The Kel Owey (var. Kel Owi, Kel Ewey form People of the Bull) are a Tuareg clan confederation which from the 18th century until the advent of French colonial rule at the beginning of the 20th century was a dominant power in the Aïr region of north central Niger.
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History
The Kel Owey have, like many Tuareg confederations been both a sub-group of other confederations and the dominant power over other clans. In 1740 the Kel Owey moved south from modern Algeria and destroyed the town of Assodé, sacked Agadez, placed the Sultanate of Agadez under their control, and dispersed the Kel Ayr to the south and west. The confederation was then under the direct suzerainary of the Anastafidet, lord of the Kel Owey. Heinrich Barth passed through the Aouderas valley with a Kel Owey trans-Saharan caravan in 1850, and reported that it was only recently that the Kel Owey had pushed the Kel Gres and Kel Itesen Tuareg south and west out of the valley. When the French appeared in force in the 1890s, they found the nomadic the Kel Owey confederation allied now to a confederation led by the Kel Ayr, but remaining the dominant power from the Aïr Mountains south to Damergu just north of Zinder.
Central Saharan trade
Throughout the 19th century the Kel Owey controlled the central of three main trade routes from the West African Sahel to the Mediterranean. Kel Owey caravans carried hides, gold, ostrich feathers and slaves north from the borders of the Sokoto Caliphate, beginning in Kano, Zinder, Agadez, the Air, to Ghat and Ghadames. The Kel Owey also for some time controlled the Agadez centered trade in salt and dates, called the Azalai. This trade was supplemented by grain grown in the fertile Air by bonded servile Tuareg classes, conquered communities, and slaves working plantation estates witnessed by Barth. Barth stayed at a series of estates held by the family of Annur, a high ranking Kel Owey noble, as well as those held by the Anastafidet himself, commenting on their extensive size, geographic spread, and the relative lack of restrictions on the labourers who were, technically, often first generation slaves. Barth reports the in the Air seeing the southernmost use of plow agriculture, and detailing Kel Owey plantations, trade villages, and weigh stations deep in the territory of their southern neighbors at Tessawa and Damagaram, and mixed into the territory controlled by the Imazureg Tuareg around Gangara. From the date plantations and salt basins of the Kaouar, huge caravans transported good south to Zinder and Kano.
20th century
After participating in a number of rebellions against French rule and being particularly hard hit by a series of famines in the second decade of the 1900s, their noble and warrior clans were almost destroyed, and some others of their constituent elements have been largely subsumed by other Toureg "Kel"s. The Kel Owey remain powerful in the central Aïr Massif, especially in the Bagzane plateau.