مقابر سيدي عيسى

The tombs of Sheikh Abou Mahdi Aïssa ben Smaïl, and his disciples are locat-ed north of the Ksar of Melika, inside a large cemetery considered a real city of the dead. Cheikh Sidi Aïssa, who came from the high plateau region of Ouled Naïl, around 1500. He had numerous disciples in the M'Zab valley and others from Djerba in Tunisia and Djabel Naffoussa in Libya. He left numerous writ-ings in different fields such as fiqh, literature, and other sciences. Mélika, his adopted city, remained faithful to him by devoting to him the privilege of en-hancing his tombstones and those of his disciples by their materialization in small works made in Timchemt (local plaster). These works, assimilated to sur-realist sculptures, offer with their pinnacles of different heights a unique and unique plastic image. In front of these tombs there is a prayer area where the inhabitants of Melika gather during funerals and the “Ziyara » or visit. This is organized annually in the spring by the “Azzaba” (council of wise men), and essentially consists of divulging local history and ensuring the perpetuity of the knowledge of collective memory. the Sidi Aïssa mosque, located on the edge of the cemetery and near of the Ksar enclosure, was an integral part of the en-tire architectural landscape of these places, but unfortunately, it was destroyed in the sixties.