Skoura

Skoura belongs to Ouarzazate province in the Draa-Tafilalet region.¹ At the 2024 census the rural municipality of Skoura Ahl El Oust, in the Ouarzazate district, had 24,053 inhabitants in 4,879 households; 4,576 of them lived in the urban centre of Skoura.² The present-day town lies on the eastern edge of the oasis, on the main road coming from Ouarzazate.³

The oasis lies in a narrow, sediment-filled basin at an altitude of 1,000 to 1,600 metres, bounded by the High Atlas to the north and Jebel Saghro to the south.⁴ It spreads between and around the confluence of three rivers that carry water only part of the year: the Oued el-Hajjaj, Oued Boujilha and Oued Madri rise in the High Atlas and flow south into the Dades. They usually run from late winter to late spring.⁵ They are fed from the mountains, where precipitation reaches up to 600 millimetres a year and most peaks are snow-covered from November to April; this reserve also feeds springs, wells and khettaras.⁶

Farming in Skoura takes place mainly on small fields where date palms, fruit trees and field crops grow together; the palms and fruit trees need only seasonal irrigation.⁷ The oasis belongs to the type with three tiers of cultivation: date palms, fruit trees, and cereals and vegetables. Where water runs short, at the lower end of the oasis, plain cereal fields replace the gardens.⁸

The irrigation network has three parts: the diversion dam (agoug) in the riverbed, the spring with its khettara, and the channels (seguias) that carry the water to the plots. A khettara is a gently sloping tunnel high enough for a person to walk through stooping; on the surface it is marked by a line of shafts about ten metres apart, through which the spoil was brought up during construction.⁹ At the end of the 1990s the palm grove had 48 khettaras, 16 of them dry; between 1960 and 1980 there had been 58, six of them dry. Most deliver no more than 50 litres per second, whereas the lined Makhzen khettara above Skoura, more than six kilometres long, delivers 114.¹⁰

The water belongs to communities of rights holders who built the seguias and khettaras at their own expense; each can sell or lease his share. It is distributed in rotation, the nouba, according to each family’s share of the work contributed; in Skoura a full cycle usually lasts 12 days, otherwise 16 to 20.¹¹ In the past, farmers timed their turns by the hours of prayer, by the stars at night or by a shadow on a wall; today they use a watch. The jemaa, the assembly of the ksar, organises maintenance and appoints an amazal who oversees the water turns.¹²

A survey based on satellite imagery and fieldwork in 2021 and 2022 recorded 268 khettara segments in and around the oasis; 80 per cent of them existed by 1971 at the latest. The Makhzen khettara was built with local residents between the 1930s and the 1950s under the protectorate administration. The regional agricultural office of Ouarzazate (ORMVA) later took over the work; in 1989 it had seguias and shafts reinforced with concrete.¹³ In 1996 the oasis had 74 motor pumps.¹⁴ During the droughts of the 1980s many of the southern khettaras ran dry; after the rains of 2005 some delivered water again.¹⁵

Kasbahs of mud brick and rammed earth stand among the fields.¹⁶ For one of them, the Kasbah Amridil in Skoura, the Ministry of Culture prepared a decree in 2018 to add it to the national heritage list.¹⁷

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.¹⁸