A Labyrinth of Kingdoms

by Steve Kemper

  Conflict with the Arabs drove some Tuareg tribes south into the western Sahara and the desert mountains of Hoggar and Aïr. There they collided and commingled with the dark-skinned Hausa and Fulani peoples of the Sahel.

  The Tuaregs partitioned themselves into bewildering divisions of confederations, tribes, subtribes, clans, and factions. Barth’s brief descriptions of the branches just within Aïr runs for a dozen pages. Every Tuareg, male and female, belonged to one of three overarching feudal categories: nobles, vassals, or slaves. Nobles disdained ordinary labor. Male nobles raided, waged war, and protected their vassals and slaves. Female nobles focused on artistic activities such as music, poetry, jewelry-making, and other decorative crafts. Vassals handled livestock and crops, from which they supported nobles. Male vassals often accompanied nobles on raids. Slaves—blacks captured in raids, and their descendants—did the domestic and outdoor labor.

  Tuareg men, then as now, were distinctive because of their tagelmoust, or turban-veil. They wrapped this 10-foot cloth around their head, leaving a slit for their eyes. Once donned in early manhood, the tagelmoust was not taken off even for eating, drinking, or sleeping. It’s unclear when and why Tuareg men adopted the veil. Speculation varies from the practical—to protect against sun and blowing sand—to the superstitious—to keep out evil spirits. But since Tuareg women do not wear the veil, no explanation is entirely satisfactory.

  A Tuareg warrior carried a spear, a double-edged cross-hilted sword about 3 feet long, and a shield of tanned animal hide 4 or 5 feet long. On his inner left forearm he stored a sheathed dagger with a 6-inch blade, the tip pointing to the elbow, the hilt at the wrist for instant access. Above his right elbow he typically wore a ring carved from soft stone, to protect his sword arm. During Barth’s time a few Tuaregs started carrying muskets and other firearms, but most scorned such weapons as unmanly. A Tuareg man adorned his austere robes with silver ornaments and decorative leather charms and amulets to ward off the evil eye. He wore wide sandals for support on sand. Though his feet were as tough as thick leather, the dry heat sometimes cracked them badly, in which case he sewed them up with a needle and thread.

  As raiders Tuaregs were rapacious and ruthless. Everyone, including Tuaregs from other factions, was fair game, though raiders did not steal or molest Tuareg women. Plunder taken on raids or extorted from caravans wasn’t considered theft, but the well-deserved spoils of daring and force. An anthropologist once noted that for the Tuaregs, “the idea that man is free and a brigand is so inseparable that the same verb (Iohagh) means ‘he is free’ and ‘he pillages.’ ”

  The Tuaregs built their way of life around the camel. Camels represented wealth and sustenance. They made possible the long-range desert mobility that Tuaregs needed for trade and pillage. They supplied milk. If their owner was dying of thirst, their blood and the water in their stomachs provided emergency fluids. When age, sickness, or exhaustion claimed camels, they became meat. Their hides became tents, ropes, saddles, bags, waterskins, and gear.

  The triad celebrated in Tuareg song and poetry was women, daring deeds, and—essential for success with both of the former—camels. Men and women judged a man not only by the number of his camels but by his style while mounted, which included his ornate saddle and other camel trappings. Camels attracted and bought brides. They were also given as payment to settle disputes.

  Camels also pervaded the Tuaregs’ language, Tamasheq. Terms covered every aspect of camelness, starting with types, their uses, and every inch of their exteriors. Glossaries were necessary to describe a camel’s age, health, defects, distinguishing features, and colors (white, whitish, whitish yellow, dirty white, and on through the spectrum). There were terms for special qualities, such as a camel that neighed with joy or one that bellowed when lonely. There were terms for camels that roared in complaint when being loaded or unloaded. There were words to describe the length of a camel’s step and the many possible gaits. The Tuaregs had words for small groups of camels and large groups, for camels in caravans and camels at pasture, for a camel forced to go grazing while its calf remained tethered in camp.

