CHAPTER 3

The Environment of
North Africa
Philippe Leveau

Historians rely on scientific data from the abiotic environment, studied by their geologist and
physical geographer colleagues, the biotic environment, the work of phytogeographers, ecologists,
and paleoecologists, and research in the relatively new field of environmentalgeology or geoecol-
ogy to describe the natural conditions facing societies in Ancient North Africa. All of these disci-
plines work with spatiotemporal scales different from that of historical geography. Nonetheless,
these differences in scales allow historians to effectively integrate this scientific data with textual
and archeological sources. This chapter will draw on all of these types of evidence. That said, it will
challenge a long-standing paradigm that attributes to human societies responsibility for the degra-
dation of different environments and, more cogently for our purposes, the question of whether in
the case of North Africa the Roman Empire was responsible for a vast degradation of the environ-
ment or was simply a consequence of the industrial era.

The North of Africa: A Transitional Zone

The region extending from the Straits of Gibraltar to the bottom of the Gulf of Gabes, through the
Anti-Atlas Mountains and the north-east of Tunisia, is perhaps best described as a transitional zone in
terms of the climatic, relief, and societal factors that have effected its environment over time. It is
African in that it is situated on the northern edge of this continental shelf, but southern European in
its pleated geography, which is a direct consequence of the shelf’s slide under the Eurasian one.
Likewise, rainfall is provided by low-pressure systems circulating from west to east between the
high-pressure systems of northern Europe and the Saharan anticyclone. During the summer, in a
normal year, the Saharan high-pressure systems travel northwards, to the Mediterranean zone, bring-
ing heat and drought, while during the winter the Saharan front heads south, allowing the oceanic
low-pressure systems to water the north of the continent. The same notion of transition accounts for
the geographic conditions that allow for two distinct areas when it comes to the possibilities offered
to agricultural and sedentary life. The first is a clearly Mediterranean area extending from the
Moroccan Atlantic coast to the north of the Tunisian Ridge, via the Tell Atlas of Algeria and the High
Plains of the Algerian region of Constantine. The area encompasses maritime regions, mountain
ranges, and semi-continental plains benefiting from rainfall, with yearly averages equal to or higher

A Companion to North Africa in Antiquity. Edited byR. Bruce Hitchner

© 2022 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISBN: 9781119071754
 The Environment of North Africa 25

than 400 mm. A second area brings together inland steppic high plains with a cold and arid continental
climate in the winter, with its Moroccan and Tunisian extremities bordering on the Sahara Desert.
Finally, for the past 6000 years these areas have been deeply impacted by a third factor, which is
societal. The instability of precipitation that characterizes both of these areas in combination with
the sensitivity of the mountain ranges to river erosion and wind erosion in the plains create fragile
and discontinuous pedological stretches that worsen the effects of agricultural and pastoral activity.
Their formation and preservation of these two zones thus depends on the vegetation protecting
them. The damage caused by land clearing, harvests, and grazing increase their vulnerability to
droughts and promote the process of desertification.

Geographical Relief
North Africa is largely an area of uplands, apart from the coastal plains of Morocco and Tunisia.
The levelling of its geographical relief leads to average altitudes of 900 m in Morocco, 800 m in
Algeria, and 400 m in Tunisia. Geographers distinguish two mountain ranges flanking the high
plains, extending over a 2400 km distance from west to east: the first running in a parallel manner
to the sea from the mouth of the Oued Souss (Souss River) in the southwest of Morocco to Cap
Bon and the Gulf of Gabes in Tunisia and the second defined by the Tell Atlas in the north and the
Saharan Atlas in the south (Despois, 1964). From Tangiers to Bizerte, the Tell Atlas forms a 70 to
150 km wide strip running along the Mediterranean coast for close to 1200 km. The range is made
up of a series of massifs separated by valleys. It begins at the Straits of Gibraltar, with the Moroccan
Rif Mountains, culminating at 2452 m, and ends on the east coast of Tunisia, at Cap Blanc, the
northern tip of Africa. To the east of the Rif Mountains and of the Moulouya valley, in the Algerian
region of Oran, the coastal range drops in altitude and breaks up into small massifs, the most
important of which, the Tessala and Tlemcen Mountains, dominate the inland plains of Tlemcen,
Sidi-Bel-Abbès. and Mascara. Beyond, the Tell Atlas is divided by two longitudinal ranges running
parallel to each other. To the west, the Chelif Valley, which extends into the Habra and Sig Plains,
stretches over 350 km from the Sebkha of Oran, separating the Dahra and Zaccar coastal massifs
from the inland Beni Chougrane and Ouarsenis massifs. To the east, a great syncline separates the
Greater Kabylia from the Titteri massifs, and then the Biban Range from the Babor Mountains.
Further to the east, the range extends beyond the Algerian region of Constantine into the Tunisian
Kroumirie (1000 m) and Mogod (500 m) Mountains. The latter directly dominate the coastline,
which includes the Mitidja and Annaba Plains.
To the south of the Tell Atlas, the high Algerian–Moroccan plains extend over 700 km to the
east of the Middle Atlas Mountains, from the Moulouya River to the Hodna depression. With a
width of 200 km and an altitude of 1200 to 1300 m at their western extremity, the plains narrow
and drop to an altitude close to 700 m towards the east. They form a series of closed basins inter-
spersed by salt-pans, which separate the Hodna Mountains from the High Plaines of Constantine
(Hautes Plaines Constantinoises). The altitude is considerably lower, around 1000 m, and small
mountain ranges, separating the Setif, Ain Beda, and Tebessa depressions, are scattered within.
Even further to the south, the South Atlas ranges that extend for over 2000 km between Agadir
and the Gulf of Tunis above the Saharan Platform are larger and more diverse than the ranges of
the Tell Atlas. We can distinguish three areas of differing dimensions. To the west, the High Atlas
culminates at the Djebel Toubkal (4165 m). It is flanked on its south side by the Anti-Atlas and on
its northeast side by the Middle Atlas. The Saharan Atlas itself begins on the east side of the
Moulouya River (Wadi Mouloya), which flows into the Mediterranean close to the Algerian border.
The Saharan Atlas comprises a series of southwest–northeast oriented ranges bordering the Algero-
Moroccan high plains and the Saharan shield. These are, running from west to east, the Ksour
Range, the Djebel Amour, the Ouled-Naïl, and the Ziban Mountains. Beyond the Hodna depres-
sion, the Saharan Atlas extends to the south of the High Plains of Constantine with the Aurès
Mountains, culminating at more the 2300 m, and the Nemenchas. To the east of this second
system, the intermediary high plains disappear and the folds emanating from the Saharan Atlas join
26 Philippe Leveau

