Ghadames

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Ghadames

Ghadames (Berber: ghdams / ?adem?s; Libyan vernacular: gdam?s) is an oasis town in the west of Libya

Libya

Libya , officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , is a country located in North Africa. Bordering the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Libya lies between Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
. It lies roughly 549 km in the southwest of Tripoli

Tripoli

Tripoli is the largest and Capital city of Libya.Tripoli has a population of 1.69 million. The city is located in the northwest of the country on the edge of the desert, on a point of rocky land projecting into the Mediterranean Sea and forming a bay....
, near the borders with Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country located in North Africa. It is the largest country of the Mediterranean sea, second largest in the Arab World, and the second largest on the African continent and the eleventh-largest country in the world in terms of land area....
and Tunisia

Tunisia

Tunisia , officially the Tunisian Republic , is a country located in North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and Libya to the southeast....
.

The oasis has a population of 7000 Tuareg

Tuareg

The Tuareg are a nomadic pastoralist people. They are the principal inhabitants of the Saharan interior of North Africa. They call themselves variously Kel Tamasheq or Kel Tamajaq , Imuhagh, Imazaghan or Imashaghen , or Kel Tagelmust, i.e., "People of the Veil"....
Berbers

Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous ethnic groups of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River....
. The old part of the town, which is surrounded by a wall, has been declared World Heritage of the UNESCO

UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945....
. Each of the seven clans that used to live in this part of the town had its own district, of which each had a public place where festivals could be held.

first records about Ghadames date from the Roman period, when there were troops in the town from time to time.

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Encyclopedia

Ghadames (Berber: ghdams / ?adem?s; Libyan vernacular: gdam?s) is an oasis town in the west of Libya

Libya

Tripoli

Algeria

Tunisia

Tuareg

Berber people

UNESCO

History

The first records about Ghadames date from the Roman period, when there were troops in the town from time to time. The Roman name for the town was Cydamus.

During the 6th century, a Bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordination or consecration member of the Clergy#Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight....
lived in the oasis, after the population had been converted to Christianity by Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
missionaries.

During the 7th century, Ghadames was ruled by the Muslim Arabs. The population quickly converted to Islam

Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
and Ghadames played an important role as base for the Trans-Saharan trade

Trans-Saharan trade

Trans-Saharan trade is trade across the Sahara between Mediterranean countries and sub-Saharan Africa. While existing from prehistoric times, the peak of such trade extended from the eighth century until the late sixteenth century....
until the 19th century.

In the 1970s, the government built new houses outside of the old part of the town. However, many inhabitants return to the old part of the town during the summer, as its architecture provides better protection against the heat.