The top-level domain (TLD) you referred to, XN—MGBAH1A3HJKRD, is actually an Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) representation of the Arabic script TLD meaning “Mauritania” in the Arabic language. This TLD is referred to as a country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) as it pertains to a specific geographical location — in this case, the country of Mauritania.
The need for such a TLD arose due to the global nature of the internet and the worldwide user community. Domain names initially were restricted to Latin characters. However, a major portion of the global internet users does not use Latin characters. Therefore, in 2003, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) published a set of protocols, known as Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA), enabling the efficient and standardized conversion of local language scripts into a format that can be understood universally by web servers and systems around the globe.
Simply put, IDNA allows the use of non-Latin alphabets (such as Arabic, Cyrillic, Chinese, etc.) in domain names. The underlying principle entails usage of the “Punycode” technique, which involves encoding these non-Latin characters into ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) strings starting with the prefix “xn—”, that can be correctly processed by web servers.
Following this IDNA protocol, the Arabic ccTLD for Mauritania becomes “xn—mgbah1a3hjkrd”, where “xn—” is the ASCII compatible encoding prefix and “mgbah1a3hjkrd” the ‘Punycode’ representation of “Mauritania” in Arabic.
An example of a website using this ccTLD is the Mauritanian government’s official website, reachable as “http://www.xn—mgbah1a3hjkrd.mr” in ASCII format.
Pertaining sources include the IETF’s official document outlining the IDNA framework (RFC 5891), the World Intellectual Property Organization’s brief on IDNs, and the official website of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the organization overseeing IDNs and TLDs globally. Further, the Mauritanian government’s official website represents live example of the TLD in question.
Sources:
1. RFC 5891: Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA): Protocol (IETF)
2. Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) Brief (WIPO)
3. Information about .mr domain (ICANN)
4. Mauritanian Government’s Official Website
