Tichitt is a Saharan oasis settlement on the Aoukar depression of central Mauritania, three hundred kilometres south of the Adrar plateau and on the southern margin of the contemporary desert. The site has been continuously occupied for more than three thousand years — substantially longer than any of the other Mauritanian medieval Berber towns — and is the type-site of the Tichitt Tradition, a late-Neolithic dry-stone settlement culture of the eastern Aoukar that flourished between approximately 2000 and 200 BCE.
The medieval town of Tichitt was founded around 1150 by Berber and Soninke populations and developed across the late medieval period as a trans-Saharan trade entrepôt linked to the gold and salt circuits of the Niger bend and the Tagant. Tichitt's position on the southern edge of the Sahara made it the principal interface between the desert pastoral and the Sahelian agricultural spheres, and the town hosted Berber, Soninke, and Hassani populations in close proximity.
The town has retained a distinctive vernacular architecture of greenstone, sandstone, and mud construction, with polychromatic patterning produced by the alternation of locally quarried stone colours. The walls of the old quarter, the principal mosque, and the surviving family libraries preserve this medieval architectural record substantially intact.
Tichitt was inscribed by UNESCO as part of the Ancient ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata serial World Heritage Site in 1996. Recent archaeological work on the surrounding pre-Islamic settlement has substantially extended the documented chronology of west Saharan urbanism, with implications for the broader question of indigenous African state formation.