Tin Hinan, Legendary Ancestress-Queen of the Tuareg, and Her Tomb, and Women Leaders in Amazigh History

Hocine Ziyani, La reine Tin Hinan, (Wikimedia)

Let's do a cultural post far from any of the current (and slowly merging into each other) wars. (And a hat tip to Diana Buja for calling this to my attention.) A post at the Ancient Origins website discusses "The Monumental Tomb of Queen Tin Hinan, Ancient Ancestress of the Tuaregs."

Besides being an interesting story in its own right, it gives me a chance to talk about the prominent role women leaders have played in the history of North Africa's Amazigh ("Berber") people.

In 1925 a monumental tomb was excavated in Abalessa in southern Algeria near Tamanrasset in the mountain region known as Hoggar (Arabic) of Ahaggar (Berber/Tamazight/Tamasheq) by archaeologist Byron Khun de Prorok. It contained the remains of a woman buried with fine jewelry, and inside an elaborate structure that may have been a Roman frontier fort. Coins and later carbon dating suggest a 4th or 5th century AD date.

The Tuareg, the nomadic Saharan Amazigh people who live in southern Algeria and Libya, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and some neighboring countries, consider this the tomb of their legendary Queen Tin Hinan, who is considered the ancestress of the Tuareg people and the ruler of the Hoggar region. In Tuareg tradition, the monumental tomb is that of Tin Hinan, or T'in Hinan, ancestress and Queen of the Tuareg people. Tin Hinan literally means "she of the tents," or "she of the camp," and she is also known as Tamenukalt,  or "Queen."

Some of the traditions relating to Tin Hinan, such as those which make her Muslim, are unhistorical if the identification of the tomb (4th-5th centuries AD) is accurate. In Tuareg tradition she is said to have come from Tafilalt in the Atlas to the Ahaggar, along with a servant, Takamat. Tin Hinan was held to be the ancestress of the Tuareg nobility, and Takamat of the commoners.

There is no certainty, other than popular identification, that the monumental tomb is really that of Tin Hinan or even that Tin Hinan is a historical figure, and some have even suggested the skeleton may be male. But there is an interesting coincidence. The skeleton found in the tomb, now in the museum in Algiers, shows a deformity that may  indicate that the  woman in question was lame. Now, in Ibn Khaldun's universal history Kitab al-‘Ibar, the most famous parts of which (after its "Introduction," the famous Muqaddima) are the sections on Berber genealogies and history, translated into French by de Slane as Histoire des Berbères, Ibn Khaldun says that the Huwwara, Lamta, Sanhaja and other Berber tribes all claim descent from a single woman, a queen he calls "Tiski the Lame." Many students of the Hoggar region, including Charles de Foucauld, the famous missionary at Tamanrasset who studied the languages and traditions, have assumed or argued that Tiski may be identical with Tin Hinan (which is a title, not a personal name). And Ibn Khaldun says the place name Hoggar derives from Huwwara.

Clearly, a monumental female tomb adorned with jewelry suggests a powerful queen, The Tuareg traditions of Tin Hinan and Ibn Khaldun's tale of Tiski the Lame both speak of an ancestress Queen of the Tuareg of the Hoggar. And the skeleton found in the tomb appears lame.Separating out legend from fact is difficult.

it is a reminder, though, that Amazigh history in the pre-Islamic period witnessed instances of strong female leadership. Another example at the time of the Arab conquest of the Maghreb is the woman resistance leader called by Arab historians al-Kahina (the priestess or sorceress; a cognate of "cohen") who led the resistance in what is now Algeria and is variously considered Berber or Byzantine or both,

Some further readings and videos, in French except for a couple:

Dida Badi, Tin-Hinan; une modèle structural de la société touarègue," in Etudes et documents berbères, pp. 199-205.(at academia.edu)

M. Gast, entry "Huwwâra, Houuara, Houara, Hawwâra," in Encyclopédie berbère.
 
Ibn Khaldun, Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l'Afrique Septentrional, translated by Wlliam MacGuckin Baron de Slane, Vol. I (Algiers, 1852), pages 272-273 (Google Books).

Daily Kos; "The Tuaregs I: Tin Hinanm the mother of us all:"

El Watan (Algiers),  "Tin Hinan, une reine ou un roi ? 

