Last updated Mountains in the Adrar region; desert scenes continue to define the Mauritanian landscape since classical times
Precolonial Mauritania, lying next to the Atlantic coast at the western edge of the Sahara Desert, received and assimilated into its complex society many waves of Saharan migrants and conquerors.
Plinius wrote that the area north of the river Senegal was populated, during Augustus times, by the Pharusii and Perorsi[1]Berbers moved south to Mauritania beginning in the 3rd century, followed by Arabs in the 8th century, subjugating and assimilating Mauritania's original inhabitants.
The Umayyads were the first Arab Muslims to enter Mauritania. During the Islamic conquests, they made incursions into Mauritania and were present in the region by the end of the 7th century.[2] Many Berber tribes in Mauritania fled the arrival of the Arabs to the Gao region in Mali.[3]
From the 15th century, there was also limited European trading activity, mostly in gum arabic.
The tensions between the tribal Berber groups which had established themselves before the arrival of Islam, and the Arabized and Muslim Beni Hassan came to a head in the Char Bouba war of 1644 to 1674. The resulting victory of the Beni Hassan sealed the fate of Mauritania as an Arabized Muslim territory, the last part of Africa to be acquired into the Muslim World before the Muslim expansion was checked by the European Scramble for Africa in the 19th century.
There was French presence at the Senegal River from the 17th century, and by 1840, Senegal became a permanent French possession. The colonisation of Mauritania was an expansion of the area of French control over Senegal, beginning in the form of punitive expeditions against the Maures. The colonial period of Mauritania lasted for a mere two generations, from 1904 to 1960. The French authorities had difficulty in maintaining order in view of the numerous and complicated conflicts among the area's numerous factions and sub-factions. They attempted to abolish slavery in 1905, but with very limited success.[4]Mauritanian independence was granted in 1960, following a 1958 referendum under the French Fifth Republic.
Characteristics
In the year 41 AD Suetonius Paullinus, afterwards Consul, was the first of the Romans who led an army across Mount Atlas. At the end of a ten days' march he reached the summit,—which even in summer was covered with snow,—and from thence, after passing a desert of black sand and burnt rocks, he arrived at a river called Gerj...he then penetrated into the country of the Canarii and Perorsi, the former of whom inhabited a woody region abounding in elephants and serpents, and the latter were Ethiopians, not far distant from the Pharusii and the river Daras (modern river Senegal)[5]
What is now Mauritania was a dry savanna area during classical antiquity, where independent tribes like the Pharusii and the Perorsi (and the Nigritae near the Niger river) lived a semi-nomadic life facing the growing desertification of the Sahara.
Some Berber tribes moved to Mauritania in the 3rd and 4th century, and after the 8th century some Arabs entered the region as conquerors.
From the 8th century through the 15th century, black kingdoms of the western Sudan, such as Ghana Empire, Mali Empire, and Songhai Empire, brought their political culture from the south.[7]
The divisive tendencies of the various groups within Mauritanian society have always worked against the development of Mauritanian unity. Both the Sanhadja Confederation, at its height from the 8th century to the 10th century, and the Almoravid Empire, from the 11th century to the 12th century, were weakened by internecine warfare, and succumbed to further invasions from the Ghana Empire and the Almohad Empire, respectively.[7]
The first external influence that tended to unify the country was Islam. The Islamization of Mauritania was a gradual process that spanned more than 500 years. Beginning slowly through contacts with Berber and Arab merchants engaged in the important caravan trades and rapidly advancing through the Almoravid conquests, Islamization did not take firm hold until the arrival of Yemeni Arabs in the 12th and 13th centuries and was not complete until several centuries later. Gradual Islamization was accompanied by a process of Arabization as well, during which the Berber masters of Mauritania lost power and became vassals of their Arab conquerors.[7]
From the 15th century to the 19th century, European contact with Mauritania was dominated by the trade for gum arabic. Rivalries among European powers enabled the Arab-Berber population, the Maures (Moors), to maintain their independence and later to exact annual payments from France, whose sovereignty over the Sénégal River and the Mauritanian coast was recognized by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Although penetration beyond the coast and the Senegal River began in earnest under Louis Faidherbe, governor of Senegal in the mid-19th century, European conquest or "pacification" of the entire country did not begin until 1900.
