Adobe

Sun-dried mudbrick. The Arabic and local term toub covers the same material. Adobe blocks are typically used for partition walls, vault construction, and decorative elements within structures whose principal load-bearing walls are pisé. The technique is widely shared across the Saharan-Maghreb region with regional variations in block dimensions, mix proportions, and finishing.

Adobe production is seasonal and labour-intensive. The graded soil mix — clay, sand, occasional fine gravel, and chopped straw (tibn) for fibre reinforcement — is wetted, kneaded by foot, packed into wooden moulds, demoulded immediately, and laid out in the sun for a controlled drying cycle of one to several weeks. Block dimensions vary regionally: relatively long, thin blocks in the lower Drâa and Tafilalt; squarer, thicker blocks in the High Atlas and Anti-Atlas; the smaller, lighter blocks of the Mauritanian and Algerian Saharan ksour. Adobe walls are normally laid in earthen mortar and rendered with a finer earthen plaster; the same maalem economy that sustains pisé construction also produces and lays adobe, often within a single building campaign and the same wall section.