OUADDA

also spelled Wadai, historic and cultural region in eastern Chad, central Africa. The chief city of the region is Abch. The region's area of savanna grasslands roughly corresponds to the formerly independent Ouadda Muslim sultanate (see Wadai, Kingdom of). Crossed by caravans linking the Sahara with equatorial Africa and by Muslim pilgrim routes from West Africa toward Mecca, Ouadda is an amalgam of cultural and ethnic influences. The dominant people, the Maba, a Negroid, Sudanic people, are Muslims. Their main economic activity is raising cattle. Other inhabitants include Arabs and Fulani and various other peoples. Though Arab geographers had described the area, Ouadda was not generally known to Europeans until after 1873, when it was explored by the German geographer Gustav Nachtigal. The history of Ouadda before the 17th century is uncertain, but in about 1640 a Maba chieftain, Abd-el-Kerim, conquered the country and overthrew the Tungur, a dynasty originating in Darfur to the east. For the next 200 years there were intermittent wars with the kingdoms of Bagirmi and Kanem-Bornu, many for the purpose of maintaining Ouadda's supply of slaves and eunuchs for shipment to Arab courts in the north. Muhammad al-Sharif, who was sultan of Ouadda from 1835 to 1858, introduced the Sanusiyah Islamic brotherhood into the region, and it remained the dominant political and religious force until Ouadda was conquered by the French. Although it had been recognized as within the French sphere of influence according to an Anglo-French agreement of 1899, Ouadda retained its effective independence until 1904, when Ouaddaans attacked French outposts in the Chari region. Fighting continued sporadically until 1908, when the Ouadda sultan, Doud Murra, proclaimed a holy war (jihad) against the French. Dividing his army into units under feudal lords, he was no match for French troops and was soundly defeated. By 1912 the French had pacified the area and abolished the sultanate. A famine in 191314 devastated Ouadda. From an estimated population of more than 2,000,000 in the 1870s, the inhabitants were reduced to about 300,000 by 1917. After independence in 1960, banditry, long prevalent in Ouadda under the French, evolved into guerrilla warfare on the part of the Muslim population against the southern Christians and animists who dominated Chad's government. Fighting in this region continued sporadically into the 1980s because of the country's continuing civil war.