Chapter VIII: Architecture and Art (2)

Although certain remains of a presumed funerary or religious nature in Air have been described as “argem,” it has apparently escaped notice that both the pre-Moslem as well as the later graves of the country are all linear descendants of the older and more pretentious monuments. Yet if the term has any significance at all, there has been a tendency perhaps to describe rather too many enclosures as “argem.” Certain examples illustrated by Gautier are probably devoid of any spiritual significance. There are in Air, for instance, especially in the north of the country near Agwau, a number of groups of concentric stone circles, which were simply enclosures round temporary huts or tents. The old hut circles of the T’imia village (Plate 29) show clearly how an isolated example might be assumed to have been a prayer or religious enclosure. Again, the circular heaps of stones at Elazzas resemble the “argem” illustrated by Bates[231] so much that one might be tempted to conclude that they were such, if it did not happen to be known that they were the raised plinths on which huts used to be constructed. A deduction drawn from the occurrence of the latter might indicate that the origin of the true “argem” was derived from a desire to commemorate in death the only permanent part of a man’s hut dwelling in life. Such an explanation is not only permissible but even probable; it is even possible that in some cases tombs were actually made in the very floor of the hut or side of the pedestal where the deceased had lived.

In the lower Turayet valley in Southern Air I passed a number of graves which seemed to suggest an intermediate type between the large prehistoric “rigm” and the later small enclosure of stones covered with white pebbles. The Turayet graves were small circular platforms like the hut foundations at Elazzas, but not more than 10 ft. in diameter with vertical sides a few inches above the ground level and flat tops covered with white stones. The occurrence of these tombs on the Turayet valley, not far from the mouth of the Akaraq valley, where also is perhaps a pre-Moslem place of worship, and the existence of what may prove a pre-Moslem urn burial cemetery at Marandet, all of which places are in the extreme south of Air, are interesting points when it is remembered that the first Tuareg inhabitants of Air came to the country from the south. It may nevertheless be pure coincidence that there seemed to be fewer obviously ancient monuments in Northern Air than in the southern part.

The absence of funerary inscriptions is in marked contrast with the profusion of rock writings in Air. Written literature is, however, almost non-existent, but traditional poetry takes its place. The esteem in which poetry is held and the popularity which it enjoys are proof of the intellectual capacity which is present in this people.

When it is realised that, alone among the ancient people of North Africa, the Tuareg have kept an individual script, it seems extraordinary that drawing, painting and sculpture should have remained in so primitive a state. Even if we are to admit that the earliest and therefore the best of the rock drawings of North Africa are the work of the ancestors of the Tuareg, it is hardly possible to qualify them as more than interesting or curious. Few of them are beautiful. Some of the “Early Period”[232] drawings were executed with precision and care, but even if full allowance is made for the possibility of their having been coloured there are hardly any artistic achievements of merit. They do not bear comparison with the bushman drawings of South Africa, still less with the magnificent cave paintings of the Reindeer Age in Europe. But while some doubt exists regarding the authorship of the early drawings, the later North African pictures can be ascribed to the Tuareg without any fear of controversy. The Tuareg are still engaged in making them, but this modern work is even more crude. The drawings have become conventionalised; the symbols do not necessarily bear any likeness to the objects which they purport to represent.

The rock drawings in Air display continuity from bad examples in the style of the early period down to the modern conventionalised glyphs. In most cases both the early and the late work is accompanied by T’ifinagh inscriptions. The earlier drawings represent animals which exist, or used to exist, in Air. The most carefully executed I saw were in the valley leading up from Agaragar to the pass into the Ighazar basin above Faodet. The place was near some watering-point, used by the northern Salt Caravan from Air to Bilma. The pictures were somewhat difficult to see as they had in part been covered by later drawings. The execution was rough, consisting of little more than an outline with a few markings on the bodies of some of the animals. As in the late petroglyphs there was no chiselling or cutting: the lines were made by hammering with a more or less suitable instrument and then by rubbing with a stone and sand. Among the animals thus represented, the giraffe and the ostrich in a wild state survive south of Air. An antelope with sloping quarters and large lyre-shaped horns, the ox, the camel, the donkey, a horse, a large bird, and the human figure, both male and female, could also be traced. The large antelope I cannot identify for certain, but the large bird is probably the Greater Arab Bustard.

