Algeria, visit to the model cities of a rigorous and traditionalist Muslim community, isolated in the desert. In the deep Algerian Sahara lives a religious community that has remained impervious to external influences for a long time, creator of a lifestyle and an urban project extraordinarily suited to the poverty of means and the hostility of the desert
“Harmony”. It is the word that comes to mind when you are in the cities of the M’zab. Harmony of the pastel colors of the houses: a thousand soft and soft shades like the desert dunes. Harmony of the shapes of the buildings: low and sinuous like the arches of the porticoes that offer shade. Harmony of the network of alleys clinging to the hills, a tangle of lines that seem designed by artists, not by urban planners.
Ghardaïa, 700 kilometers south of Algiers, is a harmonious city in the heart of the Sahara. From afar it looks like a mirage, a miracle of water and life amidst the desolation of the stony desert. “It is God’s gift to his children, to thank them for their faith and obedience,” explains Salem, an Algerian friend who accompanies me on my visit. “It is not a simple oasis: it is a land of peace and prosperity created by Allah to allow us to pray and live in harmony”.
Together with the other four towns of the M’zab valley – El Atteuf, Melika, Beni Isguen and Bou Noura – Ghardaïa is the main seat of a particular branch of the Islamic world, Ibadism, whose only other important nucleus is found on the Djerba island, Tunisia. The faithful, around 150,000, are called Mozabites here due to the close relationship between their existence as a religious group and their isolation in this remote valley. The Ibadis, “Protestants of Islam”, were continuously persecuted and expelled from everywhere, until they chose to settle, at the beginning of the 11th century, in the heart of the Algerian desert, in the then uninhabited valley of the M’zab. They dug very deep wells with their hands, created palm groves, built large dams to exploit the rare rains to the last drop. In less than fifty years they gave birth to a grandiose pentapolis.
Urban model
Alien to territorial disputes and ambitions of domination, a fundamental crossroads for caravans headed for the Great South, the Mozabite pentapolis represented for centuries a completely autonomous community, impervious to external influences, creator of a lifestyle admirably suited to poverty of means and extreme hostility of the desert. In its simplicity, this fortified pentapolis has enclosed – it would be better to say “protected” – for almost a thousand years an extraordinary culture otherwise condemned to disappear.
Mozabite cities stand on rocky hillocks. At the highest point is the mosque, surmounted by the typical truncated pyramid-shaped minaret. The houses were built following a strict distinction of class: below the mosque, the houses for the tolba, the scholars of the Koran, then, as you descend, the houses of the notables, those of the blacksmiths, and of the men with trades less noble. The merchants’ houses are confined to the lower part of the hill, close to the city walls, so as not to contaminate the purity of the faith with profane activities. The houses are arranged in concentric circles around the mosque; the maze of streets that branches off from above creates a suggestive mosaic of light and shadow, an urban design of harmonious simplicity that has fascinated world-famous architects such as Le Corbusier and which makes the Mozabite cities a UNESCO protected world heritage ( the structure of cities coincides with the idea that Le Corbusier had of urban architecture: a machine à habiter, without academicism, on a human scale, in which the whole city becomes a large house).
Simplicity and rigour
The typical Mozabite house, recognizable by the numerous arches, domes and small windows, is built in stone, palm wood, plaster, lime and sand, natural materials recovered from the desert. The elegant simplicity of the shapes and decorations demonstrate the rejection of ostentation and the futile, a central element of Mozabite culture. The houses are designed to measure for man, everything is in the name of economy and rigor.
Even today the M’zab appears as a microcosm where time seems to have stopped. Where prayers, prostrations and secular rites are renewed in “medieval” villages and where the harmony of community life is regulated by an iron religious discipline: luxury, dance, music, showiness and “all that which can bring ephemeral joy through the stimulation of the senses”.
The colors and smells of the souk are very strong. Traders sell everything: carpets, spices, vegetables, goats, especially dates. They call them deglet nur, “dates of light”, and they are among the best qualities of all the Maghreb. They have tasty pulp and are so transparent that you can see the core.
A recipe that Ibadi families jealously guard makes deglet nur the main ingredient of an extraordinary couscous that is offered only to distinguished guests.
From the early hours of the morning, camel drivers laden with spices and the inhabitants of nearby towns meet in the market square. With a little patience, on the stalls of the souk you can find anything: red henna powder, colored fabrics, medicinal herbs, next to old shoes, bicycle wheels, engine parts, Chinese cell phones, sewing machines, electronic components , watches with GPS. The same merchant can sell birdcages, desert roses and colorful slippers.
Recluse women
It is a rich and enterprising community, that of the M’zab, the most traditionalist and, at the same time, the most modern in the Muslim world. While on the one hand the Mozabites claim to profess a pure faith that goes back to the very roots of Islam, on the other they are rightly considered skilled and dynamic merchants. The dense commercial network created by them spreads beyond national borders, forcing them to spend a lot of time away from home (about a third of men live outside the valley seasonally), amidst the uses and customs of modern society. Then, today, the internet arrived. Young people are holding smartphones. Satellite dishes bring television images from all over the world into homes. The communities of the M’zab live in the balance between tradition and modernity.
Algeria, Mzab, El Ateuf, A woman with a veil (Photo by Frédéric Soreau / Photononstop / Photononstop via AFP)
The women live in confinement, unable by local law to leave. They are closely watched by the tiazzabin, the guardians of the faith in charge of watching over their good conduct. “Women can’t wear more than four necklaces, talk and laugh loudly, wear Western clothes, get tattooed,” Salem explains to me again. “If one is caught sinning, she must publicly confess her guilt and do penance… In the most serious cases, such as that of marital infidelity, they risk being rejected by the community”. The life of the Mozabite women takes place within the home, in small houses whose rare windows and terraces allow you to just see without being seen. When they go out to visit a friend or a shop they have to disappear completely under a veil of natural wool, the ahouli, which only keeps one eye exposed. If they cross a man, they must turn towards a wall.
A changing world
The M’zab is steeped in spirituality. The visitor seems to be in a large open-air monastery, where everyone tries to earn a place in paradise. The rhythm of the day is marked by the muezzin, in charge of launching the adhān, the invitation to prayer, five times a day. Today, however, customs are changing and religious rigor is diluted. The Councils of Elders are concerned because a large part of the young population has gone to live outside the ancient walls, escaping the rigid moral control of traditional structures.
In Beni Isguen, the holy city of the Mozabite universe, I meet Tizegarine Slim, a cultured and enterprising man, head of the association for the promotion of the traditional arts of the M’zab. «Thanks to the formalism that permeates the social life of the Mozabites, the urban planning of the pentapolis is miraculously protected», he tells me. «Academism, the desire for ostentation, false luxury are abolished. The simplicity of the forms, of the materials, of the techniques in the name of economy and rigor make the smallest piece a lesson in modern architecture». Today, however, the M’zab and his culture are undergoing major changes and Monsieur Tizegarine does not hide his concern: “Unfortunately, more and more Mozabites are not interested in traditions. Paradoxically, while many western scholars come to visit our towns, fascinated by the urban planning and architectural solutions devised by our ancestors, the locals seem to slowly detach themselves from their roots».
The concern is even greater if we consider that the M’zab constitutes one of the most important historic centers in all of Algeria and that, despite repeated attempts to protect it, in recent years the building boom has disfigured its scenic beauty, posing serious problems above all to the preservation of the Mozabite style and to the management of environmental resources.
Traduit de https://www.africarivista.it/larmonia-senza-tempo-dello-mzab/210513/
