Tribes of the Sahara [Reprint 2013 ed.] 9780674731424, 9780674731417

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TRIBES of the

SAHARA

Ahaggar T u a r e g Camel Corps soldier

TRIBES of the

SAHARA Lloyd Cabot Briggs

HARVARD UNIVERSITY i 9 6 0

PRESS -

CAMBRIDGE

© i960 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Ford Foundation

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-7988

Printed in the United States of America

TO CARLTON

S.

COON

P

R

E

F

A

C

E

T H E R E H A S BEEN more pure balderdash written and repeated about the tribes of the Sahara than about almost any other peoples in the world. Only three years ago, for instance, I heard a well-known lecturer declare to an unsuspecting audience of honest New England farmers that the warlike nomadic Tuareg are probably descended from a little band of crusaders, who got cut off, centuries ago, in the rock-walled valley of Petra (now in the Kingdom of J o r d a n ) , whence they finally escaped and found their way—heavens knows how—across Egypt and Libya to the very heart of the Sahara. And then he added that T u a r e g men are about seven feet tall—although he was speaking in a church—whereas the tallest one whose measurements have been recorded stood not quite six feet six inches in his sandal-feet and his fellow countrymen average only about five feet eight, shorter indeed than the average American. But, because the desert wastes of the Sahara have always been off the beaten track of tourist trade, and because travel there has always been not only expensive and difficult but dangerous as well, it is relatively safe for professional purveyors of mysterious romance to introduce into the Saharan scene pleasing rainbows of illusion at the ends of which they are sure to find pots filled enthusiastically by dazzled audiences with gold. For who among those audiences would ever stumble on the truth? And who would want t o ? A fairy-tale is such a delightfully cheap and satisfying form of entertainment. T h e sober truth about the Sahara, however, is more mysterious than anything that has ever been written about it, even by the most irresponsible spinner of fairy-

vii

PREFACE t a l e s ; f o r the fact is that very little is yet known about the peoples who live there. T h e following study is the result of twelve y e a r s of field and library work, including a number of trips into the western S a h a r a as f a r south as the " T o m b of T i n H i n a n " near A b a l e s s a . T h e library w o r k w a s easy enough, though laborious, since many of the basic publications are now extremely r a r e and correspondingly difficult to find, but work in the field w a s quite another m a t t e r . In this connection I must first acknowledge my g r e a t debt to M r . M a u r i c e R e y g a s s e , f o r m e r l y D i r e c t o r of the B a r d o M u seum of A l g i e r s and District C o m m i s s i o n e r of T e b e s s a , who g a v e me the benefit of his inexhaustible f u n d of miscellaneous i n f o r m a t i o n g a t h e r e d in the course of extensive travels in the S a h a r a in y e a r s gone by. In many long and pleasant evenings together he drew f o r me pictures of the desert and its inhabitants so clear and vivid that I w a s reasonably f a m i l i a r with m a n y p a r t s of the a r e a b e f o r e ever I set f o o t in them. I have enjoyed also the invaluable official support and personal encouragement of M r . M a u r i c e C a s s e t a n d G e n e r a l P a u l P a s s a g e r , respectively Inspector G e n e r a l and f o r m e r Chief of the Public H e a l t h Service of the Southern T e r r i t o r i e s o f A l g e r i a . T h r o u g h them every available facility w a s placed at my disposal, o f t e n b e f o r e I even h a d time to ask f o r it. Benevolent expert consultants h a v e p e r f o r m e d f o r me other onerous and delicate t a s k s of a kind that all too o f t e n g o without a p p r o p r i a t e recognition. P r o f e s s o r s C a r l e t o n S. C o o n of the U n i v e r s i t y of Pennsylvania and W i l l i a m W . H o w e l l s , D o u g l a s L . Oliver, H a l l a m L . M o v i u s , J r . of H a r v a r d U n i v e r s i t y and T h e o d o r e M o n o d of D a k a r , M r . E . W . Bovili, f o r m e r l y o f northern N i g e r i a , and D r . R a y m o n d Cabannes, who g r e w up in the S a h a r a , reviewed those sections dealing with their v a r i o u s specialties. E a c h of these kind friends and distinguished colleagues has h a d a hand in m a k i n g this a better b o o k than it could ever have been without their helpful comments. So many local military and civilian officials and p r i v a t e individuals, as well as p r o f e s s i o n a l colleagues, h a v e helped me a t various times and places and in so many ways, that it is a practical v i ii

