Deserts and the way people have adapted to live in harsh desert environments continue to fascinate me. On a trip to south-eastern Tunisia, I came across fascinating traditional architectural adaptations to the desert climate, such as cave houses (trologdytes) and fortified granaries (ksour). While very few living examples of these traditional buildings exist today, tourism is helping keep the heritage alive and ruins are being restored.
Desert agriculture and the ksour
South-East Tunisia has an arid climate and water scarcity has always been a challenge for the area’s inhabitants. In some areas the water table is accessible enough that wells can be dug, but elsewhere collecting rainwater has been essential. For this, the desert residents of South-East Tunisia have traditionally built rainwater cisterns, dams and terraces to capture rainwater runoff and prevent soil erosion. But even with these measures, in some areas agriculture has traditionally only been possible in particularly rainy years. Hence, a good system was needed to store food, and the system developed was the ksar, or ksour in plural.
The ksar is one of the most distinct traditional architectural features of South-East Tunisia, particularly the regions of Tataouine and Beni Khedache. The ksar is essentially a fortified granary built with stones and earth and consisting of several cells (ghorfas) in one or more stories opening to a courtyard. Food could be stored in the ksar for up to seven years which helped cope with drought years. An average ksar had about 150 to 200 vaulted ghorfas, each about 4-5 meters deep and 2 meters tall and wide and with a wooden door and small holes for ventilation. Ghorfas could be connected to each other if they belonged to the same owner. The ksar courtyard served as a meeting and market place and temporary storage area.
The ksar was a collective storage that served a tribe or even a group of tribes, and it was essential to protect it from outside attacks and raids. From the outside, there were minimal or no openings and the walls were high, as in a fortress. Whenever possible, natural features were taken advantage of, such as when building a ksar along mountain ridges, which made it difficult to detect the structure from a distance. Other valuables could also be stored in the ksar as it was so well guarded.
The citadel ksar of Chenini
Ksour in South-East Tunisia have traditionally been built on plains and on mountains with some variation in design. A specific type of ksar is the citadel ksar or kalaa, where the ksar is located on top of a hill with a village in the slopes below. One example is the Berber village of Chenini, where the houses below the ksar are troglodyte cave houses dug horizontally into the slopes of the hill. As the ksar was fortified, it could provide refuge to the inhabitants of the village in case of attack.
The ancient part of Chenini is no longer inhabited and it is in ruins, although under renovation. The inhabitants of this part used to rely on small scale agriculture, but access to water has always been challenging and already 50-60 years ago most people had moved out. Around 80 families still live in Chenini today, although their houses are more modern and include comforts such as electricity.
Troglodyte houses of Matmata
In Chenini, the hill provides an ideal setting for building cave houses as it allows taking advantage of the natural hillside. But traditional cave houses in southern Tunisia have been built even on plains without such natural advantages, most famously in the town of Matmata. Here, cave houses have been dug out of the sandstone for centuries, starting with a circular vertically dug hole of 5 to 10 meters in diameter.
The initial vertical hole of the troglodyte house becomes a central courtyard, around which rooms are dug horizontally into the sides. Ceilings are usually carved to form of vaults for better structural stability and the interiors are painted white with lime wash for improved lighting. An entrance is also dug horizontally from the courtyard, and several courtyards can be connected with corridors to form larger dwellings. The resulting cave house is well adapted to the desert environment, remaining cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The design also protects the house from strong desert winds.
Tourism and Star Wars in the desert
Modern agricultural and construction techniques, along with socio-economic changes and migration to cities, have reduced the need for traditional technology and architecture in the desert region of South-East Tunisia. There are some 150 ksour in South-East Tunisia but they are no longer in use, while cave houses are also becoming rarer and rarer. However, the ksour and the troglodyte houses remain part of the architectural and cultural heritage of the region, and hence have also attracted tourism. The income from tourism is also promoting the conservation and restoration of these traditional structures.
Part of the tourism appeal of the Tunisian desert and its traditional buildings is that they have been used as filming locations for Star Wars movies. For example, Hotel Sidi Idriss, a troglodyte house in Matmata, was the childhood home of Luke Skywalker on Tatooine, while Ksar Hadada featured in the films as the city of Moa Espa. The fact that these real-life traditional buildings could be exotic enough to represent a place from another planet is just another testament to the ingenuity of the traditional inhabitants of this desert region.
