Annonce

**Bourguignon89** · 03 octobre 2009, 18h59

2) Quelques scènes du film

À partir des négatifs très nets fournis par Haeseler, nous avons reconstitué environ 4500 pieds(à convertir en mètre) de film que nous avons daigné présenter pendant la soirée.

- La première partie de ce film illustre la géographie de la partie centrale du massif, la nature sud-européenne de ses vallées du nord, dans le sens où les agriculteurs romain les avaient cultivées ; le décor typiquement nord-africain du canyon de Ghassira; l'imposante paroi de roche qui, formant la limite sud de l'Aurès, fronce les sourcils vers le bas sur le Sahara , et la fente étroite, à quelque 700 pieds de profondeur, à travers laquelle le flux de Ghasira sculpte son chemin vers le sud, à travers ce mur de rochers, avant de se perdre dans le désert.
Ensuite, nous avons procédé à montrer comment les formations rocheuses de la montagne ont conservé dans la grotte de l'utilisation des logements qui ne semblent pas avoir changé depuis l'époque paléolithique, et comment ces logements peuvent être trouvés habitée aujourd'hui à divers stades d'amélioration et de développement jusqu'à arriver aux huttes en pierre des Shawiyas.
Lors de l'examen de l'influence que l'architecture romaine pourrait avoir exercée sur le Shawiya, nous avons inclus une série d'images du hameau de Ghasira, haut perché sur le bord de ce canyon, qui semble rappeler exactement les notes de Salluste sur la forteresse de Jugurtha; ainsi on vient au fait que la forme des villages de l'Aurès a été peu, voire pas du tout, altéré par le contact avec Rome.

- La section suivante du film traite des aspects les plus facilement photographiés de la vie Shawiya, à savoir les occupations des hommes. Ces sujets comprennent la vannerie et la structuration, au moyen d'une herminette extrêmement primitif, d'écluses en bois pour les portes: serrures d'un type que le professeur Sir William Flinders Petrie dit qu'elles ont été introduit en Egypte au temps des Romains ( "Social Life in Ancient Egypt ', p. 103).

Certaines images montrent la méthode de mouture du blé dont l'usage était antérieur à celui des quern(le plâteau et la marmite en pierre dans lesquels on moût le blé) . Le "quern" peut-être d'invention romaine au IIème siècle av. J-C, et est devenu en usage dans les Aurès. Mes raisons d'attribuer une origine romaine à la meule sont MM Bennett et Elton dans leur «Histoire de la mouture du maïs», vol. I.
Dans la représentation de l'agriculture du district, nous avons inclus des photos de la charrue Shawiya très primitif. Cela semble ressembler de près la mise en oeuvre, mais peu avancé de la houe, dont Sir W. Flinders Petrie décrit comme étant en service, tirée par des bœufs, au début de l'ère Egyptienne (op.cit., P. 134).

Le système d'irrigation employée par le Shawiya et leur méthode de mesure du temps à cet égard ont également été enregistrées. J'ai décrit ce système de mesure du temps dans deux rapports publiés au Journal géographiques (Janvier 1922 et Mai 1924).

Bien que les Shawiya attribuent leur agriculture aux Romains, les héritiers directs de la culture de céréales dont ils vantent leurs semences chaque année, nous devons nous rappeler que, pour ces gens, tout ce qui est ancien est dérivé des Romains, les ruines de ce qui était une ville cossue sont liées à Timgad, à la limite nord de leur pays. Pourtant, je crois que Rome a acquis une grande partie de ses connaissances agricoles en provenance des Phéniciens (Carthaginois), et selon certains auteurs (par exemple, Ernest Mercier, "Histoire de 1'Afrique septentrionale, 'I, p. 47), les Phéniciens eux-mêmes essayé de perfectionner l'agriculture existante de Barbarie, plutôt que d'introduire cette science dans un domaine vierge.

La production de cultures dans le massif , il ya de longs siècles, a conduit à la construction de plusieurs étages de greniers défendables qui paraissent conformes à la description donnée par Sir W. Flinders Petrie (op. cit., P. 4) du grenier central qui est devenu la base de la première ville etat de l'euphrate.

