Generations of travelers have dreamed in front of the ruins of the forts of Djado more than 1,300 km from Niamey in the northeast of Niger, without ever solving their puzzles.

Who built these ksars, fortified villages built of salt stone whose remains haunt the oases of Kawar, a desert and isolated region in the northeast of Niger? At what time ? And why were they abandoned?

No excavation, no scientific dating has ever been undertaken in the area to definitively answer these questions.