Azougui (or Azuggi, , ) was a town in north-western

Mauritania Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a sovereign country in Maghreb, Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to Mauritania–Western Sahara border, the north and northwest, ...

, lying on the Adrar Plateau, north-west of

Atar Atar, Ahtra, Atash, Azar () or ''Dāštāɣni'',, s.v. ''agni-.'' is the Zoroastrian concept of holy fire, sometimes described in abstract terms as "burning and unburning fire" or "visible and invisible fire" (Mirza, 1987:389). It is conside ...

. In the eleventh century it was the first capital of the

Almoravid dynasty The Almoravid dynasty () was a Berber Muslim dynasty centered in the territory of present-day Morocco. It established an empire that stretched over the western Maghreb and Al-Andalus, starting in the 1050s and lasting until its fall to the Almo ...

, who conquered a territory stretching from the

Ghana Empire The Ghana Empire (), also known as simply Ghana, Ghanata, or Wagadu, was an ancient western-Sahelian empire based in the modern-day southeast of Mauritania and western Mali. It is uncertain among historians when Ghana's ruling dynasty began. T ...

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

and the

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula ( ), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe. Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprisin ...

. The chronicler

al-Bakri Abū ʿUbayd ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb ibn ʿAmr al-Bakrī (), or simply al-Bakrī (c. 1040–1094) was an Arab Andalusian historian and a geographer of the Muslim West. Life Al-Bakri was born in Huelva, the ...

(–1094) claims a fortress "surrounded by 20,000 palms" was built here by Yannu ibn Umar, a brother of the first Almoravid chieftains,

Yahya ibn Umar al-Lamtuni Abu Zakariyya Yahya ibn Umar ibn Talagagin ibn Turgut ibn Wartasin, commonly suffixed al-Lamtuni al-Sanhaji, (d. near Azuggi, 1056; Arabic : يحيى إبن عمر) was a chieftain of the Lamtuna, a tribe in the Sanhaja confederation. Yahya ibn ...

and Abu Bakr ibn Umar, and marked the frontier between the dominions of the Lamtuna and the Gudala. Both of them

Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–196 ...

Sanhaja The Sanhaja (, or زناگة ''Znāga''; , pl. Iẓnagen, and also Aẓnaj, pl. Iẓnajen) were once one of the largest Berbers, Berber tribal confederations, along with the Zenata, Zanata and Masmuda confederations. Many tribes in Algeria, Libya ...

desert tribes and one-time allies, the Lamtuna formed the core of the Almoravids after the Gudala broke away. It was near this location, at a place called Tabfarilla, that the early Almoravids suffered their first significant defeat, when the Gudala crushed an Almoravid Lamtuna army based in Azougui and killed their leader Yahya ibn Umar in 1056. Azougui and the nearby battlefield subsequently became a revered site for the Almoravids. Both al-Bakri and al-Zuhri, another chronicler writing in the 1150s, regarded Azougui as the capital of the Almoravids.

Al-Idrisi Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Qurtubi al-Hasani as-Sabti, or simply al-Idrisi (; ; 1100–1165), was an Arab Muslim geographer and cartographer who served in the court of King Roger II at Palermo, Sicily. Muhammad al-Idrisi was born in C ...

identified Azuggi as an essential stop on the trans-Saharan trade route between

and

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

("Whoever wants to go to the countries of Sila, Takrur and Ghana in the land of the Sudan cannot avoid this town").al-Idrisi, in ) He also notes that the " Guineans" (prob. Soninke) called it "Quqadam". The site is even older, as seventh century rock carvings attest. Parts of the

citadel A citadel is the most fortified area of a town or city. It may be a castle, fortress, or fortified center. The term is a diminutive of ''city'', meaning "little city", because it is a smaller part of the city of which it is the defensive core. ...

and the

necropolis A necropolis (: necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'' (). The term usually implies a separate burial site at a distan ...

of al-Imam al-Hadrami survive.

External links

Paysage culturel d'Azougui - UNESCO World Heritage Centre

References

Sources

* * * * * {{Cite book, editor1-last=Levtzion, editor1-first=N., editor1-link=Nehemia Levtzion, editor2-last=Hopkins, editor2-first=J.F.P., date=2000, orig-date=1981, title=Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, location=Cambridge, UK, publisher=Cambridge University Press Almoravid Empire Former populated places in Mauritania Archaeological sites in Mauritania Adrar region