those of the Tell Atlas, with which they form a third system: The Great Tunisian Ridge. The ridge
begins in Algeria with Djebels Chambi (1544 m), Semmama (1314 m), and Zaghouan (1295 m),
ending at the Cap Bon range (637 m). Further to the south, the Atlas is reduced to mountain
clusters scattered above high plains. Towards the east and the coast of the Gulf of Gabes, the
altitude decreases in the lower and upper steppes of west-central Tunisia.
To the east of the Gulf of Gabes, in Tripolitania, the mountainous bulge of the Atlas ranges is
interrupted and gives way to the Saharan Metacraton, which extends the coast. The transition bet-
ween both is underscored by the sunken area stretching from the west of the Chott El Djerid to
the Chott Melghir, lying 40 m below sea level, and further west, via the Wadi Djedi. Further to the
east, beyond Gabes and the island of Djerba, the Djeffara Plain is bordered by a rugged coastline,
along which alternate oases, lagoons, and sandy areas. This plain straddling the Tunisian–Libyan
border forms a transition between the desert and the coastal steppe. The Djebel Nefousa, a long
dissymmetric range culminating at 968 m and at a distance of 120 km from the coast, stretches
above the coastal plain, which it dominates in a semi-circular bluff, over a length of about 190 km.
To the south, the plain is prolonged by the Hamada Al Hamra desert plateau from where we reach
Fezzan, a point of convergence of three series of parallel low areas: the Wadi Ash-Shali, the Wadi
Al-Ajial Hayaa, and the Murzuq Basin, which are prolonged by small oases.

The Current Climate and Vegetation

The coastal Tell belongs to the Mediterranean climate zone, which is defined by a succession of hot
and dry summers (25°C on average) and relatively mild and wet winters (10°C on average). There
is considerable variation in climate: in the higher latitudes droughts last from seven to nine months
a year, in contrast to the lower ones where droughts rarely exceed four months. The Tell Oranais
represents an exception, however, with a cumulated yearly rainfall that is lower by a third from that
of Algiers, Annaba, or Tunis: 375 mm instead of 600 mm in an essencea semi-arid Mediterranean
climate (Louanchi, 2011).
The strong interannual weather variations of these climates is explained by the fluctuations of
the Saharan front. The Tunis Manouba weather station recorded an annual minimum rainfall of
221 mm and those of Annaba, Algiers, and Oran 276 mm in 1961, 318 mm in 1989, and 172 mm
in 1983, respectively. Nonetheless, torrential rains of more than 200 mm can fall in a few hours.
A maximum level of 808 mm was reached in Tunis and a maximum level of 1100 mm in Algiers in
1973 and in Annaba in 1984. Minimum and maximum levels of rainfall determine whether a
region belongs to the Mediterranean climate zone or to the arid Saharan zone (Henia, 2008).
High-pressure areas centered on the African continent are not always stable and tend to fracture
longitudinally. Thus, in certain barometric configurations, the combined effects of the barrier of
the Moroccan Atlas and of an anticyclone located above the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco push
aside the low-pressure systems coming from the west. The combination of these factors explains
the non-conformity of the climates in the historical Mediterranean regions, between Morocco and
Libya, in comparison with the climate model defined as “Mediterranean” by biogeographers. For
that reason, climatologists place these regions in the north supratropical zone.
In the mountain ranges and on the southern high plains, by contrast, the climate is continental.
The dryness of the air increases the differences between day and night temperatures. Altitude
lowers winter temperatures to averages ranging between 0 and 5°C, which contributes to freezing
on more than 50 days per year. Summer temperatures rise to averages between 30 and 40°C. Dust-
filled dry winds, blowing from the Sahara to the coast – the chergui in Morocco and the sirocco in
Algeria – drive temperatures up to 50°C and intensify drought. Depending on the humidity level,
we can distinguish two types of climates: one that is semi-arid, on the High Plains of Constantine
and the eastern Atlas ranges; the other that is arid, on the high Algerian-Moroccan plains. Only the
Djebel Amour, with a permanent snow cover, enjoys a yearly level of rainfall of more than 400 mm.
To the south and in Tripolitania the climate is desert-like regulated by a stable subtropical
high-pressure system and characterized by the quasi-absence of rain: less than 100 mm per year.
 The Environment of North Africa 27

Phytogeographers distinguish four areas of vegetation, which correspond to the dominant to

Mediterranean and steppe climates. The former covers a great portion of the Moroccan Atlantic
coastline, the Tell Atlas regions of Algeria, the greater part of the High Plains of Constantine, and
the portion of Tunisia north of the Tunisian Ridge. In its natural state, the area’s vegetation is
essentially forests and scrublands, characterized by Mediterranean shrubs (olive trees, pine trees,
pistachio trees, and green oaks). In the steppe, grasses dominate. Vast stretches are covered by
esparto grass as well as Artemisia and dotted with Jujube bushes forming forest clusters. These
stretches cover the southwest of Morocco, the greatest part of the Algerian-Moroccan high plains
and the portion of Tunisia south of the Tunisian Ridge Le Houéro (Le Houérou, 1969). Two
other areas of vegetation are more limited in size. The largest of the two is a pre-desert steppe
characterized by thin and scattered vegetation where Esparto grass is missing. It covers the Hodna
depression, the plains of the Gulf of Gades, and the Djeffara. A fourth alpine area is limited to
mountain clusters in Morocco.

