Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/570

 470 NOETH-WEST AFRICA. mingled with the Ulad-Delim nation, 'with whom they had contracted numerous alliances. After making themselves masters of the Adghagh highlands and of the surrounding plains, they united with other Berber or with Nigritian tribes ; then breaking away from their mountain fastnesses, and crossing the Niger, they penetrated far into the Sudan, where they reduced more than one Negro kingdom. But they have been partly subdued in their turn, at least in an ethnological and linguistic sense. Many have been assimilated in physical appearance to the Haussa Negroes, while their Berber speech has been largely affected by words and expressions borrowed from the Nigritian languages of Sudan. Travellers speak vaguely of communities not yet converted to the Mohammedan faith, who are supposed to occupy the Adghagh uplands, interspersed amongst the Awellimiden tribes. These aborigines take the name of Daggatun, and speak the same Berber dialect as the Tuaregs ; but their complexion is lighter, and they marry exclusively amongst themselves. No Targui, however poor, would ever consent to give his daughter in marriage to the wealthiest heir of the Daggatuns. These pagans have no rights except through the mediation of some Targui patron, who in return for their tribute consents to become their ** shield." But when the tribe sets out on a marauding or warlike expedition, the Daggatuns become the shield, being always placed in front. According to the Jewish traveller, Mardochai, these retainers of the Awellimiden are Jews, if not in religion at least by descent, and like their kindred elsewhere, occupy themselves chiefly with the retail traffic. Being animated by little zeal for the faith, and remiss in the observance of the prescribed prayers and fasts, the Awellimiden have neither schools nor mosques. Their religious centre is in the Sudan, their marabuts being the Bakkai of Timbuktu, to whom they remit their offerings, and from whom they receive the interpretation of the Koran and all new institutions. Thus the ancient matri- archal custom, according to which the inheritance passes to the sister's sons, ha8 now been abolished among the marabuts of the Awellimiden, surviving only in the civil population. In other respects the usages of the southern Tuaregs differ little from those of their northern kindred. Like them they dwell in leather tents or under matting, and the nation is divided into a noble class, and the imrhad, or caste of enslaved workers. Manual labour is held in contempt, and their chief occupation is incessant warfare with their neighbours, whether these be of kindred stock, like the Kel-Gheres and Itissan tribes, or of aUen race, like the riverain populations of the Niger Valley.