The city is divided into several quarters, the names of which are recorded on Barth’s plan. The only two I heard mentioned were Terjeman and Katanga, the former so called from the interpreters who used to live in the neighbourhood, the latter from the market where what Americans would term “dry goods” of the Air fashion are sold. Little seems to have changed in seventy-five years; necklaces, stone arm-rings, wooden spoons and cotton cloth can be bought, now as then. In the larger market near by, called by the Hausa name of Kaswa n’Rakumi (the Camel Market), live-stock of all sorts is sold. The vegetable market seems to be as ill furnished now as it was in 1850.
I visited two or three private houses. They were not imposing, lacking the architectural features of the better-class houses in the Sudan. The use of white and colour washes in the interiors and on the outside walls was interesting. This practice is the only feature in which the houses of Agades differed from those of the Sudan; it appears to be peculiar in this part of Africa to the Tuareg, the habit having, no doubt, been copied from the north. The pigment is made of a chalky substance found near Agades, or of ochreous earths occurring in various places in Air. One of the houses which I saw was that of the Añastafidet, the administrative head of the Kel Owi tribes. The rooms were small and ill-planned; there was no attempt at decoration. The technique of the south had evidently not flourished in the atmosphere of the Sahara. The two plans of private houses reproduced by Barth give an idea of the rambling and haphazard designing.
The most elaborate and well-kept house is the one which belongs to the Kadhi, near the Great Mosque. It must have been here that Barth attended several sittings of the Kadhi’s Court, adjudicating on inter-tribal matters which could not be settled by the tribal chiefs. It did not seem at all remarkable after the great houses of the Sudan, but was perhaps rather better kept than most of the other buildings in Agades. The people call it the House of Kaossen, and his family still live there. He carried on his intrigues from this place, and plotted with apparent impunity through 1917, until the time was ripe for open rebellion. He had returned from the Fezzan full of ambition to free his country from the white men whom he fought all his life. He had taken part in the operations against the French in Equatorial Africa, largely directed by the Senussiya from their “zawias” in Tibesti and Ennedi. When this period of hostility came to an end, but not before the French had sustained several severe reverses, notably during the fighting at Bir Alali (Fort Pradie), north-east of Lake Chad, Kaossen took refuge with the Azger Tuareg in the Eastern Fezzan, raiding and fighting with these lawless folk against their neighbours. Of his own initiative, but aided by the Senussiya and their Turkish and German advisers, Kaossen returned to his native country in 1917 with a small band of supporters to drive out the French, an effort in which he very nearly succeeded.
By far the most considerable monument of the city is the Great Mosque. I was unable to visit the interior, but from the general appearance of the building I am sure that I should have agreed with the description of Barth, who wrote: “The lowness of the structure had surprised me from without, but I was still more astonished when I entered the interior and saw that it consisted of low narrow naves divided by pillars of immense thickness, the reason of which it is not possible at present to understand, as they have nothing to support but a roof of dûm-tree boards, mats and a layer of clay.” He goes on to speculate on the superstructure which these “vaults or cellars” may have been designed to carry but which was never completed. I do not think such speculation is necessary. The description fits accurately every one of the seven or eight other mosques in Air which I saw within and without. In none of them were the walls ever meant to carry an upper storey. In all of them the ceiling was low and the roof flat, with rows of massive pillars and the naves running transversely from north to south across the buildings, which were usually far broader than they were deep.
The Great Mosque of Agades as it stands to-day was built in 1844.[81] It would hardly be remarkable were it not for the minaret, which was rebuilt by the Sultan Abd el Qader in 1847 to replace the one which had fallen. From a base thirty feet square resting on four massive pilasters in the interior of the mosque, this four-sided tower of mud and dûm-palm rafters rises to a height of between eighty and ninety feet, tapering from about one-third of its height to a narrow platform less than eight feet square at the top. Access is obtained by a spiral way between the solid core and the outer wall, which is pierced with small windows. From a little distance the foreshortening produced by the tapering faces gives the impression of immense height without accentuating the pyramidical form. The four-square, flat sides are bound together by transverse rafters projecting some three or four feet. These ends serve the purpose of scaffolding when refacing is necessary after the rains, an operation without which the tower would not have stood any length of time. Near the mosque is a heap of mud, the remains of an older tower called “Sofo,” presumably of the same type.[82]
The structure is properly speaking a minaret, but was used as a watch-tower in time of war. It is not now used for either purpose. The muezzin stands on the roof of the mosque below to call upon the Faithful at the prescribed hours to forsake their pursuits and turn to the only God. The Tower of Agades stands like a beacon, showing far over the monotonous plains. I remember this solitary pillar towering above a confused mass of low and ruinous buildings against the blood-red setting sun, which appeared and disappeared in the black clouds of an evening in the rains. The blue hills and sharp peaks of Air were distant in the north; to the south lay a drab plain, unbroken as far as eye could see in the gathering twilight. The Tower seemed like the lonely monument of a decaying civilisation.
There are said to have been as many as seventy mosques in and near the city, but only two, I think, are still used. Outside the walls to the S.W. there is a shrine known as Sidi Hamada, “My Lord of the Desert,” appropriately named considering the barren nature of the ground all round. It is an open place of prayer of much sanctity, and reputed to be the oldest Moslem place of worship in the neighbourhood. The Qibla is in a low bank, faced with a dry stone wall, which slopes down to the level of the surrounding ground a few feet on each side of the niche. On certain occasions prayers are said at Sidi Hamada, notably on the Feast of the Sheep, known to the Tuareg as Salla Laja, which I was fortunate enough to witness at Agades in June 1922.
PLATE 10
GATHERING AT SIDI HAMADA