Somewhere between January 12 and 14, an old woman still haunts the memory of Amazigh villages. They call her bayuza, the Old Woman of the cold — and her night carries a different name in nearly every valley of southeastern Morocco.

Since January 14, 2024, Yennayer has been a paid national holiday in Morocco, a recognition the Amazigh movement had sought for decades. But the ritual itself never waited for the state. In 1920, ethnographer Émile Laoust was already recording it, straight from the mouths of Chleuh women and elders, in Mots et choses berbères — still one of the most precise sources we have on these threshold rites.

Yennayer or Januarius: the roots of the name

The word Yennayer comes from the Latin Januarius — the same root that gives us January. It points to long contact with the Julian calendar, brought to North Africa by Roman conquest and kept alive in Amazigh villages long after the Gregorian calendar replaced it elsewhere.

The Amazigh New Year opens the agricultural year, not the civil one. It falls on January 14 in Morocco — sometimes the 12th or 13th elsewhere in the Maghreb — and has counted year 2974 of the Berber calendar since January 2024. The next threshold, in January 2027, opens year 2977.

A tradition popularized in the 20th century ties this count to the coronation of the Amazigh king Chachnak — Sheshonq I to Egyptian pharaohs — around 950 BCE. No archaeological evidence confirms it. The story still carries weight: it gives Yennayer an origin of its own, apart from any calendar imposed from outside.

Laoust’s forgotten chapter

Émile Laoust spent part of his career crossing Chleuh-speaking Morocco, recording what modernity was about to erase, straight from the women and elders who still lived it. Mots et choses berbères, published in 1920, remains one of the most meticulous surveys of that world.

Chapter VI, on time, weather, and sky, gives six precise pages — 195 to 201 — to the first day of the year. It holds a legend translated nowhere else, night-names that shift from valley to valley, household omens that general-press coverage of Yennayer almost never mentions.

The legend of the borrowed days

Before Yennayer come the liali — some forty dreaded nights when the cold settles into the mountains and herders fear losing their flocks. It’s in that tense climate that Laoust records, in untranslated Chleuh, the legend of the borrowed days.

As his reign nears its end, Ennayer — January, personified — swears he has harmed no one all winter. An old woman scoffs: she and her flock survived him easily, she says. Stung, Ennayer turns to Brayer, February, and borrows a day.

With that stolen day, he unleashes hail and freezing wind on the old woman’s flock, driving it to the mountaintop. Brayer asks for his day back. Ennayer never returns it — which is why, the elders say, February counts one day short of every other month.

The same motif — a month that borrows to punish — turns up elsewhere across the Maghreb in different shapes; “days of the old woman” are documented from the Sahara to the Mediterranean coast. The version Laoust fixed on paper belongs to Chleuh country alone: one day, one debt, never settled.

One night, a hundred names

Reading Laoust valley by valley, what stands out most is how many names this one night carries. The Aït Yousi call it asuggwas ujdid, “the new year.” The Aït Seghrouchen, the Izayane, and the Ichqern call it id n-bayuza, “the night of the Old Woman” — a demon wearing an old woman’s face, they believe, who passes through every house and every tent that night. The Aït Ouarain call it biannou, a word that survives in place names too: Tabennaiut, the mountain overlooking present-day Khénifra, still carries its trace.

The bonfire lit for the occasion, called bennaiu or tabennaiut depending on the tribe, isn’t unique to Yennayer alone. The Muslim feast of Achoura, which also marks a new beginning, absorbed part of the same ritual — so thoroughly that in Ouargla, the same word names Achoura itself. The two celebrations blurred together over time, and even the Chleuh who still sing these words no longer always know what they once meant.

At nightfall, Aït Isaffen children go door to door singing: “Bennayo! Bennayo! Whoever won’t give me my dumpling and my bone, may their dog drag them and churn their butter in a packsaddle!” Further south, in the Dadès valley, children chant Bayanno, kerkano; in Demnat, among the Infedouaq, they ask for the “bones of Baino.” Three valleys, three refrains — the same threshold of the year, crossed each time in song.

The threshold table: tagulla, urkimen, and seven-vegetable couscous

The Yennayer ritual, Laoust notes, comes down in Chleuh country to a hearty meal followed by forecasts for the year ahead. Families eat tagulla, a thick porridge still known today as Tagoula and believed to fortify the body, or coarse-grain couscous, berkuks.

The seven green vegetables served alongside — among them artichoke, wild asparagus, and watercress — give the dish its name, sb’a lehodrat. Urkimen, a mix of grains cooked with the trotters of the animal slaughtered at Eid al-Adha, symbolically closes the ritual cycle of the year just past. Among the Aït Tamemt, custom calls for two whole chickens per person — “as many as one has ears,” the text notes, not without a smile.

Eating one’s fill that night is no small matter: “whoever isn’t full that day won’t be full all year,” runs a saying Laoust recorded among the Ida Oukensous. The second night belongs to eggs and poultry; everyone keeps the eggshells knotted in a fold of clothing overnight, a charm against running short of money before the year is out.

