Amssakoul n’Ténéré
I am a lone traveller of the desert
Nothing is surprising
I tolerate the wind
I tolerate thirst
And the sun
I know how to walk until dusk
In the flat, empty desert, where nothing is given
Always alert
By the mountains where I was born
Which I have climbed up and down
I know where water hides
These concerns are my companions
Always familiar, the story of my life
by Souéloum Diagho
Poetry relates the Tuaregs’ long history and reflects their soulful ideology. It furrows deep into their society's psyche, charting life in passionate, charming verse, idealising their culture, love, and life in the desert as nomads or 'free' people. Great romantics, Tuareg poets worship their lovers with inexhaustible ardour—the emotional, solitary herdsman often composes poetry in supposed conversation with his camel. Through poetry, the Tuaregs also recount (and remember) their history of war and significant political events. Ballads tell literal stories, relating a particular combat or a defining moment. At celebrations, women sing praises of men's gallantry, beauty and bravery. And at campsites, as the elders talk politics and philosophy into the night, young Tuaregs slip away into the dark for ahals, to flirt and sing poetry. The ahal is the teenage Tuaregs’ night out.
Tuareg poetry has its origins in early Arabic poetry. Traditionally, it is passed down orally. First transcribed after 1905 by the curious missionary, Père Foucauld—who translated it from the Tuaregs’ Tamasheq language into French—poems can be dated to 1820 but many derive ‘from antiquity’. Its structure is highly developed, with specific rhymes and metres according to subject matter, and it also varies according to who the orator, or singer is, and what class they are from. As with all Tuareg vocations, there are families of poets but nobles—the warrior-chiefs—were often acclaimed poets.
Poetry is sung, occassionally with the revered Imzad, the Tuareg 'violin'. The poet is an important part of celebrations such as marriages and baptisms. Yet, brutally removed from their old life since colonialism (as late as 1917 for Tuaregs of Aïr, in what became Niger), Tuareg poetry glorifies and yearns for the past, decrying the intrusions into their desert and their society's upheaval. Since the 1970s and the Tuaregs’ new troubles with the ever-encroaching modern world, poetry relates woes in a new, angst-ridden verse. The most recent poetry, sung to electric guitars, is Tuareg pop music and it is acclaimed globally. Mali's Tinariwen were 2012 Grammy award-winners. Rooted in traditional forms these songs are equally influenced by Western icons such as, for Niger's star, Bombino, Jimi Hendrix or Dire Straits.
From the sea-shores to the desert : Origins of the Kel Tamasheq
Much about the Tuaregs, or Kel Tamasheq—the people who speak Tamasheq—is a mystery, or seemingly contradictory. Where exactly they are from is still debated; their writing is a system of codes; their language is full of metaphor—indirect, and couched in symbolism; and the notion of trust is widely mistrusted. They call themselves ‘free people’ but the class structure that orders their society is as rigid as the harsh granite landscapes that some of them inhabit. The Tuareg are Muslim but their society is matrilineal, and it's the men who are veiled. Women are not required to wear a veil. Tuareg men like to see their women’s beauty, and Tuareg women are very beautiful.
Many Tuaregs have ancestors with roots all along Mediterranean shores. Evidence of an original territory comes from rock-carvings in Dougga in Tunisia, which show the earliest known writings of the Tuareg's hieroglyphic script, which is called Tifinagh. The region was formerly called Targa. Karl-G.Prasse was an authority who named Targa as a precise area of Tuareg origin, and from where the name ‘Tuareg’ derives.
Tifinagh letters have a Phoenician character. This could place some Tuareg ancestors further east—in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Some Tuareg perhaps descend from the Garamantes, fierce defenders of their territories during the Roman invasions of Africa, and in which regions (now in Libya), the Kel Ajjer, or ‘the people’ of Ajjer, live. According to myth, the noble Kel Ghela of the Kel Ahaggar, of south-eastern Algeria, descend from Tin-Hinan, the Tuareg's 4th century queen. Her tomb at Abalessa in southern Algeria was excavated in the 1920s. A servile class called the Dag Ghali, and also part of the Kel Ahaggar clan, descend from Takama, Tin-Hinan's servant-companion. However, as Paul Pandolphi, a specialist in Tuareg history and culture says ‘there remain numerous versions of this historical myth’. Some say that some Tuareg were originally Jewish, hence the conundrum of blue-eyed Tuaregs—or perhaps this is a genetic throwback from more ancient Caucasian roots? Francis Rodd, the eminent author of People of the Veil (1926), even hypothesises on possible Viking links for the Tuaregs.
Now, Tuaregs traditionally live deep in the Sahara. The major six or seven mostly Kel groups are clans similar to the idea of Scottish clans. Each clan, or confederation, may have hundreds of smaller Kel or other groups—the Kel name may also relate to the region they live in, or indeed, historically lived in. It can be confusing that the Kel Ferwan, the people of Iferouane, for instance, no longer live anywhere near Iferouane. A confederation is a political unity or tobol, taken from the name for a drum. The confederations are therefore ‘drum’ groups and the drum is the property of the Amenokhal, a king to whom each smaller group traditionally paid taxes or levies for protection. The drum is used to gather people for political meetings.
Descending from all the different areas—or peoples—and (which is easy to forget), with confederations living hundreds if not thousands of miles apart, the key to understanding complex inter-Tuareg politics—politics being at the root of much about Tuaregs and their social unity or, more often, disunity—is to understand that the drum groups were never united. Foreigners who know little about the Tuaregs often assume otherwise. Tuaregs inter-marry but traditionally, they would have found themselves fighting relatives in one of the frequent raids or razzais that Tuaregs perpetually pursed for economic survival. But the groups always had different political motives: any alliance might last for a very short period.
