History of Mauritania

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania is a former French colony in West Africa , located on the Atlantic Ocean. It borders the states of Algeria , Mali and Senegal as well as the territory of the Western Sahara ( Democratic Arab Republic of the Sahara ). Mauritania lies on the western edge of the Sahara and is inhabited by originally nomadic Moors , a mixed people of Arabs , Berbers and assimilated black West Africans.

Contemporary observers of Mauritania have often described the country as a bridge between North and West Africa. Indeed, various groups in Mauritania have also maintained strong cultural and economic ties with their neighbors in the two regions ( Maghreb and CEDEAO - Communauté Économique des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest), with whom they are most of the time in direct contact Were in contact.

Although the country served as a geographical transport bridge for the gold, salt and slave trade between the northern and southern borders of the Sahara, it also marked the cultural border between the sedentary farmers of sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab-Berber nomads of the Maghreb.

Throughout the history of Mauritania, the interrelationship between the two cultures has been full of political and social conflicts, which has repeatedly impaired Mauritanian politics in the past and will very likely continue to influence, if not to say determine, influence in the medium term. Only Islam , to which the entire population has professed since the 9th century, represents a uniform bond between the various sections of the population.

The indigenous population

Old Paleolithic stone tools now in the Natural History Museum of Milan

The Sahara has not always been a desert. In the course of time periods of dryness and moisture have alternated. Some Oldowan sites have been described in the Massif des Richât east of Ouadane . They were on the banks of paleo lakes, such as El Beyedh or Guelb Er Richât. The most important sites are Wadi Akerdeil and Aftassa-Amzeili southeast of Zouerate .

Henri Lhote next to Mauritanian petroglyphs, 1967

John Desmond Clark in the same place, 1967

A population of fishermen, hunters and farmers represented the Bafur , whose descendants could be the coastal fishermen of Imraguen . The valley farmers, who are the black ancestors of the Tukulörs and Wolof , lived next to the Bafur. Changes in climate and perhaps exposed pastures contributed to the progressive drying of the Sahara and thus to migration towards the south. For the period between 2500 or 2200 and 1500 BC An increasing sand input can be proven.

Despite the unfavorable climate development, the first waves of migration to Western Sahara from the north would still have to occur in the course of the 1st millennium BC. Have taken place. The new migrants were nomadic Berbers . It is not yet known exactly what reasons drove them there: perhaps to escape enemies or simply to look for new pastures. What is certain is that they used horses for riding and knew how to forge iron, which gave them a clear advantage over the last representatives of the Neolithic population.

However, they probably would not have stayed in the Sahara, which was gradually becoming a sandy desert during this period, if they had not been fortunate enough to find the only animal capable of ensuring human survival in this climatic zone: the camel , which came from the east around the 1st century BC. Arrived in Mauritania. The introduction of the camel gave the Berbers the opportunity to engage in warlike activities and trade. This first wave of aggressors defeated the Bafour and declared subjects to those who could not escape south.

Sanhajah League (3rd to 10th centuries)

caravan

The character of the population today reflects the waves of immigration from the north towards Mauritania, which began in the 3rd century AD when the first Berbers moved in (first wave of immigration). The indigenous peoples were defeated after further waves of Berber immigration in the 7th and 8th centuries, the time of the arrival of Islam in North Africa, and were either subjugated or moved further south or fled.

The tribes that lived on the girdle of Western Sahara at that time come from the two main Berber peoples of northwest Africa: Zanata and Sanhajah . The former, originally nomads, had established themselves around the 9th century as masters of the oases and trading centers of the northern parts of the desert. In the south in the middle of the desert the main nomadic tribes were settled, the camel breeding, Sanhadscha.

