Tuareg, Africa
Posted On December 2, 2009
The Tuareg is commonly known as Twareg and also Touareg. Tuareg are a Berber roaming pastoralist people. They are the major population of the Saharan center of North Africa. They call themselves by various names such as the Kel Tamasheq and also Kel Tamajaq which mean “Speakers of Tamasheq”, also Imuhagh, mashaghen, which means “the free people” and also Kel Tagelmust that means the “People of the Veil”. The name Tuareg was given to them by early historians as well as the explorers those belongs to Leo Africanus.
The meaning and the origin of the name Twareg has been long discussed with numerous etymologies superior, although it would come into view that Twārəg is derivative of the “broken plural” of Tārgi, a name whose previous sense was “inhabitant of Targa” . Also the Tuareg name for the Libyan region was known as Fezzan. Targa in Berber means “drainage channel”.
Various Tuareg name and there meanings:-
Amajagh which means a Tuareg man.
Imajaghan which means Tuareg men, people.
Tamajaq which means a Tuareg woman.
Timajaghen which means Tuareg women.
Tamajaq which means the Tuareg language.
Tifinagh which means the Tuareg alphabet.
Kel Tamajaq which means the Tuareg people.
Also you need to know that
Amajagh, Amahagh, Amashegh, Amazigh which means a Tuareg or Berber man but it differs for the different region.
Tamajaq, Tamahaq, Tamasheq, Tamazight which means a Tuareg or Berber woman and Tuareg and also the Berber language.
Imajaghan, Imuhagh, Imashaghan, Imazighan has the similar meaning that is the Tuareg and Berber people.
These days the Tuareg’s are found typically in West Africa, a number of historians maintain they increasingly motivated south for the last 2000 years. At a point of time they were the wanderers who used to go all the way through the Sahara. They have a little-used but very old script named Tifinagh.
In the early twenty century, the Tuareg refuse to accept the French colonial attack on their Central Saharan mother country. Tuareg broad swords were no match for the more superior arms of French regiment. After many mass executions from both sides, the Tuareg became quiet and obligatorily signed the treaties of Mali in the year 1905 and Niger in the year 1917. In southern Algeria, the French came across the strongest confrontation from the Ahaggar Tuareg. Their Amenokal, traditional chief Moussa ag Amastan, fought several battles in protection of the province. Finally, Tuareg provinces were taken under French supremacy, and their confederations were mainly take apart and modernized.
African countries’ after attaining their independence in the year 1960, the locals divided the Tuareg province, the modern city that came up was Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Libya, Algeria.
Conventionally the Tuaregs are the animist’s people. These days they put into practice a syncretism connecting the conventional animist attitude and ritual also the Islamic ones as well as the christian symbols.
