This article is about the town. For the former Libyan district see Ghadamis District.

Ghadames غدامس
Ghadames Mosque at night
Ghadames Location in Libya
Coordinates: 30°8′N 9°30′E / 30.133°N 9.5°E / 30.133; 9.5
Country	Libya
District	Nalut District
Time zone	UTC + 2

Ghadames or Ghadamis (Arabic: غدامس‎, Berber: ghdams / ɛadēməs; Libyan vernacular: ġdāməs) is an oasis town in the west of Libya. It lies roughly 549 km in the southwest of Tripoli, near the borders with Algeria and Tunisia.

The oasis has a population of 7000 Tuareg Berbers. The old part of the town, which is surrounded by a wall, has been declared World Heritage of the UNESCO. Each of the seven clans that used to live in this part of the town had its own district, of which each had a public place where festivals could be held.

[edit] History

The first records about Ghadames date from the Roman period, when there were troops in the town from time to time. The Roman name for the town was Cydamus.

Houses in Ghadames are made of mud, lime, and palm tree trunks with covered alleyways between them to offer good shelter against summer heat.

During the 6th century, a Bishop lived in the oasis, after the population had been converted to Christianity by Byzantine missionaries.

During the 7th century, Ghadames was ruled by the Muslim Arabs. The population quickly converted to Islam and Ghadames played an important role as base for the Trans-Saharan trade until the 19th century.

In the 1970s, the government built new houses outside of the old part of the town. However, many inhabitants return to the old part of the town during the summer, as its architecture provides better protection against the heat.

The oasis of Ghadames
Is known to most people, I guess
In Libya's vast land
Half-buried in sand
It survives, and it thrives — more or less^[1]

[edit] Old Town of Ghadames

The old town, inscribed in 1986 as a UNESCO World Heritage site, was de-populated of its inhabitants throughout the 1990s, leaving the old buildings at risk of collapse due to a lack of maintenance.^[2]

[edit] Notes

1. ^ |Limerick by Charles Issawi|Die Welt des Islams 38.1 (1998) p. 9
2. ^ The World Heritage Newsletter, No.9, December 1995.

[edit] External links

• "Ghadamis, Libya", Falling Rain Genomics, Inc.
• Azzouz, Intisar (1980) "Ghadames, Libya" In Safran, Linda (ed) (1980) Places of Public Gathering in Islam: proceedings of seminar five in the series Architectural transformations in the Islamic world, held in Amman, Jordan, May 4-7 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Philadelphia, OCLC 7208199; photographs of Ghadames

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