Chenini is a Berber ksar village of southeastern Tunisia, perched along a sandstone ridge on the eastern edge of the Dahar plateau, eighteen kilometres west of Tataouine. Together with the neighbouring villages of Douiret and Guermessa, it constitutes the most distinctive surviving Berber settlement complex in the country.
The traditional architecture combines a fortified hilltop ksar — a tier of barrel-vaulted mud-and-stone storerooms (ghorfas) on multiple levels, used as collective granaries and refuge — with a lower agricultural village of cave dwellings excavated into the soft sandstone of the cliff face. The whitewashed mosque at the foot of the ridge dates to the twelfth century in its present form.
The Berber population of Chenini and Douiret historically spoke a southern variety of Tamazight closely related to the Nafusi of western Libya and to the dialects of the Matmata plateau. The variety is severely endangered: most of the population has resettled in the modern village of New Chenini in the wadi below or in coastal cities, and Arabic dominates intergenerational transmission.
The Chenini-Douiret-Guermessa complex is on Tunisia's UNESCO tentative list as a candidate for World Heritage inscription. Tourism since the 1990s has brought some restoration of the ksar and conversion of upper-level ghorfas into guesthouses; the lower cave dwellings remain in use seasonally.