Wikipedia,"Tin Hinan"

algeria.com: "Tin Hinan Festival a Tribute to the Legendary Tuareg Queen"

Does Libya Still Have Two Parliaments, Just One (and if so, Which?), or None After High Court Decision?

Just when you thought things couldn't get much worse in Libya, yesterday's Supreme Court decision declaring the August inflection of a new House of Representatives to be unconstitutional,  may have muddled things even further. Since August, there have been two rival parliaments, or claimants yo be parliament: a  House of Representatives generally recognized internationally as the legitimate legislature, now meeting in Tobruk, and a rump of the former legislative body, the General National Congress, sitting in Tripoli under the aegis of the "Libyan Dawn" Islamist militias controlling that town. Since the Supreme Court is also in Tripoli, the Tobruk Parliament has rejected the Court's decision.

The problem is that the Supreme Court did not officially explain its reasoning for the ruling, adding to confusion and to some uncertainty internationally; only the Tobruk body enjoys international recognition, but the Supreme Court ruling calls that legitimacy into question, though the Court may have acted under the guns of the militias. Although it has said ti will release the full text of the decision, it reportedly involves the adoption of the Electoral Law by fewer than the two-thirds majority of the former General National Congress provided for under the country's Constitutional Declaration.

Meanwhile, the rump of the GNC in Tripoli has said the decision leaves it free to "resume its legislative functions," although, since it consists of members not elected to the new House of Representatives, it lacks a quorum of its original strength.

Most international and UN efforts to resolve the standoff have focused on opening talks between the two rival factions aimed at finding a way to form  a coalition government. The United Nations issued a statement reiterating the need to create a national consensus, but that seems more difficult than ever now.

This has revived old concerns that the eastern region around Benghazi might secede.

And in the deep south, tribal fighting around the Sharara oilfields led to declining production and, in recent days, a takeover of the oilfields and a shutdown of production, though it is claimed this will resume "soon."  Some are portraying the tribal conflict as simply that, an ethnic conflict between the Berber-speaking Tuareg and the Nilo-Saharan-speaking Tebou, while others claim the two sides are now fighting as proxies for the rival governments in Tripoli and Tobruk.

Some Useful Takes on Algeria and Mali

Today's a US holiday (Martin Luther King Day combined with the Presidential inauguration) so posting may be light but with Israel's elections tomorrow and Jordan's on Wednesday, it's going to be a busy week.

First off today I wanted to point you to several interesting takes on the events in Algeria and Mali that provide useful perspectives that differ a bit from the Western media's received wisdom.

• Natalya Vince, "In Amenas – a history of silence, not a history of violence" argues that much  of the commentary on the Algerian response has focused on Algeria's supposed violent heritage, compressing modern Algerian history into the war of independence and the troubles of the 1990s and ignoring everything in between. A useful antidote to much superficial commentary.

• The Mauritanian blogger who blogs at Dekhnistan offers "A Disaster 50 Years in the Making," arguing that the roots of the situation in Mali lie not just in the Libyan civil war or the rise of Al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), but in the years before French West Africa achieved independence, when nothing was done to alter colonial boundaries that combined Tuareg and Amazigh north with sub-Saharan south in such countries as Mauritania, Niger, Mali and Chad. While, farther east, we welcome the separation of Sudan and South Sudan, the specter of Al-Qa‘ida has become the primary focus in Mali.

• Related to the above, an article in Libération reminds us that not all of the northern rebels are Islamists, and that the Tuareg separatist group that started the whole affair the MNLA, are still in the mix: "Le Nord-Mali entre Touaregs et jihadistes" (in French). 


•  "How the French Air War in Mali Really Went Down" offers what appears to be considerable detail about the French (and other Western) operations over Mali in the current campaign.

Heritage Destruction: Salafis Eradicating Timbuktu's Greatness

Somewhere, Ibn Battuta is weeping.

Although usually not within the purview of this blog, the takeover of the northern, Tuareg parts of Mali (the self-proclaimed "Azawad") first by the MNLA and more recently by radical Islamist groups this year, with links across the borders into Libya and Algeria, have forced attention to the ancient Islamic heritage of the reason. I've posted about Timbuktu's glorious past before, but now, following the fall first of Timbuktu and more recently of Gao to radical Salafist rebels of the Ansar Dine and MUJWA movements, that heritage is in danger. After destruction over the weekend of medieval Saint's tombs in Timbuktu, the Islamists have now destroyed an ancient door, kept closed for centuries, on one of Timbuktu's three great historic mosques, Sidi Yahya:

Among the tombs they destroyed is that of Sidi Mahmoudou, a saint who died in 955, according to the UNESCO website. In addition, on Monday they set upon one of the doors of the Sidi Yahya, a mosque built around 1400. Local legend held that the gate leading to the cemetery would only open on the final day at the end of time.

