Photos of the Berber Ksar El Mguebl Fortified Store Tunisia

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Photos of the Beautiful Historic Berber Fortified Ksar El Mguebl 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 Beautiful Historic Berber Fortified Ksar El Mguebl , Sahara, Tunisia

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Photos of the Berber Ksar El Mguebl, Tunisia.

The Berbers

The Berbers are a North African peoples whose civilisation stretched from Tunisia to the Atlantic Ocean in Morocco. For 500 years they ruled in Spain creating great Palaces like the Alhambra at Granada.

The Berbers became rich by trading high value goods across the Sahara. Along the edge of the Sahara in Southern Tunisia around Tetouine Berber nomads built Ksour which are fortified villages individually known as Ksar. Ksar El Mguebl is typical of these Berber fortified villages.

Ksar El Mguebl

Ez Zahra is an ancient fortified granary and food storage complex of multi-story vaulted granary cellars, or ghorfas, around an 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.

Berber 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 El Mguebl

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.

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.