Page 118 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW - ISSUE 13

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However, the hare is known to use this tactic habitually, and Tuareg hunters try to catch
them by using several dogs at once. However, if there is bush land nearby, the hare manages
to escape the dogs nine times out of ten. The men then intervene with their spears, try to hit
the hare with their weapons or force it to come out of its retreat. The Tuareg dogs do not

have a particularly good nose - perhaps this is due to the dry air - and will easily let a hare
running from bush to bush escape. Among the Tuareg in the Tassili and Ahaggar, the hare is
usually caught with an iron-jawed trap and only rarely hunted with dogs. The meat of the
hare is eaten cooked. Its skin is not used. Its name in Tamacheq is emerouel (pl. imerouelen,

fém. sing. temerouelt, fém. pl. timerouelÎn). One also says abekni (pl. ibeknÎten), but the
latter names are little used.

Among the hunters of Ihaggar there is a saying that if you see a hare during a hunt, you will

certainly have bad luck. It is a belief attributed to sympathetic magic when the flight of the
hare predicts the flight of the game.

The hare is often mentioned in Tuareg folklore. He embodies the coward and the being

without intelligence. One day, the story goes, he saw a wadi coming to where he had laid his
young. When he had all the time in the world to get them to safety, he strutted along the
shore and challenged the wadi, thinking he could still defeat it. When he saw the wadi
coming, full of arrogance, he began to quickly suck up the water, thinking he was the
strongest and could dry up the wadi that way. All the other animals laughed, as you can

imagine. And so it came to pass as it had to: the tragic hero became a victim of his absurd
heroism and had to watch his young being carried away by the gushing floods!” (p. 134-135).

If we look at the Sloughi again for comparison, the hare hunt has demonstrably been an

essential part of the game to be hunted since antiquity. We also find depictions of hunting
hares among the Egyptians. Both cultures and land areas have agriculture and thus
cultivated crops, which hares also feed on. They can therefore be seen as pests from their
perspective. The Tuareg, however, do not have this perspective because they live
nomadically or transhumantly and practise animal husbandry. For them, the hare is
therefore of less importance.