Djerba

Djerba, in the Gulf of Gabès off Tunisia, covers 514 km2 and is the largest island in North Africa. On this semi-arid, water-poor land a distinctive way of settling emerged around the 9th century and kept evolving until the 18th.

Typical of the Ibadi communities was a dispersed, low-density pattern: family estates called menzel, combining homes and workplaces, grouped into neighbourhoods called houma. Many mosques doubled as refuges and defensive posts. Denser quarters held Jewish neighbourhoods, the market district and the El Ghriba synagogue; the earliest physical evidence of the island's Jewish community is 11th-century material from the Cairo Geniza.

In 2023 seven components, five rural and two urban, were inscribed as Djerba: Testimony to a settlement pattern in an island territory. The urban parts include part of the historic centre of Houmt Souk and a residential quarter of Hara Sghira.