Mellah of Tinghir: The Jewish Quarter of the Todra Oasis

Jewish communities lived across the Todra (Todgha) valley. A regional history from Sud-Est Maroc names the ksar of Asfalou as their main home, followed by Tinghir, Taourirt and Ait Ourjdal, and notes a local Amazigh song that honours these ksour for what Jews contributed to them. The sources we have do not give a founding date for Tinghir’s mellah.

A French officer’s report from 1930 described Tinghir’s kasbah as about 300 homes, with a Jewish quarter of about 70 homes at its centre. The Jews of Tinghir left in the 1950s and 1960s, and an AFP report in 2014 confirmed that none remain.

Kamal Hachkar, a French-Moroccan director whose hometown is Tinghir, spent five years on his documentary, travelling between southern Morocco and Jerusalem. He interviewed Jews who had left the Tinghir mellah in the 1950s and set out to show, in his words, “a very special period when Jews and Muslims lived together in this Berber region.” The film was first screened in Tinghir in April 2014, to an audience of several hundred.

The same reporting recorded the words of an elderly local craftsman: “The departure of the Jews left a vacuum, and they are always in our memories.” Life was never as simple as nostalgia suggests, and Visiting Jewish Morocco notes that business rivalry, religious differences and questions of governance and security strained relations at times.

The former Jewish quarter lies within the old kasbah, which today holds far fewer people than it once did. Our sources do not identify a standing synagogue or a marked Jewish building. A local guide can show you where the quarter lay and, where families are willing, introduce older residents who remember their Jewish neighbours.

Families of Tinghir origin still return. One emigrant interviewed in Sud-Est Maroc describes relatives travelling every year to Tinghir, Skoura and Rich (Er-Rich) to pray at the tombs of their ancestors. If your family came from the Todra, our Jewish roots trip guide explains how we prepare such visits.

Tinghir sits on the road between Ouarzazate and the Tafilalet. Continue east to Erfoud and Rissani, home of the Abuhatzeira rabbinic family. See our guide to Jewish heritage in southern Morocco.