Local radio host Kader Kalil said that the members of Ansar Dine arrived at the mosque with shovels and pickaxes and yanked off the door, revealing a wall behind it. Kalil said that they explained they were doing so in order to disabuse people of the local legend and to teach them to put their whole faith in the Quran.

"Since my childhood, I have never seen the door on the western side of the mosque open. And I was born in 1947," said Kader, a longtime resident of the city. "When we were children, we were told that the door would only open at the end of time. These religious people want to go to the source, to show us that this is not true. .... Of course our population is not happy. The women, especially, are crying a lot."

Slideshow here. They have sworn to destroy every mausoleum in Timbuktu. UNESCO has put both Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia in Gao on the Endangered List of heritage sites, which is unlikely to have much impact on the Ansar Dine. This French report shows video of some of the early destruction:


Destruction of tombs is often a Salafi demand: particularly in North Africa, where the Islamic cult of local saints is deeply ingrained, though Salafis have attacked Sufi tombs in Egypt and elsewhere, and when the Saudi Kingdom expanded into the Hijaz in the early 20th Century, many ancient tombs were destroyed by committed Wahhabis. While these monuments, and even the great mosques in Timbuktu, may not be as spectacular as the Buddhas of Bamiyan (destroyed by the Taliban), the destruction of Islamic monuments by those claiming to act in the name of Islam seems even more appalling somehow, though the destruction of heritage monuments is indefensible on any grounds.

As usual, one of the more perceptive commentators is kal at The Moor Next Door, whose latest post-fall-of-Gao analysis is here. MUJWA — the Movement of Unity and Jihad in West Africa — is something of a mystery; it seems to be a sort of offshoot from Al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb, but with special emphases:

MUJWA’s propaganda during the Battle of Gao displays its intelligent exploitation of local grievances. A video released to regional media (and posted to the jihadist forums) shows the group’s effort to link its narrative to Songhai nationalist feelings; the video bears the name “Askia,” the name of a Songhai emperor with strong symbol power ... MUJWA has moved from former AQIM subcontractors, members and even drug runners to finding tactical support among members of the city other ethnic groups in the city, in the process projecting an image of ‘popular support’ which may or may not reflect sympathy with the Islamist groups per se as much as a perception of a common enemy.

It's a complicated story; two Twitter tweets (one from kal):

All this aside, this is a tragedy for Mali,for Africa, and for Islamic heritage in general.

Fall of Timbuktu to Rebels a Reminder of the City's Onetime Greatness

The name "Timbuktu," to many Westerners,has long been synonymous with remoteness, isolation, a bit of mystery, Those attributes do not so much reflect the city's history as they do a particular Western concept of it, perhaps inspired by the fact that from the Mediterranean one had to cross the great Sahara to reach it, or even just by the somewhat magical sounds of the name itself. At an earlier time, in the Islamic world and the Mediterranean, the name of Timbuktu evoked fabulous wealth, a city rumored to abound in gold. That was never really the case either. But Timbuktu was once both a great entrepot where the Saharan caravan trade met the Niger River Valley, and a center of Islamic learning, the greatest university center south of the Mediterranean coastal cities.

On Sunday, Timbuktu became the latest front in Mali's war, when Tuareg rebels of the MNLA took the city in the wake of the recent coup in Mali. (See my earlier post here.) But soon after, the MNLA's erstwhile allies, the Islamist Ansar Eddine, reportedly pushed the MNLA out. Now there are reports that Al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has joined Ansar Eddine in Timbuktu. The Moor Next Door tries to make sense of it, with many useful links.

I'm not going to try to sort out the tribal and religious factions in Mali, because despite being a blogger and being based in Washington, I still resist pontificating on things about which I know absolutely nothing at all. Which is the case here.

