Oualata
commune of Mauritania
Oualata or Walāta (Arabic: ولاتة) (also Biru in 17th century chronicles) is a small oasis town in southeast Mauritania, located at the eastern end of the Aoukar basin. Oualata was important as a caravan city in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as the southern terminus of a trans-Saharan trade route and now it is a World Heritage Site.
The whole Oualata commune has a total size of 93,092 square kilometres (35,943 sq mi), mostly consisting of desert. The main town is located in the south of the commune.
History
The Oualata area is believed to have been first settled by an agro-pastoral people akin to the Mandé Soninke people who lived along the rocky promontories of the Tichitt-Oualata and Tagant cliffs of Mauritania facing the Aoukar basin. There, they built what are among the oldest stone settlements on the African continent.
The town formed part of the Ghana Empire and grew wealthy through trade. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Oualata replaced Aoudaghost as the principal southern terminus of the trans-Saharan trade and developed into an important commercial and religious centre. By the fourteenth century the city had become part of the Mali Empire.
An important trans-Saharan route began at Sijilmasa and passed through Taghaza with its salt mines and ended at Oualata.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Oualata” is commune of Mauritania. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Oualata, commune and Mauritania, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “commune of Mauritania” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q162281. VIAF identifies the subject as 1146284322515331451. The Library of Congress control number is no2012091170. Authority coordinates are 17.298, -7.024. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Oualata”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Oualata primary sources, Oualata archive and Oualata research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Oualata”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Oualata” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.