The veiled Berbers of the central Sahara (the later Tuareg)

Who rules

Name

none: each town, clan and confederation has its own chief; none is named for 1 January 1200

Title

no single ruler

Since

not applicable

Confidence

medium

The Arabic writers call these peoples 'the veiled ones' (al-mulaththamun). The name Tuareg (Arabic Tawariq, singular Targi) is later; the people call themselves Imazighen or Imuhagh. Al-Bakri (1068) gives Tadmekka a king; the confederation chiefs with the drum of command (amenokal) are known only from later centuries.

What the realm holds

• Tadmekka (Essouk) and the Adrar (the later Adrar des Ifoghas): wells, pastures, the town and its market
• the Tilemsi valley and the eastern Azawad down to the Niger's north bank opposite the Gao country
• Takedda (Azelik) with its copper workshops and salt springs in the Ighazer plain west of Air
• the Air mountains with their valleys and wells (Assode in tradition)
• the Azawagh and Tamesna plains: wet-season pastures and salt licks
• on the Maghreb sheet: the Hoggar and the Ajjer (written there)

How it was acquired

Berber-speaking herders have held the central Sahara since antiquity. Ibn Hawqal (tenth century) names the Banu Tanmak as the kings of Tadmekka; the Ibadi Zanata merchants of the town were Muslims from the ninth century, and the Sanhaja of Tadmak are said by al-Zuhri to have become (Sunni) Muslims after the war of 1083-4, or in 503 AH (1109-10) by another reading.

Allies and rivals

Gao (trade partner nine days south of Tadmekka); the Ibadi merchants of Ouargla, the Jarid and the Jabal Nafusa (gold for cloth since the late tenth century); Ghadames (forty days from Tadmekka); Ghana (war of 1083-4); the Massufa and Lamtuna to the west (kin). Kanem lies beyond the Tenere to the east. No alliance or war is recorded for 1199-1200.

The realm that morning

Each group holds its own wells and pastures. Tadmekka is still a living town (radiocarbon dates of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries in its upper levels) but probably past its eleventh-century peak. Takedda is a small copper town under its own chief (Jarry, from the In Gall archaeological programme). The southern foothills of Air round the later Agadez may still be partly held by Hausa-speaking Gobirawa farmers whom the Berbers later drove south (tradition: the kan researcher writes Gobir).

Wealth

Camels, goats and sheep; caravan guiding, hire and protection; gold blanks cast at Tadmekka (al-Bakri's 'bald' dinars of pure gold; coin moulds from Nixon's excavations); copper of Takedda and earlier Marandet; salt (a salt mine called Tutak, six days from Tadmekka, al-Bakri); sorghum and millet bought from the Sudan; cotton cloth.

Military

Camel-riding warriors with spear, sword and leather shield (later evidence). No fortresses; Tadmekka's town lies in a defensible valley. No numbers in any source.

Threats

• drought on the pastures
• the shift of the gold trade away from the Tadmekka road (west to Walata, east to Kawar)
• later: Kanem's reach toward Takedda in the thirteenth century (Ibn Sa'id)

Who speaks

The king of Tadmekka for his town and its clans; the chief of Takedda for his town; elsewhere clan heads and councils of elders. The later confederations (Kel Adagh, Kel Ayr, Kel Owey, Iwillimmeden) with their drum chiefs did not yet exist in their later form.

Assemblies

Clan councils of the free men and elders (known from later practice). Society by later evidence: noble warrior lineages (imajeghen) with camels and arms, vassal herders (imghad) who paid a yearly due, clerics (ineslemen), smiths and craftsmen (inadan) and slaves (iklan); this ranking probably took shape after the tenth century.

Tribute

No outside power takes tribute on 1 January 1200. Tadmekka itself held the Saghmara in dominion (al-Bakri). Ghana, helped by the Almoravids, fought Tadmekka in 1083-4 (al-Zuhri). In the mid thirteenth century Ibn Sa'id says the king of Kanem held Takedda: that is later.

Religion

Muslims, with Ibadi merchants in Tadmekka since the ninth century and Maliki Islam spreading after the Almoravids. Arabic epitaphs and rock inscriptions at Essouk dated to the eleventh century (Moraes Farias); rock inscriptions in Tifinagh beside them.

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1200No dated event is recorded for the veiled Berbers of the central Sahara in 1200.

Places of note

• Tadmekka (Essouk): The Berber caravan town; 'the likeness of Mecca'.
• Takedda (Azelik): Copper town of the Ighazer plain.
• Assode: Old town of central Air; its founding date is not pinned.

