ABSTRACT
The northern Tuareg have no written records of their history. This is because their script, tifinagh, has very limited usage, while Arabic, particularly in its written form, has been little known by them until recently. The main contemporary source material of the most critical period in their history, from the time when the French began to push south into the Sahara in the second half of the nineteenth century until about 1920 when they were deemed to be pacified, is of French origin. It consists mainly of French military archives,1 reports written by French army officers who were involved in the conquest and exploration of the Sahara, the reports and records of administrators and a number of semi-official scientific and ethnological reports. Even the most valuable studies of that period, notably Duveyrier’s Les Touareg du Nord (1864), Bissuel’s Les Touareg de l’Ouest (1888) and Benhazera’s Six Mois chez les Touareg du Ahaggar (1908), are written largely from a French perspective.2
