Touggourt across the Saharan Atlas

 Touggourt across the Saharan Atlas 

We set out from Timgad on a bright and sunny morning. We passed fields that has been ploughed and ready for grain to be planted and orchards with many of the rows of trees covered with white muslin cloth. There were green fields where there was irrigation, trees and low hills in the distance.

We some entered the foothills of the Saharan Atlas Mountains, an extension of the Atlas Mountains more assciated with Morocco. The Saharan Atlas sepaarte the coastal plains and plateaus from the Sahara.

After 40 minutes of driving we passed a sign telling us that we were at 1,550 metres and since Timgad is at 1,000 metres, we had already climbed 550 metres but the road continued upwards. There were fields in the bottom of the valley but the upper slopes were rough pasture and scrub, patches of rock and very few trees. The road hair pinned upwards, giving views back down the valley. We crossed a pass and the road descended.

Many of the smaller valleys had small earth dams with pipes leading to a small cistern or reservoir to provide water for irrigation. We turned along a valley bottom until the next turn that would take us up the Ghoufi Canyon. There were steep sides and the cliffs closed in on the road with little space for anything else.   

A view back down the canyon. The road turns a corner in the centre of the photo. 

There are two Roman inscriptions. The one being pointed at under the curved black bar is virtually illegible. The one to the right under the straight black bar commenorates the legion that built the road through the canyon. 

Just metres further up the canyon is the monument recalling the first shot fired at the outbreak of the Revolution (what locals call it, whilst we would refer to it as the War of Independence) on 1st November 1954. A bus that a politician was travelling on was stopped and he was shot dead.

After a coffee break we stopped at Ghoufi. It is where there has been a village for over 1,400 years. The river has carved out a deep canyon. There are 26 types of date palm growing in the bottom of the canyon. The water is often only knee deep but in 2024, a nine metre high flash flood cascaded down the canyon causing a lot of damage. Only one old lady and some goats still live there. 

It has some troglydyte houses built half way up the canyon's cliffs, the dark line running along the far cliff face in the middle of the photo. Algeria's second highest mountain is just behind the horizon.  

This is a fortified granary with sheer drops on three sides overlooking the canyon. Each family had a separate room to store their grain together with any valueables.

We stopped for a lunch of traditional wheat soup, chicken and fruit in Biskra. Biskra is considered to be the gateway to the Sahara. We left Biskra and headed for the desert. On the fringes of the town, the desert is being invaded by urban sprawl with new housing and factories being built with scrub desert vegetation between plots.

The desert is largely flat with a few low hills in the distance. There are a few scrub plants but little exceeding knee height. But there is water in places and where water seeps to the surface, it evaporates and leaves a white salty deposit. Entreprising farmers have levelled the surface with salt free soil and sand and planted date plantations on the salt free new soil to give them time for seeping water to help the palms to establish themselves as date palms are moderately tolerate of brackish water.

The sun set and the moon rose as we entered Touggourt, formerly a simple oasis town that has doubled in size in the last decade. Touggourt was te starting point of the first motorised crossing of the Sahara devised y the then Citreon owner. 

Timgad, the Pompeii of Africa

 Timgad, the Pompeii of Africa 

We had a two hour drive from Constantine. There are extensive wheat fields on the road out of Constantine with hills in the distance with just a few green firlds where there was irrigation water. We had a brief stop at Les Lacs where there are two salt pans at the lowest point of the country at 30 metres below sea level. One of the pans is shallow and dries out in summer due to evaporation. It only refills with the winter rains. 

The other salt pan is much larger and is permanent. Along its edge are rectangular evaporation ponds to harvest the salt. It is collected and sold at the side of the road or to merchants.

The scenery changed again. The hills where still there but there were fewer fields interspersed with large brown areas of stunted growth claiming to be rough pasture but due to the sparsity of vegetation, it would be hard to maintain anything other than a small herd other a large area.  

Our next stop of the day was at the Mausoleum of Madracen. He was a Berber Numidian king and the mausoleum was built in the 3rd century BC.  It sits surrunded by fields with hills rising in all directions. It has been excavated but no sarcophagus or grave goods were found. 

This is probably the best view of the mausoleum...

as the other sde has soe temporary reapirs to maintain the integrity of the structure but when there are so many ancient monuments and only a limited budget, money is allocated sparingly. 

The base was suttounded by column, not for any functional architectural reason but just for esthics. 

Some columns are in reasonable condition...

...but some sections and sections of walls show erosion and are in urgent need of repair...

                                      

...just as the east facing door also needs attention. It was an hour's drive on to Timgad where we had lunch before visiting the Roman ruins. 

The city was founded by Emperor Trajan around 100 AD. It ia nick named the 'Pompeii of North Africa' due to its excellent state of preservation although no bodies were found. 

First through the gates of the ruins was the museum. We could take photos of the mosaics but not any of the exhibits. There were statues, lamps, pottery and household items.

Just one of the mosaics showing a geometric pattern...

...and another depicting Jupiter in the centre with a wide surround of more geometric patterns. 

Outside were the stone donative inscriptions, stones recording a donation from the named donor and recording the god to whom the donation is dedicated. 

A view through the northern gate up the main north-south road to the forum at the end. At the top is a cross roads with the man east-west main road.

A detail of a hypocaust, the underfloor heating of Roman baths. There was also a library, homes and public latrines.

A view across the landscape of some of the ruins. 

A side street and the surface was of a lower quality construction and stone used than the main road. 

The Arch of Trajan viewed from the crossroads of the main two roads going north-south and east-west in front of the forum. 

A view across the forum. 

