PLATE 28
HOUSE TYPES.
My interest in Tuareg architecture was first aroused near Tabello, east of Bagezan, a point reached while I was circumnavigating the massif. From Auderas we had been to visit T’imia, whence we returned to the Abarakan valley. We then climbed laboriously up the bed of the Teghazar[217] tributary, and so reached the plateau east of the Central massif. We camped at about 3500 feet, by the spring of Teginjir. The water here is strongly mineralised, and comes out of the ground at about 90° F. charged with carbonic acid gas. Within a short distance of the spring is the volcanic crater and cone of Gheshwa,[218] the only recent vent which I came across in Air. It was visited and described by Von Bary, but curiously enough is neither referred to in other works nor shown on the Cortier map. The cinder cone is small and rather broken down on the west side, but the sides are still exceedingly steep and covered with loose scoriæ. The lava flow which came out of the vent extends from the foot of the cone, for some five miles to the south-east; it appears to have originated in the course of a single eruption. The lava stratum is level and about 20 feet thick, overlying the Teginjir plain, which consists of a surface alluvium from the neighbouring mountains, and, at one point, a disintegrating crystalline outcrop. The lava is acid and vesicular, resembling in appearance recent flows from Vesuvius or at Casamicciola on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples. The surface of the Teginjir flow proved indescribably rough and devoid of vegetation; it has as yet had no time to disintegrate and is undoubtedly still in the same twisted and cracked form which it had assumed during the cooling process. E.S.E. of Mount Gheshwa are two small black hillocks which appear to be minor cinder cones, not connected with any lava flows. The eruption which formed the Gheshwa cone and neighbouring lava flow is certainly posterior to the general configuration of the plateau and is a most recent geological phenomenon, but I found no tradition among the natives of any volcanic activity within living memory.
The ground drains eastward from Teginjir along the southern side of the T’imia massif to the Anfissak valley, named after the buttress hills which form the south-east corner of this group. East of Anfissak the plain extends towards and beyond Mount Mari in the north; a number of hillocks litter the plain to the south. The caravan road from Tripoli to the Sudan runs down this plain by the Adoral valley past Mari well, which is now filled in, by Anfissak well, and by Adaudu and the Tebernit water-holes to Beughqot. Thence it goes due south to Tergulawen and over the Azawagh to Damergu and Nigeria.
A short distance to the south the Anfissak valley changes its name to Tamanet, so called after a watering-place which we reached in one day’s march from Teginjir. At least it was meant to be a watering-point, but we found that insufficient rain had fallen that year in Eastern Air and there was no water in the sand of the valley bed. We camped and left next day on a short ration of water over one of the most difficult parts of Air which I encountered in the whole of my journey. The plain is not boldly accidentated, but the valleys have cut deep into the disintegrating plateau. Their sides are steep and the flat places between them are so thickly covered with boulders that the area is almost impossible to cross. We eventually reached the Tebernit[219] valley just above Adaudu and sent camels up the valley to find water at a point called Emilía on the way to Ajiru. Our supply had completely run out. It was thirsty work waiting for the watering party to return, and one’s worst apprehensions were of course aroused. I prowled about to relieve the tedium, and found a place where a ridge of rock crossed the bed or channel of the valley. I began digging in the sand to find water, for it seemed a likely place for an “Ers,” as there was an old village site near by. Sure enough I found water about two feet down, and everyone cheered up, as the Emilía party was not due back for several hours. The place became known to the expedition as “Rodd’s Ers.”
Marching from here to Tabello was light work; we camped in the valley where the Arakieta tributary comes down from Bagezan near a small hut village, and then made an easy stage to the rendezvous of the salt caravan. The valley known as Tabello we discovered to be the upper part of the Beughqot: it was another example of the confusing habit of giving a multitude of names to a single system. Each section bears a different name to which a traveller, according to where he happens to be, may refer. The Ajiru, Tellia, Tebernit and Afasas are really the same valley; similarly the Telezu, Tokede, Towar, Tessuma and Etaras are another, while the Abarakan, T’imilen, Agerzan, Bilasicat, Azar and Anu Maqaran are also one and the same watercourse.
The country east of Bagezan now belongs to the Kel Owi confederation. The northern part of the plain is the country of the Kel Azañieres, but before their advent the Immikitan came as far south as Tamanet. The Kel Anfissak, living presumably at Barth’s well of Albes, are a Kel Azañieres sub-tribe. Ajiru was the home of Belkho and the head-quarters of the Igermaden; but Tabello belonged to the Igademawen. It was at Ajiru that Von Bary was detained as a virtual prisoner by Belkho until he decided to abandon his projected journey to the Sudan.
The countryside had evidently at one time been quite thickly inhabited, but presumably before the immigration of the Kel Owi, for nearly all the ruined villages contained a characteristic type of house, which every Tuareg agreed was built by the Itesan, who of course came to Air long before the Kel Owi. In the Beughqot valley where it is called Tabello a great deal of water is available all the year round in the sand, and consequently several villages sprang up on both banks. The largest group, which will be described in detail, is the northernmost on the west bank, called Tasawat. The houses here are all of the characteristic “old type,” which is culturally far the most advanced dwelling in Air. Many of the buildings here are very well preserved except for the roof, which in almost every instance has collapsed. In the Tabello houses the walls are for the most part well preserved, but elsewhere in Air the constructional material was less good, for little remains of the oldest type dwellings but the ground plan.
The oldest houses, which I will call the “A type,” are rectangular in plan and have two rooms, a larger one with two or three outer doors, and an inner one with one door in the partition wall and no outer doors. All the houses of this type and most of the later houses in Air are oriented in the same direction, namely, within a few degrees of north and south, with the smaller room at the northern end. There were a few exceptions in the fourth group which I examined at Tabello; they were houses on a N.N.W.-S.S.E. line, or oriented E.-W. with the small room at the west end. The latter is an interesting point, because although the Air dialect of Temajegh contains a proper word for north (“tasalgi”), the word for west (“ataram”), which in some other dialects of the language has acquired the significance of north, is also sometimes used for this cardinal point.