{
 "key": "history",
 "kind": "article",
 "type": "guide",
 "language": "en",
 "url": "https://ourika-valley.com/ourika-valley-history/",
 "json": "https://ourika-valley.com/data/en/pages/history.json",
 "translations": {
  "en": "https://ourika-valley.com/ourika-valley-history/",
  "fr": "https://ourika-valley.com/fr/histoire-vallee-ourika/",
  "es": "https://ourika-valley.com/es/historia-valle-ourika/",
  "it": "https://ourika-valley.com/it/storia-valle-ourika/",
  "de": "https://ourika-valley.com/de/geschichte-ourika-tal/",
  "nl": "https://ourika-valley.com/nl/geschiedenis-ourika-vallei/"
 },
 "title": "A short history of the Ourika Valley",
 "meta_title": "Ourika Valley History: From Aghmat to the 2023 Earthquake",
 "description": "A dated history of the Ourika Valley: Amazigh tribes, Aghmat and the Almoravids, qaids, the Setti Fatma shrine, the 1995 flood and the 2023 earthquake.",
 "summary": "The Ourika Valley has been farmed by Amazigh communities for centuries. Its river fed Aghmat, the first Almoravid capital, then Marrakech. The valley lived under qaids and the French protectorate, opened to tourism in the 20th century, and survived the 1995 flood and the 2023 earthquake.",
 "updated": "2026-10-01",
 "author": "Brahim",
 "highlights": [
  "Bronze Age engravings on the Oukaïmeden plateau",
  "Aghmat, at the valley mouth, was the first Almoravid capital around 1058",
  "An old earth tower-house at Tafza is now the Ecomusée Berbère",
  "The flash flood of 17 August 1995 changed how the valley lives with its river"
 ],
 "facts": [
  {
   "label": "Region",
   "value": "Al Haouz province, High Atlas, Morocco"
  },
  {
   "label": "People",
   "value": "Amazigh (Berber), Tashelhit speakers"
  },
  {
   "label": "Oldest traces",
   "value": "Rock engravings at Oukaïmeden, many from the 2nd millennium BC"
  },
  {
   "label": "Medieval centre",
   "value": "Aghmat, first Almoravid capital around 1058"
  },
  {
   "label": "Major flood",
   "value": "17 August 1995"
  },
  {
   "label": "Earthquake",
   "value": "8 September 2023, magnitude 6.8, epicentre near Ighil"
  }
 ],
 "itinerary": [],
 "includes": [],
 "excludes": [],
 "faq": [
  {
   "question": "Why is the valley called Ourika?",
   "answer": "Ourika was first the name of an Amazigh tribe and of the river that runs through its land. Medieval authors wrote of Aghmat Ourika, the town at the mouth of the valley. Today the name covers the river, the valley, the rural commune and the small town of Tnine Ourika."
  },
  {
   "question": "What happened in the Ourika Valley in 1995?",
   "answer": "On the evening of 17 August 1995 a violent summer storm sent a wall of water and mud down the river. Houses, cafes, cars and people were swept away. Reported tolls vary, and later reports speak of more than 200 dead."
  },
  {
   "question": "Was the Ourika Valley damaged by the 2023 earthquake?",
   "answer": "The 8 September 2023 earthquake hit the whole Al Haouz province, and villages in and around the valley suffered damage. The worst destruction was further west, closer to the epicentre near Ighil. The valley is open to visitors and daily life, farming and tourism have resumed."
  },
  {
   "question": "How old are the Oukaïmeden rock engravings?",
   "answer": "Researchers date many of the more than a thousand engravings to the Bronze Age, from the 2nd millennium BC, when images of weapons such as daggers, halberds and shields appear. Older animal figures also exist. They were first studied in detail by Jean Malhomme in the 1950s."
  },
  {
   "question": "Can non-Muslims visit the shrine of Setti Fatma?",
   "answer": "The koubba of Setti Fatma is a place of prayer and, as with most shrines in Morocco, non-Muslims do not go inside. Everyone is welcome in the village, at the river and at the market held during the moussem in August."
