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TIARET—TIBBU

that of Benedict XII. (d. 1342), of which the head is preserved in the museum at Avignon, while an effigy of the same pope in the crypt of St Peter's at Rome has a tiara with only two crowns. Since Benedict XII. the triple-crowned tiara has appeared regularly on the monuments of the popes. The crowns are essentially uniform, though the ornament varies (leaves or spikes).

Outside Rome it was still a considerable time before the triple-crowned tiara appeared in representations of the popes, and as late as the 15th century they are sometimes pictured with the single-crowned tiara. The reason for the addition of the third crown is unknown. The symbolism now attached to the triple crown (authority over heaven, earth and hell, or the temporal power and the powers of binding and loosing) is certainly not the original explanation.

Several baseless hypotheses have been advanced as to the origin of the papal tiara. In all probability the camelaucum, the oldest form of the tiara, came into use under the Greek and Syrian popes of the 7th, or the beginning of the 8th century, perhaps even under Pope Constantine himself. The prototype of the camelaucum must undoubtedly be sought at Constantinople in the head-ornament forming part of the Byzantine court costume. (J. Bra.) 


TIARET (Tahert), a town of Algeria, in the Tell Atlas, department of Oran, 122 m. S.E. of Mostaganem by rail. It occupies an important strategic position on a pass through the mountains at an elevation of 3552 ft. Pop. (1906), 5778, of whom 3433 were Europeans. The Wadi Tiaret flows through the town in a series of cascades. The upper town, the residential quarter, is on the right bank of this stream. The citadel occupies a separate hill on the other side of the wadi. The chief business centre is the lower town where are also the principal public buildings. On another hill opposite the citadel is the native town.

The citadel occupies the site of a Roman station believed to be that of Tingurtia. Tiaret (Berber for “station ”) was a town of note at the time of the Arab invasion of North Africa in the 7th century and is stated by Ibn Khaldun to have offered a stubborn resistance to Sidi-Okba. In 761 it was taken by Abdurrahman ibn Rostem, the founder of the dynasty of the Beni Rustām (Rostem). Their empire, which during the reign of Abdurrahman (761-784) and his son Abdul Wahab (784-823) extended over the greater part of the modern Algeria, was known as the Ibadite Empire from Abdallah ibn Ibad, the founder of the heretical sect to which Abdurrahman belonged. The Ibadites represented the moderate section of the Kharijites (see Mahommedan Religion). Seven princes of the Rustamite house succeeded Abdul Wahab at Tiaret, but in 909 the dynasty was overthrown by the Fatimite general al Shi'i. Two years later Tiaret was captured by Massala ibn Habbus of the Miknasa dynasty of Morocco, and after his death in 924 two other princes of the same house maintained their independence, but in 933 the Fatimites again gained the mastery. The Ibadites, after being expelled from the Tell, took refuge in Wargla. They were driven thence in the 11th century and migrated to Mzab, where their descendants still profess the Ibadite doctrines (see Mzabites). After its second capture by the Fatimites, Tiaret ceased to be the capital of a separate state. For a long period it was included in the sultanate of Tlemçen, and in the 16th century fell to the Turks. It was one of the chief towns of Abd el Kader, but was occupied by the French in 1843. At Takdempt, 6 m. west of Tiaret, Abd el Kader had his principal arsenal. About a mile from Takdempt are ruins of a town supposed to be the remains of the Ibadite capital. Eighteen miles S.S.W. of Tiaret are the sepulchral monuments known as the Jedars (see Algeria: § Archaeology).


TIBBU, or Tebu (“ Men of Tu, ” i.e. “ of the rocks ”), a nomad negro-Berber race of the eastern Sahara, their territory being conterminous westward with that of the Tuareg Berbers. Roughly, their domain is some 200,000 sq. m. Their westernmost settlements are the oases of Agram, Kawar and Jebādo, their northernmost the district of Gatron (Qatrūn) within the Fezzan frontier, while south and south-east they merge gradually in the negroid populations of Kanem, Bornu (Chad basin), Wadai and north-west Darfur. But the bulk of the nation is concentrated in the region of Tibesti or Tu, hence their name. There are two main divisions-the northern Teda, or less negroid Tibbu, and the southern Daza, or more negroid Tibbu. Somewhat more distantly connected with the same family are the Baele of the eastern and south-eastern oases and the Zoghāwa (Zaghwa) of Darfur. The Tibbu are variously estimated as numbering from 60,000 to 100,000, but their districts are so little known that these figures are not to be relied on.