France created the boundaries of contemporary Mauritania and administered it until the independence in the 1960s. Because extensive European contact began so late in the country's history, the traditional social structure carried over into modern times with little change.[7]
French rule brought legal prohibitions against slavery, and an end to interclan warfare. During the colonial period, the population remained nomadic, but many sedentary peoples, whose ancestors had been expelled centuries earlier, began to trickle back into Mauritania. As the country gained independence in 1960, the capital city Nouakchott was founded at the site of a small colonial village, the Ksar, while 90% of the population was still nomadic.
The prehistory of the west Saharan region is not fully characterised. There are some written accounts by medieval Arab traders and explorers who reached the important caravan trading centers and Sudanic kingdoms of eastern Mauritania, but the major sources of pre-European history are oral history, legends, and archaeological evidence. These sources indicate that during the millennia preceding the Christian Era, the Sahara was a more habitable region than it is today and supported a flourishing culture. In the area that is now Mauritania, the Bafour, a proto-Berber people, whose descendants may be the coastal Imraguen fishermen, were hunters, pastoralists, and fishermen. Valley cultivators, who may have been black ancestors of the riverine Toucouleur and Wolof peoples, lived alongside the Bafour. Dhar Tichitt is the oldest surviving archaeological settlements in West Africa and the oldest of all stone base settlements south of the Sahara. It was built by the Soninke people (or by the Serers[8]) and is thought to be the precursor of the Ghana empire. It was being settled around 2000 BCE.[9][10] Climatic changes, and perhaps overgrazing, led to a gradual desiccation of the Sahara and the southward movement of these peoples.[11]
In the 3rd and 4th centuries, this southward migration from the southern Atlas region was intensified by the arrival of Berber groups from the north who were searching for pasturage or fleeing political anarchy and war. The wide-ranging activities of these turbulent Berber warriors were made possible by the introduction of the camel to the Sahara in this period. This first wave of Berber invaders subjugated and made vassals of those Bafour who did not flee south. Other Berber groups followed in the 7th and 8th centuries, themselves fleeing in large numbers before the Arab conquerors of the Maghreb.[11]
Arab invasions
The Umayyads were the first Arab Muslims to enter Mauritania. During the Islamic conquests, they made incursions into Mauritania and were present in the region by the end of the 7th century.[13] Many Berber tribes in Mauritania fled the arrival of the Arabs to the Gao region in Mali.[14]
By the 16th century, most blacks had been pushed to the Sénégal River. Those remaining in the north became slaves cultivating the oases.[15]
After the decline of the Almoravid Empire, a long process of Arabization began in Mauritania, one that until then had been resisted successfully by the Berbers. Several groups of Yemeni Arabs who had been in the north of Africa turned south to Mauritania. Settling in northern Mauritania, they disrupted the caravan trade, causing routes to shift east, which in turn led to the gradual decline of Mauritania's trading towns. One particular Yemeni group, the Bani Hassan, continued to migrate southward until, by the end of the 17th century, they dominated the entire country. The last effort of the Berbers to shake off the Arab yoke was the Mauritanian Thirty Years' War (1644–74), or Sharr Bubba, led by Nasr ad-Din, a Lemtunaimam. This Sanhadja war of liberation was, however, unsuccessful; the Berbers were forced to abandon the sword and became vassals to the warrior Arab groups.[15]
Thus, the contemporary social structure of Mauritania can be dated from 1674. The warrior groups or Arabs dominated the Berber groups, who turned to clericalism to regain a degree of ascendancy. At the bottom of the social structure were the slaves, subservient to both warriors and Islamic holy men. All of these groups, whose language was Hassaniya Arabic, became known as Maures. The bitter rivalries and resentments characteristic of their social structure were later fully exploited by the French.[15]
