Aoudéras

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Location of Aoudéras in Niger

Aoudéras (also Aoudérass , Auderas and Auderass ) is a village in the rural municipality of Dabaga in Niger .

The village is located about 23 kilometers west of the Monts Bagzane in a valley in the high mountains of Aïr . The Timia oasis is located around 66 kilometers northeast and the city of Agadez around 85 kilometers southwest of the settlement. Elméki, about 19 kilometers away, is one of the larger villages in the vicinity . Aoudéras is headed by a traditional local chief ( chef traditionnel ) and administratively belongs to the rural municipality of Dabaga in the department of Tchirozérine in the Agadez region . The Aoudéras dry valley of the same name runs near the village with extensive palm groves and gardens. There is a long tradition of irrigation farming here . About 15 kilometers west of the town center there are two rock formations that shape the landscape: Tchintézawal north of the dry valley and Tchizén-Islama south of it.

Aoudéras is one of the oldest larger settlements in the Aïr. The village was inhabited for a long time by the Itese , a sedentary, farming group whose origins lay in the Libyan area and which was associated with the Tuareg fraction Kel Gress . As a result of a war with the Tuareg faction Kel Owey in the early 1820s, the Itese were expelled to the south. The village was from then on dominated by the Kel Nugru , a subgroup of the Kel Owey. The German Africa explorer Heinrich Barth , who was one of the first Europeans to reach the Aïr, entered the place on October 7th, 1850. Barth described Aoudéras as a village consisting of ten individual villages with flourishing agriculture. He described how agriculture was practiced in the fertile valley by harnessing slaves to a kind of plow.

Aoudéras 1899 on a drawing by the Foureau-Lamy Mission

The French research and military expedition, Mission Foureau-Lamy , set up camp in Aoudéras from July 6th to 25th, 1899. At the beginning of the 20th century, the village was the second largest settlement in the Aïr region after Agadez. The predominance of Kel Nugru ended with the Kaocen revolt of 1917. Kaocen supporters destroyed the village. Their conflict with France forced the Kel Nugru into a three-year exile in the savannah between Zinder and Kano . In the meantime, the Sultan of Agadez appropriated many of their date groves. The Briton Francis Rennell Rodd spent several months in the village in 1922, doing research on the Tuareg. From the 1960s to the 1980s there was a sharp decline in the number of herds in Aoudéras. A plague of locusts in 2004 hit agriculture.

At the 2012 census, Aoudéras had 727 inhabitants who lived in 143 households. At the 2001 census, the population was 764 in 141 households.

The population is made up almost exclusively of Iklan , the former slaves of the Tuareg . Locally they are known as Kel Aoudéras ("People of Aoudéras") and Kel Fergan ("People of the Gardens"). The Kel Aoudéras are descended from various Nigerian ethnic groups: the Tuareg, Hausa , Kanuri , Tubu and Fulbe . They are integrated into the Tuareg society and were originally brought to Aoudéras to earn a living in the cultivation of dates.

literature

  • Frederick E. Brusberg: Economy and society of Aoudéras, a community of the Saharan Aïr Massif (Niger) . Dissertation. McGill University, Montreal 1988 ( mcgill.ca [PDF]).

Web links

Commons : Aoudéras  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b National Repertoire des Localités (ReNaLoc). (RAR) Institut National de la Statistique de la République du Niger, July 2014, p. 20 , accessed on 7 August 2015 (French).
  2. ↑ a b c d Jolijn Geels: Niger . Bradt, Chalfont St Peter 2006, ISBN 1-84162-152-8 , p. 183 .
  3. ^ A b c Frederick E. Brusberg: Economy and society of Aoudéras, a community of the Saharan Aïr Massif (Niger) . Dissertation. McGill University, Montreal 1988, pp. 94–95 ( mcgill.ca [PDF; accessed May 11, 2018]).
  4. ↑ a b Thaddaeus Eduard Gumprecht: About Dr. Barth and Dr. Overweg's research trip to Lake Chad and inner Africa . In: Thaddaeus Eduard Gumprecht (ed.): Monthly reports on the negotiations of the Society for Geography in Berlin . tape 9 . Simon Schropp and Comp, Berlin 1852, p. 199, 246 and 253 .
  5. ^ A b Heinrich Barth: Journeys and discoveries in North and Central Africa in the years 1849 to 1855 . First volume. Justus Perthes, Gotha 1859, p. 165–166 ( archive.org [accessed May 11, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Fernand Foureau : Documents scientifiques de la mission saharienne. Mission Foureau-Lamy d'Alger au Congo par le Tchad . Atlas (cartographer: Verlet-Hanus). Masson, Paris 1905 ( upmc.fr [accessed May 9, 2018]).
  7. ^ A b c Frederick E. Brusberg: Economy and society of Aoudéras, a community of the Saharan Aïr Massif (Niger) . Dissertation. McGill University, Montreal 1988, pp. 98 and 100 ( mcgill.ca [PDF; accessed on May 11, 2018]).
  8. ^ Répertoire National des Communes (RENACOM). (RAR file) Institut National de la Statistique, accessed November 8, 2010 (French).
  9. ^ Frederick E. Brusberg: Economy and society of Aoudéras, a community of the Saharan Aïr Massif (Niger) . Dissertation. McGill University, Montreal 1988, pp. 1 ( mcgill.ca [PDF; accessed on May 11, 2018]).

Coordinates: 17 ° 38 '  N , 8 ° 25'  E