The gh (or Arabic غ, ghen) sound is, as in other Berber languages, very common in the speech of the Tuareg. The letter is so strongly grasseyé as to be indistinguishable, in many cases, from r. The French with greater logic write this sound r or r’. Doubtless many names which have been spelled with r in the succeeding pages should more correctly have been spelled with gh: such mistakes are due to the difficulties both of distinguishing the sound in speech, and of transcribing French transliterations.
No attempt has been made to indicate the occurrence of the third g which exists in the Tuareg alphabet, in addition to the hard g and the soft g (written j).
The Arabic letter ع (’ain) does not exist in the speech of the Tuareg; where they use an Arabic word containing this letter, they substitute for it the sound gh.
No signs have been used to distinguish between the hard and soft varieties of the letters d, t and z. The “kef” (Iek) and “qaf” (Iaq) sounds are written k and q.
PEOPLE OF THE VEIL
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Sahara is the name given in modern geography to the whole of the interior of North Africa between the Nile Valley and the Atlantic littoral, south of the Mediterranean coastlands and north of the Equatorial belt. The word “Sahara” is derived from the Arabic, and its meaning refers to a certain type of stony desert in one particular area. There is no native name for the whole of this vast land surface: it is far too large to fall wholly within the cognisance of any one group of its diverse inhabitants. The fact that it is a Moslem area and sharply distinguished from the rest of Africa has made it desirable to find a better name than “Sahara” to include both the interior and the littoral, for even “Sahara,” unsatisfactory as it is, can only be used of the former. “Africa Minor” has been proposed, but the reception accorded to this name has not been so cordial as to warrant its use. The clumsy term “North Africa” must therefore serve in the following pages to describe all the northern part of the continent; specifically it refers to the parts west of the Nile Valley and north of the Sudan.[1] It is an area which is now no longer permanently inhabited by negro races, and which is not covered by the dense vegetation of Equatoria.
To the general public the name Sahara denotes “Desert,” and the latter connotes sand and thirst and camels and picturesque men and veiled women. The Sahara in reality is very different. Its surface and races are varied. Almost every type of physical feature, except permanent glaciation, can be found. The greater part is capable of supporting animal and vegetable life in some degree. Absolute desert where no living thing can exist does not on the whole form a very large proportion of the surface. It has become usual nowadays to differentiate between the cultivated or cultivable areas, the steppe desert and the true desert. The latter alone is devoid of organic life, and is the exception rather than the rule. The mountain groups of the Sahara fall, as an intermediate category, between the cultivated and the desert lands. Generally speaking, animal and vegetable life exist in the valleys, where some tillage is often possible. The density of population, however, is never comparable with that of the cultivated districts, which, except where they fringe the coast, are usually included in the term “oases.”