Abstract: Charles de Foucauld the scholar, the explorer, the frontier runner, has now become the symbol of the dialog between Christians and Moslems. Charles de Foucauld the ascete, the mystic beatified 89 years after his death. Charles de Foucauld and his mystery, that of a man haunted by melancholy, hatred of oneself, and aspiration to martyrdom⦠This book focuses on his extreme experience, his eremitic life in the middle of the Sahara, from 1905 to 1916. How did he live? Which were his relationships with his Tuareg neighbours? What place took his scholarly studies on the language of the Tuaregs in his life ?
Abstract: Edition, with introduction and notes by D Casajus, of a diary written in 1857 by the young french explorer Henri Duveyrier during his first journey in the Sahara desert.
Abstract: Tuaregs live in the Sahel and the southern Sahara. Until the beginning of this century, these people were spread out in different tribes each forming an independent political group. Despite the national borders of Algeria, Mali, Libya and Niger, which separate them today, they share a common language descended from Berber. In Gens de parole, Dominique Casajus undertakes an ethnological study of a people who inspired a whole mythology in the imagination of French colonists and historians. The author particularly focuses on their oral tradition and language, to which they give great importance. Their favorite uses of language are elegiac and war poetry. Casajus, aware of the subjective aspect of ethnology, offers the most objective analysis and observation possible on Tuaregs.
Abstract: Edition, with introduction and notes by D. Casajus, of the french translation of poems Charles de Foucauld collected in 1907 among the Tuaregs of southern Algeria
Abstract: The Kel Ferwan Tuareg roam beyond the gates of the old city of Agadez (northern Niger), moving their heavy tents of palm mats. The tent of the Kel Ferwan is held to be a replica of the cosmos : ist circular base is analogous to the earth circle, its spherical form recalls that of the celestial vault, and its four stakes are similar to the four pillars said to uphold the sky at the four corners of the earth. Long ago, God gave this design to the Tuareg, and ever since, their tents, always reconstructed according to this unchanging celestial model, have been passed down from mother to dauthter.
To thent belongs to the wife ; the husband, though he be the tentâs « master », is always but a guest. As soon as a young man begins to grow up, he leaves his motherâs tent to pursue an uncertain way of life, sharing makeshift palm mat shelters with his peers. He comes back into a tent only upon marriage, and divorce or widowhood can always return him to the adolescentâs precarious position.
At the same time however, the tents which belong to women and to which an entire symbolic system assigns feminin qualities, are organized around men : each camp assembles a man, his sons, his wife and his daughters-in-law. The essential nature of Tuareg social life, the rhythmical unfolding of which is described in this book, is contained within the paradox represented by camps of men living in tents belonging to women.
Abstract: The Tuareg use alphabets with characters called tafineq (plural: tifinagh). Some writers have, rightly or wrongly, related this wordâs root (FNQ) to the word used by the Greeks to refer to the Phoenicians. These alphabets derived from much older ones, which are usually said to be âLibyanâ or âLibyco-Berberâ. Libyco-Berber inscriptions are found throughout a region stretching from Libya to Morocco and even the Canary Islands â sometimes along with Punic or Latin engravings. Owing to the discovery in Dougga (Tunisia) of two bilingual Libyco-Punic inscriptions dating from the 2nd century BC, one of the variants of the Libyco-Berber alphabet has been partly deciphered. Moroccan inscriptions are probably older, but the dates proposed for them are to be used with caution. Two recent studies, the one devoted to contemporary rock inscriptions and the other to the evolution of Libyco-Berber scripts from Ancient Times up till the present, are reviewed; and a few hypotheses related to the dating of engravings are discussed as well as the circumstances of the initial discovery made in Dougga.
Abstract: What practical knowledge do the Tuareg, who have neither maps nor compasses, develop to orient and mentally situate themselves in space? This know-how is no different from what we use everyday. Our day-by-day spatial orientation has little to do with the learned description that we can make of it. This article is drawn from practices observed in northern Niger and from a study of 19th and early 20th century documents.
