Chapter XXVI: Appendix: V

ON THE ROOT “MZGh” IN VARIOUS LIBYAN NAMES

Many authors have assumed that the word “Imajegh” was a generic or even a national name applicable to the whole of the Tuareg race, and perhaps even to most of the Libyans in North Africa. The “MZGh” root of this word, which properly denotes the noble caste of the Tuareg, does indeed appear in the classical names of many tribes or groups of people in North Africa. Among these may be cited the Meshwesh of early Egyptian records and the Macae of Greek historians, the latter being apparently a racial and not a tribal name. The root reappears in several such forms as Mazices, Maxitani, Mazaces, etc., all belonging to a people found principally in the Great Syrtis, in Southern Cyrenaica, and in Tripolitania, both on the coast and in the interior:[461] a more isolated group with radically the same name, the Maxyes, is placed by Herodotus as far west as Tunisia.[462]

In the Air dialect of the Temajegh language the name for the nobles of the Tuareg takes the form of “Imajeghan” with the singular “Imajegh.” In other dialects the word displays some variations including the forms Amazigh, Imazir, Imohagh, Imohaq, Imoshag, etc., according to the local pronunciation. The word is derived according to an informant of Duveyrier[463] from the verb “ahegh,” meaning “to raid” or, by extension of the meaning, “to be free,” or “independent.” De Foucauld, however, gives the form of the word as “Amahar,” a proper name having as its root ⵗⵂ (Gh H), like “Ahegh,” but not necessarily derived from the latter.[464]

As has already been noted, the name does not cover the totality of the race, for it does not include the servile clans, which, whatever their origin, are considered even by the nobles to belong, like themselves, to the Tuareg people. The word “Imajegh” is a caste and not a racial appellation.

I am doubtful if Sergi is justified in using a statement made by Père de Foucauld in 1888,[465] to the effect that the “Berbers” of North Africa generally, and those of the north-west in particular, who are known to the Arabs under various names, used the MZGh root as a name for themselves in such a manner as to indicate that it was a national appellation or the name of a racial stock of wide extension. It would be interesting to know how far de Foucauld, after a long period of residence as a hermit among the Tuareg of Ahaggar, modified the views he expressed in 1888. Subject to correction by any authority having had access to his notes, I take it he would rather have meant that the MZGh root was used in a quasi-national sense in a number of Berber dialects or by a number of Berber-speaking people when talking of themselves, but not in referring generally to the population of North Africa.

Stuhlmann[466] went so far as to talk of “Die Mazigh Völker,” and stated that all the “Berbers” from Tripoli to Western Morocco call themselves Mazigh: this, however, is not the case. As Lenz, supporting the theory of a dual origin for the Libyans, points out, the “Berbers”[467] even of Morocco are divided into two families, to which he gives the names of Amazigh and Shellakh.[468]

Hanoteau, on the other hand, seeking at least a unity of language, says[469] that “plusieurs de ces peuples . . . ont oublié leur nom national. Mais partout où les populations berbères ont été à l’abri du contact et de l’influence arabe, elles ont conservé des noms appartenant à leur idiome,” and he goes on to mention the various dialectical forms of the MZGh root which he has found in different localities. He concludes, “toutes ces dénominations ne sont en realité que des variantes de prononciation d’un même nom.” This certainly is so, but that he is justified in assuming it to be a national name is more doubtful. He next tries to establish that the signification which “some people” have given to the word Imajegh and its derivatives is not substantiated, and that when a Tuareg wishes to refer to a noble or to a free man he calls them “ilelli” or “amunan” and not “imajeghan.” This, however, is not correct. The first two words may indeed signify an abstract quality, but when the nobles are mentioned, “Imajegh” is invariably used. Hanoteau’s statement is misleading. In addition to the use of the term “imajeghan” to denote the Tuareg nobles, with no reference to their characters or qualities, the Tuareg say “imajegh” to qualify any individual, as “imajegh” to denote someone of a certain class either in their own or in another race. They speak of the “Imajeghan n’Arab,” meaning the upper class Arabs as opposed to the slaves and under-dogs of the Arab countries. They describe the British, I am glad to say, as Imajeghan, or the White Nobles, even in every-day conversation among themselves. It is always a class distinction, and not a compliment, an epithet of virtue or a national name. The dictionaries and grammars of Motylinski, de Foucauld,[470] Masquerey and even of Hanoteau himself on the Tuareg language bear out this point.

One of the principal reasons for using the foreign word “Tuareg” to describe this people is that they do not possess a national name. Barth,[471] who is a meticulous observer, makes this very clear: “as Amóshagh (in the plural form I’móshagh)[472] designates rather in the present state of Tawárek society the free and noble man in opposition to A’mghi (plural, Imghad), the whole of these free and degraded tribes together are better designated by the general term ‘the Red People,’ ‘I’dinet n’sheggarnén,’ for which there is still another form, viz. ‘Tishorén.’” I myself did not hear these two terms used in Air, so prefer to adopt the circumlocution Kel Tagilmus, or People of the Veil, which is used and understood by all Tuareg.

Many of the Imghad, or servile people, are themselves of noble origin, but have become the serfs of other noble clans by conquest. It is clear that the former could not use as a national name what is primarily a caste name to which they had lost their right.