Djinguereber Mosque

Timbuktu, though, is another matter (though I've never been there). When I originally posted on the Mali coup I noted that, though Mali is not considered part of the Middle East these days, its Saharan regions had long been linked to the trans-Saharan trade, and the late Col. Qadhafi's meddling and Tuareg policies had spilled over into the Sahara and Sahel. But the links go even deeper, for long before Timbuktu became a symbol in European imagery for the remote and mysterious (and before the author of a children's book discovered that it rhymed with "Kalamazoo"), Timbuktu was known throughout the Arab world for its wealth, its gold, and its reputation as a major center of Islamic learning. It was echoes of that reputation which made Europeans want to find the city, and the difficulties of doing so gave birth to the image of one of the most remote places on earth.

But Timbuktu's original fame was not for its remoteness, but for its key location at the intersection of major trade routes across the Sahara. Located only a few miles from the upper Niger, it also provided access to the cultivable lands to the south.

European Image of Mansa Musa

In 1324 AD, the Emperor Mansa Musa of Mali made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca. Musa ("Mansa" is a Mandinka title meaning roughly, Emperor) was enormously rich in gold, and famously gave so much gold away that his hajj actually distorted prices throughout the Mediterranean basin. Musa added Timbuktu to the Mali Empire and proceeded to build its great mosques and its famous Islamic university; the reputation of his wealth soon combined with the reputation of Timbuktu's university and mosques to make its name familiar throughout the Arab world, though it was never Musa's capital. Ibn Battuta visited it and described it (but then, he went just about everywhere.)

By the time the Europeans got there finally, in the 1800s, the glory days had faded, but three of the medieval mosques still stand and the great University of Sankore still survives as the University of Timbuktu.

Azawad (Wikipedia)

The Tuareg rebels may, indeed, be tugging Timbuktu and other cities such as Gao back into a North African orbit rather than a sub-Saharan one, especially if they were to succeed in breaking the northern, desert region they call Azawad off from the rest of Mali.

Though Mauritania, Algeria, and Libya are certainly concerned about the events in Mali and worried about the possible role of AQIM among the Tuareg, so far the issue has been in the hands of the Economic Council of West African States (ECOWAS), which has been pressuring the new junta to restore the elected government. While the junta has delayed a promised return to the constitution, the rebels have taken Gao, Timbuktu and other cities of the north.

For more on Timbuktu's history, see the Timbuktu Foundation website,  and the Timbuktu Wikipedia article. To follow events in Mali see the links in The Moor Next Door's piece linked by me above.

Are the Libyan Rebels Targeting Black Africans?

Mao famously said that a revolution is not a dinner party, and Lenin may have said that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs (the attribution is fuzzy on that one). I wouldn't have chosen to dine with either of those gentlemen, but all wars are ugly, and a civil war can be the ugliest of all, so there's little surprising about reports of abuses by the victors in the wake of the fall of Tripoli. What is a bit more disturbing is a growing number of reports that the rebels have particularly singled out dark-skinned Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans for vengeance. Over the past few days, reports have emerged that not only armed mercenaries are being targeted, but all sub-Saharans, even ordinary migrant workers.  Amnesty International has called attention to the problem, and it is being reported upon by the general media, although some skilled observers are a bit cautious about how extensive the problem really is.

Qadhafi's many African adventures  led him to recruit soldiers from Mali, Chad, and Niger, many of whom served in the Libyan Army long before the revolution broke out. Since February there have been multiple reports that he was flying in mercenaries from a number of Saharan and Sahelian countries, paying them large sums to put down the rebellion. That many of the rebels want vengeance against these mercenary forces is understandable, if contrary to the laws of war.

But not every sub-Saharan African in Libya was a hired mercenary. Plenty were simply immigrants looking for work in the oilfields or other sectors. If they are being targeted solely because they are foreign, or worse, solely because of the color of their skin as some stories are suggesting, that does not augur well for the free Libya the rebels say they seek. Let's hope these prove to be isolated instances in the heat of victory and not signs of a deeper xenophobia or racism on the part of the victors.

There are also questions about the attitude towards the Tuareg, the nomadic, Berber-speaking tribesmen who roam southwestern Libya and neighboring countries. Algeria has also announced that it allowed some 500 Libyan Tuareg to enter Algeria as they were being pursued by rebel forces. The Libyan Tuareg were reportedly fighting on the regime's side, and there is no direct assertion that they were driven out solely because they are Tuareg, Other Tuareg originating from Mali and Niger who had been fighting for Qadhafi are reportedly returning to their home countries, which find it somewhat disturbing to have bodies of armed men with military training crossing their borders, even if they are coming home.