Chebika
Interesting facts
- The Roman name Ad Speculum means 'place of the mirror', and the outpost is thought to have signalled to neighbouring forts by flashing a metal mirror.
- In Tunisian Arabic, Chebika means 'little net', a name linked to the way water threads through the cascades like a mesh.
- The 1969 floods that emptied the old village were among Tunisia's deadliest disasters, killing more than 400 people across the country.
- Roman milestones, cisterns and a fossatum, a defensive ditch of the Saharan frontier line, survive in the surroundings of the oasis.
- The palm grove covers only about 25 hectares shared by some 116 farmers, the smallest of the three great mountain oases near the Algerian border.
- The gorge was carved by the spring's water into limestone laid down in the Upper Cretaceous, the last age of the dinosaurs.
- Irrigation water is collectively owned and shared out by centuries-old rules; each farmer's allotted time was once measured with a water clock.
- The gardens are farmed in three storeys: dense date palms, mostly Deglet Nour, above fruit trees, with cereals, vegetables and fodder at ground level.
- According to legend, the camel of the saint Sidi Soltane knelt here on his return from Mecca, and a spring burst from the ground where it stopped.
- The saint is still honoured each year at the Sidi Soltane festival, which draws people from Chebika, Tamerza and neighbouring tribes.
Why it is worth it
Chebika sits where the last ridge of the Atlas runs out into the Sahara, a few kilometres from the Algerian border in southwest Tunisia. From the plain the mountain looks bare and burnt, layered in bands of ochre and rust, yet tucked into its foot is a pocket of palms and running water. A spring rises in the hills to the northeast, and its stream tumbles through a narrow gorge in a chain of small waterfalls and clear pools before spreading out to irrigate the date palms below. The contrast between the dry, sculpted rock and the green shade of the canyon is the whole spell of the place.
Above the gorge stands the old village, built from stone and earth on the slope of Jebel en Negueb. It was abandoned in 1969, when catastrophic floods struck the region, and its residents moved to a new village nearby; the empty houses and lanes, now weathered to the colour of the mountain, survive as a ruin overlooking the palms. Its local name, Qasr el-Shams, the Palace of the Sun, is often explained by the way the ridge catches the light from dawn to dusk. The site has a long past: in Roman times it was Ad Speculum, a settlement on the road along the desert frontier of the province of Africa.
A short path loops from the ruins down into the canyon, past the pools and the waterfall and back up over the rocks, with views out across the open plain to the south. The setting has drawn film-makers, and many of the desert scenes of The English Patient were shot in the landscape around the oasis. Chebika is the first of three mountain oases strung along the border, with Tamerza and Midรจs a short drive further on; together they form one of the most beautiful excursions in southern Tunisia, best begun early in the morning, while the gorge is cool and quiet.
Getting there
Chebika lies about 22 km from Redeyef and roughly an hour's drive northwest of Tozeur on paved roads. The nearest airport is TozeurโNefta International Airport (TOE), about 45 km away. The oasis is usually visited as part of a loop of around 120 km from Tozeur that also takes in Tamerza and Midรจs.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Chebika (ุงูุดุจููุฉ) is a mountain oasis and associated village in western Tunisia, in Tozeur Governorate.
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