One of the Sanhajj groups who arrived in Mauritania in the 8th century were the Lamtuna . In the 9th century the Lamtuna had usurped political dominance in the Adrar and Hodh regions . With two other important Sanhajan tribes, the Masufa and the Jodala , they formed the Sanhajah League in order to gain control of the Saharan trade routes. From their capital, Aoudaghoust , the Lamtuna controlled this loose union and the western desert routes of the caravan trade, which was just beginning to flourish in these regions after the introduction of the camel. At its peak between the 9th and 10th centuries, the Sanhajah Federation operated a decentralized policy based on two different groups:

• the urban Muslim traders who traded in caravans and
• the very independent nomads who continued to keep their traditional religions.

The caravan trade operated by the Sanhajah traders connected the trading city of Sidschilmasa in the north of the Maghreb and Koumbi Saleh , capital of the Empire of Ghana , in the south. The trade route later ended in the south at Timbuktu , the capital of the Mali Empire . Gold, ivory and slaves were transported north and exchanged for salt (the old salt mines near Kediet Ijill in northern Mauritania are still in operation today), copper, clothing and other luxury goods.

Important cities arose along the trade routes. The simplest, but not the shortest route between Ghana and Sidschilmasa led from Koumbi Saleh via Aoudaghoust, Oualata , Tichitt and Ouadane . These cities along the route became important centers of trade and power. The Arab chronicler al-Bakri described Aoudaghoust in the 11th century as a large city with a population of 5000 to 6000 people, a large and many smaller mosques and large, artificially irrigated fields in the area.

Almoravid and West African Empires (11th to 14th centuries)

In the 11th century and after the dissolution of the Sanhajah League, the country entered a period of unrest. Various Berber groups of the former Sanhajah League fought among themselves. A small group of Sanhajah, the Almoravids , founded a religious center from which they preached Islamic reform doctrines and established an Islamic empire. In 1090 the Almoravids ruled from Spain to Senegal . After less than forty years, however, the expansion of the Almoravids came to a standstill, due to the difficulties that arose from the administration of the now rapidly growing empire. At the same time, their enemies in the north and south had evolved.

The West African kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhai expanded their territories over the course of the following six centuries and took over the Berber fortresses. This process is now known as the second wave of immigration.

Arab invasion (14th to 18th centuries)

A third wave of immigration, this time from the north, was the Arab immigration of various groups from Yemen , displacing Berbers and Africans alike towards the south. Towards the end of the 16th century, one of these Arab groups, the Banī Hassān , controlled the entire territory of what is now Mauritania.

The current social structure of Mauritania can be traced back to the situation at the end of the 17th century, when the Banī Hassān defeated the religious Arab-Berber groups, the Zwāya, who wanted to expel the Arabs by military means ( Char-Bouba War ). The armed Arab groups maintained their rule over the Berbers, who for the most part turned to the ulama and submitted to the Arabs. At the bottom of the social hierarchy were the black slaves. All three groups spoke Hassānīja , an Arabic dialect, and formed the so-called Moors. During this time most of the black Africans lived in the basin of the Senegal River.

Causes of flight

Although the Arab invasions in North Africa were almost entirely attributed to the Islamic conquest, the deterioration in ecological conditions in Arabia had a decisive impact on the timing and number of immigrants who left Arabia in search of pastureland . The climatic similarity of Arabia and North Africa made North Africa an ideal destination for the emigrating peoples. After the tragic collapse of the dam of Marib near Sanaa in Yemen in 570, several hundred Arab tribes were forced to leave their homeland for North and East Africa. This migratory movement occurred 40 years before the emergence of Islam. The importance of ecological changes can be seen in the emigration processes of the 11th century, when a severe drought caused many Arabs to leave their homeland. The most famous of the emigrating tribes at the time were the Banu Hilal , originally from Yemen, who had invaded North Africa three centuries earlier. From there they reached northern Mauritania in the 14th century.

Consequences of immigration

Ibn Chaldun reported that during their invasion of North Africa the Banu Hilal moved west and destroyed, murdered and robbed.

