Gasr Al-Hajj
Interesting facts
- Each storage chamber is about 1.9 metres high, 5.5 metres deep and 2.2 metres wide, lit almost only through its open door.
- There were no landings in front of the doors: owners reached the lower chambers on movable palm trunks cut with notches as steps.
- The half-buried lowest row of chambers was used to store olive oil, while the tiers above held grain, mostly barley and wheat.
- The round granary has a single entrance, and a staircase leads to a walkway running around the top of the ring.
- The chamber doors were once fastened with intricate wooden locks; all have vanished, and some have turned up in city antique shops.
- It was built entirely of local materials, rubble stone, earth and palm trunks, with a mud plaster that had to be renewed every few years.
- Families left food, tools and weapons here under guard while they drove their sheep and goats to summer pastures.
- The name means castle of the pilgrim, which suggests it may also have served as a halt for pilgrims heading for the coast.
Why it is worth it
From outside, Gasr Al-Hajj in Libya's Nafusa Mountains looks like a low, round fortress of rough stone; inside, its walls open onto a circular court lined with tier upon tier of small storage chambers, their doorways stacked like the cells of a honeycomb. It is one of the most striking examples of the fortified communal granaries, or ksour, that are characteristic of the Amazigh villages of this mountain range.
The granary was built in the thirteenth century, the seventh century of the Islamic calendar, by Abdallah Abu Jatla. It was designed to store the harvests of the families of the surrounding area: grain, barley and dates could be kept safe behind its walls in return for a quarter of each family's crop. The builder endowed that income as a waqf, a charitable foundation, to pay for teaching the Qur'an and Islamic learning to the people of the area. The building originally held 114 chambers, a number that local tradition links with the 114 suras of the Qur'an; over time some rooms were divided among heirs, raising the count to 119, and 29 cellars were added below.
The Nafusa Mountains, or Jebel Nafusa, form an escarpment that rises sharply from the coastal plain south-west of Tripoli and runs for some 250 km towards the Tunisian border. Their villages have long been home to Amazigh communities, many of them historically followers of the Ibadi branch of Islam, who farmed olives, grain and figs on the plateau. Fortified granaries like this one allowed scattered households to protect their stores from raids and drought, and Gasr Al-Hajj, with its ordered ring of chambers, is among the best known of them.
Getting there
The granary lies in the Nafusa Mountains, about 15 km from the town of Zintan and roughly 130 km by road from Tripoli. The nearest airport is Mitiga International Airport (MJI) in Tripoli, about 141 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
Gasr Al-Hājj is a huge fortified granary of circular shape built in the 7th century AH/13th century AD by Abdallah Abu Jatla. It is located in Libya on the Tripoli-'Aziziya-Al Jawf route in Libya about 130 km from Tripoli. It was built to serve as granary for families from the surrounding area in return for quarter of their crops, which, it is said, the owner had endowed as a waqf for teaching Qur'an and Islamic related subjects to the people of the area. The building originally comprised 114 chambers, which could be the number of the subscribing families during the time of construction. It is also speculated that the number 114 was used symbolically to reflect the number of Sura in the Qur'an, a view widely accepted by villagers in the region nowadays. The number of chambers as of now, is 119, as result of splitting 10 chambers due to inheritance disputes. Other changes include the addition of 29 cellars.
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