Only the dunes attempt to embody the reassuring movement of life to the extent that some have sought to perceive in this still eternity the sole space where one could finally escape, forget oneself and others, even lose oneself, and erase one’s existence. Adorned with the trappings of myth and exoticism, the desert displays an enchanting yet paradoxical beauty, for its charm is a bountiful source of inspiration that stimulates the senses, the mind, and even the spirit.

And yet, the desert tells its own story and reveals its secrets to the sincere gaze of an attentive traveler or a seasoned inhabitant. French writer and poet Edmond Jabès testifies:

In reality, the Sahara Desert is a space where ethnicities and peoples, customs and beliefs have constantly intersected and mingled. All human desires have been exchanged there, just as ideas and dreams have, weaving over the centuries a majestic network between an ever-imposing Nature and humans fiercely perched on their perpetual quest for wandering and refuge, clinging to their atavistic thirst for adventure, their insatiable need for power and wealth, or forever frozen in their aspiration to re-enchant their existence on this Land of suffering.

The word “Sahārā” means “vast area devoid of vegetation” in Arabic. The name “Tiniri” (or Ténéré) means “large extended plain, without mountains or dunes, flat desert” in Tamacheq, the Tamazight language of the local Berber populations, also known as Tuaregs.

Ultimately, this vast territory with its apparent emptiness has been an essential component of Africa’s history, serving as a borderland and gateway between all the regions that border it, from North to South and from West to East, from the Maghreb to Egypt and all the sub-Saharan countries.

Once upon a time, the Sahara offered humanity a vibrant garden of life

The Sahara is a vast desert covering most of northern Africa. Extreme water scarcity, rare precipitation, and abundant sand are its main features. However, the current appearance of the Sahara is nothing like what it used to be. It is the territory of a fabulous history of natural transformations to which human life always seeks to adapt.

100 million years ago, the Sahara was covered by the waters of the paleo-ocean Tethys. The regular cycle of glaciations alternated between extreme aridity and lush greenery of its lands. But nearly 10,000 years ago, it froze in benevolent allure, covering itself with lakes, rivers, forests, and a vast wooded savannah or grassy plains inhabited by elephants, giraffes, large predators, crocodiles, hippos… There, humans hunted and fished, and then harvested and gathered what nature abundantly provided. The oldest testimonies that have reached us date back 8,000 years and consist of rock engravings depicting hunters armed with bows and arrows pursuing game.

It is in this generous Sahara that humans live, as other groups will elsewhere on the planet, this formidable existential transformation that gradually leads them to become sedentary farmers and nomadic herders. It is the Neolithic revolution that flourishes here. Domestic cattle then appear in scattered engravings in this still green Sahara. Humans with dark skin, slender and sporting a small goatee, coexist with others with lighter skin, probably coming from the East and bringing with them the horse and later the camel.

The Sahara, crucible of Berber peoples

Around 6,000 years ago, the Sahara entered a new phase of aridity that has been increasing ever since. Hippopotamuses and elephants disappear from the rock paintings of this time and are replaced by a previously unknown form: the horse, shown harnessed to a two-wheeled chariot under the command of warriors armed with javelins and shields.

Human prehistory slowly comes to an end and launches into its Antiquity. Humans continue their adventure by forming peoples here and there, united by a common language and cultural gestures. The Berber adventure can begin, with the heart of the Sahara being its crucible, pulsating with the mixture of these nascent peoples. Funerary monuments and rock art now serve as the archive of all these human adventures born from the desert.

The first to establish an organized society with its rules, customs, and values were called the Proto-Berber cattle herders. Known not only as excellent hunters, they gradually asserted an identity as intrepid warriors, imbued with a certain nobility of spirit that bore the seeds of Berber elegance, which would flourish over the centuries. These early Berber peoples evolved to form others who were then known as Libyans, Garamantes, and Gétules. One particular group would become emblematic of the Sahara. They were known as Imohagh and would later be called by the Arabs the Touareg. A veiled-faced people, they preserved the use of the Libyan script, which would later become Tifinagh, from antiquity to the present day.

