Part 2

A desert of forty days’ journey in extent lay between Aúdaghost and Támedelt,[9] a town of Sús el Aḳṣa, on the verge of the desert, and eleven days from Sijilmésah. The two months’ journey between Ghánah and Sijilmésah, would, if literally interpreted, place the capital of the Blacks forty-nine days distant from Támedelt. But where could a route of forty-nine days southward from the borders of Sús el Aḳṣa meet the Great River, unless in the vicinity of Tomboktú?[10] This city is distant about two months from Táfílélt, and not more than fifty days from Sús el Aḳṣa.[11] It owes all its importance to its advanced position, near the very point where the river turns eastward, after repressing the desert in its northerly course, and making its nearest approach to Western Barbary. The advantages of such a position could never have been overlooked while caravans traversed the desolate plains of the interior. The site of Ghánah then, and Tomboktú, being equidistant from Sús el Aḳṣa, both in a southerly direction from it, and both in the vicinity of the Great River, which, within the distance of fifty days from Sús el Aḳṣa, washes the desert during only a short part of its course, cannot have been far asunder. This brief argument is in reality unanswerable. Within the assigned time, a caravan travelling at the ordinary pace, could reach the Great River nowhere but in the vicinity of Tomboktú. The site of Aúkár then being near Tomboktú, Aúdaghost fifteen days distant from it towards the north-east, must have been situate in the same tract as the modern town or encampment of Mabrúk.[12] Thus the first view of the routes to the chief towns of the ancient Ghánah suggests the approximate positions of those towns. Let their positions be assumed accordingly, so as to give distinctness to our conceptions, while we follow, step by step, the routes to them across the desert; and the examination of these routes in all their particulars will, in turn, illustrate and confirm our assumptions, if they be correct.

The position of Támedelt, the starting point of the caravans to Negroland, must be in the first place determined. That town is stated to have been five days westward (or, we must rather suppose, south of westward) from Darʿah, and six days south-eastward from Iklí, the capital of Sús, which town, situate on a river flowing northward, was two days from Mésah and five from Wád Nún. Now the capital of Darʿah was five days distant from Sijilmésah, which was nine ordinary journeys from Fez.[13] Támedelt was therefore twenty days from Fez, by the road on the eastern side of the mountains, and it was also six days south-eastward from Iklí, which town must accordingly be so placed within five days of Wád Nún, and two days northward from the river of Mésah, as to allow Támedelt a somewhat westerly bearing from Darʿah. These conditions being fulfilled, the position of Támadelt will be nearly in lat. 28° 45′ N., long. 7° 10′ W., and not far from the modern Tatta.[14] The position thus assumed, though not quite free from uncertainty, will yet involve no inaccuracy capable of endangering the argument depending on it.

The starting point being ascertained, there remains no difficulty in tracing the route to Aúdaghost. The first day’s journey from Támedelt conducted to a deep well called Bír el Jemmálín:[15] the second led through a narrow defile. Then for three days the road went over the mountains of Azawwar,[16] strewed with masses of iron-stone. These mountains extend, according to El Bekrí, ten days’ journey from the ocean to the road (from Támedelt probably) to Sijilmésah. They are evidently the same chain of mountains which caravans now pass at the distance of six days from Wád Nún. It is apparent also that the road to Aúdaghost must have crossed them at a distance not exceeding ten days’ journey from the sea; and therefore could have scarcely inclined towards the east. Three days beyond the mountains was the watering place of Tendefas, and three days further a great well called Weínhílún.[17] Then another three days led to a scanty spring named Tázḳa, or the House.[18] Four days further were the brackish wells of Weítúnán, and after another four days the watering place of Aúkázenta.[19] There ended the hard desert, and the region of loose sand-hills commenced, the passage of which presented the greatest difficulty to the traveller, and was fraught with danger.