Natural and Cultural Borders in the Geography of North Africa

The strong influence of climate on the conditions of agricultural production has led geographers to
propose two main geographic zones. The first, the 400 mm annual rainfall isohyet separating the
regions, where it is possible to farm without irrigation, and those regions that depend on it. However,
this isohyet circumscribed the regions where it is possible to farm in accordance with the profitability
criteria first advanced by European colonization from those that required cultivation techniques
specific to an arid environment, including dry-farming, which is practiced in the southwest of the
United States. This divide was treated by geographers as a “climate boundary” separating sedentary
farmers from farmers whose movement is determined by the availability of grazing resources. Modern
authors have used this climate boundary when describing the geography of Roman Africa, which
extended from the coast to the pre-desert marking the southern boundary of the province of Africa.
This boundary was defined by the Roman military frontier or limes. Historians who have adopted
this principle define this boundary as a transition area, the Tell/Sahara interface, rather than as a line
(Trousset, 1986). The delineation of the second boundary corresponds either to the Algiers
longitudinal meridian, sometimes called the Algiers-Biskra diagonal, which apparently separated the
Arab speaking populations from the Berber speaking populations. The former settled in the more
fragmented, drier, and hotter western Tell Atlas and the latter in the massive, extended, and humid
eastern Tell Atlas. Yet G. Camps showed that the north–south boundary that effectively separated
political structures in the Maghreb has a historical origin that goes back to proto-history with no
natural forces justifying such a separation (Camps, 1999).
In both cases, the aim of the considerations inspiring these divisions was to preserve over time
the boundaries set during the French colonial period; in the first instance to mark the southern
extension of the colonization and in the second the decision to divide Algeria into three départe-
ments: Oran, Algiers, and Constantine. French colonization, guided by an ideology that empha-
sized the restoration of the ancient prosperity of Africa, imposed upon French historians of the
colonial period the vision of Roman territorial dynamics as a model that could be studied and
replicated. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve a correspondence with the climate
boundaries noted above and Roman policies toward the African provinces. The same holds true for
the thesis that the extension of olive cultivation coincides with the advances of the Roman army.

Climate During Antiquity

Recent improvements in Carbon-14 dating have permitted a better understanding of the evolution
of vegetal environments and the formation of different geographic reliefs. Relying on the relation-
ship established by phytogeographers between plant groupings and climate areas, palynologists are
28 Philippe Leveau

able to assess the periodicity of climate phenomena – rainfall, thermal conditions, and evaporation –
and to determine succession conditions in the different regions presented above. Working within
the time scales of historical societies, the different fields of paleoecology – pollen analysis, dendro-
climatology, pedoanthracology – have identified climate fluctuations over the past millennia
through their effects on vegetation (Ballouche, 2003).
Geomorphologists likewise have been able to determine the sedimentation patterns forming
foothill deposits in river valleys. The hydrological processes that are at the origin of these patterns
constitute the second source of information regarding climate history. Indeed, during a period of
“hydrologic rest,” rain falling on a slope protected by vegetation is retained, and then seeps into
the soil and fosters its development. Only the fine sediments are carried away and accumulate at
the bottom of the slopes. However, during periods of “meteorological forcing,” the absence of
vegetation or its scarcity multiplies the erosive potential of the climate and erosion becomes more
efficient as precipitation becomes scarcer and harsher, interrupting pedogenesis. On the basis of
this conceptual model, Claudio Vita Finzi carried out systematic observations of the sedimentary
filling of the valleys of Tripolitania and of Cyrenaica, which led him to distinguish two main phases
of infilling: an ancient phase (Older Fills), at the end of the Pleistocene era, and a recent phase
(Younger Fills), at the beginning of the Holocene era (Vita Finzi, 1969). The deposits that char-
acterized these phases had a climatic origin. They made it possible to notice a humid fluctuation in
the climate, which began in the Neolithic age (Shaw, 1981, 1995).
These new tools have not diminished the value of textual and archaeological evidence, but it is
no longer necessary to rely on them alone to reconstitute the environmental conditions in antiq-
uity, as it was difficult to describe on this anecdotal basis, the variations of the main climate param-
eters: temperature, rainfall, and wind. To be sure, rock engravings and archeological data clearly
indicated the desiccation of the Sahara since the Neolithic age. The inventory of ancient hydraulic
works established by French administrators also provided an idea of the available hydraulic
resources. This suggested that the climate of Africa during the period stretching from the fifth
century bce to the seventh century ce was not fundamentally different from that of today. It was,
however, slightly more humid, in particular in the mountains bordering the desert, according to
Stéphane Gsell who dedicated the third of his general chapters opening his monumental Histoire
Ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord to the climate of Antiquity (Gsell, 1913). In the first decade of this
century, paleoclimatologists revealed, in addition to other “proxy data” used in the reconstitution
of climates from the past, the presence of bridges built over rivers that are currently dried up,
Roman cities in quasi-desert or steppic areas, or texts and representations of animal species that
have disappeared (Reale and Dirmeyer, 2000; Reale and Shukla, 2000).
The evolutionary pattern over the last 20 millennia is linked to the variations in the quantities of
heat reaching Earth, determined by the fluctuation of its orbit. These variations act on the position
of the air masses that are at the origin of weather phenomena. During the Würm glaciation, which
reached its peak 21,000 years bp, the desert enjoyed its maximum extension. Later on, the increase
of sunshine, which reached its peak approximately 10,000 years bp, led to a shrinking of the
high-pressure areas centered on the Sahara. This stimulated rain-bearing low-pressure systems
thanks to the westerly winds, which explains the retraction of the Sahara desert and a vegetal recap-
ture reaching its peak around 6000 years bp (Magny et al., 2011, 2013). The vestiges of Saharan
Neolithic settlement are contemporary with the quasi-disappearance of the desert. To the north,
in the steppe area, a hydric and thermal optimum explains the development of olive and pistachio
tree (Oleo-lenticetum) clusters. In the Middle Atlas, the Rif Mountains, the Algerian Djurdjura,
and the Kroumiria Mountains of northwestern Tunisia, deciduous oak forests experienced a
remarkable expansion. Later on, as of 4500 calendar years bp (before the present), the edge of the
intertropical zone moved northwards in latitude, leading, in turn, to a proportional northwards
shift of the Mediterranean climate zone, causing a modification of the bioclimatic zones, which in
turn launched a phase in the development of arid patterns, giving way to the current zoning. The
extended displacement of the isohyets triggered a repetition of drought periods and, thus, a broad-
ening of the steppe. In the northeast, the deciduous oak forests remained until around 2500 years bp,
 The Environment of North Africa 29

