Free Republic

CHINGUETTI, Mauritania (AP) — For centuries, poets, scholars and theologians have flocked to Chinguetti, a trans-Saharan trading post home to more than a dozen libraries containing thousands of manuscripts. But it now stands on the brink of oblivion. Shifting sands have long covered the ancient city’s 8th-century core and are encroaching on neighborhoods at its current edge. Residents say the desert is their destiny. As the world’s climate gets hotter and drier, sandstorms are more frequently depositing inches and feet of dunes onto Chinguetti’s streets and in people’s homes, submerging some entirely. Tree-planting projects are trying to keep the invading...

'The desert city of Chinguetti, sinking ever-deeper under the sands of the Sahara, is the last place in the world you would expect to find a library. Yet this crumbling outpost in the west-African country of Mauritania is home to around 6,000 rare books and manuscripts, including some of the oldest Koranic texts in existence which date back to the 9th Century. It was once the prosperous and bustling trade centre of several 'trans-Sahara' trade routes. Traders from all over Europe, north-Africa and the Levant would stop in Chinguetti before moving on to sub-Saharan Africa. There, they would rub shoulders...