Tinghir

Tinghir grew where water reaches the surface. The Todgha river, fed by snowmelt in the eastern High Atlas, emerges from its gorge and is split into channels that have irrigated this stretch of valley for centuries, and the settlement is really a chain of earth-built villages and ksour strung along the gardens rather than a single old town. Its people are Amazigh, mainly of the Aït Todgha, in a valley long contested and traded across by the Aït Atta of the mountains to the south.

The oasis lay on the routes linking the Tafilalet, the caravan terminus in the east, with the Drâa and Marrakesh, and its fortified granaries and walled villages reflect a history in which stored grain and dates had to be defended. In the early twentieth century the valley fell under the authority of the Glaoui family, the "lords of the Atlas" who ruled much of southern Morocco in cooperation with the French protectorate; and a ruined kasbah stands on the ridge above the palm grove. The Aït Atta of the mountains fought the French until their surrender at the Battle of Bougafer in 1933, and the region was among the last to be brought under protectorate control.

Tinghir, like other oasis towns of the south, had a Jewish community living among the ksour; almost all of Morocco's Jews emigrated, most of them to Israel, in the decades after 1948. Since independence the town has grown out of the gardens and along the main road, drawing people from the surrounding villages, and in 2009 it became the seat of its own province.

Tinghir belongs to the Amazigh south, and Tamazight is the language of the street and the market; Moroccan Arabic is the language of administration and business, and French is used in schools and offices. Amazigh identity is worn openly here, in the alphabet on shopfronts and official signs and in the music played at weddings, where ahidous-style line dancing with frame drums and sung verse can continue most of the night.

The rhythm of the oasis is collective. Water rights in the palm grove are shared out by long-standing custom, with turns at the channels divided among families, and the upkeep of ditches, paths and walls is organised village by village. Traditional houses of packed earth, some several storeys high, are still built and repaired with the same materials, although concrete and breeze block have taken over in the new town.

Craftwork is modest compared with the imperial cities, but silver and carpets from the valley and the Saghro have a local reputation, and the Aït Atta weave heavy woollen rugs in dark colours. Life is conservative and family-centred: Friday couscous after prayers, long evenings of tea and conversation in the cafés for men, and household gatherings for women and families. Visitors are common enough not to be remarkable, and rare enough that hospitality is still offered rather than sold.

The town itself had just over 42,000 people at the 2014 census, with many more in the villages strung along the oasis and in the mountain settlements of the province. Agriculture underpins everything: dates above all, with olives, almonds, alfalfa for livestock and vegetables grown in small irrigated plots under the palms. Tourism is the second pillar, built on the gorge, the kasbah road and the desert circuits that pass through, and it supports guesthouses, cafés, drivers and guides.

Money also arrives from elsewhere. Tinghir has sent migrants to France, Belgium and the Netherlands for generations, and remittances pay for houses, weddings and shops; the town fills in summer when families return. Mining provides work in the province, notably the silver operation at Imiter to the west, which has also been the focus of a long local dispute over the wealth it takes from the region.

Drought is the defining issue. Years of poor rain and snow have lowered the water table, dried channels and killed palms across the oases of the south, and deep wells and pumps have spread. Days follow the sun: business early, a long pause in the afternoon heat, and the streets busy again after sunset, when the cafés fill and the market stalls light up.

Tinghir eats the food of the oases. Dates are the staple harvest, eaten fresh in autumn, dried through the year and offered to guests with milk or tea; several varieties are grown in the valley and sold by weight in town. Bread is baked at home or in neighbourhood ovens, and the local flatbread is eaten with olive oil or with amlou where argan oil reaches the market from the Souss.

Tagines are cooked over charcoal with the vegetables of the gardens — carrots, turnips, potatoes, tomatoes — and with lamb, goat or chicken, often flavoured with cumin, saffron and preserved lemon. Couscous is the Friday dish, rolled from barley as well as semolina in mountain households. Berkoukes, a soup of large couscous grains in a vegetable broth, and harira, thickened with lentils and chickpeas, are winter food, and in Ramadan harira with dates and honeyed pastries breaks the fast.

Drinks are simple: mint tea poured from height, sweetened heavily and often flavoured with wormwood in winter or with sage, and fresh orange juice in season. Olive oil pressed in the valley, almonds from the terraces and honey from the mountain hives are the local products worth buying, and alcohol is not part of everyday life here.