Ahfir

Ahfir is an urban municipality in Berkane province, in the Oriental region.¹ The town lies on the left bank of the Oued Kiss, at the foot of the Beni Snassen and between the plains of Triffa and Angad.² The Oued Kiss bounds the Triffa plain to the east and forms the border with Algeria.³ In 2005 national road 2 between Oujda-Angad airport and Ahfir was upgraded to a dual carriageway over 20 kilometres.⁴

At the 2024 census Ahfir had 16,310 inhabitants in 4,612 households.⁵ In 2014 there had been 19,630.⁶ At 1.8 per cent a year, its population fell faster than that of any other town in the region.⁷ The Cercle d’Ahfir comprises the municipalities of Aghbal, Fezouane, Laatamna and Madagh with a combined 51,116 inhabitants; Berkane province as a whole had 284,061.⁸

The name Ahfir means “holes” in Berber and refers to a quarry that was worked here.⁹ During the French protectorate the place was called Martimprey-du-Kiss; after independence in 1956 it took back its name.¹⁰ Most of the inhabitants come from the Aït Iznasen tribal group.¹¹

The Triffa plain below the Beni Snassen is one of the coastal plains on either side of the Moulouya described by the geographer Roland Paskoff in 1962: alluvial soils that slope almost imperceptibly towards the sea.¹² He gave the mean annual rainfall of these plains as 350 millimetres, with strong fluctuations between 560 millimetres in 1942–43 and 150 millimetres in 1944–45; frosts, he wrote, are rare.¹³

Since 1956 the Mechra Homadi diversion weir has raised the level of the Moulouya by about 40 metres.¹⁴ From there a main canal carrying 18 cubic metres per second runs twelve kilometres through the river’s gorges and then 50 kilometres across the Triffa plain.¹⁵ In 1962 a final 15-kilometre section to the Oued Kiss, which was to take the water of the drainage channels, was under construction; irrigation of 35,000 hectares was planned.¹⁶

In 2010 the protected geographical indication “Clémentine de Berkane” was recognised.¹⁷ Its area is the Triffa plain, bounded by the Mediterranean to the north, the Oued Kiss and the prefecture of Oujda-Angad to the east, the Beni Snassen to the south and the pre-Rif hills to the west.¹⁸ It includes the four municipalities of the Cercle d’Ahfir as well as Boughriba, Chouihia and Zegzel.¹⁹ The fruit ripens from early October to early January.²⁰