Auteur: Aures
Date: 2009-02-27 21:18:47
Les travaux de M. W. Hilton-Simpson sur les Aurès (suite)
awras a écrit:
"....A instar "des grands explorateurs de son 'époque" il a donné plusieurs conférences sur les Aurès et sur le mode de vie de ses habitants, les Ishawiyen (un exemple de ses conférences sera bientôt en ligne) ...."
Il s’agit d'une conférence prononcée devant les membres de la "Geographical Society" de Londres le 07 novembre 1921, et publiée ensuite dans "The Geographical Journal" de 1922.
Elle se qualifierait comme une « promenade » socio-historico-culturelle à travers les Aurès, car elle touche à tous les aspects de la région: sa géographie, son climat, l’architecture, le folklore, les coutumes, l’histoire, la flore, etc.
En plus, l’article contient plusieurs photos des villages et des paysages de l’époque : Ghoufi, Tifelfal, Tijdad, Ish-m-ul, Maafa, Jemora, Banian, etc.
Évidemment l'auteur va au-delà d'une simple analyse descriptive en démontrant que la préservation et la conservation des habitudes et le mode de vie des habitants des Aurès sont restés intacts depuis des millénaires à cause de la protection naturelle de ces montagnes: à cause de la géographie de la région.
La partie d'aujourd’hui est une description géographique d’ Ighzer n Abi, Ighzer Amllal, Mag Azuggwagh / Azeggwah n umag d wedrar n Cecar.
Bonne lecture
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THE INFLUENCE OF ITS GEOGRAPHY ON THE PEOPLE OF THE AURES MASSIF, ALGERIA
M. W. Hilton-Simpson
The Geographical Journal, Vol. 59, No. 1. (Jan., 1922), pp. 19-34.
-I-
This paper can lay claim to be nothing more than an attempt to draw attention to the influence of the geography of the massif upon its Shawiya Berber inhabitants in the preservation of manners and customs, arts and crafts, many of which have disappeared from other more accessible regions of North Africa. In order to realize how such a conservative influence has been exercised by the country upon its inhabitants, we must call to mind the frontiers of the massif and the geography of its valleys, before proceeding to consider a few examples of those traces of ancient culture which are to be found among the Shawiya today.
The boundaries of the Aures are clearly defined. Its northern frontier, separating it from the high-level plateau some 2800 feet above sea, upon which stand the ruins of the Roman camp of Lambessa and city of Timgad, consists of a barrier of steep wooded slopes leading up to the ridge of Mahmel, 7620 feet, and the peaks of Ish-mul, 6800 feet, and Shelya, 7630 feet above sea-level, which mountains, capped with snow during a great part of the year, form the watershed of the massif. This frontier provides the Shawiya with an excellent line of defence in the north, running from west to east between the modern French towns of Batna and Khenshela on the plateau.
The southern wall of the Aures, the barren rocks overlooking the Sahara, whose wonderful coloration at sunset delights the eye of the visitor to Biskra, offers scant hope of success to an invader approaching from the desert, for the streams flowing from the high northern ridges of the hills to lose themselves in the Sahara emerge from the massif through narrow gorges bordered by precipitous cliffs, their waters liable to rise in sudden flood when rain has fallen or snow has melted on the watershed ;and such tracks as avoid the river-bed are narrow, steep, and easily defensible. From the neighbourhood of Biskra in the west, then, to the oasis of Khanqa Sidi Naji in the south-eastern corner of the massif, the region is well protected by its southern geographical boundary.
From the oasis of Khanqa Sidi Naji the great bare ridge of the Jebel Shershar runs north-eastwards towards the plateau to the east of Khenshela, attaining an altitude above sea-level of 5870 feet, and forming a mighty bastion to guard the massif from the incursions of the nomad tribes, themselves Berbers, who wander over the country to the east of the Aures.
The western frontier of the massif, beneath which now runs the railway from Batna to Biskra, though, as seen from the train, it may appear less clearly defined than the other borders of the Aures, is in reality rugged and steep enough to oppose an almost impassable barrier to an enemy approaching from the west, for its rocky walls are penetrated by but one deep defile-that which leads eastward to the valley of Bu-Zina in the hills from a point near the railway at Ma'afa.
The frontiers of the Aures massif, then, are such as to favour within them the survival of ancient customs among its Berber inhabitants. The physical features of the country so shut off from the outer world; provide a series of natural ramparts for the protection of the Shawiya within what we may term their outer walls. Thus, in the north-west the rocky amphitheatre of Mahmel protects from the north and partially encloses the high-lying valley of Bu Zina, in which rises the stream of the same name; a valley surrounded by precipitous rocky hills penetrated by two narrow gorges, the defile of Ma'afa leading to the west, and a deep ravine beneath the heights of a sacred mountain, known as the Jebel Bus, through which the Wad Bu Zina flows south to its confluence with the Wad Abdi at the important village of Menaa. Immediately to the east of the Bu Zina valley and separated from it by a rocky ridge-a spur of Mahmel-lies that of the Abdi stream.
Rising at the eastern foot of Mahmel, it flows in a south-westerly direction to join the Bu Zina river at Mena'a, through a valley (containing numerous villages) which, like that of Bu Zina and its eastern neighbour the Wad el Abyod, closely resembles a district of southern Europe.
The gardens beside its stream are plentifully besprinkled with apricot, peach, and almond trees, as well as with walnuts and figs; the slopes which border it are studded with juniper and ilex.
