Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa, Vol. 1 (of 5) : $b being a journal of an expedition undertaken under the auspices of H.B.M.'s Government, in the years 1849-1855Barth, Heinrich
History
Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa, Vol. 1 (of 5) : $b being a journal of an expedition undertaken under the auspices of H.B.M.'s Government, in the years 1849-1855
Barth, Heinrich
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Africa, North -- Description and travel
It appears that the Kél-owí are traceable from the north-west, and the
nobler part of them belong to the once very powerful and numerous tribe
of the Aurághen, whence their dialect is called Auraghíye even at the
present day. Their name signifies “the people settled in (the district
or valley of) Owí;” for “kél” is exactly identical with the Arabic word
áhel, and seems besides to be applied with especial propriety to
indicate the settled, in opposition to the nomadic tribes. For in
general the characteristic mark of the Kél-owí and their kinsmen is,
that they live in villages consisting of fixed and immovable huts, and
not in tents made of skins, like the other tribes, or in movable huts
made of mats, like the Tagáma and many of the Imghád of the Awelímmiden.
With this prefix kél, may be formed the name of the inhabitants of any
place or country:—Ferwán, Kél-ferwán; Bághzen, Kél-bághzen; Afélle (the
north), Kél-afélle, “the people of the north,” whom the Arabs in
Timbúktu call Áhel e’ Sáhel; and no doubt a Targi, at least of the tribe
of the Awelímmiden or Kél-owí, would call the inhabitants of London Kél-
london or Kél-londra, just as he says Kél-ghadámes, Kél-tawát.
But there is something indeterminate in the name Kél-owí, which has both
a narrower and a wider sense, as is frequently the case with the names
of those tribes which, having become predominant, have grouped around
them and, to a certain extent, even incorporated with themselves many
other tribes which did not originally belong to them. In this wider
sense the name Kél-owí comprises a great many tribes, or rather
sections, generally named after their respective settlements.
I have already observed that the Berbers, in conquering this country
from the Negro, or I should rather say the sub-Libyan race (the
Leucæthiopes of the ancients), did not entirely destroy the latter, but
rather mingled with them by intermarriage with the females, thereby
modifying the original type of their race, and blending the severe and
austere manners and the fine figure of the Berber with the cheerful and
playful character and the darker colour of the African. The way in which
they settled in this country seems to have been very similar to that in
which the ancient Greeks settled in Lycia. For the women appear to have
the superiority over the male sex in the country of Ásben, at least to a
certain extent; so that when a ba-Ásbenchi marries a woman of another
village, she does not leave her dwelling-place to follow her husband,
but he must come to her in her own village. The same principle is shown
in the regulation that the chief of the Kél-owí must not marry a woman
of the Targi blood, but can rear children only from black women or
female slaves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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