Djelfa

Djelfa occupies the Ouled Naïl Range at about 1,138 metres above sea level, between the dry High Plains of northern Algeria and the Sahara. Flat steppe country with intermittent salt lakes gives way southward to increasingly arid lands, while winter precipitation makes snow possible at this altitude. North of the town, erosion of salt and marl has produced the striking Rocher de Sel. The natural corridor between plateau and desert creates an environment suited to movement and seasonal grazing, and Djelfa’s later role as a livestock market grew from that position.

Human occupation around the site reaches much farther back. Neolithic rock carvings in the area date from roughly 7000 to 5000 BCE, and megalithic funerary structures stand west of the town. A Roman settlement called Fallaba later occupied the site and remained into late antiquity; its bishopric is known from a bishop who attended a Carthage synod in 484. During the Hafsid era the place became an important trading post, and the Ouled Naïl communities made the surrounding country their meeting ground. A French military post founded later laid out the later town on a geometric plan, but the older caravan, pastoral and settlement histories continued to define its regional importance.