{"id":744,"date":"2013-10-13T08:09:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-13T08:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/?p=744"},"modified":"2024-04-19T19:24:15","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T19:24:15","slug":"introduction-to-an-oasis-tafilalt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/?p=744","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to an oasis (Tafilalt)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_1046\"
\nThis is our first clear view of the Tafilalt\u2014a palmerie we have been following for the past 40 minutes from Errachidia.\u00a0 We look down over a sprawling river of green, stretching for miles to the north and south. This roadside stop hangs over the top of the oasis, which seems to fill in an immense crevasse opening up the surface of the desert.\u00a0 The heat is oppressive: Jeremy tries to stand in the shade I cast.\u00a0 Down below, the palmerie looks cool and lush.
\n\"SONY
\nEric Ross, AUI geographer, is walking us through a brief introduction to the oasis.\u00a0\u201cFirst, I want you to forget everything you think you know about oases. \u00a0Forget Hollywood images of waving palm trees and limpid pools of water; forget the myth of effortless fertility. \u00a0An oasis is an agricultural system,\u201d Eric announces, gesturing at the lush river of green below us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWater alone is not enough,\u201d John Shoup adds. \u00a0\u201cAdd water to desert and you get a salt marsh, not an oasis.\u201d
\nA student hand goes up.\u00a0 \u201cWhy a salt marsh?\u00a0 Is there salt in the sand?\u201d
\nEric shakes his head.\u00a0 \u201cEvaporation.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0John clarifies:\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s salt in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen that salt, crusting on the red rocks, marking the dry riverbeds near Telouet.\u00a0 There are salt mines in the area, too, so I\u2019d guess the salt passes into the water from the rock in the mountains.
\n\"IMG_1127\"<\/a>\u00a0\"IMG_1126\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But Eric is speaking, repeating his point for emphasis. \u00a0\u201cAn oasis is a complex system of irrigation and husbandry: incredibly labor intensive, but also highly productive. \u00a0In fact, a thriving oasis is the most productive agricultural system in the world in terms of output per hectare\u2014more productive than the often-cited rice paddies of southeast Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eric continues his explanation.\u00a0 \u201cA healthy oasis has three productive levels.\u00a0 Palms go in first, because their roots are bulbs, like tulips, and they help hold water in the soil.\u00a0 Their fronds also provide some small measure of shade, which is important for the crops that follow.\u00a0 The middle layer consists of fruit trees: pomegranates and figs, olives and citrus.\u00a0 The bottom level produces vegetables, onions, and also forage crops like alfalfa to feed donkeys, sheep, etc., since there is no open grazing land.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>
\n\u201cThis, unlike the oases we\u2019ll see further south, is a thriving oasis, and it is the second largest oasis of the Sahara, second only to the Nile.\u00a0 In the sites we\u2019ll visit tomorrow, further downstream, the middle layer has vanished: fruit trees are no longer sustainable, given the greater scarcity of water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe oases in Morocco differ from those in western Egypt: in Egypt, the oases are produced through artesian wells, and the oasis is based on the distribution of water from the center to the periphery.\u00a0 Moroccan oases are all based on surface water that flows down from the mountains: the sandstone of these mountains does not absorb water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe labor needed for an oasis to thrive is organized according to a complex social system.\u00a0 There are four classes (not unlike the caste system of India), of which only two classes can own property.\u00a0 All of the property in an oasis is privately owned, but the water rights are more commonly collective, and those rights are administered tribally.\u00a0 The water rights of individual families are measured in terms of hours of irrigation per year, and those hours are defined in part by the amount of rain in a given year.\u00a0 The man administering water rights has memorized the ancestry of each land-owner and the percentage of water from each irrigation channel that eventually leads to the calculation of irrigation hours due.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone outside the landowner classes of the village attempts to buy land, both the seller and the buyer are fined by the community, and upon the buyer\u2019s death, the land reverts to the seller\u2019s family.\u00a0 Buyers from outside the landowning class cannot acquire land to pass on to their descendants.<\/p>\n

\u201cConversely, everyone from a landowning family inherits, leaving the land to be ever more finely parsed.\u00a0 Eventually, one might inherit a single tree, leaving one\u2019s children to inherit a portion of a tree, while one\u2019s grandchildren inherit a still smaller fraction of a tree.\u00a0 An entire family can live for a year on the proceeds from a single tree\u2019s fruit, so even a fraction of a tree is not an inconsiderable inheritance\u2014as long as one has the water needed for that tree to thrive.\u201d
\n\"SONY<\/a>
\n\u201cThe importance of water, along with its scarcity, means that oases have historically been sites of much social violence: raiding from one tribe to another, raiding herds, raiding grain reserves.\u00a0 This can be seen in the architecture: each house is a little fortress, each village is a little fortress. \u00a0But we’ll see more of this tomorrow.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is our first clear view of the Tafilalt\u2014a palmerie we have been following for the past 40 minutes from Errachidia.\u00a0 We look down over a sprawling river of green, stretching for miles to the north and south. This roadside stop hangs over the top of the oasis, which seems to fill in an immense … Continue reading Introduction to an oasis (Tafilalt)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4JDdJ-c0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2841,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions\/2841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}