Sanhadja Confederation
One of the Berber groups arriving in Mauritania in the 8th century was the Lemtuna. By the 9th century, the Lemtuna had attained political dominance in the Adrar and Hodh regions. Together with two other important Berber groups, the Messufa and the Godala, they set up the Sanhadja Confederation. From their capital, Aoudaghast, the Lemtuna controlled this loose confederation and the western routes of the Saharan caravan trade that had begun to flourish after the introduction of the camel. At its height, from the eighth to the end of the 10th century, the Sanhadja Confederation was a decentralized polity based on two distinct groups: the nomadic and very independent Berber groups, who maintained their traditional religions, and the Muslim, urban Berber merchants, who conducted the caravan trade.[16]
Although dominated by the Sanhadja merchants, the caravan trade had its northern terminus in the Maghribi commercial city of Sijilmasa and its southern terminus in Koumbi Saleh, capital of the Ghana Empire. Later, the southern trade route ended in Timbuktu, capital of the Mali Empire. Gold, ivory, and slaves were carried north in return for salt (ancient salt mines near Kediet Ijill in northern Mauritania are still being worked), copper, cloth, and other luxury goods.[16]
Important towns developed along the trade routes. The easiest, though not the shortest, routes between Ghana and Sijilmasa were from Koumbi Saleh through Aoudaghast, Oualâta, Tîchît, and Ouadane. These towns along the route grew to be important commercial as well as political centers. The 11th-century Arab chronicler Al-Bakri describes Aoudaghast, with its population of 5,000 to 6,000, as a big town with a large mosque and several smaller ones, surrounded by large cultivated areas under irrigation. Oualâta was a major relay point on the gold and salt trade route, as well as a chief assembly point for pilgrims traveling to Mecca. Koumbi Saleh was a large cosmopolitan city comprising two distinct sections: the Muslim quarter, with its Arab-influenced architecture, and the black quarter of traditional thatch and mud architecture, where the non-Muslim king of Ghana resided. Another important Mauritanian trade city of the Sanhadja Confederation was Chinguetti, later an important religious center. Although Koumbi Saleh did not outlive the fall of the Ghana Empire, Aoudaghast and particularly Oualâta maintained their importance well into the 16th century, when trade began shifting to the European-controlled coasts.[16]
By the 11th century, traditional religious practices thrived. The conquest of the entire west Saharan region by the Almoravids in the 11th century made possible a more orthodox Islamization of all the peoples of Mauritania.[17]
The breakup of the Sanhadja Confederation in the early 11th century led to a period of unrest and warfare among the Sanhadja Berber groups of Mauritania. In about 1039, a chief of the Godala, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca bringing with him a Sanhadja theologian, Abdallah ibn Yassin, to teach a more orthodox Islam. Rejected by the Godala two years later, after the death of Ibn Ibrahim, Ibn Yassin and some of his Sanhadja followers retired to a secluded place where they built a fortified religious center, a ribat, which attracted many Sanhadja. In 1042 the al murabitun (men of the ribat), as Ibn Yassin's followers came to be called, launched a jihad, or holy war, against the nonbelievers and the heretics among the Sanhadja, beginning what later become known as the Almoravid movement. The initial aim of the Almoravids was to establish a political community in which the ethical and juridical principles of Islam would be strictly applied.[17]
First, the Almoravids attacked and subdued the Godala, forcing them to acknowledge Islam. Then, rallying the other Berber groups of the west Sahara, the Almoravids succeeded in recreating the political unity of the Sanhadja Confederation and adding to it a religious unity and purpose. By 1054 the Almoravids had captured Sijilmasa in the Maghrib and had retaken Aoudaghast from Ghana.[17]