Since the Arab conquest of the "distant Maghreb " ( Al-maghrib al-aqsa ) in the 8th century, Mauritania has experienced slow but continuous immigration of Arabs and gradually increasing Arab influence in the north. The growing presence of the Arabs caused the Berbers, who preferred not to mix with other groups, to move south, where they subjugated the indigenous black population. In the 16th century the majority of blacks were pushed as far as the Senegal River, a minority were enslaved and forced to cultivate the oases .

The Arabization of Mauritania

After the fall of the Almoravids , the gradual Arabization of Mauritania began, which had been suppressed by the Berbers until then.

In the 11th century, a number of Arab nomadic tribes invaded the Sahara , which had to lead to major changes in North Africa. Two large nomadic tribes, the Banu Hilal and the Banu Soulaïm, who had settled in the Nile Delta, caused unrest in Egypt through their disputes . The caliph of the Egyptian Fatimids had therefore persecuted them to Ifrīqiya (in what is now Tunisia ). To escape persecution by the Merinids , a Moroccan dynasty in the 13th century, or perhaps simply to find new pastures, part of Ma'qil made up of a group of tribes called Beni Hassan gradually left the valley of Draa and migrated south towards Western Sahara. This was not a sudden invasion, but rather a continuous infiltration that lasted two or three centuries.

The emergence of today's Moors

The Ur-Yemeni groups that settled in northern Mauritania disrupted the caravan trade , which shifted to the east, which led to the gradual decline of the then large trading cities of Mauritania. The Bani Hassan continued to migrate south and ruled the whole country by the end of the 17th century. For over 200 years they plundered the region and fought the Berbers who roamed the northern reaches of the Mali ( Songhai ) and Tekrur kingdoms . The last attempt by the Berbers to escape Arab rule was a thirty-year war ( Char Bouba War 1644–74), instigated by Imam Nasir Eddine Lemtouni . The war to liberate the Sanhajah ended with an Arab victory over the Berbers, who had to submit to the Arab groups. From the mixing of these ethnic groups, a new people of the Arabic language emerged, historically known as "Moors" and today called Bidhan .

The Moors, a people originally made up of Arab, Berber and black African ethnic groups, were shepherds and nomads who lived in a large part of the Sahara, from the Draa River in the north to the banks of Senegal and Niger in the south and from the Atlantic coast in the West to the al-Majabat , an almost impenetrable dune landscape in eastern Mauritania and northern Mali. The ethnogenesis of the Moorish people turned out to be a complex interaction between Sanhadscha and Beni Hassan; it lasted for several hundred years and was slowed down by the constant changes in the region.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, travelers reported that the Sanhajah language, Zenaga , was still very widespread.

The Portuguese Gomes Eanes de Azurara quoted the explorer João Fernandes in the 15th century , who had traveled with nomads from the coastal city of Dakhla into the Sahara hinterland in 1445 and is said to have noticed that the nomads were of Muslim faith, but were in Script and language different from the rest of the Moors.

The colonial era (16th to 20th centuries)

Postage stamp from the French colonial period of Mauritania

Europeans only began to show interest in Mauritania in the second half of the 16th century, first in the form of expeditions through the desert . French merchants in Saint Louis bought gum arabic from the Moors in southern Mauritania . In the 19th century, French forces occupied the regions of Trarza and Brakna , which are also located in southern Mauritania. At the beginning of the 20th century, the French armed forces under Xavier Coppolani chose Mauritania again as a conquest target and tried with all their might to pacify the Arab warlords.

But in contrast to the colonial rule practiced in West Africa, the French in Mauritania pursued a laissez-faire policy by taking advantage of the Arab structures of rule. The structures established at that time existed until the 1940s, or more precisely: until after the end of the Second World War . While the vast majority of French colonies sought independence, or at least some decisive reform, there was only a minimum of political activity in Mauritania. France had nonetheless put changes into practice that corresponded to the reforms demanded and granted elsewhere in French-speaking Africa.

