Tamacine

Tamacine is an oasis in the Oued Righ, south of Touggourt, where palm groves and fortified settlements stand amid the northern Sahara. The inhabitants draw on underground water to cultivate dates in a dry landscape. By the late eighteenth century the sheikhs of Tamacine and Touggourt were rivals, each governing an oasis and market centre in the valley. Their competition formed part of the politics of a region linked to the authority of Ottoman Algeria.