With the death of Ibn Yassin in 1059, leadership of the movement in the south passed to Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar, amir of Adrar, and to Yusuf ibn Tashfin in the north. Under Ibn Tashfin, the Berbers captured Morocco and founded Marrakech as their capital in 1062. By 1082 all of the western Maghrib (to at least present-day Algiers) was under Almoravid domination. In 1086 the Andalusian emirates, under attack from the Spanish Christian king Alfonso and the Christian reconquest of Spain, called on Ibn Tashfin and his Berber warriors to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and come to their rescue. The Almoravids defeated the Spanish Christians and, by 1090, imposed Almoravid rule and the Maliki school of Islamic law in Muslim Spain.[17]
In Mauritania, Abu Bakr led the Almoravids in a war against Ghana (1062–76), culminating in the capture in 1076 of Koumbi Saleh. This event marked the end of the dominance of the Ghana Empire. But after the death of Abu Bakr in 1087 and Ibn Tashfin in 1106, traditional rivalries among the Sanhadja and a new Muslim reformist conquest led by the ZenataAlmohads (1133–63) destroyed the Almoravid Empire.[17]
For a short time, the Mauritanian Sanhadja dynasty of the Almoravid Empire controlled a vast territory stretching from Spain to Senegal. The unity established between Morocco and Mauritania during the Almoravid period continued to have some political importance in the 1980s, as it formed part of the basis for Morocco's claims to Mauritania. But the greatest contribution of the Sanhadja and the Almoravids was the Islamization of the western Maghrib. This process would remain a dominant factor in the history of the area for the next several centuries.[17]
Sudanic empires and kingdoms
Although the Almoravids had substantial contacts with the Maghrib, influences from the blackSudanic kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai played an important role in Mauritania's history for about 700 years—from the 8th to the 15th century. Ghana, the first of the great West African Sudanic kingdoms, included in its territory all of southeastern Mauritania extending to Tagant. Ghana reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries with the extension of its rule over the Sanhadja Berbers. This large and centralized kingdom controlled the southern terminus of the trans-Saharan trade in gold, ivory, and salt.[18]
The capture of Koumbi Saleh in 1076 by the Almoravids marked the end of Ghana's hegemony, although the kingdom continued to exist for another 125 years. The Mandé, under the leadership of the legendary Sundiata, founded the second great Sudanic kingdom, Mali. By the end of the 13th century, the Mali Empire extended over that part of Mauritania previously controlled by Ghana, as well as over the remaining Sahelian regions and the Senegal River Valley. Sundiata and his successors took over Ghana's role in the Saharan trade and in the administration and collection of tribute from vast stretches of the Sudan and the Sahel.[18]
The slow decline of the Mali Empire that started at the end of the 14th century came about through internal discord and revolts by the inhabitants of vassal states, including the Songhai of Gao. By the end of the 15th century, the Songhai Empire had replaced the Mali Empire and extended to Mauritania and the upper Senegal River Valley. At the end of the 16th century, a large Moroccan force defeated the Songhai, bringing to an end the seven centuries of domination of the western Sudan (and a large part of Mauritania) by strong, centralized black kingdoms.[18]
Early European involvement
Despite the Almoravid domination of Spain in the 11th and 12th centuries, there seems to be little evidence of contact during that time between Mauritania and Europe. The inhospitable coastline of Mauritania continued to deter voyagers until the Portuguese began their African explorations in the 15th century. The area of Mauritania was of little interest to either Arab or European conquerors; the existence of gold reserves in the interior was not yet known, and the important trade routes passed the territory well to the east, through Timbuktu. The Saadi dynasty conquered much of the Saharan interior but did not show interest in expanding their territory westward.
