Sahara: The life of the great desert by Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle, HarperCollins, 拢16.99, ISBN 0007148208
WE BEGIN our Saharan journey with Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle sipping tea under the flimsy shade of an acacia on the edge of the Erg de Tenere in Niger. It鈥檚 noon and hot 鈥� the high forties 鈥� so we sit grilling in silence. And as we do, three blue-robed and veiled Tuareg high above on their camels, silent except for 鈥渃reaking of leather and breathy burping鈥� appear from nowhere and pass within a few yards. Without a sign of greeting, they carry on to the north. Sahara took me straight back to my first encounter with the region about 30 years ago, when we went in search of the Tassili N鈥橝jjer frescoes in Algeria. I felt a real affinity with Villiers and Hirtle as I began their new biography of the desert.
And I agree 鈥� the Sahara is the greatest desert on the planet. More than 7 million square kilometres, only 15 per cent of which is sand. Eleven North African countries. Two million inhabitants. Six nomadic groups. Five mountain massifs. A network of ancient caravan routes winds past rock art chronicling change over 12,000 years or more.
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To do justice to a contemporary understanding of this desert, its long history and complex geography, de Villiers and Hirtle have been thorough in their research. They draw on the diaries and records of travellers and scientists, beginning with the Moorish scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi. A long list of the known and lesser known contribute to the story, backed by useful annotations. I found all my favourites here: pioneers such as Ibn Batuta in the 14th century and Leo Africanus in the 1500s, the late 18th-century explorer Mungo Park, and the 19th-century stars Ren茅 Caill茅 and Heinrich Barth. J. L. Cloudsley-Thompson, Tor Eigland and Angela Fisher offer modern views.
De Villiers and Hirtle travel through time too, beginning 100 million years ago, when the whole Sahara was forested and moist, home to dinosaurs, crocodiles and fish. Remnants of vast drainage systems and dry lakes can still be seen, and in rare wet winters, ancient landscapes magically reappear.
Not so in Arawan: here the wind-blown sands smother the town despite the efforts of the sand women who sweep and sweep. (So why did a Manhattanite build the Arawan Hilton Hotel there?) The master of the sands is the wind, and Sahara includes a useful listing of the hot, often dreaded variants that blow across this region. Some are so strong that they can whisk grasshoppers from Africa to Antigua in five days. Others carry more than 60 million tonnes of sand over the Atlantic each year. On water and fossil aquifers, the authors ask if Gaddafi鈥檚 Great-Man-Made River, the largest civil engineering project on Earth, can last more than 50 years.
But the heart of the Sahara is its many peoples, nomadic and settled. Those 2 million who make it their home have coped with a changing landscape, famine, forced migration, invasions and holy wars for the past 40,000 years. It鈥檚 a phenomenal story, and the chapters devoted to it are the best in the book. Here are descriptions of the first inhabitants and their Stone Age relics left in the sand. And then we hear about the ten or so empires: the mysterious Garamantes of the Fezzan in the south-west corner of Libya, for example, whose chariots travelled as far as the Niger river. They were overthrown by the Romans and later ruled by successive Arab dynasties.
Trade knits the Sahara together. The map of caravan routes shows these remarkable links. Today, a third of the inhabitants are nomadic, notably the Tubu from the Tibesti and the Tuareg from the central Sahara. The Chaamba in the north, originally from Syria, were once a haven for 鈥渞efugees and troublemakers鈥�. The Moors in the west are descendants of the Berbers. The authors bring out the best in those they describe. So it is impossible not to feel respect for these nomadic communities and an admiration for their heritage.
With this broad perspective, the authors weave together the ongoing life of a desert that is forever changing, its mysteries largely intact.