Tuareg people

The Tuareg people (/ˈtwɑːrɛɡ/; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym, depending on variety: Imuhaɣ, Imušaɣ, Imašeɣăn or Imajeɣăn) are a large Berber ethnic group, traditionally nomadic pastoralists, who principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Algeria, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and as far as northern Nigeria, with small communities in Chad and Sudan known as the Kinnin.

The Tuareg speak languages of the same name, also known as Tamasheq, 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.