Ouadane

Ouadane was founded in the twelfth century by Berber settlers on a rocky spur at the edge of the Adrar, where wells and a palm grove could support a settlement in country otherwise bare. It became a halt and a market on the trans-Saharan routes, where caravans carrying salt from the northern mines and gold, grain, dates and enslaved people traded and reorganised before the next crossing, and it grew into a stone town of narrow lanes, storerooms and a Friday mosque, all built of flat local stone laid without mortar.

Its reputation reached the Atlantic coast. In 1487 Portuguese traders established a trading post at Ouadane, an attempt to reach the inland gold trade from the sea, and although it did not last, it marks one of the earliest European commercial ventures this far into the Sahara. The town also shared in the region's scholarly tradition, with Quranic teaching and manuscripts kept in family houses as at Chinguetti.

Decline followed the trade. Routes shifted, rival towns rose, internal conflict and the change in Atlantic commerce drained the caravan economy, and the old quarter was gradually abandoned for a newer settlement on the level ground above, leaving the ksar to collapse slowly into the slope. Ouadane, with Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata, was inscribed in 1996 on the UNESCO World Heritage List as the Ancient Ksour, and since then some stabilisation work has been done. The town today is small, its population reduced by migration to Atar and Nouakchott, and its visitors come mainly in the cool months.

Ouadane's culture is the Moorish culture of the desert north, Hassaniya-speaking and built on family, lineage and hospitality. A visit is not rushed: greetings run long, questions about health and relatives come before business, and the three rounds of strong sweet green tea, brewed on a charcoal stove and poured from a height to raise foam, mark its course. Guests are fed, and refusing food outright is awkward.

Like Chinguetti, the town belongs to the old tradition of desert scholarship. Families here have kept manuscripts and books of law, theology, grammar and poetry, and the memory of the mahadra, the household Quranic school, is part of local identity even though the town is now far smaller than it was. Religious practice is conservative and Sufi-influenced, and the mosque and the prayer times set the shape of the day.

The ruins are not treated as an abandoned curiosity by the people of the upper town: they are family property, ancestral ground and the reason outsiders come. Guides from the town show visitors through the lanes and explain which house belonged to whom, and this guiding, together with the guesthouses, is one of the few cash incomes available. Dress is the standard of the north — the loose daraa for men, the wrapped malahfa for women — and the Guetna, the summer date harvest, is the year's main social season.

Ouadane is a town of a few thousand people at most, and the inhabited part is much smaller than the ruin beside it. Households live from the date grove, small irrigated gardens, goats and camels, a handful of government posts in the school and clinic, shopkeeping, and the guiding, driving and guesthouse work that the cool-season visitors bring. A great many families have relatives in Atar or Nouakchott, and money moves back along that road.

Isolation shapes everything. Supplies arrive by pickup over rough track, so prices are higher than in Atar and stock runs out; water comes from wells and boreholes; electricity and mobile coverage exist but are not constant. Medical emergencies mean a long drive. Sand and wind work steadily on the buildings, and keeping walls and lanes clear is routine.

The day starts early, stops through the afternoon heat and revives in the evening, when people sit out, tea goes round and news travels. Summer is the date harvest, when the grove fills with families. The town's long-term problem is the same as its neighbours': young people leave, the old quarter needs more maintenance than a small population can provide, and the visitor season is vulnerable to anything that changes the security picture in the Sahara.

Food in Ouadane is desert food: dates, milk, grain and meat, prepared simply and shared. The grove below the ksar produces the dates, eaten fresh through the harvest and dried or pressed into paste for the rest of the year, and a dish of them with a pot of tea is how a household receives anyone who arrives. Camel's milk and zrig, soured milk thinned with water and sweetened, are the everyday drinks where herds are close.

Cooked meals are usually rice, couscous or pasta with goat or camel in a sauce of onion and tomato, with whatever vegetables have survived the drive from Atar, served in a shared dish eaten with the right hand while seated on mats. Strips of sun-dried meat keep without refrigeration and are cooked into sauces on journeys. A whole animal roasted as méchoui marks a celebration or an important guest.

Bread is baked in the town, and wheat, sugar, tea and oil arrive by pickup. Green tea finishes every meal and most conversations: brewed strong with mint and a great deal of sugar, aerated by pouring between pot and glass from a height, and served in three rounds that take the better part of an hour and are not meant to be hurried. Alcohol is illegal in Mauritania, so tea and water are the drinks.