The Portuguese had established a trading fort at Arguin, southeast of Cap Blanc (present-day Ras Nouadhibou), in 1455. The king of Portugal also maintained a commercial agent at Ouadane in the Adrar in an attempt to divert gold traveling north by caravan. Having only slight success in their quest for gold, the Portuguese quickly adapted to dealing in slaves. In the mid-15th century, as many as 1,000 slaves per year were exported from Arguin to Europe and to the Portuguese sugar plantations on the island of Sao Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea.[19]
With the merger of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in 1580, the Spaniards became the dominant influence along the coast. In 1638, however, they were replaced by the Dutch, who were the first to begin exploiting the gum arabic trade. Produced by the acacia trees of Trarza and Brakna and used in textile pattern printing, this gum arabic was considered superior to that previously obtained in Arabia. By 1678 the French had driven out the Dutch and established a permanent settlement at Saint-Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River, where the French Compagnie du Sénégal had been trading for more than fifty years.[19]
The Maures, with whom the Europeans were trading, considered the constant rivalries between European powers a sign of weakness, and they quickly learned the benefits of playing one power against the other. For example, they agreed simultaneously to give monopolies to the French and the Dutch. The Maures also took advantage of the Europeans whenever possible, so that when the French negotiated with the emir of Trarza to secure a monopoly on the gum arabic trade, the amir in exchange demanded a considerable number of gifts. Thus began the coutume, an annual payment expected by the Maures for doing business with a government or a company. By 1763 the British had expelled France from the West African coast, and France recovered control only when the Congress of Vienna in 1815 recognized French sovereignty over the coast of West Africa from Cap Blanc south to Senegal.[19]
Related Research Articles
The Almoravid dynasty was an imperial Berber Muslim dynasty centered in the territory of present-day Morocco. It established an empire in the 11th century that stretched over the western Maghreb and Al-Andalus, starting in the 1050s and lasting until its fall to the Almohads in 1147. The Almoravid capital was Marrakesh, a city founded by the Almoravid leader Abu Bakr ibn Umar c. 1070. The dynasty emerged from a coalition of the Lamtuna, Gudala, and Massufa, nomadic Berber tribes living in what is now Mauritania and the Western Sahara, traversing the territory between the Draa, the Niger, and the Senegal rivers.
The original inhabitants of Mauritania were the Bafour, presumably a Mande ethnic group, connected to the contemporary Arabized minor social group of Imraguen ("fishermen") on the Atlantic coast.
The history of Western Sahara can be traced back to the times of Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Navigator in the 5th century BC. Though few historical records are left from that period, Western Sahara's modern history has its roots linked to some nomadic groups such as the Sanhaja group, and the introduction of Islam and the Arabic language at the end of the 8th century AD.
The Songhai people, Hausa : mutanen sonhay, zabarmawa, dendawa, Gaoborori, Tuareg languages : ihatan(ayneha), izabarmane, Arabic languages : zabarmawi, Mande : koroboro are ethnolinguistic group in West Africa who speak the various Songhai languages. Their history and lingua franca is linked to the Songhai Empire which dominated the western Sahel in the 15th and 16th century. Predominantly a Muslim community, the Songhai are found primarily throughout Niger and Mali in the Western sudanic region. The name Songhai was historically neither an ethnic nor linguistic designation, but a name for the ruling caste of the Songhay Empire which are the Songhai proper of sunni and Askya dynasty found predominantly in present-Niger. However, the correct term used to refer to this group of people collectively by the natives is "Ayneha". Although some Speakers in Mali have also adopted the name Songhay as an ethnic designation, other Songhay-speaking groups identify themselves by other ethnic terms such as Zarma or Isawaghen. The dialect of Koyraboro Senni spoken in Gao is unintelligible to speakers of the Zarma dialect of Niger, according to at least one report. The Songhay languages are commonly taken to be Nilo-Saharan but this classification remains controversial. Nicolai considers the songhay languages as a afro-asiatic Berber subgroup or a new subgroup of semitic languages restructured under Mande and nilo Saharan influence, the lexicon of songhay languages includes many completes lexical fields close to Berbers languages, old and new semitic, northern songhay speakers are Berbers from Tuareg people : Dimmendaal (2008) believes that for now it is best considered an independent language family.
