THE OASIS OF GHADAMES

Some gardens in the oasis are abandoned, others are still cultivated and maintained by their owners, more by attachment than necessity, because fruits and vegetables arrive by road from Libya. For centuries, slaves from Africa had maintained the palm grove which provided valuable dates to the inhabitants of Jebel Nefousa. In the 1950 s, the oasis, surrounded by a wall of stone and toub (dry brick), which was still mentioned in places, was one kilometre from the south-east to the northwest for an area of hectares with more than thousand palms. Cultures were organized according to the three stories that were found in all the Saharan oases before the modernization of the last few decades: date palms were the main agricultural wealth of the oasis. Their protective shadow resulted in the development of fruit trees (apple trees, peach trees, fig trees, figs, orange trees, lemon), second floor, and on the ground grew cereals for the consumption of oasiens and alfalfa for cattle. Large keys allowed to close each garden. The walls of toub hiding the gardens on each side of the streets leading to the old town were beautifully renovated by UNESCO; the work made the hole for the famous tordu trunk of the palm tree, which grows Rue street, and for whom a small wall was built to support it.