The Souss is the broad valley of southwestern Morocco, drained by the Oued Souss between the High Atlas to the north and the Anti-Atlas to the south, opening to the Atlantic. It is the agricultural and demographic heartland of the Tachelhit-speaking Chleuh.
Tachelhit is the southern Tamazight variety, with around eight million speakers across the Souss, the western High Atlas, and the Anti-Atlas. It has the longest continuous written tradition of any Berber variety, with manuscripts in Arabic script dating from the sixteenth century onwards.
The valley's economy has long combined irrigated cereal and citrus agriculture with the harvest of argan, the endemic Argania spinosa whose oil supports a regional cooperative economy increasingly tied to global cosmetic markets. Soussi merchants are historically dominant in Moroccan grocery and foodstuff retail across the country.
Agadir, rebuilt after the 1960 earthquake destroyed the old kasbah and city, is the modern administrative and tourism capital. Inland, Taroudant, walled and red-walled, served for centuries as the seat of regional power, including under the early Saadian sultans of the sixteenth century.