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Mauritania's presidential election, its third since adopting the democratic process in 1992, took place on November 7, 2003. Six candidates, including Mauritania's first female and first Haratine (former slave family) candidates, represented a wide variety of political goals and backgrounds. Incumbent President Maaouiya Sid'Ahmed Taya won reelection...
A majority of the population still depends on agriculture and livestock for a livelihood, even though most of the nomads and many subsistence farmers were forced into the cities by recurrent droughts in the 1970s and 1980s. Mauritania has extensive deposits of iron ore, which account for almost 50% of total exports. The decline in world demand for this...
Moorish society is proud of its Arab and Muslim heritage. Theology, poetry, and music flourish. Goldsmithing is a fine art. Kewri societies have a rich and varied folklore. Mail, telephone, and telegraph services are combined in the main post offices. Fewer than 6,000 telephones are in use, and administrative contact is primarily through radiotelephone....
From the 3rd to 7th centuries, the migration of Berber tribes from North Africa displaced the Bafours, the original inhabitants of present-day Mauritania and the ancestors of the Soninke. Continued Arab-Berber migration drove indigenous black Africans south to the Senegal River or enslaved them. By 1076, Islamic warrior monks (Almoravid or Al Murabitun)...
Mauritania is bordered by Algeria, Mali, Western Sahara (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) and Senegal. To the west lies the Atlantic Ocean. Mauritania consists mainly of the vast Saharan plain of sand and scrub. Most of this area is a sea of sand dunes, but in places the land rises to rocky plateaux with deep ravines leaving isolated peaks. The Adrar...
Eighty percent of the population are Moors - of Arab-Berber descent and speaking dialects of Hassaniya Arabic. Much social status is determined by derivations from either the region's Arab-Berber conquerors or the caucasoid-negroid peoples they enslaved. An aristocratic-servile status continues to define Maure (Moor) society as "white" and "black."...
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