May 31, 2019 Comments Off on Chinguetti – an important African village largely abandoned to the desert Views: 1138 Ancient Stories, Nostalgia

Each year, the Sahara – what is the world’s largest desert – extends approximately 30 miles to the south of the African continent. Mauritania is one of the countries that has greatly succumbed to this invasive process of nature in which once fertile lands become lifeless, obsolete terrains.

One intriguing site of interest threatened by desertification in Mauritania is Chinguetti, once a wealthy trade post during the Middle Ages. Thousands of camels would enter the village on a daily basis, carrying valuable resources of gold, silver, and wool, in those days when Chinguetti served as a commercial hub.

Archeological evidence in the region such as cave paintings attests what a thriving green area Chinguetti had been even before that. An abundant savannah teeming with life. But that’s the not case anymore.

The Great “Friday Mosque” of Chinguetti, Photo: Nataraja, CC BY-SA 3.0

Chinguetti, founded in the 8th-century A.D., used to be also one of Mauritania’s four “ksours” – a place where Sunni pilgrims assembled before their journey to Mecca. Pilgrims would get together with family members living in other towns and villages, give each other presents and pray in the old mosque in the village center.

Chinguetti’s Great Friday Mosque is still standing. It’s considered as one of the most precious places in all of Mauritania. The mosque has a squared minaret with egg-like finials that together comprise a pointed axis to Mecca. The structure is made of unmortared stone.

Chinguetti’s Old Town, with the mosque minaret in the middle, Photo: François COLIN, CC BY-SA 2.5

However, what has made Chinguetti really special and important for history and religion is its small libraries where rare books have been stored for centuries.

The village libraries accommodate important Quranic teachings and writings authored by pilgrims. Those who came to the village to study Islam also advanced on subjects such as maths, medicine, and astronomy. Each library is made of rocks and mud but only five have survived to this date. Over 1,000 authentic scripts are kept inside the remaining libraries, and only Muslims are supposedly allowed to enter and see the books, some of which kept in wooden boxes and a vast majority of copies exposed to the arid air of the desert.

Ancient manuscripts from the Chinguetti’s village libraries, Photo: Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 3.0

The conditions under which the sacred scripts are kept in the village libraries have made conservationists worried for some years now. Persuading the guardians to move the books to a place safer has been hard. It means breaking up with centuries of tradition, which is a strong enough reason for them to resist change.

For the few people who live in Chinguetti, guarding the libraries is guarding a major source of income as well. Locals are also exceptionally proud as they believe Chinguetti is Islam’s seventh-most holy city. Such claim has not been recognized outside the realms of West Africa, however.

Library guardian in Chinguetti, Photo: Michał Huniewicz, CC BY 2.0



Although Chinguetti has received a special World Heritage status by UNESCO in 1996, not much has been accomplished to protect the village and its surrounding from the encroaching desert. All buildings in the village suffer erosion both from seasonal flash floods and ever more violent sandstorms.

The libraries also contain documents describing trade-related activity from the old days, when tens of thousands of camels would enter or leave the town daily, Photo: Michał Huniewicz, CC BY 2.0



Perhaps technology can help save the village and its treasures, but that’s an entirely different challenge. Smithsonian Magazine’s Jeanne Maglaty explains the challenges faced by scientists and researchers investigating how to halt desertification in nature.

“Among the most promising technologies under development include methods for purifying and recycling wastewater for irrigation; breeding or genetically modifying plants that could survive in arid, nutrient-starved soil; and using remote sensing satellites to preemptively identify land areas at risk from desertification. Thus far, low-tech efforts elsewhere in the world have been a failure. Along the Mongolian border, Chinese environmental authorities sought to reclaim land overrun by the Gobi Desert by planting trees, dropping seeds from planes and even covering the ground with massive straw mats. All to no avail,” Maglaty writes.

We can only hope Chinguetti is not entirely lost to the deserts one day in the future.

We also thought to remind you of Lost utopia in Africa: theft was unknown, and people did not have doors to their houses in the old Benin City



Tags: Chinguetti, desertification, Library, lost cities, Lost places, Mauritania, memory, remote cities, remote places, Sahara, West Africa