PREFACE

impossibility for me to list them all, while to try to single out some for special mention would only put me in the position of seeming to discriminate where no discrimination is intended. And so I will simply take this opportunity to thank them most warmly, one and all. Lastly I want to express my sincere gratitude to those modest and devoted toilers in the shadows, Miss M a r g a r e t Currier, Miss Yvonne Oddon, and M r . M a r c e l Koelbert, Librarians respectively of the Peabody Museum, the Musée de l'Homme of Paris, and the University of Algiers; they all found basic source material for me that I would have been hard put to it to lay my hands on otherwise. L . Cabot Briggs

ix

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1

LANDSCAPE

Xvii

AND

NATURAL

RESOURCES

I

2

THE

BACKGROUND

3

THE

SEDENTARY

4

HUNTERS, NOMADS

FOOD

OF

THE

PAST

POPULATIONS GATHERERS,

GENERALLY

34 63

AND I06

5

THE

TUAREG

I24

6

THE

TEDA

167

7

ARAB

8

THE

9

HEALTH

IO

NOMADS

I90

MOORS

211

AND

RETROSPECT

DISEASE AND

PROPHECY

237 262

GLOSSARY

273

BIBLIOGRAPHY

277

INDEX

287

ILLUSTRATIONS Frontispiece

A h a g g a r T u a r e g Camel Corps soldier

(photograph by A. J . Weber)

Plates, following

page

106

1 . Landscape of the extreme northern Sahara—near Laghouat (photograph by A. J . Weber)

2. T h e Great Eastern E r g — n e a r E l Oued (photograph courtesy of O F A L A C , Algiers)

3. Landscape of the extreme southern Sahara—near In Guezzam (photograph by A. J . Weber)

4. Landscape of Hadjadj

the western central Sahara—near

Aïn-el-

(photograph by A. J . Weber)

5. T h e Oued M z a b , normal and in flood (photographs by A. J . Weber)

6. A typical Saharan pulley well (photograph by A. J . Weber)

7· F o g g a r a s near Ouargla

(photograph courtesy of O F A L A C , Algiers)

8. Waterhole in the A h a g g a r (photograph by A. J . Weber)

9. A T e d a village in the Tibesti (photograph by Lecoeur, courtesy of the Musée de l'Homme)

1 0 . Bey-ag-Akhamouk, heir apparent (and now paramount chief) of the A h a g g a r T u a r e g , with one of the last horses of the central Sahara (photograph by Dr. H. Foley, courtesy of the Musée de l'Homme)

1 1 . B a g g a g e camels in the market place at Ghardaia (photograph by L. C. Briggs)

xiii

ILLUSTRATIONS 1 2 . Sheep and goats in the market place at G h a r d a i a (photograph by L. C. Briggs)

1 3 . T e n t of a poor Chaamba nomad f a m i l y of O u a r g l a (women's quarters on right) (photograph by L. C. Briggs)

1 4 . A noble woman of the A h a g g a r T u a r e g ( K e l R e l a T r i b e ) (photograph by A . J . Weber)

1 5 . Y o u n g T u a r e g nobles of the A h a g g a r , come into town f o r a spree (photograph by P. Ichac, courtesy of the Musée de l'Homme)

1 6 . T u a r e g of the A h a g g a r — C a m e l Corps soldiers (photograph by A . J . Weber)

1 7 . T h e A j j e r Camel Corps Company on parade (photograph by A . J . Weber)

1 8 . G h a r d a i a , a town of the M z a b (in 1 9 5 8 ) (photograph by L. C. Briggs)

i o . T h e main square of M e d i l i (in 1 9 5 1 ) (photograph by L. C. Briggs)

20. A street in G h a r d a i a (photograph by L . C. Briggs)

2 1 . Y a h i a Ballalou, Ghardaia

Paramount

Chief

of

the

Mzabites

of

(photograph by L. C. Briggs)

2 2 . W a n d e r i n g entertainers of the northwestern central Sahara (at O u a r g l a ) (photograph by A . J . Weber)

