Oualata

At the Sahara's far southeastern edge, Oualata rewards the longest drive in Mauritanian tourism with its singular art: the old ksar's red-ochre houses frame doors and windows in white painted geometry - interlaced rosettes and arabesques renewed by the town's women in a living tradition that made Oualata the most visually distinctive of the four UNESCO caravan towns. A small museum keeps the decorative canon and the manuscript heritage; family libraries hold centuries of scholarship from the town's era as a caravan and learning hub on the Timbuktu roads; and the desert's emptiness around completes the sense of arrival at civilisation's beautiful last outpost.

History

The area is believed to have been first settled by agro-pastoral people related to the Soninke, who built some of the oldest stone settlements in Africa along the Tichitt-Oualata and Tagant cliffs. The town was part of the Ghana Empire, and at the beginning of the 13th century it replaced Aoudaghost as the main southern terminus of the trans-Saharan trade, at the end of a route from Sijilmasa through the salt mines of Taghaza, becoming an important commercial and religious centre and, by the 14th century, part of the Mali Empire; the historian Raymond Mauny estimated its medieval population at 2,000 to 3,000. Ibn Battuta stayed about fifty days, found the people Muslim and mostly Massufa, a branch of the Sanhaja, and was surprised by the respect and independence women enjoyed, and today the town is a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Oualata).

What's there

• The painted doorways - white geometry on red-ochre walls.
• The women's tradition - decoration renewed generation to generation.
• The manuscript libraries - caravan-era scholarship surviving.
• The ksar lanes - the old town against the empty horizon.

When to go

November to February only, in practical terms - the far southeast bakes otherwise; travel runs via Nema with arrangements made ahead, and the annual manuscript-festival period brings the town its liveliest days.

What to expect

This is the remotest of the ksour - long pistes, sparse facilities and full desert logistics; most visitors are committed circuit-makers. Go with operators who run the route. Photograph people and interiors by permission - the art lives on private houses.

Nearby

Nema, and the long pistes back toward Tichitt and the west.

Key facts