Fertile zones in otherwise arid regions that receive a consistent supply of water, usually from underground streams or aquifers.
Oases have played vital roles in sustaining both regional and long-distance trade, serving as way-stops, markets, tax-collection stations, and places where traders could acquire a wide diversity of services. Oases fit frequently into complex production, consumption, and distribution networks that helped connect people across continents. Their importance to long-distance trade waned somewhat in the seventeenth century, when major market shifts and the rise of the European trading companies put pressure on overland distribution channels. This gradual shift, however, affected shorter distance regional trade much less, and many oases from the Sahara to Central Asia continue to serve these local markets.
The largest oases or oasis complexes are supplied by sources that yield water regardless of other climatic changes and thus can allow for consistent agricultural production. The first civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt grew up in the oases created by the Tigris and Euphrates and Nile Rivers, respectively.
A few oases that once served overland caravans continue to serve long-distance trade routes but are now connected to the larger world by mechanized transport. Herat, situated in the Harr÷ud River valley of what is now western Afghanistan and one of the golden oases of the Silk Road, has more recently become a center for petroleum production as well as agriculture and light industry. Likewise, Turpan, in what is now Xinjiang Province in China, has been a long-distance trade center since at least the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.) and continues in its role as a major agricultural producer, now connected by rail to larger marketing networks. Bukhara, located on the Zeravshan River in present-day Uzbekistan and established not later than the first century C.E., is yet another example. It grew as an agricultural center and key stop on the Silk Road. The Soviet Union discovered natural gas in that region in the mid-twentieth century and linked the city by way of rail, so Bukhara has since grown in importance as a commercial center.
Some oases still exist as important regional centers. The Najraf oasis in southern Saudi Arabia once served as a principal stopping point on the frankincense and myrrh trading networks. While no longer a long-distance entrepôt, it has survived as a major regional market. Meanwhile, the Tuwat oasis complex in the Algerian Sahara was a crucial caravan destination until the twentieth century. While no longer as important to long-distance trade, it is still the most important market in the central Sahara and produces crafts, light industrial products, and agricultural goods.
Beyond oases’ commercial functions, military campaigns throughout world history have also relied on them to conquer large tracts of territory. In 1592, the Moroccan Sa’adian sultan Muhamad al-Mansûr led an army of 20,000 men across the desert to successfully attack Timbuktu, relying on many of the same oases used by his merchant subjects to export gold and slaves from sub-Saharan Africa. The French army used this same long-distance network of oases to bring the desert under their control in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where at each stage they established a permanent military and administrative post that ultimately connected back to the Algerian capital, Algiers. During World War II, Allied and Axis powers alike used oases as strategic staging points for desert combat, with both sides evolving highly specialized desert fighting units that relied on Saharan oases for supplies and reinforcements.
Oases—like this one at Al-Gowf (in modern-day Saudi Arabia) shown in a 1910 photo—have played vital roles in sustaining both regional and long-distance trade and in serving as way-stops, markets, tax-collection stations, and places where traders could access a wide diversity of services. (Library of Congress)
The importance of oases to human existence has also often translated into religious significance. The Siwa oasis in Egypt, for example, housed the temple of Zeus Ammon that Alexander the Great consulted and that dates from the fourth century B.C.E. Another example is Mecca, in what is today Saudi Arabia. As late as the sixth century C.E., Mecca’s water supplies were still so meager that it could not support substantial agriculture. But the small oasis did stand at an all-important commercial crossroads, and in the century before the Prophet Muhammad’s birth, his family, the Quraysh, managed to develop Mecca into a safe haven, pilgrimage center, and major market. Mecca became the central symbolic pilgrimage point in Islam in the seventh century C.E., but retains important commercial functions as well.
David Gutelius
See also: Caravans; Saharan and Trans-Saharan Trade; Silk Road.
Baier, Stephen. An Economic History of Central Niger. Oxford: Clarendon, 1980.
Rudelson, Justin Ben-Adam. Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism Along China’s Silk Road. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Vikør, Knut S. The Oasis of Salt: The History of Kawar, a Saharan Centre of Salt Production. Bergen: University of Bergen, 1999.