2 3 . H a r a t i n woman of T a m a n r a s s e t (photograph by A . J . Weber)

24. A typical camp site and tent of the A h a g g a r T u a r e g (photograph by Chasseloup-Laubat, courtesy of the Musée de l'Homme)

2 5 . A zeriba (grass hut) of the A j j e r T u a r e g (photograph by the Reygasse-Rigal expedition, courtesy of the Musée de l'Homme)

26. A woman of a smith family of T a m a n r a s s e t (photograph by L . C. Briggs)

xi V

ILLUSTRATIONS 27. A Jewish girl (photograph by d'Armagnac, courtesy of the Musée de l'Homme)

28. A C h a a m b a n o m a d of M e d i l i (photograph by L. C. Briggs)

29. A M o o r i s h C a m e l C o r p s soldier (photograph by A . J. Weber)

30. M o h a m m e d B o u a l , a M z a b i t e s h o p k e e p e r (photograph by L. C. Briggs)

3 1 . A M z a b i t e w o m a n of G h a r d a i a (photograph by d'Armagnac, courtesy of the Musée de l'Homme)

32. O n the trail (photograph by the Reygasse-Rigal

expedition, courtesy

of the

Musée

de

l'Homme)

33. In camp. A mounted A h a g g a r T a r g u i beside his tent, w i t h the author's w i f e , T u a r e g relatives, and a C a m e l C o r p s soldier and officer (photograph by L. C. B r i g g s )

Illustrations

in text

Map

ι . N o r t h A f r i c a and the S a h a r a D e s e r t

5

Map

2. R e g i o n a l names and r a i n f a l l in the S a h a r a

6

Map

3. T h e a p p r o x i m a t e distribution of linguistic stocks in the S a h a r a

Figure

ι . C r o s s section of a f o g g a r a

10

F i g u r e 2. P l a n of a S a h a r a n house F i g u r e 3. D i a g r a m

of

a l e a t h e r tent of

Tuareg

65

77 the

Ahaggar 144

F i g u r e 4. D i a g r a m of a T e d a n o m a d hut

182

F i g u r e 5. D i a g r a m of a C h a a m b a tent

205

XV

INTRODUCTION THE GEOGRAPHICAL A R E A covered in this book is the desert which lies between the western frontier of Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean, and between the northern and southern limits shown in M a p 2. Its eastern half is bounded on the north by the more or less hilly and broken coastal strip where classical and modern European cultures have found lodgment, while its western half extends northward only to the fringe of steppe and piedmont country that forms the southern rim of the Atlas mountain complex. Most modern geographers take as the boundary on the south the line which marks the northernmost extension of a prickly weed commonly known as cram-cram or initi, and the southern limit of had, a scrubby thorn bush. The Sàhara as thus defined is still by f a r the biggest desert in the world, stretching some 2,500 miles from east to west along the Tropic of Cancer and varying in breadth between 800 and 1,200 miles from north to south. It has an area of roughly 3,000,000 square miles or a little more, and a native population of probably not quite 2,500,000. It is over twice as big as all of Europe west of the Russian border, including Great Britain and Denmark, an area that has a population of over 385,000,000 altogether. The continental United States is a little smaller than the Sahara but already had a population that numbered 175,000,000 when these words were written and was increasing at the rate of over 2,500,000 a year. Unfortunately the literature on the tribes of the Sahara is a sorry mess at best. First there is a great body of hearsay information, mixed with mythology, gossip, and wild speculation, and retailed by the geographers and historians of the classical and xvii

