Boumalne Dadès

Boumalne Dadès is an urban municipality¹ in Tinghir province in the Draa-Tafilalet region.² Tinghir province was created by a decree of 11 June 2009.³ At the 2024 census Boumalne Dadès had 12,391 inhabitants in 2,769 households, and the province 323,805.⁴

A district is named after the town, comprising the municipalities of Aït Sedrate Jbel Soufla, Aït Sedrate Jbel El Oulia, Aït Youl, Ikniouen, M'semrir and Tilmi; together they had 52,970 inhabitants in 2024.⁵

In the decree of 2 December 1959 that established the municipalities of the Kingdom, Boumalne appears as a municipality of the Boumalne-du-Dadès district in what was then Ouarzazate province; the district also included Msemrir, Tilmi, Tinerhir, Iknioun, Souk-Khemis-du-Dadès and El-Kelâa-des-Mgouna, among others.⁶ During the Protectorate, Boumalne was the seat of the Dadès-Todgha district, and national road 10 from Ouarzazate to Errachidia linked the town with Kelâat M'Gouna and Tinghir. Today shared taxis and minibuses connect the surrounding villages with Boumalne, Tinghir and Kelâat M'Gouna.⁷

According to their oral tradition, the Ayt Hadiddou, whose land includes the upper Dadès, lived in the area around Boumalne-du-Dadès in the 11th century.⁸

The Dadès rises in the High Atlas at 2,800 to 3,400 metres and reaches the Ouarzazate Basin at about 1,550 metres. Between M'semrir and Boumalne it crosses a fold-and-thrust belt of Jurassic marine limestones and mudstones, deposits of a Mesozoic rift system; in its upper course it has cut highly sinuous canyons more than 100 metres deep.⁹

Two gorges stand out. At Tarhia n'Dadès the river breaks through a ridge of Lower Jurassic limestone over half a kilometre, 150 metres deep and 20 to 50 metres wide. Further downstream it has carved the Dadès Gorge proper into structurally thickened Lower Jurassic limestones: about 5 kilometres long, more than 200 metres deep and 20 to 100 metres wide. It then enters the Aït Sedratt basin, where Pliocene and Quaternary conglomerates lie.¹⁰

The Dadès flows all year round, with an average daily discharge of 33.3 cubic metres per second and seasonal variations that depend on winter and spring precipitation along the watershed. Annual precipitation decreases downstream from about 200 millimetres at M'semrir to 150 millimetres at Boumalne.¹¹ In the Ouarzazate Basin the river is reinforced by tributaries from the southern slope of the High Atlas, among them the Assif M'goun.¹²

Boumalne Dadès lies within the area of the designation of origin “Rose de Kelâat M'Gouna-Dadès”, recognised by an order of the Minister of Agriculture of 27 May 2011. The area covers the urban municipalities of Kelâat M'Gouna and Boumalne Dadès and the rural municipalities of Aït Sedrate Sahel Gharbia, Aït Sedrate Sahel Charkia, Aït Ouassif, Souk Lekhmis and Ighil N'Oumgoun; the protected variety is Rosa damascena.¹³

The climate figures come from the Ouarzazate weather station at 1,136 metres. Over the years 1991 to 2020 it recorded an average of 115 millimetres of precipitation a year; the mean daily maximum temperature ranged from 17.3 °C in January to 38.8 °C in July.¹⁴