People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

GRAIN POTS, IFERUAN

GARDEN WELL

As in the south, millet and guinea corn are sown during the rains, but they usually require irrigation before they reach maturity. In certain areas rain-grown crops could be raised most years. In the past a fair amount of cereals seems to have been produced in this way; to-day the Tuareg are too poor to risk losing their seed in the event of inadequate or irregular rainfall. Although the wheat grown in the Ighazar used nearly all to be exported to the Fezzan, where it was much in demand on account of its excellent quality for making the Arab food “kus-kus,” Air at no time has produced enough grain for its own consumption. In the economics of Air necessary grain imports are paid for by the proceeds of wheat sales or live-stock traffic with the north, and by the profits of the trade in salt from Bilma; these provide the means of purchasing the cheaper millet and guinea corn of Damergu. Any additional surplus, representing annual savings, is invested in live-stock, especially camels, within the borders of the country.

The breakdown of the social organisations of the Tuareg in Air compelled numbers of nobles out of sheer poverty after they had lost their camels and herds to cultivate the soil; before the war not even the servile people were very extensively so employed if they could find enough slaves to do the work.

Neither the advent of a European Power nor the subsequent changes in the social structure of the country has had very much effect on the position of slaves in Air. Of these there are two categories,[122] the household slave and the outdoor slave, and both of them are chattels in local customary law. The former are called “ikelan,” the latter “irawellan,”[123] or alternatively “bela,” “buzu” or “bugadie,” which, however, are not Temajegh words, but have been borrowed from the south. The term “irawel” is also used generically to cover both categories of slaves, although it primarily refers to the latter. In the use of this word Barth[124] makes one of the few mistakes of which he has been guilty, where he states that the most noble part of the Kel Owi group of tribes in Air is the “Irolangh” clan, to which the Amenokal or Sultan of the Kel Owi belonged. The paramount chief of his day, Annur, belonged to the Kel Assarara section of the Imaslagha tribe, which is probably the original and certainly one of the most noble of the Kel Owi, for it includes the Kel Tafidet, who gave their name to the whole confederation. The traveller’s mistaken reference to Irawellan or Irolangh is probably due to his having been informed by a member of some non-Kel Owi tribe that Annur and all his people were “really Irawellan,” or servile people. Such abuse of the Kel Owi is common among the other Air Tuareg. It is certainly not justified in fact, and is due to the contempt in which an older nobility will always hold more recent arrivals.[125]

The negro slaves, the Ikelan, are primarily concerned with garden cultivation, and are consequently sedentary. One half of the produce of their labour goes to their masters and the other half to support themselves and their families. Ikelan also perform all the domestic duties of the Tuareg to whom they belong, and herd their masters’ goats and sheep if they happen to be living in the same neighbourhood. A certain proportion of the offspring of the flocks is also given to the slaves. Since, primarily, they are cultivators of the ground, they do not move from place to place with their owners. They consequently often escape domestic work and herding. Despite their legal status they are in practice permitted to own property, though, if their masters decided to remove it, they would be within their rights to do so. In other words, the theoretical status of slavery which makes it impossible for a chattel to own property has been considerably modified, and not as a consequence of the altered conditions, or of the legislation of a European Power, but because slavery among the Tuareg never did involve great hardship. Their slaves, furthermore, always had the hope of manumission and consequent change to the status of Imghad or serfs, a rise in the social scale which, in fact, often did occur. It was in slave trading and not in slave owning that the Tuareg sinned against the ethical standards which are usually accepted in Europe, and obtained so unenviable a reputation last century.

Herding live-stock, and especially camels, is the primary function of the outdoor slave or Buzu. Though often also a negro, he is considered to possess a somewhat higher status than the Akel, for he does not as a rule work in the house or village. The Buzu’s work, if on the whole less strenuous than that of the tiller of gardens, is felt to be more manly because he is associated with camels. He travels with nobles or Imghad, to either of whom he may belong. He does all the hard menial work on the march. He is responsible especially for herding the camels at pasture and for loading and unloading them each day on the road. Such duties as filling water-skins, driving camels down to water, feeding them on the march and making rope for the loads, all fall to his lot. The Buzu may even accompany his master’s camels on raids or act as personal messenger for his lord. When the camels are resting he spends his days watching the grazing animals, or looking after any other herds which his master may own in the neighbourhood. On the whole I have found the Buzu a remarkably hard-working person. He is almost useless without his master to give him orders and to see that they are carried out, but ready to undertake any exertion connected with his work, which he regards as his fate, but not his privilege to perform without complaint.

It is difficult to determine whether there is any racial difference between the Buzu class, the tillers of gardens, and the ordinary household slaves. The first are more respected than the last, which may mean that they are more closely related in blood to their masters. The practice of concubinage, though not very widespread, has probably created the caste, and from them, in time, a certain proportion of the Imghad. While theoretically the children of a slave concubine and a Tuareg man ought to be “ikelan” like their mother, in practice they tend to rise into the superior caste of the Buzu, and eventually in successive generations to Imghad. In Air at least the general tendency is for the old-established caste distinctions to become more elastic and for the ancient order to pass away. Although the events of the last twenty years have contributed greatly to this change, the strongest factor has certainly been the increasing wealth of the Imghad, but another reason is probably that many Imghad tribes in Air were themselves originally Imajeghan before their capture in war or their subjugation by some means. Consequently with the dissolution of tribal allegiances in Air and enhanced prosperity they have tended to revert to their former status. They cling so tenaciously to nobility of birth that, rather than accept the logical results of inferiority consequent upon defeat in war, the people collectively combine to admit the fiction of servile people possessing dual status.

The presence of more than one racial type among the Imghad has led certain travellers to make quite unjustifiable generalisations about this section of Tuareg society. There have also been advanced numerous and most unnecessarily complicated theories to account for the division of the race as a whole into these two castes. The problem is really much simpler. Although by no general rule can it be said that the Imghad originally belonged to this or to that people, they are all clearly the descendants of groups or individuals captured in war and subsequently released from bondage to form a caste enjoying a certain measure of freedom, and having a separate legal or civil existence under something more than the mere political suzerainty of the noble tribe which originally possessed them. In this first stage, the noble tribe represents the original pure Tuareg race, while the oldest Imghad are the first extraneous people whom they conquered, in some cases perhaps as early as in the Neolithic ages. “It is necessary,” says Bates,[126] with great justice, “to state emphatically that the division into Imghad and Imajeghan is so ancient that the Saharan Berbers preserve no knowledge of its origin.” This antiquity may be held to account for the complete national fusion which has taken place among the two castes: nearly all Imghad would utterly fail to grasp a suggestion that they were not to-day as much Tuareg as their Imajeghan overlords, however they may dislike and abuse the latter. As time went on more and more Imghad were added to the race, each group being subject to the noble tribe responsible for its conquest. The possibility of a group of people becoming the Imghad of an Imghad tribe was precluded by the relations obtaining between serfs and nobles, whereby it is the sole prerogative of the latter to wage war or make peace. Should an Imghad tribe capture slaves in war they could not be manumitted except by the Imajegh tribe, the lords of the victorious Imghad; and by the act of manumission the newly-acquired slaves would then become the equals of their Imghad conquerors under the dominion of the Imajeghan concerned.