African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 750
heroine depicted in myth as having fought against Arabs and resisted Islam, older men
present quickly dismissed her as “not important.” Only female herbalist healers explicitly
mentioned Tagurmat by name, when they related the story of Tagurmat as founder of the
local Igurmaden clan and also the founder of the herbalist medical profession. One
elderly female herbalist, for example, related another variant of the Tagurmat myth:
There was a woman who had a very jealous husband. He transferred her
very far away. They lived so that other men would not see her. One day,
he saw people coming toward them on their camels, elaborately decorated.
They said, “Look at the men who are going to war.” The woman looked
and she said, “I see a very handsome man among these men, one with an
indigo robe.” As soon as he heard this, the husband killed the woman with
a knife and she died. He straightened her body out for burial. The
woman’s stomach moved. He tore it open and took out two small twin
girls. The two little girls each held something in their hands. He cut the
umbilical cords. He arranged these girls, and after that he united the
people for taking the dead woman to the cemetery. And he told the people
afterward, “Look at what is in the hands of the little girls.” The people
said, “These small objects held, you must hide until the girls grow up to
learn about them. If they die, the information will also die.” The small
objects were in wood. These were hidden until the girls grew up. They
replied, “That is the beginning of medicine.” They even had medicine of
icherifan (clans claiming descent from the Prophet) and they taught how
the medicine is made: one touches, they explained, everything. They were
named Fatane and Fatoni. All the women on their side of the family
learned to make medicine from them, and taught this to those women who
were interested. That was the beginning of healing. Since being taken out
of their mother’s womb, these girls held medicines.
In discussions of local mythical/historical heroes, many men expressed admiration for
Boulkhou and also Kaousan: the former was a founding marabout/warrior hero, the latter
was the leader of the 1917 Tuareg Senoussi Revolt against the French in the Sahara. They
also emphasized the sinking of the first well and the building of the first mosque in the
area by a patrilineally traced male ancestor. A marabout, insisted that myths about the
mythical female founding ancestress were “not true history, but like a children’s tale.”
Instead, he emphasized a legend relating the exploits of Boulkhou, a male
marabout/warrior hero who resisted enemies in the Air region by wearing Quranic
amulets, suspended by a thread, inside a well for forty days. Many local men cited
folklore sources they identified with the Quran in order to validate legal practices.
Marabouts, for example, explained the custom of bridewealth as deriving from a local
variant of the Adam and Eve myth: “Adam gave the first bridewealth for Eve by reciting
the Islamic ezeker (songs praising God)” (Rasmussen 1997, 138). Among many Air
Tuareg groups, the tradi-tional purpose of bridewealth is to protect women
socioeconomically, for it is considered ungallant for a husband to request a
reimbursement on divorce. Kel Ewey fathers hold the bridewealth in trust for brides, and
marabouts decide who keeps the bridewealth on divorce (whoever is not at fault,