Mauritania: The Desert Library City and the Culture of the Sahara
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Chinguetti is a 13th-century caravan city in the Mauritanian Sahara that was once the seventh holiest city in Islam — the gathering point for pilgrims crossing the Sahara on their way to Mecca. The city accumulated an extraordinary collection of manuscripts over centuries as scholars gathered there, and the private libraries of Chinguetti's families — passed down through generations — are estimated to contain between 6,000 and 10,000 manuscripts covering Quranic interpretation, mathematics, astronomy, and Sahelian history. The desert is slowly reclaiming the city. Sand dunes advance each year. The manuscripts are in fragile condition.
The Moors of Mauritania — the Arabic-speaking Beydane and Haratin communities who dominate the country's northern and central regions — maintain a traditional culture built on camel herding, desert trade, and a sophisticated oral poetry tradition. Mauritanian music — hassaniyya poetry sung to a form of lute called a tidinit — is among the most complex and austere in West Africa, concerned with religious and philosophical themes and performed in a style that values restraint and subtlety.
Mauritania's Atlantic coast contains the Banc d'Arguin National Park — a UNESCO World Heritage site where one of the world's most important concentrations of migratory birds gathers. Millions of wading birds from European breeding grounds winter in the shallow, nutrient-rich waters between the coast and the offshore sandbanks. The Imraguen fishermen who have worked these waters for centuries use traditional techniques to drive mullet schools toward their nets — a method that has been practised here since at least the 15th century.
