Editing Chinguetti (section)

== Religious importance ==
For centuries, the city was a principal gathering place for [[pilgrim]]s of the [[Maghreb]] to gather, on their way to [[Mecca]]. It became known as a [[holy city]] in its own right, especially for pilgrims unable to make the long journey to the [[Arabian Peninsula|Arab Peninsula]]. It also became a center of Islamic religious and scientific scholarship in [[West Africa]].<ref>{{Cite web|date=2021-04-13|title=The Importance of Mauritanian Scholars in Global Islam|url=https://merip.org/2021/04/the-importance-of-mauritanian-scholars-in-global-islam/|url-status=live|access-date=2021-10-31|website=[[Middle East Report|Middle East Report Online]]|language=en-US|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210413151711/https://merip.org/2021/04/the-importance-of-mauritanian-scholars-in-global-islam/ |archive-date=2021-04-13 }}</ref> In addition to religious training, the schools of Chinguetti taught students rhetoric, law, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. For many centuries, all of Mauritania was commonly known in the Arab world as ''[[Bilad Shinqit]],'' "the land of Chinguetti." It is sometimes said to be the [[Holiest sites in Islam|seventh-most holy city]] of [[Islam]],<ref>{{Cite web|title=Chinguetti in the Mauritanian Sahara is the seventh holiest city of Islam|url=https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Chinguetti-in-the-Mauritanian-Sahara-is-the-seventh-holiest-city-of-Islam-and-a-World_fig8_233841504|url-status=live|access-date=13 November 2021|website=Researche Gate|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211113170146/https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Chinguetti-in-the-Mauritanian-Sahara-is-the-seventh-holiest-city-of-Islam-and-a-World_fig8_233841504 |archive-date=2021-11-13 }}</ref><ref>{{citation |title=Encyclopedia of the Third World: Laos to Zambia |page=965 |author=George Thomas Kurian |year=1978 |volume=2 |publisher=Facts on File}}</ref>  The city remains one of the world's most important historical sites both in terms of the history of Islam and the history of West Africa.

Although largely abandoned to the desert, the city features a series of medieval [[manuscript]] libraries without peer in West Africa. The area around the ''Rue des Savants'' (or “street of intelligent ones”) was once famous as a gathering place for scholars, and as a place to debate the finer points of [[Sharia|Islamic law]]. Today,  the quiet city still offers the urban and religious architecture of the Moorish empire as it existed in the Middle Ages.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p085dgnl/inside-the-abandoned-city-of-ancient-libraries|title=Inside the abandoned city of ancient libraries|website=BBC|date=4 March 2020}}</ref>