ChinguettiLegend A caravan town founded in AD 777, re-founded in the thirteenth century as a fortified stop for trans-Saharan caravans, and once the gathering place where pilgrims of the Maghreb met to cross to Mecca; it is sometimes called the... Open it on the map · Read the story
OuadaneLegend A caravan town in the Mauritanian Adrar, 93 km northeast of Chinguetti, that existed to move salt. Slabs were cut at the mines at Idjil and came through here on their way south, and Ouadane was the staging post; the first written... Open it on the map · Read the story
OualataLegend In the early 1200s this oasis took over from Aoudaghost as the southern end of the trans-Saharan trade, which meant the caravans coming down from Sijilmasa by way of Taghaza and its salt mines finished here. Raymond Mauny put the... Open it on the map · Read the story
The Richat StructureLegend A bullseye 40 km across in the middle of the Sahara, so regular that it was used as a landmark from orbit long before anyone agreed what it was. The obvious guess was an impact crater and the obvious guess was wrong: there is no... Open it on the map · Read the story
TichittLegend Two things sit in the same place here. The Dhar Tichitt sites are the oldest surviving archaeological settlements in West Africa, stone-built by agropastoral communities from around 2000 BC, and they may run ahead of the Ghana... Open it on the map · Read the story
Every one of these is sourced
Each entry links to the record it came from. Access rules, permits and land status vary by country and are noted where the source states them, check locally before you go.
