Couserans

Couserans (French pronunciation: ​[kuzəʁɑ̃]; Gascon: Coserans [kuzeˈɾas]) is a small former province of France located in the Pyrenees mountains. Today Couserans makes up the western half of the Ariège département, around the towns of Saint-Girons and Saint-Lizier. A small part of Couserans is also in the extreme south of Haute-Garonne, just across the border from Ariège.

Couserans has a land area of 1,162 km² (449 sq. miles). At the 1999 census there were 21,260 inhabitants on the territory of the former province of Couserans, which means a density of only 18 inhabitants per km² (47 inhabitants per sq. mile), one of the lowest densities in western Europe. The only urban area is Saint-Girons (which includes Saint-Lizier), with 9,484 inhabitants in 1999 (44.6% of the whole population of Couserans).

Couserans was inhabited by a people whom the Romans called Consoranni. It seems the original inhabitants were Aquitanian, like in the rest of Gascony, and spoke a language related to the old Basque language. Later some Iberians who, like the Aquitanians, were non-Indo-European people, may have come from the Spanish peninsula and mixed with the inhabitants. Later in the 3rd century BC came the first Indo-Europeans, a Celtic Gallic tribe called the Volcae Tectosages, originally from Belgium or southern Germany, who settled in Toulouse, and may also have penetrated Couserans. However, if they entered Couserans, there were certainly not many of them, and the people whom the Romans called Consoranni were probably essentially Aquitanian. The Consoranni were closest to their western neighbors the Convenae (i.e. "the assembled") whose territory is known today as Comminges (a name derived from Convenae).

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