The northern limit and general direction of the sandy region of the great desert are marked out with tolerable distinctness in the narratives of some modern travellers. It was on the twenty-fifth day of his journey from Wád Nún to Tomboktú that Sidi Hamed entered the region of drifting sand.[20] This must have been somewhere between the twenty- third and twenty-fourth parallels of latitude. In the same line, or twenty-two days from El Harib, between Tatta and Darʿah, Caillié left the sand-hills on his journey from Tomboktú northwards.[21] Laing, on his way from Twát to Tomboktú, entered the sands in lat. 23° 56′ N.; and Scott crossed a similar tract, eleven days’ journey in extent, apparently from the twenty-first to the twenty-third parallel inclusive, and not far from the ocean.[22] The vast expanse of light sand thrown up into wave-like hillocks, which change with every wind, is a remarkable feature of the great desert, depending not more on the mineralogical constitution of the country than on the excessive dryness of the climate. The permanence of its general position, therefore, in spite of local fluctuations, is as certain as its extension from west to east, between the zones fertilized by rains. Now the site of Támedelt was four or five days westward from El Harib; and since on the road to Tomboktú from the former of these places the loose sand is entered on the twenty- fifth day, from the latter on the twenty-third; while from Támedelt to Aúdaghost the sands were entered also on the twenty-third day, there is reason to infer, that so far, the direction of the road from Sús el Aḳṣa to Aúdaghost differed little, if at all, from the modern road to Tomboktú. The ancient and modern roads to Negroland ran nearly parallel between the hills south of Sús el Aḳṣa and the zone of drifting sands.

The most difficult part of the journey, according to El Bekrí, lay over the ridges of loose sand, on entering which there was no water to be found till, after four days’ toil, the traveller reached the wells of Wanzamín, where all the roads to Negroland met together.[23] The roads thus said to meet that from Sijilmésah must have been those from Wergelán, Twát, and Télemsén or Tremecen. Now the roads from these places to Tomboktú all unite at Telig, about thirty days from El Harib, and our hypothesis respecting the position of Aúdaghost derives no slight confirmation from the circumstance that it gives to the meeting of the roads to that place, twenty-seven days from Támedelt, a position which harmonizes perfectly with their present junction on the road to Tomboktú. Near the meeting of the roads was a mountain, the recesses of which concealed bands of various tribes of the Zenágah, as the Lamṭah, Gezúlah, Geráwah, &c., all from the south-western extremity of Atlas, who lay in wait to attack caravans.

From the wells of Wanzamín the road continued through sand-hills in the province of Wárán for five days to a large well belonging to the Benú Wáreth, thence in two days to Agharef, and in three more to Akríri, that is to say, the reservoir of water.[24] Near this place was a mountain named Azgúnán, where caravans were in danger of being attacked by the Blacks.[25] One day further, over hot sands, lay the brackish wells of Wárán, then, for three days, fresh water was found in wells belonging to the Zenágah, and another day led over the high mountain, at the foot of which stood Aúdaghost. This town was situate in a hilly country, within the limits of the rains, and does not appear to have had any water but that of wells. It can hardly be supposed that the limit of the rains in the interior of the African continent, at a distance from the sea coast, ascends beyond the twentieth parallel of latitude.[26] Now if a distance of forty days’ journey be measured from Támedelt, so as to intersect the twentieth parallel towards the interior, it will be found that fifteen days’ journey south-westward (according to the distance and bearing of Aúkar from Aúdaghost) measured from that intersection, will reach to the neighbourhood of Tomboktú.

The foregoing account is evidently that of a route frequented by caravans, and therefore the distances mentioned in it may be received with confidence. Its general direction, as Abulfedá tells us, was to the south. El Bekrí describes also the journey from Darʿah to Ghánah, in a brief and uncircumstantial manner; but his description, though wanting in the minuteness and precision derivable from the experience of caravans, is yet not wholly uninstructive. From Wádi Darʿah to Wádi Tárḳa, on the margin of the desert, was a journey of five days. Then the traveller entered the wilderness in which water occurred only every two or three days. Of the wells first met with, one was called Tezámt. Eastward of it were Bír el Ḥammálín, or the porters’ well, and another named Nálellí or Málekí.[27] “From these wells,” says our author, “to the country of Islám, is a distance of four days; and at an equal distance are the Adarérén Wazzél, or mountains of iron.[28] There a desert begins in which there is no water for eight days; it is, indeed, that which is emphatically styled The Desert. The water in it belongs to the Benú Yentesír, a tribe of Zenágah. The village of Moddúken, which is next arrived at, belongs to the same race. Thence to Ghánah is a journey of four days.”[29]

