Here are some more maps to study. The first article about pre-colonial and colonial maps showing “Azawad” dating back to the 1600s… are here.
This is the second article about the existence of Azawad, showing its existence written in a few of hundreds of old pre-colonial and colonial maps of Azawad that exist today in various international libraries in many parts of the world.
The first five maps very clearly shows where the land of the Tuareg, used to be before the colonization, and the following unjust and erroneous drawing of artificial borders by people who didn´t even live there. Totally ignoring the peoples that did and still do live there under tremendous sufferings due to terrible marginalization and oppression to the point of systematic genocide, and these post-colonial borders and unjust attachments.
If Azawad never existed (and was just a fantasy and dream on the social media as Malian Azawad-deniers keep saying), these maps, – and there are hundreds of them! – would never have been made, and would not exist. Neither would the name Azawad exist in old history books and other writings, but it does.
These maps also shows very clearly that the area called “Bambara” and Melli on some maps was located a lot more south than the Azawad in the Sahara desert – which also often were marked with “Tuareg” or with the names of old Tuareg confederations on some old maps.
That does not mean that only Tuareg lived there, but it means that they were clearly represented, and it shows clearly by the written out names, that the Azawadians and Malians were different peoples that lived in different territories. Which means that the Azawadians have never been “Malian”, and how could they have been “Malian”, when the state of Mali was not yet even created?
You can`t change the identity and history of an ancient people trying to make them become something they are not and have never been. And when they naturally resist such oppression and marginalization they call them “terrorists” and use that label as a license to kill them, and make up all kind of lies about them being “foreigners”… and etc, at the same time as their ancient culture is being appropriated.
Foreigners in their own land? but that is how they are treated and that is how many of them are made to feel. It`s the erasure of a people, a systematic genocide, nothing else.
How France could attach them together into one state – what gave them the right ?? – must be one of the most devastating colonial oppressive decisions ever made, causing thousands of people to get displaced and massacred.
“Azawad has existed for centuries, long before Mali’s artificial invention in 1960. Their post-colonial state is just a French construction entrusted to its local collaborators” to quote Fatim Wallet.
The denial of Azawads existence is a pathetic attempt to justify the cultural and military genocide against the people of Azawad, and its nothing but colonialism continuing in another form.
These maps are from 1578 to 1914.
Country of the “Imoshagh,” or Tawarek (Tuareg)
(Tademekket) and (Awilmmiden) around the bend of the Niger River, these were Tuareg confederations before colonization.
Year 1578:
Year 1600:
Year 1631:
Year 1641:
Year 1660:
Year 1667:
Year 1702:
Six pictures from two different books – year 1707:
Year 1740, four pictures:
Year 1752, three pictures:
Year 1864:
That Azawad would only be a “fantasy that never existed” is nothing but a monumental historical falsification, an attempt to hide the truth. The proofs are here right in front of our eyes, tucked away in old map books in international libraries even as far away as Brazil.
Map of Africa 1880 AD:
Year 1914:
Azawad, an ancient nation with an ancient history, with their own culture, writing and language. It was not a state in the modern sense with defined borders, due to that its population lived mostly (but not exclusively) a nomadic life. In turn, due to the harsh climate of the Sahara area and a nomadic lifestyle which was developed to adapt to its environment – since millenia. The tifinagh writings scattered all over this wast area is a witness to their presence.
Unfortunately, the state authorities of Mali never respected or accepted Azawad`s identity and instead marginalized them, and they still do all the can (with the help of Russian mercenaries and Turkish drones) to exterminate them.
Azawad Support Group, and Azawad Contexts