In the later work the conventionalised symbols remain fairly constant. The ox is shown as a straight line with four vertical lines representing legs, a clear indication of the hump, and two short horns. The rectangular camel symbol had become so debased that for a long time I was at a loss to interpret it. The representations of the human figure are only curious inasmuch as they emphasise the long robe worn by the Tuareg and sometimes the cross bands over the breast, so typical of the Libyans in the Egyptian paintings. An interesting point in these rudimentary examples of the pictorial art is that even in the early period they portray a similar fauna and habit of life to those of to-day. A faint Egyptian influence may be detected in the human figures. I know of no drawings in Air to compare with the ones found by Barth at Telizzarhen, nor any which appeared to have a religious significance. The most interesting example is certainly that of the ox and cart referred to in the following chapter.

The necessity of pictorial expression was evidently less felt than that of poetry, a condition to which nomadism has undoubtedly contributed. Yet even in ornament and draughtsmanship the Tuareg seem once to have reached a higher plane of civilisation in the past than that which they now possess and which their life has led them progressively to abandon.

They have little knowledge of history outside their own tribal or group lore with the exception of that modicum of knowledge derived from a superficial study of the Quran. At the same time, men like Ahodu have heard and remembered stories of the past such as those of Kahena, Queen of the Aures, and of her fighting against the Arabs. Their knowledge of local geography is enormous, of the general form or shape of North Africa small. They know of the Mediterranean and their language has a word for the sea. They have heard of the Nile, of Egypt, of the Niger and of Lake Chad, but they have only very vague inklings of the existence of Arabia or of the whereabouts of Istambul, where the Defender of the Faith lived. They can draw rough maps of local features on the sand and understand perfectly the conception of European maps on a wider scale. When I showed them an atlas with a map of the world and laboriously explained that it was a flat representation of a spherical object, Ahodu and Sidi surprised me by saying that they knew that the world was round, and that if you went in by a hole you would eventually come out on the other side. Duveyrier and others have been surprised at the knowledge of European countries and politics which they have found in the Sahara. The communication of news between distant parts of Africa is highly developed and at times astounding.

