The Oasis of Tighmert, Pre-Saharan Region of Oued Noun

Morocco
Submission date: 07/22/2016
Criteria: (iii)(iv)(v)
Category: Cultural
Submitted by:
Permanent Delegation of the Kingdom of Morocco to UNESCO
State, province or region:
Guelmim-Oued Noun
Coordinates
N28 27 0 W10 6 36
Ref.: 6159

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DESCRIPTION

The rosary of Tighmert oasis, rich in archaeological elements, was the capital of the city of Nul-Lamta, the agglomeration, the medieval capital of the northwest shore of the Sahara until the 16th century. It is now presented as a series of palm groves belonging to the rural municipality of Asrir 12 km southeast of the city of Goulmim 200 km south of Agadir. This rosary of oasis, embodied by a set of ksur (sing. ksar) following the Warg-n-Nun river from upstream to downstream. It is spread from the Northeast to the Southwest under the titles Ayt Bakkou, Taourirt, Ayt Massoud, Ayt Mhamad, Ayt al-Khannous, Asrir and Zraywila. The oasis of Asrir being the southern limit of the Rosary is separated from Zraywila by about 30 km.

The Oasis of Tighmert rosary embodies the northern part of the territory of the Azwafit tribe. Genealogical matrix of the tribes of the Talma confederation, the Azwafit masters of the rosaries of oasis that surround Tighmart, make the remains of the city of Nul-Lamta a series of palm groves whose territory materializes a very diverse ecosystem in a subarid area characterized by a dense arboreal floor where the date palm offers a microclimate for underlying crops. Sporadically, the water sources of the Warg-n-Nun River feed the palm groves of Nul-Lamta by many resurgences of the water table, once managed according to the customary rules of the ksur. The oasis rosary benefits from a high-quality environment in an arid area characterized by a shortage of precipitation and the dominance for a long period of the year of the (dry) Chergui winds that blow and destroy all forms of bour culture.

This position in the center of the region along the Warg-n-Nun River is reflected in a privileged situation where the weekly and annual markets (an-muggar) drain an intense commercial movement, which is explained by the dynamics of trans-Saharan activities. The abundance of archaeological remains scattered inside and around palm groves requires the application of protective laws against companies plundering remains, hence the urgency of its classification. Aware of the problem, the Team of Multidisciplinary Saharan Studies (EESP) of the University Institute of Scientific Research (lURS) Université Mohamed V- Rabat has developed a strategy and an action plan, following which a plan for the protection of the Tighmart Oasis Rosary was submitted to the Development Agency of the Southern Provinces – Rabat and finally to the Ministry of Culture.

Justification of the Exceptional Universal Value

Obviously, human settlements are doomed to disappear in the very near future, left abandoned, they are collapsing. This disappearance is certain if no rehabilitation and revitalization measures are taken. This necessarily requires and not only the recognition of this material heritage as a national and international heritage, but also through the search for means of production and exchange that can offer the local population the resources necessary for its development, without prejudice to the fragile balance of its intangible heritage and local socio-cultural peculiarities.

Today a space of geostrategic stake, the Tighmart oasis rosary is a hinterland vector of economic development. Its mode of implementation is reflected in an increased appropriation likely to reactivate the trans-Saharan commercial logic from an interface space likely to form a homogeneous set of Ksûr capable of embodying the mark of a culture that has been able to network palm groves on a territorial scale by reintroducing the notion of road, routes and historical paths. The geographical proximity of urban centers, favors a vernacular urban planning adapted to the needs of the oasis ecosystem by the simplicity and purity of its forms, this type of architecture has taken on a quality of formal model for modern architecture.

In itself, the apprehension of the oasis space has a universal character by its simple principles. The adaptation to the geographical environment, its architecture and urbanism and the spatial and economic interdependence of the constituent entities of a global approach, shed light on the inseparable aspect of the pastoral, rural and urban link for a reading of the oasis space where traditional architecture and urban planning are no longer defined by a historical period, but by principles at the basis of creation. It follows that the Tighmart oasis rosary is representative of a cumulation of the culture of the Saharan ethnic background of which it forms the framework. The palm groves offer an architectural ensemble combining built and stayered gardens, characteristic of everything that makes the Tighmart oasis rosary a synthesis of the interaction between the human, geographical and economic-cultural aspect. Once introduced, the recognition of these various aspects includes the reasons and forms of this specificity. Because, by implementing these different facets, that this rosary of oasis deserves to capture the eye according to universal criteria.

