Valley of the Casbahs: A Journey across the Moroccan Sahara by Jeffrey Tayler: book review

In Valley of the Casbahs (2004) Jeffrey Tayler describes an epic and unique journey following the Draa River in Morocco in 2001 from the source to the sea. He travels in nomadic style with stubborn donkeys and camels and argumentative Berber guides – archetypal wanderers and co-originators of the Islamic civilization.

His previous attempt, fifteen years earlier, after reading Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands, had resulted in near death stranded in a desert storm with no water, food, maps or radio. His predecessor died from lack of water. Determined to follow his dream, he conquers the desert and relates the history of the desert Arabs and the decline of the nomadic way of life: “I found, in the Draa Valley and the Western Sahara, not modernized Bedouin but future residents of tin-shack slums and proud sheikhs humbled by the politics and police of nation-states.”

Much of the book is about the Sahara desert and its barren terrain. Here he learns of the various desert terminology: empty land was khla; flat sandy land was ragg; totally flat and empty country was mham; empty rolling country covered with rock was hidban; dunes without vegetation was uruq; dune with mottled scrub was nibka; dune with more than three trees was ghaba (forest); a patch of smooth land where a camel could kneel was mliss and a patch of land where a camel could not kneel was harsh.

Stories of the virtues of simplicity, hospitality and comradeship throughout his journey make this more than a description of captivating casbahs (Arabic citadels), fortressed villages, labyrinthine corridors and courtyards, and debilitating deserts. After three months traveling the moonscape gorges of the Anti-Atlas Mountains and the denuded dunes, he reaches the silver and white ocean foam of the Atlantic. His Berber companions reflect on their remarkable feat and the strength of his ancestors: “we Reguibat could once walk a hundred kilometers a day without tiring, drinking only a litre of water and eating only a handful of dates. By God, our ancestors were strong! Why, in the old days we walked all the way from here to Mauritania!”

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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