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(Ar. Fad̲j̲īd̲j̲ ), a group of seven ḳsūr isolated in the south-east of Morocco and surrounded on three sides by the Algerian frontier. It is situated | to the east of the d̲j̲abal Grūz at the meeting point of the Sahara Atlas and the Sahara plateau, in a broad hollow 850-900 metres in altitude (long. 1° 15′ W., lat. 32° 5′). The seven ḳṣur fall into three groups: al-Ūdāg̲h̲īr, al-ʿAbīd, Awlād Slīmān and al-Maïzz to the north-west, the two Ḥammām (Fūḳānī and Taḥtānī) to the north-east, and Zenāga, the most important, two kilometres to …

(G̲h̲dāms), a little oasis in the Lybian Sahara, situated approximately on the 30th parallel and the 10th meridian east of Greenwich (at almost the same longitude as G̲h̲āt, Gabès and Tunis). It lies at an altitude of 350 m. between the great oriental erg and the arid plateaus of al-Ḥamāda al-Ḥamrāʾ, almost at the meeting-place of the Libyan, Algerian and Tunisian frontiers. It owes its very ancient existence and its continuance to the artesian spring called ʿAyn al-Fres ( faras ) (temperature 30° C., 2-3 grammes per litre of sodium and magnesium chlor…

(current orthography: azalaī ), a term for the great caravans made up of several thousand camels (or to be more precise, dromedaries), which in the spring and autumn carry the salt from the salt deposits of the Southern Sahara to the tropical ¶ regions of the Sahel and the Sudan. This salt, which used to be exchanged by the Blacks against its weight in gold, if one is to believe al-Bakrī (trans. de Slane, 2nd. ed., 327), is exchanged today for food-stuffs: rice, millet, sugar, tea… The salt from Id̲j̲il, to the West, which has perhaps b…

(current spelling: Ghardaїa), the chief town of the Mzab, situated 635 km. by road south of Algiers on the parallel 32° 30′. Between 500 and 560 metres in altitude, it is built over a rounded hillock on the right bank of the Wādī Mzab, which cuts a hundred metres into the completely desert-like and deeply channeled limestone plateau of the s̲h̲ebka (“net”) of the Mzab. Ghardaїa was founded in 445/1053, after al-Ateuf (al-ʿAṭf, 407/1011), Bou Noura (Bū Nūra), Beni Isguen (Isgen) and Melīka, its lower neighbours, by the Ibāḍīs who, little by little, abandoned S…

, confederation of Touareg tribes consisting of about 17,000 persons who live in the southern Sahara between latitudes 17° and 21° N. at the north-east extremity of the republic of Mali. They inhabit the fairly low mountains of the Adrar [ q.v.] and especially its valleys and its surrounding depressions. The Adrar is a dense massif, of crystalline and granitic rocks, less than 1.000 metres high, which slopes to the west and is bordered to the west and the south by small sandstone plateaus. The wādīs flow almost every summer during the …

, town and oasis of the Zībān in the south-east of Algeria and on the northern fringe of the Sahara. It is situated at an altitude of between 100-120 metres, on the alluvial cone and the west bank of the Oued Biskra, at the mouth of a wide depression which extends from the Awrās massif to the western Saharan peaks of the Atlas Mountains. This has always been a route much used by nomads and conquering shepherds. Its blue sky, seldom streaked with clouds, its mild winter climate (mean temperature …

, a depression in the Libyan desert situated on the 29th parallel, between the district of Sirte and the Fezzān. The word denotes the three oases of Waddān, Hōn and Sokna, and also the depression (170-280 m.) in which they are situated between the D̲j̲. Waddān and the gloomy volcanic massif of the D̲j̲. al-Sōdā (803 m.). The historical significance of Ḏj̲ufra is explained by the abundance of the underground water-supply throughout the depression, and also by its position at the meeting-point of …

a small oasis to the southeast of Cyrenaica, the site of the tomb of Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Sanūsī, founder of the brotherhood of the Sanūsiyya. It is the furthest east, the smallest and the least prosperous of the oases along the important traditional route which leads from the valley of the Nile and Sīwa to Fezzan and the region of Tripoli, passing through a chain of depressions where are to be found the palm-groves of D̲j̲ālo, Awd̲j̲īla, Marada, and D̲j̲ufra, which are close to the 29th parallel. The depression of D̲j̲ag̲h̲būb consists of a sinuous basin called Wādī D̲j̲ag̲h̲būb c…

This name designates both an oasis and a group of three palm groves situated on the traditional caravan route, which in the South of Cyrenaïca and between the 30th and 29th parallels, joins Sīwa, in Egypt, and Ḏj̲arabūb to Tripolitania and Fezzān by Marada and the Ḏj̲ofra. Awd̲j̲ila has been known, since Herodotus (iv, 172, 182) and the classical authors, for its abundance of dates and as a halting place. Its rôle as a halting place seems to have been enhanced by the Arab conquest of the Mag̲h̲rib. Ibn Ḥawḳal (trans, de Slane, JA, 3rd series, xiii, 163) describes it in the 4th/10th cent…

, a word applied by the Arab writers both to a town—now al-Mard̲j̲—and to the region which belonged to it, that is to say Cyrenaïca, a broad African peninsula jutting out into the eastern Mediterranean between the gulf of Bomba and that of the Great Syrtis, situated, therefore, between long. 20° and 30° east of Greenwich and the parallels 30° and 33° of latitude. To the east begins the Marmarica, whilst the vast eastern Libyan Sahara stretches away to the south. The relief is made up of plateaux, resulting from the folding, in the Miocene age, of thick layers of Cenomanian l…

