Mauritania P-19 1000 Ouguiya 2014 UNC—Tichit Mosque—Camel & Fish

A polymer note from one of the world’s most overlooked countries — printed in Leipzig, featuring a mosque in a desert city that has barely changed since the 12th century.

Banknote Characteristics

• Varieties: Single variety
• Color: Multicolor on geometric underprint
• Front: Geometric and ornamental designs with native motifs; Arabic script
• Back: Bowl with fish at left, camel, hut, and Tichit Mosque; Latin and Arabic script
• Watermark: Integrated into polymer substrate
• Composition: Polymer (Guardian®)
• Size: 143 × 70 mm (5.63 × 2.76 in)
• Issuing entity: Central Bank of Mauritania (البنك المركزي الموريتاني)
• Printer: Giesecke+Devrient, Leipzig (1852–date)
• Demonetized: 1 January 2019
• References: P-19
• Currency: Old Ouguiya (1973–2018)
• Country: Mauritania — Islamic Republic (1960–date)

About Mauritania

• Capital: Nouakchott (city ~1.3 million; metro ~1.5 million)
• Population: ~4.7 million (UN 2023) — similar to New Zealand or Louisiana
• Area: 1,030,700 km² (397,955 mi²) — similar to Egypt or three times California
• GDP per capita at PPP: ~$7,200 USD (IMF 2024) — ranks ~158th out of 193 globally
• Main exports: Iron ore, gold, copper, fish, crude oil
• Borders: Western Sahara, Algeria, Mali, Senegal; Atlantic Ocean to the west
• Official languages: Arabic (~100%); Hassaniya Arabic is the dominant spoken dialect
• Spoken languages: Pulaar (~20%), Soninke (~8%), Wolof (~7%), French (administrative)
• Sovereignty:
  • Ancient Ghana Empire and Almoravid Berber dynasties
  • French West Africa (1902–1960)
  • Islamic Republic of Mauritania (1960–date) — this note issued during this period

Mauritania Unfiltered

• Mauritania only abolished slavery by law in 1981 — the last country on earth to do so — and didn’t criminalize it until 2007; an estimated 90,000 people still live in conditions of slavery today.
• Nouakchott didn’t exist until 1958 — it was built from scratch in the desert two years before independence, and is now one of the fastest-growing cities in Africa.
• The Mauritania Iron Ore Railway runs 704 km through the Sahara with trains up to 3 km long — adventurous travelers ride on top of the iron ore cars.
• The Ouguiya is one of only two currencies in the world not based on a decimal system — 1 ouguiya = 5 khoums — the other being the Malagasy ariary.

A city older than the note

Tichit is a UNESCO World Heritage site deep in the Mauritanian Sahara — a stone city that has stood since the 12th century, once a major stop on trans-Saharan trade routes. Its mosque appears on this note as a quiet reminder that Mauritania’s history runs far deeper than its modern borders suggest.

The polymer Guardian® substrate was chosen for durability in desert conditions — resistant to moisture, folding, and the heat that destroys paper notes. Finding one in UNC means finding one that never circulated in that heat.

Own this polymer document of a vanished currency

The Old Ouguiya was replaced on 1 January 2019. This 1000 note — polymer, crisp, printed in Leipzig, featuring a 12th-century desert mosque — is now a collectible from a currency that no longer exists.

The Sahara preserves things. So does polymer.