In Berber-speaking Tuareg society women decorate the leather saddlebags used to carry salt during migrations across the desert. They work the goatskin with impressed, stitched, or excised motifs, and attach tassels and fringe that shake with the camel’s movement for added visual impact. The colorful palette of black, green, reddish brown, and white comes from dyes made with indigo, pomegranate, sorghum, and minerals.
Tuareg is an Arabic term meaning abandoned by God. They call themselves Imohag, translated as free men. No one knows the true origin of the Tuareg, where they came from or when they arrived in the Sahara.
The most striking attribute of the Tuareg is the indigo veil, worn by the men but not the women, giving rise to the popular name the Blue Men of the Sahara, or Men of the Veil.
