Ruins of the ksar at Timimoun, Algeria.

A ksar is a village consisting of generally attached houses, often having collective granaries and other structures (mosque, bath, oven, shops) widespread among the oasis populations of the Maghreb (northern Africa.) Ksars are sometimes situated in mountain locations to make defense easier; they often are entirely within a single, continuous wall. The building material of the entire structure is normally adobe, or cut stone and adobe. The idea of the ksar as a granary is a confused notion of two things, the granary itself, found within a ksar, and the ksar, which is a village, normally, with granaries within it. "Ksar" is the normal form in which the Arabic word (more correctly transliterated as "qsar," singular, and qsur, plural) is found. Berber (amazigh) equivalent is aghrem or ighrem. Ksar is generally translated as "Castle" in English, although the simplest rendering might be "fortified village," with the word sometimes taking on the meaning of "fort" depending on its specific function. Particularly prevalent as a place name across the map of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia -- the Maghreb; and particularly prevalent in the Saharan side of the various ranges of the Atlas Mountains. Image File history File links Ksar. ... Image File history File links Ksar. ... Timimoun is a town and an oasis at the same time, located in Gourara region in Algeria. ... Granary at Thiruparaithurai, Kumbakonam (old temple town), built around 1600-1634 A granary is a storehouse for threshed grain or animal feed. ... // Mosque; Aswan, Egypt. ... The Maghreb (المغرب العربي ; sometimes also rendered Moghreb), meaning western in Arabic, is the region of the continent of Africa north of the Sahara desert and west of the Nile — specifically, the modern countries of Morocco, Western Sahara (annexed and occupied by Morocco), Algeria, Tunisia, Libya — and to a much lesser extent... Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. ... Renewal of the surface coating of an adobe wall in Chamisal, New Mexico Adobe is a building material composed of water, sandy clay and straw or other organic materials, which is shaped into bricks using wooden frames and dried in the sun . ... Arabic (; , less formally, ) is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... Map showing the location of the Atlas Mountains The Atlas Mountains are a mountain range in northwest Africa extending about 2400 km (1500 miles) through Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and including The Rock of Gibraltar. ...

Ksar is the Maghrebi pronunciation of Alcázar and means exactly the same thing. Maghreb arabic is a dialect of Arabic spoken in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya. ... An alcázar is a Spanish castle, from the Arabic word القصر al qasr meaning fortress, in turn from the Latin castellum fortress (ultimately from castrum watchpost). Many cities in Spain have an alcázar. ...