A Maghreb republic borrowed Rome’s Mauretania—without overlapping it
Mauritania, the Islamic Republic on West Africa’s Atlantic Maghreb edge, borders Western Sahara, Algeria, Mali, and Senegal. Its English name echoes Latin Mauretania, an ancient Mediterranean kingdom and Roman province farther north in today’s Algeria–Morocco—territories that lie well away from the modern state, which Arab geographers instead called the land of Chinguetti.
Ninety percent of the country lies in the Sahara, making it Africa’s 11th-largest state, and most of its 5.4 million people cluster in the milder south. Roughly a third live in Nouakchott, the coastal capital, which France picked in 1960 when it was barely a fortified village. Arabic is official, with Pulaar, Soninke and Wolof recognised nationally; Haratin make up about 40 percent of the population, Bidhan 30 and sub-Saharan groups the rest.
Rome’s Mauretania took its name from the Mauri, the same root that gave Europe the word Moors. Bafour farmers were among the first Saharans to settle, later moving south as the desert spread, and Berbers arrived between the 3rd and 7th centuries. Umayyad forces reached the area by the late 600s. In the 11th century desert Berber confederations formed the Almoravid movement, whose empire ran from the Sahara into Iberia. The Char Bouba War of 1644–1674 ended with Beni Hassan Arabs on top, and their Hassaniya dialect became the common tongue.
Xavier Coppolani, who coined the French name in 1899, led the conquest from 1901, taking Trarza, Brakna and Tagant by 1904; Adrar held out until 1912. Throughout colonial rule nine in ten people stayed nomadic. Independence came in 1960, and Moktar Ould Daddah made it a one-party state in 1964.
Officers removed Daddah without bloodshed on 10 July 1978 after a costly bid to seize part of Western Sahara, which Mauritania abandoned in 1979. Sahel droughts in the early 1970s deepened poverty, and some 70,000 Black Mauritanians were expelled around the 1989 border crisis with Senegal. Slavery was banned in 1905, 1981 and August 2007 yet persists. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz led the 2008 coup, and the 2019 handover to Mohamed Ould Ghazouani was the first peaceful transfer.
Source: Mauritania
