DOURIET — “All the villages were abandoned at the same time, starting in 1970…” Mohamed is recounting the more recent history, as he walks through the narrow streets of his ancestral home village of Douiret. Some 20 kilometers west of Tataouine, this small troglodyte village in the Tunisian Dahar mountain range has been emptied of its residents, and its houses are slowly disappearing beneath the ruins.
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Villages such as Douiret, Matmata and Beni Khedache, known for their tourist appeal, that seem to hide another reality. Faced with the fear of losing part of their history and identity, residents like Mohammed are mobilizing to maintain a presence and safeguard their heritage.
In Douiret jdida (new Douiret), Salem remembers his childhood “spent up there” as well as he remembers the day he left in 1979. Like many Douiret residents, he decided to follow his wife and in-laws down the mountain to live on the plain, leaving their house in “very poor condition.” The region’s residents had long been accustomed to leaving periodically for Sfax, Gabès, Djerba or Tunis, in order to find work. While they moved frequently, their departure was only temporary.
A history of modernity
From the 1970s, locals were encouraged by authorities to leave their villages in the Dahar for new houses in the plain. This political decision, launched with a speech by the first president of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, in the city of Matmata in 1959, was part of a push to build a “modern” state.
Bourguiba saw in all forms of traditional housing “appalling sights dating back hundreds of centuries.”
For Bourguiba, president of a country that had just gained its independence, “modernity required challenging certain forms of vernacular housing,” says historian Charlotte Jebili, which meant all forms of ancestral dwellings.
Bourguiba saw in all forms of traditional housing “appalling sights dating back hundreds of centuries,” constituting an obstacle standing in the way of the “progress” he envisioned. While visiting the region, he affirmed that “this primitive mentality… no longer exists,” and deemed it necessary for all Tunisians living there to “leave their Saharan wanderings” in order to form “together with the rest of the population, the stable and evolved nation we want to be.”
New villages
To carry out this policy, Bourguiba decided to build new villages in the plains, sometimes 15 kilometers away from the initial settlements.
The authorities used a variety of means to encourage the inhabitants to move out. The new dwellings were connected to the water and electricity network, which was not the case for the mountain villages. The Tunisian National Housing Association (SNIT) built more than half of the houses in the plain, and gave them for free to villagers who agreed to move in.
Shopkeepers followed suit, leaving a few holdouts on their own.
Built in the shape of a vault, the new houses were inspired by the dwellings of old Douiret, to keep the internal temperature constant, but above all to “convince people to come down,” as one resident of new Douiret explains. After an initial phase of displacement encouraged by the local authorities, the residents then began to move down to the plain on their own accord. New houses were added to the 300 built by the SNIT for new arrivals.
Shopkeepers followed suit, leaving a few holdouts on their own. “Everyone saw things differently. Many didn’t want to leave their homes,” says Jamel, who grew up in new Douiret. His grandparents chose to stay the old village for as long as they could, even though “it was very tiring.”
The other villages of the Dahar suffered the same fate, with only two exceptions: Matmata and Chenini. Salem attributes that to the residents’ absolute opposition to moving out. “They just refused to give up until the end,” he says.
The holdouts
Today, the ancient village of Douiret is empty. Only two holiday homes, or gites, are keeping it alive, welcoming both tourists and people from the region. “Rather than staying with their families in the new village, they come here and pay to help us,” says Latifa, who has been managing one of the gites with his sister for the past 20 years. Even though all villagers have moved to the plain by now, Latifa is ready to bet that “if the whole village was renovated tomorrow, they wouldn’t stay down there.”
To date, most of the houses in the ancient village have been destroyed. According to a census carried out in 2014 by urban planner Manel Zbini, less than 5% of the troglodyte houses have not been damaged.
Faced with the risk of this heritage disappearing, a dozen residents formed, in 1958, the Agency for the Preservation of Nature and the Protection of the Environment of Douiret (ASNAPED), following the departure of the last family from old Douiret. Leading restoration projects, the association helped open the sisters’ gite in 2002, after restoring houses lent by local residents.
Ancestral techniques
Latifa is delighted to see the young generation taking care of the place she where grew up. “This week, I have a group of 15 to 20 people coming from the [new] village to help with maintain the old village… I’m happy and touched,” she said. She was the first to support “the unemployed young people who come to work in agriculture and help to maintain the jessours.”
The jessours, invented several centuries ago, are stone and earth dams that stand several meters high and that hold back rainwater and runoff water. Each terrace corresponds to a plot of land owned by a family in the village. This agricultural technique makes it possible to practice agriculture and arboriculture in an arid zone. Indeed, before the torrential rains that recently hit the region, residents had gone “more than three years without rain”.
While some are worried that this method might be disappearing, Douiret residents don’t agree. “The jessours have never been forgotten,” says one resident. “We have a deep connection with the earth, the olive trees and the palm trees.”
Many people want to keep their jessours as they are, following the ancient technique.
Faced with recurring droughts, Latifa sees that “many people want to keep their jessours as they are, following the ancient technique.”
