In-Gall (var. In Gall, I-n-Gall, In-Gal, Ingal, Ingall) is a town in the

Agadez Region Agadez Region is one of the seven regions of Niger. At , it covers more than half of Niger's land area, and is the largest region in the country, as well as the largest African state subdivision. The capital of the department is Agadez. Histo ...

, Tchirozerine Department of northeast

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesoasis In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

and salt flats, In-Gall is the gathering point for the Cure Salee festival of

Tuareg The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym: ''Imuhaɣ/Imušaɣ/Imašeɣăn/Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern A ...

and Wodaabe pastoralists to celebrate the end of the rainy season each September. During the festival, In-Gall's population grows to several thousand nomads, officials, and tourists. As of 2011, the commune had a total population of 47,170 people. In-Gall had been a stop on the main roads between the capital of Niger, Niamey (600 km to the southwest), and the mining town of Arlit (200 km to the northeast, 150 km from the Algerian border) or the provincial capital Agadez (100 km to the east). In the 1970s, the main road was repaved to transport

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

from the French-owned mines in Arlit, but the new road bypassed In-Gall, ending its use as a waystation. Since then, its population has dropped from almost 5,000 to less than 500. During the Tuareg insurgency of the 1990s, In-Gall was a prime fortification of the Niger armed forces, and when peace was concluded in 2000 the old fort was reportedly abandoned.

Description

"''InGall, an oasis town in a semi-desert zone that forms the gateway to the Sahara. InGall is a conglomeration of mud houses, whose gardens, in contrast to the barren landscape in which the town is set, are filled with fruit trees and vegetable patches.''"

History

The history, archaeology, and culture of the In-Gall area has been extensively studied, most notably by the French anthropologist and archaeologist couple, Suzanne and Edmond Bernus. In-Gall is not only a prominent Tuareg seasonal centre, to which certain clans return each year, but it has a history as a stop in the

Trans-Saharan trade Trans-Saharan trade requires travel across the Sahara between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. While existing from prehistoric times, the peak of trade extended from the 8th century until the early 17th century. The Sahara once had a very d ...

, was an eastern outpost of the

Songhay Empire The Songhai Empire (also transliterated as Songhay) was a state that dominated the western Sahel/Sudan in the 15th and 16th century. At its peak, it was one of the largest states in African history. The state is known by its historiographical ...

in the 16th century, was an important centre of the

Aïr Sultanate The Sultanate of Agadez (also known as Tenere Sultanate of Aïr, Sultanate of Aïr, or Asben") was a Berber kingdom centered in the city of Agadez in the Aïr Mountains, located at the southern edge of the Sahara desert in north-central Niger. ...

thereafter, and became a French colonial fort in an often hostile region in the early 20th century.

Pre-history

Archaeological evidence shows the area as a centre of prehistoric populations dating back some eight thousand year to when it sat in the midst of a now dry

Azawagh The Azawagh (alias ''Azaouagh'' or ''Azawak'') is a dry basin covering what is today the northwestern Niger, as well as parts of northeastern Mali and southern Algeria. The Azawagh is mainly made up of Sahelian and Saharan flatlands and ha ...

river valley, fed by the Aïr Massif and flowing south to the

Niger River The Niger River ( ; ) is the main river of West Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone border. It runs in a crescent shape through ...

. Of particular note have been thousands of pre-common era stone burial mounds which suggest a common culture in the area. Archeologists have also found in the In-Gall region many of the earliest mosques in Niger, dating back to early Berber occupations before 1000CE.

Salt extraction

In-Gall is intimately linked with the nearby salt industry at Teguidda-n-Tessoumt, around 15 km to the north. Teguidda, on the site of an ancient lake bed, floods as water washes down from the Aïr Massif to the east each year, producing natural salt ponds. The population of In-Gall maintain and harvest from evaporation ponds here, sending labourers from the local clans to work the salt and transport it back to In-Gall at the end of the season. In-Gall is near enough that, unlike the oasis town of

Fachi Fachi is an oasis surrounded by the Ténéré desert and the dunes of the Erg of Bilma in eastern Niger, placed on the western edge of the small Agram mountain outcropping. It has an estimated population of 2,000 people. It is also a stopping p ...

where plots are owned by Agadez-based Tuareg clans and worked by a permanent population, the workers at Teguidda return to In-Gall for the remainder of the year. Teguidda also lacks a stable oasis, which provides In-Gall with market gardens and date palm farming on a year-round basis. Prior to its decline in the 20th century — because of the smaller scale of the In-Gall salt markets as well as its easy access by road — In-Gall was once a destination of the

Azalai The Azalai (Tamasheq, var. Azalay) is a semi-annual salt caravan route practiced by Tuareg traders in the Sahara desert between Timbuktu and the Taoudenni salt mine in Mali, or the act of traveling with a caravan along that route. The other maj ...

salt caravans, in which Tuareg merchants transported salt from the markets here across the

Sahel The Sahel (; ar, ساحل ' , "coast, shore") is a region in North Africa. It is defined as the ecoclimatic and biogeographic realm of transition between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south. Having a hot semi-arid c ...

for agricultural and medicinal uses.

Uranium mining

In 2004, a Canadian corporation was granted a government license to mine for uranium in the area. Northwestern Mineral Ventures was awarded the Irhazer and Ingall concessions, each in size. Mines would reportedly be "open pit" strip mines. More than 100 uranium exploration licenses have been granted in the

area since 2004 to foreign firms from China (over 40%), Canada, and India. Since 2007, a Chinese mining consortium, whose license covers an area north of In-Gall, has carried out infrastructural work for new uranium mine at Azelik, some 85 km north of in Gall, which includes extending roads from In-Gall to the site. Nigerien human rights, environmental and Tuareg groups have argued that mining activities in this region are a threat to scarce water resources, upon which pastoralists depend. The short rainy season in the

area north and west of In-Gall makes the region the northern destination for a cattle and camel herding

transhumance Transhumance is a type of pastoralism or nomadism, a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions (''vertical transhumance''), it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and lower vall ...

cycle, which sees communities travel as far south as

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the ...

during the dry months.

Dinosaurs

In-Gall is also famous to outsiders for its palaeontological digs, most notably the

Jobaria tiguidensis ''Jobaria'' is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived in what is now Niger during the middle Jurassic Period, between 164 and 161 million years ago. ''Jobaria'' is currently the only known valid sauropod from the Tiourarén Formation, Tiouraren, ...

, and the remains of petrified forests dating back 135 million years.See The Dinosaurs of InGal
http://www.projectexploration.org/niger2000/feature_12_03_2000_e.htm
/ref>

References

* Abdoulkader Aghali, Koffi Kouassi
Observatoire de la décentralisation au Niger: N° 73 La commune d'In Gall
(3, 2008). Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherche sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local, (LASDEL), Niamey. Retrieved 2009-03-16. * Abdoulkader Aghali, Salekh Rhousseini
Observatoire de la décentralisation au Niger: N° 61 La commune d'In Gall
(2, October 2007). Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherche sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local, (LASDEL), Niamey. Retrieved 2009-03-16. * Samuel Decalo. Historical Dictionary of Niger. Scarecrow Press, London and New Jersey (1979).
Niger: Intou.org
Accessed 2009-03-27. * Jolijn Geels. Niger. Bradt London and Globe Pequot New York (2006). .
Michael Palin's Travel entry for Ingall

festival of 2000.]