Zerzura — the lost white oasis

OVERVIEW

Zerzura is a legendary city or oasis in the Sahara. The 13th-century tax register Villages of the Fayyum already lists a deserted village called Zarzura. The treasure-hunters' Kitab al-Kanuz describes Zerzura as 'a white town, like a dove' with a bird carved on its gate: take the key from its beak, enter, and you will find great wealth and a king and queen asleep in the castle.

HISTORY

John Gardner Wilkinson recorded it in 1835 from an Arab who said he found it chasing a stray camel — a 'Wadee Zerzoora' of palms, springs and ruins five days west of the Farafra–Bahariya track; other oases in the same account were later found, but not Zerzura. Ralph Bagnold and László Almásy searched by Ford Model A in 1929–1930 and founded the Zerzura Club in a bar at Wadi Halfa; the 1932 Almásy–Clayton flights found two valleys in the Gilf Kebir and in 1933 Almásy found the third 'Zerzura' wadi — rain oases. Bagnold held that the legend could never be solved by a discovery. Orde Wingate published 'In Search of Zerzura' in 1934.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

A modern story — a lone camel herder rescued in 1481 by tall, blue-eyed swordsmen of a hidden white city, a ruby ring that passed to King Idris and Gaddafi — is shown by the article to trace to Emile Schurmacher's 1969 entertainment book More Strange Unsolved Mysteries, with no primary evidence for any of it. That version is fabricated; the older legend is recorded as a legend.

VISITING

The Gilf Kebir is a remote plateau in Egypt's south-western desert near the Libyan border; the Cave of Swimmers there has been badly damaged by visitors since 1996. Visiting arrangements are not recorded in the sources.