The island of Jerba, off the south-eastern coast of Tunisia, has long been a place of legend. In Homer’s Odyssey, this was the Land of the Lotus-Eaters where the inhabitants passed their lives ‘in indolent forgetfulness, drugged by the legendary honeyed fruit’. Upon arriving on the island, Odysseus lamented that:
My men went on and presently met the Lotus-Eaters, nor did these Lotus-Eaters have any thoughts of destroying our companions, but they only gave them lotus to taste of. But any of them who ate the honey-sweet fruit of lotus was unwilling to take any message back, or to go away, but they wanted to stay there with the lotus-eating people, feeding on lotus, and forget the way home.
On my way to Jerba, the louage (shared taxi) driver, whose kind are not normally counted among the most poetic of people, announced that ‘you are going to the island of dreams’.
It is not difficult to see why myths of an idyllic life of indulgence persist. In summer, the island’s superb beaches are overrun with holiday-makers from Europe, while in winter flamingos gather in their thousands on the island’s north-east coast. Houmt Souq, the main town on the island, is an enchanting mix of uniformly whitewashed architecture, covered souqs (markets) and shady, café-filled squares covered in vines.
Jerba’s history is also like no other place in North Africa.
In the 8th century ad, the island became a refuge for the Ibadis, a schismatic Islamic Shi’a sect of the Kharijites who were fleeing persecution from more orthodox Islamic forces. The sect was predominantly Berber, the indigenous people of North Africa whose lands have throughout history been invaded by the Phoenicians, the Romans, the armies of Islam and the array of local dynasties which followed in their wake. The Berbers resisted, seeking out island, desert and mountain refuges as well as esoteric sects that expressed their resistance to orthodoxies of any kind but their own.
Their architecture tells the story of Jerba as a place of refuge. Mosques (more than 200) and menzels (fortified homesteads) abound across the island, each built implicit with heavily buttressed walls, squat minarets and watchtowers. Some are even underground. Even at worship, the Ibadis were fearful of attack and ready to mount a defence at a moment’s notice.
Today, the Ibadi doctrine survives only in the villages of southern Jerba and in the villages of the M’Zab Valley in central Algeria.
Living alongside the Ibadis