Chinguetti Mosque

Interesting facts

The five clay ostrich eggs atop the minaret are not random: four mark the cardinal directions, and the central one aligns with the direction of Mecca.

The ostrich-egg finials are said to recall a time when the land around Chinguetti was green enough for ostriches to roam.

Inside the prayer hall the floor is not tiled or carpeted but simply covered with desert sand.

The minaret stands on a square base roughly six to seven metres across, its walls of dry yellow and pinkish stone tapering gently as they rise.

UNESCO carried out a restoration of the mosque in the 1970s, one of its early conservation efforts in the Sahara.

In 2008 the World Monuments Fund listed Chinguetti among the world's most endangered sites, threatened by advancing sand and desertification.

Chinguetti has been called the seventh holy city of Islam, a reputation built on its scholars and its role on the pilgrimage route.

Its medieval schools taught law, rhetoric, astronomy, mathematics and medicine, and scholars gathered on a lane known as the Street of the Learned.

The town receives only about 64 mm of rain a year, and average July highs climb above 41 degrees Celsius.

Why it is worth it

A single square tower of unmortared stone rises above the flat roofs of Chinguetti, a desert town on the Adrar Plateau of northern Mauritania, and for many Mauritanians it is the image of the nation itself. The Friday Mosque of Chinguetti dates from the 13th or 14th century, and its minaret is often described as the second-oldest still in continuous use anywhere in the Islamic world. The tower is capped with five ostrich-egg finials, a small and unexpected flourish on an otherwise severe building.

The mosque is built from split stone laid without mortar and bound with clay, and its roof rests on palm-trunk beams carried by stone piers. Inside, a prayer hall of four aisles opens onto a courtyard, and the qibla wall facing Mecca holds a pair of niches, one for the mihrab and one for the minbar, an arrangement found in many mosques of the region. Decoration is almost entirely absent. That plainness follows the strict Maliki tradition associated with the Almoravid movement, which shaped religious life across the western Maghreb and gave the old town its spare character. It remains an active place of worship.

Chinguetti itself was founded in the 8th century; its name is usually rendered as "spring of horses" in Azer, an extinct language related to Soninke. After a period of decline it was re-established in the 13th century as a fortified halt for caravans crossing the Sahara between the Mediterranean and the lands to the south. For centuries it was also a meeting point for pilgrims of the Maghreb setting out for Mecca, and it became a centre of learning in its own right: the Arab world long called the whole of Mauritania Bilad Shinqit, "the land of Chinguetti". Houses of reddish dry stone and mud brick, many with doors cut from acacia wood, line the narrow lanes that lead to the mosque, and the old quarter still keeps family libraries of medieval Qur'anic and scientific manuscripts. High dunes press against the western edge of the town. Since 1996 Chinguetti has been part of the World Heritage Site of the Ancient Ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata.

Getting there

Chinguetti lies on the Adrar Plateau east of Atar, the regional capital, about 70 km away in a straight line, and it is reached by road from Atar. Atar Airport (ATR) is the closest airfield, roughly 70 km to the west. Tazadit Airport (OUZ) at Zouérat is about 254 km away in a straight line.

Chinguetti Mosque

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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