INTRODUCTION

neoclassical schools f r o m the days of H e r o d o t u s down to the eighteenth century. During the Middle Ages A r a b historians, geographers, and travelers gave a good deal of attention to the area, but much of the material they collected was hearsay too, and most of it was confined to peoples who were or were thought to be either early emigrant offshoots of ancient peoples of the N e a r E a s t or remnants of the great invading A r a b hordes of Islam. W h a t little the early Moslem authors have to say about peoples who were really strange to them is so incomplete, conflicting, and sometimes simply incredible, that one can learn very little of much use f r o m it, however interesting and often fascinating it may be. In addition Arabs are inclined to look on history as a record of families and tribes, moving freely through time and space alike, whereas we are accustomed to think of it as a record of nations, with their rulers and dynasties or political systems succeeding each other in time but always within a fixed f r a m e of geographical reference. T h e A r a b approach to history is a normal functional byproduct of the basically nomadic tribal culture in which it was developed, while ours, inherited f r o m the urban Greeks and Romans, is a culture trait of ancient city states and, in broad terms, of the basically urban cultures of Europe and America that have grown out of them. T h e difference between these two underlying concepts is much more profound and f a r reaching than any mere statement of fact can express, so much so indeed that those brought up under the academic influence of either one automatically find at first that the other yields only very f r a g m e n t a r y and incoherent pictures. W i t h the dawn of the nineteenth century one begins to find disjointed general impressions, and sometimes remarkably precise detailed observations, scattered through the travel narratives of such famous pioneer explorers as Captain George Francis Lyon of the Royal N a v y and D r . Heinrich B a r t h ; but concise descriptions of communities and tribes as such are still very few and fragmentary. T h e modern studies published during the last seventy years or so are more coherent, but even they are usually either so generalized as to be woefully superficial, or limited to the population of a relatively small area. N o general description xvi i i

INTRODUCTION

of the peoples of the Sahara as a whole, their history, environment, and ways of life, has ever been published in English, or in any other language for that matter. Therefore the main purpose of this book is to make readily available an over-all summary of what is known about the subject. Readers who would like to go into the matter in more technical detail as regards the physical anthropology and pathology of the area will do well to consult my recent monograph, The Living Races of the Sahara Desert. In preparing both my monograph and the present book, I threshed and winnowed all the Saharan literature that I could get my hands on, with special emphasis on firsthand observations made by research workers in the field. Also I myself spent as much time as I could among the desert tribes, so as to gather more direct and more detailed impressions of their ways of life. Although twelve years have been devoted to these tasks, it has not been possible for me to visit more than about a quarter of the entire area, and so I have confined my field research to a few carefully chosen communities which I consider representative of the largest and most important elements of the Saharan population as a whole. The results of this field work are incorporated in my descriptions of the sedentary agriculturalists, artisans, and merchants belonging to various racial, religious, and linguistic stocks, of the Chaamba who are pastoral Arab nomads, and of the Ahaggar Tuareg, who are pastoral nomadic Berbers. M y descriptions of other Saharan peoples are based partly on data gathered from the literature, and partly on information supplied by friends of mine who are personally familiar with the communities in question. The spelling of names of tribes and places in the Sahara presents special problems. Although Saharan Arabic and Berber dialects are easier for English speakers to pronounce than they are for the speakers of most other western European languages, many of their sounds and intonations still seem very strange even to American and English ears. Because of this, and because Arabic has its own written alphabet, which is very different from our own, while Berber (except for the Tuareg dialects) has xix

INTRODUCTION

none at all, precise transliteration is a practical impossibility unless one falls back on some such system as the International Phonetic Alphabet. But such a frightening collection of esoteric symbols would be no more familiar to the average reader and no more easily understood by him than would the Arabic alphabet itself, and it is even more difficult to learn. Most readers will not be interested primarily in precise pronunciation a n y w a y ; what they will want most is to be able to locate points on maps with the least possible difficulty. T h e modern maps and scientific literature of the Sahara are mostly in French, and so I have put place names as a rule in the forms usually employed by modern French cartographers. The names of tribes and other ethnic groups have likewise been presented, as a rule, in their most usual French forms. Unfortunately these are not yet fully standardized by any means ; one still finds such extreme variants as Mouydir — Immidir = Emidir; and so explanatory notes will be inserted whenever it seems strictly necessary.