Reading the year ahead: omens and divination

After the meal, among the Ntifa, a woman of the house rolls a handful of couscous into a dumpling and offers it to each family member in turn. She then sets it above the doorframe; by morning she reads it for omens in whatever hair, wool, or feather the night wind has left there — the talkimt n-djiuneg, “the dumpling of I’m-not-hungry-anymore.”

Other omens hide in the food itself. Among the Aït Mzal, a small coin, a date pit, and a piece of argan bark go into the cooking pot: finding the coin means wealth, the bark means poverty, the pit means a growing herd. Laoust himself likens the custom to the French Twelfth Night cake — a hidden token, a fortune drawn by chance, two worlds that never met yet answer each other.

Yennayer is also the night the hearth gets renewed. The lady of the house tosses the worn stones onto the dungheap, saying: “I exchange you, O stones… for peace and prosperity.” Afterward, men and women go listening at neighbors’ doors, reading whatever conversation they overhear as an omen for the year — in Timgissin, a girl hoping to marry does the same while licking the spoon that stirred the porridge.

The last Wednesday and the rain forecasts

Among the Ida Gounidif, the month’s last Wednesday calls for a ritual urkimen in which every ingredient — lentils, turnips, carob bark — carries its own meaning, in a ceremony Laoust details over several pages. It deserves a fragment of its own one day.

Among the Ihahan, three tagulla dumplings stand in for January, February, and March, set out on the terrace and sprinkled with salt. Whichever one dissolves overnight marks, by morning, the wettest month to come — a home-grown forecast, kept every year without instrument or almanac.

Yennayer today

Since May 2023, by royal decision, the Amazigh New Year has been a paid national holiday — an institutional recognition long sought by the Amazigh movement, and hailed as acknowledgment of a pillar of Moroccan identity alongside the Hijri and Gregorian calendars. Algeria and Libya had already granted it that status.

Laoust already sensed it in 1920: Yennayer’s practices fade as the countryside empties out. Today the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture runs conferences and concerts to keep the memory alive — an institutional gesture that can’t quite replace a dumpling hung on a Chleuh doorway, read at dawn by a woman who has never heard of Laoust.

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Every year around January 12-14, a date pit hides inside the tagoula bowls of Amazigh families — good luck for whoever finds it. That’s Yennayer, the Berber New Year: an agricultural feast older than the calendar that replaced it, and one that never quite disappeared.

A name from far away

The word “Yennayer” comes from the Latin Januarius, the same root as our January. That link points to old contact with the Julian calendar, brought by Rome and kept alive in Amazigh villages long after the Gregorian calendar took over elsewhere. Some trace the date back to the legendary coronation of the Amazigh king Chachnak, who became pharaoh of Egypt around 950 BCE — an origin still debated, but one that gives the feast a legitimacy of its own.

Since January 14, 2024, Yennayer has been a paid national holiday in Morocco, an official recognition the Amazigh movement had sought for years. The Berber calendar now counts year 2976; the next threshold, in January 2027, opens year 2977.

A feast of the land and renewal

As an agricultural feast, Yennayer celebrates fertility, renewal, and the prosperity to come above all else. Much like our January 1st, it’s a time for family gatherings, good wishes, and looking back on the year gone by. People treat it as a lucky day, good for weddings, engagements, and any fresh start.

The New Year table

Food takes center stage in the celebrations. Orkimen, a thick soup of dried fava beans, wheat, and wild herbs, often opens the meal. Couscous, made for the occasion with seven vegetables, stands for abundance and balance. Tagoula, a rustic porridge of corn kernels enriched with butter, ghee, argan oil, and honey, closes the meal on flavors straight from the land.

A lucky bite

A date pit or almond piece often hides inside the Tagoula or the couscous. Whoever finds it in their bowl is said to carry luck for the whole year. In the old days, that person would even be trusted with the keys to the family granary — the agadir — a mark of confidence and shared blessing from the whole household.

What the table doesn’t tell you is everything that happens the night before and the morning after: a legend of borrowed days never returned, a couscous dumpling hung on the door and read by the wind, hearth stones renewed with spoken wishes. Émile Laoust recorded it all in 1920, valley by valley — worth the longer read.

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One summer evening, on the village Assarag, drums wake before the stars. Men close ranks in a circle; the Anksalim’s voice rises, low and insistent. Then women step in, and the Amazigh circle closes on itself, ready to turn until dawn.

The circle at the heart of Ahwach

Ahwach belongs to the Amazigh communities of the western High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas, and the Souss basin. It unfolds on the village’s central square — the Assarag, or Assais in Tamazight.

Men dressed in white take the center, drums and tambourines in hand. One of them, the Anksalim, opens the chant in a deep, haunting voice: Ahwach begins. Women then form a circle around them, ululations and tambourine beats marking the start.

The rhythm builds in waves. Bodies sway, and improvised poetry drifts from the sacred to the profane — invocation, a search for origins, confessions of the heart. Three instruments carry this rise: the taguenza (a wooden-frame tambourine), the dendoum (a double-headed cylindrical drum), and the naqouss (a metal gong struck with sticks).

Costumes, poetic duels, and colonial-era travelers’ accounts feature in our in-depth piece: Ahwach, the Amazigh Tradition of Morocco.

