Kharga Oasis

“ The total annual discharge of the whole of the wells of Kharga Oasis is barely equal in volume to the water which can be held by saturated beds underlying 1 square kilometre of surface, assuming the sandstone to be only 122 metres thick; that is to say, it would take between 3,000 and 4,000 years for the existing wells to discharge the water held by the beds underlying the depression alone, without considering the vast surrounding desert [161] areas, where there is no reason to doubt that the water-tables are equally well developed. ”

“ Dakhla Oasis differs somewhat from Kharga in that the villages are less scattered and, so to speak, more closely packed together. Owing, too, to the better water supply it is very much more fertile. Dakhla, too, is more favourably situated than Kharga, as it nestles at the foot of a great east and west cliff, three or four hundred feet in height, that protects it to a great extent from the prevailing northerly winds. Kharga, on the other hand, runs from north to south, with the result that the tearing desert gales sweep down upon it from the north with their full force. ”

“ No shuttle is used, the rushes being woven across the strings that form the basis of the mat by hand.
Kharga Oasis is richer in archæological remains than any of the others. In early times the place was evidently of greater importance than it is at present, and probably supported a larger population.
It is known to have been inhabited at a very remote period, even as far back as the reign of Thothmes III (1503-1449 B.C.) . In early days it seems to have been used mainly as a place of exile. ”

“ It is very difficult to see where to draw the line. The system adopted in Algeria of describing places like Kharga and Wad Ghirh as groups of oases—or oasis-archipelagos, as they are sometimes called—seems preferable to the Egyptian plan of alluding to them as a single oasis. It would seem advisable to confine the term oasis to a place which is actually cultivated, whether continuously inhabited or not, and to use the word hattia for “fertile spots” in the desert where no cultivation exists. The dividing-line, however, between a hattia and a deserted oasis would not be very sharply drawn. ”

“ To the north-west of Kharga lies a little place known as ’Ain Um Debadib, where there is a considerable area of scrub, with a few palms and sunt (i.e. acacia) trees. A certain amount of ground is [311] cultivated here by a family from Kharga village, who, however, do not always reside there. This is usually considered a separate oasis.
In the eastern part of the Farafra depression is an area, some sixteen miles by twelve, covered with scrub, among which a few date palms, which seemed to be to some extent cultivated, are also to be seen. ”

“ There are no permanent houses or inhabitants, though frequently bedawin living in tents, or brushwood huts, are to be found there with their camels. The place contains several wells, and is sometimes described as an oasis, though the natives more usually allude to it as a hattia.
At ’Ain Amur, half-way between Kharga and Dakhla, is a well, some ruins, a patch of scrub and a palm or two. This, however, never has any residents—the well being only used by travellers between Kharga and Dakhla. This place is usually described as a hattia, though I have heard even this called an oasis. ”

“ PREFACE The inhabited depressions of the Libyan Desert, called by Herodotus the ‘Islands of the Blest,’ are interesting alike to the archæologist, to the geographer and geologist, and to the tourist who wishes to wander from the well-beaten tracks, and perhaps none more so than the Oasis of Kharga, lying 130 miles west of Luxor—the site of ancient Thebes—and recently connected by railway with the Nile Valley. ”

“ KHARAGHODA, a village of British India, in the Ahmedabad district of Bombay, situated on the Little Runn of Cutch, and the terminus of a branch railway; pop. (1901) , 2108. Here is the government factory of salt, known as Baragra salt, producing nearly 2,000,000 cwt. a year, most of which is exported to other provinces in Central and Northern India.
KHARGA (Wah el-Kharga, the outer oasis) , the largest of the Egyptian oases, and hence frequently called the Great Oasis. It lies in the Libyan desert between 24° and 26° N. and 30° and 31° E., the chief town, also called Kharga, being 435 m. ”

