A holy city lost in the sands: Chinguetti

I've recently found out about a town which between the 11th and the 17th centuries was a major center of learning and religion. Founded as a stop on the trans-Saharan caravan routes running from the inner delta of the Niger and the Senegal valley to the Maghreb, Chinguetti quickly arose as a center of culture and learning. Eventually it doubled up as a pilgrimage center, for those who could not make the long hajj to Mecca. The locals say that Chinguetti is the 7th holiest city of Islam (I'm guessing after Mecca, Medinah, Jerusalem, Najaf, Karbala and Qayrawan). These days, Chinguetti has lost its importance, but it is a Unesco world heritage site, and it has libraries which are famous throughout the Islamic world.

http://www.cnntraveller.com/2005/mar_apr/chinguetti/
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200306/mauritania.s.manuscripts.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinguetti
http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_12/uk/doss4.htm

Very interesting,thanks!

You're partially right, Spartakus. I suspect it has specifically to do with the decline of the Trans-Saharan trade routes, which were mostly used to transport gold from Subsaharan West Africa to the north African coast. This started in the late 15th and early 16th century, when the Portuguese found a way to trade directly with the Africans by sea, thereby rendering the difficult trans-Saharan voyage impractical. The last great gold-trading west African kingdom, Songhay, was weakened enough to be conquered by the Moroccans in 1640 and unproductgive enough to be abandoned by the latter a half-decade later. You also have the naming of what is today modern Ghana, the Gold Coast, which is indicative of these new trade routes.