Rissani is a small market town 25 kilometres northwest of Merzouga, and it is the practical and historical counterpart to the tourist-oriented village. It sits near the ruins of Sijilmassa, a medieval Islamic city that was for centuries the northern terminus of the trans-Saharan caravan trade — gold, salt, and enslaved people flowed through here between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean world. The ruins are substantial but largely unexcavated; they stretch for kilometres south of the modern town.
The souk is the main draw. It operates every day but is largest on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, when traders from the surrounding villages and oases bring produce, livestock, and goods. It remains a genuine working market rather than a tourist attraction — spices, dates, leather goods, and basic hardware alongside the occasional tourist souvenir.
The road between Merzouga and Rissani passes through a long palmery, a strip of date palms and small-scale agriculture that has sustained settlement here for thousands of years. Rissani is also the hometown of the Alaoui dynasty, the royal family that has ruled Morocco since the seventeenth century — a fact the town is quietly proud of.