Others, such as the Zenata and the Sanhaja, confederations of nomadic Berber tribes of the Sahara, would have a major influence on the history of North Africa. The Zenata would be directly responsible for the founding of Sijilmasa, the great medieval city of the Sahara. The Sanhaja would be responsible for the powerful Almoravid dynasty that ruled over much of the western Maghreb and Al-Andalus, in the Iberian Peninsula, during the 11th and 12th centuries.

The Sahara witnessed the emergence of many other great cities, such as Tegdaoust, the capital of the Berber kingdom of Aoudaghost (present-day Mauritania), founded in the 9th century and conquered by Ghana in 990. The city of Tahert in Algeria, whose name derives from the Berber word meaning “lion”. The city of Tadmekka, which means “resemblance to Mecca” in Berber, or the city of Essouk, “market” in Arabic, and the former capital of Adagh in Mali, predominantly populated by Berbers. The city of Ghadames in Libya, known as the “Pearl of the Desert,” and finally, the city of Chinguetti in Mauritania, renowned as the “city of libraries.”

During the Middle Ages, the Sahara witnessed the formation of several empires such as those of Ghana and Mali, the Songhai Empire in West Africa, and the Kanem-Bornu Empire covering present-day Niger, Libya, and Chad. These empires relied on their mastery of Saharan life and the trans-Saharan trade routes for their power, trading in gold and other commodities.

Further reading : Sijilmassa, la cité mythique qui fit rayonner le cœur vrai du Maghreb

The desertification of the Sahara and the rise of the great nomadism

Over the centuries, the Sahara has transformed from a savanna into a barren desert. This long period of drought led to the disappearance of plant and animal biodiversity. As a result, Saharan populations were forced to migrate to more hospitable peripheral regions and aggregated in oases on the desert fringes, forming the rare green spots where cereal and vegetable crops could still be grown. This transformation in the relationship with the living territory marked the emergence of the great nomadism in the Sahara. Inhabited by nomads determined to remain free by adapting to the harshness of the desert, the Sahara would now become an ocean traversed by caravan routes.

Initially, these tracks crossing the desert were called the chariot route, such as the one opened by the Berber Garamantes tribes between the cities now known as Tripoli and Gao. The arrival of the Phoenicians and the establishment of Carthage nearly 2,800 years ago launched the slave trade through the sands of the desert, which would become, along with gold and salt, the most lucrative trade. The Greeks and Romans developed commercial outposts throughout North Africa, but it was with the Muslim conquest, begun in 647, that cultural and commercial relations between the Maghreb and Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa flourished on all levels.

In the early 8th century, the Ibadi Berbers were the main architects of the expansion of long-distance trade. They put in place all the components of this trade with the opening of various caravan routes and the control of caravan terminals both north and south of the Sahara, until the mid-13th century.

The gradual development of maritime trade and colonial expansion led to a lasting weakening of trans-Saharan exchanges and the progressive impoverishment of the populations involved. The arrival of Europeans somewhat revitalized interest in the Sahara, especially in its exotic dimension, but without allowing it to revive its former splendor. Interest in the mineral resources of the Saharan subsoil remained an insurmountable constraint.

A story constantly to be told for what it bears witness to our humanity

Southeast-morocco.com will unfold, article by article, the narrative of this marvelous tale of the Sahara, in perpetual evolution since time immemorial: a birthplace and cradle of peoples and civilizations, a space for encounter and blending of humanity, a crossroads of their ambitions and aspirations. A journey through time to explore the history of our humanity in Africa and the African dimension within the Maghreb and Morocco in particular.

An enlightening perspective fostering recognition and reconciliation with our shared history, so that once again, the myriad hues of our true humanity may gleam on the satin sands of the vast Sahara.

Photo credits : Abdellah Azizi / azifoto.com

The post The Sahara, the mirror space of human adventure in Africa appeared first on Southeast-morocco.com.

