Tolga () is a municipality in

Biskra Province Biskra (, Berber: ⴱⴻⵙⴽⵔⴰ) is a province (''wilaya'') of Algeria. Its capital is Biskra. It is located on the northern edge of the Algerian Sahara, south of the Atlas Mountains. Geographically, Biskra Province is arid, but oases and ...

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

. Located in south-east Algeria, 363 km south of the capital

Algiers Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many Communes of Algeria, communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008Census 14 April 2008: Offi ...

(34° 43' 00" N and 5° 23' 00" E). Tolga is well known internationally for high-quality

dates Date or dates may refer to: * Date, the fruit of the date palm (''Phoenix dactylifera'') * Jujube, also known as red date or Chinese date, the fruit of ''Ziziphus jujuba'' Social activity *Dating, a form of courtship involving social activit ...

(

Deglet Nour Deglet Nour, also spelled Deglet Noor, is a cultivar of the Phoenix dactylifera, date palm that originated in the oasis of Tolga, Algeria, Tolga in Algeria.Pierre Munier, ''Le palmier-dattier'', éd. Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris, 1973, Commonl ...

). It has more than 500,000 date palm trees. Most dates produced are exported.

History

The Tolga

Oasis In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

s. Many rectangular stones from the Roman era have been found in old Tolga, testifying their presence in this oasis. The city was the headquarters of the powerful Confederation of Dhouaouda and Ryah from

Beni Hilal The Banu Hilal () was a confederation of Arab tribes from the Najd region of the central Arabian Peninsula that emigrated to the Maghreb region of North Africa in the 11th century. They ruled the Najd, and campaigned in the borderlands between Ir ...

, a

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...

clan from southern

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

where they have migrated under the leadership of the

Fatimid The Fatimid Caliphate (; ), also known as the Fatimid Empire, was a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries CE under the rule of the Fatimid dynasty, Fatimids, an Isma'ili Shi'a dynasty. Spanning a large area of North Africa ...

s between the 10th and 11th centuries. According to the

Andalusia Andalusia ( , ; , ) is the southernmost autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain, located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomou ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

and geographer

Al-Bakri Abū ʿUbayd ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb ibn ʿAmr al-Bakrī (), or simply al-Bakrī (c. 1040–1094) was an Arab Andalusian historian and a geographer of the Muslim West. Life Al-Bakri was born in Huelva, the ...

, ''"Tolga next to Farfar and Bourdj ben Azzouz and many other towns in this region make the biggest oisis in Algeria and North Africa, One of those cities are inhabited by Arabs and Amazigh origins. "''

References

Communes of Biskra Province {{Biskra-geo-stub