Photos of the Beautiful Ksar Ouled Soltane Fortified Granary

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Photos of the Beautiful Historic Berber Fortified Ksar Ouled Soltane on the edge of the Sahara, Tunisia. Photos by photographer Paul E Williams. (TIP – use the icons below the slideshow for thumbnail photos and info)

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Photos of the Historic Berber Fortified Ksar Ouled Soltane, Sahara, Tunisia

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Photos of the Berber Ksar Ouled Soutane, Tataouine Tunisia.

Ksar Ouled Soutane

Ksar Ouled Soutane is an ancient fortified granary and food storage complex multi-story vaulted granary cellars, or ghorfas, around two inner courtyards.  The granary Ksars were essential for the nomadic Berber tribes that traded across the Sahara desert with camel trains. They assure that their food supplies were safe whilst they were away on their long trading trips.

The Berbers

The Berbers of North Africa were a sophisticated people who at the height of their powers controlled the Magreb: Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, as well as most of Spain. Berbers were nomads and their camel trains traded across the Sahara desert bringing high value products north. This lucrative trade brought the Berbers wealth and allowed them to build a civilisation of great power.

Nomads Problem of Storing Food

There is an obvious problem of food storage if you are a nomad in the arid conditions of the Sahara desert. The nomads traded their trans Saharan goods for food along the coast, but being tent dwelling nomads where would the be kept safe during the many months it took to cross the Sahara and return? The Berbers evolved Ksar or fortified grain stores to protect their food supplies whilst away.

Layout of Ksar Ouled Soutane

A Ksar consists of ghorfas or vaulted rooms to store grain. Each ghorfa is a self contained unit and they were built in several levels on top of each other. The ghorfa doors opened to courtyards on the inside of the Ksars. The back of the gorfa were part of a high external wall.

It would be entered through a fortified wooden gate every Ksar had a small mosque for the nomads to pray at. Ksour would have been easy to defend from raiding parties. The lack of wood in the desert meant that building ladders or siege equipment to climb the walls was impossible.

Ksar Ouled Soutane Remote Location

Ksar Ouled Soutane is situated on a barren hill overlooking the Northern Sahara plain. From the Ksar the Sahara spreads away south for 1000 miles across and endless flat arid plain where it might only rain every 10 years. To live in such conditions the desert peoples had to adapt strategies for survival in which the Ksar Ouled Soutane played a crucial part.

Although the Berber Ksar has a very distinctive style, similar mud brick villages can be found in Mali and the Yemen, showing that the desert peoples learnt from each other over great distances.

Ksar Ouled Soutane & Star Wars

Ksar Ouled Soutane may look very familiar and there is a good reason for that. George Lucas recognised the evocative style of Ksar and used it as locations for his Star War movies. Ksar Ouled Soutane was the setting for the Slave Quarters Row of Mos Espa in Star Wars Episode 1 The Phantom Menace, where Anakin Skywalker lived as a boy.

Although Star Wars has bought Ksar Ouled Soutane a steady trickle of Star Wars fans, its remoteness and proximity to the Libyan Border make it inaccessible to most tourists to Tunisia. Often Ksar Ouled Soutane is deserted, apart from a couple of lonely resident guides.