Twat (Berber)

Twat: Historic trade routes in Western Sahara

Topographic map of Algeria showing the location of the Twat

Twat (also Tawat, Tuat, Touat, Tamentit; Tifinagh script ⵜⵓⵡⴰⵜ ) is in the Berber language the name of an oasis region in the Sahara of Algeria , located in the Adrar province .

Tamentit or Twat used to be the name of the spiritual center of the Twat, which was determined by the fall of a meteorite .

Geographical location

South of Timimoun , where all caravan routes from north, west and east join on the way to Sudan , the twat begins at Adrar and Tamantit . Under this name one understands the oases, the settlements of which are lined up on the left eastern side of the Oued Messaoud . The population of the individual oases is of different origins, between which traditionally stubborn hostilities exist. Reggane is the last of these oasis cities in the south. Beyond extends the real desert that separates North Africa from Sub-Saharan Africa.

The north-south caravan route in the Twat area had the following stops:

Fez ,
Tafilet : there was a university in Sidschilmasa until the 11th century.
Twat, Adrar (town)
Taghazat
Taoudenni
Timbuktu
Gao

history

Premodern times

When 400,000 Jews were murdered in the Roman province of Cyrenaica in the 2nd century AD , some survivors fled to the Twat oasis, where they devoted themselves, among other things, to the Trans-Saharan trade . The population, often traumatized by the massacre, acted as a cultural bearer from the east for the area to which they fled. They had technical solutions for the settlement pressure they contributed to, such as the establishment of qanats . It was in this social environment that the myth of the Tuareg queen Tin Hinan was born .

Around 1250, Islamic proselytizing by Al Hassan Addakhil from Yanbu 'al-Bahr led to the replacement of the traditional Berber religion .

In 1447 the Genoese Antonio Malfante was the first European to travel the Sahara route through Twat. At the instigation of Muhammad al-Maghili , the Jewish communities of Twat and Gourara were wiped out by pogroms in 1490 .

Around the middle of the 16th century, the Aulād Sīdī ʿUmar al-Sheikh, a branch of the Moorish tribal association of the Kunta , settled in Touat. In 1581 Touat was conquered by the Saadi . Ahmad ar-Raggād, a member of the Aulād Sīdī ʿUmar al-Sheikh, founded the Zāwiya of the Kunta in Touat in 1652 , which remained one of the most important religious centers of the place for centuries.

19th and 20th centuries

The Traité de Lalla- Maghnia of March 18, 1845 between Sultan Mulai Abd ar-Rahman and Ludwig Philip of France left the rule of Twat, Gurara ( Timimoun ) and Tidikelt ( Aoulef ) open. Bou Ahmed , the Grand Vizier of Abd al-Aziz of Morocco , had the Twat occupied in 1900 because, according to his legal opinion, the Twat in the Traité de Lalla-Marnia Morocco was slammed. By 1901 French troops occupied the three oases Twat, Gurara and Tidikelt and the city of Igli .

“ Morocco is losing territory, France is getting the entire disputed region.

The Sultan rejects the French government's proposal for preferential tariffs. The London Times correspondent in Fez claims that the Algerian-Moroccan border issue has been satisfactorily resolved and that a border route has been agreed. The Moroccan and French governments pledged mutual support in preventing smuggling and collecting import and export duties. France receives the territories already occupied by French troops. The Sultan rejected the French government's proposal for preferential import and export customs duties at the border stations, pointing out that if such were allowed, this would be contrary to existing treaties. An expedition led by Monsieur Alfred-Aimé Flamant , which was claimed to be scientific but had a military escort, arrived in December 1899 with the residents of Insalah, the capital of the Tidikelt district, in the northeast of the Twat is in conflict. Insalah is approximately 300 miles from the southernmost French military base in Algeria, El Meniaa . The inhabitants were suppressed and Insalah was permanently occupied by French troops. An article in the London Times of January 17, 1900 depicts the occupation of a number of oases, commonly known as twat. It is from these oases that the nomadic tribes of the Sahara receive their main source of food in the form of dates. The Twat has considerable underground water resources and has always been a major center of Sahara trade. In March 1900, the French army won another victory when they occupied Ingar, and the following month Igli at Oued Saoura -Messaud was taken by a powerful force. Since this place is a key position on the route from Morocco to the oases, the sultan and the guarantee states protested against the occupation. He claimed that the Twat region was in the Moroccan sphere and that French actions violated the treaty of 1845 which regulated the borders of Morocco and Algeria.

On July 2, 1900, the Prime Minister of France, Monsieur Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau , declared that the territory claimed by the Sultan belonged to France. Igli, said the Prime Minister, was of great strategic importance and the railroad would possibly lead to this place. "

- New York Times. October 20, 1902

A road and rail link to Timbuktu was built under French rule. The area has been designated as the Territoire des oasis saharennes . After the independence of Algeria, the railway line was no longer maintained.

1956 proclaimed Allal al-Fassi , founder of the nationalist Istiqlal -party the claim bulk Morocco on Twat, Béchar and Tindouf . After the withdrawal of the French troops from Algeria, Mohammed V of Morocco briefly occupied the Twat. Even today, Mohammed VI claims . of Morocco Béchar.

The Algerian government offers protection to the Polisario Front in Tindouf.

Tamentite meteorite

Tamentite meteorite, sampled

Gerhard Rohlfs reported on a meteorite that he had seen in the Kasbah of Tamentit in 1864.

In 1927 Antoine Lacroix estimated the time of the meteorite decline based on stories to be in the 14th century. The site of the impact was a location between Noum en Nas (27 ° 37 'N, 0 ° 13' W) and Tittaf (27 ° 24 '33 "N, −0 ° 11' 5" E ) (27 ° 45 'N, 0 ° 10' W). In the sky the meteor had been observed to be golden, at the point of impact as silver and when the people who had arrived could not agree on the property rights, they realized that it was iron . Between 1392 and 1413 a Sheikh Ámr had him brought 40 km to the north-northwest in front of the mosque of Tamentit.

After French troops occupied French Morocco in the Rif War in 1925 , the meteorite was brought to the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in 1927 , where it weighed 510 kg after Lacroix had taken a sample.

A stele dating from 1390 with a Hebrew inscription about Mimoun ben Shmouel, ben Braham, ben Kouby was also found in Tamentit .

Tamentite meteorite
Issued at Vulcania

literature

Aziz A. Allah Batran: The Qadiryya Brotherhood in West Africa and the Western Sahara: The Life and Times of Shaykh Al-Mukhtar Al-Kunti (1729-1811). Institut des Etudes Africaines, Rabat, 2001. pp. 35-42.