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 SKELETONS
ON THE ZAHARA
Dean King,
2005 (Arrow)
This
astonishing yarn expands
on the gruelling tale of the 1815 wreck
and enslavement of the crew of the American
brig Commerce mentioned in Spanish
Sahara reviewed
below. The ordeal the crew suffered at the hands
of the barbaric Western Saharan tribes (described
collectively but
not so accurately as 'Saharawi') is truly horrendous.
At that time (and indeed right up to the St Exupery
era) ransoming
of foreigners to European trading posts at Essaouira
or St Louis was the norm, but the Commerce had the misfortune to
run around around Cap Boujdour midway between the
two.
Pounced upon
and subsequently sold on and on to other nomads
for a blanket or other chattels, the miseries
of the beaten, stripped and starved crew
as they tramp around the desert of present day
southern Western Sahara and northern Mauritania
are based chiefly
on the Commerce's Captain Riley's own account.
This book gained wide popularity following his
eventual rescue and even influenced Lincoln's
anti-slavery attitudes. For weeks at a time
the best drink they could manage was cupping
their hands behind a urinating camel and most
lost half their body weight - some lost their
minds.
You do have a
feeling the author - more familiar with maritime
than desert matters - embellishes a little too
zealously at times, but it all helps to drive
the narrative along with barely a dull moment.
This is a survival story on par with
Shakelton's amazing escape from Antarctica, and
right up to the very end their continued depradations
leave you guessing as to the final outcome.
 A documentary of
the book appears on the History Channel from
time to time.
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 SPANISH SAHARA
John Mercer, 1976 (o/p)
John Mercer visited this tightly-controlled colony as power was slipping from Spain's hands and the region's Saharawi people faced recolonisation led primarily by Morocco, that resulted in the protracted Polisario conflict which endures today with the territory divided by the berm. All that was about to kick off as the book ends, and up to that point Mercer gives a very through account of this seeming Saharan No Man's Land starting with geology, natural history and prehistory. The Berber history of the Almoravids who conquered most of Spain leads to the feeble (or unproductive) Portuguese and Spanish incursions of the late Middle Ages on which Spain based its colonial claim in the late nineteenth century. We also read about the activities of early traders like the Scot, Mackenzie, whose fortress-like trading counter still lies off Cape Juby an adventurer-entrepreneur who tried to buy into the rich trans-Saharan caravan trade before it got to Moroccan markets. Or the depredations suffered by Alexander Scott and James Riley, shipwrecked in the early nineteenth century, but who at least lived to tell the tale.
We also get what must be the best English-language account of the tribes of that region closely related to today's Moors; the well known Arabised Reguibat, the Delim and other lesser clans who, when not raiding each other, preyed on shipwrecks, their victims and early explorers. Their complex allegiances, culture, customs and daily life is especially detailed, as in an account of the manoeuvres behind the French colonisation of the region. Resources was what they were after: the world's largest source of phosphate at Bou Craa, the iron ore at Zouerate and the rich offshore fisheries.
It may be 30 years old, but its hard to think of a more thoroughly researched account (in English) that opens up the Western Sahara and its neighbouring regions - you'll find it used on the web from around a tenner.
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 SAHARA, THE LIFE OF THE GREAT DESERT
Mark de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle. Harper Collins, 2003
It is generally unavoidable to write about history while not having been there, but it is surely indefensible to attempt to describe the geography of a region with virtually no firsthand experience.The authors start off promisingly by dismissing the customary romanticism laid on the Sahara as "outsider thinking": the "pitiless sun" being no more than the "pitiless traffic" of Fifth Avenue. Thereafter great empires of West Africa are well accounted for (lifted from a previous book of the authors?) but beyond that, and their visits to Niger and Timbuktu, they get in a complete muddle. The howlers start from page 9 when we learn that the Tanezrouft is an erg and later that In Salah is "an epicentre of the oil industry" and Leptis was dug out of the sand. The nature of the harmattan wind also happens to contradict all previous sources, Ghat is an all but abandoned Tuareg camp and - get this - the canyon of Iherir contains the Sahara's only perennial river! This is a clanger of Saharan proportions but will hopefully bring some income to the poor village of Iherir when the whitewater brigade turn up.The problem is that the authors have been to the Sahara just a couple of times, more than most it is true but surely not enough to attempt a book such as this?