Wádi Darʿah was three days from Támedelt, probably east by north. Wádi Tárḳa may be conjectured to have been on the southern side of the mountains of Azawwar mentioned in the account of the route to Aúdaghost. But the particular here chiefly deserving of attention, is The Desert, in which no water was met with for eight days. The name of this desert, omitted by El Bekrí, is supplied by subsequent writers. We are informed that the merchants going to Ghánah passed through the desert of Tíser, a dry and desolate wilderness of sand, with only a few pools of bad water, the chief of which was that called the well of Tíser.[30] The extent of this desert is variously stated to be eight, ten, twelve, and even fourteen days’ journey.[31] At its eastern extremity stood Aúdaghost, and hence it is not surprising that the journey to that city should present diminished difficulty; though the loose, hot sands, and intervals of four or five days without water, in the latter half of the route thither, between the 23rd and 32nd days, clearly mark the continuation of the inhospitable tract.[32] On the west, the desert of Tíser adjoined the division of the Ṣaḥrá called Kamnúdíyah, which bordered on the ocean in the vicinity of Cape Bojador, as shall be shown hereafter. Unless we assign, therefore, to the territorial divisions of the Ṣaḥrá a disproportionate extension from west to east, the contiguity of the maritime district of Kamnúdíyah to the desert of Tíser, strengthens the presumption that the latter could hardly have reached beyond the twelfth meridian from the shores of the Atlantic; or, in other words, that it did not extend far east of the meridian of Tomboktú, and, consequently, that the road to this city from the north passes over the tract of desert anciently named Tíser.

But it will naturally be asked, is there such a tract of peculiarly arid desert on the road to Tomboktú? Certainly there is; a desert of like extent, presenting the same physical character, and occupying a similar position in the route. Ibn Baṭúṭah, on his way from Sijilmésah to Tomboktú, arrived at Tegháza, near the edge of the desert, in twenty- five days. In ten days more, he came to the wells, or rather muddy pools of Táserahlá, where the caravan halted to prepare for the march over the formidable waste of sand, which it required ten days to traverse in order to reach Aïwalátin, a town on the southern border of the Ṣaḥrá.[33] Had that traveller crossed obliquely from Táserahlá to Tomboktú, he might perhaps have found the waterless desert to exceed a ten days’ journey in extent. But towards the east its width seems to diminish; whether it be that the northward course of the Great River, or the chain of mountains determining that circuit of the stream, and stretching across into the desert, modifies the atmosphere so as to give a greater range to the periodic rains in that meridian, we have no means of deciding. But the whole of the western Ṣaḥrá and the peculiar tract under consideration, are described by Leo Africanus in the following manner:—

“To begin with the desert of Zenaga; this is a dry and barren tract beginning from the ocean on the west, and extending eastward to the salt pits of Tegaza. On the north it is bounded by Numidia; that is to say, by Sus, Acca, and Darah; and it extends towards the south as far as the land of the Blacks; that is to say, to the kingdom of Gualata and Tombutto. There is no water found in it, except at intervals of a hundred miles, and this, after all, is salt and bitter, in wells of great depth, particularly on the road from Segelmesse to Tombutto. There are many wild animals and serpents in it, as shall be related in the proper place. In this waste is found a desert very difficult and dismal, called Azaoad, where neither water nor dwelling-place is met with for two hundred miles, from the well of Azaoad to the well of Araoan, which is a hundred and fifty miles from Tombutto, and in which great numbers of men and animals perish of heat and thirst.”[34]

