Ouadane

Ouadane is the second of the four Mauritanian ksour inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage. The town stands on the eastern edge of the Adrar Plateau, around 120 kilometres east of Chinguetti, on what was once a major branch of the trans-Saharan trade.

Founded in the twelfth century, Ouadane was for centuries an important religious and commercial centre, comparable in regional significance to Chinguetti. Ibn Battuta passed through the area in the fourteenth century. The town's old quarter is built almost entirely in stone and mortar, with narrow streets running between blank-walled courtyard houses, organised around a central mosque.

Ouadane's decline has been more severe than Chinguetti's. Most of the medieval old town is now in significant ruin, with houses partially collapsed and the population reduced to fewer than fifteen hundred. Sand encroachment is acute. Conservation activity has been limited by the town's remoteness — the route from the regional capital Atar requires four-wheel-drive transport for much of the year.

Despite these challenges, Ouadane remains one of the most architecturally legible of the medieval Saharan trading towns. Its stone fabric weathers more durably than the pisé of southern Morocco, allowing the urban grain of a twelfth-century caravan town to remain readable even in ruin.