The Touat, a group of oases in southern Algeria, has famously played a central part in the diffusion of knowledge throughout the Islamic Sahel belt. Placed at the crossroads of both the central and the Western trans-Saharan caravan routes, it soon developped into a centre of scholarship in its own right, as witness the large number of known Islamic authors who resided in the area, the remnants of a vast number of Islamic teaching institutes and the thousands of manuscripts that can still be found in private collections throughout the region. Yet today, although much scholarly activity persists at the local level, the region is generally seen as a dead end, lacking in development, initiative and legal economic activity.

This paper aims to trace the various connections that linked the Touat with the Maghreb on one hand, and with northern Mali and Niger on the other, taking into account the modalities of exchange and travel, and paying special attention to the daily intercourse of long forgotten scholars trying to solve local problems, and their contemporary relevance. It tries to argue that the importance of trans-Saharan movement for the Touat has resulted in the development of a certain kind of society promoting a certain kind of knowledge, notion of authority and social cohesion. It then goes on to examine how this past is dealt with and approached by contemporary Touatis, and how the notion that the Touat constitutes a longstanding intellectual and spiritual crossroads, cherished by contemporary local intellectuals, might make sense (or fail to make sense) in the current political and intellectual climate.