Abstract: How were the Iliad and the Odyssey written is a question asked since Ancient times. Some of the answers provided during the modern period are presented. According to the abbey of Aubignac, writing in the mid-17th century, Homer never existed ; and the works passed down under his name are collections of previously disparate material. Nonetheless, the following centuries witnessed several « lives » of Homer or writings that tried to depict Homer at work. For Giambattista Vico, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Wood and, later on, Milman Parry and Albert Lord, Homer was not a writer but a bard, probably illiterate. This placed him as a poet far above all those who came afterwards : other wrote, but Homer sang. Attaching a nostalgic value to oral culture is something that many specialists of traditional literature would still do.
Abstract: Dominique Casajus, Courtly Poetry and Love Rivalry. â The songs of troubadours and contemporary poetry among the Tuareg both present a narrator who tells about how he is suffering from being separated from his beloved. This motif of the lonely poet is always paired with another, also present in both corpuses, namely : the narrator mentions the obstacles lying on the path leading to the loved one. The main obstacle is the narratorâs rivals, called lauzengiers in troubadour poetry. Erich Köhler and Georges Duby saw the theme of lauzengiers as a poetic translation of the condition of small landowners who, during the 10th and 11th centuries, sought to rival the old nobility whose origins went back to the time of Charlemagne. This idea is tested by comparing information about the troubadours to data gathered in the lands of the Tuareg and Moors.
Abstract: French ethnologists readily display a noisy desire to assert the specificity of their discipline. And yet ethnology belongs to what Jean-Claude Passeron has called the âhistoricalâ disciplines, meaning that as far as its epistemological status is concerned, it cannot be dissociated from history or sociology. It is true, however, that a discipline cannot be characterised solely by its epistemological regime, and the occupational practices used in the different historical sciences are extremely diverse. In this paper, we examine some of those practices, but we shall see that in themselves, they are also insufficient to characterise a discipline.
Abstract: The Tent Turned Toward the Setting Sun. â Like many other nomads in the Sahara or Sahel, the Tuareg set up their tents in relation to axes, each of which is assigned a value. This reminds us of Pierre Bourdieuâs description of the Kabyle house in 1963 and, inevitably, of the « disenchantment » he later expressed about what he called his « last work as a cheerful structuralist ». While describing how the Tuareg in the Sahel dwell in their tents and world, attention is also drawn to the grounds of this disenchantment, namely changes in anthropology and in its styles of « writing ».
Abstract: In 1869 and 1861, Henri Duveyrier stayed for several months with the Azgar Tuaregs in the South-east of present-day Algeria. His relationship with chief Ikhenoukhen, difficult at first, became quite friendly. Touched by Duveyrier's youth, the old chief became his mentor. It is this exceptional moment that is recounted her. Little came of this meeting: several decades later, the French entered Azgar country as conquerors, and there was no longer any question of friendship.
Abstract: The songs of the troubadours, odes from pre-Islamic Arabia and contemporary Tuareg poetry have in common that they present a narrator who tells how much he has suffered because of his separation from the loved one. Listeners (or readers) tend to see this suffering narrator as the authorâs spokesman - a tendency all the stronger insofar as the author is remote in space or time. Nonetheless they are aware that only someone who knows how to stand back from his suffering can become a poet. On the other hand, the author tends to present the suffering that he has inflicted on his narrator like a test of his own competence as a poet. In turn, the suffering that the public ascribes to the author is assumed to be related to biographical experiences. But these painful experiences are only imagined with reference to the works of poetry that they supposedly produced, as though the author had no life apart from the moment when he resembled his suffering narrator.
Abstract: The semi-legendary figure of the pre-islamic poet, Imrû'l-Qays, is not unknown among the Sahelian Tuareg. They quote him in their poems and in their stories in which he appears as a cultural hero who invented poetry and the Tuareg alphabet. He stands in opposition to a character who is recognisable as a Sahelian version of another pre-islamic poet, 'Antara. This article attempts to identify the source of these Tuareg narratives in certain medieval Arab documents.
