Jedars

Construction

The tombs are situated on the tops of two hills in the mountainous Frenda area, around 30 km south of Tiaret. There are three sepulchres on Jabal Lakhdar (35.113098°N 1.212475°E / 35.113098; 1.212475), and ten on Jabal Arawi (35.063391°N 1.183733°E / 35.063391; 1.183733, also known as Ternaten) 6 km south of the first group. The graves' size and commanding situation indicate that they were built for royalty. They have been systematically plundered for many centuries, and hence are in a state of ruin.

The monuments were erected straight onto the substratum or with very shallow excavation. Some stone was quarried from local limestone and sandstone, some was recycled from nearby settlements and necropoli of earlier times. The materials vary widely: dressed stone blocks 1-1.5 m. long, partially dressed blocks up to 2.4 m. long, natural rock slabs with minimal dressing, old tombstones, and old building fragments. Most of the construction is dry stone, lime mortar is used sparingly.

The 13 Jedars share many characteristics. There are also many similarities with much smaller Berber tombs called bazinas, which are common in the pre-Sahara zone. This shows that they represent an indigenous Berber tradition, in spite of their use of Roman architectural techniques and Mediterranean Christian iconography.

The characteristics are:

It is believed that the solid jedars that do not contain funerary chambers may cover a single tomb excavated into the bedrock.

Epigraphy and iconography

The jedars of Jabal Lakhdar seem to have displayed a dedicatory inscription on one side of the top. This inscription was in Latin, but not deeply engraved and hence in every case is now almost illegible; the inscribed blocks are also very damaged. Enough remains only to confirm that these were tombs, but not whose they were. However, these jedars display an enormous range of stonecutters' marks, from isolated letters to partial names. Most of these are also Latin, some have been postulated to be Tifinagh. There are a few unobtrusive Christian symbols, and a couple of roughly carved panels (apparently hunting scenes) similar to many ancient Lybico-Berber rock carvings.

The largest jedar at Ternaten is the only one in that group sufficiently intact to display epigraphy and iconography. It contained large well-executed polychrome murals (now almost completely weathered away) of religious scenes typical of Mediterranean Christian iconography of the 5th century or later, indicating that the ruling class had by then become Christian. This jedar also contains many Latin inscriptions on recycled tombstones and other building material, dating from the time of Septimius Severus (202-203 CE) up to 494 CE. The source of this recycled material is not known with certainty, but there are several large ruins of cities and necropoli in the surrounding districts.

Age

The three jedars of Jabal Lakhdar are believed to be the oldest. Within this group, the relative chronology is now believed known, from study of the stonemasons' marks. The largest, with funerary chambers, known as Jedar A, is the oldest; very soon after, solid Jedar B was constructed by many of the same workmen. The last jedar, C, is believed to have been incomplete when it was very hurriedly finished and its occupant interred, perhaps a generation later. Taking into account the unobtrusive nature of the Christian symbols, it is believed the occupants of these tombs were not themselves Christian but ruled over Christian subjects. Remains of a wooden coffin from Jedar B returned a C14 date of 410 ± 50 CE. Calibrating the date on the OxCal system gives a range of 410 - 615 AD at 95.4% probability. A recent re-reading of the dedication from Jedar A has proposed a 4th-century date.

The only jedar in the Ternaten group for which dating has been attempted is the largest, Jedar F. Because the latest recycled tombstone bears a date of 494, it may belong to the 6th or 7th century. Unlike the Jabal Lakhdar monuments, its funerary chambers seem to have been built to hold more than one occupant, so it has been proposed that it is dynastic, with the smaller jedars surrounding it those of lesser nobility or rank.

History and archaeology

The earliest known reference to the jedars is in the lost Tarikh of the 11th-century historian Ibrahim ar-Raqiq, in extracts preserved in the works of Ibn Khaldun and other later writers. ar-Raqiq relates that when the Fatimid caliph Ismail al-Mansur was conducting military operations in the Tiaret area, he was shown the jedars at Jabal Lakhdar and wanted to know what the dedicatory inscriptions said; he was given a fanciful translation that the monuments were built to celebrate a military victory by the Byzantine army of Justinian I. Although Ibn Khaldun lived in the area for a number of years, he made no other reference to the jedars.

Beginning in 1842, French military expeditions in the area noted the monuments, resulting in the first archaeological descriptions. Jedar A was opened in a very rough manner in 1875 by antiquarians who failed to publish their research. In 1882, Professor La Blanchère from Algiers University published a detailed study on the jedars (mostly based on the previous excavations) and attempted to place them in historical context. His identification of them as belonging to the Berber king Massonas mentioned by the 6th-century historian Procopius is not supported today.

In the early 1940s, an anthropology student, Dr. Roffo, obtained permission to excavate. In pursuance of this, he used explosives to open Jedar B, from which he obtained a skeleton which was in a wooden coffin in a tomb excavated beneath the building; the same happened with one of the smaller jedars at Ternaten. The whereabouts of these skeletons is unknown (they may lie unrecognised in an Algerian museum) and Dr. Roffo, it is said, burnt most of his notes in a fit of pique after an argument with the Director of Antiquities (who had probably got wind of his methods of 'excavation').

During the Algerian War of Independence the jedars were closed by the French military who filled in any entrances and laid mines in some places. After the war they were used by a shaman for quasi-Islamic fertility rituals until he was evicted by local authorities.

During the years 1968-70, an Algerian studying under Gabriel Camps at the University of Aix-Marseilles, Fatima Kadria Kadra, made the first archaeological study of the jedars to use systematic modern techniques. A book based on her thesis was published by Algiers University in 1983 and remains the definitive reference. Attempts by Camps (1995) to attribute the tombs to known Berber kings such as Mastigas and Garmul are considered speculative.

Further work has been discouraged by the unstable situation in Algeria since that time.