Travel Guide El Oued

El-Oued, whose name means river, the "city of a thousand domes" as Isabelle Eberhardt called it when she lived there around 1898-1900, is the capital of Souf, which also means river, an amazing region in the north of the Grand Erg Oriental, between the Wadi R'hir and Tunisia. A real sea of sand whose average altitude is that of the sea level, the Souf owes its particularity to its "honeycomb" aspect.The inhabitants of Souf arrived from Yemen five centuries ago, driven out by excessive taxes, and developed with remarkable patience and self-sacrifice the cultivation of date palms which, before, quickly withered in this mineral universe. But the exiles were able to detect the presence of water under the dunes and the sand of the disappeared wadi and they began to dig until they found it, often at a depth of more than 20 m. At the bottom of the holes, whose diameter can reach several hundred meters, they planted date palms which, since then, are cultivated with their roots in the water and their heads in the sun. Irrigation is no longer essential, but the maintenance of the funnels is! It is necessary to tirelessly move the sand up the slope towards the periphery of the crater protected by interlacing palms, derisory screens.About twenty villages developed at the time around the palm groves, today they have become almost a suburb of El-Oued which has considerably expanded.On the spot, and to know everything about the Souf, you should try to get the monograph Le Souf by André-Roger Voisin, published by El-Walid.