The palm grove of Skoura epitomizes the oasis in every aspect of its definition. It stands as an isolated vegetation haven in an arid environment, where a population of diverse origins has aggregated over time. Within this living space, an economy has been organized primarily around integrated agriculture, manifesting in a well-known layering of crops: date palms towering above, followed by fruit trees, and then in the lower, shadier layer, featuring vegetables, fodder, and cereals. This agricultural system relies on artificial irrigation of the land and gardens. Consequently, the Skoura oasis enjoys genuine ecological and cultural authenticity. The lush gardens and magnificent kasbahs that compose it are the result of the industrious ingenuity of the populations that have succeeded one another here generation after generation. Skoura stands as a green oasis of life, reflecting the history of the entire Southeastern region of Morocco.

A palm grove that lives to the rhythm of the seasons

At the foot of the Atlas Mountains, the palm grove of Skoura stands out in beauty. Its gardens abound with date palms and other fruit trees such as olive trees, pomegranate trees, almond trees, apricot trees, fig trees… These trees themselves protect the lower crops of wheat, barley, alfalfa, corn… that grow up to the edge of the riverbank.

According to oral tradition, Skoura was once a large lake populated by various bird species, the most common of which was the partridge, known in Amazigh as Askour or Taskourt for its feminine form.

Different communities migrated from the neighboring mountains and the edges of the desert, especially from the Drâa and Tafilalet regions, to settle along the shores of this lake. Legend has it that the majority community, coming from Drâa, then nicknamed the valley of olives, brought with them the olive tree to plant in this well-watered territory. These communities then drained the lake to grow gardens of palm trees, olive trees, or pomegranate trees… Over the years, the place was named Skoura through the repetition of the word Askour or partridge, as a name distorted over time.

The oasis of Skoura thrives and declines according to the whims of the seasons. Rainy years turn it into an enchanted paradise, while periods of drought bring desolation and hardship. The Dadès River flows persistently through it and crosses many villages of the palm grove, including the douar Sidi Flah, while the Hajjaj River, which runs the length of the palm grove, only nourishes the gardens with its waters during periods of flooding. The rest of the time, this river is dry.

A lire : The oasis bears the seeds of tomorrow’s Morocco, and of the world

The population of Skoura mainly sustains itself through agriculture. The scarcity of surface water has driven the inhabitants of the palm grove since ancient times to devise a clever irrigation system known as the khettara or qanat, consisting of an underground network of channels designed to capture water from the mountainsides and distribute it to the various villages and their family gardens. These draining galleries thus provide a constant and regular source of water for irrigating the fields throughout the seasons.

Kettara : the khettara technique is considered one of the oldest systems for water management in oasis agriculture, as its origins are traced back to ancient Persia over 3,000 years ago. In Afghanistan, they are called “kiraz,” in Iran “qanat,” in Algeria “fouggara,” in Morocco “khettara,” in Yemen “aflaj,” in China “karez,” and in Syria “kanawat.”

The times of desolation have nevertheless deeply marked the local collective memory. During the first half of the 20th century, drought struck the entire region, leading to famine and typhus. Mr. Mrabou, a native of the Skoura palm grove, holds distressing memories of this period and testifies:

Alongside these dark days, the Palmeraie of Skoura has experienced other periods of prosperity that have turned it into a magnificent fairyland. Times when the sky showered it with torrents of rain. The old man rejoices:

An architecture rooted in the oasis environment

Skoura reflects oasis architecture. Numerous hamlets are scattered within the palm grove, housing a population once subjected to provide labor for the local lord, the true master of the area, in the form of work in the fields and for the construction of kasbahs.

The hamlets adjoin the kasbahs, grand fortified residences built from the red earth called “tabia” in Amazigh. These kasbahs were symbols of power as they were inhabited by the notable figures of the territory, influential families who were nonetheless vassals of the reigning lord who held sway over the entire region. Examples include the Kasbah Si Abd El Kebir, once the Khalifa of Skoura, the Kasbah Mohamed Ben Hamadi, the Kasbah Ait Abou, and the Kasbah Ben Moro… All these fortified houses bear the names of the families to which they belong. The Kasbah Amridil, famous for having been depicted on the fifty-dirham banknotes, housed a renowned family of religious influence descended from the Naciria Zaouïa of Tamegroute.

