The ancient Saharan city of Chinguetti, a historical hub for poets, scholars, and theologians and home to thousands of manuscripts, is facing an existential threat from the encroaching desert.
Shifting sands, a constant presence, have already buried the city’s 8th-century heart and are now steadily advancing on its current borders. Residents, seemingly resigned to their fate, speak of the desert as an inevitable destiny.
As global temperatures rise and the climate becomes increasingly arid, sandstorms are growing in frequency and intensity.
These storms deposit layers of sand, sometimes reaching several feet, onto Chinguetti’s streets and into homes, in some cases burying them completely. Efforts to combat the encroaching dunes through tree planting initiatives are underway, but they have yet to alleviate the deep-seated anxieties about the city’s future.
Chinguetti is one of four UNESCO World Heritage sites in Mauritania, a West African nation where only 0.5% of land is considered farmable. In Africa — the continent that contributes the least to fossil fuel emissions — only Somalia and Eswatini have experienced more climate change impacts, according to World Bank data.
Mauritanians believe Chinguetti is among Islam’s holiest cities. Its dry stone and mud mortar homes, mosques and libraries store some of West Africa’s oldest quranic texts and manuscripts, covering topics ranging from law to mathematics.
Community leader Melainine Med El Wely feels agonized over the stakes for residents and the history contained within Chinguetti’s walls. It’s like watching a natural disaster in slow motion, he said.
“It’s a city surrounded by an ocean of sand that’s advancing every minute,” El Wely, the president of the local Association for Participatory Oasis Management, said. “There are places that I walk now that I remember being the roofs of houses when I was a kid.”
He remembers that once when enough sand blew into his neighborhood to cover the palms used to make roofs, an unknowing camel walking through the neighborhood plunged into what was once someone’s living room.
Chinguetti mapped:
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