Tiznit, EI
Published in
Encyclopaedia of Islam
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Tiznit
Abderrahmane LAKHSASSI
Tiznit is a city of the Moroccan Southwest whose inhabitants speak the Berber Tachelhit language [see Berber]. At 224 meters over the sea level, it is situated on the main road, RP 30, that passes by Agadir [q.v.] and descends toward the Western Sahara. Its position in the Souss [to see SÛS] plain, between the Atlantic ocean to the west (15 Km), the High-Atlas to the north (90 Km), and the Anti-Atlas to the south and the East makes it a crossroads city. Before the 19th century, nothing was known about it, apart from the legend of its foundation, due to a certain prostitute, who become thereafter a saint. Oral tradition claims that her dog had found first l'in aqdîm (the Old Source) of Tiznit.
Besieged by the sheriff [to see SHURAFA'] Hashem U-Ali (murdered in 1825), Tiznit, by its constant opposition to the hegemony of Tazerwalt [q.v.], was fortified in 1883. Under the direction of the sultan Hassan I [q.v.], the expedition of 1886 strengthened the position of the Makhzen [to see Makhzan] in the region. The city then attracted many Jews of the so-called Bilâd al-Sîbâ,. Tiznit must have one tousand inhabitants in 1882 (Erckmann : 56) and its population in 1936 already reached 4 662 of which 357 Jews and 132 Europeans.
Chased from the Sahara at the beginning of the century, Sheik al Mâ'-al-'Aynayn [q.v.] took refuge there in 1909. His son Ahmad al-Hiba [q.v. in Suppl.] succeeded to mobilise the surrounding tribes, launching the jihad against the army of the French Protectorate. Being proclaimed sultan in 1912, al-Hiba took Tiznit as his capital until he was defeated near Marrakech. Since then until the Spanish de-colonisation of the Western Sahara in 1975, Tiznit had remained a small city from where the Spanish enclave of Ifni [q.v.] has been supervised. In 1982, it already counted 23 000 inhabitants, and its importance continued to increase to become today the county seat of the whole Province.
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Bibligraphy : J. Erckmann, Le Maroc moderne, Paris 1885, 56-7,; L. Justinard, Notes sur l' histoire du Sous au the XIXè siècle, in Hespèris in, v, (1925) and vi, (1926); L. Justinard, Un grand chef Berbère : le caïd Goundafi, Casablanca 1951; al-Mukhtâr al-Sûsî, Iligh qadîman wa hadîthan, al-Ribât 1966; J. Guibert, L'histoire d'une ville : Tiznit, mémoire pour l'obtention du diplôme de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1978-9; Tiznit, in Ma'lamat in al-maghrîb, viii, Salâ, 1996, pp. 2676-83.
(Abderrahmane LAKHSASI