People of the veil

Sahara is the name given in modern geography to the whole of the interior of North Africa between the Nile Valley and the Atlantic littoral, south of the Mediterranean coastland...

tactlessness and discourtesy, and in part to his inability to realise that the chief, for political reasons, did not desire him to go to the Sudan. Von Bary returned to Ghat, me...

Until about twenty years ago it was easier to reach the Western Sudan and Central Africa around Lake Chad from the north than from the Gulf of Guinea, notwithstanding a journey...

The Eghalgawen massif contains a number of watering-points. The pool of Eghalgawen is near the junction of a valley sloping down from the hills, the main valley here assuming th...

On 6th August, soon after noon, I marched out of Agades with twenty-six camels and eight men for Central Air. My two travelling companions had left the same morning with ten cam...

By constantly seeing the same people for nearly three months at Auderas and in the neighbourhood, I was able to dissipate much of the innate diffidence which the Tuareg display...

One of my first trips from Auderas was to the village of Towar,[175] which lies under the south-western spurs of Bagezan on the edge of the plain between this massif and Todra....

The Auderas country, still almost in Tegama, is far less interesting ethnically than the north or east. The old permanent habitations in the area are less characteristic of the...

The Bagezan group looms large in Central Air, but even its general features are unknown. The mountains have neither been reconnoitred nor mapped. The area they occupy figures as...

Nominally at least all the Tuareg of Air are now Moslems with the possible exception of some of the Imghad of the Ikazkazan, who were described to me as Kufara (heathens). Never...

When I returned to Auderas from Tabello I found the valley had dried up very much. The hamlets were already in great part deserted. The people had moved out of the settlements w...

After the close of the classical period, the works of that great historian and philosopher, Abu Zeid Abd el Rahman ibn Khaldun, are our most fruitful source of information regar...

The history of Air is inextricably mixed up with the problems of Tuareg ethnology. It is best to treat the various questions which arise as a whole. Information for all the earl...

As a division of Tuareg the people of Air cannot be said to have achieved great deeds in the history of the world as did the Sanhaja; but as a part of the race they can justly c...

Here my account of the Air Tuareg must close. No one can be better aware than myself of the shortcomings and discrepancies of my story. The task would have been easier had a gen...