The Sheikh of gigantic stature[11].
Hateetah Ben Khouden, the "friend" of the English.
I found the strongest demonstrations of rivalry, and the bitterest feelings of faction, in the conduct of these several princes of The Desert, who are the personages of influence and authority amongst the Ghat Touaricks. In the monarchical class the Governor of the town is allied to the Sultan by marriage, though Khanouhen has no family by the Governor's sister. Shafou, the venerable Sultan, is of such gentle unassuming manners that he exercises no political influence over the wild sons of The Desert. Khanouhen embodies the Sultan, and is the man of eloquence, of action, and intrepidity in the national councils. He is feared by all (Jabour, perhaps, excepted), but, nevertheless, is not tyrannical in his administration of affairs. Jabour, the Marabout, is a wise, upright, and amiable prince. His influence extends beyond the Ghat Touaricks. Jabour told me himself, he had several people subject to his authority, extending as far as Timbuctoo. To these, the Prince promised to commit me in case I determined to make a journey to Timbuctoo. Like Khanouhen, Jabour has two wives; one resides in Ghat, where the Sheikh has a town-house, and the other in the country districts. He has, besides, four or five sons. I saw one of them, who was as much of an aristocrat as his father. The merchants assured me that Jabour's influence, more especially as he is a marabout, although he is no demagogue priest of the Higgins' calibre, is unbounded. "With a slave of Jabour," they declared, "you may go to Timbuctoo, and all parts of Sahara." The Sheikh himself does not visit the neighbouring countries. This is not the custom of the Touaricks, the people being opposed to the Sheikhs leaving their districts; but they send their slaves or relations continually about. Berka, the head of the democratic faction, is too old to exercise power, he has only strength enough to get about. The aged Prince paid me two visits, and was as gentle as gentleness could be. His family contains some powerful and intrepid chiefs, amongst the rest the Giant, the Goliath of the Ghat Touaricks. But, speaking of giants, Bassa, Sultan of the Haghar Touaricks, is the real Giant of The Desert. Some of the people report this Giant Desert Prince to have six fingers on each hand, and to be several heads taller than he of Ghat. His spear, they describe, in the true spirit of the marvellous, to be, "higher than the tallest palm." I may help their imagination, "And the staff of his spear is like a weaver's beam, and his spear's head weighs six hundred shekels of iron," or is like—
"The mast Of some great admiral."
Were I to adopt our present fanciful theories of accounting for the origin and migration of nations, I should here have a fine field before me, and the Touarghee giants of The Sahara would become, by the transmuting fancy of our antiquarian theologians, the veritable Philistines of Gath and Ekron. For many of the Berber tribes, amongst whom the Touaricks are classed, especially the Shelouh of Morocco, relate traditionally that their fathers came from the land of the Philistines, and that they themselves are Philistines. What then is easier than to find in the name of Ghat the Gath of the Philistines? But unfortunately, Azgher is the Touarick name of themselves and their country. Still the name of Ghat must have its origin. As before noticed, the original signification of the term Ghat has been traced to mean "Sun" or "God," in the ancient Libyo-Egyptian language. I am not competent to give an opinion on the subject. One of the Latin writers makes the aboriginal people of North Africa to have been Medes. The probability is they were Syrians of some class. From the coast they would naturally pass or migrate to The Sahara.
Hateetah is an extremely pacific man in his conduct, and greatly liked for his peace-making disposition; but he is only a second-rate Sheikh, and has no political influence over Touarick affairs, beyond what the chief of his family enjoys. He has several brothers and cousins, all esteemed Sheikhs, but with little or no power.
The government of the Touaricks is an assemblage of Chieftains, the people supporting their respective leaders, the heads of their clans in the feudal style, and all these controlled by a Sultan or Sheikh-Kebir. The number of Sheikhs, when the lesser, or second and third-rate, Sheikhs are included, is very considerable, and makes the country, as the Governor says, "a country of Sheikhs." In their various districts, each greater Sheikh exercises a sovereign, if not independent authority. In any national emergency, they all willingly unite for the common defence and protection, as now, when they are collecting their forces, in a common effort to extirpate the Shanbâh banditti. The people, however, enjoy complete liberty. The Touaricks, though a nation of chiefs and princes, are in every sense and view a nation of freemen, and have none of those odious and effeminate vices which so darkly stain the Mahometans of the North Coast, or the Negro countries of Negroland. Every man is a tower of strength for himself, and his desert hut or tent, situate in vast solitudes, is his own inviolable home of freedom!
