The Mauritanian Adrar is the central plateau of north-central Mauritania, a sandstone elevation rising approximately five hundred metres above the surrounding Saharan plain and extending some seventy thousand square kilometres between the Inchiri to the west and the Tagant to the east. Its name simply repeats the standard Berber word for mountain.
The plateau preserves the principal concentration of medieval Berber-Saharan urbanism in the western Sahara: Chinguetti, Ouadane, and the smaller settlements of Atar, Aoujeft, Azougui, and Wadane fall within the broad Adrar geography. The Sanhaja confederations of the medieval Almoravid period — Lamtuna, Gudala, Massufa — had their territorial heart on this plateau and on its surrounding plains.
The Adrar economy historically combined date cultivation in the wadis of the plateau (the palmeraies of Atar, Tergit, and Toujounine), trans-Saharan trade through the medieval ksour, and pastoralism on the surrounding steppe. The contemporary economy retains all three components in reduced form, with substantial outmigration to Nouakchott and the Atlantic coastal cities.
The Zenaga Berber language — formerly the principal language of the Adrar plateau and of the broader western Sahara — survives in a small population in southern Mauritania, with fewer than ten thousand speakers. The remainder of the plateau population is Hassani Arabic-speaking; the substrate Berber vocabulary in Hassani is substantial and remains a topic of active linguistic research.