Zagora

Zagora lies in the Drâa valley and is the capital of the province of the same name¹ in the Draa-Tafilalet region.² In 2024 the municipality had 42,294 inhabitants and the province 285,545.³

Between Ouarzazate and M’Hamid El Ghizlane the Drâa covers some 200 kilometres, past stony desert, eroded mountains and palm groves with kasbahs.⁴ Since 2005 six of these oases, together with the El Mansour Eddahbi reservoir, have formed the Moyenne Dr’a Ramsar site, 45,000 hectares in the provinces of Ouarzazate and Zagora; about a hundred bird species depend on the palm groves.⁵

The El Mansour Eddahbi dam, built in 1972, supplies irrigation water for around 26,000 hectares in Zagora province.⁶ The crops are date palms, fruit trees, henna and cereals.⁷

On the left bank of the Drâa, opposite the town, rises Jbel Zagora, a small spur of the Bani with two summits of 1,030 and 971 metres. On its northern flank lie the walls of a fortress that Jacques Meunié and Charles Allain surveyed in 1952 and partly excavated during two visits in 1952 and 1954.⁸

The walls are of stone, with square bastions and a round tower, and contain no rammed earth. On the basis of this construction the two researchers attributed the fortress to the Almoravids and dated it to the third quarter of the 11th century, the period when the Almoravids first took the oases of the Drâa and the Tafilalet. The complex includes a simple bath.⁹

In the palm oasis at the foot of the mountain they also looked for Tagmadert, the place the Saadians came from, and located it a little further south, between Sert and Amezrou.¹⁰

Eighteen kilometres from Zagora lies Tamegroute with the Zaouïa Nassiriya, founded by Sidi Mohamed Ben Nacer in the 17th century. Its library holds some 4,000 manuscripts, some of them six centuries old, on subjects including theology, grammar, medicine and mathematics.¹¹

About 50 kilometres west of M’Hamid El Ghizlane lies Erg Chigaga, one of Morocco's two great dune fields. It is around 40 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide and can only be reached by off-road vehicle, by dromedary or on foot.¹²

The present Zagora airport (IATA code OZG) was built between 2007 and 2009, about seven kilometres south-south-west of the town.¹³