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Visit ruins frozen in time to revive memory
Memorial tourism
For a cultured person, there is nothing more enriching than visiting ruins, places full of history, because our history is our memory. Our history is also our identity, which says what we are and what we have been.
When we look at the ruins, we have the impression of seeing an ancient city plunged into silence, forgetting that every corner is a place of fertile memory; the more you question it, the more important details you have about the information of which the walls are the omnipresent witnesses. In this research work, we will not only be interested in the ruins of large cities, but also and above all in the ruins of individual and isolated houses, all the more interesting because they tell sometimes extravagant stories. To appreciate the ruins, we must know their history from the time when in place of these ruins, there was life in the houses, under a flourishing civilization that ended with the arrival of the invaders who had passed by sowing death, destruction, fire in such a way as to leave no chance of survival to the inhabitants, most of whom prefer to save their heads, fleeing, leaving behind dead people and ruins. Thus the arrival of the Romans in North Africa was only achieved at the cost of three bloodiest Punic Wars. The Roman Empire itself, which had flourished for nearly five centuries, fell under the invasion of the Vandals from Northern Europe. These invaders transformed the many Roman cities into ruins, and the work of destruction lasted a century.
To be interested in these ruins, you need to know who built the city, in what year, and how it fell. You need to have a minimum of knowledge to know who inhabited the city, how the population lived, were there infrastructures in the city necessary for a fulfilling life. We also know that there are still urban cities whose history is several thousand years old, such as Tangier, Ténès, Tamenfoust, Carthage; they have been built several times since the Phoenician era. These are ancient cities that have a lot to tell about their past.
Typical example: Timgad, a Roman colonial city in ruins
It was founded by the Roman Emperor Trajan in the year 100 AD. There are only anonymous houses lined up, there are several rows of houses. As amenities, the Romans had thermal baths, four in total, one at each cardinal point, where the inhabitants could take baths of hot medicinal waters. So fitness baths that must have been exclusively reserved for the inhabitants, Roman colonists who had participated in the conquest of occupation. They benefited from the shows given in the open air: theater, animal wrestling that took place in the arenas. The Emperor Vespasian had created in these Roman cities places of public convenience that have kept their original name “the vespasiennes” to this day. As for the natives, we do not know their living conditions. Apuleius and Saint Augustines should have dedicated a book to them at least to inform the descendants about the fate reserved for them since they had this rare privilege at the time of being able to write in Latin.
Roman cities were exclusively reserved for the Romans and their allies. In any case, we know one important thing about those times, that the Romans called Algeria the granary of Rome. But the Roman Empire began in Carthage, it spread to Algeria and towards the East, it extended to El Quods in Palestine. But the cities that most attract our attention are Carthage, Algiers, Tamenfoust, El Quods, for their many historical remains, a superposition of Phoenician and Roman ruins. In Algiers, while digging deep for the metro works, we discovered the remains of an ancient city that dates back to a distant time, mosaics and earthenware tiles of rare beauty covering the walls. We know that the Phoenicians came from the 9th or 8th century before the Christian era. They were merchants from Tyre (Lebanon) who crisscrossed the Mediterranean coast on old boats of the time, trading in everyday goods such as olive oil.
Over time, they were able to make their trade flourish by founding trading posts on both sides of the Mediterranean, in Tangier, Ténès, Algiers Tamenfoust, Tunis, Carthage, and Monaco on the other side; let us not forget that even the name “Monaco” is of Phoenician origin. There may have been other Phoenician port cities that we do not know about. We know that the Phoenicians contributed to the improvement of oil production through quality and quantity, from the moment they introduced the grafting of the olive tree. What one feels in front of a landscape of ruins, emotions and a desire to know more about the Roman mercenaries who inhabited the cities, and after they won the victory against the natives, our distant ancestors, they founded the cities: Tipasa, Cherchell, Souk Ahras, Tebessa, Khenchela and some urban cities of lesser importance such as Tigzirt sur mer, Mila whose ruins have been updated very recently. Thus, the Roman soldiers, foreigners to the country, settled against the will of the people of the country, they seized the riches and this lasted more than four centuries. Today, these ruins have become tourist sites that are part of the world heritage and which are of great value.
Individual ruins in isolated areas
These are the most discredited ruins and we find them interesting for more than one reason. These are remains that once belonged to local families and have been abandoned. No one bothers to visit them. We do not know who inhabited these ruined houses and in what period. Sometimes, they are dwellings in
land that have resisted all the winds and storms of which only the lower walls remain. And yet, what historical stories can they be the subject of! And exciting stories that can inspire writers in need of fantastic situations. There, there used to be a mill for grinding wheat or barley. Now all that remains are ruins, remains of sections of walls, a few tiles still hanging on a corner as if to defy time, vestige of a roof that disappeared a long time ago. And, in the middle of the ground, we see scattered some large pieces like the millstones, and the steel axis around which they turned for decades to grind the grains that the citizens brought back on donkeys. With the introduction of electricity, the mill was modernized, it worked faster and was able to satisfy all the customers of the day, whereas before, it was sometimes necessary to come back the next day. And how many stories have been told about the mill, some of them sad, such as that of an old man who fell dead while lifting a sack of semolina weighing nearly forty kilos to put it on the back of his donkey. There have been clashes between the miller and customers who were not happy with the milling. In one place, there are these ruins of a house formerly inhabited by generations of a large and influential family. It owned immense lands that were well worked during the lifetime of its members. Nothing could have said, in the time of prosperity, that it was going to disappear, and yet, that is what was going to happen.
The members of this family left one by one, either by dying or by choosing to go and live elsewhere under other skies and this for generations until the day when the house was emptied and this, for almost a century, little by little, it fell into ruins little by little, at first no one noticed it, but over the decades, the house lost everything that made its charm, the roof deteriorated, the walls disintegrated.
We love ruins, out of a taste for historical remains
We visit them as tourists to discover the important remains. It is part of the country’s history, we go there as if we were going to a museum. And how many museums we have, some are even open-air, just waiting to be visited. Normally this should be part of general knowledge. As for the ruins lost in nature, remains of homes, mills, blacksmith shops or farriers, they deserve to be lingered over, because behind each of them, there is the man we do not know and who built for a sometimes urgent need to live or to practice a manual trade. We must tell ourselves that they did not grow alone, and that behind them, there is the work of man. The ruins are pages of human history to be deciphered.
Boumediene Abed