o - Aceh Books website

772 TEBU
is every reason to believe that he used personal skill to solidify powers under
colonial rule that he never could have had in the traditional system. It seems
that previously the derdai was a guardian rather than a chief.
The dominant rule governing actual social organization is one of bilateral kindred
and relationship rather than patrilineality. Marriage is kindred exogamous and ideally
virilocal. The last 15 years of drought and revolution have so reduced the economic
viability of the Tibesti that men remain absent most of the year and residence has
become commonly uxorilocal, as the women stay with the children to care for the
herds. The basic unit of social organization is the nuclear family. Friendship plays
at least as large a part in determining cooperation as does relationship.
The Teda are 100 percent Muslim. Their Islamization dates very probably to
early in the Arab conquest, although most education in the Quran and the intricacies
of the legal system was a result of the establishment of Sanussi schools
in Libya and Chad within the last 100 years. Although there are some traces of
pre-Islamic belief, most of these have been incorporated into the Muslim system.
The Islamic calendar is followed. Prayer is regularly practiced by both men and
women, as is the Ramadan fast and zakat. Inheritance is Islamic. Although the
Tibesti does not shelter many mallamai (men educated in the Quran) since few
return to live permanently in the mountains, there are families boasting five
generations of mallamai. Two clans' ancestors seem to have been mallamai educated
in southern Chad and Niger. The Libyan oil boom has enabled more and
more Teda, both men and women, to perform the Haj.
The Teda are considered to be solitary, rather tough mountain and desert
people. They have been on fairly hostile terms with their Arab and Tuareg
neighbors through the colonial period. Independence from rather than cooperation
with each other is the modus vivendi. Teda values are basically Spartan in
character, softened somewhat by an Islamic sense of the more you give, the
more your receive.
The last 10 years have been particularly difficult for the Teda. The Tibesti
has served as a refuge for the guerrilla forces fighting the Chad government for
the rights of the Muslims, who constitute 50 percent of the population in Chad.
One-half of the Tibesti belong nominally to Chad and half to Libya, although
since the French left the area has not received the benefits of any government.
The Daza constitute by far the largest and oldest group within the Tebu. There
are reported to be 181,000 in Chad and 30,000 in Niger. Generally characterized
as cattle and camel pastoralists of the open Sahel, the Daza, like the Teda, engage
in commerce and agriculture. Their pastoralism involves frequent moves in the
vicinity of clan-owned wells with seasonal movement between wells. They are
divided into patrilineal clans which are not linked to those of the Teda. These
clans seem to identify more with territory than do the Teda, and patrilineality
is slightly more emphasized. Their culture is very similar to that of the Teda.
They live in similar loaf-shaped mat tents. Circumcision is performed on boys
of 10 to 12. Marriage involves a seven-day ceremony and divorce is frequent,
divorcees holding an independent and respectable status in the community. A