  Camel maladies required another set of terminology, as well as veterinary skills. The most common problem, saddle sores, was treated with a lotion made of urine from a female camel. If infected, the sores were cut or burned. Sometimes the clouds of flies that followed caravans laid eggs in these open wounds, attracting birds that pecked at the maggots and irritated the camel. This could be stopped by tying a pair of crow’s wings to the camel’s hump. Tuaregs treated other camel ailments with salt, tobacco, and heated butter. Other remedies—enemas, bleeding, cauterizing with a hot iron—were used on humans (in Europe, too) as well as on camels.

  The animals were watered every three days or so, but before a long dry journey this was gradually lengthened so that before the trip began, the camels would drink nearly to bursting.

  Every Westerner noticed that Tuareg culture upended certain practices of Islam. This was especially noticeable in the position of women in Tuareg society, whether noble, vassal, or slave. Most of Islamic North Africa espoused the Arabic attitude that a respectable female should go out only three times in her life: once when she left the womb, once when she left her father’s house for marriage, and once when she died. By contrast, Tuareg women enjoyed a wide degree of autonomy. As Barth noted, “the women appear to have the superiority over the male sex in the country of [Aïr], at least to a certain extent.”

  Tuareg women did not wear veils or hide their sexuality. They adorned themselves to be alluring, with henna on their nails, kohl around their eyes, and, for special occasions, red or yellow ochres daubed on cheeks and foreheads. They were not restricted to the indoors or to certain areas of the dwelling. They usually ate with the men and with guests, not separately. They were heard as well as seen—the men sought and respected their opinions.

  The women were often better educated than the men, since they had the task of teaching their children to read and write Tamasheq, a strange language that can be written left to right, right to left, up and down, in a spiral, or boustrophedon style (alternating lines in opposite directions). Noble Tuareg women also learned to sing, play music, and recite poetry. Westerners universally commented on the easy respect between Tuareg men and women, and on their tenderness for their children. Though Islam allowed a man four wives, monogamy was typical among the Tuaregs.

  The culture was matrilineal. When a Tuareg woman married, her husband left his village for hers. The camels, livestock, and jewelry that he was obliged to give her became her property. If she used these to increase her wealth, it belonged solely to her. If the marriage didn’t work out, a woman could get a divorce simply by decreeing it. Whatever property she had accumulated stayed with her. So did the couple’s children, since, the Tuaregs reasoned, she had carried them before birth. If a married couple had children and the mother died, the children stayed with the mother’s clan. If the clans of the mother and father went to war, the children fought for the mother’s side. Similarly, when slaves belonging to different masters married, their children were considered the property of the female’s master. In some tribes, slaves had a degree of self-determination—a slave who felt mistreated could change masters.

  Relations between the sexes also differed markedly between Tuaregs and their Islamic neighbors. Tuaregs did not fetishize virginity and female purity. Charles de Foucauld, a French monk who lived among the Tuaregs for a dozen years in the early twentieth century and compiled a four-volume dictionary of Tamasheq, found no word in the language for virginity. Young Tuareg males and females mixed frequently at nighttime social events called ahal, filled with music, dancing, and flirting. Couples often wandered off into the desert night. This time of courtship and experimentation before marriage was called asri, “to gallop with free reins.” Both sexes did so without penalty. After marriage, a woman wasn’t put into seclusion but could visit her friends at will, including male friends.

  Much of
this ran counter to Islamic practice everywhere else, which added to the Tuaregs’ fascination for Westerners, who often made the error of mythologizing them. But the Tuaregs’ independence included acute hardship, especially for their slaves. These desert people were tough beyond belief, but existed on the edge of survival. They often subsisted for months on milk and coarse grain. Everyone except the small minority of nobles survived through backbreaking labor, much of it done by the women.

  AS THE CARAVAN rested in the village, the alarm sounded again: the Tuaregs are coming! Rumor flashed the number of warriors at fifty to sixty. Richardson again ordered the distribution of powder and shot, including, to Barth’s amazement, to the three strangers. Richardson justified the action in his journal by noting that these men had vowed to defend the Christians to the death. Barth called this “imprudence and absurdity,” since the three men “made no other use of the present than to supply their band with this material, which alone gave us a degree of superiority, and constituted our security.”

