In-Gall

In-Gall is intimately linked with the nearby salt industry at Teguidda-n-Tessoumt, around 15 km to the north. Teguidda, on the site of an ancient lake bed, floods as water washes down from the Aïr Massif to the east each year, producing natural salt ponds. The population of In-Gall maintain and harvest from evaporation ponds here, sending laborers from the local clans to work the salt and transport it back to In-Gall at the end of the season. In-Gall is near enough that, unlike the oasis town of Fachi where plots are owned by Agadez based Tuareg clans and worked by a permanent population, the workers at Teguidda return to In-Gall for the remainder of the year. Teguidda also lacks a stable oasis, which provides In-Gall with market gardens and date palm farming on a year-round basis. Prior to its decline in the 20th century—because of the smaller scale of the In-Gall salt markets as well as its easy access by road—In-Gall was once a destination of the Azalai salt caravans in which Tuareg merchants transported salt from the markets here across the Sahel for agricultural and medicinal uses.