Tozeur - The Oasis

There are various ways of exploring the oasis in Tozeur- in a horse-drawn carriage, on a dromedary or on a donkey. To avoid any possible misunderstanding the charge for the drive or the ride should be agreed in advance.

General

The oasis of Tozeur, an intensively cultivated area of some 1,050 hectares/2,600 acres, lies immediately south of the town. It contains some 400,000 date-palms, which provide shade for fruit trees (peaches, apricots, pomegranates, figs, citrus fruits and bananas). Ground crops such as vegetables, salad plants and corn, which consume a great deal of water, are only occasionally found. The palms yield between 25,000 and 30,000 tons of dates annually, including only 1000 tons of the top quality deglat en nour dates - particularly aromatic, semi-sweet and not too soft - which grow only at the tips of palms in good soils well supplied with water. Access

From Avenue Abou el Kacem ech Chabbi, on the south side of the town, a number of little streets run south into the oasis. There are six small hamlets in the oasis, the most important of which are Bled el Hader, Abbès and Sahraoui.

Irrigation

The oasis is supplied with water by some 200 springs and artesian wells with a total flow of 700liters/154gallons per second. Most of the springs are near the Belvédère, where they join to form the river which flows through the oasis and peters out at its end, on the edge of the Chott el Djerid. The water from the river and the artesian wells is channeled to the various land holdings within the oasis, in accordance with a complicated distribution system which still follows the ancient rules, through an intricate network of little open channels known as seguias. The regulations on the distribution were originally laid down by Imam Ibn Chabbat (d. 1282 in Tozeur) in a book written in the middle of the 13th century. Under this system each holding of land, depending on its situation, size and time of irrigation (morning, evening, etc.), is assigned a particular unit of time (khaddous), during which it is supplied with water through the seguias, all of which are of the same size. This close control over the distribution of water is necessitated by the scarcity of the supply. The artesian wells bring up water from depths of between 60 and 100m (200 and 330ft); but in recent years the water table has been slowly but steadily falling, so that the yield of the wells has been decreasing. They are now giving place to modern deep wells, which tap deposits of fossil water at a depth of 600m/2000ft - a supply dating from earlier geological periods which is not renewable.

Land ownership

Land ownership in Tozeur is still based on traditional and rather antiquated concepts and structures. Most of the land in the oasis belongs to no more than 60 families, who account for under 2% of the population, and the Zaouia Tidjaniya, a wealthy and influential religious brotherhood found throughout the Maghreb. Only 8% of the land belongs to smallholders who work their own land and usually own no more than 50 palms. The large landowners - many of them merchants or nomads, who are traditionally disinclined to work on the land - and religious brotherhoods own more than 1,000 palms apiece, and their land is worked by share-croppers (khammes), who retain between a 10th and a third (depending on the crop) of the harvest. The name khammes comes from khamsa ("five"), the croppers' average or traditional share being one-fifth. This pattern of land ownership and employment developed over the centuries when the caravan routes fell out of use and oasis farming remained the only means of subsistence. The wealthier landowners bought up the impoverished smallholders' water rights, cut off their water supply and finally acquired their land, and the dispossessed peasants were then compelled to become their tenants. The share of the harvest they receive is sufficient only to meet the most basic requirements of subsistence.