Chinguetti, the sand-swallowed library city

The Friday Mosque of Chinguetti wears 5 ostrich egg finials.

Chinguetti is a ksar on the Adrar Plateau in northern Mauritania.

A wadi splits the old stone sector from the new town.

Older houses use reddish dry-stone and mud-brick construction techniques.

Flat roofs are timbered from palms along narrow streets.

Chinguetti was a trading center for trans-Saharan caravans.

UNESCO designated Chinguetti a World Heritage Site in 1996.

The old quarter holds 5 important manuscript libraries of scientific texts.

The old quarter holds 5 medieval manuscript libraries.

Many manuscripts in the old quarter date from later Middle Ages.

Medieval schools taught students rhetoric, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine.

High sand dunes mark the western boundary of the city today.

Several houses have been abandoned to the encroaching desert sand.