The Sahelian kingdoms were a series of centralized kingdoms or empires that were centered on the Sahel, the area of grasslands south of the Sahara, from the 8th century to the 19th. The wealth of the states came from controlling the trade routes across the desert. Their power came from having large pack animals like camels and horses that were fast enough to keep a large empire under central control and were also useful in such kind of battle. All of these empires were also quite decentralized with member cities having a great deal of autonomy.
Oualata or Walata is a small oasis town in southeast Mauritania, located at the eastern end of the Aoukar basin. Oualata was important as a caravan city in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as the southern terminus of a trans-Saharan trade route and now it is a World Heritage Site.
Chinguetti is a ksar and a medieval trading center in northern Mauritania, located on the Adrar Plateau east of Atar.
Koumbi Saleh, sometimes Kumbi Saleh is the site of a ruined medieval town in south east Mauritania that may have been the capital of the Ghana Empire.
Aoudaghost, also transliterated as Awadaghust, Awdughast, Awdaghusht, Awdaghost, and Awdhaghurst is a former Berber town in Hodh El Gharbi, Mauritania. It was an important oasis town at the southern end of a trans-Saharan caravan route that is mentioned in a number of early Arabic manuscripts. The archaeological ruins at Tegdaoust in southern Mauritania are thought to be the remains of the medieval town.
Trans-Saharan trade requires travel across the Sahara between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. While existing from prehistoric times, the peak of trade extended from the 8th century until the early 17th century. The Sahara once had a very different environment. In Libya and Algeria, from at least 7000 BC, there was pastoralism, the herding of sheep, goats, large settlements, and pottery. Cattle were introduced to the Central Sahara (Ahaggar) from 4000 to 3500 BC. Remarkable rock paintings in places that are currently very dry, portray flora and fauna that are not present in the modern desert environment.
Abu Bakr ibn Umar ibn Ibrahim ibn Turgut, sometimes suffixed al-Sanhaji or al-Lamtuni was a chieftain of the Lamtuna Berber Tribe and Amir of the Almoravids from 1056 until his death. He is credited to have founded the Moroccan city of Marrakesh, and under his rule the heretic Barghawatas were destroyed. In 1076, he conquered Koumbi Saleh capital of the Ghana Empire, and is credited to have brought Islam in this Western Sub-Saharan Africa region. In November of 1087, Abu Bakr died of a poisoned arrow in Senegal.
The Sanhaja were once one of the largest Berber tribal confederations, along with the Zanata and Masmuda confederations. Many tribes in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia and Western Sahara bore and still carry this ethnonym, especially in its Berber form. Other names for the population include Zenaga, Znaga, Sanhája, Sanhâdja and Senhaja.
The Tajakant is a Sahrawi tribe of Berber Sanhaja origins. They speak Hassaniya Arabic.
The Wangara are a subgroup of the Soninke who later became assimilated merchant classes that specialized in both Trans Saharan and Secret Trade of Gold Dust. Their diaspora operated all throughout West Africa Sahel-Sudan. Fostering regionally organized trade networks and Architecture projects. But based in the many Sahelian and Niger-Volta-Sene-Gambia river city-states. Particularly Dia, Timbuktu, Agadez, Kano, Gao, Koumbi Saleh, Guidimaka, Salaga, Kong, Bussa, Bissa, Kankan, Jallon, Djenné as well as Bambouk, Bure, Lobi, and Bono State goldfields and Borgu. They also were practicing Muslims with a clerical social class (Karamogo), Timbuktu Alumni political advisors, Sufi Mystic healers and individual leaders (Marabout). Living by a philosophy of merchantile pacifism called the Suwarian Tradition. Teaching peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims, reserving Jihad for self-defence only and even serving as Soothsayers or a "priesthood" of literate messengers for non-Muslim Chiefdoms/Kingdoms. This gave them a degree of control and immense wealth in lands where they were the minority. Creating contacts with almost all West African religious denominations. A group of Mande traders, loosely associated with the Kingdoms of the Sahel region and other West African Empires. Such as Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Bono State, Kong, Borgu, Dendi, Macina, Hausa Kingdoms & the Pashalik of Timbuktu. Wangara also describes any land south of Timbuktu and Agadez. The Bilad-Al-Sudan or Bilad-Al-Tibr, "Land of Black" or "Gold."