Another local asset is the architecture, designed to keep cool in an area where temperatures can reach 48.5 °C (119.3 °F) , the record temperature recorded in 2021. Many of the village’s residents emphasize the importance of these ancestral techniques, adapted to the climate.
“In the new village, people live under bricks, where it’s very hot. They use air conditioning, but some of them aren’t rich enough to afford it. Sometimes they die of heat,” Latifa says. Whereas in the ghorfas or caves, as Mohammed describes them, “the temperature is stable, between 26 °C and 27 °C (78.8 °F and 80.6 °F), all year round. There’s no need for heating or air conditioning!”
Preserving heritage
On weekends, Salem’s daughter Ibtissem and her two boys join him in Douiret jdida. Ibtissem lives in Tataouine, but she prefers to say that she lives between the two villages. Even though she left to study in Tunis, she didn’t hesitate to return to the region where she has a “blood, physical and mental connection,” which she nurtures by helping to maintain local traditions through different projects she contributes to.
At almost 40 years old, Ibtissem doesn’t see any risk of the new generation losing these traditions, saying “they cannot forget, they will always be attached to them.” The only thing that worries her is the transmission of the local language, Amazigh. “That’s where the risk lies. When I speak to my father in Amazigh, my two kids start laughing,” she says. Indeed, the number of people who still speak Shilha, the Tunisian Amazigh dialect, is estimated between 10,000 and 50,000.
People would like to have the means to renovate these homes.
Kousay and Wael, Ibtissem’s two nephews in their twenties, agree with her. “I am attached to the region, even if I have to leave, I will always come back whenever I can,” Kousay says. He and his brother haven’t ruled out the possibility of leaving, as work opportunities are almost nonexistent in the Douiret area. “The more opportunities there are elsewhere, the further I will go, but I will always come back,” Wael says.
While their first priority is building their future, they share their grandfather’s vision of the family heritage: an old traditional house near old Douiret. Kousay says that if he could, he would restore and maintain it, but he lacks the financial resources. Like Salem, he thinks that “the state should take care of this.”
“Most people don’t have the means, and those who do prefer to invest in their houses in the plain rather than those in the mountains,” says Salem, who regrets that nothing is being done for the ancient village. “People would like to have the means to renovate these homes, because they might need them or come back to stay in them. It would be better than leaving them derelict.” Kousay agrees, adding “if the state showed initiative, we’d help!”
Seeking recognition
While there are many initiatives, there are not enough funds to restore the entire village. The situation in Douiret is not an exception. Housing structures vary throughout the Dahar mountain range, but all the villages and ksour (typical villages of the Maghreb region) face the same risk of disappearing.
According to the regional commission for cultural affairs in Tataouine, 40% of the ksours will be completely abandoned by 2021. An in-depth survey by geographer Zayed Hammami in 2013 revealed that the rate of abandonment of these fortifications was close to 62%, with some of them over 75% collapsed. Several restoration plans have been launched, led by the Institut National du Patrimoine (INP) and sometimes in collaboration with intergovernmental projects.
One of the reasons for this low restoration rate may be the land tenure system that applies to the ksour. As an INP researcher points out, the vast majority of these ksour are collectively owned. The agreement of all owners is therefore required prior to any transformation of the building, which sometimes results in the cancellation or postponement of restoration projects.
Efforts to make these traditional buildings part of Tunisia’s protected heritage also seem to have been hampered by a certain marginalization of southeast Tunisian culture. In a 2009 UNESCO report, Mustapha Khauousi described it “without exaggeration” as “the poor relation of immovable cultural heritage in Tunisia.” It was only in 2021 that a group of 19 ksour were included for the first time on Tunisia’s national heritage list. A further nine ksour were added to this list in January 2024 by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs.
“They have long been considered by professionals and managers as part of a marginal culture, not to say a backwarded one… it has rarely attracted the attention of researchers and its understanding is still very limited and often superficial,” Khauousi wrote in 2009.
Finding a balance
The INP, a group of associations and representatives of civil society collaborated in 2012 to prepare a file to present the ksours to UNESCO, which put them on a preliminary list in 2019. The list only contains 20 of about 90 of ksours, even though UNESCO considers this cultural element as “underrepresented in the list of world heritage sites, not to say… completely absent.”
UNESCO listing of this heritage could be a lasting way of restoring these dwellings, but it will also mean their exploitation by tourists. Some, like Hayet, a resident of new Douiret, sees the arrival of tourists as beneficial “on all levels: for our work, for exchange and for their own discovery.”
We want to preserve the charm of the village, so that people can feel at home.
Others are conscious of the risks that mass tourism could bring to the region. “It can help, but it must be monitored,” Jamel says, adding that the difficulty in accessing Douiret and other villages is a good way “to preserve this fragile environment.” For her part, Latifa refuses to develop her hostel, saying “Many travel agencies have asked us to expand, but we don’t want to! We want to preserve the charm of the village, so that people can feel at home.”
Turning the village into a tourist attraction doesn’t seem to be an option for Latifa, who is keen to protect it. “That would mean that anyone could come with their 4x4s or buses… Instead of coming with 30 people, they want to bring 70 or 80. This place is not a dormitory!”
