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INTRODUCTION 17a poem valuable is the argument, vision or feeling expressed, which can bedebated or taken as an example in other forms of historical production.Fragments of poetry are often used to illustrate what has been said, or as afundament to build one’s own narrative on. 20 The Teshumara movement and itssuccessors have been very prolific in the domain of poetry and song writing.Most poems and songs reflect upon the social-political situation the ishumarfound themselves in, and upon the social-political conditions of the Tamasheqworld outside the Teshumara. The aim of the poets was to raise politicalawareness within the Tamasheq world, along the lines of their own thoughts,which were not by definition shared by all Kel Tamasheq. Hence, the relationsunderlying the (re)construction of events in historically loaded political discoursewas one of ‘informed’ towards ‘non-informed’. Teshumara poetry is notonly the result of relations contemporary to their production. Many poemsevoke historical moments. Therefore, they are themselves historical end products,used to raise political awareness. I have collected a corpus of poetrymyself but, due to unfortunate circumstances, most of this corpus remainsuntranslated and thus closed to me. Luckily enough, more competent people inthis respect have done similar work. With few exceptions, I will make use oftwo unpublished corpuses of poetry. The first was collected in 1995, mostlyfrom the mouth of the composers themselves, by Nadia Belalimat and translatedwith the help of Moussa ag Keyna, himself a poet of the Teshumara. 21 Thesecond corpus was collected by Georg Klute in 1996 and 1998 and was translatedwith the help of Ehya ag Sidiyene. 22 These poems were collected largelyin a similar fashion to my own collection and are similar in content as well. Thetwo people that helped translate both corpuses were exactly those I had hopedto engage in the translation of my own corpus, simply because they are the bestones normally available. But alas, they were not.The centrality of individualised history, the exploits of persons, is predominantin all forms of historical production mentioned above. Tamasheq communalidentity and belonging are imagined, in the sense of Anderson’s work, butthe whole of Tamasheq society consists of face-to-face communities in closecontact with each other. They know of each other’s existence, stories andparticular exploits. The role of the physical environment is related to this. Intimes of scarcity, it is vital to be able to leave one’s territory and dwell on thatof neighbours. In this particular environment, knowing people, and the relationto them over space as well as time, is essential to survival. It is easier to rememberthe historical relation one has to a particular tewsit through the inter-202122A good and available example of this is: Ag Alojaly, G. 1975.Belalimat, N. 1996.Klute, G. 2001.