but experienced a regression of woody species as well as the replacement of deciduous oak forests
by sclerophyllous oak forests, with holm and cork oaks. To the south, the growth of the steppe
can be seen in an extension of the Artemisia coverage, which is the steppe’s marker (Ballouche,
2001).
However, factors other than solar intensity contribute to climate fluctuations. The climate’s
evolution is not regular and amidst the general trend towards aridification we can recognize
periods of higher humidity whose alternation is seen in the formation of soils (pedogenesis). This
is why North Africa seems to have enjoyed a more humid climate in the period between the sec-
ond century bce and the second century ce. This was observed in Tripolitania, in the Graret D’nar
Salem alluvial basin, where sediment cores collected below a Romano-Libyan farming settlement
provided a sedimentary and palynological sequence demonstrating the existence of a slightly more
humid period than that of today (Gilbertson and Hunt, 1997: 67–79 and 271). In the mid-
Medjerda Valley, a team from the universities of Dresden and Seville identified four phases of aridi-
fication, around 4700, 3000, 1600, and 400 calendar years bp, respectively (Faust et al., 2004).
The first corresponds to the end of the Neolithic age, the second extends down to the late first
millennium bce, and the third, beginning in the fifth century ce, was a period of Saharan expan-
sion that seems to have established the climatic framework for a millennium, lower intensity vari-
ations notwithstanding.
These observations have been corroborated by geomorphology. Thus, in the Plain of Sfax, in
Tunisia, where cooperation between archeologists and geomorphologists was particularly fruitful,
the morphogenesis of the Chaal Charfaoui watershed suggests that the “autumn rains were most
probably more intense than those of today” (Ballais et al., 2003; Ferhi et al., 2007). Elsewhere,
systematic investigations have made it possible to identify several phases of erosion that apparently
correspond to concentrated and a more torrential precipitation pattern than at present. They are
at the origin of sedimentary accumulations, inverting the trend that prevailed between the tenth
and fourth millennium bp, a time when the post-ice age rise in sea level, which is tied to climate
warming, led to an infiltration of the valleys carved out by the rivers and to a general retreat of the
shoreline. Influenced by the deceleration of the rise of the sea level, the accumulation of sediments
in the river mouths wrested from the basins of the wadis, followed by their carriage, resulted in a
clogging of the river mouths and to a general advance of the coastline. Thus, Utica, a Phoenician
settlement at the mouth the Medjerda River, is now located more than 10 km inland. This process
continued until an unspecified date before a reversal in trends that caused a quasi-general retreat
of the shoreline (Slim et al., 2004; Wilson, 2017). Analogous observations in the Aurès Mountains
show that the period running from 250 bce to approximately 250 ce is characterized by a stabili-
zation of the environment in which alluvial accumulation variations are moderate. During the
period that follows up until approximately 600 ce, accumulation reaches its maximum point, three
times that of the early-mid Holocene (Ballais, 2009).
It is, however, necessary to note the many uncertainties that remain derive in part from the
manner in which the question is treated by paleoclimatologists. Research favors the creation of
long sequences, allowing us to fill the databanks that are necessary to build climate models, eras-
ing the climate fluctuations over the past millennia. The limits of this research, however, are also
linked to the difficulties in applying to North African environments methods that were developed
in Northern European countries, rich in peatlands favorable to the preservation of pollens that
are destroyed by the yearly alternations of floods and droughts characterizing the Mediterranean
climate. Thus, the ancient environment in the humid mountain areas of western Morocco and of
eastern Tunisia remains largely unknown at present. The only detailed study dealing with this
history was carried out in the 1980s on the basis of marine sediments from the Holocene period,
from 5000 years before to the present, in the Gulf of Gabes, an area subjected to a semi-arid cli-
mate (Brun, 1992 bp). High-resolution analyses of marine core samples from the central
Mediterranean (the Strait of Sicily) demonstrate continuity with lake core samples along a tran-
sect running from the Alps to the Praola Lake in southern Sicily. These analyses draw attention
to a change that occurred in the yearly distribution of rainfall following the variations in solar
30 Philippe Leveau

radiation intensity that was observed by astrophysicists. Rainfall, which reached its peak during
the summers and winters prior to 4500 years bp, apparently declined during those seasons in the
period that followed (Magny et al., 2013). However, the effect of drought is not the same
depending on the period when drought occurs. If drought occurs during the vegetative period,
the absence of rainfall in the spring has direct consequences on agriculture, whereas during the
fall and winter its effects are on groundwater levels. Aridification is a result of multiple periods of
drought, which have lasting effects on the soils. The distinction between drought and aridifica-
tion is fundamental for regions extending from 36°N latitiude, where Mediterranean winters
characterized by the humidity of the cold season are the rule, to 34°N latitude, where they are
the exception.
Finally, the question of temperatures is particularly significant. In 1956, X. de Planhol and
M. Tabuteau tried to shed light on this by using the geography of the olive tree whose tolerance
threshold reaches an average of –8°C for extreme minimum lows (Planhol and Tabuteau, 1956).
A comparison between the current map of olive tree distribution and its ancient expansion, docu-
mented by archeological vestiges, made it possible to disregard a thermal degradation tantamount
to that observed in Anatolia. Especially during Antiquity, where there were no olive trees, a milder
climate was apparently enjoyed, which may explain a lessening of its continental nature, due to the
Eurosiberian anticyclone. This observation was verified in an investigation undertaken in the
Nemencha Mountains by J.-P. Chabin, a geographer. The olive tree, present in Antiquity up to
about 1300 ce on terrains with the most runoff waters, does not grow at altitudes above 1200 m.
This small difference leads us to believe that the diminution or different distribution of the rainfall
was the main climatic factor (Chabin, 1988; Chabin and Laporte, 2016).

