Principally the inhabitants of the Sahara, Tuaregs are a Berber subgroup, which created a separate identity from other Berbers. They inhabit various parts of North and West Africa, with the majority of the Libyan Tuaregs living in the Fezzan region. The Tuaregs people speak Tamasheq, the language that belongs to the Berber-Afroasiatic family of languages.

According to Tuareg folklore, their origin can be traced back to the Tuareg queen ‘Tin Hinane’ who lived between the 4th and 5th centuries. The Tuareg refer to her as Tamenokalt, which means ‘Queen of the tents’. The story of Tin Hinane tells of the queen escaping punishment from a misdeed and fleeing from Tafilalt in Morocco and settling into the Sahel region of North Africa. She was followed by her Berber servants, among whom was a woman named Takamata. Both Takamata and Tin were pregnant. Encountering difficulties during the journey. Takamata, loyal to her queen, went in search of food and came across an anthill, in which she found edibles stored by the ants. Returning to Tin with the nourishment the entourage were able to continue their journey. They eventually arrived at Abalissa, Algeria, where both gave birth. The queen delivered a daughter, while Takamata gave birth to two girls. It is told that these three females then became the ancestors of the Tuaregs. Tin Hinane’s tomb, discovered in 1925, is now a tourist point, located in Abalissa, Algeria. The walls of Tin Hinane’s tomb have various inscriptions in Tifinagh, Libyan Berber script⁶.

Etymology of ‘Tuareg’

Tuaregs refer to themselves as Kel Tamasheq which translates as ‘Speakers of Tamasheq’ and Kel Tagelmust - ‘The Veiled People’, referring to the veil worn by the Tuareg men⁷. Between the 10th and 16th centuries, the Tuaregs were known to have been called by various names. Writers of the time including, Ibn Hawkal and al-Bakri, in the 10th and 11th centuries called them Tuaregs Mulatthamin, meaning “the veiled ones.”

This term was also used by other writers in later centuries. The English called the Tuaregs ‘The Blue People’. They are also known regionally as Imuhagh or Imushagh, which is another variant of Amazighen, the name Berbers identify themselves as⁸.

Colonial History

In the 19th century, the Tuaregs confederations came into being, with each confederation ruled by its own Supreme Chief, with the Council of Elders from each tribe assisting them. There were seven major confederations, including the famous Kel Ajjer confederation in the Fezzan region of Libya and Western Algeria, whose stronghold was at Ghat⁹. The Tuaregs turned out to be instrumental in resisting the French invasion in the central Sahara in 1881, in which the French were badly defeated by the Tuaregs. However, in the subsequent years, at the turn of 20th century, the Tuaregs capitulated to French power, which resulted in the Tuaregs territory coming under the control of the French. After taking over the control, the French divided the Tuareg territory into several nation states. ¹⁰.

Tuareg Society and Social Structure

The Tuaregs were originally a nomadic society composed of pastoralists who tended livestock, however due to desertification many of the Tuareg society began to cultivate agricultural crops alongside water holes and oases. After the colonisation by the French and other European nations, the trading culture of the Tuareg society was transformed. Under the Trans Sahara trading system, the Tuaregs with their abilities to carry out long distance trading became instrumental in exchanging the European products with the gold, salt, leathers, and peppers from west Africa. Their role in supervising the Trans Saharan trading routes eventually turned them into a powerful and influential tribe. Under Ottoman and Arab colonisation the Tuaregs are also credited for their role in spreading Islam throughout the Sahara¹¹.

The Garamantes, are another Amazigh people who dwelled in the Fezzan region of Libya, some 700 miles south of the Mediterranean coast. The Garamantes are successors of the Iron Age Berber tribes.

Although the earliest written proof of the existence of the Garamantes tribe is in the 5th century BC, they were probably present as a tribe in Fezzan from 1000 BC, emerging as a major regional power during the second century AD, possessing a strong agricultural economy through the building of Qanat irrigation systems in Fezzan, consisting of over a thousand miles of underground tunnels and shafts accessing fossil water). The origin of the name ‘Garamantes’ is derived from the Greek word ‘Igerramen’, which translates to “Saints’ or ‘Sacred, Unadulterated People.”