A lire : The Naciria zaouia of Tamegroute, exploration of its genesis

These square-shaped kasbahs with towers at their four corners impose themselves with their grandeur and fascinate with the beauty of their architecture. The majesty of the walls and the precision of the proportions are complemented by harmonious decoration featuring splendid geometric designs: battlements with pyramid-shaped tops, friezes of arcades, motifs in bas-relief and haut-relief… Authentic ornaments in harmony with others newly introduced under Hispano-Moorish influence. These kasbahs are architectural masterpieces that highlight the skill of the local master craftsmen, these meticulous architects of earthen construction.

A crossroads of ethnic and cultural diversity

The inhabitants of Skoura are called the Ahl Skoura. Originally, they form an Arabized faction of the Amazigh tribes formerly known as the Masmouda, one of the three major Berber groups alongside the Zanata and the Sanhaja. A large part of this population is from the Tafilalt and Draa regions. During the reign of the Almohads, the inhabitants of the Skoura oasis were part of the Haskoura confederation, with its capital in Demnate. In addition to this element of the indigenous population, other communities, Arabs from the Beni Hilal and Beni Maâkil tribes, also settled in Skoura, enriching it with populations of African origin.

The population of Skoura was indeed truly composite, a real mixture of different branches of immigration that found themselves in this lush place to build a collective unified by time. A large part forms the common people, still called laâouam in the local Arabic, meaning populace. Then comes an important group of people called the haratines because of their agricultural know-how, their name literally meaning plowmen. This black-skinned population was therefore part of the farming class. They spread throughout the territories of the Draa and Tafilalt valleys and constitute a fundamental human component of the population and history of the southeastern region of Morocco.

The Haratines : known in Berber as Ismengen (singular: Asmeng) and sometimes referred to as Black Moors, denote black inhabitants of the Sahara. They are said to be descendants of black slaves brought from sub-Saharan regions like Sudan by Berber merchants, often as a result of raids conducted by the Tuaregs, or during the period of slavery in the Arab-Muslim world.

Another ethnic group with dark skin directly originating from Sudan and called Laâbid, literally meaning the slaves, traditionally handled household affairs. They constituted the servant class. Followers of the Gnaoua brotherhood, they carried on the traditions of this itinerant music and annually celebrated a spiritual tradition called Derdba, meaning drumming, starting from Douar Chebbaka to reach the tomb of the marabout Sidi Mbarek where they sacrificed an animal as an offering. Their music symbolized blessing and healing for the suffering among the inhabitants.

The Zaouias or Sufi brotherhoods also represented an essential component of the palm grove, a religious, social, and spiritual force. Their representatives bore significant names like Ezzaoui or Elmrabet, meaning religious or ascetic who has devoted himself to the contemplative life. This class was exempt from taxes, labor, and did not participate in inter-tribal conflicts. The buildings of these Zaouias served as shelters for the unfortunate, spaces for Quranic study as well as Quranic schools, and lodging for students. Their traces still exist today, such as the Zaouia Ait Sidi Rehhal and the Zaouia Si Abdelmoumen in the villages Kser Oulad Âamer, and the Zaouia Aït Si Yaâcoub in the Douar Ouled Brahim. However, a mysterious Zaouia persists in the stories told by the elders of Skoura, a Zaouia of the stone, the Zaouiat Lahjer. No one knows where it was located. It disappeared long ago, and only its name remains.

