| International Festival of the Sahara | |
|---|---|
 Tunisian musicians shot at the 43rd International Festival of the Sahara in Douz, Tunisia | |
| Frequency | Annually |
| Location(s) |  Douz, Tunisia |
| Founded | 1910 |
| Area | International |
| Website | www.festivaldouz.org.tn[ dead link ] |
The International Festival of the Sahara is an annual festival held in Douz, Tunisia.
The festival, called the Camel festival, began in 1910 when Tunisia was under French rule. In 1967 it took on its modern identity according to the will of Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's first president of the new republic, to become the country's oldest and best-known festival. M'hammed Marzougui, who dedicated his life to make people aware of and appreciate nomadic way of life and traditions, was mainly responsible for the festival's foundation. Since then, every year at the end of December for four days, thousands of people, mostly from all over Tunisia and other Maghrebien countries, flock to Douz. [1]
After the opening ceremony, the main events take place in the H'naiech stadium in front of the desert surrounded by Bedouin tents. Camel marathons, fantasia- galloping Arab horses ridden by daring riders, a Bedouin marriage, sloughi desert hunting dogs - catching rabbits are the principal features.
In the evening, groups from visiting countries perform songs and dances. The central event is the poetry contest run by the desert poet, Abdellatif Belgacem. [2] [3]
The festival has become an important media and touristic event followed by cameramen and journalists from all over the world.
Libya is the fourth largest country in Africa and the sixteenth largest country in the world. It is on the Mediterranean with Egypt to the east, Tunisia to the northwest, Algeria to the west, Niger and Chad to the south, and Sudan to the southeast. Although the oil discoveries of the 1960s have brought immense wealth, at the time of its independence it was an extremely poor desert state whose only important physical asset appeared to be its strategic location at the midpoint of Africa's northern rim.
North Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt and Sudan's Red Sea coast in the east.
Western Sahara is a disputed territory on the northwest coast of Africa. About 20% of the territory is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR); the remaining 80% is occupied and administered by neighboring Morocco. It has a surface area of 266,000 square kilometres (103,000 sq mi). It is the second most sparsely populated country in the world and most sparsely in Africa, mainly consisting of desert flatlands. The population is estimated at 500,000, of which nearly 40% live in Morocco-controlled Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara.
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Arabian Desert but spread across the rest of the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa after the spread of Islam. The English word bedouin comes from the Arabic badawī, which means "desert-dweller", and is traditionally contrasted with ḥāḍir, the term for sedentary people. Bedouin territory stretches from the vast deserts of North Africa to the rocky ones of the Middle East. They are sometimes traditionally divided into tribes, or clans, and historically share a common culture of herding camels, sheep and goats. The vast majority of Bedouins adhere to Islam, although there are some fewer numbers of Christian Bedouins present in the Fertile Crescent.
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The Maghreb, also known as the Arab Maghreb and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb also includes the disputed territory of Western Sahara. As of 2018, the region had a population of over 100 million people.
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The Pushkar Fair, also called the Pushkar Camel Fair or locally as Kartik Mela or Pushkar ka Mela is an annual multi-day livestock fair and cultural fête held in the town of Pushkar near Ajmer city in Ajmer district in. The fair starts with the Hindu calendar month of Kartik and ends on the Kartik Purnima, which typically overlaps with late October and early November in the Gregorian calendar. In 1998, over 1 million visitors came to Pushkar throughout the year. The Pushkar fair alone attracts over 200,000 visitors.
Sahara with Michael Palin is a four-part BBC television series presented by British comedian and travel presenter Michael Palin, and first broadcast in 2002. In it, Palin travelled around the Sahara in Northern and Western Africa, meeting people and visiting places. The journey route included the following countries and territories: Gibraltar, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Ceuta, Spain.
Kebili is a town in the south of Tunisia and one of the main cities in the Nefzaoua region. It is located in southern Tunisia near the Chott el Djerid salt lake. It is the capital of the Kebili Governorate.
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Chott el Djerid also spelled Sciott Gerid and Shott el Jerid, is a chott, a large endorheic salt lake in southern Tunisia. The name can be translated from the Arabic into English as "Lagoon of the Land of Palms".
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