Tafilalt is a pre-Saharan oasis system of southeastern Morocco, watered by the Ziz and Rheris rivers as they emerge from the High Atlas onto the desert plain. The oasis is a continuous palm grove some thirty kilometres long, with the modern towns of Erfoud, Rissani, and Erfoud as its principal settlements.
The oasis is the historical territory of Sijilmasa, a Berber merchant city founded in 757 by the Miknasa Zenata as the northern terminus of the trans-Saharan gold caravan from Awdaghust and the West African Sahel. Sijilmasa was the principal commercial node of the western Maghreb across the medieval period and a focal point of Kharijite, Sufi, and Sharifian movements; the Almoravid, Almohad, and Marinid dynasties each in turn exercised authority through it.
Sijilmasa was abandoned by stages between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries; its ruined walls are preserved on the outskirts of Rissani and remain a continuing archaeological site. The successor town of Rissani, founded in the seventeenth century, is the home village of the Alaouite dynasty, which began its rise to power from Tafilalt under Moulay Ali al-Sharif in the 1630s and subsequently ruled Morocco from the 1660s to the present.
The contemporary oasis combines date and citrus agriculture with a long-declining trans-Saharan caravan trade and increasing labour migration to Errachidia, Meknes, and abroad. Tamazight (Central Tamazight) is widely spoken alongside Hassaniya Arabic, and the oasis preserves a distinctive ksar architecture closely related to the Drâa.