The cherished memory of the Jewish community of Skoura

Like in other areas of southeastern Morocco, the Jewish community was highly esteemed in the oasis of Skoura, even from the earliest times etched in the memories of the elders still alive today, suggesting that this population group directly contributed to the creation of the oasis, and certainly to its development over the years. Their significance is evidenced by their monopoly in trades ranging from commerce to craftsmanship, from manual arts to building construction. The Jews thus constituted an intrinsic human and cultural component integrated within the tribe of Skoura. Prominent Jewish family names residing in Skoura still resonate, such as Aït Mouchi Haroun, Aït Ben Âalia, Israel Ben Bihi, Ishak, Aït Âannou, Masâaoud, Mochi Haroun Hayoun, Haddou Ben Chaloum… This enriching presence endured for centuries and left visible traces, notably in their festive venues (El Hara) like in the douar Aoulad Âamer or in Jewish cemeteries such as those in the douar Boumehchad and the douar Ouled Yaâgoub, which literally means Sons of Jacob.

The Jews of Skoura celebrated their festivals such as the Mimouna at the end of the last day of Passover and the pomegranate festival known as Âid Erramman. Their revered saint, to whom they swore allegiance, was Moulay Ighi or Rabbi David Laskar, whose mausoleum is located in the village of Zerkten, in the Marrakech region. It is known that during those times of harmony, here in Skoura as in other living areas of the Southeastern region, the populations of Muslim and Jewish faiths from the same territory shared their traditional festivities with a spirit of mutual respect and affection.

Mohamed Mrabou still recalls his days living with the Jews in Skoura. He reminisces about that era, which was a vibrant part of his life and that of the entire Skoura oasis, once:

Such is the face of the palm grove of Skoura, an oasis rooted in the oldest traditions of Morocco yet still vibrant, radiating the most beautiful colors of this cultural mosaic that has shaped the identity and character of the Southeast region of Morocco.

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Today, the village of Fint is no longer the oasis it once was; time, climatic vagaries, and population movements have continuously transformed it. Its ancient ruins, fields, and valley appear silent and asleep when first glimpsed, yet they hold a long history inscribed within collective memory and recounted through the diverse voices of its women and men. It’s a collective history passed down through oral tradition where the real, the legendary, and the mythical merge. Tales are woven together, intermingled, forgotten, and reconstructed to narrate to the world the story of the Fint oasis.

Lhaj Elhassane Aghlane, born in 1933, is one of the few elders from Fint still alive today. He testifies about the tribal life of yesteryears. His narrative resurrects the lived past, bringing it to life through words laden with strong emotional resonance, infused with nostalgia for those times when Fint …

Fint, the origins of an Amazigh tribe

The majority of families in Fint reportedly arrived successively from the Draa region and other areas of southeastern Morocco, notably from the Tata region. They fled droughts, epidemics, famine, and tribal conflicts. An Amazigh community settled in this remote place, which at that time provided rudimentary yet sufficient living conditions due to the intermittent waters of the Fint wadi.

The early inhabitants settled on the north bank of the Fint wadi. Modest earthen homes were built a few meters above the valley, on the slope of the Tassegdelte rock, sheltered from the devastating floods that inundated the oasis during the heavy rainy seasons.

For a long time, only inhabitants with darker skin populated the Fint Oasis. However, oral history mentions the presence of a wealthy Berber family with fair skin that had left Fint over a century ago. This family allegedly had ties to the saint Sidi M’hend Ou Moussa, managing his trade until their permanent departure from Fint due to a wave of mosquito invasion.

During the French Protectorate and the period of caidalism in Morocco, two prominent village leaders wielded their authority over Fint: Amghar Hammou N’Ali Oubaha from the village of Taherblit and M’hend Ou R’hou from the village of Timoula. Both were assistants to the Glaoua caids who held sway over the High Atlas and the southeastern region of Morocco.

At that time, Fint was not exempt from the dictates of the Caïd El Glaoui, who had his official residence in the kasbah of Telouet. The oasis inhabitants were at the mercy of confiscations of property and any other valuable belongings.

The Glaoua caliphates, particularly Si Mohamed established in the kasbah of Taourirte and Ou-Tzggart in that of Tifoultoute, wielded their absolute power over the tribes. Mandatory labor was imposed on all boys over twelve years old. It involved assisting in plowing, harvesting, or construction works in the service of the Glaoua masters.

A rustic way of life in an age-old oasis.