Climate Variability
The distinction between drought, which is a temporary weather phenomenon, and aridity, which
is caused by a repetition of periods of drought, is at the heart of the question of North Africa’s
environmental evolution during Antiquity. This distinction should condition the assessments of
the lasting droughts and of the disastrous floods noted by S. Gsell in the ancient sources.
The mentions of drought are not frequent and they are not always reliable in climatic terms.
Hence, when Saint Cyprian writing in the mid-third century ad wrote that “in the winter there is
not such an abundance of showers for nourishing the seeds” (Ad Demetrianum, 2), his statement
is simply a product of the eschatological worldview of a Christian for whom the misfortunes of his
age were the warning signs of the expected and longed for end times. However, when Arnobius of
Sicca Veneria explains in his treaty against the pagans, in the year 297 or 298 ce, that drought is
afflicting the Gaetuli and Mauretania Tingitana, whereas the Moors of Caesarea and the Numidians
are enjoying prosperous harvests (Adversus gentes or Adversus nationes, 1.16), this suggests that an
anticyclone must have settled above the western Mediterranean. The few other accounts that
mention droughts suggest that they probably did not last more than one or two years. On the other
hand, the five-year drought that preceded Hadrian’s arrival in North Africa in 128 ce is of particular
interest (HA.Hadr., 22.14: “it rained upon his arrival after five years of drought which earned him
the affection of the Africans”). Modern commentators have interpreted this as explaining the
imperial propaganda of the time, showing that the Gods blessed the arrival of the Emperor. The
reality of this episode is evidenced by two altars built in 128 ce by the commander of the legion
stationed in Lambaesis, at the foot of the Aurès, Mountains: one dedicated to Jupiter (CIL 8.
2609 = ILS 3061), the other to the winds bringing beneficent rain (CIL 8.2610 = ILS 3935).
Furthermore, Italian archaeologists believe that they recognized in the stratigraphy of the La
Malga cisterns at Carthage that this episode, or at least the sequence of events of which it was part,
namely the presence of gypsum crystals, was similar to those found in the soils of desert environ-
ments, suggestings that the aqueduct abutting the cistern was built during an arid climatic period
during the second to early third century (Di Stefano, 2009: 162). This episode, in itself, is not a
sign of a climate change. Rather it may be explained as the result of Saharan high-pressure systems
 The Environment of North Africa 31

that moved up into the Mediterranean area during the summer but did not move down during the
winter, a barometric situation that prevented the low-pressure systems from watering the north of
Tunisia. There is nothing exceptional about this phenomenon (Leveau, 2018).
The accounts of destruction caused by floods and water are more frequent, but these are weather
accidents whose destructibility does not match the flood damage in the city of Rome at the beginning
of our era and show instead climate fluctuations affecting central Italy. There is little to conclude
from the mention of torrential rains in the ancient as they are simply characteristic of Mediterranean
weather. While there third century epigraphic documents – military documents in particular – men-
tioning the repair of roads and bridges damaged or destroyed by the floods (Salama, 1951), this can
be explained by the attention given to the maintenance of the road network. Thus, by adding a new
document to the list that P. Salama had established, German archeologists reproduced a fragmen-
tary inscription found in the excavations of the Gheriat-el-Garbia fort located on the limes tripolita-
nus: ab impetu aqu[arum- - -]\multa loca ed[ucta (?) - - -]. The impetus aquae is a fierce current that
the authors believe designates the flooding of the wadis caused by the torrential rains that fell “in
numerous locations” (Haensch and Mackensen, 2011). However, it does not have any more climatic
significance than the whirlwinds that would sweep away herds crossing a ravine and which was com-
memorated by a rock inscription in Kabylia: cuius voragine semper attrita s[u]nt pecora, nunc provi-
dentia bonorum lucet felix strata gurgus (Gsell, 1899).

Climate and Society: The Debate on Climatic and

Anthropic Causalities
Agropastoral activity becomes increasingly important from the Neolithic period onward. In the
second half of the first millennium bc forests retreated in the face of urbanization, which increased
the need for more agriculture, timber extraction for firewood, and of softwood for urban worksites
and shipbuilding. The former non-desert and forested environment becomes colonized by species
adapted to arid geographies, which was followed by a process of soil degradation in arid, semi-arid,
and sub humid areas. In sum, endogenous human forces combined with exognenous climate
factors to transform the environment. In the historiography on Ancient Africa, mention is made of
a doubly harmful effect, first the degradation of a fragile natural environment and second the­
cause-and-effect relationship of three historical movements: the Roman period, the invasions of
the eleventh century, and European colonization.
Geomorphologists have postulated that the overpopulation of the mountainous zones, rather
than climate, was the determining factor in an erosive crisis responsible for the sedimentary accumu-
lations in the foothills. In the 1950s and 1960s, the geographer R. Benchétrit (1955, 1972; see also
Bravard, 2006) established a close relationship between European colonization, which pushed the
Arab peasants back into the mountains, and the environmental crisis that was subsequently observed
by geographers. Building on a similar observation regarding Antiquity in the south of Italy and
Sicily (and more generally to the second half of the Holocene period and the whole of Mediterranean),
R. Neboit argued that this was a period when the threshold of anthropization was crossed (Neboit-
Guilhot, 1983, 1984). Occurring three or four millennia after an earlier Neolithic anthropization,
this event was related to a societal model defined as “Roman.” Roman colonization in Africa, in this
model, had two aims relating to land cultivation: maximizing profits coming from state-owned
farms and the massive production of wheat to feed the capital of the Empire. Consequently, Rome
built a centralized empire ruling the totality of the Imperial Occidens and in so doing implemented
true spatial planning policy, which is abundantly illustrated by the road network, Roman centuria-
tion, the drainage systems, the construction of canals, the port developments, etc. The six centuries
of the Roman era thus seem to correspond to a moment in history characterized by robust spatial
planning. As if in anticipation of the reality of European colonization, the Romans apparently seized
the land and pushed the indigenous populations into the mountains.
32 Philippe Leveau

