Tuat
Encyclopedia
Tuat is a desert region in central Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

 that contains a string of small oases. In the past, the oases were important for caravans crossing the Sahara desert.

Geography

Tuat lies to the south of the Grand Erg Occidental
Grand Erg Occidental
The Grand Erg Occidental is the second largest erg in northern Algeria, behind the Grand Erg Oriental. This true desert region receives less than 25 cm of rainfall per year. It contains no human villages and there are no roads through it....

, to the east of the Erg Chech and to the south east of the Tademaït Plateau. It contains a string of small oases strung out along the eastern edge of the Wadi Messaoud, a continuation of the Wadi Saoura
Saoura
The Saoura is a valley in southwestern Algeria. From 1962 to 1974 it was the name of a wilaya ....

. The oases extend over a distance of 160 km from the district of Bouda in the north to Reggane
Reggane
Reggane from berber argan is a town in the Adrar Province of central Algeria, in the Sahara Desert. It is the southernmost town of the Tuat....

 in the south. The largest town in the region is Adrar
Adrar, Algeria
Adrar is a town and commune in Algeria, based around an oasis of the Sahara Desert and the administrative capital of the second largest province in Algeria: Adrar Province....

, 20 km south east of Bouda. Adrar was established by the French after their conquest in 1900 and had a population of 43,903 in 2002. Associated with each oasis are small walled villages called ksour
Ksar
Ksar is the Arabic term for "castle", loaned from Latin castrum.The Berber equivalent is aghrem or ighrman ....

(singular ksar or gsar). There are also some forts (kasbah
Kasbah
A kasbah or qassabah is a type of medina, Islamic city, or fortress .It was a place for the local leader to live and a defense when a city was under attack. A kasbah has high walls, usually without windows. Sometimes, they were built on hilltops so that they could be more easily defended...

s
), most of which have been abandoned.

There is almost no rainfall in the region and the agriculture depends on groundwater
Groundwater
Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock...

 from the Continental Intercalary (Continental Intercalaire in French), an enormous aquifer
Aquifer
An aquifer is a wet underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials from which groundwater can be usefully extracted using a water well. The study of water flow in aquifers and the characterization of aquifers is called hydrogeology...

 that extends for over 600,000 km2, an area that includes parts of Algeria, Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....

 and Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...

. The Continental Intercalary is a layer of porous sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

 deposited between the Moscovian
Moscovian (Carboniferous)
The Moscovian is in the ICS geologic timescale a stage or age in the Pennsylvanian, the youngest subsystem of the Carboniferous. The Moscovian age lasted from 311.7 ± 1.1 to 306.5 ± 1.0 Ma, is preceded by the Bashkirian and is followed by the Kasimovian...

 and the Cenomanian
Cenomanian
The Cenomanian is, in the ICS' geological timescale the oldest or earliest age of the Late Cretaceous epoch or the lowest stage of the Upper Cretaceous series. An age is a unit of geochronology: it is a unit of time; the stage is a unit in the stratigraphic column deposited during the corresponding...

 periods. It forms the deeper of the two aquifers of the North Western Sahara Aquifer System (NWSAS). Tuat is situated at the south western boundary of the Continental Intercalary where the aquifer lies only 2–6 m below the surface.

The oases contain 700,000-800,000 date palms (Phoenix dactylifera) in an area of 4,500 hectare. The palm groves are irrigated by a system of foggaras. These are traditional gravity catchment systems which consist of a tunnel constructed with a gentle uphill gradient from the low ground near the wadi into the aquifer lying under the nearby higher ground. Vertical access holes every 10–20 m along the tunnel provide ventilation and facilitate the construction and maintenance. Many of the foggaras are over a kilometre in length. They typically provide flow rates of between 2 L/s and 3 L/s. In 1963 the region of Tuat contained 531 foggaras of which only 358 were functioning. The total combined flow rate was approximately 2000 L/s. Foggaras are expensive to construct and to maintain. As they collapse they are often not repaired. Instead, water is obtained using vertical wells and electric pumps allowing grain to be grown using a center pivot irrigation
Center pivot irrigation
Center-pivot irrigation , also called circle irrigation, is a method of crop irrigation in which equipment rotates around a pivot...

 system. A single well can provide 30 L/s to 50 L/s of water.

In addition to water, the rock beneath Tuat contains pockets of natural gas. Sonatrach
Sonatrach
Sonatrach is an Algerian government-owned company formed to exploit the hydrocarbon resources of the country. Its diversified activities cover all aspects of production: exploration, extraction, transport, and refining...