Behind the forum was the well preserved ampitheatre which was so much better preserved than the theatre we saw in Djemila. Near the top of the site were some public baths. These were quite striking as some of the areas where the slaves worked to tend the fires to produce the heat for the baths were preserved. 

We passed the market with its stome stalls, basically a slab of rock resting on two vertical slabs, just visible behind the three columns to the left.  

The Arch of Trajan in the evening sun, although it was built nearly 80 years after his death. 

 

 

Tiddis and the City of Bridges

Tiddis and the City of Bridges 

Our frst stop of the day was Tiddis, The romans built it on topof a re-existing Berber settlement. It was used as a defensive outpost for Constantine, then called Citra. This prosperous town, established on a plateau, with steep sides had a monumental gate, baths, industrial facilities (tanneries and a pottery), cisterns to collect rainwater, much bigger than the ones we had seen the day before at Djemila, a sanctuary to Mithras dating back to the 4th century BC, and also a Christian chapel.

We passed a cemetery and a small square centre where people were buried in the foetus position, surrounded by a rock circle. Above this would have been a pile of stones that had long since disappeared. 

We went through the outer gate and paused at a small church purposefully built opposite the site of the temple dedicated to Mithras where bulls would be sacrificed and those to be initiated into the cut were covered in blood. We passed some cisterns as we made our way up the hill with slopes much steeper than at Djemila but it started raining.

We came to the forum, much smaller than most forums as it was a small site with irregular slopes. From the tower, we had an impression of how well this location aided defence as it would be hard to attck uphill and the enemy could be seen from a long way away. The rain had intensified but instead of continuing, we decided to head back to the mini-bus. Our next scheduled stop was a mosque , and since it was raining, a much more atttractive option as it would be dry. 

We got off the mini-bus outside the Emir Abdulkader Mosque. It was named after Emir Abdelkader, considered to be the instigator of and influencial in organising opposition to French colonial control in the 19th century. Planning started soon after achieving indepedence but construction was only completed in 1994.

The decrations inside are supberb, and whlst materials came from all round the world, te decoration was done by local craftsmen. The dome is 64 metres high and the teo square minarets are 107 metres high. It can hold 15,000 worshippers and was once the largest in Algeria but its position has now slipped. 

After returning to Constantine and lunch we had time to visit the Citra Museum. It has more mosaics, a room dedicated to coins, artefacts from Roman history and afterwards, ancient history and upstairs, more modern art.

                                      

Then it was a short drive across town to the Ahmad Bey Palace. The palace was commissioned durthe rule of Ahmed Bey ben Mohamed Cherif. Construction took ten years sarting in 1825. He only occupied it for two years before it fell to the French who had captured Algiers in 1830 but it had taken them that long to reack Constantine. 

A twoer to the left, part of the palace whilst the dome and the square minaret to the right is the Ghazal Market Mosque. 

We had a guided tour inside and then some free time.

A detail of the ceiling. 

It has four courtyards, this is the Orange courtyard as orange trees grow in it. 

One of the slender columns that are either round, octogonal or composite. 

One side of the gallery running around one of the courtyards...

...another detail...

...an ornate door at the top of the stairs leading from the upper floor facing the courtyard to the ground floor.

The door to the bey's office.

Inside the bey's office flanked by his advisor to his right and his general.

The servants courtyard.

After the bey's palace we drove up to the Martyr's Monument, set on a high point of the plateau where Constantine is built. It commenorates those from the area that fell during the First Word War. There are are the names of the more than 800 names. There are not just French names but Arabic and Jewish names plus a scattering of Italian and Spanish names who fell fidghting for France.

A view of the cliff to one side (the top is a restricted area, an Algerian military base)...

...and the view to the other side with the newer otter suburbs in the distance.

A French bridge bult 1911 that spans the gorge. The road leads straight into the old town . To the right of the photo is a former French military base. 

Looking downstream from the 1911 French bridge and the end of the gorge and one of the seven bridges that link the city to other areas giving the nickname of the city as The City of Bridges. 

A view from the bridge back to the Martyr's Monument. 

Looking up the gorge, where the river exits a natural stone arch In the distance is another bridge, a Frnech built replica of an earlier Ottoman bridge. Then it was time to walk along a road hacked out of the cliff face with frequent tunnels underneath the French military base to reach the centre of the city and return to our hotel. 

 

Djemila UNESCO site, Algeria

 Djemila UNESCO site.

We had a planned stop at a resturant for lunch as everything else was closed for Friday prayers. As soon as the last mosque's prayers were finished we headed to the entrance to the Roman city known as Cuicul.

First stop on site was teh museum. It display many of the findings from digs but it is most famous for the range and quality of the mosaics that have been lifted from excavated villas and reset on the internal walls of the musuem. Here is a range...

 

A mosaic from the House of Bacchus. 

A model of the site, starting with the northern and oldest part with the forum, courthouse and other essential buildings and the oldest section at the bottom of the photo. Then the next section above it, the theatre to the top left and houses and villas to the top right hand corner.

It was started on a virgin site where no former settlement had been built. It was started in the 1st century AD as a settlement for retired Romn soldiers. It is a hilly triangular site with rivers on two sides that meet towards the north of the city. 

The Christian Basilica. 

Some of the columns and wallks of surviving structures. 

The main temple.

A gatehouse and arch over one of the approaches to the city centre. 

Opus Africano, a type of contruction used in the srea using large blocks for stength with infill of alternate layers of small stones and tiles to give some flexibility to withstand destruction during earthquakes. earthquakes

The Arch of Caracalla, unfortunately with the sun in the wrong place to see the delicate features.  

The plain side of the arch but with the afternoon sun shining on it.