The same writer elsewhere informs us, that the desert of Azawad was so called from its barrenness and dryness. It is not unreasonable to suppose that when the local designation of Tíser fell into disuse, the epithet expressing the general aspect of the region took its place. The name Azawad still remains to the tract of desert northward of Tomboktú.[35] And it cannot escape attention that the deserts of Tíser and Azawad resemble each other not only in extent and physical character, but that they are also equidistant from Sijilmésah; that they are both on the road southward from it, and both reaching to the southern limit of the Ṣaḥrá. There is still another point of resemblance between them, which, of itself, is almost sufficient to prove their common identity. El Bekrí remarks, that in travelling from Sijilmésah to Ghánah, a desert of two months’ journey was traversed, in which there were no fixed habitations, and the only people met with were wanderers, such as the Benú Masúfah, a branch of the Zenágah. The Benú Masúfah then, were in the middle of the eleventh century the tenants of the inhospitable plains over which lay the road to Ghánah; and it is remarkable that, three centuries later, the same miserable tribe hovered over the road to Tomboktú. Ibn Baṭúṭah found them to be the regular, and, as it were, hereditary guides across that desert, with the intricacies of which, tradition as well as personal experience had made them perfectly acquainted. In a region where the natural landmarks are so broad and unchangeable, and where man is comparatively so weak; where there is so little to tempt ambition or to nourish caprice, and where the whole tribe laying claim to a long extent of territory, could never exceed a handful of individuals,—the fact that the roads to Ghánah and Tomboktú, traced over peculiarly arid and forbidding tracts, both passed through the encampments of the same tribe, is a strong proof of the proximity of those roads: for the occupiers of the most inhospitable region in which life can with difficulty be supported, are not likely to be disturbed in their possessions.

It has been seen that Leo Africanus represents the country of the Zenágah, or Ṣinhájah, to have extended from the sea shore as far eastward as Tegháza and Tomboktú. He obviously meant to intimate that the road to Tomboktú formed the eastern boundary of that nation or division of the Berbers. But his expressions are not such as require to be strictly interpreted; on the contrary, they have a claim to that latitude of explanation which reconciles them with the state of things at present, when the Zenágah occupy the country round Tomboktú and to a short distance eastward of it. His expressions, however, militate most strongly against any hypothesis which would place Aúdaghost remote from Tomboktú, since the road to the former of those cities lay wholly within the limits of the Zenágah. If these people held as large a share of the Ṣaḥrá in the beginning of the sixteenth century as in the middle of the eleventh,—and, since they figured as conquerors in the only revolution generally affecting them in the meantime, this can hardly be disputed,—it must follow that the road to Aúdaghost, being within their limits, could not have passed far eastward of Tomboktú.

The Zenágah extended southward, according to Leo, “to the country of the Blacks, where are the kingdoms of Gualata and Tombutto.” To the words, “the country of the Blacks,” Marmol, while borrowing largely from the Arab writer, adds the gloss, “which is called Geneúa.”[36] And herein he accords with all other authorities respecting the position of Genéwah, which region, however vaguely defined, is yet always placed on the frontiers of Negroland, westward from Tomboktú. In early ages however, before the Berbers had derived strength from Arab instruction, the Blacks probably possessed a larger share of the desert, or at least the name Genéwah reached further northward. An Arab writer informs us, that Genéwah extended from the ocean in the west, to the country of Wergelán in the east, and from Amímah in the south to Arkí and Núl el Aḳṣa in the north.[37] The longitudinal dimensions of this country are here expressed in terms of obvious inaccuracy. Wergelán, though far to the north-east of the country called Genéwah, is yet made conterminous with it, owing to the great share which that Berber state took in the commerce of Negroland, at that time concentred in Ghánah. But the line on which the breadth of Genéwah is measured, drawn from north to south, from Arkí to Amímah, may be presumed to mark its central or principal section. Now Arkí was on the hills of the Lumtúnah, seven days distant from Wád Nún, and Amímah stood at a short distance westward or south- westward from the future site of Tomboktú.[38] The mean position of Genéwah being thus indicated, the author adds, “and of its cities, is Ghánah.”[39] Here, then, is another proof that Ghánah was contiguous to the western desert and to western Negroland, and that the tract of country in which it stood and flourished, was the same in which Tomboktú subsequently rose into importance.