It is further argued in this model that in the eleventh century Africa was subjected to a new
invasion, by the Arab Hilalian tribes, who apparently ruined its agriculture by imposing a mode
of subsistence based on pastoralism. This is based on a passage from the work of Ibn Khaldoun
who, basing himself on a Quranic comparison, wrote in the fourteenth century that nomadic
tribes, the Banu Hilal, “raided Ifriqiya like a plague of grasshoppers, damaging and destroying
everything on their way.” According to an Egyptian geographer from the beginning of the four-
teenth century, before their arrival “[…] the entire country from Tripoli to Tangiers was only
hedges and a continuous succession of villages” (Ibn Khaldoun, 1863: 341).
The thesis of the responsibility of the Arab tribes in the degradation of the environments had
already been criticized by geographers who condemned its ideological bias. Yet the debate on the
climatic or anthropic origins of the steppe’s extension, at the expense of the forest, was reactivated
by the interpretation of the pollinic data from the sediment cores taken in the Gulf of Gabes and
studied by A. Brun. Working with her, M. Rouvillois-Brigol, the author of a study on the Ouargla
oasis in the Algerian Sahara, raised the question of the origin of the steppization of Tunisia that
occurred in the Punic era (Rouvillois-Brigol, 1985). The pollen analyses showed that, since the
Roman period, the vegetal landscape experienced a gradual increase of Artemisia steppes, which
then accelerated. These analyses provided evidence of an aridification phase that reached its peak
around the fourteenth century and preceded a more humid phase corresponding to the Little Ice
Age, running from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries (Brun, 1992). It was therefore
necessary to overturn the causal system and the “presumption that the nomad followed Artemisia
much more than making Artemisia grow along his way.” This thesis favoring climatic causality was
confirmed by the studies that followed.

Forms of Anthropization
The debate on the respective place of climate or human factors in the changes of North African
environments has at present taken on a new form involving the convergence of two historiographic
currents, post-colonial and environmental history. The US geographer, Diana Davis, for example,
demonstrated how the French colonial administration justified the fight against native practices
and the plundering of their populations by relying on the ecological and forest sciences of the
period. Apparently, a kind of colonial science created the “great narrative” of the decline of nature’s
prosperity, which the colonizer was seeking to restore. This science based itself on the thesis that
the Bedouin tribes were responsible for this decline; i.e., the development of nomadic pastoralism
following the Hilalian invasions were at the origin of the degradation of the environment whose
fruitful exploitation during the Roman era had made Africa one of the richest and most urbanized
provinces of the Empire, as well as its breadbasket (Davis, 2007).
The post-colonial rejection of the argument advanced by the colonial period historians treats as
a historical reality what in reality is a historiographic construct. This rejection is little more than a
permutation of values. Its followers seem unaware that the Roman province of Africa, Proconsular
Africa, only represented the eastern part of North Africa and, even if it did supply Rome with
wheat, it did not supply wheat to the empire, but only to its capital. This region was only the sec-
ond provider, after Egypt, and what was at issue were monthly wheat supplies for the 200,000
registered Roman citizens, first at a discounted price and then for free, without prejudice to the
existence of an important free wheat market in other provinces. The theory also ignores the fact
that Africa remained a cereal exporter beyond the Roman period. From approximately 1725 ce,
Algeria became the main exporter of North African wheat to Marseille. It is only in the course of
the nineteenth century that vegetable oil became more important than grains among Tunisian
exports. In reality, the cultivation practices developed by the latter administrations in support of
decolonization do not give any more value to native practices either. From the time in which the
idea that forest dwellers had imposed themselves by mastering mountain terrains in Europe, geog-
raphers complained about the underestimation of the climate’s role and of the technocratic
 The Environment of North Africa 33

repression of local population practices. The geographers J. Despois and J. Dresch had already
condemned the misinterpretation of language of authors accusing the Arab invasions and nomadism
for having ruined most of the North African forests. In this perspective, as well as in light of the
objectives of modern societies and of the ideologies positioning themselves in relation to produc-
tionism, it is necessary to break away from such an assessment of the cultivation practices of ancient
North African societies. When geographers introduce the criterion of profitability, this is done in
relation to current economic conditions. The error consists in equating the current era to the
ancient eras without paying appropriate attention to the introduction of new harvesting tech-
niques. The first appeared in the nineteenth century, with the introduction of the turning plow
“equipped with a front axle, a coulter blade, a ploughshare and a moldboard that the swing plough
does not have, so it can plough the earth at twice a greater depth” (Dresch, 1986). The second is
tied to the mechanization characterized by the use of polydisk and gang plows, which was adopted
in large farms regardless of the political, economic, and social regimes.

