Ouara, also known as Wara, was the capital of the Sultanate of Wadai (also Ouaddai), in modern-day Chad. It was the seat of the “Kolak”, or Sultan, from the time of the foundation of the Wadai Sultanate in the 17th century until the abandonment of the site around 1850. Though, even after it’s abandonment, it remained a burial ground for the rulers of Wadai, and is still visited during coronation ceremonies. Wadai was sandwiched between Kanem-Bornu to the west, Bagirmi to the southwest, Darfur to the east, and desert tribes to the north, often going to war with its neighbors.
The ruins of the walled palatial compound at Ouara, c. 300 meters in diameter, built from fired brick and still reaching 10 meters in height in some places, is by far the most well preserved historical palace compound of the so-called “bilād as sūdān”, or “Land of the Blacks” in Arabic, a vast region known as “the Sudan” in older literature, stretching across the Sahel and Savannah regions between the Senegambia in the west to modern-day Sudan in the east.
Construction of the palatial compound at Ouara is believed to have started under Wadai’s founder, Abd al-Karim in the first half of the 17th century, and continued under his son Kharut al-Kabir, or Karut I (ruled c. 1655 - 1678). The exact chronology of the construction of the numerous edifices in the compound is not well understood, and the large brick mosque just outside of the palace compound seems to have been built in the 18th century.
There are rather vague claims of involvement of a North African architect, though the architecture at Ouara bears little resemblance to North African architecture, while comparable fired brick palaces also existed in Nubia, Darfur, Bagirmi, Kanem and Bornu. Even the reported method of brick making was rather unique: “the clay, regarded as unsuitable for this purpose, was mixed with warm water in which fat beef and camel meat has been cooked”.
The ruling dynasty too, was allegedly of Abbasid origin. Claims such as these are common among Islamic African polities in a bid for legitimacy, though they should not be taken too seriously. The famous 19th century explorer, Heinrich Barth, in his Travels and Discoveries, relates the content of a royal letter given to him, relevant to the matter at hand. Barth refers to the supposed Abbasid origin of the Dynasty as "altogether imaginary", and refers to their actual tribe as "Gémir", an Arabized Nubian tribe, perhaps synonymous or otherwise closely related to the Maba people of Chad and Darfur, also known as the Burgu or Wadai people (Nilo-Saharan speakers). He explains how Wadai’s founder, Abd al-Karim was the grandson of a man called Woda, and the great-grandson of a man called Yamé, who had embraced Islam and were originally settled in Shendi, on the Nile river in central Sudan. They migrated to Wadai, then under the control of the Tunjur Kingdom, where they gained prominence. Abd al-Karim, who had managed to become a governor under the Tunjur, overthrew the ruling dynasty, and married the daughter of Daud, the defeated Tunjur king, producing his successor, Karut I.
And unlike the general histories which claim that Ouara was abandoned because the wells had run dry, Barth tells us that the ruler, Mohammed Saleh, had moved the capital to Abéché, "in order to escape from his public and private enemies", leading to a population collapse at Ouara. Barth states, "Indeed Wara, till recently the capital and residence of the monarch, which in 1852, on account of the seat of government having been transferred to Abéshr, was every day becoming more and more deserted, scarcely contains above four hundred houses".
There are a number of period descriptions of Ouara at its height, most notably by Mohammed Ibn-Oumar el Tounsy (Muhammad ibn ‘Umar Al-Tūnisī), a Tunisian scholar from a merchant family who spent 10 years in the region during the 19th century, (mostly Darfur) and 18 months in Wadai specifically. He described Wadai as the most well governed of the Eastern Sudanic kingdoms and wrote very favorably of the state. Tunisi describes the multistoried palace as well as a series of palace gates, including “the gate of iron”, covered in iron plates. Tunisi describes Ouara as a "large city", and indicates a high population density, while almost contradictorily also saying that it didn't have a large population. For context, Tunisi was a resident of Cairo, one of the most populous cities in Africa at the time. Aside from the palace compound and the mosque just outside of the compound, Tunisi states that most of the houses were huts made from millet stalks, very similar to the ones found in Darfur. These type of dwellings are still found in the region today. They didn’t leave much of a visible trace on the modern site of Ouara. However, Tunisi also explained that all the compounds had enclosure walls built of stone and earth, which have left traces that are actually still visible from satellite images and provide us with a good idea of the physical size of the town. The core settlement stretched almost 2 km on a NE-SW-axis and about 1.4 km on a NW-SE-axis, hemmed in by small mountains on the south, east and north-western part of the city, giving it a bit of an L-shape. According to Tunisi it took half an hour to walk from one end of the city to the other end. J.B. Lebeuf, in "The Site of Wara", states that the city may have had up to 40.000 inhabitants at it's height.
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