Mauritania

The Sanhaja Berbers of this desert launched the Almoravid movement in the eleventh century, a religious and military drive that went on to rule Morocco and Muslim Spain. For centuries the region's wealth lay in the trans-Saharan trade in salt, gold, dates, and enslaved people, and its caravan towns — Chinguetti, Ouadane, Tichitt, and Oualata — became centres of Islamic learning, with libraries of manuscripts that partly survive.

From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, migrations of Arab Bani Hassan tribes gradually dominated the Berbers and spread Hassaniya Arabic. A layered society formed, with warrior and religious lineages, tributary and artisan groups, and a large enslaved population — a hierarchy whose effects have never fully dissolved. France pushed in from Senegal from the late nineteenth century and made Mauritania a colony within French West Africa; independence came in 1960 under Moktar Ould Daddah.

Mauritania's claim to the southern third of Western Sahara dragged it into a losing war in the 1970s, triggering the first of many coups in 1978. The decades since have seen repeated military takeovers, the violent expulsion and killing of thousands of black Mauritanians in 1989–91 — a wrong still officially unaddressed — and long strongman rule. A first peaceful handover of the presidency took place in 2019. Slavery was made a crime only in 2007, and descent-based servitude persists in remote areas despite the law and the campaigners, some jailed, who fight it.

Mauritania sits on a cultural fault line. The Bidhan or "White Moors" are Arab-Berber, Hassaniya-speaking, and historically dominant; the Haratin or "Black Moors", descendants of enslaved people, share that language and are the largest single group; and Afro-Mauritanian peoples — Halpulaar, Soninke, Wolof — live mainly along the Senegal River and keep their own languages and traditions.

Moorish life turns on hospitality and the tea ritual: three rounds of strong, sweet, foamy green tea, poured from a height, each round meant to taste different, and never hurried. Poetry, sung and recited in Hassaniya, is highly prized, and the iggawin griot families are its keepers and the country's best-known musicians. Islam is conservative and Sufi-influenced, and Qur'anic boarding schools have a long scholarly reputation.

Dress is distinctive: the flowing pale-blue or white daraa robe for men, the bright wrapped malahfa for women. In some Moorish communities the old practice of leblouh, force-feeding girls to fatten them for marriage, still lingers, though younger Mauritanians view it negatively.

The great droughts of the 1970s and 80s destroyed the nomadic economy, and Mauritania went from mostly herders to mostly city-dwellers in a generation. Nouakchott, a small settlement at independence, is now a sprawling capital of well over a million, sandy and low-built, fighting encroaching dunes and seasonal floods. Nouadhibou, in the north, lives off fishing and the iron-ore terminal.

The cash economy rests on iron ore mined at Zouérat and railed to the coast, on gold and copper, on the rich Atlantic fishing grounds, and on the Grand Tortue Ahmeyim offshore gas field, shared with Senegal under a 2018 intergovernmental agreement. Development indicators are low, and the legacy of slavery still shapes who does the hardest and least-paid work.

Away from the cities, herders move camels, goats, and sheep between wells and seasonal pasture; the Senegal River valley grows rice, sorghum, and vegetables and supports river fishing; and the Adrar and Tagant oases tend date palms and small irrigated gardens. Life is organised around prayer times, the heat of the day, and the extended family.

Mauritanian cooking blends Berber, Arab, French, and West African elements. Thieboudienne — fish, rice, and vegetables in tomato, a dish shared with Senegal — is considered the national dish. Across the country there is méchoui, whole roast lamb or kid; couscous with meat and vegetables; and, among herders, plenty of camel meat and camel milk.

Dates are central, fresh at the summer harvest and dried for the rest of the year. Milk drinks are everyday fare: zrig, soured milk thinned with water and sweetened, and curdled-milk dishes eaten with millet. On the coast, grilled and fried Atlantic fish is abundant and cheap. French bread and pastries are a colonial hangover found in every town.

Every social occasion ends with the long tea ceremony, and a guest is rarely let go without being fed. Meals are typically eaten from a shared dish, with the right hand, seated on mats or carpets.

The Adrar plateau, reached from Atar, holds Mauritania's headline sights: Chinguetti, a half-buried medieval town with a stark stone mosque and family-kept libraries of centuries-old manuscripts; Ouadane, a UNESCO-listed ruin of dry-stone houses on a ridge; the palm-shaded gorge and pools of Terjit; and the huge monolith of Ben Amera, Africa's largest, with its smaller neighbour Aïsha.

Nearby, close to Ouadane, is the Guelb er Richat — the "Eye of the Sahara" — a 40-kilometre bullseye of concentric rock ridges so large it is a landmark for astronauts. The Amatlich and other sand seas around the Adrar are the classic dune country for camel treks and desert bivouacs.

On the coast, Banc d'Arguin National Park, a World Heritage Site, is one of the world's great sites for migratory shorebirds, its shallows still fished by the Imraguen people using traditional methods. The iron-ore train itself is an attraction — a train up to three kilometres long that travellers ride across the desert on top of the ore — and Nouadhibou's bay holds a graveyard of rusting abandoned ships.