The rocky chain separating the Abdi valley from that of the Wad el Abyod (in which chain the peaks of Azraq overlooking Mena'a rise to a height of some 6350 feet above the sea) contains high valleys and upper slopes clothed in forests of pine and cedar (the home of sus scrofa, the European wild boar), whence distant views of the snows of Ishmul to the north provide glimpses of scenery more suggestive, perhaps, of an Asiatic hill country than of mountains upon the fringe of the African desert.
But in descending the Wad Abdi from Mena'a, riding largely in the bed of the stream, the traveller finds that in a space of some 12 miles as the crow flies he has left behind him the European scenery of the country about Mena'a, and, having passed between ruddy cliffs in the gorge just to the north of the little date oasis of Beni Suiq, he emerges into a wide and typically North African desert valley at Jemora, where the stream, meandering through groves of many thousands of date palms, flows on to the Sahara between ranges of hills devoid of vegetation, whose rocks glow at evening in all those successive shades of orange, pink, and purple which combine to form the glory of a sunset upon barren desert hills. In these 12 short miles he has left a land of fair-haired Berbers for a desert valley dotted with the tents of the Ulad Zian nomads, boasting of an Arab descent; he has exchanged the woodland home of the wild boar for the barren plains and foothills which afford meagre sustenance to the Dorcas and Cuvier's gazelles, and the bare crags among which may be sought Ovis Lervin, the Barbary sheep. I have nowhere met with so sharp a contrast in peoples, fauna, and flora as that to be found in the short space between Jemora and Mena'a. (Voyez sous peu la liste de toutes les plantes de cette région géographique. Elles ont été dénombrées par le botaniste E. Cosson, lors de la toute première tentative de recensement de la flore algérienne en 1853. La liste sera postée au message intitulé : Menaa, ndlr )
The Wad el Abyod, the valley of which lies to the east of the Wad Abdi, also flows from north-east to south-west, rising at the foot of Shelya and passing beneath the southern slopes of Ishmul. For the northern part of its course this river valley resembles closely enough that of Abdi above Mena'a ; but at a point near the centre of its course it turns to the south, and, flowing through the chasm of Tighanimin, the only cleft in its south-eastern wall (a ridge known as Zelatu above this gorge, where it reaches 5670 feet, and Kruma-4960 feet-to the south-west of the ravine), it emerges into a basin, some miles in width, which forms a sort of hinterland between the European scenery of its upper course and the Africa of its lower reaches.
From this basin onwards the stream, hence known as the Wad Rasira, runs south-westward through a wide valley between the ridge of Kruma to the north-west and that of Ahmar Khaddu-meaning the " Red-cheeked Mountain" from its hues at sunset-to the south-east, this wall of the valley attaining an altitude of some 6320 feet above sea-level. The ridges of Zelatu and Ahmar Khaddu, branches of a common stem known as the Ras Tageshrirt-6480 feet-enclose this valley and the basin at its head from the north and north-east, as does Mahmel that of Bu Zina.
In the centre of this wide valley the stream has cut for itself a ravine which must, I think, rank first among the scenic wonders of the Aures, if not of the whole of Algeria.
The traveller crossing the valley from side to side sees nothing of the river nor any outstanding feature to break the barren monotony of surroundings described by Colonel Lartigue as "un pays épouvantable, où il semble que les pierres ont plu en deluge" until suddenly he finds himself upon the brink of a narrow chasm, at the foot of whose precipitous cliffs the Rasira stream flows through a belt of date palms, which the depth of the cañon reduces to the proportion of mere oleander bushes to the eye of the beholder from the brink of the great ravine. Clinging like eagles' nests to the rim of the cañon, overlooking their plantations below them, are to be seen numerous Shawiya hamlets, their houses built flush with the edge of the cliff from which, at a distance, they are scarcely distinguishable. This cañon of the Rasira, throughout its dozen miles of length, is marvellous in its grandeur and wild beauty.
Upon emerging from its cañon the river enters broken country, in which it waters a large date oasis at Banyan, before entering another but shorter gorge a deep cleft in a solid wall of rock, which forms the central gateway of the southern Aures, through which it passes to the oasis of Mshunesh on the edge of the Sahara. Thus it will be seen that the western and central portions of the Aures are subdivided by rocky ridges into a series of valleys, each approached by but one or two deep defiles, which valleys may be likened to small fortresses within the natural walls which guard the massif as a whole.
To the east of Ahmar Khaddu, of which the eastern face is very precipitous, lies a tangle of lower foothills and valleys, through one of which the Wad Qeshtan flows from the Aures to the desert, an area far less densely populated than the country to the north-west of the Red-cheeked Mountain, its inhabitants mostly leading a nomadic life.
We did not, therefore, visit these lesser valleys, for we preferred to seek out the Shawiya villages upon either side of the Jebel Shershar, the eastern bastion of the Aures. Beneath the western slopes of this ridge the most considerable of the poor Aures streams, known as the Wed el Arab, flows through a remarkably barren country until it reaches the Sahara at the oasis of Khanqa Sidi Naji after passing through a defile of the same name.
This valley, too, contains but few villages, for many of its inhabitants move up and down the barren hills with their flocks of goats and sheep according to the season and the state of the pastures: as happens also east of the ridge of the Jebel Shershar, where the Wed Beni Barbar flows southwards through the foothills to the desert. But though many of them lead a nomadic or semi-nomadic life, the inhabitants of the slopes of Jebel Shershar are Shawiya; and in such villages as they possess we found that Berber culture could be studied.
(à suivre)
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