PLATE 32
MOSQUES.
The etymology given by the Arabs to the word “tarki” or “tawarek,” even if not strictly accurate, indicates that the People of the Veil adopted the Faith of Islam long after the other inhabitants of North Africa. When they did so, they appear to have been lukewarm converts and to have retained many practices which the Prophet directed good Moslems to abhor. At Ghat, which was ever under their influence and where numbers of them have always lived, the tradition of their recent conversion may be found in the two parts of the town, known as the Quarter of Yes and the Quarter of No, from the people who accepted or refused Islam. At so late a period as when the Kel Owi arrived at the end of the seventeenth century A.D. the Kel Ferwan whom they drove out of the Iferuan valley in Northern Air were still “heathen,” though we are not told what their religion was. A very early date for the mosques of Air is therefore inherently improbable even if the Kel Geres did found Tefis as the first permanent place of worship for the new Faith. Assuming that the Kel Geres came to Air in the eleventh or twelfth century, the foundation of T’intaghoda mosque some 400 years later is not improbable; and it is not wholly impossible to reconcile such a date with the implications involved in the story of the gift of the mosque of Agades to the second Sultan of Air, who, we believe, reigned half-way through the fifteenth century. I prefer to consider that the mosques as a whole are not very old. Their style of construction demonstrates them to be more recent than the “A type” houses, though admittedly this view might have to be altered in the event of excavations providing additional or contradictory evidence.
Apart from the numerous places of prayer marked by a “Qibla” of a few stones laid on the surface of the ground or by a quadrilateral enclosure of small stones, I only came across one site which might have been a pre-Moslem place of worship adapted to the later Faith. In the upper part of the River of Agades, on the south shore below the cliffs, at the entrance of the gulf where the Akaraq valley joins it, there is a square enclosure marked by what looks like the remains of a wall of which only the foundations on the ground level survive. The walls may never at any time have been more than a few inches high; what remains is of stones set in mud cement. At each of the four corners of the square there was a large stone. The four sides, each of some 15 ft. long, were true and square and oriented on the cardinal points. The enclosure was obviously not that of a hut, nor like the ground-plan of any of the houses in Air. In the centre of the eastern side at a later period two standing stones had been set up. The stones were fossil trees, some other fragments of which were lying loose on the top of the neighbouring cliff. They had obviously been brought by human agency, as curious or interesting stones, from another place at no very remote period.[226] The two standing stones were about 2 ft. 6 in. apart. They were intended to mark the east, but were quite clearly later additions to the place, for they were merely standing, and not built into, the foundation of the enclosure. They were not even symmetrical or exactly in the centre of the side. The enclosure may, I think, be regarded as a pre-Moslem place of worship and not merely as a dwelling-house, because the “Qibla” pillars of an Islamic place of prayer could as readily have been set up elsewhere, had there not been a deliberate design to convert a site from one religious use to another. Its form does not resemble that of any of the usual buildings of Air. In the vicinity was a group of graves, some of which were circular enclosures, while others, obviously more recent in date, were oblong and correctly oriented from the Moslem point of view.
The graves and tombs of Air might well form the object of interesting archæological excavation. Many of them display an indubitably non-Moslem appearance. The most common type which continues throughout the period of Tuareg occupation in one form or another is a ring of stones set on edge around a raised area covered with small white pebbles. The grave is too low to be termed a tumulus or mound, it is convex or shaped like an inverted saucer, but the centre rises only a few inches above the surrounding ground. The ring of stones may be roughly circular, oval or elliptical. In the Moslem period the graves are definitely oblong, the major axis being directed north and south, in order that the body may be placed in the grave with the head turned towards the east. The older graves were the round, or elliptical enclosures, the latter with no fixed orientation; the earlier they are the more nearly circular they seem to be. This is especially noticeable in the case of the graves near, and probably contemporary with, the “A type” houses at Tabello. A large central circular grave is often surrounded by smaller oval ones lying in any direction, clustering about a more important burial.
The later Moslem graves are smaller, but the practice of covering the surface with white pebbles or chips of quartz continues. The shape becomes narrower, less circular and more inclined to turn into a rectangle. The appearance of head-stones or head and feet stones, which the Arabs call “The Witnesses,” coincides with correct Moslem orientation, but even in modern times it is rare to find any inscription. The few I saw were rough scratchings in Arabic script and sometimes, in T’ifinagh, of some simple name like “Muhammad” or “Ahmed.” I only saw one instance, at Afis, of an inscription of any length; it recorded the interment of a notable sheikh, and was scored with a pointed tool on a potsherd. Neither in the houses nor in the graves of Air is there any evidence of the Tuareg having attempted to cut stone. Even the petroglyphs are hammered and scratched but not chiselled.
A great deal has been written about the funerary monuments of North Africa known as the “argem.”[227] They are found in many parts of the Northern Sahara, in the Ahnet mountains and the Adghar n’Ifoghas, and in the Nigerian Sudan, but not in Tuat. They have been reported in the Azger Tassili, at In Azawa on the north road from Air and at several points in Air. Bates reports them in the Gulf of Bomba and in the Nubian cemeteries of Upper Egypt.[228]
They are enclosures of piled stones varying in shape from round to square, but generally the former; or they take the form of tumuli containing a cist or tomb. In certain cases the graves are described as surrounded by concentric circles of stones. The distribution of these “argem” recalls immediately the geographical situation of the Tuareg. It would be easy to assume that their existence was due to this people, were it not for the difficulty that the monuments all appear quite late in date. To quote Gautier[229]: “En résumé la question des monuments rupestres du Sahara, funéraires et religieux, semble élucidée, au moins dans ses grandes lignes. Le problème d’ailleurs, tel qu’il se pose actuellement, et sous réserve de découvertes ultérieures, est remarquablement simple. En autres pays, en particulier dans les provinces voisines d’Algérie et du Soudan, le passé préhistorique se présente sous des aspects multiples. En Algérie les redjems abondent, mais on trouve à côté d’eux des dolmens, quelques sépultures sous roche, pour rien dire des Puniques et Romaines. Au Soudan, comme on peut s’y attendre, en un pays où tant de races sont juxtaposées, le livre de M. Desplagnes énumère des tombeaux de types divers et multiples, poterie, grottes sépulcrales, cases funéraires, tumulus.[230] Rien de pareil au Sahara. On distingue bien des types différents de redjem, les caveaux sous tumulus du nord qui sont peut-être influencés par les dolmens et sépultures romaines, les redjems à soutaches du Tassili des Azguers, les chouchets du Hogar qui semblent nous raconter l’itinéraire et l’expansion des nobles Touaregs actuels. . . . Parmi tant de pierres sahariennes entassées ou agencées par l’homme, on n’en connaît pas une seule qu’on peut soupçonner de l’avoir été par une autre main que Berbère.” But here the difficulty appears, for “ceci nous conduirait à conclure que les Berbères ont habité le Sahara dans toute l’étendue du passé historique et préhistorique si d’autre part tous ces redjems ne paraissaient récents. . . . Les mobiliers funéraires contiennent du fer, et on n’en connaît pas un seul qui soit purement et authentiquement néolithique. Cette énorme lacune est naturellement de nature à nous inspirer la plus grande prudence dans nos conclusions. D’autant plus que, après tout, les monuments similaires algériens, dans l’état actuel de nos connaissances, ne paraissent pas plus anciens.”