Garamantes History
Garamantes: Sedentary Berber groups occupied the Maghreb during the start of the first millennium BCE, including the progenitors of the Moors of western parts, the Numids of contemporary eastern Algeria and the High Plains, the Getulians of the Predesert, and the Garamantes of the Fezzan. Two significant events spurred the Maghreb’s incorporation into the world of Mediterranean empires: the founding of Carthage around 750 BCE by Phoenicians from Tyre, and the establishment of Cyrena in 631 BCE by Greeks from Thera.
Carthage possessed the fertile coastal lowlands of modern-day Tunisia and Tripolitania, but had no desire to expand westward or southward into mountains or desert steppe. Its domain spanned the waters off Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, and Andalusia, as well as its ports along the African coast up to Gibraltar and Mogador. Its power eventually led to a battle with Rome, and the Punic Wars ended in 146 BCE with the fall of Carthage.
Built on African land, Cyrena was a typical Greek city renowned solely for its chariot racing. As it exploited the tiny coastal strip of Cyrenaica and Marmarica, it was always in battle with invading desert nomads and, on rare occasions, Egypt. Alexander’s invasion (331 BCE) led to its autonomy until its integration into the Roman Empire in 96 BCE.
At the start of the Christian era, the entire coastal Maghrib and Egypt were Romanized. As early as the fifth century BC, Herodotus mentions the Garamantes. He portrays them chasing the “Ethiopians on their four-horse chariots,” indicating that the Garamantes, like all of their Mediterranean contemporaries, employed horses and chariots. The Garamantes were sedentary agriculturists who lived mostly in the rich Wadi el-Agial, a vast oasis, as well as throughout the southwestern portion of modern-day Libya, between Tibesti and Ghadames.
The Romans considered them as half-legendary, but unsettling, “an ungovernable tribe,” as Tacitus says, “unceasingly engaged in brigandage actions against its neighbors,” and too far away to be subdued. Germa, the capital city of the Geramantes, had a contentious relationship with Rome. The Garamantes occasionally attacked Mediterranean cities, and Rome frequently led punitive expeditions against them. In other times, tranquility reigned.
The Garamantes were still a political grouping independent of Rome and Byzantium when the Islamic conquest began around 640. During the first millennium, the culminating phase began south of the Maghrib. The Libyan Desert was a formidable barrier that separated the Sahara and Egypt completely. However, certain inventions from the Mediterranean countries made their way to the middle Sahara.
The horse and chariot made their debut there. Technical indicators such as two-pole chariots, trigas, and quadrigas aid in dating this innovation, with all Saharan chariots constructed after 700 BCE. The Saharan rock art sequence refers to this period as the “Horse Period” or “Caballine Period”. Another new item, the throwing spear, had replaced the bow, the primary weapon of the Saharan neolithic people. Some decades later, the sword and shield appeared. The introduction of the camel just before the Christian era, however, is unquestionably the most significant novelty.
The Assyrians, who conquered Egypt in the seventh century BCE, domesticated the dromedary in the Middle East before introducing it into Egypt. From there, the animal first traveled to the Maghrib, where it was used as a draft animal for agricultural labor, and then to the central Sahara. It This animal is abundantly represented in the “Camel Period” rock art. The Saharan people instantly understood the significance of this “ship of the desert.”
Keeping horses in a harsh desert became too difficult in the early Christian era. Only certain areas, like the Sahelian margins (Air, Adrar des Iforas, Mauritania) or the Maghrib countries, could sustain them. Anywhere else, the camel used the horse as a pack animal. Above all, it made raids easier to conduct. Caravan trade began at the start of the camel period. At this time, characteristic African products, such as Guinean gold from Bambuk, began to arrive in Mediterranean ports on a regular basis, followed by Punic commodities in southern Morocco and Mauritania.
Only after the introduction of the camel into central and western Sahara could the trans-Saharan trade commence. The rock art of the central Sahara (that is, the current Tuareg country) shows no break in the evolution from the horse period to the camel period, which has continued until the present.
As a result, the Tuareg or their immediate ancestors, who had been settled in the central Sahara since the beginning of the first millennium BCE, are responsible for the introduction of the horse, chariot, throwing spear, camel, and writing. This contradicts Tuareg oral traditions, which state that they arrived at Air already Islamized.