PALACE OF THE SULTANS OF THE AIR

Built in the 10 th century, this two-storey building (m high) is surrounded by numerous outbuildings that act as a courtroom, place of worship and prison. At the time, it was in the centre of the city, surrounded by walls whose access was made by carefully controlled doors. It consists of several courses and rooms, two small ones, one reserved for the sultan's horse saddle and the other for the ritual drum. The Sultan's Salon is a very beautiful veined hausa voûte and passed to the lime, a staircase leads to the floor. The palace does not visit because it is still inhabited by a hundred people close to the sultan. Sometimes, the latter receives his visitor in the dark corridor which takes place, protected by amulets hanging above the door. But normally Ibrahim Oumarou is housed in a modern building in the court of the Sultanate serving religious feasts. Sultan Ibrahim Oumarou is a modest and erased man, always ready to welcome the visitor. He succeeded his father Oumarou Ibrahim in 1960, matching the reign of his eldest, also for 41 years Sultan of the Aïr, some of which had reigned only two months, such as the Sultan Ahmed Er Rofay in 1850 or Taga Ta Azarete in 1453! The key cause of the formation of the Aïr in Aïr was the search for a leader who could make the arbitrator in the rifts between touarègues tribes at the end of the th century. He could not belong to one tribe or another (otherwise he would not have been respected), and he was leaving it outside the country. The oral tradition speaks of Istanbul, but in a more certain way it is mentioned in manuscripts of the th century of the sultans of the time that would have joined in Safattan their village of origin after disturbances affecting the Sultanate. In Sattafan is in the north of the Telia valley in the Adragh des Ifora in Mali. The Sultan of today has little political influence and is subject to the will of the state which can dismiss a sultan as we saw recently in Zinder. Nevertheless, there remains the central character surrounded by his court for the organisation of major religious festivals, the Bianou, the Mouloud, the feast of Fin of Lent and Eid.