One gets the impression they fell for the enigmatic Tuareg (as you do) and thought "heck, let's write our new book about Sahara and those shimmering courtly nomads!" Anyone who would dare take on such a task surely ought to read French and German. Perhaps this is why the authors quote repeatedly from a limited range of the usual English-language sources: Barth, Nachtigal plus Africanus and other ancients and the few Brits like Clapperton that put pen to paper. But they use these 19th century explorers as if they were as reliable as anyone and relevant today - including ancient spellings; have they not even heard of a Mich 953/741 map? Having done a lot of their groundwork fifteen years ago, Porch's excellent 'Conquest of the Sahara' (see below) gets a good work out while Heseltine's 'From Libyan Sands to Chad' (1955, and a great little classic) is the veritable horse's mouth for Chad and the Tubu (so never mind about Jean Chapelle's 'Nomads Noirs du Sahara' then). And last but not least is the Encyclopaedia Britannica (online version…) for all those last minute queries. What a give away. Elsewhere the embellishment is irritating if to be expected - though you would have thought not in the "moonscape" Aïr, one of the few places in the Sahara where one suspects the authors have actually been. They certainly do not appear to have visited the desert areas of Morocco, Chad, Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania or even Egypt, or have nothing accurate to say about these places. But I liked the section on weather and also got a better understanding of the eminence of Old Ghana in the heyday of the trans-Sahara trading caravans.
In the end though, the authors prove that they too are outsiders - overlooking or skimming vast parts of Saharan geography like the Gilf Kebir (and not just the 'Western Desert'), the Tassili and Akakus, the distinctive Moorish culture and the Reguibat and the ongoing Tubu rebellion. They extrapolate from maps whose context they misunderstand: we learn that "dunes cover most of Western Sahara" and long-abandoned Tagheza somehow overrules Taoudenni today as a source of salt. They miss out on contemporary political upheavals too, as if they wrote the book 20 years ago. So it is that comprehending the Tuareg rebellion in Niger, (something which has set these people back years and was one of Micheal Buckley's better achievements in Grains of Sand) isn't allowed to interfere with eulogies on their preternatural guiding abilities, etc; the same, tired old Tuareg schtick.
The trouble with making stuff up or guessing is that, besides making a fool of the authors, the reader does not know what else is fictitious and so the book's value is lost. Europe is the source of the greatest works on the Sahara, either through direct historical connection or learning. The definitive work on the Great Desert will, or may already be, written in French or German. This book certainly is not it.
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 THE HUNT FOR ZERZURA; THE LOST OASIS AND THE DESERT WAR
Saul Kelly, 2003
Here we get the background behind the English Patient fiction: the international bunch of adventurers who opened up the exploration of the Libyan Desert between the wars and then went on to become adversaries in WWII (what a great film that would make!). In case you're wondering, Zerzura is a lost oasis of ancient legend mentioned in the Arabian Nights and Herodotus, and retold to British explorer Wilkinson in the late 1800s - a Shangri-La in the wastes between the outlying oases of the Western Desert and the Depression of Kufra.
What comes out is that behind the chummy search for Zerzura by British chappies and Jonny Foreigner was, sadly, a need for strategic intelligence from the little known Libyan Desert. By the early 1930s Mussolini had pharaonic aspirations in Brit-controlled Egypt and with every trip the blanks on the maps were filled in and handed over.
Of all the characters, Almasy's background and motivations are most intriguing. Even in the book's latter re-telling of daring LRDG escapades, there is still a hint that he was hedging his bets as the war of the Axis powers declined. His own daring Operation Kondor - delivering a pair of hapless agents to Asyut all the way from Cyrennecia via the Gilf - failed to help Rommel's advance, though through no fault of his own. But a decade or more earlier it's still hard to tell whether his urge to explore the Libyan Desert in Egypt and Sudan was purely strategic as hinted, or just a love of adventure inherited from his explorer-father. The competitiveness and envies absent from his own account (see below) are to his credit as the Brits did not take to him at all.