Ahwach and Ahidous: one pulse, two territories

People often mix up Ahwach with its Middle Atlas cousin, Ahidous. Both share the same grammar: circle, chant-and-drum alternation, poetic duel. But each carries the pulse of a different territory.

Ahidous belongs to the Tamazight-speaking tribes of Khénifra, Azrou, and Imilchil. Men and women dance elbow to elbow, in tight rows or blocks, to sung verses called izlan, kept by a single bendir and handclaps.

Ahwach belongs to the Tashelhit-speaking world of the Chleuh. Men hold the center of the circle, the percussion runs fuller, and the women’s ring can split into two facing rows that answer each other — a choreographed dialogue Ahidous doesn’t share in quite this form.

Two territories, then, for one shared impulse: turning the collective circle into the place where Amazigh speech is spoken and passed on.

A living heritage, still seeking recognition

Each year, a National Festival of Ahwach Arts brings troupes from across the kingdom to Ouarzazate, under the Ministry of Culture’s patronage — a rare showcase for an art still carried mostly by oral transmission.

Unlike the Taskiwin, a martial dance of the western High Atlas inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2017, Ahwach has yet to earn that recognition, despite advocacy from researchers and practitioners over the years.

The gradual loss of the art’s great masters raises the stakes. University initiatives, notably around Ibn Zohr University, now work to archive voices and gestures before they fade.

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At the end of the 19th century, southern Morocco remained a little-known land for Europeans. Under the Alaouite dynasty, the country only partly controlled these regions, which were often administered by local tribes. In 1883, Charles de Foucauld undertook an exploratory journey into Morocco’s interior, then largely closed to Christians, especially beyond the Atlas Mountains.

Charles de Foucauld therefore travelled under a Jewish identity, accompanied by the Moroccan rabbi Mardochée Aby Serour, a guide and interpreter whose knowledge of the terrain and local communities made the expedition possible.

His travel journal, published in 1888 under the title Reconnaissance au Maroc, marked an important stage in European knowledge of Morocco’s interior. It is a narrative that combines geographical observations, notes on tribes, field sketches and fragments of oral traditions.

During a stay in Tikirt, a douar in the commune of Aït Zineb, in the province of Ouarzazate, he discovered the ruins of a mysterious citadel around which local people told strange legends.

Here is his account:

A fortress between myth and history

The remains of Tasgedlt, although now partly destroyed, still suggest the scale of this ancient fortification. Its thick walls, made from a combination of masonry and rammed earth, bear witness to an architectural know-how adapted to the region’s arid climate. Its position, overlooking the landscape, suggests a defensive function. It made it possible to watch over the surrounding area, the passages, the cultivated land and the banks of the Oued Imini. The caverns beneath the citadel may have served as shelters or as places to store food, although their exact function remains difficult to establish.

The people of the region speak of a legend surrounding these ruins:

According to this oral tradition, Muslims waged long wars against these princesses before driving them away.

Charles de Foucauld, however, remained cautious. He himself noted that it was more likely that the three kasbahs were the work of a single sultan, perhaps the one who built the bridge over the Oued Rdat. This remark is important. It does not destroy the legend, but it distinguishes between two levels: on the one hand, oral memory, which gives the place a face; on the other, the historical hypothesis, which links the ruins to political power and to the organisation of the territory.

Collective memory and the remains of a forgotten past

The legends surrounding the citadel have been passed down from generation to generation. In a culture where history is first and foremost transmitted orally, such stories play a fundamental role in the transmission of heritage. The elders of the village still say that strange sounds can be heard at night near the ruins, as if the spirits of the three princesses continued to haunt the place. Some see in these legends a way of preserving the memory of a distant past, where myth and reality are intertwined.

The fortress of Tasgedlt is not an isolated case. Throughout southern Morocco, there are ruins of citadels that once served to defend trade routes. Sites such as Tamnougalt or Tazenakht bear witness to the organisation of these territories, where each fortification played the role of a bastion against invasions or tribal rivalries.

Today, the douar of Tadoula, where the remains of this ancient citadel are found, may preserve in its name an echo of Doula Bent Ouâd, the princess associated with Tasgedlt. Nothing allows this to be stated with certainty, but this proximity between the name of the place and the story handed down gives the ruin a particular depth. Between architecture, oral memory and ancient sketches, Tasgedlt remains one of the most mysterious sites in the region of Ouarzazate.

Read also: The lost destiny of the Jews of South-Eastern Morocco…

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Perched in the heart of the Atlas Mountains, Tikirt stood out for its elegant and distinctive architecture. Its fortified earthen houses, tall tighremts and geometric decorations bore witness to the skill of local craftsmen.

The city’s lush gardens, irrigated by an elaborate network of seguias — traditional irrigation canals — provided abundant harvests and reflected the agricultural prosperity of the region.

The women of Tikirt lived within this landscape of earth, gardens and mountains. They wore the traditional adornments of southern Morocco: amber and coral necklaces, bracelets, brooches and earrings. These Berber jewels expressed social status, family belonging and the rich cultural heritage of the region.

A city admired by European explorers

The splendour of Tikirt struck several European explorers.

