Traveller's Log:
A desolate but spectacular vista awaits the hardy traveller who chooses to head south and cross the mighty Atlas Mountains to the land of Gaetulia. As they crest the rocky height, a land of striking limestone plateaus and windy grasslands opens before them, with hints of the enormous desert that lies beyond glinting in the distance. If the traveller wanders east, they would come across a land of rock and salt, with glittering lakes. To the very south lies the mightiest desert the world has ever known, its vast dunes rising to the height of mountain-tops. Along the hilly hinterland that drifts to the southwest lie valleys home to pastures from which spring thousands of beautiful equine specimens. Riding atop these horses are the rough and capable people of this land, who must wisely migrate and manage their resources to stay alive in these steppes they call home. Proud of their freedom and mobility, these people known as the Gaetuli will fiercely defend the land they call home, even as they eagerly peer beyond its wild boundaries.
Geography
Gaetulia is a vast territory that extends across the southern slopes of the Atlas Mountains and into the steppes and desert that lie in the northwest corner of the Sahara. Gaetulia roughly occupies the central third of modern Algeria and includes slices of southeastern Morrocco and southwestern Tunisia. The northern reaches encompass the hills and valleys of the southern Atlas slopes while rock and sand deserts with scarce vegetation and scattered oases lie to the south and east. In the far east of the territory, many salt lakes punctuate the landscape, though they are smaller in size than some of the fabled lakes that extend even further east. Seasonal rivers criss-cross the landscape, most originating in the Saharan Atlas and coming to life only during the winter.
The vegetation of Gaetulia, where it exists at all, predominately consists of grasses such Aristida pungens and Panicum turgidum and browse shrubs such as several acacias. The grazing decreases rapidly in quality the farther one gets from the Atlas foothills, with Saharan dunes dominating the southernmost portion of Gaetulia. The oases and wadi valleys provide an exception to that rule however, with rather luxurious vegetation shielding them from the desert. In addition, many oases are now home to bountiful date palms, providing both a source of trade and luxury.
The climate of Gaetulia is typical of desert regions. With the seasons split between hot summers and mild winters the daily climate of the region is marked by very high temperature differences between day and night. Precipitation is low and has been slowly decreasing for centuries, but the area is nonetheless subject to occasional flash floods and rainy winters in the northern steppe. Sandstorms are relatively rare phenomenon in the south and only typically occur between March and June.
The livestock of Gaetulia is rather limited with goats, cattle, and sheep existing in small numbers in the northern steppes. Horses however exist in great quantities, and the Gaetuli have a well-deserved reputation for breeding some of the finest quality horses in the North African subregion. Camels exist in small quantities, brought by the occasional Gamantine trader all the way from Arabia, but have yet to be utilized in any meaningful ways by the Gaetuli tribes.
The wildlife of Gaetulia consists of many grazing animals including gazelles, antelopes, and the occasional deer in the northern hills. The predators that exist here are typically small mammals such as hyenas, jackals and the fennec fox. Desert mice and lizards also flourish in the rocks and sands of the southwest.
The People, Society and Government
Gaetulia is named for the Gaetuli people, which rather than meaning a specific tribe is instead a term encompassing the confederation of Berber-speaking tribes that lived to the immediate southeast of the Atlas Mountains. Though there existed little in the way of a common political and cultural identity prior to the rise of the northern Numidian kingdoms in the late third century, the existence of pastoral families who had to regulate grazing areas and seasonal movements led to distinct groups that would form the basis of later Gaetuli identity. These groupings formed federative entities, or tribes, with groups of elders. Pliny reports that they were often led by a chief called Aguellid and multiple sources suggest they were united by a common language group called Libyan that they shared with other Numidians.
Physically the Gaetuli likely resembled the other Numidian groups, though many historical sources make note of the darkness of Gaetuli skin colouration. Ptolemy and Strabo both imply a common origin of the Nubians, Garamantines, and Gaetuli, indicating there is some cause to believe that Gaetuli were ethnically distinct from the northern contemporary and future Berber populations.
Though the Gaetuli were almost uniformly nomadic when they began to heavily interact with the Carthaginian and Roman conflicts, it is clear that limit cereal agriculture was practiced in many of the valleys and oases that dotted the landscape. In addition, many accounts suggest that seasonal harvests of dates occurred in the eastern oases. The vast majority of Gaetuli however were nomadic pastoralists, specializing in horse breeding and consisting on a diet of milk and flesh from the handful of domesticated animals that were able to subsist on the thin grassy steppes they called home.
No evidence for urbanization or any type of industry exists, and exports of resources from the area were small in nature prior to contact with Rome. Gaetulia did later become notable for purple dye that was famous in the time of Augustus, purportedly made from the purple shellfish Murex brandaris found in the coastal areas that existed in the western and eastern hinterlands of Gaetuli territory.
Like other Numidian groups, the Gaetuli religious beliefs centred around perceived sacred presence in elements or places. Stones, trees, mountains were all thought to have special essences. Some animals like the ram, the lion and the snake were also seen as sacred. Several personal divinities are made reference to in historical sources, such as the seven gods inscribed on a relief in Beja, southern Tunisia. Outside influences also exist. The worship of Amun and Athena intermittently occurred among the Gaetuli, though it was far more common in the coastal regions to their east.
