Taouehsit Tafza mâallems: the fifteen inhabited fortresses limestonemaster builders of the Gourara (Algerian Sahara)

• Illili Mahrour ^[1]
  1. [1] Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Des Enjeux Contemporains (LADEC), Université Lumière Lyon, Lyon, France
• Localización: FORTMED2023. Defensive architecture of the mediterranean : vol. XIII, XIV, XV / Marco Giorgio Bevilacqua (dir. congr.), Denise Ulivieri (aut.), 2023, ISBN 978-84-1396-129-3, págs. 653-662
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Taouehsit is one of the fortified settlement oases forming the network of the Gourara defensive structures situated in the south of Timimoun sebkha (salty soil) on the edge of the Meguiden, an erosion glacis of a sandstone cuesta area of the Continental Intercalaire. Taouehsit fortresses are located in the southwest of Algeria on the ancient caravan trails linking sub-Saharan Africa to the Atlantic shores and the Mediterranean world, a famous meeting place on the pilgrimage route to Mecca until the 19th century. By using a space anthropological approach prevailing oral tradition we have tried to understand why Taouehsit is known as the seat of the limestone master builders, called Tafza mâallems in zenete berber language and how the inhabited spatial organization grew inside and around the bour, a non-irrigated palm tree area of this Saharan settlement formed by fifteen distinct defensive structures. Despite their advanced state of ruins, whether occupied or abandoned, the fortresses and their landscape are still identified and referred to as the representatives of Tafza master builders’ limestone constructive know-how. The building technic is based on curved and right-angled stone masonry of the defensive walls as well as circular and squared angles towers like those of Agham At Gaffa which is one of the fifteen ancient inhabited fortresses where the Haratin master builders, former slave descendants, were also specialized in major limestone irrigation structures. The fortresses toponymy, the cemetery position together with the saints’ tomb and mausoleum structures highlight the stone architecture construction technics and allow to follow throughout time the development of the Saharan stone building culture that led about the 17th century to stone conical domed mausoleums.