Nouakchott & the Coast

The coast was long a thinly peopled edge of the desert, fished by the ancestors of the Imraguen and grazed by nomads. Tradition holds that the Almoravid movement began in the 11th century at a retreat on or near this coast, and islands in the Banc d'Arguin are among the sites suggested. In 1443 Portuguese sailors reached the island of Arguin, and a trading fort built there in 1455 later passed to the Dutch and the French. In 1816 the French frigate Méduse ran aground on the Banc d'Arguin, a wreck remembered through Géricault's painting of its raft.

Inland, the Moorish emirate of Trarza grew from the 17th century and grew rich from the gum-arabic trade with European merchants at the mouth of the Senegal river. France brought it under control in the early 1900s, and in 1907 named the small northern fishing port of Nouadhibou Port-Étienne.

The colony was run from Saint-Louis in Senegal until the late 1950s, when a new capital was begun in 1958 at Nouakchott, then a small village by the sea. The droughts of the 1970s and 1980s drove herders from the desert into its tents and shanties, and the city swelled into the country's largest by far. Nouadhibou grew with the iron-ore terminal and the fishing industry, and since 2006 it has become a departure point for migrant boats heading for the Canary Islands.

The coast is where Mauritania's peoples meet. Nouakchott gathers Bidhan and Haratin families from every part of the desert, Halpulaar, Soninke and Wolof from the river valley, and large communities of Senegalese, Malians and other West Africans who work in fishing, building and trade. Hassaniya is the language of the street, with French and Wolof widely heard, and Nouadhibou's fishing industry draws workers from the south.

The Imraguen of the Banc d'Arguin are a small fishing community of Hassaniya speakers who worked with dolphins to drive mullet into their nets, a practice that has since died out. Villages such as Iwik still sail lanches, Canarian-style sailing boats used since the 1930s, since motorboats are banned inside the park.

Trarza is a heartland of Moorish learning and song. Boutilimit is known for its religious scholars and manuscripts, and the region's griot families play the tidinit lute and the ardin harp at weddings. In Nouakchott the Friday prayer at the Saudi Mosque, the evening tea on the sand, and the sea-front crowds after sunset are the rhythm of the week.

Nouakchott, split since 2014 into three administrative regions, has well over a million people, low sandy neighbourhoods spreading into the dunes, and seasonal flooding in its lower districts. Nouadhibou, with over 100,000, is the second city; Rosso, Boutilimit and Akjoujt are the other main towns.

The coast carries much of the economy. Nouadhibou's fishing port and processing plants handle the catch from the waters that make the Mauritanian fishing grounds among the richest in the world, while trains bring iron ore to the terminal by the harbour. Nouakchott holds the ministries, the markets, the Chinese-built deep-water port, and most private business. Inchiri has copper and gold mining around Akjoujt, and irrigated farms in Trarza line the Senegal river.

Daily life turns on the heat: markets busy in the morning, a long lunch and rest, and streets filling again in the late afternoon. Fuel and food prices, unemployment among the young, and migration by sea are constant concerns, and the new offshore gas field has raised hopes of wider prosperity.

The coast eats fish. Thieboudienne, rice cooked in a tomato sauce with a whole fish and vegetables, is an everyday lunch in Nouakchott, as it is in Senegal, and grilled fish is cheap in the fishing towns. Much of the catch landed at Nouadhibou is exported, but fresh fish is served in the town.

The Imraguen preserve fish by drying and salting it, and make a prized cured mullet roe, poutargue. Inland in Trarza the diet turns to the herders' foods: camel and goat meat, milk, millet couscous, and méchoui, a whole lamb roasted for feasts.

Nouakchott's restaurants reflect its population, with Senegalese rice dishes, Lebanese grills, Moroccan tagines and French bread on every corner. Zrig, water or milk mixed with fermented milk, is the everyday cooler, and every meal ends with the three rounds of green tea with mint, brewed slowly and poured from a height to raise a foam.

Nouakchott is a working capital rather than a sightseeing city, but its fishing beach, the Port de Pêche, is where pirogues land their catch and fish is sold fresh on the sand. The National Museum, the Saudi Mosque and the Marché Marocain fill a day.

North of the capital the Banc d'Arguin National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, protects dunes, mudflats, shallows and islands where flamingos, pelicans, spoonbills and huge flocks of waders winter. Cap Timiris, the coast's only significant headland, lies near its southern end.

Nouadhibou lies on the Cap Blanc peninsula, shared with Western Sahara. Its ship graveyard, a scatter of rusting wrecks in the bay and along the shore, still lines the beaches, and the peninsula's tip shelters a colony of Mediterranean monk seals. Inland, the Trarza dunes rise in long orange ridges east of Nouakchott towards Boutilimit, and the Diawling National Park protects the wetlands of the Senegal delta.