Le film que nous avons préparé est un produit pour illustrer le marketing et l'échange de produits dans la vie quotidienne des Shawiya.
- Ensuite, il traite de la vie des enfants: leurs jeux, l'éducation des garçons dans leurs écoles musulmanes. Dans ces dernieres sont utilisées des tablettes manuscrites en bois comprimés qui semblent étroitement ressembler à celles utilisées en Egypte dans des temps très anciens.

- De là on passe à la plus difficile de nos tâches, à savoir la photographie de femmes. Heureusement, une connaissance préalable shawiya avec ma femme et mes deux jeunes enfants (qui avait traversé l'Aurès avec nous avant) a permis aux femmes Shawiya d'être beaucoup moins méfiantes que ce à quoi on aurait pu s'attendre, avec en conséquence qu'il nous a permis de les photographier en toutes leurs tâches quotidiennes .

En commençant par leur travail le plus dur, le transport de l'eau et de carburant jusqu'à leur villages hauts perchés sur les falaises, le film montre ensuite leur vie domestique, leur cuisine, etc, dans leur huttes de pierre ou les cavernes.

Viennent ensuite les deux séries d'images qui, je crois, sont les meilleures de celles que nous avons obtenu : les arts du tissage et de poterie. Dans le premier cas tout l'art est affiché: tonte, le peignage, le cardage, plusieurs méthodes de filature, tissage de montage et tisser sur les métiers à tisser horizontal et vertical. La première de ces deux métiers à tisser semble être la plus primitive. Elle semble montrer des similitudes à celle en usage dans l'Egypte ancienne une vingtaine de siècles avant Jésus-Christ. L'arbre généalogique du métier à tisser vertical semble remonter à environ 3300 ans, si je me trompe pas en le reliant aux métiers à tisser illustrés sur les murs des tombes égyptiennes.
En tirant ces conclusions quant à l'origine des textiles Shawiya j'ai été guidé principalement par une étude de deux œuvres de M. H. Ling Roth:
'Primitive Looms' and 'Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms.'

La poterie a un type très simple. Pas de roue est utilisée, et le tissu est produit par la main d'une manière similaire à celle faite en Egypte préhistorique et la Sicile. La roue qui par rotation façonne la poterie avec l'aide des mains a été faite, je crois, dans l'Afrique carthaginoise dès le septième siècle avant J.-C.
Les photos qui illustrent ce processus comprennent toutes les étapes de la fabrication d'un pot du creusement de la terre à l'objet fini.
Les pots ne sont pas bâtis par l'application spirale de bandes d'argile. Leurs flancs sont placés sur leur base en trois ou quatre dalles d'argile, qui sont amenées à fusionner l'un avec l'autre et parvenir à une plus grande hauteur par des manipulations avec les doigts du potier.

- Le film se termine avec une bobine très court consacré au folklore. Elle inclut une méthode de prédiction des événements futurs au moyen d'un plat renversé et un pendentif paien, à l'origine de laquelle je n'ai encore trouvé aucun indice, et il montre un ancien jeu qui peut être considéré comme l'ancêtre du hockey version féminine.
Dans un article antérieur (Geographical Journal, Janvier 1922) je l'ai souligné le lien probable entre ce jeu et les conflits des jeunes filles Auseennes dans le sud de la tunisie, tels que décrits par Hérodote, en l'honneur d'une grande déesse. D'autres traces du culte de cette déesse peut se trouver dans les cérémonies d'appel de la pluie montrées sur le film, dans lequel une louche décorée pour ressembler à une tête de femme se fait de maison en maison, et dans les performances des danseuses de la tribu shawiya des Aith aebdhi.
Ces jeunes filles affirment que leur profession a été transmise dans leur famille de mère en fille depuis des temps immémoriaux, et il est fermement convaincu que, si elles devaient abandonner leur mode de vie très douteux les récoltes seraient les premières victimes des conséquences. Il semble plus que probable que là aussi nous avons une survivance du culte de cette grande déesse de la fertilité et les cultures, Ta-Nit, Astarté, Ashtoreth, Athéna, comme elle a été diversement appelée.

