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The Ikelan ( Éklan/ Ikelan or Ibenheren in Tamasheq; Bouzou in Hausa language; Bella in Songhai; singular Akli) are members within Tuareg people society.
The Ikelan's situation is somewhat analogous to that of the Haratin within Moors society in Mauritania. Like the Haratin, the name "Ikelan", and to a much greater degree Bouzou and Bella, are exonyms (a name not used by that people themselves) with negative connotations. Historically the term "Ikelan" has been used to refer to the slaves of the Tuareg. Moreover, while they now speak the same language as Tuareg nobles, they are possibly of assimilated origin from other local neighbouring communities.
Tuareg higher caste traditions value a Nomad life, warfare, study, animal husbandry, and trade. Consequently, higher caste communities travel, at least seasonally, if able. Lower caste groups, not limited to the Ikelan, are more likely to live in settled communities, either in Sahara oasis towns or in villages scattered among other ethnic groups in the Sahel region to the south.Samuel Decalo. Historical Dictionary of Niger. Scarecrow Press, London and New Jersey (1979). Jolijn Geels. Niger. Bradt London and Globe Pequot New York (2006).
Servile groups came in two forms: domestic slaves lived near their owners as domestic servants and herders, and functioned as part of the family, with close social interactions. Additionally, entire communities became servile to aristocratic tribes, conquered in situ, formed by migration of Ikelan families or even other ethnic groups moving into Tuareg controlled communities seeking protection. Sometimes members of rival Kels, defeated in war, were subsumed as lower castes, but usually of higher level than the Ikelan.
Servile farming or salt extraction communities, somewhat analogous to European Serfdom were gradually assimilated into Tuareg culture, maintained Tuaregs herders during their annual transhumance cycle, or provided trade or farming centers for Tuareg clans. Prior to the 20th century, the Tuareg captured most individual slaves during raids into other communities and in war. War was then the main source of supply of slaves, although many were bought at slave markets, run mostly by indigenous peoples.
Some Tuareg noble and vassal men married slaves, and their children became freemen. In this sense, éklan formed distinct subsections of a family: "fictive children." Entire Ikelan communities, on the other hand were a class held in an inherited serfdom condition, common among some societies in pre-colonial West Africa, and often having little interaction with "their" nobles though most of the year. Anti-Slavery International & Association Timidira, Galy kadir Abdelkader, ed. Niger: Slavery in Historical, Legal and Contemporary Perspectives . March 2004
When French colonial governments were established, they passed legislation to abolish slavery, but did not enforce it. Some commentators believe the French interest was directed more at dismantling the traditional Tuareg political economy, which depended on slave labor for herding, than at freeing the slaves.Martin A. Klein. Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa. (African Studies, number 94.) New York: Cambridge University Press. (1998) Edouard Bernus. "Les palmeraies de l'Aïr" Revue de l'Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 11, (1972) pp.37–50.Frederick Brusberg. "Production and Exchange in the Saharan Air", Current Anthropology, Vol. 26, No. 3. (Jun., 1985), pp. 394–395. Field research on the economics of the Aouderas valley, 1984.Michael J. Mortimore. "The Changing Resources of Sedentary Communities in Air, Southern Sahara", Geographical Review, Vol. 62, No. 1. (Jan., 1972), pp. 71–91. Historian Martin Klein reports that there was a large-scale attempt by French West African authorities to liberate slaves and other bonded castes in Tuareg areas following the 1914–1916 Firouan revolt.Klein (1998) pp.111–140
Despite this, French officials following the Second World War reported there were some 50,000 " Bella" under direct control of Tuareg masters in the Gao–Timbuktu areas of French Sudan alone.Klein (1998) p.234 This was at least four decades after French declarations of mass freedom had happened in other areas of the colony. In 1946, a series of mass desertions of Tuareg slaves and bonded communities began in Nioro and later in Menaka, quickly spreading along the Niger River valley.Klein (1998) pp.234-251
In the first decade of the 20th century, French administrators in southern Tuareg areas of French Sudan estimated "free" to "servile" Tuareg populations at rations of 1 to 8 or 9.Klein (1998) "Appendix I:How Many Slaves?" pp.252–263 At the same time the servile " rimaibe" population of the Masina Fulbe, roughly equivalent to the Bella, made up between 70% and 80% of the Fulbe population, while servile Songhai groups around Gao made up some 2/3 to 3/4 of the total Songhai population.
Klein concludes that roughly 50% of the population of French Soudan at the beginning of the 20th century were in some servile or slave relationship.
In 2008, the Tuareg-based human rights group Temedt, along with Anti-Slavery International, reported that "several thousand" members of the Tuareg people Bella caste remain enslaved in the Gao Region and especially around the towns of Ménaka and Ansongo. They complain that while laws provide redress, cases are rarely resolved by Malian courts.
Descent-based slavery, where generations of the same family are born into debt bondage, is traditionally practiced by at least four of Niger's eight ethnic groups. The slave holders are mostly from the nomadic ethnic groups—Tuareg people, Fula people, Toubou people and Arabs. In the region of Say on the right bank of the river Niger, it is estimated that three-quarters of the population around 1904–1905 was composed of slaves.
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