In the previous post we sailed from Sicily to Bizerte in Tunisia, visited friends we know from Abu Dhabi en drove a rental car to Kairouan, Islam’s fourth holiest city. We continue driving South, deeper into Berber country.
Who are the Berber people? The Greeks called them Barbars, a term used to describe all non-Greek-speaking peoples, not to be confused with the Roman Barbarians, a term for the various tribes and armies putting pressure on Rome’s Northern borders.
Berbers descended from tribes that lived around the coast of North Africa sometime around 5,000 BC. As these tribes, united by similar languages mingled, they established a common identity that became the basis for the Berber culture. Berbers refer to themselves as the “Amazigh,” or “free men.”
A series of Berber tribes gave rise to Berber kingdoms under Carthaginian and Roman influence but were suppressed by the Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries AD. From the very beginning, Islam provided the ideological stimulus for the rise of fresh Berber dynasties. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, the greatest of those—the Almoravids and the Almohads—conquered Southern Spain and North Africa. Meanwhile, Berber merchants and nomads of the Sahara had initiated a trans-Saharan trade in gold and slaves. By the 14th century however, the Berbers were in retreat, subjected to Arabisation and driven off the coastal plains and into the mountains and desert.
But first we have to fill up the car before exploring Berber territory.
A “Ksar” can be translated as “Fortified village”. It’s building blocks are “Ghorfa’s”, vaulted rooms used by Berbers as (food) storage room, animal shelter or other functional traditional rooms. They are often stacked as multistory structures, sometimes reaching four stories high. Traditionally, these ghorfa’s were grouped together as a ksar.
A bit to the East of Beni Kheddache we find Ksar Joumaa in wat looks like a more successful attempt to attract tourist to stay in the renovated Ghorfa’s turned hotel rooms. Some rooms even have AC! There were no guests when we were there, but then, tourist season is during winter. The images below are clickable.
A little bit further South we find Ksar Hadada, (H on the map). In Jul 1997 the movie scenes for the town “Mos Espa” of planet “Tatooine” of the Star Wars movie “The Phantom Menace” were shot here. The set was transformed into a hotel after the film crew left, and is now one of the most successful ksars in Tunisia. Note that the name of the nearby town Tataouine was the inspiration for the planet’s name “Tatooine”.
The town “Mos Espa” was a slave colony. The screenshots are from the scene when Anakin, the young boy, learns that he is no longer a slave and has to leave Tatooine, but his mother has to stay behind.
Besides “Star Wars”, also parts of “Le Patient Anglais”, “Indiana Jones” and “Monty Python” were shot in Tunisia.
There are many more Ksar to be found in this area, but once you have seen a few, you have seen them all. We got as far South as Ksar Ouled Soltane (J on the map). There was a small museum in the different Ghorfa’s giving a good impression of its former use.
We hope you enjoyed reading the story. Next time we head back North along the more touristic places along the coast towards the capital Tunis.
Liza and Frits.