XX

TRIBES of the

SAHARA

Chapter 1

LANDSCAPE NATURAL

AND RESOURCES

THE SAHARA is by no means the unending sea of sand that popular fiction and motion pictures and television have so often led us to suppose; on the contrary it is a vast area of infinitely varied landscapes. 1 Immense gravelly plains and rockribbed plateaus cover much of the desert's surface. D o t t e d here and there are closed depressions of all shapes and sizes which occur singly or in scattered groups or chains. In some regions the relief is very broken but with no more than minor variations in altitude. T h e valleys of the M z a b and the Metlili, f o r example, cut through the surface of a plain but only deeply enough so that the tips of the minarets of valley towns do not quite reach up to the main ground level, while the plain itself is not only dissected by these and innumerable other steep walled valleys, disposed in intricate drainage patterns that the A r a b s call by analogy a net or shebka ( French = chebka ) , but is also studded with low buttes of exactly equal height whose perfectly flat tops are all that remains of a still older plain. H e r e is an excellent example of a landscape illustrating the p a s s a g e of a series of m a j o r erosion cycles and the various transitional phases connecting them, all neatly laid out as though modeled a f t e r a d i a g r a m in a geology textbook. A n d there are also regions of extreme relief, notably the volcanic massifs of the Tibesti and the A h a g g a r (usually spelt H o g g a r ) but including also some enormous cliff formations. T h e s e cliffs 1 Much of this chapter is based on the latest standard French text, by Capot-Rey, which deals mainly with the geography of the western half of the Sahara. In English, see Meigs' and Bruce Carpenter's excellent though very brief monographs.

I

T R I B E S OF T H E SAHARA may be low and very long like the H a n k , in the extreme west, which runs in a nearly straight line f o r over 3 0 0 miles but rarely rises to a height of more than 1 6 0 feet, or relatively short but tremendously high like the cliffs which tower over 2 , 5 0 0 feet above D j a n e t . In the A h a g g a r , the modern administrative center, T a m a n r a s s e t , lies at an altitude of roughly 4,600 feet, about average f o r that region (if the term " a v e r a g e " can be used appropriately in describing so uneven an a r e a ) , while the culminating peak, the T a h a t , reaches nearly 9,600 feet above sea level. T h e volcanic peak of the E m i Koussi, the culminating point of the Tibesti massif, reaches an altitude of about 1 1 , 2 0 0 feet, the highest in the entire desert and almost exactly the same height as M o u n t H o o d in the Cascade R a n g e of Oregon. A n d lastly there are the great sandy wastes or ergs, which, however, cover not much more than a fifth of the entire area. Probably about two thirds of their surface consists of rolling sandy plains dotted with occasional minor groups of dunes, while only the remaining third, barely one fifteenth of the whole S a h a r a , is characterized by the spectacular m a j o r dune formations of popular imagination. A i r temperature in the shade is extremely variable, with winter and summer means in the neighborhood of roughly 5 2 o and 9 8 o ( F a h r e n h e i t ) respectively, while extremes run f r o m about 2 0 o to over 1 3 0 o in the shade. But the thermometer o f t e n falls twentyfive to thirty-five and sometimes over fifty degrees at sunset, such variations being relatively great in the plains and rather less at higher altitudes. Surprisingly enough, the temperature of sand only a f o o t or so below the surface remains practically constant day and night, at a point slightly lower than the daily average air temperature. Relative humidity is sometimes higher in the northern desert than at Paris, but in midsummer it often f a l l s as low as 2 0 per cent and has been known to drop to as little as 2.3 per cent in the A h a g g a r . A t G h a t , in the central Sahara, the monthly mean ranges roughly f r o m a low of 2 0 per cent in August to a high of 54 per cent in J a n u a r y , about the same as Phoenix, A r i z o n a , but a little more variable. T h e total annual evaporation rate varies