The Emirate of Trarza was a precolonial state in what is today southwest Mauritania. It has survived as a traditional confederation of semi-nomadic peoples to the present day. Its name is shared with the modern Region of Trarza. The population, a mixture of Berber tribes, had been there for a long time before being conquered in the 11th century by Hassaniya Arabic speakers from the north. Europeans later called these people Moors/Maures, and thus have titled this group "the Trarza Moors".
The Ghana Empire, also known as Wagadou or Awkar, was a West African empire based in the modern-day southeast of Mauritania and western Mali that existed from c. 300 until c. 1100. The Empire was founded by the Soninke people, and was based in the city of Koumbi Saleh.
Abu Zakariyya Yahya ibn Umar ibn Talagagin ibn Turgut ibn Wartasin, commonly suffixed al-Lamtunial-Sanhaji, was a chieftain of the Lamtuna, a tribe in the Sanhaja confederation. Yahya ibn Umar was the first emir of the Almoravids in the mid-11th century, a movement he constructed in collaboration with the religious leader Abdallah ibn Yasin. Yahya led the Almoravid armies in their first campaigns, including captures of Sijilmassa and Awdaghost in 1054/55, but was himself killed in battle against a dissident Berber faction in the Adrar. Yahya was succeeded as Almoravid emir by his brother, Abu Bakr ibn Umar.
The people of Mauritania are nearly all adherents of Sunni Islam of Maliki school of jurisprudence, influenced with Sufism. Mauritania is a country in Africa, bordering Algeria, Mali, Senegal, and the Western Sahara. Officially, 100% of the Mauritanian citizens are Muslim, although there is a small community of Christians, mainly of foreign nationality. The two largest Sufi Muslim tariqas in Mauritania are Tijaniyyah and Qadiriyya. Because of the ethnic and tribal divisions in the country, religion is seen by the government as essential for national unity.
During the 200 year period between 1301 and 1500 the main civilizations and kingdoms in Africa were the Mali Empire, Kingdom of Kongo, Ife Empire, Benin Kingdom, Hausa City-states, Great Zimbabwe, Ethiopian Empire, Kilwa Sultanate, Khormans and the Ajuran Sultanate. These kingdoms flourished in the first part of this period, especially the Mali Empire, which saw a cultural flowering within its empire centred on the University of Timbuktu.
During the Trans-Saharan slave trade, slaves were transported across the Sahara desert. Most were moved from Sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations; a small percentage went the other direction. Estimates of the total number of black slaves moved from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Muslim world range from 11-17 million, and the trans-Saharan trade routes conveyed a significant number of this total, with one estimate tallying around 7.2 million slaves crossing the Sahara from the mid-7th century until the 20th century.
↑ there were renewed efforts to ban slavery in 1981 and 2007, in spite of which Mauritania remains the country with the largest proportion of enslaved population worldwide.
↑ The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 1-10. Royal Geographical Society (Great Britain). page 7
↑ Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. The History of African Cities South of the Sahara. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005, pp. 42,43 ISBN1-55876-303-1
The journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 1-10 Royal Geographical Society, Great Britain. (Editor J. Murray, 1832). Harvard University, 2007
Gravrand, Henry, La Civilisation Sereer - Pangool, Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines du Senegal (1990), pp 9, 20, 77, ISBN2-7236-1055-1
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