The Adaptation of Societies to the Evolution of Environments

From a critical perspective, it is necessary to comment on the various ways in which landscapes
were shaped by rural populations in Antiquity. We are not speaking here about the great land
developments that have grasped the attention of historians of “Romanization” but of humbler
installations that ensured harvesting in arid and in subarid zones. These installations share with
those of the Mediterranean zone a reliance on hydraulics, which provide to plants the necessary
quantities of water for their growth in order to compensate for an insufficient or deficient climate
impact. We can distinguish three types of installations responding to different situations.
The first is the classical irrigation installation transporting water from a spring or diverting water
from a waterway to an arable plot. This, of course, has no African or even Mediterranean speci-
ficity. With regard to Ancient Africa, Pliny the Elder in Tacape (Gabes), “in the middle of the
sands,” describes the distribution of water coming from a spring (HN 28.51 [188]). This tech-
nology is described in detail in Lamasba by a famous inscription (Shaw, 1984). The fertile Belezema
Plain is located in the High Plains of Constantine between the Aurès Mountains in the east and the
Hodna depression in the west, which enjoys an annual rainfall ranging from 400 to 500 mm. Only
a few kilometers away lies the region where Procopius (Bell. Vand. 4.19) described irrigation in the
following terms: “The Abigas River flows from Aurasium, and descending into a plain, waters the
land just as the men there desire. For the natives conduct this stream to whatever place they think
it will best serve them at the moment, for in this plain there are many channels, into which the
Abigas is divided, and entering all of them, it passes underground, and reappears again above the
ground and gathers its stream together. This takes place over the greatest part of the plain and
makes it possible for the inhabitants of the region, by stopping up the waterways with earth, or by
again opening them, to make use of the waters of this river as they wish.” A legal document dating
from the eleventh century shows the persistence of the regulation of these practices in southern
Ifriqiya during the Middle Ages (Ben Ouezdou and Trousset, 2009).
Installations of this kind in the foothills of the eastern massifs were mentioned in it. Hence,
B. Hitchner, in relating the intense development that the Kasserine region in central Tunisia
enjoyed during the Roman era, described the traces of installations of this kind southeast of the
Djebel Chambi and on the right bank of the Wadi El Darb (Hitchner, 1995). Yet the preservation
of this kind of installation is not guaranteed. This is what occurred in the foothills of eastern
Algeria where the growing of cereals is done by spate irrigation. Thus, M. Cote described the
regressive erosion process in the Nemenchas, where J. Birebent had mapped the ancient agricul-
tural spreading that, by deepening the riverbeds of the wadis, forced farmers to capture water else-
where (Cote, 1968: 226).
Two other kinds of installations guarantee the farmer’s independence with regard to the climate
by mobilizing, in one case, the water reserve contained in the soils and, in the other, in deep
34 Philippe Leveau

aquifers. The first is called jessour in the south of Tunisia and faïd irrigation in Morocco (Roose et
al., 2001). Geographers and agronomists who have worked in this region have provided precise
descriptions of these. A jessour is a small trapezoidal dam raised at the bottom of an wadi in order
to trap the sediments carried by the runoff waters, to retain an arable soil upstream, and to store a
body of water that is protected from evaporation. Downstream, surface water flow is concentrated
on the surface area that is the best suited for cultivation. The lower layers of the soil that store these
waters are shielded from evaporation by capillarity, thanks to plowing techniques maintaining a
powder layer on the surface. Pliny, who stresses the importance of preparatory plowing, explains
that up to nine passes are done (NH 28.48 [180]). Columella specifies that in Africa powdery soil
is more fertile than all the others, provided we make sure to make it brittle (Praef., 1.24: In Africa
Numidiaque putres arenae fecunditate vel robustissimum solum vincunt). He recalls that Virgil rec-
ommended four tillages (Columella 2,2: et cui putre solum; namque hoc imitamur arando;
referencing Georgics, 1.43–49). Hence the provision of an annual quantity of 200 mm is equivalent
to 500 mm/year, making it possible to plant trees and to harvest cereals. This technique takes into
account harvesting conditions in an arid environment, a practice that lies behind modern dry
farming in the southwest of the United States. More generally speaking, this technique makes use
of the sandy sedimentary accumulations of the foothills that are poor in organic elements but rich
in mineral elements coming from the rocks from which they originate, whereas the soils of the
humid regions are naturally washed by the rains. Low walls that collect water, hence lowering the
runoff water speed, reducing the effect of erosion, and stabilizing the slopes that can reach an
incline of up to 25%, are associated with the jessours.
We owe to archeologists the material proof of the existence of this phenomenon. It was described
under the name of Walls and Floodwater Farming by a pluridisciplinary team of British archaeolo-
gists who studied between 1979 and 1989 the Libyan plateau drained by the Zemzem, Sofeggin,
and Bei al Kébir wadis that flow into the Gulf of Sidra. This region, extending over an area of
75,000 km2 and constituting the hinterland of the coastal Roman cities of Sabratha, Tripoli, and
Lepcis Magna, is located between the isohyets of 25 to 100 mm of annual rainfall (Barker, 1996).
Further to the west, in Tunisia, Trousset (1995) and B. Hitchner (1995) described the agricultural
development of southern Tunisia as resulting from the spreading of flood waters conjugating with
the building of farming terraces, the former in the desert area of the limes tripolitanus between
Gafsa and the Chott El Djerid and the latter in the region of Kasserine. The generalization of these
practices in the southeast of Tunisia, however, is now well demonstrated in the work of A. Mrabet
(2018) and those in the western part of the Hodna in the work of S. Slimani (Slimani and
Kherbouche 2018).
The third kind of installation is known in Saharan Africa as foggara in Algeria and khettara in
Morocco, two terms that also translate as qanat. The installation is made up of a series of vertical
wells connected to a drainage gallery transporting the water to an oasis. The waters that are cap-
tured are either waters circulating under the beds of the former courses of rivers flowing down
from the Saharan Atlas or waters from aquifers, some of which were left behind from the pluvial
period of the early Holocene when the monsoon would travel as far in the Sahara as approximately
30 degrees of latitude, or ten degrees to the north of the current limit. This is the case in Fezzan,
a region of the Libyan desert with an average annual rainfall that is lower than 10 mm, making any
form of non-irrigated agriculture impossible and where several years can go by without the slight-
est downpour. On the basis of written sources, it has been argued that the foggara was introduced
in the Saharan oases only in the eleventh century. However, the technique of the drainage gallery,
known in French as “mine d’eau,” or water mine, is universal (Leveau, 2015). The technique is
used in the subdesert and steppic areas of the Middle East but it has been suggested that it origi-
nated in Iran. In reality, an African tradition of building these hydraulic works is clearly demon-
strated in Fezzan by the Garamantian civilization (Wilson, 2006a, 2006b). This civilization, which
enjoyed remarkable growth beginning in the fifth century bce and extending into the Roman era,
gave birth to a state-level political organization. According to geologists who acknowledged the
existence of immense reserves in the Albian groundwater, stretching from the northern Atlas to
 The Environment of North Africa 35