“ Rohlfs describes Kharga village as being pretty from a distance, but remarks that the narrow dirty alleys are the pictures of laziness and poverty; the streets are covered in for protection against the rays of the sun, a common practice throughout the Sahara.
The word ‘oasis’ is old Egyptian, as also is the Arabic ‘wah,’ the latter word being also found in Coptic, and signifying an inhabited place; nevertheless, the word ‘wah’ was never used by the ancient Egyptians to designate the oases. These they called ‘otu,’ which means a place where [22] bodies are embalmed. ”

“ Both near the head of the Ain Amûr recess and in the extreme north-west corner of the oasis very old tracks trending in westerly and northwesterly directions are observable, and although unused at the present day, these may mark the positions of formerly frequented routes leading to the oasis of Farafra. At the present time that oasis is not in direct communication with Kharga, the routes used being from Manfalut in the Nile Valley, from Qasr Dakhl in the oasis of Dakhla, and from Ain el Hais in Baharia. ”

“ It commences at Mouaslet el Kharga, a new station on the Egyptian State Railway near Farshut, and crosses to the border of the desert, a few kilometres distant, by way of one of the embankments separating two of the great irrigation basins of Upper Egypt. At the edge of the desert is the station of El Qara, the point of departure for the oasis. After skirting the margin of the Nile Valley cultivation for a short distance it heads straight for the Wadi Samhûd, by means of which the plateau is gained without encountering any very heavy gradients. ”

“ At the time of my visit practically all the natives of this oasis were affiliated to the Senussia—and a most surly unpleasant lot they were.
Baharia, the next oasis to the north, is said to be of similar type to Kharga and Dakhla; but I did not visit it. It is peculiar owing to the large number of small isolated rocky hills to be seen scattered about the floor of the depression. Neither did I visit the oasis of Siwa, still farther north in the Wady el Fardy. ”

“ In hot weather the ascent to the plateau, though perhaps occupying only one or one and a half hours, will take as much out of the pack-animals as a whole day’s march. I experienced no little trouble on one occasion when returning to the valley after some months’ survey work in Dakhla Oasis. After halting one day at Kharga village, we proceeded on our way to Esna by the Bulaq pass. ”

“ Everything connected with the village is of the most primitive description, and until a very short time ago few of the inhabitants had been beyond the limits of their own fields. The advent of the railway caused no little commotion and stir in the oasis, and awakened trading instincts which had lain dormant since Roman times. Many of the villagers now travel to and fro between Kharga and the Nile Valley, and the Omda took an early opportunity of obtaining leave of absence from his onerous duties, and proceeded to Alexandria for a course of sea-baths! ”

“ A French physician, Monsieur Poncet, who passed through Kharga in 1698, en route for Abyssinia, appears to have been the only traveller who left any written records of the Great Oasis between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. ”

“ Unlike the natives of Dakhla and Kharga, who have no pretensions to a sporting character, those of Farafra Oasis are keen hunters. While in that oasis I saw several most ingenious appliances for catching game. ”

“ After a stay of some days in Kharga to allow the caravan to come through from the Nile Valley, we started off for our journey to Dakhla Oasis. Our road at first ran roughly from east to west. Shortly after our start it passed through a patch some two miles wide of curious clay ridges. These, which seemed all to be under twenty feet high, were evidently formed by the erosion of the earth by the wind-driven sand, for they all ran from north to south, in the direction of the prevailing wind. ”

“ Though the depression to the north of Dakhla, in which the oasis of Farafra lies, is far larger than those in which Kharga, Dakhla and Bahariya are situated, Farafra is a miserable little place containing only about twenty wells all told, with only two oases permanently [319] inhabited. Of these, Qasr Farafra, the larger, has a population of only about 550; while the smaller—’Ain Sheykh Murzuk—contains only one or two houses and a small Senussi zawia, the number of inhabitants probably not much exceeding twenty. ”

