The Tuareg: People of Ahaggar

The blue-veiled Tuareg of the central Sahara are the very definition of romantic glamour. The severity of their homeland and the riches of their traditional culture have won them the unstinting regard of generations of explorers. They first became a household word when their ferocious defence of their desert homeland halted the advance of French imperialism. A generation later this proud warrior nation would accept an honourable peace.

In 1962 the revolution, which succeeded in expelling France from all of Algeria, also created new patterns of authority in the Sahara. This was the period when Jeremy Keenan started his lifelong quest to observe how this traditional society would adapt to the egalitarianism of a socialist Arab republic. His is a classic work, part history, part anthropology, part travelogue. It is required reading for all who have become interested in the Tuareg and the Sahara.