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84 CHAPTER 2of race was purely based on phenotype, and not on lineage or culture. 30 Torecapitulate: In Tamasheq discourse shaggaran is the colour of the free (ellellu)but not of the noble (imushagh), who are seen as sattefen. But contrary to thislocal perception the French perceived blanc/shaggaran to be the colour ofnobility. Hence, especially after the virtual extinction of the imushagh after theTamasheq uprisings during the First World War, French racial perceptionsgained ground and led to a gradual reappraisal of skin colours within Tamasheqsociety itself. Blanc/shaggaran won in importance and noir/koual became moreand more stigmatised as the colour of slaves, with sattefen becoming in disuse.Under the influence of French as the (former) colonial language, Tamasheqracial discourse has gradually incorporated European racial discourse andterminology even further. When speaking French, a Tamasheq will nowadaystranslate koual as noir, while both shaggaran and sattefen are translated asblanc. But when speaking Tamasheq, the local term shaggaran would still beused, while the word imoulan – white – would not be. Yet, although hard evidenceis lacking, the French colonial equation of blanc with noble, togetherwith the virtual elimination of the sattefen coloured nobility after their uprisingsin the 1910s, probably helped the upward social mobility of some shaggaran/-blanc coloured groups. At present, some groups formerly described as imghadin colonial ethnography now stress that the term ellellu, which originally meant‘free’ simply means ‘noble’. By collapsing the terms sattefen, the colour of nobility,and shaggaren, the colour of the free into blanc when speaking French,and by changing the meaning of the word ellellu from 'free' into 'noble', theselower status groups effectively climb the ladder of society through the restructuringof race in society itself. 31On the basis of their perception of race in the Sahara, colonial historiographyand ethnography presented the Kel Tamasheq elite as an ‘alien invader’. Theyhave been portrayed, among other things, as the descendants of the Vandals,lost crusaders or even of a ‘Caucasian-populated sunken Atlantis’. 32 These invadershad then subdued an indigenous African population, an image that wouldresurface at various times after independence. In the colonial perception, in away, Tamasheq society in its ‘ historical’ and ‘white’ origins mirrored colonialimages of the colonial project: ‘Whites’ ruling ‘blacks’. This may have been at303132Hall, B. 2005: 67.Based on discussions with members of the fraction Ishidenharen Kel Ashu, CercleMénaka, who claim ellellu (which they are) to mean noble, but who were describedby Nicolaisen as imghad in the 1960s. Nicolaissen, J. & I. Nicolaissen 1997. Similarclaims are made by the Ifoghas and Idnan in the Région Kidal. Although thesegroups were not noble in pre-colonial times, but were dominated by the Ouillimidenimushagh, their pre-colonial status is less clear.Henry, J-R. 1996.