The oasis of Siwa … leaves a strange impression, but perhaps one that is different and more paradoxical than that which Vavilov sensed in oases further west. There is at once a sense of uninterrupted continuity with the Berber oases of antiquity, with the mud walls of the Shali village compound rising high above thousands of palms, and a sense of rapid change, with tourist buses and European-style resorts evident all around the margins of that ancient compound. Since 1986, when the first paved bitumen road connected Siwa with the market economies of the rest of the world, the population of Siwa has more than doubled. Many of the new residents are neither Tasiwit-speaking “Berbers” nor Awlad Ali Badawi “Bedouins,” but are Arabs from Cairo or second-home Europeans who are economically engaged in making Siwa a great cultural and natural attraction.
While a million palms still cover the soggy, alkaline ground of the Siwan depression, there have been some notable changes in what is grown beneath their canopies in the shady understory. The meticulous field notes of Robert Forbes from 1919, C. Dalrymple Belgrave [1] from 1924, and Ahmed Fakhry from 1968 helped me evaluate the changes in agro-biodiversity which occurred in the years prior to my three visits to Siwa between 2004 and 2006.
Date palms may still be the most prominent food crop that Siwans rely upon for their own consumption and for export, but it appears that some changes in the varietal mix of date palms has occurred. Some historic reports claim that Siwan Berbers once grew dozens of folk varieties of dates, which their Awlad Ali Bedouin neighbors harvested and transported to Cairo and Alexandria. In 1832, travelers reported that as many as 9,000 camel loads of dates left Siwa for the Nile each season; a century and a half later, just before the paved road arrived in Siwa, the Bedouins had their camels carry 10,000 loads of dates across the desert to their traditional markets along the Nile. Today, just five date varieties dominate Siwa’s plantings, and the majority of the harvesting is done by migrant workers from the Upper Nile. Much of their harvest is transported by lorries or flat-bed trucks, and only two Siwan dates are regularly featured in the markets located elsewhere in Egypt and overseas: the flavorful world-class sai’idi date, and the medicinal tagtaggt. Most of Siwa’s other dates are much like the varieties grown in other oases, so they are less competitive in a globalized markets. Fortunately, Slow Food International is assisting Siwans with the recovery of the rare varieties still found around the oasis, and is helping market the entire range of Siwan date diversity in specialty shops.
Notes:- An extremely interesting character, whose account of Siwa may be the least of his achievements. [↩]
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