For centuries, the inhabitants of Fint cultivated plots of land on the banks of the river that irrigated orchards where vineyards, fig trees, date palms – the quintessential providential tree – flourished. Dates were a staple food that ensured the subsistence of families, especially during times of scarcity

Traces confirm a centuries-old presence of this population in the oasis.

The predominantly dark-skinned population, although exclusively living in Fint, did not own much of the agricultural land cultivated in its territory. The neighboring white Berber tribes like Taguenezalt and Ighelss were the owners. The inhabitants of Fint worked there only as Khamass or sharecroppers, being paid only one-fifth of the harvest.

Times were often tough due to structural droughts and epidemics. The inhabitants sold their lands to survive.

A lire : The oasis bears the seeds of tomorrow’s Morocco, and of the world

A few Jewish families, such as Boubssou, Boutkjtatt, Ben Ouenza, lived within the tribe of Fint. These families held a relatively privileged social status. They engaged in usury and trade.

After challenging times, periods of rain followed, watering the fields, nourishing the canals, valleys, and springs. These waters brought joy to the hearts of the inhabitants of Fint, witnessing a rebirth of their oasis; greenery covered the pastures, and all the gardens thrived. The small oasis, whose economy relied on subsistence agriculture and pastoralism, suddenly experienced times of abundance.

In gratitude to God for His generosity during times of abundance and in adherence to their ancestral customs, the inhabitants of Fint organized an annual customary celebration: the Moussem of Sidi M’hend Ou Moussa, descendants of the famous saint from the southern Moroccan region, Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa, whose Zaouia is located in a village bearing his name in the Tazeroualt commune, Tiznit Province.

This ceremony was observed every first Friday of the year at the mausoleum of this local saint.

The Moqadem of the mausoleum, a local representative of authority or a kind of deputy, managed the saint’s possessions, including rented palm trees to third parties and the sale of livestock. These resources formed a fund dedicated to the mausoleum of Sidi M’hend Ou Mouassa.

On the eve of the Moussem, the day of the ceremony was announced in Ouarzazate to inform other tribes. It was an occasion to celebrate Fint’s connection to its traditions and the renewal of its ties with other tribes.

These times are over. In the oasis of Fint, the guardians of tradition peacefully live out the twilight of their lives. The history of Fint is not merely a memory. It has become an integral part of the heritage, wealth, and identity of Southeastern Morocco.

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If one draws on the poet Charles Baudelaire’s imagination, the promise of the oasis would itself be reason enough for the journey, as an invitation to go elsewhere, to a far better place where our ever more pervasive dissatisfactions, our recurring insatiability would finally find a remedy for appeasing them.

In French, the word “oasis” is feminine, almost motherly, like the term – island – used by the ancient Greeks to designate the oases discovered during their first observations of Africa. The geographer, Herodotus, born in 480 BC, even went so far as to describe the oases of Egypt and Libya as the “islands of the blessed”, thus for ever paving the way for a long litany of qualifiers that will indelibly engrave in us the image of the oasis as the place of unexpected and crucial peace in confronting the violence of life and the world.

For this is the reality: an oasis only exists owing to the harshness of its environment. Besides being an inexhaustible source for any dreams of well-being, an oasis is rather the tangible response, instinctive and reasoned, to the discomfort of existence on Earth.

The oasis is an ecosystem of life in the face of adversity

The oasis is the fruit of the ability of human genius to adapt to conditions imposed by nature and by life. At heart, an oasis is not a gift of nature at all but the pure expression of a collective intention that has led groups of humans to cease their long journeying and to decide to build a community, home and culture, where there had previously been nothing.

Over the centuries, the oasis has become a symbolic place for an affirmation of mankind’s ability to organise its husbandry of life in the face of adversity, amid a scarcity of natural resources and facing all contingencies, all those unforeseen fatalities, all those endlessly threatening dangers.

As a tiny island of salvation, the oasis will function as an ecosystem of life in which there will perpetually be a commingling of human beings, where traditions and arts will develop, where techniques and crafts will be invented, where economies will grow; everything that plays a role in the dynamic emergence of civilisation.

