The second suggestion is that they are the direct descendants of the old Phœnicians. People who oppose this idea bring forward the fact that when Scipio destroyed Carthage he killed or deported all the inhabitants. Against this, however, it must be evident that there were Carthaginians in other parts of North Africa who escaped this fate, and that Phœnician influence is found at a much later date. In the Mzab itself there are certainly things very closely connected with Carthage. The triangular decoration of the houses, the pictures of fish, of the crescent moon, of the sun and the stars are not Arab. The door-knockers represent the sun, and there are many of phallic shape. But, in spite of these rather conclusive evidences, the general idea is that the people of the Mzab are pure Berbers. In support of this theory we have the fact that they are Abhadites—that is to say, the last group of people created by the great Kharedjite schism. What is certain is that the known groups of Abhadites at Oman, Zanzibar, Djebel Nefarsa and the island of Djerba have the same customs and language as the people of Ghardaïa. The question then arises, why are these people in this desolation of the Sahara, on no natural highway, and in no trade center, where all the water comes from wells dug by the inhabitants, where it rains about once every ten years? Why have these men voluntarily condemned themselves to this life of trial and struggle? Those learned on the subject maintain that this exile was conceived in a moment of despair and as an act of faith, that in settling themselves in this merciless desert they wished once and for all to flee from the persecution which was always meted out to them by the orthodox Mohammedans, and keep their form of religion and race intact. It seems difficult to contradict this theory, all the more so when we have evidence that they were driven from the Atlantic coast and Tiaret in Oranie to Ouargla, an oasis some two hundred kilometers south of Ghardaïa, and that, after barely two hundred years in this oasis, they were again driven out by the Arabs. Weary, therefore, of suffering, they determined to settle where no one would come and molest them, and, as the only solution was to find a place naturally hostile to invaders, they chose the Mzab. This took place about A. D. 1070, but already in the year 1000 a reconnaissance had been made in the direction of the Mzab and had founded a kind of refuge at El Ateuf. When, therefore, the general emigration north took place, the remaining six cities which form the confederation of the Mzab soon sprang up—Bou, Noura, Melika, and Beni Sgen about A. D. 1048; Ghardaïa 1053; and some hundred years later Guerrera and Berriane, thirty miles outside the group adjacent to Ghardaïa.