The vast majority of the population is Teda, one of the two ethnicities of the Toubou people.

However, some clans are Daza, the other Toubou ethnicity, who left their traditional homes in the
lowlands to the south and moved north to the Tibesti.[60] The Toubou, in general, are semi-
nomadic[29][60] and live primarily in northern Chad, but also in southern Libya and eastern Niger.
The Toubou language has two main dialects, Tedaga, spoken by the Teda, and Dazaga, spoken by
the Daza. Despite their cultural proximity, the two Toubou groups do not identify as a single ethnic
group.[61] The Toubou elect a chief, the Derdé, from the Tomagra clan, although never from the
same family consecutively.[62][63] The Derdé resides in Zouar[50] and aims to impose religious
and judicial authority over the Tibesti population;[62] however, efforts toward executive
cooperation and war alliances are usually destined for failure.[64] The descendants of previous
Derdé retain authority which transfers from father to son. These appointed Maïna govern portions
of the Toubou territories.[50] Individual clans rarely have more than a thousand members and are
quite dispersed throughout the Tibesti.[64]

Toubou life is punctuated by the seasons, divided between animal husbandry and agriculture.[29]
[65] In the palm groves, some Toubou still live in traditional round huts built with stone walls
bound by mortar or clay, or built from clay or salt blocks,[66] with roofs of simple branches
arranged in a dome shape.[29] In the highlands, the buildings are built of stone, forming circles 1.5
m (4 ft 11 in) in diameter and one meter (three ft) high, which serve as shelters for goats, or as
granaries, or as human shelters and defense structures.[66] In other cases, the Toubou live in tents
that can be easily moved between the fields and the palm groves.[61]

History

Human settlement

Distribution of the clans of the Tibesti Mountains

There is evidence of human occupation of the Tibesti dating back to the Stone Age, when richer
paleovegetation facilitated human habitation.[44] The Toubou settled in the region in the 5th
century BC[67] and established trade relations with the Carthaginian civilization.[68] Around this
time, Herodotus portrayed the Toubou, which he labeled "Ethiopians" because of their skin color,
and described as having a language akin to the "cry of bats".[11][67]

Between AD 83 and 92, a Roman traveler, likely a trader, named Julius Maternus explored the
territory of the Tibesti Mountains.[d] The Tibesti are suspected by modern historians to have been
part of an unidentified country named Agisymba. Maternus may have taken his journey under the
charge of the king of Garamantes, a civilization based in present-day Libya, and his expedition may
have been part of a broader military campaign by Garamantes against the populace of Agisymba.
[69][70][71]
In the 12th century, the geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi spoke of a "country of Zaghawa negroes",
or camel herders, that had converted to Islam. The historian Ibn Khaldun described the Toubou in
the 14th century. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Al-Maqrizi and Leo Africanus recognized the
"country of the Berdoa", that is to say Bardaï, the former associating the Toubou with the Berbers
and the latter describing them as Numidian relatives of the Tuareg.[72]

The Toubou settled in the Tibesti in several waves. Generally, newcomers either killed or absorbed
the previous clans after battles that were often both long-lasting and bloody.[73] The Teda clans,
considered indigenous to the area, were first established around Enneri Bardagué. Namely, these
clans were the Cerdegua, Zouia, Kossseda (nicknamed yobat or "hunters of well water"), and
possibly the Ederguia, although the Ederguia's origin may be Zaghawa and only go back to the 17th
century. These clans controlled the palm groves, and made a peace pact with the Tomagra, a
nearby clan of camel herders who practiced Ghazw.[62] It was upon the agreement to this pact at
the end of the 16th century that power was consolidated under the Derdé, the principal regulator
of the clans, whose appointment is always made from the Tomagra clan.[62][74]

There is evidence of early Daza settlements in the Tibesti; however, these early clans—the Goga,
Kida, Terbouna and Obokina—were assimilated into later Daza clans, who arrived in the Tibesti
between the 15th and 18th centuries, having fled the Kanem-Bornu Empire in the southwest after
the Toubou allied with a Kanem enemy, the Bilala.[62] These later Daza arrivals include the Arna
Souinga in the south, Gouboda in the center-west, Tchioda and Dirsina in the west, Torama in the
northwest and center-east, and the Derdekichia (literally, "descendants of the chief," the products
of a union between an Arna Souinga and an Emmeouia) in the north. The Tibesti then played the
role of an impregnable mountain stronghold for the newcomers.[75] Meanwhile, constant
migration between the north and southwest of Chad, along with significant mixing of the
populations, forged a significant degree of cohesion among the Toubou ethnicities. Periods of
territorial expansion in the 10th and 13th centuries and periods of recession in the 15th and 16th
centuries likely coincided with more or less pronounced wet and dry periods.[62][75]