, the Algeria state-owned oil company, is collaborating with foreign companies in joint ventures to exploit these gas reserves. Sonatrach and the China National Oil & Gas Exploration & Development Corporation (CNODC) have constructed a refinery near the village of Sbaa, 40 km north of Adrar. This began operating in 2006. Separate projects led by Gaz de France
Gaz de France
Gaz de France was a French company which produced, transported and sold natural gas around the world, especially in France, its main market. The company was also particularly active in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European countries. Through its part-owned Belgian subsidiary SPE...

 (GDF Suez) and Total
Total S.A.
Total S.A. is a French multinational oil company and one of the six "Supermajor" oil companies in the world.Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and production to power generation, transportation, refining, petroleum product marketing, and...

 are both scheduled to start supplying gas in 2013. A pipeline is being built to connect to Hassi R'Mel
Hassi R'mel
Hassi R'Mel is a town in Algeria located near the 18th largest gas field worldwide. Hassi R'Mel is located in Laghouat Province northwest of Ghardaïa. It is the capital of Hassi R'Mel District. Hass R'Mel has an airport....

.

To the north of Tuat is Gourara, a similar region also containing oases with date palms irrigated by foggaras. The largest town, Timimoun
Timimoun
Timimoun is a little oasis town in Adrar Province, Algeria; in the Gourara region.It is located to the northwest of the eponymous Sebkha, at the edge of the plateau of Tadmaït....

, is 162 km north east of Adrar.

History

The Tuat oases were important in the trans-Saharan trade
Trans-Saharan trade
Trans-Saharan trade requires travel across the Sahara to reach sub-Saharan Africa. While existing from prehistoric times, the peak of trade extended from the 8th century until the late 16th century.- Increasing desertification and economic incentive :...

 because of their location at the northern end of the Tanezrouft
Tanezrouft
The Tanezrouft is one of the most desolate parts of the Sahara desert. It is situated along the borders among Algeria, Niger and Mali, west of the Hoggar mountains.-Geographic features:...

 route. Reggane is around 1150 km north of the town of Gao
Gao
Gao is a town in eastern Mali on the River Niger lying ESE of Timbuktu. Situated on the left bank of the river at the junction with the Tilemsi valley, it is the capital of the Gao Region and had a population of 86,663 in 2009....

 and a similar distance from Timbuktu
Timbuktu
Timbuktu , formerly also spelled Timbuctoo, is a town in the West African nation of Mali situated north of the River Niger on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. The town is the capital of the Timbuktu Region, one of the eight administrative regions of Mali...

. Caravans from the Sudan
Sudan (region)
The Sudan is the name given to a geographic region to the south of the Sahara, stretching from Western to Eastern Africa. The name derives from the Arabic bilâd as-sûdân or "land of the Blacks"...

 would continue northwards to towns such as Sijilmasa
Sijilmasa
Sijilmasa was a medieval trade entrepôt at the northern edge of the Sahara Desert in Morocco. The ruins of the town lie along the River Ziz in the Tafilalt oasis near the town of Rissani...

 or Tlemcen
Tlemcen
Tlemcen is a town in Northwestern Algeria, and the capital of the province of the same name. It is located inland in the center of a region known for its olive plantations and vineyards...

.

The oases are not mentioned by any of the early Arabic geographers, but it appears that Jews lived in the oases at an early date as a tombstone discovered in a village of the Bouda region has an inscription in Hebrew with a date of 1329.

The earliest written reference to Tuat is by Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta
Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta , or simply Ibn Battuta, also known as Shams ad–Din , was a Muslim Moroccan Berber explorer, known for his extensive travels published in the Rihla...

. He visited Bouda in 1353 after crossing the Sahara
Sahara
The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...

 from Takedda
Takedda
Takedda was the name of both a town and a former kingdom in current-day Niger's Western Sahara. The town of Takedda was founded by the Sanhaja, a Berber tribal confederation of the Maghreb. In 1285, a court slave freed by Mari Djata, the founder of the Mali Empire, whom had also served as a...

 in present day Niger
Niger
Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...

, a distance of 1390 km. He travelled with a large caravan that included 600 slave girls. He wrote: "Then we arrived at Būda, which is one of the biggest villages of the Tuwāt. Its land consists of sand and salt pans. It has many dates which are not good, but its people prefer them to the dates of Sijilmāsa. There is no cultivation there is no butter nor oil. Oil is only imported to it from the land of the Maghrib. The food of its people is dates and locusts. These are abundant with them; they store them as dates are stored and use them for food. They go out to hunt them before sunrise, for at that time they do not fly on account of the cold." Ibn Battuta stayed in Bouda for a few days then continued on to Sijilmasa
Sijilmasa
Sijilmasa was a medieval trade entrepôt at the northern edge of the Sahara Desert in Morocco. The ruins of the town lie along the River Ziz in the Tafilalt oasis near the town of Rissani...

 with a caravan.

