Today, the M’Zab Valley holds five of these remarkable settlements — Ghardaïa, El Atteuf, Bounoura, Melika and Beni Isguen — arranged like a chain of stars along the Mzab River’s dried bed. They were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982 and remain, improbably, fully inhabited and functioning. In Beni Isguen, the old city gates close at dusk and non-Muslim visitors may only enter with a guide; the community of some 90,000 Ibadites has maintained its traditions with a care that feels both admirable and slightly startling to the modern visitor.
Walk the Ghardaïa market, buy a hand-woven carpet, watch the date palms sway in the hot afternoon wind. The Pentapolis layout — each ksar built around a mosque whose minaret doubles as a watchtower — is a masterclass in architecture that solves real problems with elegance. At sunset, the honey-coloured walls of Melika glowing above the valley, it is very easy to understand what stopped Le Corbusier in his tracks.