René de Segonzac, in his work Au cœur de l’Atlas, mission au Maroc, 1904-1905, evokes a place surrounded by impressive mountain ranges:

This impression did not come only from the presence of one fortified building. Tikirt was rather a kind of fortified city. An old testimony describes it as a settlement made up of several adjoining tighremts, with a maze of streets, small squares and passageways. Each notable family, each important tribal section, had, in a sense, its own fortress.

Tikirt was therefore not an isolated kasbah. It was a collective ensemble, an earthen architecture where dwelling, protection, family prestige and village life were closely intertwined.

A few years earlier, Charles de Foucauld, in Reconnaissance au Maroc, based on his journey of 1883-1884, had already noted the strength of the site. He reports these words from the inhabitants:

An integrated Jewish community

Tikirt was also home to a notable Jewish community.

Photographs taken around 1935 by Jean Besancenot show a Jewish man and child from Tikirt wearing the akhnif, a large traditional black cloak. This document is precious, because it reminds us that the rural Jewish communities of southern Morocco shared part of the clothing and cultural practices of their Amazigh environment.

The Jewish presence in Morocco is ancient, with communities established for millennia, particularly in the South-East, including localities such as Tikirt.

Charles de Foucauld also mentions a significant anecdote in Reconnaissance au Maroc. He tells of meeting in Tikirt a young Jewish woman from Ouarzazate, married to a man from the village. He specifies that her husband had paid a large sum to take her with him.

Beyond the detail itself, this testimony reveals something essential: Tikirt was not a village closed in on itself. Links existed with Ouarzazate and with other localities of the South. Jewish families moved, formed alliances, traded and belonged to social and economic networks that extended well beyond the limits of a single ksar.

This Jewish memory of Tikirt must therefore be read as part of the history of the place. It recalls the ancient complexity of southern Morocco, made of neighbourhoods, exchanges, crafts, passages and multiple belongings.

Read also: The lost destiny of the Jews of South-Eastern Morocco

A commercial and cultural crossroads

Located at a strategic point, Tikirt served as a crossroads between the routes linking the High Atlas, the Siroua, Tazenakht and southern Morocco.

Merchants, craftsmen and travellers exchanged agricultural products, fabrics, precious objects, news and know-how. The city lived from this position in-between: neither entirely Atlas nor entirely Saharan, but placed on the routes that connected these worlds.

The pisé houses, the tighremts, the gates and the tightly gathered volumes protected the inhabitants and their wealth. They also gave Tikirt the powerful appearance that impressed explorers in the early twentieth century.

Read also: Sijilmassa, the mythical city that shone the true heart of the Maghreb

The decline and legacy of Tikirt

Despite its past greatness, Tikirt underwent a gradual decline. Trade routes changed. Centres of power shifted. Rural exodus emptied part of the old villages. The earthen walls, no longer maintained, gradually yielded to wind, rain and time.

Today, the remains of Tikirt recall the splendour of an almost vanished world.

But these ruins are not only the remains of a fortress. They bear witness to Amazigh architectural genius, to the social organisation of old rural communities, and to the Jewish presence in the villages of southern Morocco.

Tikirt therefore deserves to be seen not as a simple forgotten place, but as one of those fragments of memory where Amazigh architecture, ancient routes, agricultural life, adornments, exchanges and the coexistence of communities meet.

It is also striking to compare the fate of Tikirt with that of nearby Aït Ben Haddou. While Aït Ben Haddou has become one of the great heritage emblems of southern Morocco, Tikirt remains almost invisible, although it was once a radiant city, admired by explorers and marked by a strong Jewish presence. Two neighbouring places, two very different memories: one now seen by the whole world, the other still barely emerging from oblivion.

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In former times, across several Amazigh regions of North Africa, communities celebrated this ritual during prolonged periods without rain, when harvests, pastures and the very balance of village life were under threat.

Anzar, the rain god

This rite is rooted in the myth of Anzar. In pre-Islamic Amazigh belief, Anzar was the god of the sky, water, rivers, seas, streams and springs — often called Aglid n Ugfur, meaning “king of the rain.” For the prehistorian Gabriel Camps and linguist Salem Chaker, who devote an entry to him in the Encyclopédie berbère, Anzar is above all a principle of fertility: a life-giving force that strengthens vegetation and ensures the growth of herds.

But behind the god lies a love story. According to the legend, Anzar fell in love with a young woman of extraordinary beauty who was accustomed to bathing in a silver-reflecting river. Each time he drew near, she fled — and Anzar, wounded, withdrew, withholding his rain and letting the land wither. He issued a threat: “Like lightning I have split the vast sky, O Star brighter than all others — give me the treasure that is yours, or I will deprive you of this water.” Out of love for her people, the young woman finally yielded. And since that day, when rain falls, legend says she appears in the sky as a rainbow — Tislit n Unzar, the wife of Anzar.

The doll and her name

It is this myth that the rite re-enacts each time drought threatens. The bride of Anzar — Tislit n Anzar in Tamazight — took the form of a doll dressed as a bride. A figure was fashioned from rags wound around a wooden ladle or pestle, with two smaller spoons as arms, placed to receive and hold the longed-for rainwater. In some places, such as Tabelbala in the Algerian Saoura, a proper garment was cut and sewn around this wooden frame, completed with necklaces and bracelets — leaving no doubt that what was being enacted was a wedding ceremony.