Bouda, as well as Sijilmasa, Timbuktu and Gao, are marked on the 1375 Catalan Atlas
Catalan Atlas
The Catalan Atlas is the most important Catalan map of the medieval period. It was produced by the Majorcan cartographic school and is attributed to Cresques Abraham , a Jewish book illuminator who was self-described as being a master of the maps of the world as well as compasses...

 of Abraham Cresques
Abraham Cresques
Abraham Cresques , whose real name was probably Cresques Abraham, was a 14th-century Jewish cartographer from Palma, Majorca...

. At some point Bouda was abandoned and replaced by Tamentit as main ksour of the region. Tamentit was more centrally situated and perhaps easier to defend. The Arabic geographer and historian Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...

 (born Tunis 1332, died Egypt 1406) provides a description of Tuat, a place he had not visited himself, in his Kitab al-'Ibar:
One of their homelands lies three stages to the south of Sijilmāsa and is called Tuwāt. It consists of 200 qușūr strung out from west to east, of which the most easterly is called Tamanțīt, nowadays a flourishing place and a point of departure for merchants who pass to and fro between the Maghrib and the land of Māli of the Sūdān. ... The town of Būdā, the most westerly of these qușūr, used to be the point of departure for Wālātan, the outpost of the Mālī territory, but it was abandoned when the bedouin Arabs from the desert of the Sūs took to acts of brigandry on the highway and molesting the caravans. They left that place and followed the route to the land of the Sudān by way of Tamanțīt.


Note that in reality Adrar is 540 km SW of Sijilmasa, considerably more than the three stages mentioned by Ibn Khaldun. Also, the oases are strung out from NNW to SSE rather than from west to east.

We learn more about Tuat from a letter written in Latin in 1447 by the Italian Antonio Malfante from 'Tueto' to a merchant in Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

. Malfante describes a village which is believed to be Tamentit: "This locality is a mart of the country of the Moors, to which merchants come to sell their goods: gold is carried hither, and bought by those who come up from the coast. This place is De Amament [Tamentit], and there are many rich men here. The generality, however, are very poor, for they do not sow, nor do they harvest anything, save the dates upon which they subsist. They eat no meat but that of castrated camels, which are scarce and very dear." He also comments on the Jewish population: "There are many Jews, who lead a good life here, for they are under the protection of the several rulers, each of whom defends his own clients. Thus they enjoy very secure social standing. Trade is in their hands, and many of them are to be trusted with the greatest confidence."

Around 1490, encouraged by Muhammad al-Maghili
Muhammad al-Maghili
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Maghili, commonly known as Muhammad al-Maghili was an Islamic scholar from Tlemcen, a city situated in modern-day Algeria. Maghili led a campaign to expel the city's Jewish community, which had migrated there after the Roman Sack of Jerusalem, and was successful...

, a Maliki
Maliki
The ' madhhab is one of the schools of Fiqh or religious law within Sunni Islam. It is the second-largest of the four schools, followed by approximately 25% of Muslims, mostly in North Africa, West Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and in some parts of Saudi Arabia...

 scholar from Tlemcen
Tlemcen
Tlemcen is a town in Northwestern Algeria, and the capital of the province of the same name. It is located inland in the center of a region known for its olive plantations and vineyards...

, the Moslem population of Tamentit destroyed the Jewish synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...

 and forced the Jews to move elsewhere.
Sometime between 1583 and 1588 the forces of the Moroccan
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

 sultan Ahmad al-Mansur took control of the Tuat and the Gourara oases. The area remained politically dependent upon Morocco but the sovereignty of the Alaouite
Alaouite Dynasty
The Alaouite Dynasty is the name of the current Moroccan royal family. The name Alaouite comes from the ‘Alī of its founder Moulay Ali Cherif who became Prince of Tafilalt in 1631. His son Mulay r-Rshid was able to unite and pacify the country...


sultans became almost nominal.

The Treaty of Lalla Maghnia in 1845 between Morocco and France left the question of the possession of Tuat, Gourara and Tidikelt unsettled. By 1901 the three oases had been occupied by the French army. Under French rule, the area was known as the "Territoire des oasis sahariennes".

External links

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