**Bourguignon89** · 03 octobre 2009, 19h27

3) Conclusion

J'espère que les phases relativement courtes de la vie moderne dans les collines de Libye qui ont été présentées au cours d'une heure peuvent montré que certaines des coutumes qui ont eu lieu d'être étudiées là-bas datent de la haute antiquité; les traditions et l'artisanat possédant une origine beaucoup plus ancienne que celle de Rome elle-même.

Il me semble que le film Haeseler montre clairement que, une fois un art ou o un outil a pénétré dans les vallées reculées de l'Aurès, l'isolement géographique de ces profonds ravins les a conservé à notre contemplation, comme une relique d'une époque déjà lointaine.

**Bourguignon89** · 03 octobre 2009, 19h45

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 -

Le présent document ne peut prétendre à être plus qu'une tentative d'attirer l'attention sur l'influence de la géographie du massif sur ses habitants berbères Shawiya dans la préservation des mœurs et coutumes, les arts et l'artisanat, dont beaucoup ont disparu dans d'autres régions plus accessibles d'Afrique du Nord. Afin de réaliser comment une telle influence conservatrice a été exercé par le pays sur ses habitants, nous devons appeler à l'esprit les frontières du massif et la géographie de ses vallées, avant de procéder à l'examen de quelques exemples des traces d'une ancienne culture qui se trouvent parmi les Shawiya aujourd'hui.

Les limites de l'Aurès sont clairement définis. Sa frontière nord, qui le sépare du plateau de haut niveau, quelque 2800 pieds au-dessus de la mer, sur laquelle se dressent les ruines du camp romain de Lambessa et la ville de Timgad, se compose d'une barrière de fortes pentes boisées qui mènent à la crête de Mahmel, 7620 pieds, et les pics d'Ish-mul, 6800 pieds, et Shelya, 7630 pieds(~ 2400m) d'altitude, où les montagnes sont couvertes de neige pendant une grande partie de l'année. Cette frontière constitue la limite du pays Shawiya avec une excellente ligne de défense dans le nord, d'ouest en est, entre les villes modernes de Batna et Khenshela sur le plateau.

Le mur sud de l'Aurès, les roches stériles avec vue sur le Sahara, dont la coloration magnifique au coucher du soleil ravit l'oeil du visiteur à Biskra, offre peu d'espoir de succès à un envahisseur venant du désert, pour les cours d'eau s'écoulant du haut des crêtes septentrionales des collines pour se perdre dans le Sahara émergent du massif à travers des gorges étroites, bordées de falaises abruptes, de leurs eaux susceptibles d'augmenter dans des inondations soudaines lorsque la pluie est tombée ou la neige a fondu sur le bassin versant, et les passages qui tracent le lit du fleuve sont étroits, escarpés, et facilement défendable. Des environs de Biskra à l'ouest, puis, jusqu'à l'oasis de Sidi Naji Khanqa dans le sud-est du massif, la région est bien protégée par ses limites géographiques du sud du pays.

De l'oasis de Sidi Naji Khanqa la crête nu des Monts de Cherchar s'étend vers le nord-est vers le plateau à l'est de Khenshela, atteignant une altitude au-dessus du niveau marin de 5870 pieds, et formant un bastion puissant pour garder le massif des incursions des tribus nomades, les Berbères eux-mêmes, qui errent dans le pays à l'est de l'Aurès.

La frontière ouest du massif, sous lequel s'exécute maintenant le chemin de fer de Batna à Biskra, si, comme vu du train, elle semblent moins clairement définies que les autres frontières de l'Aurès, est en réalité robuste pour bloquer un ennemi venant de l'ouest; ses parois rocheuses sont pénétrés par un défilé, très profond par ailleurs, celui qui mène vers l'est jusqu'à la vallée de Bou-Zina dans les collines à partir d'un point situé près de la voie ferrée à Ma'afa.

...

**Bourguignon89** · 03 octobre 2009, 19h56

Voir la suite sur : taper forum frebend W. Hilton-Simpson geographie aurès sur google et c'est le premier lien.

Les textes sont en anglais et j'ai pas le temps de tout traduire .. donc pour ceux que ça interesse faut passer par google.

