570 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— E. 



of the shore, rising and falling with variations in shore outline. The bearing of these 

 facts on the problem of recent coastal submergence is discussed, and tidal studies 

 now in progress in the vicinity of New York to determine the form of mean sea-level 

 are described. 



Mr. F. Rennell Rodd. — The Land of the Tuaregs. 



The Tuareg of the Central Sahara represent the survivors of a people which at 

 one time inhabited the interior of North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Libyan 

 Desert, south of those countries which can properly be called Morocco, Algeria 

 Tunisia and Tripohtania, and north of the negroid zone of Equatoria. The latter 

 belt appears to have extended further north in early historical times ; indeed, the 

 further back in time the further north are the negroids found to extend. 



Leo Africanus, writing in the first half of the sixteenth century, divided the people 

 of the interior of North Africa into five sections. This people is already described as 

 wearing the litham or veil, as the Tuareg do now. The five groups of people who 

 may be accepted as the ancestors of the present Tuareg can be identified. The 

 westernmost are called Sanhaja ; they at one time ruled most of the interior of North 

 Africa, and ultimately conquered Fez, there establishing the Almoravid Dynasty, 

 that is, the dynasty of the El Merabatin or holy men, so-called when these Tuareg 

 accepted Islam. The second group was an offshoot of the Sanhaja, and lived east 

 of the latter. Both these groups lost most of their Tuareg peculiarities by admixture 

 with the Moors, consequent upon their own conquest of Fez and the conquest by the 

 latter of the Middle Niger. The third group, called Targa, is to-day represented by 

 the Tuareg of Ahaggar and part of those of Air. The fourth group, called Lemta, 

 are the Azger Tuareg of the Fezzan and some of the Air Tuareg. These Lemta 

 occupied the Air Mountains, coming down the Kawar Road from the Fezzan, settling 

 round Lake Chad for a time, and finally invading Air, peopled by Gober negroids from 

 the S.E. They were driven in the first instance south by the pressure of Arab and 

 other foreign interference in the north, and then east by the Semitic thrust across 

 Equatoria from the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Darfur and Wadai. The fifth and last 

 area of Leo, that of the Berdeoa people, can be identified with the Tibesti Mountains, 

 where the name Bardai survives, and the Libyan Desert other than that part around 

 the western oases of Egypt. This area is now inhabited by Tebu, a Kanuri folk, with 

 a very recent Semitic infiltration in Kufra and a less recent Semitic occupation of 

 Dongola and the S. Libyan Desert. The Tuareg formerly here are probably the 

 present Awelimiden tribes now living between the Niger at Gao and the desert west 

 of Agades. The name Awehmiden recalls that of the Blemmyes in the S. Libyan 

 Desert ; their migration west from Tibesti is traditionally preserved among them. 

 An indication of the practice of veiling by their men is possibly contained in the 

 description given of the Blemmyes that they had eyes in their chest. 



The association of the Tuareg with the Libyan Desert both southern and northern 

 is justified by Egyptian records. Notices of fighting between the people of the Nile 

 Valley and Libyans in the deserts to the west occur as early as the Fifth Dynasty. 

 Leaving these early references out of account, there are in the Eleventh Dynasty 

 circumstantial and detailed accounts of people called Tamahu, whose name suggests 

 Temajegh or Temehaq (according to dialect) the language of the Tuareg, the word 

 itself a female form of Imajegh, the name by which the Tuareg refers to the noble 

 tribes of the races. Besides this there are Nineteenth-Dynasty tomb paintings depicting 

 Temahu, and bearing sufficiently striking resemblances to the drawings of figures 

 associated with the Tuareg and certainly made by them in Air many centuries later, 

 as to justify the identification. 



Indications exist that the Libyans generally are not one race but are composed 

 of several stocks. The Tuareg, whose history can be traced back, if their identification 

 with the Blemmyes is correct, to a period in the first millennium B.C., and if the 

 deductions from Egyptian records are well founded, at least to the second millennium 

 B.C., seem to be one of these racial stocks which, for convenience of geographical 

 classification, are called Libyan or, in a linguistic classification, Berbers, but which 

 have little in physiological type in common. The origin of the Tuareg is not the 

 same as that of other Lib5ran types, and is probably connected with the Eastern 

 Mediterranean, even as perhaps one of the other Libyan types descended from the 

 Cro Magnon man is related to a racial stock associated with Spain, France and 

 Western North Africa. 



