Gatsby Default Starter

The Bafour or Bafur are a group of people inhabiting Mauritania and Western Sahara. The Bafour may have been a settled people at the time of the Neolithic Era. According to their oral tradition, they lived in the Western Sahara and gradually migrated southward. Charles Mwalimu describes them as "African black Agriculturalists...subsequently replaced by the Berber". Anthony Pazzanita refers to them as "a pastoral, pre-Berber people who migrated to the area during Neolithic…

Dhar Tichitt is a Neolithic archaeological site located in the southwestern region of the Sahara Desert, in Mauritania. It is one of several settlement locations along the sandstone cliffs in the area. The cliffs were inhabited by pastoralists starting at around 4000 BP and lasted to around 2300 BP before present (BP) 1 . About 500 stone settlements are found in the region. In addition to herding livestock, its inhabitants fished and grew millet. The climate of the Dhar…

Oualata or Walata (Arabic: ولاته‎) (also Biru in 17th century chronicles) 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. Oualata is believed to have been first settled by an agro-pastoral people akin to the Mandé Soninke people who lived along the rocky…

Ouadane or Wādān (Arabic: وادان‎) is a small town in the desert region of central Mauritania, situated on the southern edge of the Adrar Plateau, 93 km northeast of Chinguetti. The town was a staging post in the trans-Saharan trade and for caravans transporting slabs of salt from the mines at Idjil. A Portuguese trading post was established in 1487, but was probably soon abandoned. The town declined from the sixteenth century and most of it now lies in ruins. The old town, a…

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. From the ninth century, Arab authors mention the Ghana Empire in connection with the trans-Saharan gold trade. Al-Bakri who wrote in eleventh century described the capital of Ghana as consisting of two towns 6 miles apart, one inhabited by Muslim merchants and the other by the king of Ghana. The discovery in 1913 of a 17th…

The Ghana Empire (c. 700 until c. 1240), properly known as Wagadou (Ghana or Ga'na being the title of its ruler), was located in the area of present-day southeastern Mauritania and western Mali. It is not geographically realted to Modern Ghana. Complex societies based on trans-Saharan trade with salt and gold had existed in the region since ancient times, but the introduction of the camel to the western Sahara in the 3rd century A.D. opened the way to great changes in the…

Chinguetti (Berber languages: Cengiṭ, Arabic: شنقيط‎, translit. Šenqīṭ) is a ksar or a Berber medieval trading center in northern Mauritania, located on the Adrar Plateau east of Atar. Founded in the 13th century as the center of several trans-Saharan trade routes, this small city continues to attract a handful of visitors who admire its spare architecture, scenery and ancient libraries. The indigenous Berber Saharan architecture of older sectors of the city features houses…

Takrur, Tekrur or Tekrour (c. 800 – c. 1285) was an ancient state of West Africa, which flourished roughly parallel to the Ghana Empire. Takrur was the name of the capital of the state which flourished on the lower Senegal River. Located in the Senegal valley, along the border of present-day Senegal and Mauritania, it was a trading centre, where gold from the Bambuk region, salt from the Awlil, and Sahel grain were exchanged. It was rival of the Ghana Empire and the two…

The Sosso Empire was a twelfth-century Kaniaga kingdom of West Africa. The Kingdom of Sosso, also written as Soso or Susu, was an ancient kingdom on the coast of west Africa. During its empire, reigned their most famous leader, Sumanguru Kante. Sumanguru Kante was said to be a cruel, harsh leader of his kingdom according to old African historians. His harsh leadership style kept the empire in balance and led to organization within the nation states. There was also strong…

The Mali Empire was an empire in West Africa from c. 1230 to 1670. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Musa Keita. The Manding languages were spoken in the empire. It was the largest empire in West Africa and profoundly influenced the culture of West Africa through the spread of its language, laws and customs. The empire began as a small Mandinka kingdom at the upper reaches of the Niger River, centred around…

The Songhai Empire (also transliterated as Songhay) was a state that dominated the western Sahel in the 15th and 16th century. At its peak, it was one of the largest states in African history. The state is known by its historiographical name, derived from its leading ethnic group and ruling elite, the Songhai. Sonni Ali established Gao as the capital of the empire, although a Songhai state had existed in and around Gao since the 11th century. Other important cities in the…