In Marrakech, the ethnologist Émile Laoust documented in Mots et choses berbères (1920) the almost liturgical care devoted to this preparation: a group of widowed or divorced women of devout reputation would gather at the home of the most pious among them. They painted the facial features — eyes, nose, mouth — in black dye on the rounded surface of the ladle, rouged the cheeks, and wrapped the head in silk scarves before handing the adorned doll to the woman who would lead the procession.

She was called Taghonja, a name that comes from tlaghnja, meaning “the ladle” or “the soup spoon” — doubly symbolic, both as a vessel for the expected water and as an object tied to food and domestic life. She was adorned with henna and jewellery. In some Rif variants, a winnowing fork served in place of the ladle — another sacred vessel by virtue of its role at harvest time.

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The procession

When the time came, the most respected woman in the village — sometimes called the qibla, the keeper of ancient knowledge — prepared the bride’s toilette. She was not permitted to weep during this preparation, lest it suggest she was giving the bride to Anzar with a reluctant heart. She then lifted the doll onto her back to open the procession.

Accompanied by the children, the women walked through the village lanes chanting prayers and invocations to call the rain:

The doll was sprinkled with water along the way. At each threshold the procession passed, households poured water over the participants’ heads, aiming especially for the bride. They offered semolina, flour, meat and fat. With these gifts, the women prepared a communal meal, shared near a shrine, a riverbed, a threshing floor or the crest of a hill. The ceremony ended with a prayer imploring the return of Anzar — who on this day bore another name: Argaz n Taghonja, the husband of Taghonja.

The fate of the doll at the close of the ceremony varied from region to region. In the Tafilalt, the assembled women would engage in a ritual brawl that ended in the destruction of the effigy — and a fragment of the dismembered doll was carefully kept in the family chest, on account of the baraka that still inhabited it.

Read also : The art of women’s hairstyles among the Aït Atta of southern Morocco

A pan-Maghrebi rite

This tradition has been recorded across the Rif, Kabylia, the Atlas mountains and the Aurès range. Other traces of it have been found in the pre-Saharan region around Merzouga, among the Aït Khebbach. Whether the figure is called Taghonja, Tarenza, Boughenja or Tislit n waman — “the bride of water” — the gesture remains the same: a community that symbolically offers a bride to the sky, so that the sky may return the rain.

This rite speaks volumes about the ancient relationship of Amazigh societies with water. Rain here is not merely a natural phenomenon. It is blessing, fertility, the return of life to dry earth. And marriage — that central figure of alliance and transmission — becomes the universal language through which people address the heavens.

With time, the rite was gradually blended with prayers addressed to God. Though rooted in an ancient cult dedicated to Anzar, today the ritual is largely Islamicised: the communal meal is offered as sadaqa — an act of Islamic charity — and the procession often winds past the shrines of saints in search of their baraka. Yet behind this Islamicised form, the trace of an older imagination endures: a world in which nature, women, children, song and the whole community participated together in the call for water.

Taghonja is therefore not simply a doll carried in procession. She is the little bride of rain, the fragile face of a collective hope. And when at last a rainbow appears above the ridgelines, it is she who is recognised in the sky — the bride who consented, and whom the earth thanks.

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In traditional southern Morocco, women’s hairstyles were never a simple aesthetic choice. They were a visual language in their own right. The way a fringe was cut, the hair braided, wool added or silver ornaments fixed revealed far more than personal taste: it spoke of tribal origin, age, sometimes marital status, and played a full part in affirming identity.

Among Amazigh women of the pre-Saharan regions — the Dadès, Todgha, Saghro, Drâa and Tafilalt — hair was worked with remarkable sophistication. Volume, symmetry, the density of braids, the lines of the forehead, facial tattoos and jewellery together formed a coherent whole in which the body became a medium of cultural expression.

Old photographs are today precious testimonies of a capillary art largely transformed by time.

Who are the Aït Atta?

The Aït Atta are among the largest Amazigh tribal confederations in Morocco. Their historical territory stretched across an immense area, from the Jbel Saghro to the fringes of the desert, taking in the valleys of the Dadès, Todgha, Drâa and parts of the Tafilalt.

Traditionally organised into multiple fractions and tribal groups, the Aït Atta are often distinguished by broad geographical groupings — western, central and eastern. This vast territorial spread explains the existence of cultural variations that are sometimes quite marked, including in women’s adornment.

While language, social structures and certain symbolic codes unite the Aït Atta as a whole, each local group developed its own vestimentary and aesthetic signatures. Women’s hairstyles offer a particularly telling illustration of this.

A woman of the Aït Bou Iknifen (Lower Dadès / Lower Todgha)

This young woman from the Aït Bou Iknifen, established in the region of Ouaklim, displays a particularly refined hairstyle, characteristic of the Aït Atta groups of the Lower Dadès and Lower Todgha.

