Mauritania

Islamic republic independent from France in 1960.

☾ The Coming of Islam

Berber Islam and the Almoravid movement

Islam spread among the Ṣanhāja Berbers of the western Sahara from the early Islamic centuries; from this milieu arose the Almoravid movement of the 11th century, which carried a reformist Mālikī Islam across the Maghrib and into al-Andalus and the Sahel.

☾ Religious Composition

An Islamic republic, almost entirely Sunni-Mālikī

Mauritania is constitutionally an Islamic republic and its population is almost entirely Sunni Muslim of the Mālikī school, with the Qādiriyya and Tijāniyya Sufi orders widespread.

At a glance