Abstract: In 1907, Charles de Foucauld collected an important corpus of poetry from the Tuareg in southern Algeria. In these poems, many of which celebrate the wars that the Tuareg had fought during the preceding century, domestic and foreign warfare are presented as two different sorts of experience. Domestic warfare brought together, in the celebration of the same ethos, opponents who, though fighting each other, were engaged in poetic dialogue. In contrast, foreign warfare set at odds men who fought, we might say, in silence. The transition from one type of warfare to the other was not sudden. Although the Tuareg world never formed a political unit, an invisible border, mainly based on words, separated the Tuareg from their neighbours.
Abstract: Charles de Foucauld has lived among the Sahara Tuaregs, apart from some interruptions, from 1904 to 1916. The present paper, breaking with a heavy hagiographic literature, intents to provide some informations about the way the Tuaregs viewed him.
Abstract: As soon as Montesquieu published L'esprit des Lois, commentators debated its coherence. This debate has not yet ended. This contribution to it compares this work to the writings of Tocqueville and Durkheim, which are placed in the same line of thought. Although both these authors refered to Montesquieu's work, their references are not free of misunderstanding.
Abstract: These Tuareg games, collected in the Agadez area of Niger, range from games played in the evening for gun to games of complex strategy. Their rules are set down; and remarks, made about some formal aspects. Ethnographic information is provided about the playing context; and the vocabulary used is briefly commented. Comparisons with games from neighbouring societies are sometimes made.
Abstract: Here are a series of ethnographical facts collected from the Kel Ferwan Tuaregs (in the north of Niger) and which up to now have been granted little attention. For the Kel Ferwan the tent is considered as pertaining to the women's domain. First of all the tent where a couple lives belongs to the wife. Moreover it is handed down from mother to daughter, and then a women tends to be identified with her tent. The tent is considered as symbolizing the cosmos, and it is said to be built according to a pattern unaltered from beginning of times. The tents are gathered to form encampments, which constitute patrilocal units. The encampment is the domain of the men, the place where society pertains to history and time. So that the tent and the encampments are opposite, one being the domain of the women and of immutability, the other that of men and of history.
Abstract: The man the Catholic Church solemnly beatified on November 13th 2005 was a controversial figure. Charles de Foucauld was slaughtered at Tamanrasset on December 1st 1916, at the height of the Senoussist insurrection. For a long time, he was held to be a figurehead of colonialisation. At present, some see him as a pioneer of Islamic-Christian dialogue. This article confronts this new image of Foucauld with what we know of his relationship with Islam.
Abstract: Of all their literary genres, poetry is, without any doubt, the one that the Tuareg hold in highest esteem. The men are fond of well-crafted verses, and are all capable of versifying a few lines. Being known for oneâs poetic talents is an accomplishment to which many aspire. The most talented are esteemed by the public. Like the poets of ancient Arabia said to be haunted by evil spirits, the figure of the prestigious Tuareg poet has a more somber side. The ambiguity of poets is the subject treated herein.
Abstract: This is one of the documents submitted for the
authorâs habilitation qualification (Habilitation
à diriger des recherches) in the field of
humanities, which took place 29th June 2006 at the
University of Paris X-Nanterre. He traces out his
research career, beginning with fieldwork
undertaken in Tuareg country from 1976 to 1990. He
sets out to show how he increasingly came to view
anthropology as a historical science, whose
concepts, intimately linked with the scriptural
context in which they arise, can not be transposed
without distortion or isolated without
simplification. This means that anthropologists,
like other social science practitioners, can only
work at a fairly low level of abstraction.
The authorâs current research, which is then
described, consists first of all in the
development of a general perspective on oral
literature in connection with the process of
writing. Within this framework, by means of a
critical analysis of Milman Parry and Albert Lord,
he considers the issue of Homeric authorship. He
is also anxious to show how the themes of courtly
poetry â whether it be of Tuareg, Arabian or
Occitan origin â are closely connected to its
conditions of production and reception. The author
has also been concerned with first contacts
between the Tuareg and the French.
