History

Chinguetti was established around the 13th century as a waystation on the trans-Saharan caravan routes of the Adrar Plateau, founded by Berber traders who recognised the plateau’s water sources as an ideal staging ground for caravans linking the gold and salt trades of West Africa with Morocco and the Mediterranean world. The city grew rapidly as Muslim merchants formalised it into the principal pilgrimage station of sub-Saharan West Africa: for hundreds of years, pilgrims from the kingdoms of Mali, Songhai, Hausa, Borno, and the states of Senegambia converged on Chinguetti each year before setting out together across the Sahara toward Egypt and Mecca. At its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries, Chinguetti hosted caravans of tens of thousands of pilgrims in the surrounding valleys, and the wealth generated by that traffic financed mosques, schools, and the manuscript libraries that became the city’s enduring intellectual legacy.

Decline began from the 17th century as trans-Saharan trade routes shifted and French colonial pressure disrupted the interior pilgrimage economy. The city shrank and its manuscript collections lost their custodians’ capacity for maintenance. The Sahara, which had always pressed against the northern edge of the city, began to advance in earnest: by the 20th century the dunes had buried the northern third of the old town. The manuscripts — stored in palm-leaf chests and leather boxes without climate control — face ongoing risk from humidity fluctuations, insect damage, inheritance-driven fragmentation, and age.