[458]Agades was probably not founded in Ibn Batutah’s day, or he would certainly have referred to it; there were, however, other large settlements in Air already in existence at this time, such as Assode (see Chap. XVII).
[459]Barth, op. cit., Vol. I., App., and others; also my information.
APPENDIX V
ON THE ROOT “MZGh” IN VARIOUS LIBYAN NAMES
Many authors have assumed that the word “Imajegh” was a generic or even a national name applicable to the whole of the Tuareg race, and perhaps even to most of the Libyans in North Africa. The “MZGh” root of this word, which properly denotes the noble caste of the Tuareg, does indeed appear in the classical names of many tribes or groups of people in North Africa. Among these may be cited the Meshwesh of early Egyptian records and the Macae of Greek historians, the latter being apparently a racial and not a tribal name. The root reappears in several such forms as Mazices, Maxitani, Mazaces, etc., all belonging to a people found principally in the Great Syrtis, in Southern Cyrenaica, and in Tripolitania, both on the coast and in the interior:[461] a more isolated group with radically the same name, the Maxyes, is placed by Herodotus as far west as Tunisia.[462]
In the Air dialect of the Temajegh language the name for the nobles of the Tuareg takes the form of “Imajeghan” with the singular “Imajegh.” In other dialects the word displays some variations including the forms Amazigh, Imazir, Imohagh, Imohaq, Imoshag, etc., according to the local pronunciation. The word is derived according to an informant of Duveyrier[463] from the verb “ahegh,” meaning “to raid” or, by extension of the meaning, “to be free,” or “independent.” De Foucauld, however, gives the form of the word as “Amahar,” a proper name having as its root ⵗⵂ (Gh H), like “Ahegh,” but not necessarily derived from the latter.[464]
As has already been noted, the name does not cover the totality of the race, for it does not include the servile clans, which, whatever their origin, are considered even by the nobles to belong, like themselves, to the Tuareg people. The word “Imajegh” is a caste and not a racial appellation.
I am doubtful if Sergi is justified in using a statement made by Père de Foucauld in 1888,[465] to the effect that the “Berbers” of North Africa generally, and those of the north-west in particular, who are known to the Arabs under various names, used the MZGh root as a name for themselves in such a manner as to indicate that it was a national appellation or the name of a racial stock of wide extension. It would be interesting to know how far de Foucauld, after a long period of residence as a hermit among the Tuareg of Ahaggar, modified the views he expressed in 1888. Subject to correction by any authority having had access to his notes, I take it he would rather have meant that the MZGh root was used in a quasi-national sense in a number of Berber dialects or by a number of Berber-speaking people when talking of themselves, but not in referring generally to the population of North Africa.