The Kel Ahaggar are the Tuareg confederation of the Hoggar massif in southern Algeria, taking their name from the central plateau they inhabit and govern. They speak Tamahaq, the northern Tuareg variety, and write in the indigenous Tifinagh script.
The confederation is conventionally said to have emerged in its present form in the seventeenth century under the Kel Ghela noble lineage, with the seat of the Amenokal — the supreme chief — in the Atakor sub-range of the Hoggar. The Kel Ahaggar are organised in a hierarchy of noble drum-groups, vassal tribes (Imghad, Isekkemaren), religious lineages (Ineslemen), and dependent strata.
Their territory historically commanded the trans-Saharan trade between the Touat oases of the central Algerian Sahara and the Sahel, and the salt route to Bilma was one of the principal sources of the confederation's wealth and reach. The seasonal Azalaï caravan still crosses the Ténéré each autumn between Bilma and Agadez.
In the colonial period the Kel Ahaggar fought and lost a series of engagements with French Saharan forces between 1899 and 1902, after which the confederation was incorporated into French Saharan administration. The principal modern town is Tamanrasset; Charles de Foucauld, killed there in 1916, compiled the foundational French dictionary of Tamahaq.