Unlike other more nomadic Amazigh groups, the Garamantes engaged in farming and trading agriculture, with their major cultivations being grapes, figs, barley, and wheat. The Garamantes of Fezzan are held to be one of the first tribes to instigate trans-Saharan trade¹². The cave paintings and the rock art of the Sahara Desert depict their exchange of goods.

The Garamantes established a large urban society in the Sahara desert, in the southwest of Fezzan, named Garama, or Germa, in the Sahara desert, which served as the capital of the Garamantian kingdom. Today, the ruins of the ancient city of Garama can be visited, a testament to the former wealth of the Garamantian kingdom. The Garamantian kingdom sustained its prosperity over the six centuries of its rule, annexing and dominating neighbouring tribes and growing vastly, until it eventually lost sustainability and strength as its sources of underground water shrunk¹³.

The Tebou, or Toubou, are nomadic Amazigh inhabitants of the mountains of Southern Libya, consisting of nomadic herders and farmers living across the Saharan oases¹⁴. The name ‘Tebou’ literally means the ‘rock people’. Apart from Libya, the Tebou are also found in Chad, Niger and Sudan. The Tebou consist of two subgroups: the Teda and Dazagra, both of which share the language of the Nilo-Saharan language family.

There is no substantiated account of the origins of the Tebou people. However, according to the ancient greek historian Herodotus, the Tebou were persecuted by the Garamantes but this is contested by many historians. Apart from that, a number of references about the Tebou people are found in the Islamic literature dating back to the 8th and 9th century. Notable people who have mentioned the Tebous include the Islamic scholar - Ibn Qutaybah and the Persian polymath - Al Khwarizmi¹⁵.

Society and Social Structure

Livestock and farming are central to Tebou society, with the majority relying on the herding and trading of goats, sheep and donkeys. Furthermore, the cultivation of grains and dates along the oases is of great importance. Amongst the Tebous, the quantity of livestock determines one’s wealth and status. Livestock is often used as a dowry in marriage. The Tebous involvement in trading made them influential in linking north Africa to west Africa.

Apart from livestock and farming, the Tebou people are also involved in the mining of salt and a salt-like substance known as natron, which is used in the majority of all Tebou foods and medicines¹⁶.

Being majorly a nomadic pastoralist tribe, the Tebou society is built on the clan system that binds the people together and serves to protect them. In the Tebou household, the father is the head of the family and holds most of the power. Family and clan are the two units of Tebou society¹⁷.

Traditionally, there have been three major classes in Tebou society, free men, artisanal and the slave class. Freemen, owning property and livestock, were at the top of the hierarchy. The people from the artisanal class were experts in metal and leather work, salt mining, and farming among other occupations. The lowest in the hierarchy were slaves who were captured during raids and wars¹⁸.

Persecution of Tebou in Contemporary Libya

The Tebou people have remained one of the most persecuted groups of people, suffering under the Gaddafi regime, and even after post revolution Libya. Tebou people in Libya have been subject to various forms of discrimination ranging from being denied citizenship, access to education and healthcare and being subjected to systematic evictions from land. In December 2007, the Gaddafi government revoked the citizenship of many Tebou Libyans claiming that they were, in actuality, natives of Chad and not of Libya¹⁹.

Today the Tebou of Libya reside primarily in the southeast of Libya, near the Kufra oasis²⁰.

The Haratins, while not Amazigh in origin, are a small group of people who live across the oases of Libya and speak the Maghrabi Arabic dialect and Berber languages, and are widely considered distinct from other Sub-Saharan African peoples²¹. They live across Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and the Western Sahara.

The name ‘Haratine’ is derived from two words—Ahardan, a Berber word meaning “dark color” and Haratine being Arabic for “plowmen”. Ahardan undoubtedly referred to the skin color of “other’” people, as distinct from the Berbers, whereas haratine is for the cultivation occupation of Haratin²².

It is argued that the Haratins originated from West Africa and the Sahel region, and were brought to North Africa as slaves, but have managed to retain their own distinct identity. The Haritans, traditionally being a slave class, did not own any property or land, but rather served their masters by cultivating the land and tending livestock. The slave status, as with other tribes in the region, was transferred from parents to children²³. With the outlawing of slavery across many countries in which the Haratins resided, the tradition of keeping Haratins in cycles of servitude has gradually fallen away, but has to be fully eradicated. It is hoped that this practice will become a relic of the previous century in the next decade or so.