Her fringe, cut very short, draws a sharp line across the forehead. This contour is underlined by a row of black dotted tattoos, interrupted at the centre by a small motif evoking a suspended pendant. Beneath the eyes and along the bridge of the nose appear further tattooed marks, known as tiqifit, which contribute to the ornamentation of the face.

The hairstyle itself is enriched by two imposing silver ornaments. Most striking are the long spindle-shaped pendants ending in tassels, known locally as tiqulalin — literally “little jugs”. These jewels are not merely decorative: they also assert rank, belonging and prestige.

Here, hair, tattoo and precious metal compose an ensemble of remarkable aesthetic coherence.

Read also : The berber fibula: between tradition and symbol

A woman of the Aït Yazza (Eastern Aït Atta)

This woman belongs to the Aït Yazza, a group of the Eastern Aït Atta.

What strikes one immediately is the volume of her hairstyle. To thicken the natural braids, a large quantity of wool has been worked into the hair along its entire length. This technique produces a structure that is fuller, denser and more stable.

The result gives the whole an almost sculptural silhouette. The hair does not simply fall: it is constructed, shaped, architected.

The addition of wool was far from incidental. In many Amazigh societies, it expressed a pursuit of visual presence, formal power and elegance. The hairstyle thus became an extension of clothing and body alike.

Read also : Discovering the Amazigh culture of Morocco

Two Aït Atta women from the Drâa valley

This third portrait shows two women from the Aït Atta tribes of the Drâa valley, in the region of the Ternata. Their hairstyles are close in general structure, but reveal, on closer inspection, distinctly different personal or social choices.

Both wear a headscarf, one sober, the other richly ornamented — a likely sign of different status, or of a particular occasion. Beneath the fabric, bands of hair frame the temples and a rounded fringe traces the contour of the forehead, integrated into the overall composition of the face with the same precision seen in the hairstyles of the western groups.

What distinguishes this portrait from the two preceding ones is the way in which the hairstyle partly yields to the ensemble of adornment. Silver jewellery — pendants and necklaces — and rows of amber hold a central place, while the dark lines redrawing the eyebrows and accentuating certain features contribute to an overall ornamentation in which hair and jewellery no longer exist in a hierarchy, but in dialogue.

The Aït Atta group of the Drâa, established among the palm groves and ksour of the Ternata, had indeed developed a feminine aesthetic more oriented towards jewellery than towards capillary architecture alone. The proximity to the great caravan routes — and thus to the circuits of silver and amber trade — partly explains this abundance of precious materials. The hairstyle nonetheless remains structured, legible, charged with meaning: it converses with the jewels rather than submitting to them.

Here too, the ensemble forms a complete aesthetic, in which hair, jewellery, textile and bodily signs express at once elegance, belonging and a certain social ease.

Read also : Glossary of traditional amazigh culture: words of the Berber world

A visual heritage to rediscover

These three portraits represent only a tiny glimpse of the richness of southern Morocco’s aesthetic traditions.

Old ethnographic works are filled with photographs that remain fascinating today: Amazigh women of the Dadès or the Saghro, bridal adornments, tribal jewellery, facial tattoos — but also portraits of women from the ancient Jewish communities of the South, whose vestimentary codes sometimes entered into dialogue with those of their Amazigh neighbours.

So many fragments of memory that deserve to be documented — not out of nostalgia for a vanished world, but to better understand the cultural depth of these territories.

Editorial note

These portraits stop us in our tracks — not out of nostalgia, but because they reveal a sophistication that conventional representations of the Berber rural world have not always acknowledged. A precisely calculated fringe, architectured braids, jewels placed with care: all of this presupposes knowledge, transmission, and above all joy — the pleasure taken collectively by women in the act of adornment, in the shared time of doing each other’s hair, of beautifying, of being looked at and looking.

What has disappeared is not merely a style. It is a right. The right to be seen in one’s signs of belonging — to make visible, through hairstyle, jewel or tattoo, one’s origin, rank and tribe. That right was not swept away by time: it was confiscated by an ideological rigourism from elsewhere, which imposed on Berber women the duty to efface themselves, to conform to a uniform mould in which local identities had no place.

Old photographs have preserved some fragments of this world. It is to Mireille Morin-Barde, author of the reference work Coiffures féminines du Maroc (Edisud), that we owe the preservation of an essential part of it — patient, rigorous work, accomplished in close proximity to the women and the territories. She did not capture this world in its entirety. No one will. What these images show is also what we have lost the right to see.

View all articles : The Berber world

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Skoura palm grove: an oasis of gardens, kasbahs and memories

One of the most expansive oases in southern Morocco, where date palms, earthen kasbahs and oasis traditions compose a landscape shaped by water over centuries.

What to know before your visit

Distance from Ouarzazate: 40 km Recommended visit time: 1 full day Local guide available Best season: October to May

Google maps location

Panorama

Walking through the palm grove Visiting Kasbah Amridil Exploring Skoura’s weekly souk Traditional irrigation systems Traces of Jewish memory in Skoura Villages and traditional kasbahs Getting to Skoura Beyond Skoura

Our editorial take

Skoura is not a place you pass through. It is an oasis you take the time to read — the way you read a face. Twenty years of living in southeastern Morocco have taught us this: oases do not give up their secrets to those in a hurry. You have to stop beside a canal, accept the tea someone offers you, listen to what an elder has to say about water, about palms, and about those who have left. Only then does Skoura become something more than a landscape: a living memory.