the central Sahara and to the Nubian groundwater, the sources flow in a dessicated pattern. Their
use is favored by the importance of sandstone in the geology of the Saharan Atlas. Sandstone,
which is made up of an infinity of small sand grains, has a storage capacity that is higher than that
of any other sedimentary rock formation, in particular limestone.
The use of groundwater thanks to the galleries dug in the aquifers and to the wells represents the
Saharan societies response to the dessication of the climate and follows a principle similar to the one
described in the Ayn Manâwir qanats of the Kharga oasis of the western Egyptian desert. The flows of
the fossil aquifer accumulated in the Nubian sandstone during the last Saharan pluvial episode made
the continuation of agriculture possible. The drying up of these artesian flows at the end of the third
millennium led to the abandoning of this part of the depression. Its reoccupation was due to the exca-
vation of a network of qanats and then to its prolongation and deepening over the course of one mil-
lennium, until the second or third centuries (Wuttmann, 2001). In the urbanized regions of the
northeast, it is possible that the construction of urban aqueducts was an adaptation to the increase of
drought periods during the winter when the groundwater is replenished. These aqueducts addressed
new needs and ensured a regular water supply at the end of the summer period.

Conclusion: Environmental Changes and History

The sharp contrasts that characterize the physical environments of North Africa, as well as the fra-
gility of the vegetation coverage and of the soils, justify the role historians have accorded to environ-
mental pressures. North African societies have responded to droughts, which are a constant in
Mediterranean climates, with appropriate agricultural techniques: fallow in dry cultivation areas and
irrigation. However, the excessively frequent reoccurrences of episodes of drought have had a fra-
gilizing effect on them. Historiography shows that, in this general context, different interpretations
regarding the importance of environmental pressures have evolved in relation to the scientific
knowledge of the period and the historical context in which these interpretations were formulated.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, S. Gsell believed, as all scientists did at that time, that
the climate had only marginally changed, if at all, since the Roman period. In the first chapter of
l’Histoire de l’Afrique du Nord, he introduced the question in the following terms: “the point is to
know whether the prosperity [of Roman Africa] was caused mainly by a climate that was more
favorable to cultivation than today’s or if it was essentially the product of human intelligence and
energy; whether we are to limit ourselves to regretting a past that will never come back or to ask
of it, on the contrary, to provide us with lessons that are useful to the present” (Gsell, 1913: 40).
He concluded that land management during the Roman period could serve as a model that the
colonial authorities should adopt. Forty years later, the geographer J. Despois highlighted the
curse that the physical geography of North Africa had inflicted on its history: “between the formi-
dable nomad owing to his mobility and the inaccessible uplander, the peasant of the plains and of
the Mediterranean hills almost always succumbed” (Despois, 1953: 194). This interpretation of
the constraints exercised by the geographic relief mirrored the anxieties of the French community
with respect to the emerging decolonization (Leveau, 2020a).
A century later the perception of the relations between the societies and environment of North
Africa during the Roman period has greatly changed. Under the influence of historians working in
the proto-historic period, archaeological excavations and explorations have returned to the pre-
Roman African kingdoms their deserved role in the development of North Africa (Mattingly,
2019). New dating and analysis tools make it possible for environmental geosciences – the earth
and life sciences as well as atmospheric physics – to write a climate history aligned with the time
scale of societies. It appears that the prosperity enjoyed by Roman Africa benefited from more
abundant and better distributed precipitation than today and that the [subsequent] decrease in pre-
cipitation, linked to a rise in temperatures, was a factor behind the transhumant pastoralism in areas
where irrigation was impossible. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the multiplication of episodes
of drought led to a worsening of the level of aridity. However, aridity varied by region. The
36 Philippe Leveau

penetration of the Mediterranean inside the Euro-African landmass and the effect of geographical
relief on the circulation and distribution of both air masses and precipitations created a regional
diversity that makes it impossible to consider North Africa as a homogeneous climatic entity.

FURTHER READING

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the French historian S. Gsell (1913) concluded from available data –
mainly written sources – that the climatic conditions of the Roman era had great similarities with those of his
time. Since then, environmental geosciences – Earth and Life Sciences and Physics of the Atmosphere – and
isotopic dating have made it possible to write a history of climate at the time scale of historical societies. In
the absence of a tree ring for this period in the African region, the evaluation of the amount of precipitation
received is based mainly on geomorphological and paleoecological data. In 1996, drawing conclusions from
his work on the Libyan valleys, G. Barker (1996) argued that the most reasonable interpretation of the data
collected by the team he was leading is that over the past 3000 years the climatic conditions were close to that
experienced in the region at the end of the twentieth century. In this sector, geomorphological and paleoeco-
logical surveys do not allow establishing a coincidence between the transformations of the population and a
significant improvement or deterioration of the climate (Barker, 1996).
D. Faust et al. (2004) observe that, 700 km to the northeast, the Medjerda basin and the north of Tunisia
were affected in the fifth century by a drying phase. This played a major role in the geomorphological process
and that its impact on the settlement was decisive. These observations are not contradictory. Indeed, one cannot
treat as a homogeneous climatic whole a space that extends over more than 2000 km at the transition between the
Mediterranean and subtropical climatic zones to the south of a sea that deeply penetrates the continental mass. It
is therefore necessary to take into account the observations of M. Magny and his colleagues (2011, 2013) who
underline the consequences of a modification of the seasonal regime of rainfall for agriculture and pastoralism
during the last two millennia. In this chapter, I offered a history of the question, progress on which depends on a
multiplication of regional studies taking into account the effect of relief on the circulation of atmospheric depres-
sions that bring rains from the ocean and the Mediterranean. This is the approach that I applied to the relations
between societies and the environment in the Saharan margins of the Maghreb (Leveau, 2018, 2020b).

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