Explore Agadir, the Souss and Anti-Atlas
Despite its solid circuit of huge pisé walls, TIZNIT was only founded in 1882, when Sultan Moulay Hassan (Hassan I) was undertaking a harka – a subjugation or (literally) “burning” raid – in the Souss and Anti-Atlas. Tiznit is clean, neat and tidy, and a good staging point en route to Tafraoute, Sidi Ifni or Tata, but perhaps because of its relatively recent origin, it somehow lacks the atmosphere of Morocco’s other walled cities.
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Sidi Moussa d’Aglou (Aglou Plage)
Sidi Moussa d’Aglou (Aglou Plage)
The beach at SIDI MOUSSA D’AGLOU (Aglou Plage) is 17km from Tiznit, along a barren, scrub-lined road. It’s an isolated expanse of sand with body-breaking Atlantic surf. It has a dangerous undertow, and is watched over in summer by military police coastguards, who only allow swimming if conditions are safe. Surfing can be good but you have to pick the right spots. Quite a few Moroccans (including migrant workers from France) come down in summer, with a trickle of Europeans in winter. Between times, the place is very quiet.
There are a couple of marabout tombs on the beach and, about 1.5km to the north, a tiny (and rather pretty) troglodyte fishing village, with a hundred or so primitive cave huts dug into the rocks.
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The Blue Sultan
The Blue Sultan
Tiznit itself was used as a base by El Hiba, the ruler of Smara in the Western Sahara, who declared himself sultan of Morocco here in 1912 after learning of Moulay Hafid’s surrender to the French under the Treaty of Fez. El Hiba (also known as Ma el Aïnin) was known as the Blue Sultan on account of his blue desert robes. El Hiba led a considerable force of Berbers to Marrakesh, which acknowledged his authority, before advancing on Fez in the spring of 1913. Here his forces were defeated, but El Hiba continued his resistance. Basing himself at Taroudant, and then in the Anti-Atlas mountains, he fought on until his death, near Tafraoute, in 1919. Despite his defeat, the Berbers of the Anti-Atlas mountains still remained outside of French control, and only suffered their first true occupation with the bitter French “pacification” of the early 1930s.