, an oasis in the eastern Libyan desert, in Egypt, situated approximately on lat. 27° N. and long. 28° E., equidistant from the Nile and the Libyan frontier. It is a halting stage between the oases of al-Dāk̲h̲la 170 km. to the south-west and those of al-Baḥriyya 160 km. to the north-north-east; the routes are motorable only with difficulty. Al-Farāfra is a single village of about 1,000 inhabitants. Its mud huts surround a slightly raised fortification. Village and oasis are situated in a vast p…

, a scarped chain of mountains 60 km. long in the Tellian Atlas of Algeria, enclosing and dominating the wide depression of the wādī Sahel-Soummam, and the principal Kabyle massif ¶ in the West, known as Greater Kabylia or Kabylia of Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ura. It consists of four ridges running roughly E.-W., almost everywhere exceeding 1,500 m. (4,921 ft.) in altitude and with the D̲j̲. Haïzer reaching 2,133 m. (6,998 ft.), the Akouker 2,305 m. (7,562 ft.) and the Tamgout (Berber for summit) of Lalla K̲h̲adīd̲j̲a 2,308 m. (7,572 ft.). M…

( Bilād al -). The Djerid or “country of palms” is a district of the Sahara situated in southwestern Tunisia which includes the oases of Nefṭa, Tozeur (Tūzar), El-Oudiane (al-Udyān) and al-Ḥamma (not to be confused with al-Ḥamma of Gabès). In the Middle Ages the Djerid was more often called Ḳasṭīliya; but This name which is sometimes a synonym of Tozeur only (Ibn Ḥawḳal, 243; al-Idrīsī, 121), frequently embraces Gafsa and the Nefzāwa (Ibn K̲h̲aldūn, i, 192) along ¶ with the modern Djerid, and sometimes even the district of Gabès (Leo Africanus, 8). Apart from al-Ḥamma which is in the no…

, a ḳṣar of the Sahara among the Touareg Ajjer on the frontier between the Fezzān (Libya) and the Algerian Sahara, in the neighbourhood of the 25th parallel and the 10th meridian. It stands at an altitude of 780 metres, 3 km. to the west of the Wādi Tanezzouft, whose valley lies in a north-south direction between the bank of primary sandstone on the side of the Tadrart in the east and the similar plateaus of the Tassili of the Ajjer in the west. It owes its existence to the r…

, Eg̲h̲erg̲h̲er in Tuareg, is a Saharan wādī to the north of the massif of Hoggar (Ahaggar). Its most important tributary is, on the west, the Tag̲h̲mert n-Ak̲h̲. The basin of the Ig̲h̲arg̲h̲ar runs from the volcanic massif of Atakor, in the south, to the plateaus of primary sandstone of the “Tassilian enceinte” (Emmidin and Tassili of the Azd̲j̲er), surrounded by the granitic and metamorphic mountains of Tefedest and Turha. The Ig̲h̲arg̲h̲ar and its tributaries flow, usuall…

(Djerba) is the largest island of the Mag̲h̲rib littoral, with an area of 514 sq. kms. It lies to the south of Tunisia in the gulf of Gabès (Little Syrtis in ancient times), an area noted for its sandbanks and tidal currents. The two peninsulas of Mehabeul and Accara reach out towards it from the Djeffara plain, but the island is separated from the mainland by the Bou Grara Sea and Strait of al-Ḳanṭara to the west, and the Ad̲j̲im channel to the east. Although the channel is no more than 2 kms. …

, a town in Algiers situated 45 m. (72 km.) S-W of Oran, on the road to Tlemcen, and on the site of the Roman city of Albulae and of Kaṣr Ibn Sinān, mentioned by al-Bakrī in the 5th/11th century (de Slane’s trans, 1913, 146, 160) to the S-E of the plain of Zīdūr. A redoubt, erected by the French in 1839 near the spring called Aīn Temouchent (French orthography), and unsuccessfully attacked by the troops of ʿAbd al-Ḳādir in 1845, is the source of a centre of colonisation which has grown into a to…

( Fezzān ), one of the three provinces, with Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, of the United Kingdom of Libya which dates from 1951. An entirely desert region of 551,000 sq. km., it extends as far as 600 km. to the south of the Mediterranean, between latitudes 24° and 28°, at the longitude of Tripolitania and Chad. The most direct routes from the Sudan to the Mediterranean lie across Fezzan. The climate is very arid, and localities there have an average rainfall of only 5 to 12 mm.; frost is rare; the summers are very hot, but not among the most torrid. Fezzan consists of a number of depressions enc…

(the “throat”, or the “gullet” of the wadi), in French La Goulette (from the Italian form Goletta), township situated on the coastal strip which encloses the wide but very shallow lagoon of Tunis (less than 3 feet deep), to the north of the channel by which it is linked to the sea. After the ports of Carthage were abandoned, this became the port of Tunis; for a long time it had no artificial improvements, the ships anchoring at the entrance to a channel which had to be constantly dredged. There …

(a.) is synonymous with ‘plateau’ in the Sahara of the southern Mag̲h̲rib and Tripolitania, but is used only by some of its Arabic-speaking inhabitants. The word stands for large areas which are the outcrops of horizontal beds Of secondary or tertiary limestone or sandstone (or calcareous or gypso-calcareous crusts of the quaternary era), and which stand out as a result of the erosion caused by running water during periods which were less arid than the present. The surface of the ḥammāda s is almost always rocky and totally devoid of vegetation, except …