Erg of Bilma

The Erg of Bilma is a Dune Sea (Erg) in the Ténéré desert region of the south central Sahara. The Erg of Bilma stretches from Fachi, east of the Aïr Mountains in north central Niger, east past the town of Bilma, on to the Chadian border. It surrounds on three sides the oasis of Bilma, southernmost of a north south string of oasies of the Kaouar rise.

The ancient Bornu Empire to Fezzan caravan routes had to cross the dunes of the erg south of Bilma as the last major obstacle before reaching the sahel. While that traffic largely ceased after 1820, trade though the erg of Bilma continues from the Lake Chad region and the Termit Massif on a small scale.^[1]

References

Further reading

• Decalo, Samuel (1979), Historical Dictionary of Niger, London and New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, ISBN 0810812290 .

External links

Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Erg_of_Bilma Erg of Bilma] at Wikimedia Commons

• Prof. Dr. R. Baumhauer at The University of Trier's Geography center has produced a number of papers on the Geography and Paleogeography of the Erg of Bilma.
• Surviving the Sahara : National Geographic, December 2002.