Mauritania
Capital: Nouakchott · North Africa
Saharan crossroads where the Almoravid movement began, home to ancient caravan libraries of Chinguetti and a blend of Moorish and West African cultures.
Ethnic communities
- Bidhan (Moors)Hassaniya-speaking Arab-Berber nomadic society
- HaratinHistorically servile Moorish communities, now a major population
- HalpulaarFulbe-related farmers and herders of the Senegal River valley
- SoninkeDescendants of the Ghana Empire's founders
More communities of Mauritania
- Bidhan (White Moors) — Hassaniya nomad society of scholars, herders and emirates
- Wolof — Southern river-bank farmers linked to Senegal's kin
- Fulbe herders — Cattle nomads threading the agro-pastoral south
- Imraguen fishers — Banc d'Arguin net-fishers who call dolphins to the hunt
- Nemadi — Last hunting families of the eastern desert with dog packs
- Znaga Berber speakers — Remnant speakers of the Sanhaja's old tongue
- Reguibat — Great camel confederation of the northern wastes
- Tajakant & Oulad Delim — Saharan trading and warrior tribes
- Idaw Ali — Clerical tribe famed for Tijani scholarship
- Laghlal & Smasside — Zawiya lineages of teaching and trade
- Adrar oasis folk — Chinguetti–Ouadane librarians of the desert manuscripts
Languages
Major languages: Arabic (Hassaniya), Pulaar, Soninke, Wolof
Language families: Afro-Asiatic; Niger-Congo
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Ghana Empire (Wagadu core)
- • Almoravid Empire
- • Emirates of Trarza and Brakna
Heritage sites
- • Ancient ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata
- • Banc d'Arguin
Cultural highlights
Deep-dive community profiles
Amazigh (Berber)
The indigenous peoples of North Africa — 'Imazighen', the free people — whose Tifinagh script, mountain and desert civilizations, and millennia of continuous culture long predate the Arab arrival, stretching from the Canary Islands to the Siwa oasis.
Open deep profile →Fulani (Fulbe)
The great pastoral nation of the Sahel — some 40 million people scattered from Senegal to Sudan, keepers of the pulaaku ethical code, founders of Islamic reform states, and among them the Wodaabe, whose Gerewol beauty festival is world-famous.
Open deep profile →Soninke
Founders of Wagadu — the Ghana Empire, West Africa's first great state — whose gold-road merchants, the Wangara, seeded trade diasporas from the Sahara to the forest, and whose epic of the serpent Bida still explains the empire's fall.
Open deep profile →Wolof
Senegal's leading nation and the culture of teranga (hospitality) — heirs of the Jolof Empire, marshals of sabar drumming and làmb wrestling, whose Sufi brotherhoods and mbalax rhythms define the modern Senegambian world.
Open deep profile →