[141]The Mesufa are a surviving section of the Sanhaja, and are specifically described by Ibn Batutah and Ibn Khaldun as a part of the People of the Veil, i.e. not negroes or negroids (vide infra, [Chap. XI.]).
[142]This statement is made in spite of the reference a little later to the succession of the Sultan of Tekadda, who, though a Tuareg, does not seem to have been of the Mesufa. This little inaccuracy is, however, of no importance.
[143]Richardson: Travels, etc., Vol. II. pp. 65-6.
[144]Diod. Sic., iii. 53 sq. See also Silius Italicus, ii. 80. Bates, op. cit., pp. 112-13 and 148, agrees that the existence of matriarchal society would be a reasonable explanation of the Amazon story.
[145]Nevertheless the matriarchate is known to have existed in classical times as far south as Æthiopia, in the Meroitic kingdom as well as in early Egypt.
[146]Perry (The Children of the Sun) would doubtless suggest that it came from Egypt.
[147]See Rattray, Ashanti, 1924. This authority thinks that the Ashanti people themselves came from the north. Many of the details of their matriarchal system accord closely with that of the Tuareg.
[148]Barth, Vol. I. p. 388.
[149]Ibid., p. 341. On page 342 he says the Aulimmiden, who have the same custom, consider the practice shameful, “as exhibiting only the man’s distrust of his wife’s fidelity; for such is certainly its foundation.” I don’t agree with this conclusion; the origins of matriarchy are certainly not as simple as this.