Algeria from within

by R. V. C. Bodley

A visitors’ book will be presented to him, with which he can regale himself joyously for half an hour before committing himself to the pages as a further joy to those who follow. After Tilrempt the country becomes more and more desertic, even the alfa has completely vanished—only rough scrub, and little of that. Then suddenly, at the one hundred and fiftieth kilometer, the oasis of Berriane appears, a splash of vivid green in the middle of the wilderness. The sensation of the verdure, after miles of desert, is most refreshing. Berriane is the first city of the Mzab, and one is at once struck by the originality of the architecture, quite unlike anything that has been seen up till now. The minaret of the mosque reminds one of an obelisk.

But this haven of green is soon left behind, and more desolation begins. Not even the scrub, only stones and rocks and strips of sand. It is a merciless, arid desert, the kind of scene which must have inspired Doré to illustrate the Inferno of Dante: nothing to relieve the eye for miles around.

Ghardaïa is reached unexpectedly. One appears to be in the middle of the desert, when all of a sudden the road turns sharply to the right and dips down a steep hill. It is as if one were descending into the crater of a volcano. As the car reaches the flat there suddenly appears the cone-like minaret of Ghardaïa, as it piles itself into a kind of heap of houses on a little hill. To the left is the equally heap-like city of Melika. It is an impression never to be forgotten, a new world quite unlike anything seen before. But then the people of the Mzab are a race of their own, and the confederation of cities is quite unique. The Mzab is the Mzab, and it can be compared to nothing— it is the most original place in North Africa.

The first question to decide, however, before penetrating into its desolation and studying the inhabitants, is, Who are these people? And, curiously enough, the question is not easy to answer. It is obvious to the simplest minded, on seeing these small, squat men—with their smooth, round, white faces, fringed with dark beards—that they are unlike any one else seen in Algeria.

They are as different as the Spaniards from the Germans, as the British from the Italians. There are various theories put forward, of which the most picturesque can not really be said to be founded on any sound basis: it is that these strange people are the lost tribe of Israel. In support of this theory we have the mystery of their origin, and their very Semitic appearance; but, though it would be pleasant to write a romance on the subject, it would certainly have little merit outside fiction.

The second suggestion is that they are the direct descendants of the old Phœnicians. People who oppose this idea bring forward the fact that when Scipio destroyed Carthage he killed or deported all the inhabitants. Against this, however, it must be evident that there were Carthaginians in other parts of North Africa who escaped this fate, and that Phœnician influence is found at a much later date.

In the Mzab itself there are certainly things very closely connected with Carthage. The triangular decoration of the houses, the pictures of fish, of the crescent moon, of the sun and the stars are not Arab. The door-knockers represent the sun, and there are many of phallic shape. But, in spite of these rather conclusive evidences, the general idea is that the people of the Mzab are pure Berbers. In support of this theory we have the fact that they are Abhadites—that is to say, the last group of people created by the great Kharedjite schism. What is certain is that the known groups of Abhadites at Oman, Zanzibar, Djebel Nefarsa and the island of Djerba have the same customs and language as the people of Ghardaïa.

The question then arises, why are these people in this desolation of the Sahara, on no natural highway, and in no trade center, where all the water comes from wells dug by the inhabitants, where it rains about once every ten years? Why have these men voluntarily condemned themselves to this life of trial and struggle? Those learned on the subject maintain that this exile was conceived in a moment of despair and as an act of faith, that in settling themselves in this merciless desert they wished once and for all to flee from the persecution which was always meted out to them by the orthodox Mohammedans, and keep their form of religion and race intact.

It seems difficult to contradict this theory, all the more so when we have evidence that they were driven from the Atlantic coast and Tiaret in Oranie to Ouargla, an oasis some two hundred kilometers south of Ghardaïa, and that, after barely two hundred years in this oasis, they were again driven out by the Arabs. Weary, therefore, of suffering, they determined to settle where no one would come and molest them, and, as the only solution was to find a place naturally hostile to invaders, they chose the Mzab. This took place about A. D. 1070, but already in the year 1000 a reconnaissance had been made in the direction of the Mzab and had founded a kind of refuge at El Ateuf. When, therefore, the general emigration north took place, the remaining six cities which form the confederation of the Mzab soon sprang up—Bou, Noura, Melika, and Beni Sgen about A. D. 1048; Ghardaïa 1053; and some hundred years later Guerrera and Berriane, thirty miles outside the group adjacent to Ghardaïa.

Unlike most oases of the south, where water comes gushing out of the ground and is directed by artificial channels to irrigate the gardens, there was no surface water at all on the site chosen by these people to found their cities. Every palm-tree planted, every seed sown had to be watered artificially from wells, and if one looks at the broad oasis, with its thousands of palm-trees, and when one realizes that when the Mzabites first came the land was as barren as that seen from the road, the feat performed leaves one amazed.