the Oriental Translations Fund, 1829, pp. 241-2, etc.
[452]Scilicet, red mud.
[453]Probably another version of Hakar (هَكاَر).
[454]Barth, op. cit., Vol. I. p. 336.
[455]Barth, op. cit., Vol. I. p. 335.
[456]Tagidda (Cortier, Map of Air—Teguidda) means a small hollow or basin where water collects (De Foucauld, I. 276). The names of the three places therefore mean “Basin of the Mountain,” “Basin of the Dûm palm,” and “Basin of Salt.” Tagidda = basin, is not to be confused with Tiggedi = cliff (as the Cliff S. of Agades), from the root egged, “to jump.” De Foucauld, op. cit., I. 273, and Motylinski, Dictionnaire, etc., 1908.
[457]Not three days south-west, as Barth says.