Ksar El Barka is a historic city located in the municipality of Tamourt N' Naaj (formerly Nbeïka), some 60 km north-northeast of the regional capital, Moudjeria.

It is an archaeological site where numerous vestiges of a fortified village survive, though fragile from the passage of time and human pillaging.

Its architecture is distinctive and characteristic of the region, with its thick stone walls rendered with clay (banco) and marked by triangular or partitioned niches.

Ksar el Barka was created by the Kunta, who came from Wadan in 1690. Its founding came after both the Mâquil Arab invasion of Tagant in the sixteenth century and the collapse of the Niger empires in that same century's final years (1591: the Moroccan Sultan's conquest of Songhai).

Its founder, Imam Taleb Sid'Ahmed Ben Bajed, did not belong to the first generations of Kunta to settle in Tagant, as the tombs of his father Bajed, his grandfather Sidelemin, and even his great-grandfather Sidi Haiballah are all found in Tagant. The last rests near Legbour, 24 km west of Tidjikja, yet Ksar El Barka was unquestionably the Kunta's first deliberate effort at settlement in the region.

This city proved to hold considerable heritage significance thanks to the diversity and abundance of manuscripts identified and catalogued among the residents of this nearly forgotten settlement.

Ksar Elbarka occupies a remarkable site on the north bank of the Oued el Abiod, a major tributary of Lake Gabou, a vast depression that gathers much of the Tagant's surface water.

The settlement sits on one of the passes through the Tagant plateau, along the caravan route running from Morocco, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic coast to Walata and Mali, passing through the Adrar to the north and Tichit to the east.

This location explains the city's existence and former prosperity, and suggests the site has been inhabited since ancient times, as evidenced by numerous Neolithic sites and multiple rock paintings observable throughout the surrounding area.

Also present are the ruins scattered across nearby rocky hills—Anekch al Akhall and Anekch al Abyadh to the east—all standing roughly 5 km south of the settlement.

Along the wadi, agricultural development and the importance of palm groves formed the foundation for this thriving trading city, which Saharan caravans visited with regularity.

Ksar El Barka was also a center of cultural influence, home to poets, scholars, and learned men. The prestigious madrasas of the Ahl Moulay Eli Ould Moulay Rchid, Ahl Chekh Ould Mmenny, Ahl Taleb Ebbat, Ahl Adoubba, Ahl Elghadhi, Ahl Khayne, and many others disseminated wisdom and knowledge throughout the region.

But Ksar El-Barka's ultimate sanctification came with the visit of Cheikh Sid'el Moctar El Kounti, an illustrious figure and exceptional scholar, the renowned refoundator of the Qadiriyya Order, who traveled from Azawad to honor the Ksar in 1753.

Beginning in 1820, conflict between the Kunta and the Ahl Sidi Mahmoud and Ahl Mohamed Cheïne factions led in 1822-1823 to the destruction of Ksar el Barka and Rachid (a neighboring palm grove founded by the Kunta in 1723), an episode tragically followed by a smallpox epidemic across the entire Tagant region.

Later, in 1892-1893, Ksar el Barla was the site of a battle between the Kunta and the Zenaga (Idaw'ish), who were defeated and lost 17 notables of the Ahl Mohamad Cheïne.

Nevertheless, the various destructions were relatively quickly followed by the reconstruction (at least partial) of the Ksar by its inhabitants.

In February 1905, French occupying forces under the orders of the General Delegate of Colonial Administration, Xavier Coppolani, took control of Ksar El-Barka and constructed a fortified building that served as a grain reservoir to supply French troops stationed in Tidjikja.

In 1914, the colonial administration granted a long-standing wish of the tribal chief of the time, Sid Mhammed Ould Sid'ahmed Ould Ahmed, to partially rebuild the city whose final destruction he had witnessed. Thus the mosque was restored, some one hundred homes reconstructed, and several water sources developed within the various palm groves established along the wadi's banks.

(aerial photographs of the ruins on Google make it easy to distinguish the scale of the original city compared to the somewhat reconstructed area that remains)

Yet this renaissance effort was soon undermined by the emergence of new maritime and terrestrial transportation and communication networks.

The growth of these new commercial routes dried up the caravan trade, and the Ksar region progressively emptied of inhabitants, many of whom moved, beginning in the late 1950s after the construction of the Moudjéria pass (which definitively bypassed Ksar-El-Barka by road), to settle in Nbeika.

In August 2015, during a major ceremony organized by the municipality, the historic city received the (first) visit of a Minister of Culture of the Mauritanian State, resulting in its designation as national historical heritage on December 1st, 2015.

A program for the protection and preservation of the city, established by the Government, is currently being implemented.

Text Bruno LAMARCHE, Abdelweddoud Ould Cheikh for Détours Mauritania Voyages

Sketch: D. Jacques Meunié