Nefta

About this place

Nefta is an oasis town of the Djerid, with nearly 22,000 people at the 2014 census, on the edge of Chott el Djerid some 25 km west of Tozeur. It is Tunisia's stronghold of Sufism: with dozens of mosques and about a hundred domed shrines, it is often ranked the country's second religious centre after Kairouan. Known to the Romans as Nepte and later a bishop's seat, it was listed by the 9th-century geographer al-Yaqubi among the four cities of Qastiliya, as the Djerid was then called. Tradition holds that Sidi Bou Ali, a saint who died here around 1213, turned the town from Ibadi to Sunni Islam; Sufi orders, the Qadiriyya among them, still shape its religious life. The town wraps around the Corbeille, or Basket, a deep palm-filled hollow whose roughly 150 springs watered the oasis until they dried up in the early 1980s. Domed zawiyas and shrines ring its rim, while in Ouled Cherif lanes of patterned ochre brick like Tozeur's pass under houses built over arches. In the palms south of town, the white-domed zawiya of Sidi Bou Ali still draws pilgrims. Nefta is an easy half-day trip from Tozeur, half an hour by road; come between autumn and spring. Walk the Corbeille's rim for the view, then take the steep, sandy paths down into its shaded gardens. Star Wars' Mos Espa set, near the Ong Jemel rock, lies about 14 km north as the crow flies, reached by 4x4; the Lars homestead set was built on the salt flats about 10 km west of town.