Tuareg people

The Tuareg people or the Tuaregs are an Amazigh ethnic group. They are traditionally nomadic pastoralists who principally inhabit the Sahara in an area stretching from southwestern Libya to southern Algeria, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and as far as northern Nigeria, with smaller communities in Chad and Sudan known as the Kinnin. Their population is estimated to be 4 to 5 million worldwide.

The Tuareg speak the Tuareg languages, which include Tamasheq, Tamahaq, Tamajeq and Tawellemmet, all of which belong to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family.

They are a semi-nomadic people who mostly practice Islam, and are descended from the indigenous Berber communities of Northern Africa, whose ancestry has been described as a mosaic of local Northern African (Taforalt), Middle Eastern, European (Early European Farmers), and Sub-Saharan African, prior to the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb. Some researchers have tied the origin of the Tuareg ethnicity with the fall of the Garamantes, who inhabited the Fezzan (Libya) from the 1st millennium BC to the 5th century AD. Tuareg people are credited with spreading Islam in North Africa and the adjacent Sahel region.

Tuareg social structure has traditionally included clan membership, social status and caste hierarchies within each political confederation. The Tuareg have controlled several trans-Saharan trade routes and have been an important party to the conflicts in the Saharan region during the colonial and post-colonial eras.

Names

The origins and meanings of the name Tuareg have long been debated. It would appear that Twārəg is derived from the broken plural of Tārgi, a name whose former meaning was "inhabitant of Targa", the Tuareg name of the Libyan region commonly known as Fezzan.