On the Trails of Those of Ishaq

Appendix C. Shaykh Baye’s Notice on the Dawsahaq: Manuscript, Text and Translation

This document was communicated to the author by Charles Grémont, who had published it in his book on the Iwellemmedan (Grémont 2010*), together with Judith Scheele’s French translation. Below are a description, the photograph, the Arabic text, the translation and an English rendering of it, followed by a critical note.

C.1 The document

Manuscript by the Kunta scholar Shaykh Baye al-Kuntî, collected from its author at Aguelhok by Georges de Gironcourt during one of his missions (1908–1912). It belongs to a set catalogued under the general title “Notes sur d’anciennes tribus touareg” (“Notes on ancient Tuareg tribes”), held in the library of the Institut de France (MS 2407, items 91 to 104, fourteen pages). The notice devoted to the Dawsahaq is number 97.

The manuscript is undated. The note accompanying the translation places its writing between 1895, the year in which Shaykh Baye succeeded his elder brother at the head of the zāwiya of Telaya, and 1912, the year it was collected.

The photograph of the whole page shows the text at the top of a leaf numbered 10. In the margin are a stamp reading “Mission de Gironcourt” and the pencilled note “Manuscrit n° 97”; lower down, the library’s stamp. Number 97 is thus the number the mission gave to the manuscript.

C.2 The Arabic text

Transcription by the author, from the photograph; the slash marks the end of each line of the manuscript. The Saharan script does not mark all the diacritical dots, restored here, nor the vowels. The transcription should be checked by a reader of Saharan manuscripts.

دوسحاق أمة من أمم التوارق والظاهر أن أصلها سودان / إذ كلامها مركب بين كلام السودان والتوارق وفيهم / قبيلة تنتسب إلى الشرق وهم جميعا أهل عافية وقراءة / وأكثر سكناهم مع المدن والظاهر أنهم من قبائل / السوق وبينهم وبين دباكر مواصلة

C.3 Judith Scheele’s translation

97 – Dawsahaq. Les Dû Sahâq sont un peuple des Touaregs. Il est certain qu’à l’origine ils étaient Sûdân, car leur parler (kalâm) est composée des mots (kalâm) des Sûdân et des Touaregs. Et parmi eux (il y a) une tribu qui situe ses origines vers l’Est. Ils sont tous des gens de la paix et de l’étude. La plupart d’entre eux habitent avec les Ilmidan [Iwellemmedan]. Il est évident qu’ils sont des tribus d’Es-Suq. Entre eux et les Dabâkir il y a des relations.

English rendering of the French translation: “97 – Dawsahaq. The Dû Sahâq are a people of the Tuareg. It is certain that originally they were Sûdân, for their speech (kalâm) is composed of the words (kalâm) of the Sûdân and of the Tuareg. And among them (there is) a tribe that places its origins towards the East. They are all people of peace and of study. Most of them live with the Ilmidan [Iwellemmedan]. It is evident that they are tribes of Es-Suq. Between them and the Dabâkir there are relations.”

The name of the Iwellemmedan is written المدن in the manuscript; the translation reads it “Ilmidan”. The square brackets are the translator’s.

C.4 Critical note

What the notice confirms. The three passages that the essay quoted at second hand can indeed be read in the manuscript: the speech mixing “the words of the Sûdân and of the Tuareg” (chapter 3), the tribe “that places its origins towards the East” (chapter 5), life alongside the Iwellemmedan (chapter 6). On these three points, a source external to the community, written at the turn of the twentieth century, agrees with linguistics, the internal tradition and the 1998 oral inquiry: under the group’s method (chapter 1), they are convergent.

What the notice adds. The name is written as a single word, دوسحاق (Dawsahaq), a form that matches the neighbours’ “Daw-Sahak” (chapter 2). The Dawsahaq are said to be “all people of peace and of study” (ahl ʿāfiya wa-qirāʾa): this is the oldest written testimony to the reputation for learning that tradition ascribes to them. They are attached to the “tribes of Es-Suq”, that is, to the former Tadmekka or to the Kel Essouk (chapter 9). Finally, the notice mentions “relations” (muwāṣala) with the Dabâkir. The name, written دباكر without vowels, is very probably that of the Dabbakar, or Dag Akar, whom Grémont and his co-authors describe as “the founders of the old palm-grove site of Kidal”, settled since the nineteenth century further south, as far as the Azawagh, and whose language remains “very close to that spoken by the groups of the North (Kel Ahaggar)” (2004, p. 26). Shaykh Baye, who lived in the Adagh, had every reason to know them. The testimonies gathered in 1998–2001 give substance to these “relations”: the Dabbakar “did not take part in the pre-colonial wars” (p. 27) and counted “religious men too” among them (p. 110); “even the Dabbakar and the Dawsahak were never subjected to an authoritarian tax” (p. 111); at the conquest, the Dag Itifa (Dabbakar) were “the first in the area, with the Dawsahak Sheriffen, to accept submission to the French” (p. 135); and in 1916 the revolt was supported by all the groups of the ettebel “except the Dabbakar and the Dawsahak Sheriffen” (p. 141). Two groups of neighbouring status, peaceable and learned, with parallel political choices: this may be what the scholar calls muwāṣala. The identification remains to be confirmed, by a notice in the same collection devoted to the Dabâkir or by the elders of both groups (chapter 11).

What the notice does not say. It names neither Aïta, nor Tabalbalt, nor Ishaq, and offers no etymology of the name. The sentence on Aïta that Badi quotes from the Kitāb an-nawāzil therefore belongs to another of Shaykh Baye’s writings, which, according to Badi, restates the tradition of the Kel Adagh rather than confirming it (chapter 9).

How to read it. Twice the author introduces his conclusion with al-ẓāhir, “it appears”, which the translation renders first as “it is certain” and then as “it is evident”: for the sūdān origin, which he infers from the language, and for the attachment to Es-Suq, for which he gives no reason. That reason may lie in the preceding sentence: the Kel Essouk are, according to Grémont and his co-authors, a set of religious groups of diverse origins united by “the practice and teaching of Islam” (2004, p. 30). To attach “people of peace and of study” to the “tribes of Es-Suq” may be to classify them by status, not to give them an origin. The testimonies indeed invite us not to merge the two: a Kel Abakot (Dawsahak) speaker describes his fraction as “of a maraboutic lineage”, while acknowledging that “the first marabouts of the Iwellemmedan were the Kel Egadash”, a Kel Essouk group (p. 108); in 1916 a Dawsahak marabout, Mahen, advised Fihrun against the war that the Kel Essouk urged him to wage (p. 137); and Grémont observes that the Idaksahak, though very learned in Islam, never really obtained the status of a maraboutic (zwâya) tribe, unlike the Kel Essouk or the Kunta (Grémont 2024). These are a scholar’s inferences, not recorded traditions. Their value lies in their date, in the independence of the author, who is not Idaksahak, and in his proximity: Shaykh Baye lived in the Adagh, in contact with the groups he describes. Their limit lies in what he does not say about his sources.

The rest of the collection, items 91 to 104, has not been seen. Other notices may concern neighbouring groups, or Idaksahak fractions under other names; reading them is listed among the tasks of chapter 11.

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