**Bourguignon89** · 03 octobre 2009, 20h37

Cette étude est très interessante d'une part parce qu'il y'en a pas des masses sur les Aurès, d'autre part les conclusions tirées sont d'une extrême importance et valorisent fortement la culture chaouia (et berbère) tant négligée et qui pourtant apporte des éléments précieux quant à l'origine des berberes.

Voici la suite (résumé) :

On peut bien intituler cette deuxième partie de la conférence de M. Hilton-Simpson « Tiqli3in ». Car après avoir abordé sommairement quelques éléments anthropologiques ainsi que " l'habitat naturel " dans les régions de Maafa et de Tilatou, l'auteur consacre ensuite une grande partie de ses analyses aux villages aurèsiens, tiqli3in n wawras: choix du site, fonctions, rôles économique et social, protection, histoire, etc. ( Cf .Note)

Ses conclusions sont très enrichissantes, e.g. d'après lui, Tiqli3in ou les villages aurésiesn sont des "répliques" quasi exactes des forteresses de Jugurta, ou selon ses propres termes, des « descendants directs » de ses forteresses et maisons de trésors.

Pour aboutir à ce constat M. Hilton-Simpson compare la description de Salluste, daté de plus de 2000 ans, avec celle des villages auresiens du siècle dernier. Il corrobore ses dires en donnant des exemples concrets: trois villages sur lesquels la description de cet auteur antique, Salluste, pourrait s'appliquer presque mot par mot, soit le village des Ouled Mansour n Ighusar en Ighzer Amellal, Jellal dans la région d'Adrar n Cecar et celui de Taberdga.

**Bourguignon89** · 03 octobre 2009, 20h41

-II-

In the belief that in such an environment as I have attempted to describe we should be likely to find the Berber as little altered by the successive waves of conquest which have swept over North Africa as anywhere in Algeria, my wife and I selected the Aures massif as the field for our ethnographical work. Making our base at the little inn of El Qantara on the railway to the south-west of the hills, we undertook each year a series of journeys in the mountains, returning between them to El Qantara to replenish our stores. We travelled light. Accompanied by no servants other than a native mounted orderly, whose services the French authorities have always kindly placed at our disposal, we carried with us sleeping-valises, and but few stores. Relying for accommodation upon the never failing hospitality of the Qaids and the headmen of smaller villages, we found that we could enjoy better opportunities of studying Berber life by actually living in native houses in the villages than if we encamped outside them, opportunities which fully compensated us for the discomforts we often had to face.

Apart from the physical characteristics of the Shawiya, the fair skins and hair and the blue eyes so commonly to be seen among them, and the old Berber tongue which they speak but can no longer write, with neither of which we were directly concerned, the first outstanding difference between a village of the Aures and one of the plains which forced itself upon our notice lay in the construction of its houses. These are built of stone; mud and straw, sun-dried bricks, as used in the desert, are not to be seen in a true Shawiya village, though from east to west across the southern Aures walls built of such bricks, especially in new houses, may be found, showing how the building of the desert has encroached upon the land of the Berbers, advancing up the course of their streams; but this sign of a tide of foreign’ culture has flowed but a very short distance into the hills, having merely lapped around the edges of this island of Berber culture.

A close examination of dwellings in all parts of the Aures has shown that, within the massif, is exemplified every stage in the evolution of the human habitation from the simple unprotected cave to the multi-storied stone-built defensible granary, known as a "qal'a," which is so noticeable a feature of southern Shawiya settlements to this day.

The Shawiya goatherd, often obliged to spend some time away from his village, usually bivouacs beneath a projecting rock or in a cleft in the rocks on a hillside. Should his stay there be of long duration he will be joined by his family and by his friends with their families, the little colony protecting themselves from the mountain winds by erecting a screen of brushwood in the opening of their cave or cleft. Examples of these caves, occupied during a great part of the year, are to be found in the gorge of Tilatu and near Beni Ferra in the south-west of the massif, as well as in many other districts of the hills. In other cases the screen of bushes is replaced by a wall of stones, partly closing the entrance to the cave, as in many dwellings of the Rasira valley, and this walling-up of the entrance has developed until it reaches the stage of the completely walled-in caverns of Ma'afa and the lateral clefts in the cliff-face of Takarbust, in the Ma'afa defile, which, entirely closed by well-built walls on their open side, form snug and weather-proof cave-dwellings in the almost inaccessible face of a cliff.