With the drum groups located in often vastly different physical terrains, specific ways of economic or daily life are different in most Tuareg regions. Tuaregs who live in the Sahel are semi-nomadic pastoralists with camels. Others, such as the Dag Ghali of Ahaggar, who live in brutal rocky terrains, mostly have goats because camels could not survive in their region (there is not enough pasture).
The establishment of the new countries of Algeria, Libya, Mali and Niger created many problems for most groups. The Dag Ghali, for instance, used to keep their camels in Tamesna in northern Niger. New state boundaries separated historical territories such that usual movements was no longer possible. Drum groups were politically distinct but they would intermingle at times (if not at a time of war), with regard to pasture for the livestock, as occasionally for marriage too. Culturally, they were all Tuaregs.
Pastureland dictates the nomads’ movements, not the presence of wells or water. And people follow the camels, or goats when re-locating: the livestock searches for pasture, not their herders. Water can be found more easily than pasture even when it is not visible—holes can be dug. Of course water cannot be easily found in the scorching, barren deserts or dunes, but the Tuaregs don't live in the dunes or barren desert. Some live near oeuds, dried up riverbeds. These large valleys even flood during the sometimes torrential downpours. One should never camp in a oeud…it is not uncommon to hear stories of people being swept away in the middle of the night. Or Tuaregs live by or in mountains where there are gueltas or sometimes, ponds. Some live in small villages with abundant gardens with irrigation systems. Gardeners are sedentary. Warriors or nobles look down on them for this but the whole society depends on them. There are also beautiful oases with long valleys of date palm trees that look up to a hundred feet tall.
As in any culture, mysterious myths explain the unknown. Rock-carvings of alien-like people, tifinagh writing, and animals that lived in the Sahara when it was a lush, forested landscape are strewn throughout the desert. For the Tuareg, the alien-like people are the ‘people from before’. Indeed, no-one knows who these figures represent—they are uncannily like the supposed visitors to Roswell in New Mexico in 1947. The most significant mythical hero is Aligurran, the creator of Tifinagh and poetry. Poetry, sometimes sung to the sounds of the revered imzad (best described as a one-stringed violin), is the most treasured performing art.
The Tuareg use the cross symbol widely. On their shields, and as highly worked silver crosses which are made by the blacksmiths, who have their own caste. The blacksmiths made the heavy swords and lances and were slightly feared as mystics because they worked with fire. The Agadez cross and its now 21 variants, worn around the neck, are powerful emblems of heritage and relationships for Tuaregs of northern Niger. As an oral culture, symbols take on great meaning. The crosses’ variants are named after the different regions of Aïr and are given by men to women as tokens of love, or from fathers to sons as protective charms. The 22nd variant was made in the late 1990s in memory of Mano Dayak, the unique rebel leader of the Tuaregs of Niger's first rebellion. Dayak was unique for being able to unite many different Tuareg groups.
The cross symbol could have Christian origins or come from the Southern Cross. The Tuareg import whatever pleases or is useful to them into their culture—besides warriors they are also traders. The oldest swords came from Spain. All swords, or takuba, are similar to the swords of the Crusaders. Tuareg merchants travel in every direction across the deserts. These days, they also travel widely in Europe. In 1818, Captain Lyon drew what is believed to be the first representation of a Tuareg man in Libya: the man was from Agadez. Goods come to the Tuareg from far and wide. In the 1850s, Heinrich Barth found cloth from Manchester in the markets of Timbuktu. The key item in the Tuareg wardrobe comes from Nigeria: rich indigo cloth for cheches or head-dresses for special occasions.
The origin of the Tuaregs’ veil, for which Tuaregs are infamous, is also a mystery. Whether to keep bad spirits from entering orifices, or merely as a protection from the dust of desert winds, the veil has become a fundamental distinction of what it is to be a Tuareg man. It is worn the whole time. Even today it is rare to be with any man who is unveiled even, sometimes, if he is family. The veil is most respectfully worn high above the nose—in front of a mother-in-law or a prominent elder for instance—but it will be raised or lowered according to the status of the people a man is with. If among equals it will be loosened and lowered, but the moment a man of a higher status appears, or a stranger, or a woman, all men will hurriedly whip the veil up above the nose. The most senior man of the group, however, doesn't need to wear the veil at all, if amongst men. As Rodd said, you are as likely to see a gentleman walking down Bond Street with no trousers on as to see a Tuareg man without a veil. Times have changed now but it the most important distinction of being Tuareg for men.
Agadez, at the centre of Central Sahara, is an ancient trading crossroads. Along with Timbuktu, it is on the oldest maps of the Sahara. Although inhabited by people of many African groups, it was always controlled by Tuaregs, who lived in the desert. Its decorative architecture is Sudanese. It is otherwise notable for its mosque, and its 15thcentury Sultanate. Popular history tells how the constantly warring Tuareg realised they needed an overlord as a referee for their disputes, or a judge to help resolve contentious issues. As Constantinople was the most powerful city of the Muslim world, they sent an envoy to the Sultan in Constantinople to ask him for a candidate. The Sultan of Constantinople sent a son of one of his concubines. The current Sultan of Agadez is the direct descendant of this man. Importantly, the Sultan is not Tuareg, and he may never marry a Tuareg woman. He must be impartial to all Tuareg groups