Djerba

Djerba is a cultural landscape that reflects how local people survived and thrived on a harsh desert island. The dossier and the inscription criteria speak of overcoming the unique challenges in finding food and water, building shelters, developing an economy, defending themselves, and so on. This sounds interesting enough, though a bit vague like most cultural landscapes.

However, almost none of the inscribed locations reflect these criteria. Of the 31 locations specifically mentioned, 25 are mosques, along with a catholic church, a synagogue, and a souk. Which honestly makes this inscription baffling.

For our visit, we stayed in Houmt Souk at the north-western edge of the island. We visited the souk (naturally), the central church, and the Sidi Salem mosque just west of the town. For each of these, there isn’t really much to see. The church is only open two hours a week on Thursdays, so unless your timing is perfect you can only see the outside. The Sidi Salem mosque is only open in the afternoons, and from the outside there’s basically nothing to see anyway as it’s just a little walled compound with a dome (see photo). It reminded me of the fortified churches site in Romania, but otherwise unremarkable.

The souk is very small and inauthentic compared to those found other medinas, and since Djerba is very much a tourist town the stalls are mostly selling fridge magnets and counterfeit football jerseys. Although not mentioned in the dossier, there are a few caravanserais …

This is the first review of a visit to the Djerba WHS after its inscription. The site has received horrible reviews and an exceptionally low rating from our community, but I thought maybe it would all make more sense with the help of an OUV-frame. It’s about a dispersed but homogenous settlement and land-use pattern, characterized for example (but not limited to) self-sufficient rural communities with their own water supply, palm groves and tiny mosques. That’s why it includes 22 rather featureless and abandoned neighbourhood mosques.  

For my visit, I tried to make a representative pick from the locations without having to rent a car. In the morning, I visited 4 components in and north of the capital city Houmt Souk. The medina of Houmt Souk is not a rural settlement, of course, but the trade town where everything ended up. Included is just a small zone (the old funduqs, the covered market, the Mosque of the Turks and St. Joseph Church; but not Borj El Ghazi Mustapha). It feels like a smaller version of the Medina of Tunis, and even in the early morning, it is all geared up to receive the French and German beach tourists. I then walked on to another component, the Church of St. Nicholas. A sign on the door says that it only opens on Thursdays from 10-13. The sizeable church (upper photo) can only be seen from the sidewalk across the street.

My next goal was the Mosque of Sidi …

On our Tunisia journey this April, we visited the island of Djerba. Visiting all the country’s WHS’ we wanted to add on a visit the only site which will supposedly be forwarded (next year). Not knowing too much about the island upfront thus we decided to stay a day (and two nights) to explore it. Even though the island is far from small the mentioned elements in the site description are limited, so with all due respect to the island’s nature, history, culture and trade traditions, there is not much to see!

The nature - is semi-desert like impression all over, except for then inhabited areas. Sandy and rocky, some scattered palms and some slightly cultivated fields. The description says it’s a “dispersed habitat illustrating a great capacity of adaptation”, but we failed to see the beauty or the uniqueness.

The history - is more interesting, but the tangible part is limited.

The culture - is albeit more visual. There are heritage museums showing off the lifestyle and clothing and their way of managing daily life.

The trade traditions - is also partly “documented” through the heritage museums and some of the buildings.

The collection of scattered elements is meant to represent the heritage and we spent our time visiting a collection of them. We used a handy app called “Djerba Guide“.

The most interesting element was the venerable synagogue of Ghriba from the 19th century. The exterior is decent, not flashy. The …

Update Sep 2023: This was actually inscribed even though it wasn't recommended to be, but naturally the process these days is so chilled that pretty much anything is inscribed as World Heritage. Anyhow, the main reason for my update is that the sites I posted about were not included even though I thought Meninx would have something if expanded on and what a surprise that the weird "rock" wasn't inscribed. Instead they only inscribed mosques, mosques, and more mosques. Now before you get a fitty about me being anti-Muslim or something that's not my rant here at all: they are just so-so old mosques and aren't worth to be WH. The state party basically just spun this into "many people lived her over many years as you can see by religious devoted", well, that's not special and many places in the world have old, better, and more valuable mosques (or other cultural buildings). So, big thumbs down but whatcha gonna do - don't expect anything special on your day tour around Djerba and enjoy the beach resorts instead! Previous review for the tentative site is below.

====

Absolutely horrible. Djerba is great for beach resorts but trying to include the crappy traces of archeology around is just pathetic. I would give it half a star. That "thing" in the top right corner is actually a site! The Meninx remains may be sort of interesting but you only see these symmetrically placed rocks... Seriously?! If you are on Djerba …

I visited Djerba for holidays in February of 2009. I was very surprised now when I saw that it was to be nominated as a WHS since I found the island neither very beautiful (it is totally flat) nor archeologically or architecturally interesting. I didn't even feel the need to take any pictures! We made a tour of the island and the most memorable place was the synagogue but even this didn't impress me much. More impressive was an excursion into the desert but naturally this was on the mainland. All in all it seemed very touristy and with few historic monuments. I doubt this has changed much since.