The cave-dwelling Shawiya, dissatisfied with the irregular shape of the natural back of his home, at some time began to "square" this by means of masonry at the back and sides of his dwelling, as may be seen at Maafa, thus providing himself with a house of which the roof and floor only were of natural rock. Then, when the ledge on which he lived was wide enough to permit of such an extension, he threw forward his outer wall, connecting the top of this wall with his cave by means of a roof of mud supported upon rafters of juniper and laths of twigs. Such dwellings, half-house, half-cave, are to be found inhabited at Tilatu. And so by easy stages throughout the Aures we find the house gradually extending forward from the cave or excavation in a steep hillside until it stands alone on level ground, the typical rectangular Shawiya house of stone.

The finished house, to the somewhat rickety walls of which stability is lent by the insertion of one or more courses of beams resting upon strata of sticks running transversely through the wall, is usually built of untrimmed stones held together with mud, but trimming of the stone is practised in the Bu Zina valley, where houses are better and more regularly built than elsewhere, possibly owing to the neighbourhood of the Roman centres of Lambessa and Timgad beyond the ridge of Mahmel, whence settlers penetrated the Aures and may well have left their mark upon the buildings.

In dwellings too large to be spanned by single branches of the small local juniper (Juniperus phoenicea) the rafters of the roof are supported upon pillars of that wood. The roof, except in certain cases in the south, where Arab influence may have produced some effect, is not surrounded by a parapet, for the Shawiya do not keep their women from the gaze of passers-by, and a parapet would hinder the removal of snow in the higher villages, with consequent damage to the roof. Beyond cooking-pots, a twin-stone quern, a basket slung from the roof to form a cradle, and a loom, the houses contain nothing which can be termed furniture, the family usually sleeping upon a platform of sticks beneath which their domestic animals pass the night

As regards their general condition we can, from a now considerable experience, thoroughly endorse the statement of Leo Africanus which refers to a Berber people of Morocco : "Their houses are very loathsome, being annoied with the stinking smell of their goates . . . neither sawe I euer, to my remembrance, greater swarms of fleas than among this people."

Before examining the continued growth of the house from one to several stories we may digress for a moment to seek the reason for this expansion. In order to protect themselves and their grain from attentions of roving bands from the hungry desert which might be driven by famine to cross the rugged boundaries of the massif in search of plunder, the Shawiya, especially in the southern portion of the Aures, even now construct their villages with a view to defence, almost invariably placing them high upon the angles formed by the junction of tributary ravines with a main valley, sites with which the geography of their country has liberally supplied them.

In describing Jugurtha's stronghold near the " Muluccha" [Muluya] river (on the Algerian-Morocco border) Sallust has been translated as follows : " There rose amid the surrounding plain a rocky mountain, broad enough at the summit for a fort of moderate size, and reaching to an immense height. A single narrow approach was left; all the rest was as precipitous naturally as if labour and design had been employed to form it." And, farther on, "the path used by the garrison was extremely narrow, with a sheer descent on either side."

There are to be found in the Aures today a large number of Shawiya villages to which this description applies with remarkable accuracy.

-At Ulad Mansur upon the eastern lip of the Rasira cañon, the village is built upon the apex of a rocky angle at the junction of two ravines and can be approached by mules by but one track, winding up from the valley below to the single gateway of the village granary or " qal'a "; though pedestrians in single file can follow a precipitous track resembling a flight of rough-hewn steps up the very knife-edge of the spur, this path ending in a shaft through the rock up which the foot passenger must struggle to emerge in the village itself.

-Jellal, beneath the eastern slopes of the Jebel Shershar, is built, as is Ulad Mansur, with the walls of its houses rising flush with the edges of the precipitous promontory, or rather twin promontories, on which it stands; access to the settlement is possible from one side only, and that side defended by the walls of its rearmost houses.

-Taberdga, a few miles to the north of Jellal, crowns the summit of a steep knoll at the junction of three ravines, this knoll being approachable by means of a path following a cleft in the precipitous side of the mountain to which it is joined by an isthmus of rock, no more than yards in width, a cleft so small that the mule rider must lean low over his animal's withers to protect his head from the overhanging rocks, a chasm some 300 feet in depth yawning beneath him at one side. The isthmus itself is spanned by walls and the village gateway, beside which cliffs fall sheer to the ravines below on either hand.