PLATE 33

If only on account of their script the Tuareg have deserved more attention in this country than they have received. I have no intention at this juncture of examining either T’ifinagh or Temajegh in detail, as they require study in a volume dedicated to them alone; but, as an ancient non-Arabic script which has survived in Africa, I cannot refrain from a brief description of the former. T’ifinagh is an alphabetic and not a syllabic script, but owing to the abbreviations practised in writing and the absence of all vowels except an A which resembles the Hamza or Alif, it has come to resemble a sort of shorthand. It is usually necessary to know the general meaning of any writing before it can be read. The T’ifinagh alphabet consists of between thirty and forty symbols varying somewhat from place to place. Duveyrier[233] collected an alphabet of twenty-three letters used in the north: Hanoteau,[234] who wrote the best grammar of Temajegh yet published, gives twenty-four letters: Masquerey[235] gives twenty-three letters for the Taitoq dialect and script: Freeman found twenty-five in the Ghadamsi Tuareg dialects. In addition to these letter symbols there are about twelve ligatures of two or sometimes three letters. All these signs are used in Air, but there are also certain additional symbols which may be alternative forms. Of the twenty-three to twenty-five letters in T’ifinagh, some ten only have been derived from the classical Libyan script as exemplified by the bilingual Thugga inscription now in the British Museum. Of these ten letters perhaps five have Punic parallels, while for the thirty known Libyan letters six Phœnician parallels have been found. It has hitherto been assumed[236] that the T’ifinagh alphabet was descended from the Libyan, which, it may be noted, has not yet been found in any inscription proved to be earlier than the fourth century B.C. Many theories have been advanced for the origin of the Libyan script, but Halévy is usually accepted as the most reliable authority on the subject. He supposed that the Libyan alphabet was derived from the Phœnician with the addition of certain non-Semitic symbols current nearly all over the Mediterranean. If this were universally admitted as the correct view it would still not be possible to explain why the T’ifinagh alphabet contains so many symbols which are not common to either the Libyan or Punic systems. On evidence which cannot here be examined in detail, it seems easier to believe that the ancestors of the Tuareg brought to Africa, or copied from a people with whom they had been in contact before reaching the Sahara, an alphabet replenished by borrowing certain symbols from a Libyan system partly founded on the Phœnician one. A consideration of this problem, like the one which concerns the Temajegh language itself, must be left to experts to resolve. As much false analogy and loose reasoning have been used on this question as on the subject of the origin of the Libyan races. One thing only seems to me to stand out, namely, that the T’ifinagh alphabet and Temajegh language were not evolved in Africa but came from without, probably from the east or north-east, into the continent, where they developed independently. To postulate an Arabian origin, for instance, for T’ifinagh and Temajegh could not be construed as evidence in support of any theory regarding the origin of the Tuareg themselves. Linguistic evidence is notoriously unreliable from the anthropological point of view, since more often than not it only indicates some cultural contact. The most interesting aspect of the linguistic question is the evidence which it may afford regarding the cultural development of the older Tuareg. In their present stage of development there is no reason for them to have retained, still less for them to have evolved by themselves, any form of script. Their mode of life does not necessitate the use of writing: they are for the most part illiterate or are in process of becoming so. To have had and in so far as they still use T’ifinagh, to have retained an individual script, is to my mind the most powerful evidence in favour of the conclusion to which I have already on several occasions referred, namely, their far higher degree of civilisation in the past.

In Air, T’ifinagh is dying out. One tribal group is famous for having retained it in current use more than any other section of the Southern Tuareg. The Ifadeyen men and women still read and write Temajegh correctly if somewhat laboriously. They use it for sending messages to each other or for putting up notices on trees or rocks, saying how one or other of them visited the place. Among most of the other tribes a knowledge of T’ifinagh is confined to the older women and a few men. The younger generation can neither read nor write either in T’ifinagh or in Arabic: the scribes and holy men usually only write in Arabic script. In the olden days all the Tuareg women knew how to write and it was part of their duties to teach the children.

The rocks of Air are covered with inscriptions which have neither been recorded nor translated. Owing to the changing linguistic forms of Temajegh and the absence of any very fixed rules for writing it, it is difficult to decipher any but the modern writings. Words are not separated, vowels are not written, and where one word ends with the same consonant with which the following one begins, a single symbol is usually written for the two.

PLATE 34

T’ifinagh script may be written from left to right or from right to left, or up and down or down and up, or in a spiral or in the boustrophedon manner. The European authors who have written of Temajegh have variously reproduced T’ifinagh running from right to left and from left to right, but the two best authorities, Hanoteau and de Foucauld,[237] have adopted the former direction. It ill becomes me to differ from such learned authorities, but the existence of certain inscriptions in Air leads me to believe that the left to right manner was, there at least, perhaps the most usual system. On Plate 40 is reproduced an _Arabic_ inscription written by a Tuareg in Arabic characters running in the wrong direction, namely, from left to right, nor do I think the writer would have made this mistake unless he had been accustomed so to write in the only other script of which he could have had any knowledge, namely, T’ifinagh. The inscription, of course, records the common “La illa ilallah Muhammed rasul Allah.” I came across two or three other instances of the same sort.

The T’ifinagh inscriptions in Air, like the pictures with which they are so often associated, belong to all periods. Some of them certainly date back to the first Tuareg invasion.