For the record Zerzura was located at that time as the near-barren Wadi Abd el Malik in the western Gilf, where even in the last century Tubu cows were pastured for a few weeks out of Kufra following rain in the Gilf's highlands. Today declining rains see only a few trees and some vegetation survive, but its position between Dakhla, Abu Ballas and Kufra support the legend of a former watering hole for camel-borne raiders from the east which got embellished, as these things do, into a city of splendour, in the way of Timbuktu.
'Zerzura' will only appeal to those who've travelled in the Libyan Desert and have an interest in the protagonists. It doesn't read like the author's been there which is a shame and despite the racy blurb, comes across as a well-researched, fact -heavy and scholarly version of recent and Saharan history.
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 THE OTHER EGYPT by
Wael Abed, Cairo, 1998
The appropriate title describes the little-known western mass of the country: the Qattara Depression and Egypt's chunk of the Libyan Desert: the Great Sand Sea, Gilf Kebir plateau and Jebel Uweinat. A mixture of geography textbook, history of exploration and semi-poetic elegy to the mysteries of the desert, the book was compiled over several expeditions during the 1990s. It does not really stand up to Monod's beautifully produced 'Désert libyque' (Arthaud,1994) or Egypt; Civilisation in the Sands (see above) but it's in English so for that we can be grateful.
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 DESERT EXPLORER - A BIOGRAPHY OF COLONEL P.A. CLAYTON
Patrick Clayton (son) Zerzura Press
P.A. Clayton was one of the key figures in opening up the Libyan Desert in the early thirties. The book is a biography of the father by a son, who lived the first ten years of his life in Egypt, accompanying his father on several of his surveying expeditions deep into the desert, and the documented milestones in the explorer's life are intermingled with details based on the author's personal memories. It's a pity, that the most significant of Clayton's expeditions, those seeking the mythical Zarzura oasis in 1932 and 1933 are only described by quoting already published sources, revealing no new information. The son's view is understandably biased, sometimes resulting in deviance from facts known from other sources, but never disturbingly so. Overall, the book is an excellent combination of already published information and personal experience, supplemented by previously unpublished photographs.
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 PEOPLE OF THE VEIL ~ Being an Account of the Habits, Organisation and History of the  Wandering Tuareg Tribes which inhabit the Mountains of Air or Asben in the Central Sahara o/p
Francis Lord Rennel of Rodd, 1926
The titled Rodd was the son of a diplomat who appeared to take a gap year in 1922 to study the Tuareg of the Aïr and the Damergu region around Tanout. He came up from then British Nigeria with Angus Buchanan and anothe guy and travelled in the region (with a visit to Termit) for nine months, possibly motivated by an ancestor who'd travelled in the region in the nineteenth century. Like so many people, he became enamoured with the Aïr Tuareg, but what we get here is a thorough anthropoligical tretise in the Kel Tagelmoust, as the Tuareg call themselves ('Tuareg' is a derogatory Arabic description for 'Godless'). Their customs, architecture, origins as well as the landscape around them are all detailed intimatly with only occasional descriptions and insights into Rodd's travels. The many accompanying plates ar rather drab and a small map is included.
This book would only appeal to those looking fior rare English-language anthropological detail on the Tuareg (Jeremy Keenan's republished book on the Ahaggar Tuareg is another source) or those with a close interest in exploring the Aïr mountains.
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 THE SWORD AND THE CROSS
Fergus Fleming, Granta Books, 2004
A
double biography of two extraordinary characters
who helped shape France's colonial fortunes
in North Africa. This is the story of General
Henri Lapperine, the dashing Commander of
the Oasis whose camel corps rode sleek racing
méharis
with the general at their head. Alongside
walked his guide and interpreter - a sunburnt
scarecrow of a man reciting prayers as they
went - Charles, Pere de Foucauld.
Fleming's style is well researched and enthralling. He admits that there is not a lot of material on Lapperine, who wrote little down and seems to have been little appreciated in his lifetime. Foucauld, an obsessive letter writer and list maker, left a large legacy and has been the subject of many works - mostly in French and usually lionising his saintly attributes.
In order to tell the tale, Fleming first describes the situation in the French African colonies of Algeria and the Soudan to the south during the 19th Century. The grandiose plan is to link the two - eventually by rail - via the Sahara, the conquest of which becomes a matter of national honour. The descriptions of the large expeditions sent to achieve this aim are horrifying - they end in unmitigated disasters, each one greater than the previous. The flamboyant characters involved are described - with a repetitive postscript '…they too were murdered'.
