Splendours and Mysteries of Northern Mauritania

The ancient city of Chinguetti
Chinguetti was founded by the Ida Ouali around 1525, upstream from Abweyr, which has since disappeared and was itself created in 1261.
The probable etymology of the toponym shingitî would be:

• well of the horse, from Soninké: si: well + n: of + gede: horse.

Chinguetti was the most active commercial center and the most important city of Western Sahara. It was considered by Mauritanians as the 7th holy city of Islam with its 11 mosques, its 100 wells and its circle of scholars.
In 1675, a massacre perpetrated by part of the Ida-ou-Ali led to the breakup of the group, whose survivors founded another ksar in Tagant, Tidjikja.
Today only a single mosque remains and the memory of prosperous periods…
The main tribes that make up its population are the Ida-ou-Ali, the Laghlal and the Oulad Gheilan.

With their narrow and winding streets, their numerous dead ends, their low and dark houses made of local materials, their near absence of squares and communal spaces, Chinguetti and Wadâne have the structure of old ksour densely huddled around their mosques.

The Tanouchert palm grove extends along the edge of the Warane erg. Large sand dunes dominate it. We reach it after a lovely ride.
In the afternoon, we discover what makes our hosts' wealth. Date cultivation, the strategic position of this water point are equally fascinating things.
As evening falls, we stay to sleep in traditional huts.

The ksar of Wadâne, (Ouadâne) which was founded, it is said, the same year as Tichîtt (1141), would derive its name from the Arabic word meaning "two river beds" (wadân). The details according to which these two wadis would be the wadi of dates and the wadi of sciences are greatly to the honor of the city.
The ancient city is mentioned in writing in the mid-15th century in a Portuguese travel report but it remains difficult to form a precise idea of the city's beginnings despite its position on the western axis of trans-Saharan caravan traffic.
Wadâne is a dense urban center, of the ksar type, formerly surrounded by a very secure fortified enclosure that resisted all foreign forces until the arrival of the French.
The dominant tribes are the Kounta, the Ida ou El Hadj, the Chorfa, the Amgârîj and the Aghzazir.

The leveled dome of Guelb Er Richât, which appears during the secondary period, is located at the boundaries of the dark mountains of the Adrâr mauritanien, to the west, and the vast expanses of stones, rocky slabs and dunes of the Taoudenni basin, to the east.
The strange system of concentric ridges of the Richât is so imposing that it appears today on all maps, even at small scale.
Richât is the plural of richa (feather), a term that perfectly describes the appearance of its ridges, whose leeward slopes are streaked with tongues of sand and which dominate the deep plains where goats and camels graze... when, by chance, it has rained.
Because of its very size, it was revealed only much later, by Professor Théodore Monod in 1934.
Indeed, no one, whether coming from the harsh plateaus of the north or the dunes of the Majabat Al Koubra (Monod, 1958), to the south and southeast, could imagine that these low ridges were organized in such a perfect concentric system, vaguely elliptical with 22 km and 25 km in diameter, emerging from a buttonhole of 45 km, the Taguenzé, opening in the sandstone plateau.

The El Beyyed corridor presents, over nearly 20km towards El Ghallaouiyya, a considerable amount of lithic material. The region offers some of the main biface and worked pebble sites in western Sahara. The multiple rock art sites here represent samples of so-called "Ethiopian" fauna such as giraffes, elephants, rhinoceroses... This fauna is believed to have disappeared from the area approximately 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. El Beyyed is located at the foot of the great dhar of the Adrâr and, to the north, develops an immense and powerful erg: the Maghteïr.

The Erg Makhteir is one of these powerful dune massifs running from western Algeria, west of the Saoura to the shores of the Atlantic.
Born under the general name of Erg Chech, it ends its course in the ocean under the name of Azefal.
A cape of the Adrar plateau stands like a ship's bow, the tarf Tazazmout.

Early in the day, we head towards one of the world's largest iron mines. It's a surreal visit in a desert environment.

The railway line between Zouérate and Nouadhibou allows iron ore extracted from Kediet ej-Jill to be transported to the port of the country's economic capital, where it will be loaded onto ore carriers bound for industrialized countries. This desert train was considered the longest (220 wagons for a length of 2 km), the heaviest (22,000 tonnes, 100 tonnes per wagon), and the slowest in the world (15 to 18 hours to travel the 650 km between Zouérate and Nouadhibou). Only this last point remains valid, as for some years now, an Australian train has become the longest and heaviest in the world.

The Ben Amira monolith is one of the most breathtaking places in Mauritania. The enormous mass of granite rock rises more than 600m.
With the sand dunes surrounding it, it provides an excellent Saharan landscape. Ben Amira is the largest monolith in Africa and the third largest in the world, after Uluru and Mount Augustus located in Australia.

The western part of the Adrâr in Mauritanie offers a very wide diversity of landscapes.
The plateau is criss-crossed by a dense network of faults of tectonic origin where the wadis flow. Here the blonde ergs come to rest against the upright blades of black sandstone. Erosion has shaped the landscapes over millennia.
At the bottom of the valley, the gentleness of the palm groves stands out from the steep and austere mountain massifs. In secret crevices are set hidden gueltas with clear waters.
The settled cultivators, established in the palm groves, continue their traditional life in this Sahara which can be generous. On the surrounding plateaus, nomads in search of pasture for their herds mark their time with long seasonal movements in search of saving rains. Their white or brown tents are there, sheltered from view, in the movements of the terrain.
Here in Adrâr, the complementarity between these two necessities of life takes on all its strength. We cross the territory of the tribe of the Oulad Sassi of the confederation of the Ideichily.

We skirt the edge of the erg and the pure lines of the dunes guide our steps.
To the north unfolds, in alternating colors, the fringe of intense green from the palm groves then a mosaic of greens composed by different tree species such as Acacias raddiana (Talha), Balanites aegyptiaca (Teichot), Boscia senegalensis (Eizine).
Then comes the dark border of the Ibi el Akhdar massif at the foot of which nestle a few villages.

Possible hike in the palm grove and permanent guelta of Toungad - 1 to 2 hours of easy walking:
After leaving the vehicles at the entrance to the palm grove, you take the trails that lead under the date palms, being careful of the very dangerous barbs on the leaves and especially the stems of the fronds.
Heading east, you gradually emerge from the palms to reach the beautiful circular guelta of Toungad. The water here is permanent. You can either return via the plateau to the south towards the village or to the north towards Chatô El Kbir.

The city of Atar founded in the 17th century in the borderland plain (bâten) that stretches north of the great escarpment, is protected from sand by its geographical location.
It is the most important city in the Saharan region. It was an emirate city in the past, a garrison city for the Americans then the French and finally a regional capital.