The Tuareg: People of Ahaggar

by Jeremy Keenan

The blue-veiled Tuareg of the central Sahara are the very definition of romantic glamour. The severity of their homeland and the riches of their traditional culture have won them the unstinting regard of generations of explorers. They first became a household word when their ferocious defence of their desert homeland halted the advance of French imperialism. A generation later this proud warrior nation would accept an honourable peace.
In 1962 the revolution, which succeeded in expelling France from all of Algeria, also created new patterns of authority in the Sahara. This was the period when Jeremy Keenan started his lifelong quest to observe how this traditional society would adapt to the egalitarianism of a socialist Arab republic. His is a classic work, part history, part anthropology, part travelogue. It is required reading for all who have become interested in the Tuareg and the Sahara.

Genres: Africa, History, Nonfiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deserted

This is not a real review because I couldn’t make it through this book. The author’s objective is “to explain the processes of change that have taken place among the Kel Ahaggar during the last decade or so…..in effect, an historical analysis of change from the earliest traditional times, through the colonial period, to the present.” (p.12) The present is around 1971. If “explain” is the operative verb, then I would say that there should have been some other way to proceed, because what we have is unreadable except for the most keen and dedicated scholars of Tuareg or Algerian history. I’m afraid I don’t rank among them. The first chapters, dealing with the pre-colonial and early colonial periods, are so filled with dozens of names of tribes, clans, sub-clans, and places (of which only a few appear on the single map) that it is impossible to absorb even a part of them. The overall attempt, which seems to me a greatly expanded PhD thesis, is marked by far more history than anthropology. While the author puts some personal experiences and accounts of research activity in, I felt the whole was a project which bit off far more than could be chewed. The closer the book gets to the time the author lived in southern Algeria with the Tuareg, the clearer it gets, but let’s just call this a “note”, not a review, because I just could not cross the finish line. Without a camel in sight, I deserted my efforts. If you want to be a Tuareg-ologist then disregard what I’ve written and try it yourself as you’ll no doubt find something of value.

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this almost at random, long before I knew of Keenan's rich second life as a professional conspiracy theorist. The Tuareg is an early work from the 70s, and is initially difficult of which to make heads or tails. However, if you ignore the book's pretensions to geography, ethnography, and subtle self-aggrandizement, what comes through is a fascinating snapshot of the Kel Ahaggar at a moment of transition. Keenan's reconstruction of late 19th and early 20th century local history is fascinating, as is his documentation of the Kel Ahaggar's varied transitions to life as French subjects, then Algerian citizens. In refreshing contrast to many accounts of the Tuareg, Keenan largely resists romanticizing the lifestyle and instead describes a highly pragmatic, sometimes predatory social structure that was already in flux by the time the 20th century arrived.

More than anything, it was nice after the intense, and intensely Algiers-focused, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 to read from a different center of gravity where the war is hardly a blip in comparison to prospects for employment at the French nuclear site In Eker.

[Mike Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather terrific snapshot of where the Tuareg had ended up by the end on the sixties.