Into the desert enter two seemingly different men - bound by a desire to see the Sahara and its population as French - in Foucauld's case, Godly and French. The main protagonist is Charles de Foucauld, an aristocrat turned hermit. Starting out as an overweight and not very good cavalry officer with a taste for women and the easy life, he is sent to Algeria. Here he discovers not only a love of the desert but also forms the idea of creating a religious order - not just an average order, but one whose regime of self denial makes Trappism seem luxurious. Living on a diet of barley and dates, spending twelve hours a day in prayer he founds an order that had a membership of one during his lifetime (unsurprisingly) and converted a single elderly blind woman. He never loses touch with his acquaintances from military days - they provide protection for him and he in turn supplies them with maps and information regarding the 'ground feeling' of the desert tribes.
Lapperine sees the folly of the mass marches and forms a camel corps, whose swiftness in smaller numbers and less need for supply chains enable them to subdue the Tuareg. A 'soldiers' soldier' he was a hard taskmaster admired by his troops (when one of his natives was questioned about his loyalty to France he replied that his loyalty was not to France - but to Lapperine). He needed information from the Hoggar (a little light spying) and who better than his old friend Foucauld. When offered the chance to set up a hermitage in the remote outpost of Tamanrasset, Pere de Foucauld relishes the prospect of tending to the locals (and supplying Lapperine with reports).
By 1910 with the Tuat and Hoggar under the control of the French and with Foucauld alternating between Tamanrasset and his even more remote hermitage at Assekrem, Laperinne sets out on a series of tours. Although successful these are seen by his superiors as meddling in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire (which at the time was nominally in charge of the Tripolitania to the east of Algeria). Lapperine is recalled to France as war clouds gather leaving Foucauld behind. In an obscure footnote to the international situation Senoussi raiders roam the Sahara attacking the remaining French at the behest of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Caught up in the intrigue, Foucauld is assassinated on December 1st 1916.
Upon hearing the news Lapperine requests immediate transfer back to Algeria to avenge his friend. Three years later as he lays dying, lost in the desert following an aircrash, General Lapperine's utters his final words: 'People think they know the desert, people think I know it. Nobody really knows it'.
Tim Stead |
THE UNKNOWN SAHARA
Laszlo Almasy. Bootleg translation by Andras Zboray. 40 euro. 109pp pdf.
The eastern Sahara's Libyan Desert (covering Egypt, Libya, Sudan), was one of the last corners of the desert to be explored and still remains wild and barely visited. In the late 1920 and early 30s - the Hungarian Almasy (a contemporary of Bagnold and Clayton and fictionalised as the 'English Patient') criss-crossed this region in then newfangled motorcars which enabled systematic exploration of this hyper-arid quarter.
The book tells the stories of his many feats in the region: the first drive to Kufra from the west, the clarification of the Zarzura legend, the discovery of countless rock art sites including the famous Cave of the Swimmers, were some of his achievements.
Almasy's enthusiasm and courage is inspiring. To be bombing around the most desolate corner of the Sahara in tinny Fords (2WD of course), dropping fuel and water here and there is quite a feat. You'll also pick up some interesting Sahara lore that is not found elsewhere - in English at least. The book could use a sketch map to point out his wanderings - even with three maps on the go I found it hard to work out where he was - especially around the Gilf.
That said, 'Unknown Sahara' is a desert classic finally available in English. Like Bagnold's Libyan Sands (see below), it reveals the very earliest days of Saharan motoring. Highly recommended.
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DIE ERSCHLIESUNG DER SAHARA DURCH MOTORFAHRZEUGE 1901-1936,
[Opening up the Sahara by Motor Vehicle, 1901-36]
Werner Nother
Bellville, 832pp, about 75 euros (try amazon.de)
I would not normally review German books here, even if some of the best material may be in that language, but hardcore Saharans may be interested in this huge new book, a breeze block three times the size of Sahara Overland.