According to the Loi Lamine Guèye of 1946, all citizens had the right to vote in elections to the French parliament and also in local elections. The right to stand as a candidate was not specifically mentioned in the law, but it was not excluded either. In the elections to the Paris Parliament, French West Africa , which included Mauritania, had no two-tier suffrage as in other French colonies, but there was for all local elections. On June 23, 1956, still under French administration, the loi-cadre Defferre was introduced, which confirmed universal suffrage. The first elections took place in 1957.

independence

Despite Moroccan claims to Mauritania , the country received its independence on November 28 (national holiday) 1960. On May 20, 1961, active and passive women's suffrage was adopted in the now independent state.

Independence

Mauritania was part of the French West Africa colony until 1958 and then on November 28, 1958 it became an autonomous republic called the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. In fact, Mauritania with its 650,000 inhabitants (1959) initially achieved internal autonomy like most of the former colonial areas, while France continued to be responsible for foreign policy, defense and education. General Charles de Gaulle remained head of state as President of the French Community ( Communauté française ), the first head of government was Mokhtar Ould Daddah . Mauritania founded a customs union together with Dahomey (today Benin ), Ivory Coast , Niger and Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso ) and from 1958 was a member of the French Community as the successor to the Union française . The new political freedom, however, benefited no more than a tenth of the population, and even in this part of the population there were groups that were against the political independence of the colony. Some Moors with strong ties to Morocco advocated unity with Morocco, while the blacks in the south wanted to join the new Mali federation . It was only by co-opting the traditional leaders with vague promises that Mauritania political leader Mokhtar Ould Daddah managed to maintain political unity as Mauritania celebrated its independence as a presidential republic on November 28, 1960. The ruling party Parti du Peuple Mauritanien (PPM) (Arabic: Hisb Chaeb , German: Mauritanian People's Party) held all 34 parliamentary seats in the legislative assembly. The opposition parties, including the Nadha Wataniya Mauretaniya , were banned. On November 18, 1964, the PPM was declared a unity party.

In the first decades of independence, Mauritania remained deeply divided politically and culturally. The "blacks" in the south (non-Moors) were upset by the dominance of politics by the Moors. The Moorish dominance was reflected among other things in the disproportionate representation of the Moors in the bureaucracy, in the officer corps of the army and in the unequal allocation of development funds as well as the elevation of Arabic as the official language. The Islam became the state religion of Mauritania.

On July 6, 1965, the Mauritanian government announced the withdrawal of the country from the Joint African-Malagasy Organization (GAMO) (French: Organization commune africaine at malgache , OCAM), whose incumbent president was also Mokhtar Ould Daddah.

With student support, Mauritania's first trade union, the Union de Travailleurs Mauritaniens (UTM), protested against a pay scale according to which some expatriate Europeans received salaries that were almost 1,000 times higher than those of their Mauritanian colleagues.

The Western Sahara Conflict (1975 to 1978)

The disputes of the neighboring countries over the possession of the former Spanish overseas province of Spanish Sahara ( Western Sahara ), which had existed since around 1970, led in 1975 to joint action by Mauritania and Morocco against the Saharan guerrilla movement Polisario . In 1976 the Polisario proclaimed the Sahara Democratic Arab Republic (DARS). Morocco did not recognize the DARS and in 1976 annexed the northern two thirds of the Western Sahara area, while Mauritania claimed the southern third. This war had catastrophic economic consequences for Mauritania, not least due to several surprising attacks by the Polisario against the capital Nouakchott and iron ore production in Zouèrate . This ultimately led to the overthrow of Ould Daddah in 1978 and the ban on the unity party PPM. In August 1979 Mauritania gave up all claims to the Western Sahara territory and Morocco also annexed the southern third of the Western Sahara. To this day the Western Saharawis have to live in refugee camps and to this day Morocco has denied them access to their own country. In the years that followed, Mauritania saw several overturns and government reshuffles. Colonels Mustafa Ould Salek (1978–1979), Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Louly (1979–1980) and Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla (1980–1984) ruled successively . Colonel Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya came to power on December 12, 1984 . In early 1991 he announced a democratic transformation of the country. In accordance with a constitution passed in July 1991, free parliamentary and presidential elections took place in 1992, but these were contested by the opposition.

