The Sultan Tegama, on the other hand, betook himself to Tibesti, hoping to find sanctuary among the Tebu, who, though the hereditary enemies of the Tuareg of Air, were probably sufficiently hostile to the French to be counted on to harbour any prominent refugee from the wrath of the white man. By the influence of the Senussiya in these parts he expected to reach Kufra and so take up his residence among the malcontents who live in that remote land. Treacherous as ever and true to their reputation current all over North Africa, the Tebu entreated Tegama generously and took the first opportunity which presented itself to hand him over to a French camel patrol from Bilma. In the course of time he returned to Agades as a prisoner under an escort of negro Senegalese soldiers and was thrown into prison at the fort to await his trial by court-martial. He died suddenly one night in May 1922, by his own hand it is said, in the prison, while under the surveillance of the French, and he was buried. But one chief who was at the funeral told me that he looked under the mat which covered the alleged corpse and discovered that there was nothing there. The story spread that Tegama escaped and fled to the north, where he is still living. Perhaps it is better that this story should obtain credence than any other. Instead of Tegama, the French officer in charge of the post was court-martialled for the suicide of the king, but acquitted. The whole episode is curious, but the truth is perhaps rather unsavoury. It is another of the fierce tragedies of the Sahara.
Before Tegama, Osman Mikitan and Brahim (Ibrahim Dan Sugi) were Sultans. Mikitan was Sultan when the post was first established at the wells of T’in Shaman, but they changed places several times in the course of the intrigues which took place between the passage of the Foureau-Lamy Expedition in 1899 and the occupation of Air in 1904. In Barth’s day Abd el Qader, son of the Sultan Bakiri (Bekri), was on the throne. His tenure of office was as precarious as that of his successors, for he had been Sultan on a previous occasion before Barth reached Agades, only to be deposed in favour of Hamed el Rufai (Ahmed Rufaiyi), whom he again succeeded; they once more changed places some three years afterwards, Abd el Qader having reigned in all about thirty-two years, Hamed some twelve. The tenure of office of the Sultans of Agades during the last century has been as precarious as it was in Leo’s time, for we read in this authority[84] that the Tuareg “will sometime expel their king and choose another; so that he which pleaseth the inhabitants of the desert best is sure to be king of Agades.” Bello in his history says the same:[85] “whenever a prince displeased them, they dethroned him and appointed a different one.”
The installation of the Sultan with the customs that obtain is in the nature of a ceremonial recognition, by the representatives of the principal tribes of the Tuareg of Air, of his elevation to office. Taken in connection with the traditional mode of his selection, it throws an interesting light on relationships of the various groups of the Tuareg in Air. Barth, who was in Agades on such an occasion, wrote: “The ceremonial was gone through inside the fada (palace); but this was the procedure. First of all Abd el Kader (Qader) was conducted from his private apartments to the public hall: the chiefs of the Itisan (Itesan) and Kel Geres who were in front begged him to sit down upon the gado, a sort of couch or divan, made of the leaves of the palm tree . . . similar to the angarib used in Egypt and the lands of the Upper Nile, and covered with mats and carpets. Upon this the Sultan sat down, resting his feet on the ground, not being allowed to put them on the gado and recline in the Oriental style until the Kel Owi had desired him to do so.[86] Such is the ceremony, symbolical of the combined participation of these different tribes in the investiture of their Sultan.”[87] The throne-room in the old palace seems to have been more imposing than any part of the royal dwelling of to-day. The present audience chamber is a low, arched room, with a small daïs or seat at one end near a narrow stairway leading up to three rooms in an upper storey, which is now not in use. These rooms are lighted by small windows looking over the outer court. I wandered at random in and out of the palace except that small part which is still used by Omar himself and his women-folk. The deserted rooms were deep in dust and fallen plaster. The courts were infested with dogs, children and chickens. The palace was far less magnificent and certainly less well kept than many other houses in the city. Even the small house of the Añastafidet, with its mats and solitary carpet of horrid colours on the floor of the guest-chamber, was more cleanly.
The present Sultan enjoys little or no authority; his predecessors, unless they were backed by the more important chiefs in Air, were almost equally powerless, for the position of the Sultan, or Amenokal, as he is called in Temajegh, is curious. It is said in the native tradition that in the early days there was no authority in the land other than that of the chiefs of the various groups of tribes, and these did not in any way acknowledge one another’s authority over affairs which interested the community at large. The groups and single tribes were constantly at war with one another, and there were then 70,000 people in the land, with no common ruler.[88] The more reasonable chiefs recognised that some figure-head at least was necessary, but they could not agree that he should be chosen from any of the principal groups of clans in Air. They therefore sent a deputation to Istambul or Santambul (Constantinople) to the Commander of the Faithful, asking him to appoint a Prince to come and rule over them. The Khalif called together the sons of his wives and offered them all the country from the land of the Aulimmiden in the west to Sokoto in the east (sic), and from Tadent in the north to the lands of the Negroes in the south. But Air was so far away that none of the sons of the Khalif was willing to leave the comforts of Stambul. The Embassy was kept waiting for three years. Finally the Commander of the Faithful, weakening before the tears of his legitimate wives, the mothers of his sons, selected the child of a concubine to rule over the Tuareg of the south. The candidate returned with the deputation to Air and from that day to this there are said to have been one hundred rulers in the land. This figure does not, of course, represent the exact number; it is only meant figuratively to indicate a long period of time.