Werner Nother is one of a handful of German-speaking uber Saharans known to me and a registered ergoholic. Among his many Saharan achievements are mapping every last lake and paleo-lake in the Ubari Sand Sea years before they appeared on the tourist trail (his Hilux is pictured on p.82 of Sahara Overland). I hear it has taken him ten or twenty years to complete this massive book - a record of every pioneering expedition by motor car and bike trip into the Sahara in the first third of the last century. I can't understand a word of it but the many archive photos and crystal clear maps are good enough to illustrate the advent of the automobile in the Sahara. Some of the early solutions to the problem of soft sand traction are ingenious - they cottoned on to giant caterpillar/belt drives pretty early, though the propeller cars (right) look like they may have had pilot suction problems. And our strange friend Byron Prorok (see here) is in here too.
Interestingly, one sees that all the main pistes as depicted on the Mich 741 and including the Libyan Desert were all established by the mid-30s. And yet took them another 70-odd years to finally seal the Sahara (followed by an eternity of maintenance...). The many maps also highlight places and routes that may have slipped from the contemporary Saharan radar, offering endless opportunities for historic trips 'in the wheel tracks of'. I suspect this is a fascinating account of early motoring in the Sahara.
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 CONQUEST OF THE SAHARA
Douglas Porch (new 2005 edition by Farrar Straus Giroux)
An intriguing and readable account of France's attempts to colonise the Sahara during the 'Scramble for Africa' in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Full of historical detail, it vividly describes the vainglorious expeditions, large and small, which staggered across the desert, often poorly led and suffering greatly for personal prestige and their country's honour. The extraordinary shambles of the doomed Flatters expeditions has to be read to be believed. This description refers to the original 1986 edition.
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 THE SEARCH FOR THE TASSILI FRESCOES
Henri Lhote (Hutchinson, 1959/60) (o/p)
There are several picture books describing or including the rock art of the Tassili. The best known though not best admired is thius one: The Search for the Tassili Frescoes published (in English) in 1959 and easily available used on the web. It was he who led an expedition to record the art for posterity as the colony of Algeria was slipping out of France's hands. Unfortunatly Lhote and those in his service adopted the practise of wetting the rock art to produce more vivid photographs - something which has accelerated fading in a few decades after surviving millennia on the plateau.
In this case he may not have known any better, though a little-known Swiss expedition recorded many of the Tassili's sites in the late 1940s; doing a much more thorough job than the well-publicised Lhote missions. But Lhote was also accussed of turning a blind eye and indeed including fakes (painted as a joke) among his recorded discoveries. The slinky quartet known as 'The Bird Headed Goddesses of Jabbaren' (see left ...) are known to be one such fake, supposedly included (but excised from later editions and indeed Jabbaren itself) to help attribute the style to ancient Egyptian influences. If anything it was probably the other way round.
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 GREAT WARM DESERTS OF THE WORLD
A Goudie (OUP, 2002)
This is the latest in the author's many books on the subject in a new 'Landscapes and Evolution' series from OUP. All the world's deserts are covered, though only Sahara is reviewed here.
Thirty percent of the continents are defined as desert and of the 444 pages Sahara gets 64. It is divided into 'Sahara' and 'Libyan Desert' chapters, a designation that originates with Bagnold (see Libyan Sands, p.181). Geographically I must say I find this reasoning a bit lame (with political overtones of 'French Sahara' v 'The Rest'), but of course many contiguous desert areas, Australia being a good example, are labelled as separate 'deserts' whose boundaries are even more vague. And interestingly, this map from 1926 identifies the Libyan Desert as separate if supplmentary to the Sahara.
As a way of learning more about the Sahara's landforms, I found the Sahara chapter (where some maps depect the 'full' Sahara) a bit unsatisfying, with focus on certain areas like the Chotts, the Chad Basin and even the Inland Niger Delta. I could well be missing some abstruse academic point about desert landforms, but it seemed the same case in the Australia chapter which I know too. The Libyan Desert chapter is actually limited to Egypt from where one presumes most material is easily available and is a bit more meaty, with the paleo-rivers beneath the Great Sand Sea, the Gilf and the many depressions discussed in more detail and in both chapters the fluctuating climate - particularly the Holocene wet Phase which coincides with much of the Sahara's rock art - is described.
For anyone wanting to go further, there are countless references, good maps and tables but at £90 this book is for specialists only. A similar book written 30 years earlier is Geomorphology in Deserts by R Cooke and A Warren. You can find it used on the web for around £15 and is as informative, even if the science has moved on a bit.
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