Why visit Skoura?

Skoura palm grove ranks among the most beautiful oases in southern Morocco. Across more than 25 km², thousands of date palms, olive trees, almond trees and pomegranate trees compose a verdant landscape that stands in striking contrast to the arid terrain surrounding it. Water flowing through an age-old network of channels has sustained fertile gardens at the heart of a desert environment for centuries.

But Skoura is more than its vegetation. Towering earthen kasbahs emerge from among the palm trees, bearing witness to the oasis’s former prosperity. The most celebrated is Kasbah Amridil, one of the iconic monuments of southern Morocco — though several other fortresses are equally worthy of attention for their architecture and their stories.

Skoura is also a place of encounters and memory. Amazigh, Arab and Jewish communities lived side by side here for generations, leaving their mark in the architecture, the craft traditions, the local customs and in certain places that remain visible to this day.

Between irrigated gardens, architectural heritage and layered cultural histories, Skoura palm grove offers one of the richest and most authentic discoveries in the Ouarzazate region.

What to do in the Skoura palm grove?

Walking through the palm grove

The tracks that wind through the oasis invite you to discover its gardens, irrigation channels and small villages scattered among the palms — as well as earthen kasbahs, most of them long abandoned and slowly returning to the earth. A walk on foot or by bicycle is the finest way to take in the gentle atmosphere of the place.

Skoura’s palm grove is vast and can feel like a true labyrinth. A local guide is invaluable for finding its most rewarding kasbahs, gardens and hidden paths.

Visiting Kasbah Amridil

Probably the most famous kasbah in the oasis — once depicted on the 50-dirham banknote — Kasbah Amridil is well preserved and offers a clear window onto traditional earthen architecture and the domestic life of Skoura’s former great families.

Entrance to the kasbah is ticketed.

Exploring Skoura’s weekly souk

From the early hours of the morning, merchants and customers converge from surrounding villages — Toundoute, Imi N’Oulaoune and beyond — to trade a wealth of goods: fruit, vegetables, spices, textiles, local crafts and livestock. The market offers genuine immersion in daily local life and a culturally rich experience.

Skoura’s souk takes place every Monday.

Traditional irrigation systems

Water is the very foundation of Skoura’s palm grove. In certain parts of the oasis it is still possible to observe the ancient irrigation networks that continue to feed the gardens today. Channels, water-distribution structures and underground galleries all attest to a form of know-how developed over centuries to sustain life in an arid land.

Visiting the khettaras requires the presence of a local guide.

Read also : The palm grove of Skoura, the quintessential oasis

Traces of Jewish memory in Skoura

Skoura’s palm grove still carries visible traces of its former Jewish community, which was long woven into the economic and social fabric of the oasis. As in many oases across southeastern Morocco, Jewish communities played a significant role in trade, craftsmanship and commerce with the surrounding tribes.

Although much of this presence faded with the departures of the twentieth century, certain vestiges remain visible to the attentive visitor. These include former mellahs, former residential quarters, a Jewish cemetery and various architectural details that bear witness to this memory.

This history is a reminder that Skoura was always far more than a farming oasis. It was also a space of coexistence between Amazigh, Arab and Jewish populations, bound together by complex forms of economic, social and cultural interdependence.

Today, these often discreet traces contribute to the singular depth of Skoura. They invite a different way of looking at the oasis: behind the beauty of the palms and the kasbahs lies the memory of a shared life that has left a lasting mark on the history of southern Morocco.

What to look for: former mellahs; the old cemetery; El Hara (the communal space for celebrations); architectural motifs

Read also : The lost destiny of Jews from South East Morocco

Villages and traditional kasbahs

Beyond the celebrated Kasbah Amridil, Skoura’s palm grove shelters numerous traditional villages and former pisé kasbahs scattered throughout the gardens. Following the oasis tracks, the visitor gradually uncovers this earthen architecture — testimony to the ancient organisation of oasis life, balancing shelter, agriculture and defence. Some kasbahs appear at the bend of a canal or behind a curtain of palms, offering at every turn a new way of reading the landscape.

This activity requires the presence of a local guide.

Read also : The oasis bears the seeds of tomorrow’s Morocco, and of the world

Getting to Skoura

From Ouarzazate

Skoura lies approximately 40 km east of Ouarzazate, along the national road N10 towards Tinghir and Errachidia. The drive takes around 40 to 45 minutes and presents no particular difficulty.

Shared taxis (grands taxis) are also available from Ouarzazate’s central station.

From Marrakech

From Marrakech, allow approximately 4.5 to 5 hours by road, crossing the Tizi n’Tichka pass, continuing through Ouarzazate and then east along the N10 to Skoura. This stage fits naturally into a broader itinerary through the oases and valleys of southern Morocco.

Getting around the palm grove

A car gives easy access to Skoura, though some tracks inside the palm grove are narrow or unpaved. To explore the most rewarding areas — kasbahs, gardens and traditional irrigation systems — travelling on foot, by bicycle or with a local guide is often the better choice.

