Agdal

The Agdal is a royal estate founded in Almohad times located South of Marrakech. Its walled perimeter contains 340 Hectares of orchards. This paper discusses the evidence obtained by an archaeological survey of the site carried out in early 2012. The archeological prospection of the Tasltante plain, where the Agdal is located, has also allowed a preliminary  reconstruction of the peri-urban landscape of Marrakech in the XIXth Century.

At first sight, the agdal consists of banning grazing each year for a given period, allowing a resting period to the vegetation, the establishment of young seedlings and thus the continuity of the ecosystem and of the pastoral activity. Our primary aim is to put into perspective the pastoral production systems and the cultural representations of the population of the Ayt Ikiss in the High Atlas of Marrakesh, on the basis of an analysis of the system of tagdalts (combined system of several small agdals) and of the functioning of the pastoral Agdal of Yagour. Secondly, we analyse the main transformations with which the local agro-pastoral society is confronted. Our position is that we can only understand the concept and the practice of the agdal within the framework of a holistic and total approach that takes into account the bioecological, technical, legal, economic and symbolic systems. The agdal is a key factor of the economic system and of the local agro-pastoral system. But it also includes a fundamental cultural dimension. The religious institutions and the ritual practices are the mainstay of the rules of the agdal and occupy a central position in the management of the pastoral territory ofYagour, the maintenance of biodiversity and the long term conservation of communal pastoral resources.  

[EN] The Agdal is an almunia or royal estate located south of Marrakech, founded in Almohad period. The name is first used at the end of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, under the Alawite dynasty. In Almohad period it was known as the Buhayra and as Rawd al-Masarra (The Park of Joy) in the Saadian dinasty. Its gardens have remained continuously grown, serving both as recreational spaces. The research project started in 2012 and showed the enormous historical value and archaeological potential of this property, which required a more detailed study. It needed to be expanded with a territorial analysis of the environment of the city that allowed locate the remains of a large number of irrigation pools and water infrastructure that would have belonged to so many almunias spread over the suburban landscape of Marrakech.
[ES] el Agdal es una finca real o almunia situada al sur de Marrakech, fundada en época almohade. Las fuentes escritas no la recogen con este nombre hasta finales del siglo XVIII o principios del XIX, ya bajo la dinastía alauí. En época almohade se la conocía como la Buhayra y en la saadí como Rawd al-Masarra (El Parque de la Alegría). Sus huertas se han mantenido cultiva-das ininterrumpidamente, sirviendo a la vez de espacios de recreo. El proyecto de investigación iniciado en 2012 ya mostraba el enorme valor histórico y potencial arqueológico de esta finca, que requería de un estudio más pormenorizado. Asimismo se hacía patente la necesidad de ser ampliado con un análisis territorial del entorno de la ciudad que permitiese localizar los restos de un elevado número de grandes albercas e infraestructuras hidráulicas que habrían pertenecido a otras tantas almunias que sembraron el paisaje periurbano de Marrakech.

This study examines diverse roles of the agdal system, a several centuries-old traditional Berber form of environmental management that consists of prohibiting access to communal natural resources during a certain period, in order to enable the regeneration of natural resources. As results, we gained understanding of an ingenious system of agro-pastoral land rotation based on several agdals (also called tagdalts in diminutive) and closely linked to a complex and evolving cosmology, which together represent certain values for the conservation of the bio-physical environment, the performance of the present local economy, and the maintenance of the current social cohesion and cultural continuity. The agdal system is an inherently Moroccan type of gardening, because it is a system that has shaped the Moroccan landscape and nature for hundreds of years, but also because it is an element of social identity. A survivor of the past but still adaptable to climatic variations and social changes, the landscape of the agdals continues to resituate and determine nature in the present. As a conclusion we propose that agdals and their probably millenary cultural heritage, are very important for the durability of the current agro-pastoral activity and ecosystems.