Who are the Tuareg? | Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World (original) (raw)

Who are the Tuareg? The Art of Being Tuareg An Inadan Family Early Contact, Early Collecting Art in an Environment of Contrasts The Sahara Tuareg is a Globalized Marketplace
The Tuareg, who once controlled the caravan trade routes across the Sahara, are a seminomadic, pastoralist people of North African Berber origin. They are nominally Muslim and presently number approximately 1 to 1.5 million. They are grouped into independent federations and live in southern Algeria, southwestern Libya, Mali, and Niger, and in fewer numbers, in Burkina Faso and Nigeria. Although the Tuareg are minorities in the countries they presently inhabit,their cultural unity is far-reaching. Tuareg society is stratified and includes a noble class, tributary groups, and marginal classes made up of religious leaders and artist/smiths called inadan. Their economy is based on breeding livestock, agriculture and trade. They speak Tamasheq a language related to other North African nomadic peoples, as well as French, and they read and write using a script called Tifinar, which is related to that of ancient Libya. They are sometimes referred to as
Map of the Tuareg region