The Tibbu are usually identified with the Garamantes of Herodotus (iv. 183), whose capital was Garama (Idrisi's Germa) in Phazania (Fezzan), and of whom Ptolemy already spoke doubtfully as Ethiopians (Negroes ?): “Οντων δέ καl αύτῶν ήδη μάλλον Αiθιόπων (i. 8). But Leo Africanus transfers them to the Berber connexion, whose fifth great division he deals with under the names of Gumeri (Garamantes?) and Bardaei or Bardoa, that is, the Teda of the Bardai oasis, Tibesti.[1] Lastly Heinrich Barth on linguistic grounds grouped them with the Kanuri of Bornu, who are undoubtedly negroes; and since his time (1852–1853) the Tibbu have been regarded by most ethnologists as a negroid people.[2] Gustav Nachtigal, who studied them carefully (1870–1873), although his own inferences are somewhat vague, supplies sufficient evidence for a solution of this difficult ethnological problem. There can be little doubt that the Teda, or true Tibbu, probably identical with the Tedamansii, a branch of the Garamantes, placed by Ptolemy south of the Samamycii in Tripolitana,[3] physically resemble their western Tuareg neighbours. They are a pure homogeneous race, who have for ages undergone no perceptible change in their rocky homes, and are still distinguished by the regular features, long black ringlety hair, haughty bearing and fierce expression common to so many of the Berber peoples. Mostly of middle size, they are finely proportioned, except the somewhat too small hands and feet, with lighter complexion than that of the southern Daza, and no trace of the flat nose, thick tumid lips, or other marked characteristics of the true negro. “Their women are charming while still in the bloom of youth” (Keane's Reclus, xxii. 429). But there has been a general displacement of the race southwards; and, while a few linger in the northern Gatron and Kufara districts, large numbers have since medieval times penetrated into the Kanem, Bornu, Wadai and Darfur regions of central Sudan. Here they have everywhere merged in the natives, so that in the Daza, Kanembu, Kanuri, Baele and Zoghāwa groups the Tibbu race presents all the shades of transition between the true negro and the true Berber.

The same transitional stages are observed in the Tibbu forms of speech, which constitute a wide-spread linguistic family, whose most archaic and purest branch is the Tedaga of Tibesti (Nachtigal). Through the southern Dazaga the Tedaga merges in the more highly developed and more recent Kanem, Bornu (Kanuri), Ennedi (Baele) and Darfur (Zoghāwa) dialects, which, owing to the absence of grammatical gender and some other structural features, are usually classed as negro languages. But a negro tongue could not have arisen among the people of Hamitic speech of the Tibesti uplands, and the explanation of this linguistic difficulty is obviously the same as that of the physical puzzle. The negro affinities of the southern members of the group have arisen through assimilation with the original and now partly displaced negro idioms of central Sudan. There remains the final difficulty that Tedaga itself has nothing in common with the Berber or any Hamitic tongue. If, therefore, it is neither Hamitic nor negro, the only two stock languages recognized by Lepsius in Africa, how is it to be placed? Lepsius's generalization, inconsistent as it is with the conditions occurring in other parts of the continent, must be rejected. Room having thus been found for other linguistic families, the Tedaga of Tibesti may be explained as an independent evolution from a primeval Tibbu- Berber germ, analogous to other linguistic evolutions in other isolated or inaccessible highland regions, such as the Caucasus, the Pyrenees and the Anahuac table-land. The common germ has long since perished, or can no longer be detected, and the Tibbu and Berber languages stand side by side as fundamentally distinct, while the two races remain physically one. The Tibbu are therefore a Berber people, who in their secluded homes have had time to evolve an independent form of speech, which southwards has become largely assimilated to the Sudanese negro dialects.

Lying on the tract of the great caravan route between Fezzan and Lake Chad, the Tibbu have always been a predatory race, levying blackmail on the convoys passing through their territory, maintaining inter-tribal feuds and carrying on constant

  1. See Vater, Mithradates, ii. p. 45 of Berlin ed. 1812, and Nachtigal, Sāhara und Sudan (1881), ii. 189.
  2. “ Ursprünglich ein Negervolk,” Lepsius, Nubische Grammatik (Einleitung) (Berlin, 1880).
  3. The original inhabitants of the Kufara (Kufra) oases were Teda, some of whom survive in a settlement south of Jebel Nari. Since the beginning of the 18th century they have been replaced elsewhere in Kufara by the Zwiya Arabs from the Leshkerreh oases.