However, this idyllic version of the oasis should not cause us forget all the efforts required to develop it and to make it flourish, nor yet its structural fragility and the incessant effort that its inhabitants had to engage in to maintain the balance between the diverse and opposing forces which both surround it and create it.

The oasis is an art of existing within the world, and on Earth

More than just an achievement, the oasis illustrates humanity balanced at a point where the Earth is staring into the void: a living and active humanity, rich in experience, expertise, and which succeeds in creating harmony within itself and with whatever surrounds it.

In order to maintain stability, this fragile balance will have constantly required human vigilance and rigour, respect for rules, innovation, hard work, collegiality, sharing, solidarity and responsibility.

The oasis, from its origins to the present day, will thus have provided humanity with a formidable training ground in the art of existing within the world and on Earth.

This know-how is precious for human societies in order to better address the challenges of tomorrow, especially since achieving a new balance between Nature and all Living beings is becoming more and more imperative every year.

But today, Morocco’s oases are endangered. They have become the symbol of the dark side of mankind in his propensity to gainsay nature and to tear up the volumes of his own experiences, even though they have been learned at the expense of his own blood and sweat, and throughout the course of such a long journey.

The oasis is a chosen dwelling place

Archaeological research indicates that the first oases emerged in the Arabian Peninsula almost six thousand years ago, at the heart of the Neolithic period. The nascent oasis is the manifestation of a new way of living for the humans of the period, in response to the climate changes causing aridity to spread throughout these once flourishing regions. But this change also appears as an echo to the impulse to settle, which slowly move all the human communities away from their ancestral practices of hunting and gathering, and so too from their traditional seasonal roaming.

The gradual and slow emergence of oases is thus an act of sedentarisation characterised as consisting of developing a specific area chosen according to the presence of arable land and usable water for the benefit of human communal life. Here we clearly observe the etymological meaning of the word oasis, which is directly linked to the Greek term ὄασις, itself taken from Coptic, a Hamito-Semitic language descending from ancient Egyptian, in translation of the word ouahe, signifiying dwelling place.

It required human ingeniousness to channel the surrounding water, surface water from permanent springs or deeper sources from the water table. It was necessary to work the soils by levelling it, removing stones and fertilising it in order to make them operational for the emerging cultures. It is in this area, an Orient bubbling with life, that the technique of capturing spring water was developed through the use of khatarats or foggaras, as they are called in the Maghreb countries, or qanats in ancient Persia. This tremendous technique can be observed in almost all oases of North Africa and, for example, in Morocco in Marrakech, the palm groves of Skoura or those of the now defunct city of Sijilmassa.

The palm tree, symbol of the oasis, from its birth to its decline

The oasis is also predisposed to be the place where the date palm developed. It has become the emblem of these dwelling places over a large strip of land across the northern Sahara, from the Iranian plateaus to Morocco. As a sustainable source of shade and fertile humus, the palm tree has provided the inhabitants of the oases with a quality foodstuff while allowing for agricultural crops to develop, vertically structured with fruit and olive trees under the broad palmate leaves, and beneath them, vegetables, cereals and fodder for animals.

Léon Lehuraux, a French Camel Corps Officer, writer and ethnologist born in 1885, described the oasis in the following terms:

Regarded as a symbol of peace and the freshness the oasis offers, the date palm has sadly become the symbol of their decline. In Morocco at the beginning of the 20th century, the various oases of the country contained nearly 15 million palm trees but at the end of the century, only a third remained, most of them having fallen victim to environmental degradation due to climatic variations, pathological diseases, the exodus of their populations and the loss of agricultural know-how.

Today, it is no longer exceptional to come across expanses of dry palm trees. The pomegranate and apple trees that once grew naturally under the shade of their protective elders are disappearing. The mud houses are falling into ruin and are crumbling to dust.

The vanishing civilisation of the oasis

Indeed, here in Morocco as in other countries, the oases are dying, slowly but inescapably, despite the emergence of various ecological perceptions over recent decades.