  }
 ],
 "image": "https://ourika-valley.com/assets/img/terraces.jpg",
 "videos": [],
 "content_markdown": "The Ourika Valley is a valley of the High Atlas south of Marrakech that Amazigh communities have farmed for centuries. Its oldest traces are Bronze Age rock engravings on the Oukaïmeden plateau, dating from the 2nd millennium BC. At the mouth of the valley stood Aghmat, which the Almoravids took around 1058 and made their first capital in Morocco, about two decades before they founded Marrakech some 30 km to the north. Villages were long run by their assemblies (jmaa) under local qaids, a system the French protectorate (1912 to 1956) kept while adding a new canal and mountain refuges. On 17 August 1995 a flash flood killed more than 200 people according to later reports, and a flood warning network was completed in December 2013. The magnitude 6.8 Al Haouz earthquake of 8 September 2023 also affected villages of the valley, which is open to visitors.\n\nFamilies in the valley still tell these stories: the river before the tarmac, the night of the 1995 flood, the long weeks after the 2023 earthquake. This page puts them in order, with dates you can check, so that the villages you drive through make a little more sense.\n\n## A valley shaped by water\n\nThe Oued Ourika rises in the high peaks of the Atlas above Setti Fatma and runs north, through a narrow valley of red earth and rock, before it leaves the mountains near Tnine Ourika and spreads into the Haouz plain south of Marrakech. The climate is semi-arid: most of the year the river is modest, but snowmelt in spring and summer thunderstorms can raise it in minutes. Geographers who study the valley describe it as a classic flash-flood river, and everything in its history, from the placement of villages to the canals that water the fields, follows from that.\n\nThe people of the valley learned to live with it long ago. Villages sit on the slopes, above the riverbed, and the flat land below is kept for terraces and orchards fed by seguias, the earth canals that take water from the river and lead it along the hillsides.\n\n## The first traces: rock engravings at Oukaïmeden\n\nThe oldest human traces in the area are on the plateau of Oukaïmeden, above the valley, reached by a side road from Aghbalou. More than a thousand engravings are cut into the sandstone there. Many date from the Bronze Age, from the 2nd millennium BC, when animal figures give way to weapons: daggers, halberds, axes, shields. Archaeologists read them as marks of herding groups claiming summer pastures, a practice of seasonal transhumance that continued on these high meadows until recent times. The engravings were studied in detail by Jean Malhomme, who published his surveys in 1959 and 1961.\n\n## How is the Ourika Valley linked to the founding of Marrakech?\n\nAt the mouth of the valley, on today's road from Marrakech, lie the ruins of Aghmat. The town appears in written sources in the early 9th century, when coins were struck there, and medieval authors call it Aghmat Ourika: Ourika was the name of the local Amazigh tribe and of the river that watered its fields. Aghmat grew rich as a market town and farming centre on the banks of the Ourika, with its own canals.\n\nAround 1058 the Almoravids, coming out of the Sahara, took Aghmat and made it their first capital in Morocco. About two decades later they founded Marrakech some 30 km to the north, and Aghmat slowly lost its role. The link between the valley and the city never broke, though: the Ourika and its neighbouring rivers remained a water source for the plain and for Marrakech, and the orchards of the valley kept supplying the city's markets.\n\n## Tribes, jmaa and qaids\n\nFor most of its history the valley was organised around its villages. Each village had its jmaa, the assembly of heads of families, which shared out irrigation water by turns, looked after the seguias, the paths and the mosque, and settled disputes. Water rights were, and still are, one of the most serious matters in village life.\n\nAbove the villages, the Sultan's authority was represented by qaids, local chiefs who collected taxes and kept order. In the Ourika, the protectorate kept this system and worked through a qaid of Ourika. A good trace of that period is at Tafza, near Tnine Ourika: a tall house of rammed earth that villagers call Talberj, \"the tower\", [built by two brothers in the 1910s and 1920s](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89comus%C3%A9e_berb%C3%A8re_de_la_vall%C3%A9e_de_l%27Ourika). Since April 2009 it has housed the [Ecomusée Berbère](https://ourika-valley.com/services/ecomusee-berbere/), described as the first ecomuseum in Morocco, with objects, jewellery, rugs and old photographs of Atlas life.\n\n## The shrine of Setti Fatma\n\nThe village at the end of the road takes its name from Setti Fatma, a holy woman whose koubba (domed tomb) stands above the river. Stories about her vary from family to family. Most describe a pious and learned woman who welcomed travellers and the poor and helped settle quarrels between tribes, and some link her to the springs of the seven waterfalls. What is certain is that the shrine has drawn pilgrims for generations, and that every August a moussem is held around it: several days of prayer, market stalls, music and family gatherings. You can read more on our page about [the village of Setti Fatma](https://ourika-valley.com/services/visit-the-village-of-setti-fatma-ourika-valley/).\n\n## The protectorate years: roads, refuges and water\n\nMorocco was under French protectorate from 1912 to 1956. For the valley, this period brought two lasting changes.