The confusion which has arisen around the word “imajegh” and hasty generalisations such as those of Stuhlmann are nevertheless easy to understand, for a superficial observer talking to nobles of the Tuareg race would so readily be impressed by the recurrence and common use of the term as to assume that it really had some national sense. But Sergi[473] in this connection is misleading in citing the authority of Barth when he writes, with a footnote referring to the great explorer and implying that he is quoting him almost textually, “il nome di questi Berberi è quello di Tuareg, plurale di Tarki o Targi. Ma, osserva lo stesso Barth, questo non è il loro nome nazionale. . . . Il vero nome che essi si danno è quel medesimo che già si dava ad alcune tribù del settentrionale d’Africa, conosciuto dai Greci e dai Romani, cioè di Mazi o Macii, Maxitani è dato loro anche dagli scrittori Arabi. Oggi si adopera la forma di Amosciarg al singolare. . . . Questo sembra essere applicato a tutte le frazioni della tribù mentre quel di Tuareg probabilmente deriva dagli Arabi.” Barth, we have seen, does not do so, and Sergi is making the same error as Stuhlmann. It is true that at one point, in discussing the use of the name “Tuareg,” Barth[474] goes so far as to say, “This (the MZGh root) is the native name by which the so-called Tawarek designate their whole nation, which is divided into several families,” but from the context and from the passage generally, as well as from the other passages already quoted, it is manifest that he was referring only to the noble part of the race and not to the Imghad as well, who, he had not then realised, as he later understood, are a part of the nation.[475] The context of the passage just quoted from Barth is one in which he is showing that the Tuareg are not a tribe, but a nation, as has already been pointed out: He corrects his predecessors, saying:[476] “This name (Terga, Targa, Tarki, etc.), which has been given to the Berber inhabitants of the desert, and which Hodgson _erroneously supposed to mean ‘Tribe,’_ is quite foreign to them. . . .” Richardson,[477] in a previous trip to the Central Sahara before travelling to Air and the Sudan with Barth, had already made the same point clear. It is therefore with no shadow of justification that Sergi[478] states: “Barth non fa distinzione alcuna delle popolazioni dando il nome etnico di Tuareg o Imosciarg, e le considera tutte come una grande tribù.” He does nothing of the sort.

Bates[479] goes into the question of the MZGh names very fully. He thinks that it is evidence “of an ethnic substratum of ‘autochthones’ of a single race.” He notes the obviously close connection between the MZGh root used by the Tuareg nobles and the names in the Atlas mountains on the one hand, and the root of the Mazices, Mazaces, Macae, etc., names whose affinity with the Meshwesh of the invasions of Egypt is also obvious on the other hand. He draws the inference that a racial rather than a tribal name is involved.[480]

Nevertheless, some explanation must be sought for the appearance of the root both in a Tuareg caste name in the names of certain Atlas tribes and in classical geographical lists of North African people. Much as one might be tempted, however, to believe with Barth in the existence of a substratum of a single race, there is no real justification for assuming that all the people using the root in one form or another were even closely related. Its adoption may well have become widespread among various peoples by the use of a common language. If in its primary sense it had implied nobility or freedom or some such attribute, it is more than likely that the innate snobbishness of one race in contact with, or at one time subjected to, another race using the root in this sense, would rapidly lead them to adopt it and misuse it as their own national appellation. I am not inclined to consider the use of this root as evidence for anything but community of language. With the mixed origins which we know the Libyans possessed, any other conclusion would be dangerous. It must be remembered that there is plenty of evidence to show that in spite of the diversity of races involved, they had by the time of the Arab conquest all come to speak a common language or a series of dialects linguistically of the same origin. It is only at an early period, when the use of a single language in North Africa was probably not widespread, that the common root in the “Meshwesh” and “Macae” names can be assumed as an indication of the affinity or identification of these peoples with the later Tuareg. And at that time the names are found in the centre of North Africa only and not in the west or even in Algeria. The same considerations apply to the “Temahu”[481] of Egyptian records. The feminine form of Imajegh or Amoshagh, etc., is, of course, Temajegh or Tamahek, etc., which is the name given to the language which the Tuareg speak, though were it not for the physical likeness of the Temahu in Egyptian paintings to the Tuareg the similarity of the names alone would probably be insufficient to draw a conclusion to which, however, nearly all evidence also points.

[Footnote 461: Bates, _op. cit._, Maps III to X.]

[Footnote 462: Herodotus, IV. 191.]

[Footnote 463: Duveyrier, _op. cit._, p. 318.]

[Footnote 464: De Foucauld: _Dict. Touareg-Fraçais_, Alger, Vol. I. p. 451.]

[Footnote 465: De Foucauld: _Reconnaissance du Maroc_, Paris, 1888, p. 10 _seq._]

[Footnote 466: F. Stuhlmann: _Die Mazighvölker_, Kolonial Institut, Band 27.]

[Footnote 467: _I.e._ Libyans.]

[Footnote 468: Lenz: _Timbuktu: Reise durch Marokko_, etc., Leipzig, 1884.]

[Footnote 469: Hanoteau: _Grammaire Kabyle_, p. ix.]

[Footnote 470: De Foucauld: _Dict._, Vol. I. p. 452, _sub_ “Amajer.”]

[Footnote 471: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. V. App. III.]

[Footnote 472: Or in Air “Imajeghan.”]

[Footnote 473: Sergi: _Africa_, etc., pp. 342-3.]

[Footnote 474: Barth, _op. cit._, Vol. I. pp. 222-6.]

[Footnote 475: Where Barth is in apparent contradiction in Volume I with other statements, and especially in Volume V, on this question of the MZGh root as a national name, the explanation, I think, is that he did not apparently consider the Northern Imghad, of whom he was speaking in the first volume, as pertaining to the Tuareg nation. Later on, when this became clear, he corrected himself.]

[Footnote 476: _Loc. cit._]

[Footnote 477: Richardson: _Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara_, Vol. II. p. 140.]

[Footnote 478: _Loc. cit._]

[Footnote 479: Bates, _op. cit._, p. 42 _seq._]

[Footnote 480: _Ibid._, p. 71.]

[Footnote 481: And therefore of the Tehenu.]