According to Haj Ahmed, the Touaricks of Ghat muster fifteen thousand warriors. Let them be ten thousand, this would give an entire population, including women, old men, and children, and slaves of both sexes, of about sixty thousand souls. These Touaricks possess a good number of slaves, but of the male sex to look after their camels. Every able-bodied Touarick is a warrior, and is equipped with a dagger, suspended under the left arm by a broad leather ring attached to the scabbard, and going round the wrist, and a Touarick of adult age is never seen without this dangerous weapon; a straight broad-sword is slung on his back, and he carries a spear or lance in his right hand. Most of the spears have wooden shafts, but others are all metal, and mostly iron. Some are of fine and elegant workmanship, inlaid with brass, and of the value of a good maharee, or thirty dollars. They have staves also, which they use as walking-sticks, or weapons of war, as it may be[12]. These are their weapons of warfare. The matchlock they despise. "What can the enemy do with the gun against the sword?" the Targhee warriors ask contemptuously. They, indeed, use the sword, their grand weapon, as the English soldier the bayonet. Their superior tactic is to surprise the enemy, especially in the night, when the Genii help them, and hack him to pieces. The spear is used mostly to wound and disable the camel. Their manner of disposing of the booty, is characteristic. "What are we to do with these women and children?" they asked me, "when we have exterminated the Shânbah men." Without waiting for a reply they said:—"Oh, we'll send them to the Turks and sell them." They have the example of the Turks themselves, who, on the destruction of the Arab men in the mountains, collected the women and children together, and sent the best of them to Constantinople to be sold, in defiance of the express law of the Koran.
The maharee cannot be overlooked; this remarkable camel, which is like the greyhound amongst dogs for swiftness and agility, and even shape, they train for war and riding like the horse. They do not rear the ordinary variety of camel found in North Africa and on the Coast. مَه٘رِي or مَه٘رِ, are the two manners in which I have seen the Moorish talebs write this word in Arabic. An Arab philologist says, the term Maharee is derived from the name of the Arabian province of Mahra, on the south-east coast, adjoining Oman, whence this fine species of camel is supposed originally to have been brought into The Desert. The Touaricks, of course, have very curious legends about their peculiar camel. We have, however, the Arabic مهر, "to be diligent," "acute-minded," and the term مهاراة, "flying away," from which مهري may probably be derived. At least there is no apparent objection to such derivation. The Hebrew cognate dialect has the word also. מהר signifies "to hasten," "to be quick;" but I cannot assert positively it has any relation with this derivation. In the books written on Western Barbary, we find the terms heirée and erragnol to denote the "fleet" or "swift-footed camel," the former of which is apparently a corruption of mahry or maharee. It is said that camels are called by names derived from the Arabic numerals, as tesaee, "ten," (تسعي), and sebaee, "seven," (سبعي) according as they perform a journey of ten days, or seven days, in one; but I never heard of this distinction in any part of The Desert. It is pretended that the mahry cannot live on the Coast of Africa on account of the cold. This has not been sufficiently tried, for Haj Ibrahim kept one at Tripoli, which thrived very well, and was in good condition. It is, however, a very chilly animal, and seems to feel the cold as much as the Touarghee himself. In its healthy state it is full of fire and energy, and always assumes the mastery over the camels of the Coast, biting them, and trying to prevent them from eating with it in circle like other camels. Mounted on his mahry, dressed out fantastically in various and many-coloured harness, (the small saddle being fixed on the withers, and the rider's legs on the neck of the animal,) with his sword slung on his back, dagger under the left arm, and lance in the right hand, the Touarghee warrior sallies forth to war, daring everything, and fearing nothing but God and the Demons. In the year '44 they made an inroad upon the sandy wastes of the Shânbah bandits; days and months they pursued the brigand tribe over the trackless regions of sand; and during this expedition they neither tasted food, nor drank a drop of water, for seven days!—still keeping up a running fight, pursuing and butchering the Shânbah, who all disappeared at last, concealed under heaps of sand. This statement, which shows the extraordinary power of endurance—the moral and physical temperance in the Touaricks, I had from the Governor of Ghat himself, and which coming from him deserves credit. But the Touaricks do not eat every day though they may have food in the house. They eat generally every other day. And this amply suffices them when merely reclining in their tents, or lounging in the Souk. Habit is everything; we might all live on one meal a day if we could accustom ourselves to it. The people pretend that, though the Shânbah can count the grains of their desert region of sand, and know every form of the sand-mountains as well by night as by day, the Touaricks had nevertheless the advantage over them, pursuing them better by night than by day, because the Genii were their guides; and many Shânbah, who had hid themselves under the sand, were unburied by the Genii, and slain by the Touaricks.
I have given a case of Touarghee justice. During the Ghat Souk, all the Sheikhs assemble in the great square, the Shelly, for the arrangement of disputes; but it is mere form, and is more for gossiping and quizzing one another, the Touarick being fond of a good joke. The principal Sheikh present mounts a stone-bench, and sits down in a reclining posture, striking his spear into the ground, which stands erect before him, as if awaiting his orders. The very first thing a Touarghee does when he stops and sits down, is to strike his spear into the ground or sand. When my friend Ouweek was napping near me at the well of Tadoghseen, his spear was struck into the sand close by his head. So it is said, "And, behold, Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster." (1 Samuel, chap. xxvi. ver 7.) The Sheikh of highest rank now seated, the Sheikhs next in dignity take their seats around him, at a short distance off, in the form of a semicircle, these generally squatting on the ground. Sometimes the principal Sheikh himself squats on the ground. The cases of dispute are then brought forward, if any. The infliction of punishment is by fines. There is nothing in the shape of a prison,—this delectable institution being the work and discovery of civilization. Our Irishman might indeed, without a bull, with his back to The Desert, and his face to the civilized communities of the Coast, exclaim, on sight of the first prison and gibbet, "Thank God, I am out of the land of Barbarians, and have reached the land of Civilization!" Of fines, I heard of no other case than that of the Sultan fining two strangers a couple of dollars, whilst resident in Ghat.
