Gourara
More actions
| Gourara | |
|---|---|
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Algeria |
| Province/State | Timimoun Province |
| Coordinates | 29.26, 0.23 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 276 km² |
| Terrain | Oasis gardens among palms on the edge of the Grand Erg Occidental; approximately the communes of Timimoun, Aougrout, Talmine and Tinerkouk; the map line's outer edge leaves out ground above 4,000 m, bare or sparse ground, snow and ice, and open water |
| Growing history | |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Gourara is a cannabis growing area in the Gourara, the group of oases round Timimoun on the eastern edge of the Grand Erg Occidental, in Timimoun Province, Algeria.[1] The first sign of hemp growing in the Sahara that the ethnobotanist Jamal Bellakhdar found concerns a douar near Timimoun in 1721.[2]: 130 In 2007 the gendarmerie found cannabis, with opium poppy, growing in oasis gardens at Aougrout, Talmine and Tinerkouk.[3]
The oases
Timimoun, the historic capital of the Gourara, lies about 200 km north-east of the town of Adrar. The oases round it lie along the sebkha or in the erg, among them Taghouzi and Tinerkouk.[1] The group of oases centred on Timimoun is divided into the sub-regions of Tinerkouk, Swami, Tagouzi, Aougrout and Deldoul.[4] The region receives only 15 to 20 mm of rain a year. The oases take their water from the aquifer by foggaras, which set the oases of the Gourara, the Touat and the Tidikelt apart from the rest of Algeria; in 2004 the national water agency counted 1,398 foggaras in the three groups, 908 of them in use.[1]
Timimoun became the seat of a daïra in 1974, in the wilaya of Adrar created that year.[1] A law of 11 December 2019 made the ten communes of Timimoun, Ouled Saïd, Aougrout, Deldoul, Metarfa, Tinerkouk, Ksar Kaddour, Charouine, Talmine and Ouled Aïssa a wilaya of their own.[5]: 14
Cultivation history
Before 2000
Bellakhdar dates the first sign he found of hemp grown in the Sahara to 1721: an act of arbitration for the douar of the Beni Mehlal, near Timimoun, mentions a theft of kif plants. He thought that by then the oases of Touggourt, the Tidikelt, the Touat and the Gourara probably already held plots of resin hemp, and that only the variety indica can have been grown in the Sahara, whose climate does not suit fibre hemp. The French officers who took over the administration of the oases after the conquest found cannabis and poppy grown in Touggourt, the Touat and the Gourara.[2]: 130–132
Since 2000
El Watan reported in May 2007 that the gendarmerie brigade of Charouine had found cannabis and opium poppy growing in several oases of what was then the wilaya of Adrar the month before. At Aougrout, on 7 April, it found 2,060 cannabis plants hidden among ears of wheat in the five-hectare field of a man of 72, who said they were for his own use. At Tinerkouk, 20 people of Ksar Fatis were brought before the court for growing cannabis and opium; one man's garden there held 4,086 poppy plants on two hectares. At Ksar Yahia Oudris, in the erg, where the reporter went with the brigade, the opium and cannabis had been planted in vegetable gardens surrounded by palms and reeds, beside chillies, tomatoes, green beans and cucumbers. An officer of the Charouine brigade said that growers used the distance of some oases from the security services. The paper's reporter wrote that the growing of opium and cannabis in the Adrar region was known to be a local tradition before it spread to a large scale; Algeria had not historically been a producing country, and its few crops had been for the growers' own use.[3]
The two papers that reported the other finds of that April give different figures. El Watan counted 8,317 poppy plants and 6,274 cannabis plants at Ksar Yahia Oudris on 23 April, and 66,000 poppy plants and 540 cannabis plants in three fields of seven hectares at Ksar Bahmou, in Talmine, on 27 April.[3] Aujourd'hui le Maroc gave 8,224 poppy plants and 6,260 cannabis plants on 15 hectares at "Ksar Yahia Idris", and 43,000 poppy plants and 500 cannabis plants for the plantation in the commune of Talmine.[6]
The Touat and the Tidikelt
The Touat and the Tidikelt are the two other groups of foggara oases of the region.[1] Bellakhdar names both among the oases that probably held hemp plots by 1721, and the Touat among those where the French found cannabis growing.[2]: 130–131 A herbarium sheet gathered by Auguste Chevalier at Adrar on 31 December 1931, Chevalier 42218 (1931), is labelled Adrar, cultivé.[7]
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
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See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Otmane, Tayeb; Kouzmine, Yaël (30 June 2011). "Timimoun, évolution et enjeux actuels d'une oasis saharienne algérienne". Insaniyat (in français). 15 (51–52). Centre de recherche en anthropologie sociale et culturelle: 165–183. ISSN 1111-2050. Retrieved 22 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Bellakhdar, Jamal (2017). "Les voies suivies par le chanvre dans sa conquête du Maghreb" (PDF). Hespéris-Tamuda (in français). LII (2): 117–150. ISSN 0018-1005.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "La culture du Pavot et du cannabis prend de l'ampleur en Algérie". El Watan (in français). 14 May 2007. Retrieved 21 October 2026 – via Afrik.com.
- ↑ "Gourara Oases Group, Algeria". Med-O-Med. 13 June 2017. Retrieved 22 October 2026.
- ↑ "Loi n° 19-12 du 14 Rabie Ethani 1441 correspondant au 11 décembre 2019 modifiant et complétant la loi n° 84-09 du 4 février 1984 relative à l'organisation territoriale du pays" (PDF). Journal officiel de la République algérienne (in français) (78): 12–14. 18 December 2019.
- ↑ "Le paradis de l'opium". Aujourd'hui le Maroc (in français). 1 May 2007. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Digitised sheet P00957683: Cannabis sativa L." Herbier national, images. Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. Retrieved 4 October 2026.