Tamegroute: Green Pottery and Old Books in the Drâa Valley

Most visitors to southern Morocco drive straight through the Drâa valley on their way to a night in the dunes. The palm groves slide by, the road narrows, and Zagora comes and goes. Twenty-odd kilometres further south, almost at the point where the tarmac gives up and the Sahara begins, there is a village that deserves an afternoon of its own.

Tamegroute is small, dusty and entirely unpolished. It has no grand ramparts, no blue lanes, no queue at a ticket office. What it has instead is one of the oldest libraries in Morocco, a Sufi sanctuary that drew scholars from across Africa, and a street of potters who still fire their bowls in kilns dug into the ground, using a deep green glaze made with copper that you will not find in Fez or Safi.

For travellers over 60 this is, happily, one of the easier detours in the south: flat ground, short distances, a handful of sights within a few hundred metres of each other, and almost nothing that requires climbing. Here is what to expect, and how to make it comfortable.

A little history

The name Tamegroute comes from Amazigh (Berber) and is usually translated as "the last place" — the final settled village before the desert took over. For centuries that is exactly what it was: the last stop for caravans heading south across the Sahara, and the first sign of water and shade for those coming back.

Its fame comes from the Zaouia Naciria, a Sufi religious complex tied to the Naciri family and developed from the 17th century, when Sidi Mohamed ben Nacer made it a centre of learning. It became far more than a village mosque: a school, a court of arbitration between tribes, a place of hospitality for travellers and, above all, a library. Ben Nacer is said to have brought back several thousand works from long journeys through Africa and the East, and the collection grew with copies made on the spot.

The manuscripts that remain — Qur'ans, but also astronomy, mathematics, law and medicine, some written on gazelle parchment and dating back to the medieval period — are the reason scholars still speak of Tamegroute with real respect. The pottery came from the same impulse: craftsmen were brought in from the north to work on the zaouia's buildings in the late 17th century, and the village quietly kept the skill for itself.

The Zaouia Naciria (Nasiriyya) in Tamegroute.

What to see

Everything worth seeing sits in a compact area, and a slow visit takes two to three hours.

The library of the Zaouia Naciria

The library is the heart of the visit. A custodian shows a small selection of manuscripts in glass cases and explains them, usually in French or Arabic, sometimes in simple English. It is a short visit — fifteen to thirty minutes — but a moving one: the handwriting, the gold leaf, the marginal notes of readers dead for six hundred years. Photography is generally not allowed inside, and a modest donation or small entrance fee is customary. Mornings and late afternoons are the reliable times; Friday midday is best avoided, as it is elsewhere in Morocco.

The zaouia courtyard and mosque

Around the library lies the zaouia complex itself, with its courtyard, arcades and the mosque with its pale minaret. The mosque's prayer hall is a place of worship and not a monument to tour, but the courtyards and the outside of the buildings are quietly beautiful, especially in low afternoon light. Dress modestly and keep voices down: people come here to pray, and some come on pilgrimage.

The lanes of the old ksar

Behind the zaouia, the old village is a maze of earth-built lanes, some of them covered passages that run in shadow between the houses. They are cool even in warm weather and genuinely atmospheric. The ground is uneven and there is no signage, so this is the one part of Tamegroute where a local guide, or simply a short there-and-back stroll rather than a full loop, makes sense.

The potters' street

A few hundred metres from the zaouia, a line of workshops and open yards forms the pottery quarter. You can watch bowls being thrown, see them drying in rows under the sun, and peer into the kilns sunk into the ground. It is a working place, not a demonstration, which is precisely what makes it good.

The mosque of Tamegroute.

The famous green pottery

Tamegroute's glaze is the reason collectors come. The colour is a deep, uneven, slightly translucent green, made with copper oxide and fired in wood-burning kilns dug into the earth, and the finish is deliberately imperfect: drips, pooled colour at the rim, the odd bare patch of terracotta. Plates, bowls, tagines, jugs, oil lamps and the flat serving dishes are the classic shapes; the pieces have become quietly fashionable in European kitchens, which has helped the village survive.

If you want to buy, a few practical points. Prices are far lower here than in Marrakech, and bargaining is expected but should stay friendly. Most pieces are hand-glazed with mineral oxides in traditional workshops; if you plan to eat off them daily rather than use them decoratively, ask the seller directly what the glaze is and whether the piece is food-safe, and take the honest answer. Everything is heavy and fragile, so ask for generous newspaper padding and keep it in hand luggage if you can, or buy small.

Potters at work in Tamegroute.

A day trip nearby

Tamegroute pairs naturally with two short outings, both on flat roads.

The Tinfou dunes lie roughly 4–6 km further south, a small isolated group of sand hills rising perhaps thirty metres out of the stony plain. They are not the great ergs of Chigaga or Merzouga, and honesty demands saying so — but that is also their advantage. You can be driven to within a few metres of the sand, sit on a rug at the base, and watch the sunset without a camel, a 4x4 convoy or an overnight camp. For anyone who wants the Sahara feeling without a long ride, this is the gentlest version in Morocco.

