What do you know about the Tuareg people?
the Tuareg people
It is Amazigh people inhabiting the sub-Saharan region and the African coast. An ancient people with a long history. What is his story? And why did history not do justice to him?
What is the origin of their name?
They are called the Tuareg or the Tuareg with the letter t (Touaregs) (ⵜⵡⴰⵔⴻⴳ) in relation to Tarka, which is the saqia or the valley in the Amazigh language. It is a valley in the Fezzan region in southern Libya, and it was said that it is an area in southeastern Morocco called Tarka. They are also called Imohaq, Imohag, and Imagegen, from which the word Imazighen is derived, which means noble free men.
Their geographical location:
The Tuareg population lives between four countries. They are located in the south of Algeria in an area called Hoggar (Ahghar), in the southwest of Libya in the Fezzan region, in northern Mali in an area called Azawad and Adghag, and in the north of Niger in the Ayer region. It is a vast desert area characterized by desertification, drought and water scarcity, with some oases here and there.
In the absence of official statistics, their number may reach 3.5 million people distributed among these four countries, &85 of them live in Mali and Niger, while the remaining 15 are between Algeria and Libya.
Geographical influence of the Tuareg
Tuareg language:
As for their tongue, it is purely Berber. They constitute an extension of the Amazigh population of North Africa. They did not mix with the Arabs, as happened to the peoples of North Africa, nor with the Negroes in the south of the Sahara. That is why they preserved a pure language free of quotation, and their language is called Tamashaq or Tamagiq or the Turkic language in relation to their name Al-Tawarak, which is a dialect of dialects. Amazigh spread in North Africa. It is written in the Tifinagh letter, which is an ancient letter dating back to ten thousand years BC. It is the oldest alphabet in the world, if not the first, which is the same letter that the peoples of North Africa adopted as the official alphabet of their language.
tifinagh letter
Tuareg history:
The Tuareg people are one of the oldest peoples in the world. In prehistoric times they were known as Germanic, and in the early Islamic era they were known as the masked men (relative to the veil they put on their faces due to the harsh climate) and in the modern era they were known as Tuareg or blue men as the French call them.
Prehistoric Era:
Some of the few sources mentioned that the ancestors of the Tuareg were called the Germanic who inhabited the Fezzan region in southern Libya. These sources indicate the existence of a civilization there that is likely to be the first prehistoric civilization, according to the inscriptions found in that region, especially in the Tassili Mountains in southeastern Algeria, according to the estimates of the survey conducted during the traveler Henry Lott’s visit to the region in 1956.
Islamic era:
In Islamic times, exactly in the third century AH, the Tuareg converted to Islam during the arrival of the Arab conquerors to North Africa. They were at that time the masked people, the second generation of the Tuareg. And their origin goes back to the tribe of Sanhaja (Iznaken). The Tuareg managed in this era to reunite the tribes and spread the Islamic religion throughout the region, so they established a strong state called the Kingdom of Aughest, which includes the geographical borders of their influence to sub-Saharan Africa, what is currently known as Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, and even the State of Ghana, so they took the city of Audegest as their capital. It was led by the Lamtonian leader Teulutan bin Tiklan, who died in 222 AH.
With the end of the kingdom of Aughst, a third generation rose and established the Almoravid State. It was the first Islamic state to rule the Islamic Maghreb and the whole of North Africa, and its influence extended to Andalusia under the leadership of the Lamtonian leader Yusuf bin Tashfin. Their state continued for a century, spreading Islam throughout Africa and the Maliki Sunni doctrine until that It fell into the hands of the Almohads.
Geographical influence of the Almoravid state
The modern era:
In the modern era, the Tuareg ruled a group of sultanates, which was formed from the union of a group of tribes whose sheikhs appointed their authority until the French colonialism, which penetrated into the North African region, established the national borders of each state. These countries, forcing the Tuareg to enter into armed conflicts with these countries, especially with Mali and Niger, demanding independence or at least autonomy, so revolutions began against the Malian and Nigerien army, starting with the Kidal Revolution in 1962, then the 1990 revolution, followed by other revolutions 1995, 2004 and 2007 to the 2012 revolution, which was The last revolution The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad was able to liberate the province of Azawad and declare its independence, which did not receive international recognition.
Chief Ibrahim Ag Bahanga
Among the most important historical leaders of the Tuareg are Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, Iyad Ag Ghali and Manodiak.. Among their contemporary figures are the writer and poet Muhammad bin Khawad and the Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni, who was chosen by the French magazine Lire as one of the fifty most prominent contemporary novelists in the world and who has been nominated for the Nobel Prize several times.
This is the Tuareg people, who have not been justified by historical events, and they are still vacillating between the dream of survival at one time and the dream of independence at other times.
This was a report from the history of a great people that still carries with it a lot of history and civilization. We hope that the upcoming studies and research will give it its due.
Novelist Ibrahim Al-Koni
https://www.tamazghapeople.com/2021/09/what-do-you-know-about-tuareg-people.html