Tuareg

The Tuareg are Berber-speaking nomadic pastoralists of the central Sahara, whose men wear the indigo tagelmust. They call themselves Kel Tamasheq, speakers of Tamasheq, written in Tifinagh. Their ancestors include the Garamantes and, by tradition, followers of queen Tin Hinan, whose fourth- or fifth-century tomb stands at Abalessa. Arab geographers knew them as veiled camel herders dominating trans-Saharan routes.

Confederations were led by an amenokal and elders. In the Aïr, Tuareg clans founded the Sultanate of Agadez around 1405 to mediate between feuding drum-groups; Agadez, built from 1413, became a hub linking the Hausa kingdoms with North Africa.

Songhai conquered the sultanate around 1500; it regained independence after the Moroccan destruction of Songhai in 1591. It declined in the seventeenth century as routes withered. In the eighteenth century new Tuareg confederacies pushed south into the Aïr, and the Kel Owey displaced the Kel Geres.