People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

PLATE 30

HOUSE INTERIORS.

The constant type of the houses, despite their disparity of date, is so marked that it cannot be fortuitous. I examined in the course of my stay in Air the villages and towns of Auderas, Towar, Agejir, the Tabello and Afassaz-Tebernit groups, T’imia, Assode, T’in Wansa, Igululof, Anu Samed, T’intaghoda, Tanutmolet, Iferuan, Seliufet, Agellal, Tefis and Anu Wisheran, and found the “A” and “B types” or their derivatives predominant to an extent which made it quite clear that some fundamental principle was involved in their construction. The earlier houses betray so highly developed a technique of building that we are clearly concerned with the remnants of a far higher cultural state than that which the Tuareg now possess. I say “remnants” advisedly, for since the date of the “A type” dwellings there has been a progressive deterioration in the art of construction. Technically, in Air, what is best is earliest. The first houses of the Tuareg were obviously planned and executed with care. The walls, where still standing, measured about 2 ft. 9 in. to 3 ft. at the base, tapering 9 to 12 in. to the top. The inside faces were perpendicular, all the taper being on the outside, where it is clearly visible in the profiles of the corners. The outsides of the walls were roughly faced with mud stucco; the insides were more carefully plastered to produce a very smooth surface, which in the best houses appears to have been procured with a board; hand marks on the plaster surface seemed rare. The dûm palm rafters of the roofs, door lintels and tops of recesses were carefully placed so that any curve of the wood was upward in order to give as much height as possible. The most noticeable feature in the construction of the “A type” houses was certainly the squareness and accuracy of the corners, which were sharp and cleanly finished. The later houses were less carefully executed and the corners, instead of being square, were rounded both within and without. The walls were less perpendicular and straight, the rectangular planning was sometimes out of true, the stucco-work, while better conserved on the outer walls owing to their more recent date, was manifestly rougher; there was often, nay usually, hardly room to stand upright inside the dwelling.[221]

The constructional material of both types of house was observed to vary very much according to the supplies available on the spot. Small stones up to six inches long set in mud mortar are generally used. The coursing of the stones was carefully levelled, and in the “A type” very regular; a deterioration was seen in the later dwellings. The influence of the Sudanese style of construction is reflected in one or two houses at Tabello, where dried mud cakes have been used instead of stones; but even in these cases the mud cakes have been used like stones, set in mud mortar, levelled and regularly coursed, and contrasting with the more irregular methods of the Southland. Generally speaking the numbers of “A” and “B type” houses in Air built only of mud seemed exceedingly small. In the stone, as in the mud constructions, some re-surfacing every year after the rains must have been inevitable.

The roofs are made of palm fronds, brushwood and mud mortar with a low parapet around the edge, and often with six pinnacles, respectively at the four corners and half-way along the longest sides.

The ruins of the “A type” houses at Tabello and Afasas were nearly always surrounded by other derelict buildings within an enclosure of large stones marking a sort of compound. The enclosures were not formal; they sometimes surrounded the whole house, sometimes only one side. The outhouses in the compound had no particular character: they were storehouses or the dwellings of the slaves. The buildings were as formless as the main houses were formal: they were either one-roomed or many-chambered with or without inter-communicating doors. They rarely adjoined the “A type” buildings, and were invariably more roughly constructed, many more of them being built of mud. In the “B type” settlements one was struck with the greater absence of outhouses and enclosing walls. Where subsidiary dwellings existed there had been a tendency to build them on to the main dwelling. A large number of both “A” and “B” houses in the Ighazar had wooden porches or shelters outside the east door, and were surrounded by a sort of wooden fence or stockade.

Such are the two most characteristic types of house in Air. Other forms of dwellings I will refer to as the “C,” “D” and “E types.” The last-named “E type” can be disposed of immediately, for it is of no particular interest in connection with the Tuareg. [Plate 28] gives the plan of one such a house formerly inhabited by Fugda, chief of T’imia, before the inhabitants moved to the present village and lived in huts. It is characteristic of the Southland both in design and construction, and, like all the recent “E type” houses, was built of mud.

The “D type” is a many-roomed dwelling, apparently occupied by several families. The largest example I saw was at Tabello. The plan is given on [Plate 28.] In this case the construction was of stone and mud, but principally of the former. The technique was very inferior; several periods of construction were observable. The individual dwellings in this group were apparently at least four, consisting of areas numbered in the plan 1 to 7, 8 to 10, 13 to 17, and 20 to 26, respectively. Areas numbered 4, 9, 21, 22 and 24 were courtyards, the entrance to 21 having holes in the wall for wooden bars, and being apparently designed as a cattle-pen. The group had at least one well in area 16, and possibly another one in 12, though the latter might only have been a grain-pit. Another example of the “D type” house situated in the Afassaz valley group is given on [Plate 28.] It lay at the foot of a rock, beneath which there is a permanent water-hole in the sand. A few hundred yards away was a village of “A type” houses. Along the valley in the same vicinity were enclosures of dry stone walls on the tops of the hills bordering the valley. I hazard a conclusion that these “D type” dwellings were used by the inhabitants of the area when the larger settlements were abandoned by the Itesan and Kel Geres in their move westward as a result of raiding from the east.[222] The “D type” dwelling is a semi-fortified work, or at least a defensible building where several families who had remained in a dangerous area might congregate for safety in times of trouble. These dwellings with the hill-top enclosures along the Afassaz valley are the nearest approach to fortifications which I discovered in Air.

The last type of house to be described represents a later development of the “A type.” The “C type” houses retain many of the characteristics of the earlier buildings, and although it is not always easy to date them, their preservation indicates that they are more recent. The rectangular formality of the earlier type survived but the orientation has been lost. The technique in many cases is better than in the “B type”; but the ogive niches are absent and the interior stucco-work was often very rough. The various forms which the plan may take are given in Plates [29] and [30.] Some of the “C type” houses belong to the Itesan period and are descended from the “A type” building, while some of them are certainly late Kel Owi houses. The town of Agejir, north of Towar, from which the plans on [Plate 27] are taken was an Itesan settlement, probably founded when these tribes moved away from the plain east of Bagezan. Here I found only one true “A type” house, but as there must be over 300 ruined houses, I may well have missed many more. The state of the buildings here was very bad owing to the lack of good mud mortar, which has preserved those at Tabello. The better houses at Agejir seemed to fall into two categories: the one a single-roomed structure of about 20 ft. × 10 ft. internal dimensions, having usually two doors in the centre of the longest or east and west sides; the other a two-roomed structure. In the latter, the larger room was about the same size as in the single-roomed dwellings, the smaller room being about 10 ft. × 7 ft.; the common wall was not pierced, which may have been due to the use of inferior building materials. All the other buildings at Agejir were formless quadrangular structures, but the two types described are clearly descended directly from the “A type” house.