  Around ten o’clock that night, as the caravan’s forces stood in nervous battle lines, a small troop of mounted men advanced toward them. A volley fired over the riders’ heads persuaded them to retreat. Shooting and shouting continued for the rest of the night. Barth somehow stepped outside of this alarming situation and observed it as an enjoyable spectacle: “The scene which followed in the bright moonlight evening, and lasted throughout the night, was animating and interesting in the extreme.”

  The next day the expedition stayed put. The leaders of the shadow troop sent word that they would not molest the caravan if the Christians were handed over. This was rejected. It seemed clear to Barth that their foes were motivated less by faith than by avarice, and wouldn’t attack until they had reinforcements. Tensions and divided loyalties roiled the caravan. Barth called the situation “tedious” because it kept him in camp. That afternoon, “not being able to refrain wholly from excursions,” he spent several hours exploring a nearby valley, despite the obvious danger.

  The following morning, August 24, they moved on without incident. That evening five mounted men leading six camels camped within a pistol shot of the caravan. They were joined by the three strangers who had vowed to die for the Christians. The group’s “wild, ferocious laughter” put the caravan on edge. Then all the strangers sauntered into camp and asked for supper. Richardson, still swerving between panic and willful naïveté, didn’t like the looks of these new strangers but nevertheless convinced himself that they “gave a tolerable account of themselves,” an opinion that almost made Barth snort.

  The new strangers slipped away during the night. At dawn the Kel Owis discovered that most of their camels had disappeared as well. At six o’clock that morning the strangers from the night before rode down from a rocky ridge and ordered the Kel Owis to turn over the Christians and all their baggage. When the Kel Owis again refused, a troop of forty men, mounted on mehara and carrying spears, swords, and shields, boiled over the ridge and charged with wild cries. The caravan’s armed men were ready and marched forward, shouting defiance. When they aimed their muskets, the charging line scattered and retreated without a shot being fired. Richardson was shocked to see, among the raiders, the three strangers who had sworn undying loyalty while eating his food and accepting his powder and shot.

  A party of the raiders soon approached to parley. They didn’t want to fight other Muslims, they told the Kel Owis, they just wanted to kill the infidels. From the ridge angry men on camels shouted that more raiders would soon arrive to help take the Christians.

  The caravaneers’ loyalty to the Europeans was eroding. The camel drivers, who passed this way often, were reluctant to endanger their livelihood by affronting the local tribes. The Kel Owis, if given no alternative, would certainly trade the Christians for the return of their camels. In this dire situation Richardson told the Kel Owis to open negotiations with the raiders.

  The bargaining began. We want to kill the infidels, repeated the raiders. Unacceptable, replied the Kel Owis. In that case, said the raiders, the caravan must turn around and leave Aïr. Unfeasible, said the Kel Owis. Then if the infidels want to proceed, they must convert to Islam. Impossible, replied the Kel Owis. Which brought the raiders to their real goal: the infidels could buy their lives by giving up half their goods and baggage. After further haggling, the raiders settled for goods worth £50 (about a quarter of the expedition’s cargo), plus an enormous celebratory meal of hamsa for everybody.

  The raiders’ leader pledged that the Christians were now safe, but they remained unconvinced that he could control his wild companions. After all, he also told them that while he had been bowed in prayer, asking for the strength to defeat the infidels, one of his own Tuaregs had crept up and stolen his burnoose, carpet, and fez.

  That evening other Tuaregs from the vicinity entered camp. Angry at missing the fleecing of the Christians, they were bent on further shearing. Richardson handed over another £5-worth of goods. All this gift-giving to foes aroused resentment among the camel drivers, who also had to be placated with presents.

  On August 26 as the caravan approached the high mountains of Aïr, at about 19 degrees of latitude, the Kel Owis announced that they were crossing another invisible boundary into a new region—the Sudan. The word, shortened from the Arabic Beled e’ sudan, meant “land of the blacks,” or Negroland. To the Tuaregs it was simply the South.

