Prophet’s victorious “ goum-a” [Arabic for “ levies”—literally get-
ups] to reach athwart the Sahara-deserts. It will also show how
invaluable to ethnography are French translations of long-disregarded
Semitic historians, not merely those of the chosen Israelitish
stock. Besides, the work is little known to the “ reading public.”
E b n K hâledoon (or Khaldun) 380—the most erudite, philosophic,
and unfortunate,381 Arabian writer in Barbary during the 4th and
5th century — tells us how, “ the Molàthemeen [wearers of the
È lithàm,” muffler, for the double object of keeping off sun and dust
•in the desert, and of hiding the face from enemies—■law of the
DakMyQf® a people of Sanhadjian [Berber] race, inhabited the
sterile region that stretches away into the midst of the sandy desert
[Sahara]. From immemorial time—from very many centuries prior
to Islamism—they had continued to traverse that region where they
found everything that sufficed for their wants. Keeping themselves
thus far removed from the ‘Tell’ [Arabieè hill, i. e., Mount Atlas],
and from the cultivated country,’they replaced its productions by
the milk and flesh of their camels. Avoiding civilized countries,
they had habituated themselves to isolation ; and, brave as ferocious,
they had never bent beneath the yoke of foreign dominion.” In
short, these Sanhadjians are the perfect types of old Roman Numi-
dians, and modern Touariks, — except, in religion, the adoption of
IsIàm for Africanized-Punic fetishism — in language, a great many
Arabic words of civilization absorbed into their Berber speech — in
zoology, the camel for the horse — in arms, the match-lock for the
bow. Such, too, were a cognate tribe, the Lemtouna.
“When the Lemtouna had subjugated the desert-regions, they
carried war amidst negro nations, in order to constrain these to
become; Mussulmans [just as we, now-a-days, through missionaries,
are trying to make Christians of all peoples who are not —in most
cases, amongst inferior types of man, only hastening their ultimate
obliteration], A large portion of the Blacks then embraced Islam ;
380 Histoire des Berbères, et des,.Dynasties Musulmanes de VAfrique Septentrionale, translated
from the Arabie by the B a r o n d e S l a n e , for account of the “ Ministère de la Guerre;”
. vol. I, Algiers, 1847 ; vol. II, 1851. My excerpta are taken chiefly from I, pp. 36-7, 53,
184-5;—II, pp. 64-70, 104-5, 106. The history commences with the Arab conquest of
Barbary in the 7th century, and ends during the 14th.
ZkYD-ÂBD-ER-ItAHMÂN E b n K h a l e d o o n was born a t Tunis in 1332. After greatly
distinguishing himself a t the courts of Barbaresque princes, be became Grand Qàdee
(Judge) of Cairo under Ed-Dàher-Barqooq in 1384; when the vessel, in which his family
had embarked On their way to him, sunk, — “ Thus, one single blow deprived me for ever
of riches, happiness, and children.” He died in 1406.
882 L a y a r d , Nineveh and Babylon, 2d Exped., 1853, p. 317: — F r e s n e l (Arabes avant
VIslamisme, Paris, 1836, p. 36), shows how it was only a t the ancient Arabian fair of
Oukàsh, abolished in first century Hedjra, that hostile tribes could meet unmuffled.
but the remainder dispénsed with it, by paying the capitation-tax
[equally satisfactory to the Saracenic missionary, who good naturedly
permitted those anti-Mohammedan back-sliders, or recusants, to
‘compound (always in cash) for sins they were inclined to, b y
damning those thèy had no mind to’].”
Telagaguin, their 'king, was grandsire of Aboo-Bekr-ebn-Omar
who commanded the Elmoravidian empire. His successor Tîloutan
conquered the Souddn, “marching surrounded by 100,000 dromedary-
riders mounted upon Maharis of pure blood;” and died in Hedjra
222== a.D. 837. Another historian says that, in the 4th century
Hedjra, Obèyd-Allàh had 100,000 camels, and subdued 23 negro
kings. The Lemtouna even reached the Senegal. -,“We know,”
comments He Slano, “ that this river continued, for a long time, to
separate the Berber from the negro race.383 In the year 1446, when
the Portuguese were making their first explorations of the western
coast of Africa, the tribes of the Assanhagi \Zanaga, Sanhadja]
inhabited the northern bank of the Senegal; and the Yalof, or Wolof,
that is to say, the Blacks, occupied the other. We must observe
that ‘Senegal ris an alteration of the [Berber] word Asnaguen or
Zenaguen, plural of Zanag ; that is to say, the Sanhaja ”—one of the
great branches of the quinquegentani Berheri.m
E b n K haledoon continues^“ A s for those who remained in the
desert, nothing has changed their manner of being, and, even to-day,
they remain divided and disunited [as they continue now, 1000 years
later], * * * They [the Berber tribes] form a species of cordon along
the frontier of the land of the Blacks, _ a cordon which Stretches
i self parallely to that which the Arabs form, upon the frontier of the
two Moghrebs.and oflfrikia ;385—thus demarcating in his time, with
■ M m R I ( F w e S B VAf rii ue ™<*dentale, comprenant Vexploration du Sénégal,
w ^ 18il6h for tbe best description of these Senegalian nations.
Otia, « Berber Tribes,” p. 146p-3^pes, pp. 510-26.
T ® ^‘H^1ED00H “ Because it must not be thought that the Arab nomades had
nnabited this country in ancient times. It .was only towards the middle of the 5th cen-
wy of the Hedjra that Africa was invaded by bands of the tribes of Hillah and that of So-
ym —and then not further west than the Cyrenaica. No Arab settlers were [aside from
f> oaracen soldiery] in Barbary prior to this immigration,—except, in the confused Te-,
e “ Sends of “ Tobba, an Arabian king, who gave his name to IfriMa; * * * * And
0 reason was because the Berber race then occupied the country, and prevented the other
peoples to fix themselves in it.”
.Now, this name IfriHa, borrowed from the “ Africa” of the Latins, possessed, like
Libya ’ a more restricted geographical extension formerly than in modem days. Indeed,
f 0n® the Arabs CTen now> does not mean “ Africa,” but only the tract of country
om Cape Barca to Tunis, not even so far west as Algeria. Owing j to ignorance of this T ’ ancl ttrenchmen’s poor acquaintance then with Arabic, the General who concluded the
reaty of. Tafna” with el-Hadj Âbd-ei-Qàder, committed more diplomatic mistakes, in
6 (the cause of all the troubles France had with this gallant chieftain till she cap-
ö4