Figuig

Figuig belongs to the province of the same name in the Oriental region.¹ The oasis lies in the far south-east of Morocco, some 400 kilometres south of the Mediterranean coast.² It fills a wide basin at an average altitude of 850 to 900 metres, framed by ridges of the Saharan Atlas in the western part of the Monts des Ksour; the highest point in the area is Djebel Taghla to the south, at 1,120 metres.³ On three sides the oasis borders Algeria, and the land border is closed.⁴

At the 2024 census the municipality of Figuig had 10,449 inhabitants in 2,843 households.⁵ The province of Figuig reached 144,451 inhabitants and, at 0.43 per cent a year, grew faster between 2014 and 2024 than any other province of the Oriental.⁶ In everyday life 83.2 per cent of the province’s people speak Darija and 35.8 per cent Tamazight, against a regional average of 7.1 per cent for Tamazight.⁷

The name Figuig covers seven ksour, fortified villages that form three groups of settlement.⁸ Loudaghir, Laâbidate, Oulad Slimane and El Maïz lie to the north-west, Hammam Foukani and Hammam Tahtani to the north-east; to the south Zenaga stands alone, separated from the northern ksour by a steep rocky escarpment, the Jorf.⁹ Zenaga is the largest ksar: according to the 2004 population register, 7,000 of the oasis’s 12,577 inhabitants lived there.¹⁰

Each ksar is surrounded by earthen walls, and the houses, like the fortifications, are built of mud brick on foundations of dry-stone masonry.¹¹ The UNESCO entry names mud brick, palm wood and lime as building materials; among the buildings worth protecting it lists mosques, cemeteries, the synagogue, the church of Sainte-Anne, marabouts, gates and squares, as well as ramparts and watchtowers.¹² Between Laâbidate and Loudaghir lies the abandoned ksar of the Ouled Jaber, whose residential quarter was enclosed by a wall with towers and gates; excavations there have been planned since 2009.¹³

Rock engravings survive from prehistoric times, the oldest attributed to the Neolithic; the most important site, at the Zenaga pass, shows two adorned sheep.¹⁴ Figuig is first mentioned in writing by the historian Ibn Khaldun.¹⁵ After the decline of Sijilmassa the oasis led an important caravan trade with the oases of the Sahara, and in 1679 Moulay Ismail stationed a garrison of Abid here, after whom the ksar of Laâbidate is named.¹⁶ The Jewish community lived in two mellahs in Zenaga and Loudaghir and numbered 5,000 people at the beginning of the 20th century.¹⁷ At that time Figuig was among the ten largest towns in Morocco.¹⁸

The ksour grew up around springs; the best known is the Thaddert spring.¹⁹ The gardens are also fed by two wadis, the Sheggaret al-Abid and the Al-Ardja, and by numerous springs from a shallow water table; in the north of the oasis, thermal water is used for irrigation.²⁰ Underground galleries called khettaras or foggaras bring water to the surface, where it is collected in basins and distributed through canals by gravity.²¹ The basins serve as reservoirs during the dry season from July to October.²²

The right to water is allocated not as a quantity but as time, measured in a unit called the kharrouba.²³ Irrigation time is measured with a floating, perforated copper vessel.²⁴ The water rights are overseen by the jmaa; in each ksar a srayfi monitors the measurements and the order of irrigation down to the last plot, and the canals are maintained through communal work, the twiza.²⁵

The palm grove covers about 650 hectares; each ksar owns its own section, divided into walled gardens.²⁶ At the beginning of the 20th century there were some 300,000 date palms, a number since reduced by bayoud disease.²⁷ All the date palms are of local origin and belong to 14 varieties; beneath them grow, in layers, olives, cereals, alfalfa, vegetables and fruit such as figs, apricots, quinces and plums.²⁸ According to the FAO, 46 per cent of the date harvest stays in the household, 30 per cent goes to livestock and only 20 per cent is sold.²⁹

The FAO describes Figuig as a system in which the oasis farmers have always exchanged goods and services with the herders of the neighbouring municipality of Abbou Lakhal; the Beni Guil sheep breed is typical of the area.³⁰ Abbou Lakhal had 1,790 inhabitants in 2024.³¹ Agriculture is the oasis’s main source of income; crafts are practised mainly within families, above all the weaving of burnouses and carpets.³²

Morocco submitted the oasis to the World Heritage Tentative List on 30 May 2011, as a cultural property under criteria (iii), (iv) and (v).³³ The entry considers the seven ksour with their earlier settlement sites, the terraced gardens with their variety of crops and palm varieties, and the foggaras, basins and canals as a coherent whole.³⁴ It sees in them an example of Saharan settlement from the era of the caravan trade in which traditional irrigation has survived.³⁵