It was the hour of muster, and the Colonel introduced me to many of the officers, one of whom, Captain Montague of the General’s staff, lent me his horse, and a Spahi was told off as my guide.
“When one wanders towards the Syrtes and ‘Leptis Magna,’ one finds in the midst of Afric’s sands a town called Tacape; the soil there is much cultivated and marvellously fruitful. The town extends in all directions to about three thousand paces. Here is found a fountain with an abundant supply of water, which is only used at stated times; and here grows a high palm, and beneath that palm an olive, and under that a fig tree. Under the fig tree grows a pomegranate, and beneath that again a vine. Moreover, beneath these last are sown, first oats, then vegetables or grass, all in the same year. Yes, thus they grow them, each sheltered by the other.”
Thus wrote Pliny of the oasis near Gabés over eighteen hundred years ago, and this description can be applied in the main at the present day.
Of this town, created by the Carthaginians, colonised by the Romans, and later the seat of an archbishopric, and which stood nearer the ocean than the existing villages, there remain now only some crumbled ruins on the hills near Sid Bu’l Baba’s Zauia, now difficult even to trace.
Remains of cisterns can be seen, built with the imperishable cement of which the Romans alone understood the preparation. But the stones have long since been removed to Jara, Menzel, and Shenini, villages of the oasis, where are still to be found, in the wretched native buildings, carved capitals and bas-reliefs, side by side with sun-dried bricks and uncut stones.
But it is long since this old town vanished. The Arab geographers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as also Leo Africanus in the sixteenth century, mention Gabés as a large town surrounded by walls and deep trenches, which latter could be flooded with water. They tell us of a great fortress there, and that the town had a large population and extensive suburbs. Then the Mohammedan conquerors laid their iron hand over the country, and the inhabitants were dispersed and gathered in the villages Jara and Menzel, each now containing some four thousand inhabitants. Both villages were situated near the river and close to the market-place, and were continually fighting amongst themselves for the possession of these; whilst other villages, of which Shenini is the largest, concealed themselves amidst their palm groves.
TOWER IN THE VILLAGE OF MENZEL.
JEWESSES AT MENZEL.