Tuareg, Algerian

The Algerian Tuareg are the Tuareg of Algeria's far south outside the Tassili n'Ajjer: above all the Kel Ahaggar of the Hoggar (Ahaggar) mountains, whose rallying point is Tamanrasset, and the Algerian part of the Kel Adagh around Tinzaouatine and Timiaouine on the Malian border. They call themselves Imuhagh ('free people'; singular Amahagh) and speak Tamahaq, the northern Tuareg language, written in Tifinagh letters. The Kel Ahaggar trace their nobility to Tin Hinan, the founding queen buried at Abalessa (4th-5th century); the drum-group (ettebel) of the Kel Ghela supplied the amenokal, the supreme chief, by succession through the female line, with the Taitoq and Tegehe Mellet as the other noble groups. Below them stood vassal tribes (Kel Ulli, Dag Ghali, Aguh-n-Tahle, Isaqqamaren), religious lineages (Ineslemen, among them Ifoghas who married into the Kel Ghela), artisans (Inaden) and the formerly enslaved Iklan and the Izeggaghen gardeners, who speak Tamahaq and are part of Tuareg society. France defeated the Kel Ahaggar at Tit in 1902; Moussa ag Amastan submitted, and the colonial and then Algerian state kept the amenokal as an intermediary. After independence the Hoggar became the wilaya of Tamanrasset; the confederation's political role was ended in 1977, but the title survives: Hadj Moussa Akhamouk held it as a senator, and Ahmed Edabir was chosen in 2006 by the matrilineal custom and still convenes the Ahaggar notables (2024). Badi (2010) describes three Tuareg regions in Algeria: the Ahaggar, wholly inside Algeria; the Ajjer, split with Libya (in this project the Kel Ajjer are the group 'Tuareg, Tahaggart'); and the Algerian Adagh des Ifoghas, whose Kel Adagh and Kel Afella families range up to the Ti-m-Missao massif, with Ahaggar tribes such as the Kel Ahnet and Iklan n Tawsit. Algeria publishes no ethnic count; about 40,000-60,000 people belong to this group (see the Algeria presence for the basis).

Men wear the tagelmust, a veil and turban of indigo-dyed cloth whose dye rubs off on the skin ('blue men'); women go unveiled, own the tent (ehan) and its furnishings, and lineage and chiefship pass through the mother. Women play the imzad, a one-string bowed fiddle, at evening gatherings (ahal) where young men and women exchange poetry; the imzad was inscribed by UNESCO in 2013 for Algeria, Mali and Niger, and an association in Tamanrasset teaches it. Tea is drunk in three glasses of decreasing strength. Herding families live in tents of tanned skins or palm-mat shelters (ekeber), while most Kel Ahaggar now live in Tamanrasset and the cultivation centres of the Hoggar (Abalessa, In Amguel, Idelès, Tazrouk, Hirafok), where gardens were long worked by Izeggaghen and Iklan. Silversmiths of the Inaden make crosses (tenaghalt), swords (takouba) and leatherwork; the Tafsit spring festival in Tamanrasset and the annual pilgrimages to Tin Hinan's tomb and Charles de Foucauld's hermitage on the Assekrem draw visitors. Desert-blues (assouf) music, born among Malian exiles in Tamanrasset and Libya, is popular with the young.

The Kel Ahaggar are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school, but Islam came late and lightly to the Hoggar: the noble tribes left religious learning to the Ineslemen lineages and Sufi orders (Qadiriyya, Tijaniyya through In Salah and the Touat), and many pre-Islamic practices remain. Spirits of the wild (Kel Esuf, jinn) are feared at night and in empty places; mothers protect children with amulets (tcherot) holding Qur'anic verses written by marabouts; the evil eye and spirit possession are treated with recitation and sometimes the tende drum. Rites at the tombs of saints and at Tin Hinan's tomb mix Islamic prayer with older ancestor veneration. Men often pray less regularly than in the oasis towns, but Ramadan, the two Eids and the Mouloud are kept, and Qur'an schools run in Tamanrasset; younger people raised in the city follow a more standard, Arabic-medium Islam taught at school and on television.

Scripture portions in Tahaggart Tamahaq ('Awal n Messineɣ s Tamahaq', Wycliffe, 2020) are available online in Latin letters; no full New Testament, Jesus Film or audio Bible exists in Tamahaq, though GRN has recordings, and audio New Testaments exist in the related Tamasheq and Tawallammat. Christian presence among the Kel Ahaggar goes back to Charles de Foucauld, who lived in Tamanrasset and on the Assekrem (1905-1916) and wrote a Tuareg-French dictionary; the Little Brothers of Jesus and the Little Sisters kept a small presence without preaching, and a Catholic parish in Tamanrasset serves mostly foreigners. No Tuareg church is known in Algeria.