The country assigned to Genéwah, in the above-cited passage, really belonged for the most part to the Zenágah, who, anterior to their conversion to Mohammedanism, lived much intermingled with the Blacks. The latter may have had the upper hand; or, though in a servile state, they may have been the more numerous class of the inhabitants; or finally, the slave trade being carried on universally in the desert, the Arabs of Barbary may have easily confounded the country exporting slaves with that which produced them; and thus applied the name Genéwah to the deserts of which Berber tribes were, if not the sole occupants, at least the masters. But the movements of the Morabites revealed more completely the partition and social condition of the Ṣaḥrá. The northern portion of it, towards the ocean, was possessed by the Lumtúnah, whose dwellings covered a range of hills (probably those called by El Bekrí Azawwar) said to be six days’ journey in length, and to be shaded by 20,000 palm trees.[40] On these hills, and about seven days from Wád Nún, stood the fort or town of Arkí, the chief place of the Lumtúnah, whose flocks wandered from the shores of the ocean as far eastward as the road to Ghánah.

South of the Lumtúnah, but separated from them by an uninhabited tract ten days’ journey in width, were the Benú Goddálah, the most powerful of the Berber tribes. In the uninhabited tract ten days wide, it is easy to recognize the sandy region south of Cape Bojador, and forming the continuation of the desert of Tíser or Azawad. The country of the Benú Goddálah is said to have extended a two months’ journey in length and breadth, a description which is applied also to the whole western Ṣaḥrá, and to the dominions of Ghánah; and considering that in each case the Atlantic Ocean is taken as a boundary, it is evident enough that no exact limits were set to territorial possessions in the desert, and that claims of sovereignty often extended from opposite quarters over the same ground.[41]

In the country of the Benú Goddálah was a mine or natural deposit of salt near a town or place of fixed habitation on the sea shore, called Aúlíl. At this place was a point of land, or peninsula, insulated by the tide, but accessible on foot at low water. Close to it was the port. Ambergris was collected on it at the sea side, and turtle, which constituted the chief food of the inhabitants, were there so large, that fishermen, as our author assevers, went to sea in their shells. From Aúlíl salt was carried inland to Ghánah and other cities of the Blacks. The road from the same place to Wád Nún was a two months’ journey in length, going along the sea shore, where fresh water was found by digging in the sand when the tide was out.[42]

There is little room for doubt or hesitation in determining the position of Aúlíl. One point only on the whole coast of the Ṣaḥrá can be selected for it with any show of reason: and that point is in the bay of Arguin, where the natural deposits of salt, the little island or peninsula, and the abundance of large tortoises, are all found together; and exactly at a distance of two months’ journey from Wád Nún, along the shore.[43] At Arguin also existed, in the fifteenth century, a trade derived from the natural productions of the place, exactly similar to that ascribed to Aúlíl in the eleventh century. Since the shores of the Great Desert offer one locality, and but one, answering to the description given by El Bekrí of Aúlíl, we must necessarily conclude that this town was situate in that locality,—namely, near Cape St. Anne in the bay of Arguin.[44]

Thus it appears that the Benú Goddálah were the possessors of the maritime region of the Ṣaḥrá, from Cape Blanco southwards. They also extended far inland (a two months’ journey, as has been already stated), and were separated by a distance of only six days from the Blacks on the Great River, and in the vicinity of Ghánah. They were the possessors, therefore, of the vast country which is now divided among the Ludayas, Brebísh, Trarzas, Erghebat, and others. Though esteemed the most powerful of the Berber tribes, they were yet compelled to yield the pre- eminence to the Lumtúnah, in the wars which immediately preceded the coalition of both under the name of Morabites. It may be fairly assumed, therefore, that these great tribes which divided between them the entire breadth of the Ṣaḥrá where it was least inhospitable, constituted the main body of the Berber nation to which they belonged; and therefore that the road to Aúdaghost, which left them on the west, lay near to the limit of the country occupied by the Zenágah, and consequently passed through the same tract as the road subsequently traced to Tomboktú.