From the original impressions I had received in Air I came to the conclusion that the installation of the first Sultan could be assigned to the beginning of the fifteenth century A.D., or, in other words, to a period prior to the capture of Constantinople by the Moslems. In the course of some research on the subject I discovered that 1420 A.D. had been suggested by one authority on the evidence of tradition, while the Agades Chronicle, independently of all this evidence, had recorded that the first Sultan, Yunis,[89] ascended the throne in 809 A.H., or about 1406 A.D.[90] The important thing in any case is that, if the story of his choice has any historical foundation whatsoever, it must be referred to a period when Christian emperors were still ruling in Constantinople. It is therefore all the more interesting to learn that the first Sultan was called Yunis, which means John, and that the wife of the first Sultan, a noble girl said to have been given to him in marriage by the Kel Ferwan tribe, was called Ibuzahil or Izubahil, a name bearing a curious resemblance to Isabel. It is a fitting name for the companion of John, the man from the distant land.
If a deputation went to the Mediterranean at all, it was natural at this period that it should go to Constantinople, still regarded as the capital of nations, with which no other city in the fifteenth century could compare for civilisation or splendour. But we shall probably never know whether a Byzantine prince came to Air in 1406 A.D. or whether the names and legend of John and Isabel are only coincidence. Yunis is described as the son of Tahanazeta, and I must leave for others to discover Byzantine resemblances to this name. For the name of one of his successors, Aliso, I suggest Louis may have been our equivalent, and regarding the latter’s brother, Amati, who followed, comment is hardly necessary.
Yunis reigned twenty years and was succeeded by Akasani,[91] who was the son of Yunis’s sister. Elsewhere El Haj Ebesan or Abeshan, a son of Yunis, and his son, El Haj Muhammad ben Ebesan, are said to have reigned respectively as second and third Sultans, but this is not substantiated by the Agades Chronicle, which mentions El Haj Ebesan only as the grandfather of the sixteenth Sultan, Yusif, who came to the throne about 1594. From this record there appear to have been some forty rulers, several of whom reigned more than once, but there are certain gaps in the series.[92]
After the very first ruler the reigning family divided into two branches, which keep on reappearing, many of the Sultans of one being deposed by powerful tribes like the Itesan in favour of candidates of the other line. The family of El Guddala or Ghodala figures prominently with several notable rulers like Muhammad Hammad, who was known as the Father of his People. From such records as are available I have tried to recover the genealogy of this stock; but the Agades Chronicle is neither accurate nor complete;[93] although it is almost the only detailed information which we possess for the present. One noteworthy fact accords well with Ibn Batutah’s observations and with certain matriarchal survivals which will be referred to in detail hereafter: there are repeated instances of descent being traced through the female line. Nevertheless, this was not an essential condition. The ruler to this day is elected by the same tribes originally responsible for the elevation of Yunis to the throne: he must be drawn from one of the two branches of the original family, and his heir, subject to due and proper election, is normally considered to be his sister’s son.
Being the son of a concubine or slave, the king, according to the rules of descent of all the Tuareg, was himself of slave caste, nor could he ever achieve the distinction of being ranked among the nobles. As it is the law among the People of the Veil that the child must follow the caste of the mother and not the father, whatever the latter’s claims, only the offspring of a noble Tuareg woman can be noble. In all other matrimonial combinations the child must be a serf or slave. A slight distinction is sometimes drawn if only the mother is inferior, but it has the effect, at the most, of creating a mixed caste, without admitting the possibility of the child becoming a noble. When the problem arose of finding a wife for the first ruler who had been selected by the Khalif, despite the pre-eminence of his sponsor, tradition prevailed, that he was to be given a slave woman for wife. The arrangement had the advantage of perpetuating the status of the original Amenokal, since his children perforce had to continue in the inferior caste. For political reasons certain exceptions seem to have been made, and the Amenokal, though a serf, was also allowed to marry a noble woman, but in that case her children were not eligible. The marriage of John and Isabel—if she came from the noble Kel Ferwan, and not from Constantinople, as I suspect—may be an instance of such political dispensation. The restriction of the choice of the Amenokal to one of the two branches of the original family, and the force of tradition in regard to his descent, have resulted in the apparent paradox that in order to be Sultan of Agades the candidate has to be a slave. These considerations duly influenced the choice of the present Amenokal, Omar.
Insignificant as his power nominally is, and unimportant as the office may practically be, many of the traditional stories which purport to explain the circumstances attending the Sultan’s elevation to the throne are probably fanciful. They may be accepted but still be fictions in the legal sense. Unless or until Byzantine researches can come to our assistance, the logical explanation, if there is one, must be sought. Shorn of romance, what appears most likely to have happened is that the Tuareg of Air at a certain stage were unable to reach any agreement regarding the selection of a head of the State. They were divided up into groups which their piecemeal immigration had accentuated. But the necessities of trade and caravan traffic made it essential for the common weal to have some sovereign or head, even if he were only a nominal ruler, to maintain foreign relations and transact political business on behalf of the inhabitants of Air generally with the Emirates and Empires of the Sudan. Since none of the principal tribes was willing to forgo the privilege of providing the ruler, the expedient was hit upon of appointing a man whose status would never conflict with the authority of the tribal chiefs within the borders of the country, but who could still be delegated to speak for the whole community with the rulers of the Southland. With all the jealousy that exists among the tribes on the question of relative nobility or antiquity, the only people fulfilling the essentials were of servile caste. The choice of such a man was nevertheless possible among the Tuareg, for neither “imghad” nor slaves are despised or regarded as mere animals. This, I think, is the only explanation of the usage which obtains, that whatever may be the caste of the Amenokal’s children, only the servile ones are eligible. Although the family of the Sultan may include noble persons, it is, as a whole, a servile group in both its branches; it seems that Barth is mistaken in regarding the group as noble. The family may, as he says, be called “Sherrifa,” but probably only on account of its reputed origin. It is not considered any the more noble in the Tuareg sense of the word for all that.[94]