Chinguetti

Chinguetti (Arabic شنقيط, DMG Šinqīṭ ), also Changuit, Schin Dumaguete, Singuyty, is a historic trading post and now a place with 4370 inhabitants ( 2013) in the region of Adrar in northwestern Mauritania. It is located on the Adrar Plateau, about 70 kilometers east of Atar. Chinguetti is the capital of the department of the same name.

Overview

The well-preserved ruins of the trading post (Arabic Ksar) since 1996 together with Ouadane, Tichitt and Oualata a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The former center of several running through the Sahara trade routes attracts tourists and continues to Islamic scholars, to admire its architecture and the old libraries.

The local architecture of the older parts of the city consists of houses of stone and mud with patios that crowd of narrow streets around a mosque with a minaret, respectively.

Worth seeing include the Friday Mosque, a former stronghold of the French Foreign Legion - a national symbol of Mauritania - and a water tower. In the old town there are five old libraries with scientific and Koranic texts, many of them from the late Middle Ages.

History

The Chinguetti region has been inhabited for millennia. She used to savannah. Cave paintings in the nearby Amoghar Pass show pictures of giraffes, cows and people in a green landscape that is very different from today's desert landscape.

The city may have been founded in the 11th century by a Berber tribal group of Sanhaja. Soon after the settlement of Chinguetti occurred after the legend, the Sanhaja with the Almoravids in touch and eventually merged with them. The Almoravids were founders of the Moorish empire that stretched from present-day Senegal to Spain. The sober, no-frills architecture of the city reflects the strict Maliki Islam, the Almoravids.

After two centuries of decline, the city was founded in fact new, this time. Than fortified trading center on the trans-Saharan trade routes that linked the Mediterranean with the interior of Africa Acted was, inter alia, with recovered near salt. Although the fortress walls have disappeared for centuries, many buildings dating from this period yet.

Chinguetti is sometimes referred to as the siebtheiligste city of Islam. In any case, the city is one of the most important cities in the history of Islam as well as West Africa. For centuries, the city was the most important meeting place of pilgrims to Mecca from the Maghreb and in time became himself a holy city, especially for those who could not take the long way to the Arabian peninsula itself. She also became a center of Islamic, religious and scientific scholarship. In addition to religious education was taught in the schools rhetoric, law, astronomy, mathematics and medicine. For many centuries, was quite Mauritania in the Arab world as " Bilad Shinqit ", " The land of Chinguetti " known.

The depopulation of the city accelerated by migration to the mining region Zouérat - F'dérik and through the Western Sahara conflict in the 1970s. Since the 1980s, began first restoration work. Today largely left to the desert, the city has some of the most important medieval manuscript libraries in West Africa, which are mostly situated in Privatbeseitz. The area around the Rue des Savants was once known as a meeting place of scholars who discussed the finer details of Islamic law. Today the deserted streets show the urban and religious architecture of the Middle Ages.

The newly discovered offshore oil field in Mauritania was named in honor of the city of Chinguetti.

Sons and daughters of the town

• Ahmad ibn Al- Amin Al - Shinqiti (1863-1913), one of the most famous writers of Mauritania