Zagora is not just this small, long tourist town from which overnight caravans for European tourists depart. Zagora is also at the heart of a region rich in a long forgotten history whose traces, everywhere, remain for those who know how to look at them.
Leaving Zagora from the south, it suffices, after having crossed the bridge which spans the Draa, to look up to distinguish the rocky peak which overhangs the city. At its summit, rockslides too orderly to be natural form the ruins of a very old stronghold with multiple and successive occupations. The site is indeed ideal for monitoring the comings and goings of caravans below, an obligatory crossing point between the Draa Valley and the Sahara.
Among these ruins, the visitor will distinguish on the northern flank of the rocky peak, the enclosure of an Almoravid fortress. This Amazigh dynasty, part of present-day Mauritania, conquered the Draa Valley at the very beginning of the 11th century (of the Christian era) before seizing the great caravan city Sijilmassa (Rissani) then founding Aghmaton the other side of the Atlas, its first capital which has now disappeared, then Marrakech.
As their conquests progressed, the Almoravids built fortresses-stages which made it possible to regroup the troops before launching a new expedition towards the North. These strongholds served as weapon and supply stores, but also as fallback posts. They made it possible to maintain power over the territories that the Almoravids had conquered. In the Zagora region, they subjugated the very large Jewish community that had populated the region for centuries.
Vestiges of their passage remain everywhere in the valley. In Amzrou, immediately after Zagora, in the south, the inhabitants still speak of “the Kasbah of the Jews” even if there is not a single one left since their progressive departure for Israel, family after family, until the end of the years. 50.
The abandoned Synagogue of Amzrou
The illustrious library of the Zaouia Naciria
Could the Draa Valley be the tomb of the disappeared libraries? Leaving Amzrou for Tamegroute a little further south, towards M’Hamid El Ghizlane, everyone can visit the library of the famous zaouia Naciria. Founded in XVIIe centuryat the time of the Spanish-Portuguese breakthroughs in Morocco, by Mohammed Ibn Nacir, disciple ofAbou Hafs Omar Ibn Ahmed Al Ansariit radiated throughout the Maghreb thanks to its privileged position at the crossroads of the caravan trade route, far from the power of the Makhzen.
Renowned for still having a work by Pythagoras in Arabic, manuscripts by Ibn Sina, Ibn Rochd and Al Khawarizmi, it has been emptied of nearly two thousand works. Sent in 1962 to the National Library of the Kingdom in Rabat for restoration, they would never have returned.
La Zaouia Naciria
Continuing south, the traveler will go back in time. Arrived at Tagounite, he will continue again: 20 km to the south stands the great rocky barrier of Jbel Beni Selmane. Two passes make it possible to cross it, including the Foum er’Rjam, which gave its name to an immense and mysterious necropolis. “At this place, on the gently sloping plateau, stand hundreds, perhaps a thousand, of tumulus, pyramids of accumulated dry stones; mostly conical, from one to four or five meters in height“says Jacques Gandini, author of tourist guides dedicated to the discovery of the great Moroccan South in 4X4, far from the beaten track.
The entire “bend of the Drâa” – a bend tilts the course of the river again towards the Atlantic as it flowed up to there in the direction of the Algerian border – is, in fact, a veritable archaeological site in open sky. Surrounded by a fortified village, fortresses in ruins, threshing floors, shards of pottery are all witnesses of a forgotten civilisation. Prehistoric, Lybico-Berber, Christian, Jewish, Almoravid occupation? The answer has obviously not yet been given by scientists. However, “the whole sector, among the tumulus, is lined with sandstone slabs covered with fairly old engravings”, underlines Jacques Gandini, a sign of a multi-millennial human presence.
Foum er’Rjam
The engravings of Foum Chenna
This type of engraving is found in all the surroundings of the Draa Valley. One of the most dazzling sites is certainly 7 km west of the village of Tinzguit, located between Zagora and Agdez, to the north, on the road to Ouarzazate. There, the rock walls of the Oued Chenna gorges are covered with engravings several meters high.
Since the launch of a project to develop rock engraving sites in the Draa Valley by the Center for the Conservation and Rehabilitation of the Architectural Heritage of Atlas and Subatlassic Zones in 2008, the site has a small tourist and especially a keeper. A beginning of awareness of the rich heritage of the Zagora region.
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An espalanade was built in Foum Chenna to enhance the site.
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The engravings of Foum Chenna