Any one of these three villages, selected merely as examples, would seem to fall in exactly with Sallust's description of a Numidian stronghold of 2000 years ago,

Obviously the restricted area of the apex of a spur could not long stand the increase of population in one-storied huts. Indeed, the very position of the huts built upon the uneven surface of a spur with the floor of one often upon the same level as the roof of its neighbour below it, would naturally lead the Shawiya to transform the terrace-roof of a single apartment into the floor of a building above it by simply increasing the height of their walls. Houses thus built are very common in the southern Aures; in fact, we lived in such an one at Ulad Mansur.

Need for economy of space also doubtless called the attention of the Shawiya to the fact that it was as easy to throw rafters and floors across their narrow lanes as to put roofs upon their houses, so that it was but a step from the construction of two-storied buildings to the multi-storied structure with covered lanes which, with more or less uniform outer walls and approached as a rule by a single gateway, constitutes the qal'a, or defensible granary, which is a feature of so many southern Aures villages today, and which may fairly be supposed to be the direct descendant, probably but little changed, of Jugurtha's "fort of moderate size" or "treasure house " described by Sallust so many centuries ago; a structure preserved in the fastnesses of the Aures that has disappeared from other more accessible regions of Algeria.

The qal'a, the evolution of which from a single-storied hut seems to be clearly attributable to the natural features of its site, is still used as a storehouse, but to a decreasing extent as a dwelling, for the settled conditions prevailing under the French are inducing the Shawiya to build outside the precincts of their village forts and even to descend into the valleys below them.

**Bourguignon89** · 03 octobre 2009, 20h43

Suite de la partie - II - (résumé) :

Le système d'irrigation en Aurès

Les Auresiens, écrit Procope au 6e siècle, maîtrisent parfaitement les techniques hydrauliques. Ils dévient les cours d'eaux des rivières, par la construction des barrages et des canaux, de la manière qu'ils croient leur être la plus avantageuse et selon l'usage opportun, soit :

- à des fins militaires (Procope décrit la dérivation de la rivière Amigas pour embourber et inonder les troupes byzantines, voici un extrait tiré de: "L'Aurès au VIe siècle, note sur le récit de Procope" in Antiquité africaines, 1980:
« La rivière Amigas descend de l’Aurès et dans les la plaine, arrose La terre selon la volonté des hommes; les indigènes dirigent le flot à l’endroit et au moment le plis utile. On trouve de nombreux canaux entre lesquels se divisent les eaux qui, en les alimentant tous, disparaissent sous le sol pour réapparaître plus loin à la surface et se former à nouveau en rivière. Ces dispositifs intéressent la plus grande partie de la plaine et donnent aux habitants le moyen en plaçant ou en enlevant des barrages de terre devant les canaux, de faire des eaux de la rivière l’usage qu’il veulent. A cette occasion ils fermèrent tous les canaux et inondèrent le camp des Romains » )

- ou à des fins agricoles ( Voy. dans " Guerre des Vandales " sa description et son admiration pour la prospérité de la culture auresienne animée par des techniques d'irrigations les plus élaborées du 6e siècle:
« ..le mont Aurasios …est assez difficile à gravir, mais qu'une fois parvenu au sommet, on se trouve sur un plateau admirable, sillonné par une foule de sources servant de berceau à des rivières et revêtu d'une merveilleuse quantité d'arbres fruitiers. Toute espèce de céréales et de fruits …. » et «..Prairies luxuriantes, jardins garnis d'arbres, arômes de toute espèce.." etc.. )

C'est ce dernier point, le système d'irrigation en Aurès, que M. W.Hilton-Simpson explore dans cette 3e partie de sa conférence, c'est-à-dire :

- Les barrages

- Les canaux d'irrigations,

- Le partage des eaux.

