The flag of Mauritania is green with a yellow, five-pointed star between the horns of a yellow, upward-pointing crescent moon; red stripes along the top and bottom edges; the crescent, star, and color green are traditional symbols of Islam; green also represents hope for a bright future; the yellow color stands for the sands of the Sahara; red symbolizes the blood shed in the struggle for independence.
Marhaba
News and Upcoming Events for Mauritanians in Cleveland
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African Heritage Day - Cleveland Cultural Gardens World on Stage
The Cleveland Cultural Gardens Federation 2023 World on Stage events in the Gardens are showcasing various heritages. The first 2023 event was African Heritage Day on July 1, 2023.
MC Sia Nyorkor with Ethiopian coffee
Audience members came from a variety of African countries including Liberia, Ghana, Congo, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. One attendee from Pretoria, South Africa said, "This is the first time I've felt like home since I came to Cleveland."
There was delicious West African food, an Ethiopian coffee ceremony, drummers, dancers and fun for families.
It was a great day to celebrate the heritage of the Cleveland People from the 54 countries of Africa.
Djapo Cultural Arts Institute dancer
2021
Fun with Maps - North Africa
Casablanca, Marrakesh, Algiers, the Barbary Coast, Morocco, the Sahara Desert, Darfur, Benghazi, Tunisia, Tripoli.
You've seen these exotic locales in movies, TV shows and the news but do you know where they are or much about them? In this episode of Fun with Maps, host Dan Hanson looks at North Africa.
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent and contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states (countries). This first episode in a series covering Africa includes Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco (including Western Sahara), Tunisia and Sudan.
After watching you will never listen to Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills and Nash or even the US Marines Hymn the same.
Berbers moved south into the area of today's Mauritania beginning in the 3rd century. Beginning in the 8th century, Mauritania experienced a slow but constant infiltration of Arabs and Arab influence from the north, pressing the Berbers, who resisted assimilation, to move farther south. One particular Arab group, the Bani Hassan, continued to migrate southward until, by the end of the 17th century, they dominated the entire country. Having finally been defeated, Berber groups turned to clericalism to regain a degree of ascendancy. At the bottom of the social structure were the slaves, subservient to both the Arabic warriors and Islamic Berber holy men. All of the social rivalries were fully exploited by the French as they colonized Mauritania in the late 19th century.
Mauritania gained independence from France in 1960. In 1976, it annexed the southern third of the former Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara), but relinquished it after three years of raids by the Polisario guerrilla front seeking independence for the territory. Maaouya Ould Sid Ahmed TAYA seized power in a coup in 1984 and ruled Mauritania with a heavy hand for more than two decades. A series of presidential elections that he held were widely seen as flawed. A bloodless coup in August 2005 deposed President TAYA and ushered in a military council that oversaw a transition to democratic rule.
Independent candidate Sidi Ould Cheikh ABDALLAHI was inaugurated in April 2007 as Mauritania's first freely and fairly elected president. His term ended prematurely in August 2008 when a military junta led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel AZIZ deposed him and installed a military council government. AZIZ was subsequently elected president in 2009 and reelected in 2014 to a second and final term. He was replaced in 2019 by Mohamed Cheikh El GHAZOUANI in the country's first democratic transfer of power.
The country faces a number of internal security issues, including ethnic tensions among three major groups: Arabic-speaking descendants of slaves (Haratines), Arabic-speaking "White Moors" (Beydane), and members of Sub-Saharan ethnic groups mostly originating in the Senegal River valley (Halpulaar, Soninke, and Wolof). Since the 2000s, it also has experienced a significant terrorist threat. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) launched a series of attacks in Mauritania between 2005 and 2011, murdering American and foreign tourists and aid workers, attacking diplomatic and government facilities, and ambushing Mauritanian soldiers and gendarmes.
A successful strategy against terrorism that combines dialogue with the terrorists and military actions has prevented the country from further terrorist attacks since 2011. However, AQIM and similar groups remain active in neighboring Mali and elsewhere in the Sahel region and continue to pose a threat to Mauritanians and foreign visitors.
Deep in the Sahara lies a crater, a nearly a perfect circle that is 1.9 km (1.2 mi) wide, and sports a rim 100 m (330 ft) high. The Tenoumer crater sits in a vast plain of rocks so ancient they were deposited hundreds of millions of years before the first dinosaurs walked the Earth. Close examination of the structure has revealed that the crater's hardened "lava" was actually rock that had melted from a meteorite impact.
On this satellite image the crater's outline is unmistakable, yet it does not necessarily look like a crater; the light and shadows make it look more as if someone pressed a giant cookie cutter into the rock. In this image, the sunlight shines from the southeast (lower right), and the bright arc along the northwestern part of the crater is where the crater walls slope up to the rim. Around the perimeter, the relatively steep walls cast dark shadows. Although it resides in ancient rock, Tenoumer is geologically young, ranging in age between roughly 10,000 and 30,000 years old. Photo courtesy of NASA.
Profiles of Mauritanians in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio
If you know of a Cleveland Mauritanian who should be profiled, please let us know.
ClevelandPeople.Com - Mauritania Ambassadors
Read more about the Mauritanian and other Ambassadors. If you are interested in being considered to be an official ClevelandPeople.com Ambassador to the Cleveland Mauritanian community, please contact us.
