Explore the mysterious ancient citadel in the Sahara desert

The Sahara Desert in Northeast Niger (Africa) is a land that is almost beyond human understanding.

The towering giant sand dunes are difficult obstacles to overcome. However, in the midst of this seemingly lifeless place, there are the ruins of a large city with many mysteries.

Fortress city in the middle of the plateau

The city of Djado, named after the plateau where it was discovered, has a number of structures that are familiar and recognizable from neighboring cultures, but many are still mysterious to archaeologists.

Djado fortress city.

The city was probably built about 800 to 1,000 years ago, at a time when it was still wet, densely forested and fertile. Some things are known about the inhabitants who lived here in the past, but whether they were the people who built this city or not is still a question mark.

In North Africa there are scattered settlements, collectively known as 'ksar', with houses built from palm tree trunks, surrounded by a layer of unburnt mud. Over time, the desert winds will dry them out and become as hard as iron.

The fortress city of Djado is one such settlement. But what sets Djado apart from most similar ksars is its enormous size. Rising from the desert, the city stands out from the surrounding landscape, covering a vast area that is both a fortress and a commercial center along the roads leading to Libya.

The Kanuri people of the middle of the Sahara are the last known inhabitants of Djado. However, there is no evidence that they built this monumental structure, so it is thought that they may have inherited the city from an unknown civilization.

Due to its favorable location and pleasant climate in the past, the Djado Plateau saw human habitation long before the city was born. According to scientists, humans have lived on this plateau about 60,000 years ago, leaving behind stone art works and other signs of their presence.

Agriculture and livestock initially also left traces at this site. Goats and sheep were grazed here as early as 7 thousand BC, with the first settlements being built.

Rock art depicts the prosperous times in the Djado plateau.

Many of the rock paintings found in the Aïr Mountains in this region date from 3,500 BC to 2,500 BC. They depict a very different landscape than it is today, a verdant area with sprawling vegetation, inhabited by a wide variety of animals, including giraffes, elephants and many other large mammals.

In the process of building the ksars, the ancient people always paid attention to the changing temperatures and harsh conditions in the area, so the fact that Djado was abandoned does not mean that it was destroyed.

The key to Kanuri's abandonment of their home city seems to be the lack of a clean water supply. When the lush green landscape turns into a desert, fresh water turns into brackish water, the environment becomes too harsh, no one can live in this place.

Who built?

Isolated from the world and designed to withstand the desert environment, much of the Djado fortress city construction still stands today. Their walls stood tall, full of pride, and many of the buildings were mostly intact, except for the arches.

However, accessing the ancient city is currently a challenge for archaeologists. This part of the world is very unstable, the tribes are in bitter conflict over limited resources. Maybe future excavations will shed light on who built the great city of Djado and we can begin to understand the people of this lost culture of the Sahara.

The Kanuri, believed to be the last inhabitants of Djado, reside in the nearby desert village of Chirfa. Every year, they return to their ancestral site to harvest the dates, which somehow still grow around the site. It is possible that the Kanuri are the remains of the Kanem Empire, a great civilization that ruled the central Sahara from about 700 – 1,300 AD.

The Kanuri, the last inhabitants of Djado.

But the origins of this empire are very little known, and not much is known about the early centuries of their reign. It is unclear if the Djado was built during this period or if it actually predates Kanem.

If the Kanem empire built the Djado, excavations at the site could reveal much of this mysterious culture and provide insight into their beginnings. But if they only inherit Djado, then we will have good luck discovering a new culture, preserved and hidden in the arid desert.