2

LANDSCAPE AND NATURAL

RESOURCES

r o u g h l y f r o m 60 to 1 4 0 inches, a v e r a g i n g three to f o u r times the annual rates observed a l o n g the M e d i t e r r a n e a n coast. A s one result, n o t even the most h a r d e n e d natives of the desert can g o s a f e l y in summer f o r m o r e than t w e n t y - f o u r hours w i t h o u t w a t e r . M e a n annual r a i n f a l l figures f o r the S a h a r a are all but meaningless, f o r several reasons. In the first place the v a r i a t i o n s f r o m y e a r to y e a r are enormous and there are o f t e n l o n g periods o f complete or practically complete d r o u g h t . T h e desert as a w h o l e (as I h a v e defined it) gets a little less than 2 inches annual rainfall, a l t h o u g h p a r t s of the F e z z a n g e t as much as 4 to 6 inches a y e a r . T h e a v e r a g e annual r a i n f a l l at P h o e n i x in A r i z o n a , the driest state in the U n i t e d States, is a little o v e r 7 inches. Y e a r l y totals are deceptive also because they include completely ineffectual r a i n f a l l s of as little as a single millimeter or even less. In general it can be said t h a t rain which does not penetrate sand or d r y soil to a depth of a f o o t or m o r e is usually carried off by e v a p o r a tion b e f o r e it has a chance to affect plant g r o w t h to any appreciable extent. A t In Salah no effective rain fell between A u g u s t 1 9 2 9 and D e c e m b e r 1933, while at T a m a n r a s s e t there w a s none f r o m June 1 9 3 3 to A u g u s t 1 9 3 9 . T h i s i r r e g u l a r i t y of r a i n f a l l g o e s f a r to explain the startlingly small amount of cultivated land t h a t one finds in the S a h a r a . Recent surveys h a v e r e v e a l e d the f o l l o w i n g ratios of cultivated to uncultivated l a n d : 1 t o 2 7 0 in the A n n e x of E l O u e d , less than 1 to 3,500 in that of E l G o l é a and less than 1 to 75,000 in the A h a g g a r , w h e r e a ratio of 1 to 40,000 has been estimated as the best t h a t could be achieved under the most f a v o r a b l e conditions possible. T h e s e figures reflect the f a c t t h a t p r o l o n g e d d r o u g h t s in the S a h a r a increase in duration as one m o v e s f r o m north to south, which m a k e s l i f e exceptionally difficult in the mountain m a s s i f s of the T i b e s t i and the A h a g g a r even t h o u g h their t o t a l r a i n f a l l o v e r l o n g periods m a y equal or indeed surpass that in the plains and plateau country f a r t h e r north. T h e most c o m m o n rate of r a i n f a l l ( w h e n it does r a i n ) is half an inch o r less in t w e n t y - f o u r hours, but truly torrential rains do occur e v e r y now and then. A t T a m a n r a s s e t 1 . 7 3 inches fell in three hours in 1950, and 1.42 inches of this came d o w n in only

3

T R I B E S OF T H E

SAHARA

forty minutes. When a downpour of such proportions falls in the desert, powder dry gulleys spring to thundering life as bores of water sometimes several feet high rush down them sweeping away everything in their path. This is one reason why the Tuareg very rarely camp in or even close to the dry bed of a stream. Torrential rains also cause adobe houses to collapse occasionally, sometimes killing the occupants. A t Ain S e f r a (in the northwestern corner of the desert), f o r example, twenty-five persons were killed in this way in October 1904, while another twenty-two were buried at Tamanrasset in J a n u a r y 1 9 2 2 , and eight of them were killed outright. Tents too collapse sometimes on top of the people in them, but the results are almost never fatal. Sandstorms, essentially phenomena of winter and early spring, are more frequent in the Sahara than is rain, and they have only bad and sometimes disastrous effects on crops, domestic animals, and even human life. Often they develop in the following way. A low pressure area over the Atlantic moves toward the A f r i c a n coast and the prevailing winter wind from the northeast swings around to the southeast and then to the south, bringing a slight rise in both temperature and humidity. "Suddenly the wind shifts to the southwest, growing in force f r o m minute to minute; the sun is covered over and a distant wall of sand blots out the horizon. T h e wind begins to assume the proportions of a gale and streaming wisps of sand like trembling nets race over the ground. This is the moment f o r action, when shelter must be found as quickly as possible or when, if you must go on, you soon find yourself proceeding blindly and trying only to stay within sight of your Map

ι . In the text Sudan

designates the whole strip of territory that separates

the Sahara proper from the tropical rain forest, and extends from the valley of the upper Nile to the Atlantic Ocean; but on this map it indicates only the country formerly known as the A n g l o - E g y p t i a n Sudan. T h e word Barbary

is used in the

text (as well as on M a p 2 ) as an inclusive term covering all but the southern fringes of Morocco, A l g e r i a , and Tunisia. T h e reader who intends to go beyond the limits of this book and consult other sources should bear in mind that duplication and reduplication of local and regional place names is very characteristic of the Sahara, especially in the west. Names like Adrar,

Tadjemout,

and Taourirt

are found again

and again applied to places which may be more than a thousand miles apart or, worse still, fairly close together, and so one must often exercise considerable ingenuity in order to be sure just which place is referred to.

4

cc ÜJ CO l±J O