Food storage for Libyan farmers 700 years after it was built from clay.

This is the Qasr Al-Hājj, a huge adobe circular fortified granary built in the 13th century by Sheikh Abdallah Abu Jatla about 130 km from Tripoli, Libya. The building is a storage facility for the harvests of the semi-nomadic people of the region. The building originally had 114 storage rooms. The number of rooms has risen to 119 after inheritance claims split some of the rooms. The qasr is still used by local farmers for storage with the addition of 29 more ground floor cellars.

The small and only entrance (see below) leads to the large courtyard where local families could protect their crops and take refuge from attack. The lowest level of rooms were, and many still are, used to store olive oil while the upper levels stored grains. To the side of the main gate a staircase (see above to the right) leads to the top where a walkway makes a full circle around the adobe building.