The Gaetuli nomadism prevented the need for large settlements, but many semi-permanent pastured occupied the northern valleys, and permanent camps existed in oases. Fortified palisades were reported to exist in the north and eastern margins of the territory, likely to facilitate the protection of the date-producing oasis agriculture, the only fixed aspect of the Gaetuli economy. The first permanent habitation we have evidence of dates to the Roman occupation of the northern reaches of Gaetulia that accompanied the construction of the Tripolitanian Limes, but it is highly likely that the Roman forts were already places known to the native Gaetuli, perhaps as inhabited locations.
History
The history of the Gaetuli and the region to which they gave their name prior to contact with Mediterranean civilization is debatable and unclear, but many broad strokes are evidenced by oral and archaeological clues. The prehistory of Gaetulia begins with a small original population of Nilo-Saharan origin joined by a larger westward migratory group of Afro-Asiatic–speaking pastoralists from the Middle East who brought with them the beginnings of the Neolithic transition to dairying and basic agriculture. These pastoralists were essentially nomadic, living in camps which permitted them to make seasonal moves with their animals. The small numbers of farmers who lived in the desert oases were typically less numerous and subservient to their more mobile neighbors. This was especially the case after the adoption of the horse by pastoralist populations which aided more effective pastoralist techniques. These northwest African pastoralists, like their nomadic counterparts in other parts of the world, developed social organizations characterized by ancient patrilineages. These patrilineages slowly developed into over-arching units which we commonly refer to as tribes.
By the early third century BC, the tribes of Gaetulia had undergone varying degrees of coalescence and were described by later Hellenistic writers as forming large regional groups with little distinguishing characteristics. Pliny asserts that the Gaetuli were formed into three tribes, the Autotoles in the west, the Baniurae in the east, and the Nesimi in the southern desert. While his summary likely understates the political complexity of the region, it is clear that there were at least several dominant tribes that directed and guided Gaetuli movements and expansion. Ptolemy corroborates Pliny, and adds that the Darrae were subservient to some sort of Gaetuli confederacy.
Towards the fourth and third centuries, the neighbours of Gaetulia described them in a multiplicity of often contradictory ways. Virgil and some scattered Greek references suggest that the Gaetuli were more savage than their neighbours, but also more loyal. The Aeneid in particular remarks that the Gaetuli were unconquerable by war and implies that they had migrated northwest across the steppe.
It was the development of centralized Numidian kingdoms by the Massylii & Masaesyli that led to the first seeds of a common Gaetuli identity that pitted independent pastoralism against the more settled and entangled nature of their northern neighbours. In particular, the Gaetuli lacked any deep or institutional links with the burgeoning Punic settlements that dotted the North African coast. Gaetuli contact with Carthage was limited to indirect trade and the occasional mercenary force, and it was likely this lack of contact or shared lifestyle that prohibited lasting occupation of Gaetulia by the Roman Empire in the following century. Virgil’s Aenid involves a purported king Iarbas of Gaetulia as the rival to Aeneas for Queen Dido of Carthage’s affection, but any historical king was more likely to have been of the northern Numidian kingdoms than Gaetulia.
The first definitive entry of the Gaetuli into written history first appears in during the Jugurthine War towards the end of the second century BC. The historian Sallust claims that prior to this they did not even know the name of Rome and only a handful had existed as part of the Carthaginian mercenaries that had been previously deployed across the Mediterranean. They are said to have joined with Jugurtha in his rebellion against Rome but later appear to have joined in an alliance with Caesar against Juba I. In 25 BC, Augustus reportedly gifted the north of Gaetulia to Juba II together with Mauretania but the Gaetuli responded by rising with arms and massacring the Roman residents. It would not be until a severe defeat had been inflicted on them by Cornelius Lentulus that they submitted to the Numidian king.
After Mauritania became a Roman province in 40 AD, the Roman governors made frequent expeditions into the Gaetuli territory to the south, and the official view seems to be expressed by Pliny when he says that all Gaetulia as far as the Niger River and the Aethiopian frontier was reckoned as subject to the Empire. Though this claim is considered dubious by many historians, Roman inscriptions prove that Gaetuli served in the auxiliary troops of the empire, and it may be assumed that the country passed within the sphere of Roman influence to some degree, though any direct control was peripherally present at best.
The headache posed by Gaetuli to Roman authorities and their reputation for violent raids was a contributory cause for the construction of the Limes Tripolitanus, a frontier zone of defensive forts. Any sense of a common Gaetuli identity by either the tribes themselves or outsiders had dissipated by the end of the Roman governorship of North Africa and the Vandal invasion. Much evidence suggests however that of the Berber tribes encountered by the Muslim Arabs in the seventh century, several were direct descendants of the Gaetuli, including the Mussumili and the Zenata.
Strategy
With its settlement located far away from any other, and the small nomadic camps unlikely to yield much in the way of resources or benefits to a conquering power, Gaetulia is difficult and unpalatable to capture. Should one wish to securely hold the territories of Numidia to its north however, the wise general would be prudent to take care of a territory liable to be the source of many a pesky and dangerous raiding party. As long as Gaetulia remains free, no ruler of North Africa will remain untroubled.
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