People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

AGADES

The city of Agades used to be surrounded by mud walls, intended to baffle raiders rather than to withstand a siege. The distance along the line of their elliptical circumference, so far as it can still be traced, is a matter of three and a half to four miles. The wall has been much broken down and in some places is hard to find; its perimeter and plan seem to have varied from time to time according to the number of inhabitants. The best preserved parts are to the north-west beyond the Great Mosque, and to the north, where gates may be seen; there has evidently been considerable decay even since 1850.[77] At a distance the whole ridge on which the city stands appears covered with low, earth-coloured houses, for the most part without an upper storey. The regular sky-line is scarcely broken save by a few dûm palms and tenuous trees rising above the uniform level of the roofs. Only the tower of the mosque, like a finger pointing up to heaven, soars over the drab habitations. Their dull uniformity seems to enhance its dignity.

Agades is not a Tuareg city. Its foreign aspect is at once apparent. Although it also struck Barth immediately, he was, curiously enough, not so much concerned with what is really the most obvious feature of the alien atmosphere as he was with the foreign language and origin of most of the people he met there. His wanderings perhaps brought him less into contact with the permanent settlements of the Tuareg in Air than my good fortune did me; he could not otherwise have failed to remark that the houses in Agades are those of a Sudanese town and not those of the People of the Veil.

The most striking characteristic of the towns of the Sudan, of the immense walled cities of Kano and Zaria, as well as of the smaller places, is the mode of construction of the dwellings. There are two types of houses and in neither of them is stone used. The first type is the circular hut with a low vertical wall carrying a conical roof; the fashion extends throughout Central Africa. This abode is constructed of straw, or grass, or boughs, or of whatever material is readiest to hand. The ground plan is circular unless specific conditions have exerted a contrary influence, which occurs rather seldom. In the more advanced settlements of this sort in Northern Nigeria a development of the primitive form has taken place: it is a much larger structure with vertical mud walls which support the conical thatched roof, sometimes as much as twenty feet in diameter, standing within a compound. In many North Nigerian villages the dwellings consist exclusively of groups of such huts surrounded by low walls or enclosures.

The second type of house in the large towns of the Sudan is many-roomed and formless. The whole building, including the roof, is made of mud and often has one or more stories. The flat roof of mud and laths is carried on rafters of dûm palm wood which is one of the only available trees that resists the invasion of the white ant. Houses of this type often cover a considerable area, rambling aimlessly hither and thither in rooms, courts and alley-ways, according to the requirements and fancy of the owner or his descendants. The mud construction at times displays architectural features of real distinction. The thick tapering walls are wide and smooth. The doorways have a pylon-like appearance reminiscent of Egypt. The heavy squat façades are by no means unimposing: deep cold shadows cast by angles and buttresses break up the surface of the red walls. The broad panels around the doors are sometimes elaborated with decorative mouldings or with free arabesque designs in relief. The larger rooms which cannot be spanned by one length of rafter are vaulted inside with a false arch of mud, concealing cantilever timbering; the effect is that of a series of massive Gothic arches, plain but often of noble proportions. Technically, mud construction is easy, inexpensive and adequate in a climate where the rainy season is short and well defined. Balls of mud are dried in the sun and cemented together with wet mud. The outer and inner walls are faced with a plaster of earth and chopped straw. In the hot tropical sun the walls dry as hard as stone. The houses survive for an unlimited period of time if the outside surfaces are refaced every year after the torrential rains have washed away the stucco skin. Roofs, of course, have to be carefully levelled and drained to prevent the water accumulating in puddles and, in time, soaking through the ceilings. Gutters are provided with spouts projecting through the parapets of the roofs to prevent the water running down the sides.

