Ancient Ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata

The four Mauritanian towns of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata grew up to serve the caravan routes that began crossing the Sahara, north to south and east to west, in the 11th century. They stood at the edge of fertile valleys or oases, and their first purpose was religious teaching, so each developed around a mosque with houses for teachers and students. Traders built warehouses to keep their goods safe, and inns were provided for merchants passing through. From these pieces came the ksar (plural ksour), a stone-built town shaped for an extreme climate.

By tradition, Ouadane was founded in 1141-42 by three holy men on the ruins of settlements going back to the 8th century, and it became the most important trading centre of the western Sahara. Chinguetti was founded in the 12th century near a 7th-century oasis settlement, became known as a gathering point for pilgrims bound for Mecca, and reached its height through scholarship and religion in the 17th to 19th centuries. Tichitt became an Almoravid town in the 12th century and gained weight in the 13th as a key point on the salt route. In 1446 scholars from Timbuktu fleeing Tuareg invaders settled in Oualata and gave it a high intellectual reputation.

The decline of the caravan trade, droughts, the pull of the mining towns and the Western Sahara war of 1975-79 emptied much of Chinguetti and Ouadane. A UNESCO international campaign for the four towns was launched in 1981, and in 1993 a national foundation was set up to protect them. ICOMOS judged the nomination premature, but the Bureau of the World Heritage Committee was convinced of its value, and the four ksour were inscribed in 1996.