Azougui is the ruined site of one of the founding settlements of the Almoravid movement — the 11th-century Islamic reform movement that swept from this region north across Morocco, into Spain, and south through West Africa, reshaping the religious and political landscape of a vast territory. The Almoravids emerged here in the Adrar, among the Sanhaja Berber pastoralists of what is now Mauritania, and Azougui was among their earliest fixed settlements, a staging point as the movement gathered force in the 1040s.
The ruins today are low walls and mounds returning gradually to the desert, about 5km south of the Amogar pass. There are no facilities and no interpretation. The site is significant enough that scholars come from Europe and North America to study it, but casual visitors will see mainly eroded mud-brick outlines against the ochre landscape — the interest is in what you know, not what you see. Combining it with the rock art at the pass makes the most of the detour; together they span some eight millennia of human habitation in this landscape.