“ A few miles over broken ground brings one on to nearly level limestone desert, with no hindrance in any direction. Road runs generally S. over flat limestone; nothing of any interest till the road dips into the great hollow of the oasis. 82 87 Ein Karam Mohammed 13 100 First water at Ein Karam. See book above-mentioned for maps and full description of the great Oasis of Kharga, which lies in a dip over 100 miles long and 20 miles wide, running N. and S. About 120 wells and 10 villages or districts; population about 8,000; 4,500 feddans of cultivated ground, and about 60,000 palm trees. ”

“ The villages, wells, and cultivated lands lie within a north and south band, occupying the lowest portion of the floor, and following the general trend of the depression. They are, however, broken up by a broad area of barren desert into two distinct north and south groups, of which Kharga and Beris villages are the chief centres respectively. ”

“ It is difficult to convey to anyone who has not seen them a clear idea of these oases in the Libyan Desert. Kharga is an oblong tract of country measuring roughly a hundred and forty miles from north to south by twenty from east to west. It is bounded on the east, north and west by huge cliffs or hills. Only about a hundred and fiftieth of its area, in the neighbourhood of the various villages, hamlets and farms scattered over its surface, is under cultivation. These cultivated areas are irrigated by artesian wells, many of which date back to a very remote period. ”

“ They have in fact reduced the whole population to a state of serfdom, in return for their enforced labour teaching them a few verses from the Koran. In this way all the children have learnt to read and write.
The Bakharieh Oasis, lying nearer to the Nile Valley and being better supplied with springs than Farafreh, is also far more densely peopled. This is probably the "Little Oasis" of the ancients, and here are still to be seen a few monuments dating from the Roman period, including a noble triumphal arch, some underground aqueducts and fortifications. ”

“ In their customs the inhabitants of the oases closely resemble the natives of the Nile Valley; but in some respects they are peculiar. Until the railway into Kharga was constructed, the oases were very much more cut off from the outside world than at present. Consequently the inhabitants are in many ways much more primitive than the fellahin of the Nile Valley, and still follow customs which in some cases may have been followed there, but which have long since become obsolete. ”

“ With such memories and musings, we began our next morning's march. When we turned our backs on the Oasis of Wady Feiran, it was like leaving home. How soon the traveller on the desert gets a feeling of home for a spot where he has camped by the brookside and under the trees, where peace has come to him as he sat before his tent door in the cool of the day, when the evening wind gently stirred the leaves of the palms over his head. Three days before, this oasis was as utterly unknown to us as if it were a valley among the mountains of Central Asia. ”

“ I had intended to go straight on to El Taj, the chief town of Kufra, the next day, but Bu Helega claimed the right of hospitality and insisted that I should stop a day at the oasis which is his home. After a good night’s rest—undisturbed by sand-storms or collapsing of tents—and a shave, I was quite ready to do full justice to the breakfast sent by the Bedouins of a caravan which had just arrived from Wadai. ”

“ Towards the north another depression in the plateau on the route to Alexan- dria is occupied by the oasis of Gara, which is inhabited by some forty persons. According to a local tradition this number of forty cannot be exceeded, death inevitably re-establishing the equilibrium whenever disturbed by an excess of births or by too great an inroad of immigrants. Origin of the Oases. ”

“ It lies some 5 kilometres S.S.W. from Tablemun, and about 7 kilometres E.S.E. from Ain el Haiss, and thus forms the most southerly cultivated spot in the oasis. Both these localities were reported by our men, sent there to obtain water, to be untenanted; the lands are doubtless cultivated by men sent from Ain el Haiss or from the villages for the purpose. A long line of sand-dunes and scrub runs S.S.W., hiding these places from a traveller approaching from Ain el Haiss. ”

“ They had a fort larger and stronger than the one against which Skobeleff's army was nearly shattered to pieces at Geok Tepé; it was an enclosure with high, thick walls of mud, and large enough to hold the whole population with their flocks and herds. The Oasis is about one hundred and twenty miles from Askabad and ninety from the nearest point on the Tejend; it was formerly incorporated with the surrounding provinces of Turkestan, but for many years has been independent. ”