- La clepsydre aurèsienne ou water-clock (pour remonter à l'origine de l'horloge utilisée chez les Ah Frah de Ain Zaatout, l'auteur la compare avec plusieurs modèles provenant de : Tolga, Maroc, Tunisie - eg la description de l'horloge de Tozer par al-Bekri au 11e siècle- et d'autres pays)

**Bourguignon89** · 03 octobre 2009, 20h46

-III-

In order to stock their granaries the Shawiya cultivate every possible foot of land in their narrow valleys, and the irrigation of their fields has led to the continuance in use in some villages of a primitive type of water-clock for apportioning the limited supply of water available. The system of irrigation employed in the Aures and in such of the oases at the foot of the hills as are watered by more or less perennial streams is simple.

The stream is tapped by means of barrages, or lines of boulders placed obliquely across the watercourse, so that a portion of the stream is deflected into narrow artificial channels, known in Algeria as saqiyas, which conduct the water through the area to be irrigated. The main saqiyas, after supplying branch channels, each watering a group of gardens, discharge their residue of water into the river. This system has been developed until each group of gardens contains a network of miniature canals carried across depressions, and sometimes, as at Beni Suiq in the south-western corner of the massif, across their parent river, in wooden aqueducts often made of the hollowed stems of date-palms. These saqiyas, which are simply dug in the soil without reinforcement of their sides, require constant surveillance to counteract the silting which occurs in them after heavy rain has fallen or snow has melted on the watershed of the Aures; in some districts, therefore, an official is placed in charge of each branch saqiya, whose duty it is to exercise this surveillance and to call upon the riparian owners to make good such damage as it occurs, each landed proprietor being also responsible for the upkeep of a proportion of the barrage in the river whence he indirectly obtains his water-supply.

The construction of a new saqiya, now the care of the French, appears formerly to have been undertaken by some important chief or wealthy native who received as much as two-thirds of the palms in the newly irrigated area as a reward of his outlay and initiative.

As we have seen already, the main streams of the Aures flow southwards from the watershed in the north of the massif to lose themselves in the desert; upon the quantity of water allowed to come out of the hills, therefore, oases such as Sidi 'Oqba and Zribat el Wad on the edge of the desert depend for the production of the dates necessary for the subsistence of many nomad tribes.

Nowadays this amount is controlled by the French, but before their arrival any village of the hills had the right to as much water as its people cared to use regardless of the requirements of their neighbours lower down the river's course, provided that they allowed such water as they did not make use of to return to the parent stream.

Messieurs Hanoteau and Letourneux (' La Kabylie,' 2, 25 I) expressly state that this right was held also by the Berbers of the coastal mountains, and Colonel Lartigue (' L'Aurès,' pp. 438,439, and 445) shows that the Shawiya were in the habit of exercising it. It is evident, therefore, that disputes arising from the vital question of water-supply must have been frequent and probably sanguinary, not only between the Berbers of the hills and the nomad Arabs of the desert, but also between neighbouring Shawiya settlements, and would also have disturbed the peace of individual villages had not the clepsydra or water-clock of ancient times been kept in use to apportion its division.

When the day arrives on which the waters of a main channel are to be turned into a given one of its branch saqiyas (an operation performed without the aid of gates by merely blocking the main channel with earth and cutting an outlet in its side to connect it with the branch) owners of the gardens watered by the latter repair to a point overlooking their land, bearing with them the water-clock by means of which their periods of irrigation are to be timed.

The quantity of water to which each is entitled varies, for it is purchased, apart from the purchase of his land, by each individual farmer, who leaves it as he desires at his death and who may lend or sell any or all of his period of irrigation as he wishes. From 120 to 150 francs for one hour's uninterrupted flow of a branch saqiya every twenty days in perpetuity was stated in 1920 to be the price of irrigation at Beni Ferah.

As the side of the saqiya is cut to admit the water to the first garden to be irrigated, the water-clock, a small bowl of copper or zinc perforated in the centre of its bottom by a minute hole, is carefully placed upon the surface of a pail or earthen jar of water in which it automatically sinks as water enters through the hole. Each owner of land is entitled to so many sinkings of the clock, rather than to any definite number of hours or minutes of irrigation; the clock, therefore, is refloated the moment it sinks, and a pebble is placed on the ground by the individual manipulating the clock to indicate that the farmer has received his first sinking, an additional pebble being added to record his score each time the clock is refloated. Meantime a workman, who has been regulating the flow of the water over the garden or field, which is usually subdivided into rectangular patches by means of very small banks of earth to assist him in his task, is ready on the instant to stanch the rush of water from the saqiya when the owners beside the clock shout to him that his period is at an end; the water is then at once admitted to the next garden to be irrigated.