The palm grove is large and it is easy to lose your way. A guide is strongly recommended. Cycling is an excellent way to get around.

Beyond Skoura

Skoura’s palm grove is only one doorway into the fascinating world of southeastern Morocco’s oases. Other oases, each with their own distinct character, punctuate the valleys and foothills of the Atlas: the Fint oasis with its striking mineral landscapes, Agdz and the Drâa Valley with its immense palm groves, and further south Zagora, a former caravan staging post at the edge of the desert.

With a Moroccan guide, it is possible to set out on an immersion of one day or several days through these oasis worlds: irrigated gardens, earthen villages, ancestral water systems and living ways of life. A different way of discovering southern Morocco — close to its landscapes and its people.

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The Tuareg, also known as the Kel Tamasheq (“those of the Tamasheq language”) or Kel Tagelmust (“those of the veil”), form one of the great branches of the Berber world. A nomadic people of the central Sahara, they are distinguished by their language, Tamasheq, written in the ancient Tifinagh script — one of the oldest writing systems still in use today. Their society rests on a singular structure in which lineage passes through women: a child knows their mother and their mother’s mother, while the paternal line counts for little in the social order. It is the woman who owns the tent, who passes down rank, and on whom tribal belonging depends. This central role of women has earned the Tuareg their reputation as a matriarchal society — a rare status in the Muslim world, and one that sheds light on the place held by Tin Hinan in this people’s collective memory.

Found today across Niger, Mali, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, the Tuareg represent a living extension of the Berber world, adapted to the vast desert expanses of the Sahara — where it is the men, not the women, who wear the veil: the tagelmust, dyed with indigo, which earned them the nickname “Blue Men“.

A princess from the Tafilalet

According to oral tradition, Tin Hinan originated from the Tafilalet, in southeastern Morocco. For reasons that remain mysterious — political flight, dynastic conflict, the search for new territory — she left her homeland atop a white camel, accompanied by her servant Takamat and a caravan. The story tells that the two women nearly perished crossing the Sahara, saved at the last moment by the discovery of grain in desert anthills — an episode that remains celebrated in Tuareg oral tradition.

After this long crossing, she reached the Hoggar, in the heart of present-day Algeria, where she settled at Abalessa and founded her lineage. According to legend, Tin Hinan gave rise to the noble Kel Rela tribe, while her servant Takamat became the ancestor of vassal tribes. Other accounts, gathered from different Tuareg confederations, attribute this founding lineage to other female figures — a sign that each group constructs its own mythical genealogy around a founding mother.

The 1925 archaeological discovery

A major turning point in this story came in 1924: a Franco-American team uncovered a monumental tomb on a hill overlooking the Oued Tifirt, near Abalessa, not far from Tamanrasset. In 1925, excavations revealed the skeleton of a woman, accompanied by exceptional funerary goods for the region: pearls, gold and silver jewellery crafted using techniques of North African influence, and — a detail that would long fuel the mystery — Roman coins bearing the effigy of Emperor Constantine.

Analysis of the skeleton also revealed a slight limp, leading some researchers to draw a connection with “Tiski the lame,” mentioned by the historian Ibn Khaldun as early as the 14th century. The ethnologist Marceau Gast even suggested that the woman buried there may never have had children — a troubling detail given her status as founding mother in oral tradition.

Legend or history? A debate that remains open

It must be said honestly: the identification of the Abalessa skeleton as Tin Hinan remains debated among scholars. Some specialists, following Marceau Gast, have suggested that the legend of Tin Hinan may be a later construction, shaped by the Kel Rela confederation to legitimise their political supremacy within the Hoggar — a founding figure crafted after the fact rather than a direct historical memory.

Whether or not the woman buried at Abalessa truly was the Tin Hinan of oral legend ultimately matters little to understanding what this figure represents. She remains, in the Tuareg imagination as in that of the wider Berber world, the symbol of a lineage traced through women, of a founding migration that began in the Moroccan Tafilalet, and of an ancient bond between two shores of the Sahara — the oases of southeastern Morocco and the Hoggar of Algeria.

Read also : Ahwach, the Amazigh tradition of Morocco

A living place of memory

The mausoleum at Abalessa, now known as the Tomb of Tin Hinan, remains for the Tuareg a place of memory and lineage. Its silhouette, reminiscent of the funerary architecture of the Tafilalet and Mauritania, testifies to a Berber style shared across the Sahara. The site continues to be the subject of archaeological campaigns seeking to better understand its true origins, while the remains attributed to the queen are today preserved at the Bardo Museum in Algiers.

For the Tuareg, Tin Hinan remains far more than a historical figure: she is a living source of inspiration, invoked in oral poetry, present in stories passed down through generations, and still called upon as the symbolic mother of a people who, from the Moroccan Tafilalet to the far reaches of the Hoggar, have never stopped tracing their own path across the immensity of the desert.

Also in The Berber World: : The berber fibula: between tradition and symbol — another perspective on adornment and identity in the Amazigh world.

The post Tin Hinan, the legendary berber queen of the Tuareg appeared first on Southeast-morocco.com.

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