Idjil

The salt flats of Idjil, near the northern end of Mauritania's Adrar country, supplied the caravans of the western Sahara. Workers cut the deposit into heavy bars for transport by camel, and enslaved labourers were among those employed at the saltworks. Idjil's salt supported the commerce of Chinguetti, the oasis town that grew into a centre of Islamic learning between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Kunta groups held the saltworks as well as taking part in the trading and scholarly networks of the desert.

The later city of Zouérat lies here.