There is a tradition that the Quran was translated into Temajegh and written out in T’ifinagh, a most improper proceeding from the Moslem point of view. But no European has seen this interesting book, which is said to have been destroyed. It may possibly have survived in some place, for Ahodu told me he had once seen a book in Air written in T’ifinagh, though all the documents which I found in the mosques were in Arabic calligraphy. Until a “Corpus” of T’ifinagh inscriptions has been compiled it will be very difficult to make much progress.

Such a collection would assist in the study of Temajegh itself, for the language is in a somewhat fluid state, tending to vary dialectically from place to place and period to period. It is one of the languages termed “Berber,” the only connection in which I am prepared to admit the use of this word. By many it is considered the purest of the Berber forms of speech. Although related to such dialects as Siwi and Ghadamsi, and to western forms like Shillugh or the Atlas languages, Temajegh is distinct; it was not derived from them but developed independently, and probably preserved more of the original characteristics.

The relationship of the original tongue to the Semitic groups of languages has not yet been defined. The two linguistic families have certain direct analogies, including the formation of words from triliteral verbal roots, verbal inflections, derived verbal formations, the genders of the second and third persons, the pronominal suffixes and the aoristic style of tense. Nevertheless there are also certain very notable differences, like the absence of any trace of more than two genders, the absence of the dual form, and verbs of two or three or four radicals with primary forms in the aorist and imperative only. Berber does not appear to be a Semitic language. But the two are probably derived from a common ancestor.

The Air and Ahaggar dialects of Temajegh differ somewhat from each other. They are mutually quite intelligible, and so far as I could judge not more diverse than English and American. Barth stated that, unlike the rest of the Air Tuareg, the Kel Owi spoke the Auraghiye dialect, which is the name often given to the Ahaggar language. The name is, of course, derived from the Auriga or Hawara ethnic group, which, as we shall see, is the name of the parent stock of most of the Ahaggaren tribes. I have it on the best authority, however, of Ahodu, ’Umbellu and Sidi, that the Kel Owi language does not differ materially from the dialect of the rest of Air and am therefore at a loss to be able to explain Barth’s statement.

The absence of the Arabic ع (_’ain_) in Temajegh necessitates its transcription by the letter غ (_ghen_) which is so characteristic of Berber. In all words, therefore, adopted from the Arabic, and especially in proper names like ’Osman, ’Abdallah, ’Abdeddin, etc., the forms Ghosman, Ghibdillah, Ghabidin are used. The Temajegh letter (_yegh_) ⵗ or _ghen_ is common and so strongly _grasseyé_ that it becomes very similar to an R. The difficulty of transcription of the T’ifinagh into European languages is therefore very considerable,[238] for the R and Gh sounds are very confusing. In some T’ifinagh inscriptions the Arabic letter ع is frankly used when Arabic words occur.

The great feature of the Temajegh language and of the Tuareg is the diffusion of poetry. It is unfortunately impossible to give any examples in this volume, but the collections made by Duveyrier, Hanoteau, Masquerey, Haardt,[239] and de Foucauld[240] show the natural beauty and simplicity of this art among the People of the Veil. Their prosody is not strict, but nevertheless displays certain formality. Iambic verses of nine, ten and eleven syllables are the most usual forms of scansion, with a regular cæsura and rhymed or assonated terminations. In the matter of rhymes there is considerable freedom: the use of similarly sounding words is allowed. Terminations like “pen,” “mountain” and “waiting” would, for instance, all be permissible as rhymes. Poetry is sung, chanted or recited with or without music. The themes cover the whole field of humanity, from songs of love or thanksgiving to long ballads of war and travel. The Tuareg are in some measure all poets, but the women are most famous among them. They make verses impromptu or recite the traditional poems of their race which are so old that their origin has been forgotten. One hears of women famous throughout the Sahara as the greatest poets of their time.