This division of water, carried out in the presence of the owners concerned and usually of a member of the village council, seems to be considered as equitable by the Shawiya. The clock itself is usually the property of the village council, and so is regarded as the legal measure.

The official bowls appear to sink once in fifteen minutes, those I tried being fairly accurate; but there are in existence a number of privately owned clocks, used unofficially between friends, the time of whose sinking varies. Thus the bowl I collected, now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, sinks once in about ten minutes, while a specimen from Tolqa on the edge of the desert, collected by Mr. W. J. Harding-King, who has most kindly supplied me with very full notes upon it, varied in its time of sinking from four minutes nine seconds to four minutes four seconds in a series of nine tests, excluding the first test, in which, the clock being dry, the time was about twenty seconds longer.

Mr. Harding-King's clock differs in form from the one I collected. My specimen, which I experienced great difficulty in obtaining, consists of a circular bowl of hammered copper; its side about 1 millimetre thick, its diameter 5 7/8 inches at the lip and 6 inches at the bottom, which is slightly convex, the depth of the vessel being 2 1/8 inches at the side and 2 ¼ inches at the centre. It weighs 16 ounces.

Mr. Harding-King tells me that his specimen closely resembles my own in size and shape, save that its diameter is slightly larger at the bottom than at the top, and that its bottom is slightly more convex than that of my specimen. Both specimens are made of copper of the same thickness, and the bottoms and sides of both appear to be similarly joined by dovetailed edges. Some of the, dovetails in the Tolqa specimen, however, appear to consist of separate pieces of copper distinct from both bottom and side.

The perforation for the inlet of water in the Tolqa clock (3,5 mm. diameter) is greater than in my Beni Ferah example (1 mm. diameter), and Mr. Harding-King's bowl is fitted on the inside with a vertical tube, some 3/4 inch in height and 3/16 inch in diameter, which is fixed to the bottom of the bowl, and is intended, as Mr. Harding-King has stated in the Geographical Journal, vol. 50, p. 361, to regulate the flow of the incoming water. It is in this tube that the greatest difference between our clocks is to be found, and, although a native once attempted to describe to me a clock fitted with a tube, I was unable to follow his vague description, and I have found no such clock myself

With the exception of these two clocks, I have heard of but one other water-clock of the sinking type from North Africa, a type to be found in India, Burma, and Ceylon. Mr. Budgett Meakin gives a brief reference to this type in his work on 'The Moors ' (p. 403), and he also alludes to a Moor who manufactured water-clocks at Toledo for astronomical calculations in his 'Life in Morocco ' (p. 374).

A different type of clepsydra, however, has been reported from North Africa, namely, one in which the bowl is filled and allowed to empty upon the principle of an hour-glass. James Richardson (' Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara,' I, p. 185) noted an earthenware specimen at Ghadames in Fezzan, also used in connection with irrigation; Berthelon and Chantre report an evacuating clock, still known by a Greek name " cadous" (κάδος) from Qabes in Southern Tunis; while El Bekri in the eleventh century found this type, then known as "cadès" at Tozer, some120 miles to the west of Qabes. It seems remarkable that the two types of water-clock should be found in such comparatively close proximity to one another, for although Sir Everard im Thurn informs me that he has seen and collected a specimen in Ceylon, used alternately as an evacuating and sinking clock, Mr. Harding-King's specimen could certainly not have been so used.

From such scanty evidence as I have as yet been able to collect it is difficult to trace the origin of the Beni Ferah clock unless we consider that the fairly numerous remains, some of them in use to-day, of rock-hewn Roman "saqiyas" to be found in the Aures and, as in the gorge of El Qantara, in the neighbourhood of the massif, may indicate that the water-clock was used when these were new to apportion the flow of their waters as it is at Beni Ferah and elsewhere today.

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Etude ethnologique et anthropologique du Massif des Aurès

Etude ethnologique et anthropologique du Massif des Aurès

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