UN General Assembly
1974

144. No one and certainly not the Mauritanians can deny that brotherly and mutually beneficial relations have been established between those two entities throughout the centuries. But history attests to the fact that deep frictions also have arisen between them. However, there is one unchanging element in the long history of this Saharan region: from the beginning of history and up to the first part of this century, the region was never administered from outside. It was always governed by emirs who were genuine inhabitants of the region. On the other hand, that region was able to govern the Saharan and Moroccan entities and to unite them under one authority. That happened in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The unification that took place then was the work of the Almoravides, who had come from the central and western parts of Mauritania. For the first and last time, Mauritania and Morocco were one empire, the empire of the Mauritanian Almoravides.