Ksar Chenini is the fortified granary that crowns the ridge above the village, and it is one of the most imposing ksour in southern Tunisia. From a distance it reads as a natural extension of the rock face — stacked rows of vaulted chambers called ghorfas, their arched doorways dark against the pale stone, climbing the crest of the peak in two rough levels. At its height the complex held over 200 individual storage rooms, where oil and grain were kept by families from the valley below.
The ksar dates to the 12th century. Each ghorfa belonged to a specific family and could be locked; the collective structure served as a kind of communal safe, positioned on a hilltop specifically to frustrate raids from the plains. Walking through the vaulted corridors today — some collapsed, some surprisingly intact — you get a clear sense of how the system worked. The architecture is entirely functional, with no ornamentation, but the repetition of the barrel vaults and the scale of the thing give it a austere beauty. Some chambers are still used for grain storage by families in the new village below.