In 1971 the international community reacted with the implementation of an ambitious scientific programme under the aegis of UNESCO: the Man and Biosphere Programme. In 2000, within this institutional framework, Morocco decided to group its ancestral oases of pre-Saharan territories together under the classification of Biosphere Reserve of the Oases of South Morocco (RBOSM). So this involves nearly 80,000 km2, specifically about 11% of the national territory, including all the upper and middle Draa and Ziz-Gheriss basins in the three provinces of Errachidia, Zagora and Ouarzazate.

In spite of this, in the subsequent nearly twenty years, the decline of the oases continues to be noticeable.

We have to admit that the problems are manifold and that the oases are victims of both endogenous and exogenous scourges. Of course, global warming comes to mind first, since it now renders the traditional ability of oasis communities to manage water scarcity inoperable.

Other important factors have led to the loss of oases, such as the inevitable appeal of urban life and its consumerist philosophies, which have altered the basic needs of the individual. Young people no longer find an existential satisfaction under the shade of palm trees in a rural environment. The country’s dynamic towards modernisation has led to the pre-eminence of a certain agricultural productivity in the oasis territories, in particular with regard to an objective to export, and with the development of monocultures; and all to the detriment of biodiversity and the reasonable use of soil and water resources.

Moreover, all of Moroccan society can be deemed to share the responsibility for abandoning the know-how relating to oasis civilisation. A report published in 2011 by the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies under the direction of Mr. Driss FASSI highlighted this state of affairs:

The distant memory of a collective intelligence

This apathy towards creativity, a human virtue that produced the original feats by the founders of all these oases, has gone hand in hand with the neglect of local governance over these same oases. The oasis has in fact always existed by respecting a balanced management of water resources, a rigorous maintenance of irrigation facilities and all the necessary tending to the palm trees. All of this required the entire human community to maintain a strict adherence to collectively established rules.

Nowadays, and following the slow vanishing of tribal power being replaced by the administrative machinery of the central state, the mobilisation of collective intelligence for oasis management has become a distant memory. The mere multiplication of individual wells, which means the wide use of motor water pumps, has led to a long-standing upheaval in the water balance in these territories.

Finally, the rapid development of tourism has also inevitably disrupted the oasis ecosystem through increased construction, and therefore a greater consumption of water, accompanied by a massive destruction of landscape due to the anarchy of tourist travel routes, especially those that involve motorised vehicles.

The oasis is the place to transform into a civilisation of sobriety

All the efforts made in Morocco to protect endangered oasis areas will change nothing. The example provided by the National Agency for the Development of Oasis Zones and Argan (Andzoa) is an illustration of this observation. The launch of a major palm tree planting programme in 2008 has certainly led to a revival of the date production and export figures, but this policy of setting target figures does nothing to meet the challenges of knowing how to preserve the oasis.

The proliferation of palm farms in the Drâa Tafilalet region will not be enough to keep the oasis civilisation alive, which has nevertheless chosen the South East of Morocco as the privileged breeding ground.

Any environmental preservation policy that forgets that the oasis, first and foremost, is a place of habitation has necessarily picked the wrong target. And now, more than ever, the oasis must be seen for what it is: the harmonious co-existence between Nature and Man with the intention of communal living and sustainability.

The oasis must be recognized as the memory of eco-compatible lifestyles and at the same time the laboratory of their evolution. The oasis must assert itself as the place for becoming a civilisation of sobriety against one of abundance and waste. The oasis must return to what it has always been; a place of human conviviality, one of welcome, as a meeting point and for interchange.

This is what the oasis in Morocco is all about: the legacy of individual and collective virtues, that more than ever need to be rediscovered and implemented in face of the profound upheavals in human society, and the changes gradually being imposed on our way of life.

Once again, the oasis bears the seed of the promise of a world where life can be good. Once again, it is incumbent on humans to plant this same seed in the soil, and to let it grow.

Photo credits : Abdellah Azizi / azifoto.com

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