MAURETANIA, the ancient name of the north-western angle of the African continent, bounded towards the south by the Atlas range, and extending along the coast to the Atlantic as far as the point where that chain descends to the sea, in about 3o° N. lat. (Strabo p. 825). The Gaetulians to the south of the Altas range, on the date-producing slopes towards the Sahara, seem to have owed a precarious subjection to the kings of Mauretania, as afterwards to the Roman Government. A large part of the country is of great natural fertility, and in ancient times pro duced large quantities of corn, while the slopes of Atlas were clothed with forests, which produced, besides other kinds of timber, the celebrated ornamental wood called citrum (Plin., Hist. Nat., 13-96), for tables of which the Romans gave fabulous prices. For physical geography, see MOROCCO.
Mauretania, or Maurusia, as it was called by Greek writers, signified the land of the Mauri, or Moors (q.v.). The ethnical affinities of the race are uncertain; it is probable that all the inhabitants of this northern tract of Africa were kindred races belonging to the great Berber family (see Tissot, Geographie comparee de la province romaine d' Afrique, i. 40o et seq. ; also BERBERS). They first appear in history at the time of the Jugur thine war (I10-06 B.c.), when Mauretania was under the govern ment of Bocchus (Sallust, Jugurtha 19). To this Bocchus was given, after the war, the western part of Jugurtha's kingdom of Numidia. Sixty years later, at the time of the dictator Caesar, we find two Mauretanian kingdoms, one to the west of the river Mulucha under Bogud, and the other to the east under a Bocchus. Both these kings took Caesar's part in the civil wars, and had their territory enlarged by him. In 25 B.C. Augustus gave the two kingdoms to Juba II. of Numidia (see JUBA), with the river
Ampsaga as the eastern frontier. Claudius incorporated the kingdom into the Roman State as two provinces, viz., Mauretania Tingitana and Mauretania Caesariensis, the latter taking its name from the city Caesarea, which Juba had adopted as his capital. These provinces were governed until the time of Diocletian by imperial procurators, and were occasionally united for military purposes. Under and after Diocletian Mauretania Tingitana was attached administratively to the dioikesis of Spain, with which it was in all respects closely connected.
There were seven Roman colonies in Mauretania Tingitana and eleven in Mauretania Caesariensis ; these were mostly mili tary foundations situated on the coast, and served the purpose of securing civilization against the inroads of the natives, who were not suited for town life as in Gaul and Spain, but were under the immediate government of the procurators, retaining their own clan organization. Besides these there were many municipia or oppida civium romanorum (Plin. 5. 19 et seq.), but, as has been made clear by French archaeologists, Roman settle ments are less frequent the farther we go west, and Mauretania Tingitana has yielded but scanty evidence of Roman civilization. On the whole, Mauretania was in a flourishing condition down to the irruption of the Vandals in A.D. 429.
In 1904 the term Mauretania was revived as an official desig nation by the French Government and applied to the territory north of the lower Senegal under French protection, area 347,40o sq.m., pop. (1931) 348,929, (see SENEGAL).