Jebrine Ag Mohamed Machar (in Arabic: جبرين آغ محمد مشار), born in 1890 in the Tamghit region in the heart of Tassili n'Ajjer in Algeria, in the Tuareg group of Idjeradjeriouène Kel Maddak, is an Algerian Tuareg guide and explorer.

Jebrine Machar grew up in the nomadic camps of Tassili n'Ajjer in the vast Algerian Sahara. He made several exploration trips, notably to the troglodyte city of Séfar, where he discovered the magnificent rock paintings and engravings. He quickly became a recognized specialist and the reference guide of Tassili.

It was he who accompanied Lieutenant Brenans in 1932 during his expedition to Tassili n'Ajjer. And above all he will be the main informant and guide of Henri Lhote during his long mission of sixteen months on the Tassili plateau in 1956; which will enlighten the whole world on the immensity of the Tassili rock sites and reveal the magnificent rock engravings and paintings.

For soldiers, scientists and sometimes even a few rare tourists, this man had become indispensable. Here is how F. Bernard describes him, highlighting the qualities of this "excellent guide": "Jebrine is a man of around sixty years old, from the Kel Meddak tribe, having already led topographical and archaeological missions. He had just guided Claude Leredde's botanical mission in 1952. When he died, there would hardly be any Tuareg left who knew the whole country so well. Tall, full of natural authority, he has red hair and gray eyes." Leredde adds: "How many detours did he not make me take to show me what he knew should interest me", or again: "I had in this man to whom our destiny was entrusted a unlimited and well-justified confidence. »

But Jebrine's essential role was the one he played with Henri Lhote in the discovery of the paintings. When, in 1956, Henri Lhote set up his teams to carry out the surveys, it was naturally to him that he turned. Everywhere, he accompanied the teams, to Jabbaren, Tamghit, Séfar, Tissoukaï... 8Over sixty years old, Jebrine spared neither his efforts nor his health to cover tens of kilometers, climbing the escarpments, jumping into the scree despite his rheumatism, not missing any shelter. Often he returned to the camp to announce his discoveries, to which he led Henri Lhote and his teammates, including the rock paintings of Eheren and Tahilahi after having noticed in a shelter the fingerprints in red ocher in the shelter, and many others. Without Jebrine's knowledge, the discoveries would not have been of such magnitude. The Tuaregs themselves agree that Jebrine was one of the best connoisseurs of Tassili n'Ajjer and of these confusing stone forests in which it is so difficult to find one's way. Intelligent and intuitive, he quickly understood scientists' research instructions.

In the book Sahara, The Grand Narrative, Michel Pierre writes on page 31: "It was in the 1950s that the general public truly discovered the art of Sahara rock paintings thanks to Henri Lhote whose most important mission was takes place during a sixteen-month stay in 1956-1957 on the Tassili n'Ajjer plateau. The results of this mission owe a lot to its main informant, the Tuareg guide Jebrine ag Mohamed, who had an unparalleled knowledge of rock sites and who was never stingy with his field knowledge. Without him the mission would never have been able to bring back more than 6000 square meters of surveys divided into 1000 plates painted in gouache (today kept at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris).

All Western researchers in the region, between 1930 and 1981, were helped directly or indirectly by Jebrine, as during the Grim mission devoted to the inventory of the Tassili Cypresses in 1971-1972 where he was the third guide. Yet his name will be rarely mentioned, or only as a guide and not as a "discoverer".

If we owe it to Lieutenant Brenans for having alerted scientists with the engravings of Wadi Djerat, to Henri Lhote for having revealed to the general public the frescoes of the Tassili plateau, we owe it to Jebrine for having been the indispensable instrument to field operations. Certainly, before him, we were not unaware of the existence of this art, but by returning from his escapades with harvests of decorated walls, Jebrine allowed this Tassilian art to find its place among the most prestigious prehistoric rock arts of our planet. In this fantastic adventure, only one thing disturbs us: if Henri Lhote obtained immense worldwide notoriety thanks to this event represented by the exhibition at the Pavillon de Marsan in Paris, and especially thanks to his book - Discovering the Tassili frescoes , Arthaud, Paris - translated into several languages, Jebrine remained a complete unknown to him who did not benefit from any faded.

He spent the last years of his life in Tamghit in a zariba or in a rock shelter, preferring this existence without convenience, but free, to the comfort of the city in Djanet which he considered too tumultuous. Since 1975, he had lived on a small salary as a guard at the Tamghit tourist camp, then at the Sonatrach camp on the same site. The intervention of the Tassili Cultural Park and a Minister of Culture who met him on the plateau in 1978 allowed him to have a modest retirement. He was not alone, a few members of his family camped nearby, passing nomads possibly greeted him or took advice from this elderly, wise and generous man. Also on this date, in 1978, during an international seminar on the conversation of rock paintings, Henri Lhote and Jebrine Ag Mohamed Machar, both very old, saw each other again in moving farewells.

Shortly after, Jebrine Ag Mohamed Machar fell ill. He will be hospitalized at the Djanet hospital then in Algiers at the Mustapha Pacha hospital, far from the Sahara. He died in April 1981. Today, Jebrine Ag Mohamed Machar is a legend among the Tuaregs and throughout the Sahara. In Djanet, the Tassili Cultural Park museum bears his name as well as a natural arch in Tassili n'Ajjer. In the West, there remains of this man who contributed to one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, a few scattered testimonies in a few published works, a documentary film and a few postcards.

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