GHIRZA MAUSOLEUMS

The Mausoleums tombs are those of farmer soldiers who lived there from the third to the th century, with their families in fortified farms. Their agricultural work was continued after them: it was only in the th century that places ceased to be occupied, and a local legend said that these late inhabitants had sinned and were punished by the pétrification of their village. Some shrines (obelisk or temple form) or their decorative friezes were transported to the museums in Tripoli, Leptis Magna and Beni Walid, others did not survive an earthquake. The mausoleums, particularly well preserved despite the passage of time, lie in a stone desert, south of the buildings of the large fortified farms. One might wonder what reservations the choice of construction of farms in this area, where water was supplied mainly by tanks and where the land of the crops, installed in the bed of the Wadi Wadi, was to be artificially enriched by the installation of walls retaining the seasonal flow of water and silt from the Wadi. In fact, this choice was not motivated by agricultural considerations but by military necessity.