Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa : $b Including accounts of Tripoli, the Sahara, the remarkable kingdom of Bornu, and the countries around Lake ChadBarth, Heinrich
History
Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa : $b Including accounts of Tripoli, the Sahara, the remarkable kingdom of Bornu, and the countries around Lake Chad
Barth, Heinrich
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Africa, North -- Description and travel
their abode amongst the Hogár, in a district called Tehellahóhet, on the
road from Asïu to Tawát. A portion of the last tribe (viz. the Fárkana
or Aférkenén) dwell in a valley called Tárat, about a day’s journey
north-west from Nghákeli.
Besides these four great divisions, there are many other sections of
the Imghád. The names of these, as far as they became known to me, are
as follows: the Dik-Surki, settled in the territory of the Azkár, in a
place called Édehi; the Kél-n-tunín, living in Aderár; the Amatghílelen,
who have their abode in the same spot; the Kél-áhenet, living in Hágara;
the Akeshemáden, in the valley called Atúl; the Íkelan, who have their
dwelling-places in Zerzer; the Kélghafsa, in Ífak; the Kél-ífis, in
Temághaset; and finally, the Ijrán.
The ruling race of the Imóshagh subsist entirely on the labour of this
depressed class, but still more upon the tribute or gheráma which,
as I mentioned above, they raise from the caravans—a custom already
mentioned by Leo Africanus. Without some such revenue they could not
trick themselves out so well as they do, though when at home in their
“tekábber” they live at a very little expense, particularly as they are
not polygamists. The Imghád are not allowed to carry an iron spear nor
to wear a sword, which is the distinction of the free man, nor any very
showy dress. Most of them may be regarded as settled, or as “Kél,” that
is to say as the constant, or at least as the ordinary, inhabitants of
a given place; and this indeed, it seems, is even to be said of a great
many of the Azkár themselves, who seem to hold a middle place between
the nomadic and the settled tribes. The consequence is that many of them
do not live in leather tents, or “éhe,” but in round conical huts called
tekábber, made of bushes and dry grass.
The town of Ghát (the favoured locality of which might be presumed to
have attracted a settlement at a very early age) is not mentioned by any
Arabic author except the traveller Ebn Batúta, in the fourteenth century,
and seems never to have been a large place. Even now it is a small town
of about two hundred and fifty houses, but nevertheless of considerable
commercial importance, which would become infinitely greater if the
jealousy of the Tawáti would allow the opening of the direct road from
Timbúktu, which seems to be under the special protection of the powerful
chief Gemáma.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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