Sunday, August 9th 2026
Muhammad Gholam El Habot carefully puts on a pair of white gloves before touching the ancient manuscripts. Inside the hushed library in the ancient town of Chinguetti, in northern Mauritania, metal shelves hold hundreds of rare books with time-worn leather covers.
The air is crisp as strong midday light streams in through open wooden doors. He opens a large manuscript in Arabic, checks the yellowed pages for damage, then closes it carefully and puts it in a cardboard box.
“These books are like my family!” says the 50-year-old in the Hassaniya dialect, as he brushes away the flies that hover around his face. “My relationship with them is like that between father and son. We must protect them,” he adds.
The El Habot family library is one of the few that still remain functional in Chinguetti, a medieval city built on the edge of the Sahara, once an important commercial and religious center of the Islamic world.
Today, the stone alleys are almost empty. Most of the residents have left for the capital Nouakchott or other cities in search of work and a better life.
But emigration is not the only threat. Mauritania, where about 90 percent of the territory is covered by the Sahara, is facing accelerating desertification and climate change. Sandstorms are more frequent, extreme temperatures last longer, and rainfall has become unpredictable.
For libraries built of mud and stone, this is a silent disaster. “Extreme heat and unstable humidity damage manuscripts irreversibly,” explains American researcher Andrew Bishop, of the University of Wyoming. “These traditional buildings were not built to withstand temperatures over 40 degrees or intense rainfall,” he further emphasizes.
Muhammad el Habot did not plan to become a librarian. In 2002, after his father’s illness and death, he took over the family library out of a sense of duty. In their culture, caring for books was considered a great honor.
Today, he says regretfully, the younger generation no longer thinks the same way. His two sons do not want to continue this tradition. Many young people of Chinguetti leave for big cities, where the economic opportunities are greater.
“Once it was a matter of pride to be chosen to guard the library. Today, everyone wants to leave,” he says. The history of his family’s library stretches back several centuries. One of his ancestors, Sidi Mohamed Ould Habot, was among the famous scholars who traveled from Egypt to Andalusia in search of knowledge.
They brought to Chinguetti thousands of books on Islamic jurisprudence, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and poetry. In its heyday, the city was considered the “seventh holy city of Islam”. Pilgrims traveling to Mecca stopped there to prepare for the long journey through the desert.
Over time, trade routes changed and the city’s importance faded. Libraries began to close one after another. However, El Habot believes that the family’s legacy cannot be abandoned.
“Our ancestors entrusted the library to remain open to everyone and to be guarded by an honest descendant of the family. For us, this is a moral and spiritual responsibility,” he says.
Meanwhile, the preservation of manuscripts has become increasingly expensive. Books are damaged by insects, moisture and extreme temperatures. On the hottest days, he places buckets of water in the hall to increase humidity and protect fragile cheeks from drying out.
Tourism, once an important source of income for libraries, has fallen sharply since the attacks on foreigners in Mauritania and then the pandemic. Visitors are slowly returning, but most of Chinguetti’s libraries remain closed.
In 2024, UNESCO funded a $100,000 restoration project for thirteen of the city’s libraries, providing air conditioning, computers and storage equipment. But for El Habot, the challenge is much greater than a lack of equipment.
He opens another old manuscript and excitedly shows illustrations of the phases of the moon and an eclipse. The next page shows Mecca and Medina. “I must protect this heritage as if it were part of me. Not only for my family, but for all of humanity,” he says in a low voice, while holding the book in his hands. tesheshi.com
Source: prizrenpost
