Ksar Ait Benhaddaou

Ksar Ait Benhaddou is a historic fortified village and UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its earthen clay architecture and has been featured in numerous films, including “Gladiator” and "Game of Thrones" (see picture with the full list). The Ksar looked mostly uninhabited, housing only little stores and art galleries. The people live across the river.

It is here that we learned that the Berber don't actually like that name as it is historically derived from the Greek/Roman "Barbaros" (barbarian) and is considered pejorative. They prefer to be called Amazigh - which translates to "free people".

I was also fascinated to learn that the paintings I had been seeing around the Ksar are made with natural pigments: saffron diluted in water for red, green tea with sugar for black, and dried indigo plant for blue.

After the demonstration (see video), I approached the artist asking about the mixtures he uses, as I like to paint with watercolors as well. His face lit up and he said: "Oh, so you're an artist too!" and gave me a painting with the symbol for "free woman" in addition to the personalized painting I had already bought (with my name in the Amazigh alphabet).

Unfortunately, since I had packed a blank sketchbook for this trip and hadn't painted anything yet, I didn't have a sketch for him and decided to give away one of my brushes (with a built-in water reservoir) and my gold Faber Castell marker.Read more