  They broke camp so early on the 27th that Barth made his first notes of the day by moonlight. The landscape blossomed and grew various. Veins of beautiful white marble patterned the granite hills. Sometimes the rocks were pink or red, or varnished to gleaming black by blowing sand. The valleys were luxuriant with tall acacia trees draped with hanging vines. They passed green gorges and mountainsides indented with glens.

  But there were less welcome sights as well. Three men on mehara rode parallel to them, and the caravan came across a spot recently trampled by the footprints of many camels and men. “There was not the least doubt that another host was gathering against us,” wrote Barth. They rode with their weapons in hand.

  The day’s destination was the village of Selufiet. Eight miles before it, the guide led the caravan off the path to a campsite. Barth’s suspicions were quickly confirmed: Another plot was afoot. Fifty armed men rode into camp, followed after dark by fifty more. They were Merabetin Tuaregs from deep within Aïr. The Kel Owi escort warned the Europeans to stay together in one tent. All remained quiet until after the sunset prayers. And then, wrote Barth, “the calm was at an end, and the scene which followed was awful.”

  From inside their tent, the Europeans could hear angry debate. The Merabetins and the Kel Owis had begun a long night of intense conference. The Europeans’ servants occasionally brought reports. One of the Kel Owi leaders had thrown down his sword in front of his tribesmen, shouting, “Let us all die with the Christians!” But the reports were otherwise alarming and unchanging: The Merabetins swore that no infidels had ever passed through their country, and none ever would. The ones in the tent must either convert to Islam or die.

  Barth judged the threat to be real this time, not a bargaining ploy. The Kel Owis and the Europeans’ servants begged the Christians to convert, at least for a few days. “My colleagues,” wrote Richardson, “and particularly Dr. Barth, indignantly and passionately resisted.” Their servants, planning ahead, asked for letters that cleared them of blame for the coming slaughter. Richardson sent word that conversion was impossible, but they would pay the tribute required of infidels. If that was unacceptable, “we would wait patiently for death.” In that case, the Kel Owis told them, your deaths are certain.

  The next half-hour, as the Merabetins and Kel Owis continued to argue, was excruciating. The Europeans sat in the tent without speaking. Every sound outside seemed to signal an attack. Finally, according to Barth, Richardson broke the silence. “Let us talk a little,” he said. “We must die; what is the use of sitting so mute?” It was Richardson’s finest mome
nt as the expedition’s leader—calm and strong, like his faith.

  They heard voices approaching and tensed. One of their servants rushed into the tent: “You are not to die!” The Merabetins would accept a heavy tribute after all, equal to the payment given to the Kel Owis. “For some minutes death seemed really to hover over our heads,” wrote Barth, “but the awful moment passed by.”

  The next morning they forked over goods worth £35, as agreed. But a large hostile crowd had gathered and wanted more. Most of the expedition’s cargo, noted Barth, consisted of “worthless bulky objects” which gave the false impression of great wealth. As the caravan prepared to move out, the crowd seemed about to attack, drawn to the huge iron cases that promised gold coins. One of the caravaneers had the wit to smash open one of the cases. Instead of gold, dry biscuit spilled out. The disappointed crowd turned back to the original mound of plunder. As the caravan departed, the Merabetin were “swearing, and griping [sic] one another by the throat, and fighting over the booty.”

  That afternoon they reached Selufiet, a village of sixty or seventy huts made of grass—a sign of the Sudan. Despite the Merabetins’ promise of protection, fresh troubles arose. The caravan was besieged that night by a mob “howling like hungry jackals.” The remaining goods were saved by firing warning shots throughout the night.

  Perhaps more seriously, the camel drivers had been hired only to this point, and weren’t interested in prolonging the nightmare of working for infidels. Their departure left the caravan short of baggage animals, a plight worsened by the theft during the night of most of the camels belonging to the Kel Owis and the expedition. The Kel Owis recovered some of them the next morning, but fifteen remained missing.