Tin Hinan grave
at Abalessa
Young touareg woman
The TUAREG
The Tuareg Woman
If the history of the Tuareg is closely related to the desert, it is also thanks to the essential part of woman. Indeed, originally, the first core of the targuies was the consisted noble Tin Hinan and Takama.
Tin Hinan was the queen who took the weapons to defend her people and the ideals of her country. The matriarchal mode continues to fade on the sociopolitic life of the Hoggar. The targuies still occupies an important place in the society, and in particular in the socio-cultural field.
It is she who transmits the Amenokhal of the line of the Kel Rhela. It is also the vector carrying the strength of its culture. Indeed, they are the mothers who learn to their daughters the Tifinar writing, and the art of playing the imzad. The imzad is the monochord violin, which is played exclusively by women artists; they only had the right to vibrate this instrument.
The imzad conceited part of the relics of a past where splendour Tuareg was based primarily on prohibited warlike practices from now on.
In the fights, the warriors always sought to be brave out of fear that their wife or fiancées would deprive them of the sounds of the imzad.
The only prospect to intend to play the imzad was enough to courage them and to incite them to conquer the enemy. This characteristic conferred to the imzad is not only the capacity but also the role and the valorization of the woman who remains without question the central pillar of the community. Until our days from Tamanrasset to Djanet, from Agadés to Niamey or Kidal to Bamako, everywhere in Ahaggar or Iforas, in the medium of these rock solid masses and their desert plains still the sound of this musical lament resounds for the imzad which continues to accompany by the poems and the fictionalized histories sung by men. One cannot speak about Ahal and the Imzad without referring to beautiful Dassine, a woman who marked her time.
Nowadays still one evokes with emotion these lively symbols of the Tuareg culture. For instance in Tamanrasset, Alamine Khawlen is quoted, in Bordj El Haouas it is Zegri Aïcha, in Djanet it is Tarzagh, in Ideless it is Eddaber Biyat. Alas, unfortunately the number of the guardians of this temple of the Tuareg culture is reduced and been likely to disappear.