I.II.III.IV.
Camels20,15020,00060,00025,000
Horses554600—100
Cattle2,4912,600—1,000
Donkeys2,8403,000—2,500
Sheep and Goats51,30045,000400,000450,000

The figures in Column II are Chudeau’s[183] estimate of 1909, while those in Column III were compiled by another authority: those in Column IV are my present estimate. There is little doubt that the number of camels in Air before the war was grossly under-estimated by the early authorities. From fear of taxation and requisition the Tuareg will resort to every device to conceal their possessions, and especially the number of their camels. The same applies to their sheep and goats. In 1913 the number of camels in Air was put down at 60,000, which then was probably a reasonable figure. The herds were seriously depleted by the requisitions made for the expeditions of 1913-14 to Tibesti, when not less than 23,000 camels were taken, few of which ever returned to the country. This was certainly one of the principal grievances which led to the 1917 revolution. During the operations of 1917-18 the herds were further diminished, and have only recently again begun to increase at a rate which is bound to be slow when it is realised that a camel cannot be worked at all till it is over three years old, and ought not to be worked till it is five, while from seven years onward it is at its prime for only about five years. Nowadays there are probably not more than about 25,000 camels in Air; the sheep and goats, however, have once more reached their pre-war figure, which must have been nearly half a million.[184]

The last domestic animals worth mentioning are the dogs, of a type usually resembling inferior Arabian gazelle hounds, with short hair, often brown in colour, or with the brown or liver-and-white markings like foxhounds. The “pi” dog, which is so common in the north of Africa, I never saw in Air. Dogs are interesting owing to the friendly way in which they are treated by the Tuareg; they are much more the companions of man than is usual among Moslems, a characteristic which has probably survived from pre-Moslem days. Duveyrier refers to three types of dog among the Tuareg: a greyhound (lévrier), a long-haired Arab dog which is very rare, and a short-haired cross from these two. The latter appears to be the domestic dog in Air.[185]

Chickens are common and are eaten. In this the southern Tuareg differ from the Tuareg of the north, among whom Duveyrier specifically states that chickens, other birds and eggs are prohibited as food.[186]

But all domestic animals sink into insignificance in comparison with the camel, whose rôle is so outstanding in the nomadic life of the Tuareg that one wonders how the inhabitants of the Sahara can have lived before the advent of this animal, which is usually supposed to have come from the East at a comparatively late date in history.

The camel in Africa offers a most interesting historical problem around which there has been much inconclusive scientific dispute. The camel does not appear on Egyptian monuments before the Saitic period, and is not mentioned as living in Africa either by Herodotus or by Sallust, when the horse and probably the donkey were the ordinary means of transport of the nomads. It is fairly clear that the Carthaginians did not use camels, or we should certainly have found some reference to the animal in the accounts of the Punic or Jugurthine wars. It is said by so eminent an authority as Basset[187] that none of the Berber dialects contain any names for the camel which cannot be traced to Arabic origins, but this generalisation is also disputed. Sallust[188] says the Romans first saw a camel when they fought Mithridates at Rhyndacus, but Plutarch says it was at the battle of Magnesia in c. 190 B.C. The first text mentioning camels in Africa is in the account of the fighting with Juba, when Cæsar[189] captured twenty-two on the Zeta. A camel figures on a coin attributed either to L. Lollius Palicanus, a prefect of Cyrenaica under Augustus, or alternatively to L. Lollius, a lieutenant of Pompey,[190] but the first mention of camels in any large numbers is during the Empire, when in the late fourth century A.D. the general Romanus requisitioned 4000 animals for transport purposes from the inhabitants of Leptis Magna.[191] Other sources, including sculptures and texts of this period from now on, confirm their frequency, and by the time Corippus was writing the camel was the normal means of transport in the interior. The silence of Pliny[192] the Elder is valuable, if negative, evidence for Africa, as he mentions camels in Bactria and Arabia, and speaks of the East as the home of this animal. He knows nothing of them apparently in Africa. It is on such evidence that it has been supposed that camels were first introduced into Cyrenaica[193] from Sinai and Arabia. The conclusion would be more readily acceptable were it not for the unfortunate discoveries of camel skeletons associated with evidence of human industry of the Pleistocene period in more than one palæolithic site in North Africa.[194] In rock drawings the camel, of course, figures largely; these glyphs may not be of extreme antiquity, but they are quite possibly prior to the earliest classical references. It has been said that in really early rock drawings the camel is not represented, but neither has any complete catalogue of the drawings yet been made, nor has any conclusive scheme of dating been compiled. The question remains undecided, for although the camel was rare on the coast in early historical times, there is no evidence that it was not used more extensively in the interior. It is difficult consequently to discuss the question of early transport methods in the Sahara, of which I would only say that conditions of water supply have apparently for several thousand years been much as they certainly were throughout historical and modern times. An interesting theory has lately been advanced that there is an African and an Eastern species of camel distinguished by the peculiarity that some camels have one and some two canine teeth on each side of the upper jaw.

In the absence of any conclusive evidence it is safest to assume, as do most authorities, that the camel was not common in North Africa till as late as the second century A.D.

Gsell[195] makes an interesting suggestion that “La prospérité de la Tripolitaine prit certainement un grand essor sous la dynastie des Sévères, dont le chef était originaire de Leptis Magna. Ce fut à cette époque que Rome mit des garnisons dans les oases situées sur les routes du Soudan, ce qui favorisa évidemment le commerce des caravanes. Peut-être le développement du trafic trans-saharien fit alors adopter définitivement l’usage du chameau.” The problem of what transport was used before this period is only in part answered by Herodotus,[196] who tells us that the Garamantes harnessed oxen to carts, a statement which is confirmed from other sources, which add that cattle were used as beasts of burden as well. Whether wheeled vehicles ever reached Air is doubtful,[197] but the use of the pack-ox there continues as it does in the south. Whatever the means of transport which they favoured in their original northern homes, the Tuareg were already using camels when they reached Air. Dissociation of the Tuareg from his camel is difficult to conceive, since his life to-day as a nomad is so intimately bound up with the animal, which in turn has served so strongly to maintain his nomadic instinct. Of all animals it alone enables the Tuareg to remain to a great extent independent of his physical surroundings. Neither oxen nor donkeys could do so to the same extent.

The historical and anthropological aspect of the introduction of the ox and camel into Africa, and the identification of the races with which these animals were associated, are questions which concern the general story of North Africa rather than that of the Tuareg in particular. Fundamentally the Tuareg remains the pure nomad even when his habitat has changed and circumstances have obliged him to settle in villages or on the land. In Air all the truest nomads inhabit the Talak plain and the N.W. of the plateau, with the one great exception of the Ifadyen tribe, which during the last generation has moved south to Azawagh and Tegama. The true nomads have no fixed centres of permanent habitation whatsoever, thereby differing considerably from many of the purest Arabian nomads. But, unlike the latter again, they do not migrate very far afield; their winter and summer pastures are usually not very distant from each other. The only exception that I know to this rule is the case of some of the Ahaggaren, who send their herds to graze as far afield as the Adghar n’Ifoghas[198] and at times Damergu.[199]

PLATE 22