Precolonial Mauritania
Precolonial Mauritania, lying next to the Atlantic coast at the western edge of the Sahara Desert, received and assimilated into its complex society many waves of Saharan migrants and conquerors.
The tensions between the tribal Berber groups which had established themselves before the arrival of Islam, and the Arabized and Muslim Beni Hassan came to a head in the long Char Bouba war of 1644 to 1674.
Rivalries among European powers enabled the Arab-Berber population, the Maures (Moors), to maintain their independence and later to exact annual payments from France, whose sovereignty over the Sénégal River and the Mauritanian coast was recognized by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
Because extensive European contact began so late in the country's history, the traditional social structure carried over into modern times with little change.
During the colonial period, the population remained nomadic, but many sedentary peoples, whose ancestors had been expelled centuries earlier, began to trickle back into Mauritania.
As the country gained independence in 1960, the capital city Nouakchott was founded at the site of a small colonial village, the Ksar, while 90% of the population was still nomadic.
These sources indicate that during the millennia preceding the Christian Era, the Sahara was a more habitable region than it is today and supported a flourishing culture.
[11] The Romans did some expeditions south of their Mauretania Tingitana, perhaps reaching the area north of the river Senegal populated by the Pharusii tribe.
[12] In the 3rd and 4th centuries, this southward migration from the southern Atlas region was intensified by the arrival of Berber groups from the north who were searching for pasturage or fleeing political anarchy and war.
The last effort of the Berbers to shake off the Arab yoke was the Mauritanian Thirty Years' War (1644–74), or Sharr Bubba, led by Nasr ad-Din, a Lemtuna imam.
From their capital, Aoudaghost, the Lemtuna controlled this loose confederation and the western routes of the Saharan caravan trade that had begun to flourish after the introduction of the camel.
Although Koumbi Saleh did not outlive the fall of the Ghana Empire, Aoudaghost and particularly Oualâta maintained their importance well into the 16th century, when trade began shifting to the European-controlled coasts.
The conquest of the entire west Saharan region by the Almoravids in the 11th century made possible a more orthodox Islamization of all the peoples of Mauritania.
In 1042 the al murabitun (men of the ribat), as Ibn Yassin's followers came to be called, launched a jihad, or holy war, against the nonbelievers and the heretics among the Sanhadja, beginning what later become known as the Almoravid movement.
But after the death of Abu Bakr in 1087 and Ibn Tashfin in 1106, traditional rivalries among the Sanhadja and a new Muslim reformist conquest led by the Zenata Almohads (1133–63) destroyed the Almoravid Empire.
[17] For a short time, the Mauritanian Sanhadja dynasty of the Almoravid Empire controlled a vast territory stretching from Spain to Senegal.
[17] Although the Almoravids had substantial contacts with the Maghrib, influences from the black Sudanic kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai played an important role in Mauritania's history for about 700 years—from the 8th to the 15th century.
Ghana, the first of the great West African Sudanic kingdoms, included in its territory all of southeastern Mauritania extending to Tagant.
[18] The capture of Koumbi Saleh in 1076 by the Almoravids marked the end of Ghana's hegemony, although the kingdom continued to exist for another 125 years.
By the end of the 13th century, the Mali Empire extended over that part of Mauritania previously controlled by Ghana, as well as over the remaining Sahelian regions and the Senegal River Valley.
Sundiata and his successors took over Ghana's role in the Saharan trade and in the administration and collection of tribute from vast stretches of the Sudan and the Sahel.
[18] The slow decline of the Mali Empire that started at the end of the 14th century came about through internal discord and revolts by the inhabitants of vassal states, including the Songhai of Gao.
The area of Mauritania was of little interest to either Arab or European conquerors; the existence of gold reserves in the interior was not yet known, and the important trade routes passed the territory well to the east, through Timbuktu.
The king of Portugal also maintained a commercial agent at Ouadane in the Adrar in an attempt to divert gold traveling north by caravan.
In the mid-15th century, as many as 1,000 slaves per year were exported from Arguin to Europe and to the Portuguese sugar plantations on the island of Sao Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea.
Produced by the acacia trees of Trarza and Brakna and used in textile pattern printing, this gum arabic was considered superior to that previously obtained in Arabia.