Where the sources disagree

• Tadmekka's conversion: al-Zuhri as read by Levtzion puts it seven years after Ghana's (1083-4); the UNESCO GHA III chapter reads 503 AH (1109-10) for the Sanhaja of Tadmak and the Tasalit. Levtzion thinks it meant a turn from Ibadi to Maliki Islam.
• Wikipedia's Tuareg page dates the founding of the Sultanate of Air to 1449 in one place; the Sultanate of Agadez page and Jarry give about 1405. Both are long after 1200.
• Wikipedia's Essouk page says the town prospered between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, fr.wikipedia between the ninth and twelfth: the radiocarbon dates (twelfth and fourteenth centuries in the top levels) support occupation in 1200.

Evidence: Al-Bakri (1068) for Tadmekka, al-Zuhri and Ibn Hawqal through Lewicki (UNESCO GHA III); archaeology at Essouk (Nixon), Azelik (Bernus and Cressier), Marandet (Mauny, Lhote, Grebenart, Magnavita); later oral traditions of Air. Nothing is dated to 1199-1200.

On the map: The ground is drawn through the province and lord records (the Adrar and Tilemsi, Air, the Azawagh and Tamesna, Takedda). Pastures overlapped and moved with the rains; the edges are conventions.

Primary sources for this realm

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• History of the Sudan, Abd al-Rahman al-Sadi (about 1655, at Timbuktu). The Timbuktu tradition on the middle Niger four and a half centuries later, and the only narrative there is: the Za (Zuwa) kings of Gao and Kukiya, whose fifteenth king Za Kusoy is said to have accepted Islam in 1010 and whose successors ruled at Gao through the twelfth century; the foundation of Jenne and the conversion of its king Kunburu with his people towards the end of the sixth century of the Hijra, that is about 1200, with Jenne's early trade; and the position of Mali and Ghana as al-Sadi understood it. Read online
• The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun (1375 to 1379 at Qal'at Ibn Salama and Tunis, revised until 1406). Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes. Read online
• Medieval Arabic inscriptions of the Niger bend and the Adrar (dated epitaphs from 1013 (Essuk) and 1100 (Gao-Saney) onward). The only writing from the Sudan belt itself before the Timbuktu chronicles.
• The Book of Routes and Realms: the Description of North Africa, al-Bakri (Abu Ubayd Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Bakri) (1068, at Cordoba). Old by 1200 but still the standard description of the Sahara and the Sudan that the Almohad-period writers copied: Ghana under Tunka Manin with its twin towns and its Muslim quarter, Awdaghust, Tadmakka, Kawkaw, Takrur and Sila, the gold trade and the routes from Sijilmasa and the Dar'a; the Ibadi towns of the Jarid and the Fezzan; the Berber peoples of the Maghreb. Read online
• The Pleasure of One who Longs to Cross the Horizons (the Book of Roger), al-Idrisi (Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi) (completed in 1154 at Palermo, for Roger II of Sicily). The fullest geography of Africa a generation before 1200: the Maghreb and Ifriqiya town by town with distances and products; the Sahara routes through Sijilmasa, Awdaghust, Ghadames and Zawila; the Sudan with Ghana, Takrur, Sila, Barisa, Kawkaw (Gao) and Kugha, and Kanem with its towns Manan and Njimi; Nubia and Dongola, the Beja and the Red Sea ports; Zeila and Berbera; and the Zanj coast with Malindi, Mombasa, Qanbalu and Sofala with its gold, the earliest systematic notice of the Swahili towns. Read online
• The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. Read online
• The Travels of Ibn Battuta: Egypt, the Horn, the Swahili coast and Mali, Ibn Battuta (dictated to Ibn Juzayy) (1355, at Fez). A century and a half late, but the first eyewitness of places that in 1200 are known only from hearsay: Zeila and its stench, Mogadishu with its sultan, qadi and merchant hosts, Mombasa, and Kilwa under the Mahdali sultan Abu'l-Muzaffar al-Hasan, raiding the Zanj of the mainland; and the Sahara road from Sijilmasa through Taghaza and Walata to the court of Mali under Mansa Sulayman, then Timbuktu, Gao and Takedda among the veiled Berbers. Read online
• Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, Various (edited by N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins) (ninth to sixteenth centuries; the collection published 1981). The standard English collection of every Arabic passage on the western and central Sudan.