Their way of life is attractive. These famous ladies hold what is called a “diffa,” which is a reception or “salon.” In the evening in front of their fires under an African night they play their one-stringed “amzad” or mandoline and recite their verses. Men from all over the country come to listen or take part. They seem to live and love and think in much the same manner as in Europe those of us do who retain our natural feelings. Only perhaps there are fewer _grandes dames_ in Europe now than in the Sahara.

Poetry, music and dancing are all to a great extent branches of a single art in so far as they all depend on rhythm and seek to express the emotions. In Air the syncopated music of the negro has had more influence than in the north, so the “amzad” is less common. Their other instruments are drums, but the lilt of their dance is rather different from that of the south. Their improvised drums are most ingenious. There is the hemispherical calabash floating in a bowl of milk, the note of which varies according to the depth to which the gourd is sunk, and the millet mortar with a wet skin stretched over the mouth by two parallel poles weighed down with large stones lying across their ends. The other various drums of the Southland are also known and used by those who can afford them. The dances of the Tuareg men are done to a quick step on a syncopated beat. The most effective one is a sword dance by a single man running up to the drum and executing a series of rapid steps, with the sword held by both hands at arms’ length above the head. I have never seen any women dancing among the Air Tuareg and it is said not to be their practice. This may be so, for even among the men dancing is relatively uncommon and has probably been borrowed from the south. It seems hardly to be consistent with their grave and dignified demeanour, of which poetry is the more natural counterpart.

[Footnote 216: Jean, _op. cit._, pp. 82 and 176.]

[Footnote 217: Called Assingerma on the Cortier map. Teghazar is the diminutive of Ighazar, and means a small river or torrent.]

[Footnote 218: Also spelt Reshwa. Von Bary calls the cone Teginjir, which is inaccurate.]

[Footnote 219: Which is also called Tellia, as Barth refers to it.]

[Footnote 220: Richardson, _op. cit._, Vol. II. p. 71.]

[Footnote 221: Naturally many more of the “B” houses than of the “A” class still have the roof on them.]

[Footnote 222: Cf. Chap. XI.]

[Footnote 223: The evidence for these movements is in Chap. XI.]

[Footnote 224: Jean, _op. cit._, p. 86.]

[Footnote 225: Jean throughout regards the Kel Owi as very ancient inhabitants of Air, but if due allowance is made for (as I think) this error and his traditions are not taken to refer to an earlier period than the one with which this group is associated, they are still valuable, from the comparative point of view.]

[Footnote 226: Fossil trees exist in the sandstone hills of Eghalgawen and T’in Wana, a few miles away.]

[Footnote 227: Or “rigm” or “rigem” in the singular.]

[Footnote 228: Bates, _op. cit._, App. I.]

[Footnote 229: Gautier, _op. cit._, p. 86.]

[Footnote 230: Desplagnes: _Le plateau Central Nigérien_.]

[Footnote 231: Bates, _op. cit._, App. I., Figs. 90, 93 and 94.]

[Footnote 232: According to the classification of Pomel and Flamand. Cf. Frobenius: _Hadshra Maktuba_, and Flamand, _Les Pierres Ecrites_.]

[Footnote 233: Duveyrier, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 234: Hanoteau, _Grammaire de la Langue Tamachek_, Algiers, 1896.]

[Footnote 235: Masquerey, _Dictionnaire et Grammaire Touaregs_ (Dialect des Taitoq).]

[Footnote 236: As, for instance, by Bates, _op. cit._, p. 88, following Halévy.]

[Footnote 237: De Foucauld, _Dictionnaire Touareg-Français_, 2 Vols., Alger.]

[Footnote 238: Hence the difficulty surrounding the writing of Ghat, or Rat or Rhat. I have used “gh” through this volume, but the French usually use “r.”]

[Footnote 239: See especially MM. Haardt and Dubreuil’s account of the Citroën Motor Expedition across the Sahara.]

[Footnote 240: In R. Bazin’s life of Père de Foucauld.]