Ksar of Tizourgane

Tizourgane (in Tashelhit: ⵜⵉⵣⵯⵔⴳⴰⵏ, Tizʷrgan) is a fortified Souss douar, or village, on a mountaintop in the Anti-Atlas, some 100 kilometres from the city of Agadir in the direction of the town of Tafraout, in the commune of Ida Ougnidif, Chtouka Aït Baha province, Souss-Massa region, in the Kingdom of Morocco. The douar belongs to the sheikhdom of Aït Wafayad, which comprises 30 douars. Its population was estimated at 32 according to the official population and housing census of 2004. Tizourgane played a role in watching over and guarding the trade-caravan route in the region. The fortified village stands on the summit of a small mountain shaped like the crater of an extinct volcano.

The village is surrounded by a wall of stone and thorn that clings to the edge of the mountain, and it has a single entrance topped by a tower overlooking the side the road crosses, so that it could be watched from a long way off.

Tizourgane was famous in the past for the manufacture of stone mills and for its resistance to the colonial invasion. But with the restoration of security and stability after Morocco's independence, the villagers moved down to the foot of the mountain, and it was left abandoned and exposed to loss and ruin.

Machine-translated from “تيزركان (آيت وافاياض)” on the Arabic Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Ksar of Tizourgane ranks #4,270 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #17 of the 37 mapped in Morocco. See how Morocco compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia (in Arabic) ↗