Criterion (iii): The southern part of the city of Nûl-Larnta, that of the side and below the hill of Asrir and Tuflit al-Harratin, makes the agglomeration a political organization whose 8 data collected on the morphology, construction and occupation methods of the houses provide a first-rate corpus. The remains still visible, show the genesis of the Oasian organization from its economy supplemented substantially compared to that provided by the sources. The oasis organization identifiable through ceramic production and metals can be approached and established from the dates making it possible to take up the problem of the city of Nûl-Larnta by providing a testimony to its history. Firmly preserved from the latent threats of chronological milestones, this agglomeration has experienced moments of expansion or regression that are destroyed by the phenomenon of urbanization and spatial organization taken in its archaeological sense.

Criterion (iv): The inscription of the Tighmart oasis rosary as archaeological remains can be studied according to the factors presented above. All the buildings listed evoke the multiple functions of the city of Nul-Lamta extended over its natural environment. Architectural quality could not be considered from an abstract point of view for the interest of its past functions.

Criterion (v): Until recent years, cultural heritage, rarely considered a possible development factor, has been presented as a non-productive economic resource. While the most serious risks are the elements related to the pest attacks caused by the severe degradation of intangible heritage, users never set out to reconcile heritage preservation and sustainable development. In order to address the need for action based on the contribution of all to the resolution of the conservation problems of the heritage city of Tighmart and its oasis rosary, it is important to specify that the absence of a program to rehabilitate the tangible and intangible heritage of the Tighmart Oasis rosary results in the disproportionate development of the interests of new residents.

Declarations of authenticity and/or integrity

A privileged place of passage connecting the pre-Saharan part of the vast N-W zone of the Western Sahara, the Tighmart oasis rosary is above all a living space. Formerly the last end of the Saharan world to the North, it is inserted in the last slopes of the Anti-atlas, natural borders integrated into the architectural habits of those who were, the first, settled near the Sahara, also identified as those of the mores deemed a little too crude for the old anti-Atlasic village culture. Behind the last foothills of the Anti-atlas, the expression has been frozen to substitute the toponym Wad-Nun for the simple geographical indication. Known to all, the inhabitants of the Tighmart oasis rosary are also oasians from the surrounding mountains of the region. They have many relations with the great pastoral tracts of the South. From the rosary of Tighmart oasis, ancient and non-peripheral, we retain the toponymic characteristics, their location as a center, the prestigious lineages that belonged to the Azwafit group, have settled in these neighborhoods in a continuous movement since the beginning of the 6th/12th century pointing to the oasis traits supposed to characterize them. From this privileged observatory, a questioning is deployed on a social space in which community dynamics, those of agnatic groups and land issues in particular, coexist with more individualized codes, orchestrating unprecedented social situations, produced by the development of a new urban and regional order.

Comparison with other similar properties

The comparative context of Tighmart’s oasis rosary with similar sites classified as a World Heritage Site can be used as a framework for reading and analysis. The cities of Ouadane, Chinguitti, Tichit, Oualata offer a field likely to be invested by social science research. Muslim sources around the Atlantic Sahara report the links between these cities and the city of Nul-Lamta. The pastoral nomadism that has allowed the maintenance of a human dynamic in these arid regions since the end of the last wet period of the Quaternary, especially in the desert, which has been dry for three to four thousand years, has allowed the establishment and maintenance of caravan tracks that connected Nul-Lamta to Ouadane, Chinguitti, Atar, Tichit and Oualata. On the architectural level, Nul-Lamta is greatly reminiscent of Mauritania’s architectural traditions. The ancient caravan cities have remained for centuries the traditional stages of the great Saharan Way. The city of Tichit, once the capital of the Tagant region, is located on the southern edge of the desert. It leads to the city of Oualata in the Hawdh region in eastern Mauritania, which, until recently, had a prestigious reputation, even if it now forms only a natural border that fragments and differentiates its nomadic routes into nomadic areas of small area. It is associated with Nul-Lamta by the sum of the geographical conditions that determined the existence: on the one hand, a class of merchants and theirs, commercial cities where the culture of the land had been gradually neglected and where food was brought from outside, and where pastoral groups became carriers of commercial caravans forming in a way transport corporations across the Sahara. Like the city of Oualata, one of the main cities of the caravan in the south of the Sahara famous for the unique wall art on its houses located on the Timbuktu road, Nul-Lamta controls the same network that connects the cities of the Adrar, Tagant, the Niger Loop such as Timbuktu, Gao whose archaeology is greatly reminiscent of the remains of the oasighmert rosary. The wall art found in Nul-Lamta and Walata dates back to the al-Murabitin period (11th century) when a number of Muslims from al-Andalus stayed. Around the main entrance of the house and the street, this mural art continues to the inner courtyard and the interior of the rooms. Also, the 14 designs by the hands, straw mats and carpets, subject to change, were introduced from henna from Morocco.