The basis for his claim was the close ethnic and cultural ties between the Mauritanian Moors and the Sahrawis of Spanish Sahara, in effect forming two subsets of the same tribal Arab-Berber population.[2] The Greater Mauritania region is largely coterminous with the Hassaniya Arabic language area, and had historically been part of the pre-modern Bilad Chinguetti (Arabic: بلاد شنقيط‎, romanized: Bilād Šinqīṭ), the Land of Chinguetti, a religious center in contemporary Mauritania.[3]