\n\nThe first was water. The protectorate declared water a public good, fixed the existing rights of the villages and created new ones for colonial farms in the plain. In 1933 the administration built a new canal whose intake lay upstream of older seguias, on the land of the qaid of Ourika, to bring more water towards Marrakech and the colonial estates. The village assemblies protested and pushed for improvements to their own canals. Researchers still cite this episode as a turning point in how the valley's water was shared.\n\nThe second was access. In the early 1930s the Marrakech tourist office was already building mountain refuges in the Ourika and Rheraya valleys and pressing for motor roads into the Atlas. In the 1940s the first ski installations appeared at Oukaïmeden, which later grew into a resort, one of the highest in Africa at about 2,600 m.\n\n## What happened in the Ourika flood of 17 August 1995?\n\nThe event every family in the valley still talks about happened on the evening of 17 August 1995. A violent storm broke over the upper valley and dropped a very large amount of rain in a few hours. A wall of water, mud and boulders rushed down the river, sweeping away trees, animals, cafes built close to the water, cars parked on the banks and many people, including visitors who had come up from Marrakech for the cool air. Reported tolls vary; later reports, including [a JICA study for the Moroccan authorities](https://openjicareport.jica.go.jp/pdf/11855749.pdf), speak of more than 200 dead. Other rivers of the region flooded the same night.\n\nThe flood changed habits. In the early 2000s a pilot flood forecasting and warning system was set up in the Ourika basin with Japanese cooperation (JICA), and a larger network of gauging stations and warning posts along the valley [was completed in December 2013](https://openjicareport.jica.go.jp/pdf/12327144.pdf). Guides and drivers watch the sky and the water closely on summer afternoons. That is also why we keep the right to change the date of a trip when storms are forecast: see our [weather guide](https://ourika-valley.com/services/weather-ourika-valley/) for the months when this matters.\n\n## From a local road to a day trip from Marrakech\n\nAfter independence the road up the valley became the easiest way for people from Marrakech to escape the summer heat, and Setti Fatma grew into a place of restaurants on the riverbanks, footbridges and guides leading visitors to the [waterfalls](https://ourika-valley.com/services/conquer-the-cascades-of-setti-fatma/). Cafes, guesthouses and cooperatives appeared along the road: women's argan cooperatives, potters, rug sellers. Tourism became a second income for many families alongside farming, and a local association of guides was organised in Setti Fatma.\n\n## Was the Ourika Valley hit by the 2023 earthquake?\n\nAt 11:11 pm local time on 8 September 2023 a [magnitude 6.8 earthquake](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000kufc) struck the High Atlas, with its epicentre near Ighil, south-west of Marrakech. It was the deadliest earthquake in Morocco for decades, and most of the victims were in the province of Al Haouz, where old houses of stone and earth did not resist the shaking. The Ourika Valley was further from the epicentre than the worst-hit areas, but villages in and around it were affected and many families spent the winter in tents.\n\nSince then, repair and rebuilding have continued, the road is open, and the restaurants, cooperatives and guides of the valley are working again. When you visit, you contribute directly to that recovery: by eating in local restaurants, buying from the people who make things, and hiring local guides. Our page on [the people of the valley](https://ourika-valley.com/ourika-berber-people-culture/) explains how to do that respectfully.\n\n## Timeline\n\n| Date | Event |\n|---|---|\n| 2nd millennium BC | Bronze Age engravings of weapons on the Oukaïmeden plateau |\n| Early 9th century | Aghmat, at the mouth of the valley, appears in written sources |\n| Around 1058 | The Almoravids make Aghmat their first capital in Morocco |\n| About two decades later | The Almoravids found Marrakech, about 30 km north of Aghmat |\n| 1912 | Start of the French protectorate in Morocco |\n| 1910s to 1920s | The earth tower-house of Tafza is built by two brothers |\n| Early 1930s | Mountain refuges built in the Ourika and Rheraya valleys |\n| 1933 | New colonial canal takes Ourika water towards Marrakech and colonial farms |\n| 1940s | First ski installations at Oukaïmeden |\n| 1956 | Independence of Morocco |\n| 1959 and 1961 | Jean Malhomme publishes his surveys of the Oukaïmeden engravings |\n| 17 August 1995 | Deadly flash flood in the Ourika Valley |\n| Early 2000s | Pilot flood warning system in the Ourika basin, with JICA |\n| December 2013 | Flood warning network of the Ourika completed |\n| April 2009 | The Ecomusée Berbère opens in the tower-house of Tafza |\n| 8 September 2023 | Magnitude 6.8 Al Haouz earthquake |\n\nIf you want to see the places behind these dates, our [day trip](https://ourika-valley.com/day-trip-ourika-valley/) passes the Aghmat area, Tnine Ourika and Setti Fatma, and we are happy to add a women's cooperative or the Nectarome garden on request; the ecomuseum at Tafza has been reported closed since the 2023 earthquake.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [USGS, M 6.8 Al Haouz, Morocco earthquake event page](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000kufc)\n- [JICA, flood warning project in the Ourika and Rheraya basins, follow-up report (2015)](https://openjicareport.jica.go.jp/pdf/12327144.pdf)\n- [JICA, study on flood risk management in Morocco (2007), mentions the 1995 Ourika toll](https://openjicareport.jica.go.jp/pdf/11855749.pdf)\n- [Bladi.net, article recalling the flood of 17 August 1995 in the Ourika](https://www.bladi.net/inondations-ourika-marrakech.html)\n- [Wikipedia (French), Écomusée berbère de la vallée de l'Ourika](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89comus%C3%A9e_berb%C3%A8re_de_la_vall%C3%A9e_de_l%27Ourika)"
}