The rambling mud house and the circular mud or straw and thatch huts, grouped in compounds, together make up the towns and villages of Northern Nigeria. The two types may be seen side by side, for instance in the country between Kano and Katsina, where the Fulani and Hausa population is mixed. It would be interesting to establish, as prima facie seems to be the case, whether the circular houses were those of the sedentary Fulani, who are nearer the semi-nomadic state, and the more ambitious mud dwellings those of the Hausa. In neither of these two types of house is stone used, either as ashlar or as rough masonry. Nor do dry stone walls occur, for mud is more convenient even when stone is available.[78]

When the Tuareg, on the other hand, builds permanent or semi-permanent dwellings, he displays characteristics which at once differentiate him from the people of the south. His straw and matting huts are not of the Central African type; they have no vertical wall of reeds or grass and a separate conical roof; they are built in one piece as a parabolic dome. Another, movable, type of hut or tent consists of a leather roof arched over four vertical uprights surrounded by matting walls on a square plan. The appearance of these tents is that of a cube with a slightly domed top. The permanent houses in Air are regular, carefully built constructions of stone and cement. In them mud is not employed except where the fashion of the south has been directly copied in comparatively recent times. The rambling house plan of the south is almost unknown. The Tuareg dwelling has a definitely formal and rectangular character. It rarely consists of more than two rooms. Even the exceptions to this rule[79] display considerable differences from the southern type of house.

Both the temporary huts and the permanent dwellings of the People of the Veil, therefore, are intensely individual. They differentiate the Tuareg sharply from the southern peoples. But even a casual glance at the houses of Agades makes it obvious that they belong to a city of the south. There is plenty of stone all round the city which might have been used for building, yet nearly all the houses are rambling mud constructions like those of Kano or of any of the towns of Nigeria. The number of houses at Agades which reflect the formal Tuareg fashion of planning is small. The characteristics which one learns to associate with the truly Tuareg houses of Air are conspicuously difficult to find. When I was in Agades at the commencement of the rains before the annual refacing of the walls had been carried out, it was possible to observe the absence of stone building. An inspection of the broken walls of the many ruined houses confirmed this observation of the past. The number of pools in the town alone was evidence of the prevalence and antiquity of mud construction; Barth mentions the names of several of them. The borrow pits in the Sudanese towns, where water accumulates in the rainy season and rubbish is shot in the dry, are features which no one can escape, were it only on account of the smells which they exhale; for in the Sudan, even when stone is available as at Kano, it is not used. I have vivid recollections of Agades at this season and was particularly impressed by the efficiency of the spouts designed to carry the water off the roofs. Progress was necessarily circuitous in order to avoid drowning in the flooded holes and borrow pits, while distraction was afforded by a determined but usually unsuccessful effort to escape a series of shower-baths in the narrow streets.

The ridge on which the city stands is surrounded by several depressions where are the wells that supply the needs of the population. In addition to those outside the town there were formerly nine other wells within the walls, but, like the pools, they were nearly all adulterated by the saline impregnation of the ground.

I cannot here refrain from quoting Barth, whose capacity for meticulous observation depended on never missing an opportunity, however strange, of acquiring information. “The houses of Agades do not possess all the convenience which one would expect to find in houses in the north of Europe; but here, as in many Italian towns, the principle of da per tutto, which astonished Goethe so much at Rivoli on the Lago di Garda, is in full force, being greatly assisted by the many ruined houses which are to be found in every quarter of the town. But the free nomadic inhabitant of the wilderness does not like this custom, and rather chooses to retreat into the open spots outside the town. The insecurity of the country and the feuds generally raging oblige them still to congregate, even on such occasions. When they reach some conspicuous tree the spears are all stuck into the ground, and the party separates behind the bushes; after which they again meet under the tree, and return in solemn procession to the town. By making such little excursions I became acquainted with the shallow depressions which surround Agades. . . .” He then proceeds to enumerate them.[80] The plain where the French fort lies is called Tagurast, that to the S.W., Mermeru; to the S.E. is Ameluli, with Tisak n’Talle somewhat further away to the S.S.E.; Tara Bere lies to the west.