Several clans with traditions similar to those of the Donzas of the Borkou region, south of the
Tibesti, settled in the range in the 16th and 17th centuries. These include the Keressa and
Odobaya in the west, Foctoa in the northwest and northeast, and Emmeouia in the north.[62]
Several other clans—the Mogodi in the west, Terintere in the north, Tozoba in the center, and
Tegua and Mada in the south—are originally clans of the Bideyat people who immigrated from the
Ennedi Plateau, southeast of Tibesti, around the same time. The Mada, however, have since
largely emigrated to Borkou, Kaouar and Kanem.[62]
The early 17th century also saw the arrival of three clans from the region of Kufra to the northeast.
The Taïzera settled in the plateau in the center and west of the mass, probably fleeing the Arab
push into present-day Libya. They were initially rejected by the Daza clans and lived in isolation
until they began investing in the oases by planting numerous palms. The Mahadena occupy the
northeast quarter of the range and are likely from the Cyrenaica and Jalu regions and thus related
to the Mogharba Arab tribes, although an alternative hypothesis is that they are of Bideyat origin.
Following years of conflict, a branch of the Mahadena clan, the Fortena, withdrew to the western
margin of the Tibesti. The Fortena Mado ("Red Fortena") settled there, while the Fortena Yasko
("Black Fortena") pushed further west to Kaouar.[62]

The Tuareg people intermixed with the Toubou clans, especially with the early Goga clan, which
produced the Gouboda, and with the later Arna clan, which produced the Mormorea. In both
instances, the new clans were placed under the authority of suzerain clans of the traditionally
feudal Tuareg, although they were eventually assimilated into the Toubou majority.[76] However,
the Tuareg have not entered the Tibesti since the signing of a peace treaty that included mutual
recognition of Toubou and Tuareg territories. The treaty was reaffirmed in 1820.[50]

The settlement of the Tibesti

The indigenous Teda clans

The Daza clans migrate from Kanem

The Donza clans migrate from Borkou

The Bideyat clans migrate from Ennedi

Other clans migrate from Kufra, Cyrenaica and Jalu

Regional relations and colonization

The Ottoman Empire came into contact with the Toubou in 1560. Their relationship broke out into
conflict in the late 17th century, with the Turks favoring the authority of local Maïna at the
expense of the authority of the Derdé.[50] In 1780, the Derdé initiated an attack against the
Ottomans. The Ottoman retaliation killed 60 percent of the Toubou population.[50] The Teda then
began launching attacks on Turkish caravans in an effort to disrupt Ottoman trade.[50] In 1890,
Maï Getty Tchénimémi established diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire and began
receiving firearms. Meanwhile, Derdé Chachaï allied with the Senussi Arabs and agreed that the
southern half of the Tibesti could serve as a fallback base for the Senussi in their struggle against
the French Colonial Army.[50][77] The Tibesti was then effectively split in two, with the "pro-Maï"
in the southwest and the "pro-Derdé" in the northeast.[50] With the Derdé's blessing, the Senussi
founded a Zawiya in Bardaï, which quickly promoted the total Islamization of the Tibesti.[12][50]
At the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War, the Senussi allied with the Ottoman Empire and, at the
request of the Derdé, the Turks established garrisons in Tibesti beginning in March 1911. These
garrisons fell apart a few months later, and the Toubou attacked the Turkish troops.[77]

While the Italians occupied the Fezzan, a French column entered the Tibesti in early 1914 from
Kaouar,[77] flouting an agreement with the Maï from the previous winter and forcing the Derdé
Chachaï into exile.[50] The region was at the heart of the dispute between the colonial powers,
[78] with the Italian Empire to the north and French West Africa to the south. During World War I,
a Senussi revolt forced the Italians to temporarily withdraw from the Fezzan and the northeastern
part of the range.[77] Maï Getty Tchénimémi allied with the supporters of the Derdé and led the
resistance against the French troops until their withdrawal in 1916.[50] The Tibesti was
reconquered by the French colonial empire in 1929, and the region was placed under the
administration of French Equatorial Africa.[11][60][77]