Ghardaïa

Ghardaïa was founded in the 11th century, traditionally in 1048, by Ibadi Muslims who had retreated into the desert after the fall of their Rustamid state at Tahert in 909. Persecuted as a minority sect, they chose a bare limestone valley with underground water and no agricultural wealth, and built a town that could defend itself: houses packed in rings around a hill, a mosque with a watch minaret at the summit, and a wall with gates below. Four other ksour were founded along the same wadi between 1012 and the 14th century — El Atteuf, Bounoura, Melika and Beni Isguen — and together they formed the pentapolis of the M'zab.

Survival depended on water and on trade. Generations dug wells and built dams and channels to catch the floods that come rarely down the wadi, and planted palm gardens that turned the valley green in strips. Mozabite merchants travelled north to the coastal cities and south with the caravans, and their shops and trading houses in Algiers and elsewhere kept the valley supplied.

The Mozabites concluded a convention with the French in 1853, the year after the fall of Laghouat; the valley was annexed by the French army in November 1882 and a garrison quarter was built below the old town. After independence Ghardaïa grew into a provincial capital, spreading along the wadi with new housing, an airport and the head of the trans-Saharan road. The valley's architecture was inscribed by UNESCO in 1982, and the towns' councils still regulate building, marriage and inheritance within the community.

The Mozabites are Ibadi Muslims, a branch of Islam distinct from both Sunni and Shia, and the M'zab is one of its few surviving heartlands. Religious councils, the halqa of azzaba, hold real authority: they administer mosques and cemeteries, settle disputes, set rules on dress and celebration and can exclude members from community life. The result is a society that is orderly, self-governing and famously reserved with outsiders.

Everyday life is shaped by that order. Houses are built to the same height and plan so that no family overlooks another; each ksar has its own mosque, cemetery and market, and each has a summer quarter in the palm gardens to which families move in the hottest months. Mozabite men are known across Algeria as traders and shopkeepers, and the community keeps close ties between the valley and its merchants in the northern cities. Tumzabt, the local Berber language, is spoken at home alongside Arabic.

Craft here means wool: the M'zab's knotted carpets, in geometric red, black and white designs, are among the best known in the country, and weaving is women's work done at home. Relations with the Chaamba, the Arab pastoral people who share the region and live in the same towns, have generally been cooperative but have broken down into serious violence at times, a memory still present in local life.

The commune of Ghardaïa had about 93,000 people at the 2008 census, and the linked ksour along the wadi add substantially more, making the valley one of the larger urban clusters of the northern Algerian Sahara. It is a provincial capital, so administration, schools and a hospital employ many, but the town's reputation is commercial: wholesale trade, workshops, transport firms and shops serving a region that reaches far south.

The date gardens still matter, worked by families who own plots handed down for generations and watered by wells and the old flood-catching channels, but few households live from them alone. Textiles, carpet-making and small manufacturing occupy others, and the trans-Saharan road brings a steady traffic of lorries, traders and travellers through the town.

The day starts early and pauses in the heat, and the market square under the arcades is at its busiest in the morning and again in the evening. Mozabite social life is largely private and organised through the community's own institutions, while the lower town along the wadi is mixed and more open. Water supply, the state of the old houses, and jobs for young people are recurring concerns, and flood protection has been a serious matter since the wadi rose in 2008 and damaged parts of the valley.

Cooking in the M'zab is plain, careful and built on what the desert allows: semolina and barley, dates, dried pulses, mutton and goat, with vegetables from the gardens. Couscous is the centre of it, steamed and served with a thin stew, sometimes made with barley rather than wheat, and in a sweet version with dates and butter for celebrations. Stews of meat with chickpeas and tomato are everyday food, and bread is baked at home as flat rounds or on a hot stone.

Dates are the valley's own crop and its constant. Fresh in autumn, dried through the year, pressed into paste for pastries or eaten with lben, the salted buttermilk, they appear at every stage of a meal and are the first thing offered to a guest along with water. Sweets of semolina or crumbled bread worked with dates and butter are traditional, and makroud, the diamond-shaped semolina pastries filled with date paste, are sold in the market.

Ghardaïa's market is the place to see the rest: spices, dried chillies, olives, almonds and the herbs used in Saharan cooking, alongside camel meat sold from its own stalls. Ibadi practice is strict about alcohol, which is absent from public life, and green tea with mint, brewed strong and poured from a height, is the drink that accompanies conversation, bargaining and every visit.