Zagora, about 20–25 km north (20–30 minutes by road), is the practical town of the valley: banks, pharmacies, a lively souk on market days, hotels with gardens and pools, and the famous road sign pointing to Timbuktu. Between the two, the N9 runs through almost continuous palm groves and small ksour, with several places to pull over and look across the greenery to the bare hills beyond.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• The ground is flat, and that is the good news. The zaouia, the library and the potters' street are all on level or very gently sloping ground, with no hill to climb and no long staircase. Surfaces are hard-packed earth, gravel and occasional stone, so wear closed shoes with a good sole rather than sandals.
• Distances are short. From the zaouia to the pottery workshops is a walk of a few hundred metres. A driver can drop you at each and wait, which many happily do; if walking is difficult, you can see the main sights with almost no walking at all.
• The old lanes are the exception. They are narrow, uneven, sometimes dark under their roofed sections and occasionally have a step or a raised threshold. If your balance is uncertain, admire them from the edge and skip the deeper maze.
• Heat is the real obstacle, not terrain. Summer in the Drâa valley regularly passes 40°C and can be genuinely dangerous for older visitors. From roughly June to early September, treat outdoor sightseeing as a very early morning or late afternoon activity, or come in another season.
• Carry more water than you think you need, plus a hat and sunglasses; the light off the stony ground is fierce even in winter.
• Winter nights are cold. Daytime can be a pleasant 18–22°C while the night drops towards 5°C. Pack a fleece and check that your room has real heating.
• Sleep in Zagora or in a guesthouse in the palm groves nearby. Tamegroute itself has a few simple places to stay, but Zagora offers more comfortable rooms, lifts or ground-floor options, and easier access to a pharmacy; it is only 20–30 minutes away.
• Facilities are basic. Public toilets are scarce, so use the ones at your hotel or at a café where you buy a drink. Bring any medication you rely on; village pharmacies are limited.
• Hire a driver for the day rather than relying on shared taxis. It costs more, but it removes waiting in the sun, and a local driver will get you into the library at the right hour.
• Respect matters here. This is a living religious centre. Modest clothing covering shoulders and knees, no photographs of people without asking, and no cameras inside the library.

One of Tamegroute's narrow lanes.

What to eat

Tamegroute is not a restaurant destination, and you should plan meals around your guesthouse or a simple café. What the valley does have is superb raw material.

Dates above all: the Drâa is one of Morocco's great date valleys, and the varieties sold along the road — from the soft, dark, honeyed ones to the drier keeping dates — are worth buying by the kilo. Dates and a glass of mint tea are the standard welcome, and it would be rude and also foolish to refuse.

Tagine appears everywhere: lamb with prunes or with local dates, chicken with preserved lemon and olives, or the vegetable version that is often the best thing on the table. In the oases you may also be offered madfouna, the stuffed flatbread nicknamed "Berber pizza", filled with spiced meat, onion and egg and baked buried in embers. Breakfast is likely to be a Berber omelette cooked in an earthenware dish with tomato and onion, flat bread, olive oil, honey and amlou-style almond spread.

Two practical notes for sensitive stomachs: dishes here are aromatic rather than hot, so spice is rarely a problem; and stick to bottled or filtered water, including for rinsing fruit.

Getting there

There is no railway in this part of Morocco, and no useful public transport to Tamegroute itself. Almost everyone arrives by car, by hired driver, or by grand taxi from Zagora.

A street in Tamegroute.

Our verdict

Tamegroute rewards the kind of traveller who is not in a hurry. If you measure a destination by monuments per hour, it will disappoint: half a day covers it, and nothing here is spectacular in the postcard sense.

But few places in Morocco let you stand this close to living continuity. A library that has been lending and copying books since the 1600s. A glaze mixed the same way for three centuries, fired in a hole in the ground fifty paces from where the clay is dug. A village that was, for the caravans, the last friendly roof before a very long emptiness.

For readers over 60 it is also unusually kind: flat, short, shaded, without a single set of ruins to scramble over. Combine it with a night in the Drâa palm groves and an hour on the Tinfou sand at sunset, and you have a two-day loop from Ouarzazate that is gentle on the body and long in the memory. Go before the tour buses learn the way.

“At the edge of the sand, Tamegroute still keeps its books open and its kilns warm.”

Photo credits

• 141046Tt0761 Tamegroute 52527565328: Emilien Lebourgeois, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
• Zaouia Naciria, Tamegroute, 79-1: Stegop, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• 141044Tt0759 Tamegroute la Mosquée 52527294079: Emilien Lebourgeois, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
• 141101Jo0856 Tamegroute les potiers 52527014571: Emilien Lebourgeois, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
• 141022Jo0811 Tamegroute les ruelles 52527480800: Emilien Lebourgeois, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
• Tamegroute: Theoliane, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons