- Amzru and the Zagora Djebel
- The Almoravids in Zagora
- Tagmadert, cradle of the Saadiyîn
- The Dra and Timbuktu
- Anarchy and chronic warfare
Contemporary time

Contemporary times

When the French arrived in the region in the 1930’s, they appreciated enough the site of the former Tazagurt to make of it a military and administrative post. The road and the bridge were built in the 1950’s. In the 1990’s, Zagora became a municipality, in which Amzru was incorporated, and the capital of a new province covering the whole valley.

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Qsar of Amzru (18th)

Among the most important changes that followed French occupation and then independence, there is first the impact of security : the end of anarchy meant that families could start leaving the overcrowded qsour to build individual modern houses next to them.

Another key event was the transfer of the souq of Amzru to Zagora, in 1940. The authorities imposed it in order to avoid the consequences of the Dra floods that from time to time were preventing its crossing. A French Lieutenant wrote that in such occasions, the Dra was “absolutely impassable”, “running muddy and reddish waters on a width that varies from 300 meters to one kilometre according to the height of its banks. It is not rare to see a qsar that has been built too close to the river bed being taken away by the floods that often last for a week.” (Lieutenant Georges Spillmann, 1931)

The opening of the first non-religious public school introduced another drastic change in the douar’s way of life. Through the impetus given by a few French officers serving in Zagora, Amzru and Zagora have got in 1953 their first non-religious school, where one could learn Arabic and French.

Lastly, there was the departure of the Jews. If to speak of the qsar of Amzru as « the Jews’ kasbah » doesn’t make sense, it is absolutely true that Jews have been established in the valley for a very long time, before the Arabs themselves, and that they formed a relatively important community in Amzru itself. Some fifty families were staying in the mellâh in the 1930’s, and in the 1950’s at least twenty of them were still there, according to Amzru elders. A few had acquired gardens, most of them were surviving as craftsmen (silversmiths, goldsmiths, saddle and packsaddle makers, etc.) and shop/souq tradesmen. The qsar was eventually emptied of its Jewish population in the sixties.

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