A home for the history and living culture of the Warjlani community: classical books, seminars, the sites of the oasis, and a journal written by the people who keep its story.
Warjlan — Ouargla on today’s maps — is one of the oldest inhabited oases of the northern Sahara. Its people built a walled ksar of mud brick and palm wood around wells that have watered palm groves for more than a millennium. They speak Teggargrent, a Zenati Berber language, alongside Arabic.
After the fall of the Rustamid state at Tahert in 909, Ibadi families settled at nearby Isedraten, and for three centuries the oasis was a centre of learning and of the caravan trade running south to the Sahel. This site gathers that memory in one place — and the writing of the community today.
Jurists, theologians and historians whose works travelled from the oasis to Jerba, the Mzab and Oman.
Among the most celebrated minds of the Ibadi Maghrib. He travelled widely, reportedly as far as the lands south of the Sahara, and wrote on theology, legal theory and hadith.
Author of the earliest surviving Ibadi chronicle of North Africa — the lives and sayings of imams and shaykhs, a source later historians drew on for centuries.
Studied in Tunis and taught in the oasis. His systematic treatise on theology remained a standard reference in Ibadi circles of learning.
Talks, field visits and workshops in Ouargla, open to all. Reserve a seat so we can plan for you.
Select a site on the map or in the list. Locations are approximate — go with a local guide.
South of the oasis, low mounds hide a city of carved stucco and courtyards. Archaeologists uncovered part of it a century ago — then the dunes returned.
Youcef Hamouda · Sep 30, 2026Many Warjlani households still keep a chest of handwritten books. Heat, dust and insects are their enemies — but simple habits can save them.
Amina Bekkari · Sep 12, 2026Spoken by fewer people each generation, the Berber language of Ouargla carries words for wells, palms and winds that exist nowhere else.
Mohamed Lakhdari · Aug 27, 2026Theologian, legal theorist and traveller — the most famous name of Warjlan wrote books still taught today.
Fatima Z. Benaissa · Jul 15, 2026Before pumps, every family knew its well and its turn for water. The vocabulary of that system still shapes how the ksar speaks.
Youcef Hamouda · Jun 02, 2026