The military in power (1978 to 1984)

Because of the high costs of the war and the political disputes in Mauritania, a group of officers carried out a coup on July 10, 1978 and appointed Colonel Mustafa Ould Salek chairman of the newly formed military committee for the national reconstruction, Comité Militaire de Redressement National (CMRN), and thus head of state who had dictatorial powers from March 20, 1979. As early as April 4, 1979, the CMRN was dissolved in a palace revolt and replaced by the Comité Militaire de Salut National (CMSN) with Salek, now deprived of his power, as chairman. Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Ould Bouceif became a new strong man . Even he did not succeed in separating Mauritania from the Western Sahara conflict. On May 27, 1979, he died in a plane crash near Dakar .

On May 31, 1979 the leader of the armed forces , Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla , seized power and Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Louly was appointed as the new chairman of the CMSN . Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla became the new Prime Minister. On January 4, 1980, he also took over the CMSN chairmanship and thus the office of head of state. As early as August 1979, he had signed an armistice with the Polisario government of Western Sahara, withdrew the Mauritanian troops and assured Mauritania's neutrality in the Western Sahara conflict, later his government also agreed to the diplomatic recognition of Western Sahara .

The area of ​​Western Sahara cleared by the Mauritanians (with the exception of the west coast of the Cape Blanc peninsula with the small town of Lagouira, abandoned by the residents ) was immediately occupied by Moroccan troops.

Taya regime (1984 to 2005)

In response to the increasing corruption of the Haidalla regime and its apparently unwelcome marked inclination for the RASD / Western Sahara, Colonel Maaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya attempted a successful coup on December 12, 1984. The Taya's reformist government could hardly wait to set up democratic institutions to divert attention from its inability to undertake crucial economic and political reforms and to dampen ethnic conflicts.

Taya promised to organize local elections in the 13 regional capitals (which he redeemed in December 1987), release the political prisoners, uphold civil rights and end corruption. A second round of elections took place in December 1987 and January 1988, this time to elect 500 councilors across the country. Until his overthrow, Taya failed to alleviate the ethnic tensions that are a main reason for the country's poor development.

"Military Council for Justice and Democracy (CMJD)"

Due to the permanent stagnation and the lack of reforms, there were repeated attempts at coups against Taya, which were finally successful on August 3, 2005. On August 3, 2005, a group of officers called the Military Council for Justice and Democracy ( Conseil Militaire pour la Justice et la Démocratie , CMJD) occupied the army headquarters, the headquarters of the state radio and television, as well as the ministries and the Presidential Palace in Nouakchott and declared President Taya deposed. The putschists had taken advantage of Taya's stay abroad for the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia; Taya did not return to Mauritania, but found admission in Qatar after stops in Niger (where he was received by President Tandja Mamadou ) and Gambia . The African Union (AU) condemned the coup. The coup plotters appointed Colonel Ely Ould Mohammed Vall, who has been in charge of the police and intelligence service for many years, as the country's new leader. The new military government announced that it would introduce democratic conditions in Mauritania within two years. Colonel Vall was appointed chairman of the 17-member military council, and thus head of state and government. On August 5, Mauritania was temporarily excluded from the AU "pending the restoration of constitutional order".

Democratization and civil government under Abdallahi

The Military Council began the gradual re-establishment of democracy in 2006. In a constitutional referendum in June 2006, a new, more democratic constitution was approved by the population. The first round of parliamentary elections took place on November 19, 2006 with a turnout of 69.5 percent, the second round on December 3, 2006. The members of the military government had promised in the run-up to the elections not to run for public office themselves. Almost half of the seats were won by independent candidates, including many members of the former ruling party who did not want to be associated with the overthrown regime and Islamists whose parties had been banned. In the run-up to the elections, the opposition and civil society groups had accused the military government of weakening the established parties and promoting independent candidacies in order to preserve a greater influence on the political process. Election observers described the elections as free and fair. On January 21 and February 4, 2007, the Senate was elected in indirect elections by 3,688 local councilors.

In the presidential elections on March 11, 2007, none of the 20 candidates was able to achieve the absolute majority required. Former Finance Minister Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi , who was considered a candidate for the military government and had lived abroad for 15 years, achieved the best result with a turnout of 70.2 percent with 24.8 percent of the votes cast, just ahead of the candidate of the opposition CFCD , Ahmed Ould Daddah , with 20.7 percent. Daddah is a half-brother of Mauritania's first post-independence president, Mokhtar Ould Daddah . Since 2000, Daddah had become the most important opponent of the ousted President Taya and had been imprisoned several times. The third strongest candidate was the former central bank chief Zeine Ould Zeidane . While the two candidates from the black African minority did astonishingly well with eight to almost ten percent, the two candidates from the Islamist camp fell well short of expectations with just under two to almost eight percent. The runoff election on March 25, 2007 ended with a turnout of 67.4 percent with Abdallahi's victory, which came to 52.9 percent of the vote after Zeidane and other candidates had recommended his election to their supporters. Daddah recognized his defeat. On April 19, Abdallahi appointed Zeidane as the new Prime Minister.

Military coup by the State Council under Aziz

On August 6, 2008, there was a new military coup against the president and head of government of the north-west African country. The military had brought both politicians into their power in the capital Nouakchott. First, the French Foreign Office informed that a group of Mauritanian generals had arrested the head of government, Yahya Ould Ahmed El Waghef. Eyewitnesses told foreign press representatives of troop movements in Nouakchott. Accordingly, the radio and television stations stopped their broadcasts. The former members of the Presidential Guard, under their leader General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, described themselves as the "Council of State", which comprises a total of eleven members of the army. Previously, only 69 of the 95 members of parliament called for President Abdallahi's resignation.

Democratic elections from 2009

In 2009 a presidential election took place, which Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz clearly won. In 2014 he was re-elected; numerous opposition politicians had boycotted the election. The last parliamentary election so far took place in 2018. According to the constitution, Abdel Aziz could no longer run for election in 2019 after two terms as elected president. In the presidential election in 2019 six candidates competed.

See also

• Slavery in Mauritania
• History of africa

literature

• Robert Vernet, Baouba ould Mohamed Naffé, Hamady Bocoum, Center régional inter-africain d'archéologie (eds.): Dictionnaire archéologique de la Mauritanie , University of Nouakchott, 2003.
• Anthony G. Pazzanita: Historical Dictionary of Mauritania , Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2008.
• Till Philip Koltermann: The oldest Arabic letters of the emirs of Trārza (Mauritania): Documents of the Moorish policy of alliance with Holland and England 1721–1782 , in: Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte 7 (2006) 75–108.

Web links

Commons : History of Mauritania  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Robert Vernet, Baouba ould Mohamed Naffé: Dictionnaire Archéologique de la Mauritanie . Université de Nouakchott, Nouakchott 2003.
2. ↑ Jean-Paul Barusseau, Raphaël Certain, Robert Vernet, Jean-François Saliège: Morphosedimentological record and human settlements as indicators of West-African Late Holocene climate variations in the littoral zone of the Iwik peninsula (Banc d'Arguin - Mauritania) , in : Bulletin de la Société Géologique de France 180 (2009) 449-456.
3. ^ Franz Ansprenger: Politics in Black Africa. The modern political movements in Africa with French influences. Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne / Opladen 1961, p. 73.
4. ^ Mart Martin: The Almanac of Women and Minorities in World Politics. Westview Press, Boulder (Colorado) 2000, p. 253.
5. ↑ Tony Hodges: Western Sahara. The Roots of a Desert War. Lawrence Hill Company, Westport (Connecticut) 1983, pp. 273-275
6. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated May 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ^ Parliamentary opposition wins in Mauritania