Ouaddaï, historic and cultural region in eastern Chad, central Africa. The chief town of the region is Abéché. The region’s area of savanna grasslands roughly corresponds to the formerly independent Ouaddaï Muslim sultanate (see Wadai, Kingdom of).
Crossed by caravans linking the Sahara with equatorial Africa and by hajj routes from West Africa toward Mecca, Ouaddaï is an amalgam of cultural and ethnic influences. The dominant people, the Maba, a Sudanic people, are Muslims. Their main economic activity is raising cattle. Other inhabitants include Arabs and Fulani.
Though Arab geographers had described the area, Ouaddaï was not generally known to Europeans until after 1873, when it was explored by the German geographer Gustav Nachtigal. The history of Ouaddaï before the 17th century is uncertain, but 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 Ouaddaï’s supply of slaves and eunuchs for shipment to Arab courts in the north.
Muḥammad al-Sharīf, who was sultan of Ouaddaï from 1835 to 1858, introduced the Sanūsīyah Islamic brotherhood into the region, and it remained the dominant political and religious force until Ouaddaï 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, Ouaddaï retained its effective independence until 1904, when Ouaddaïans attacked French outposts in the Chari region. Fighting continued sporadically until 1908, when the Ouaddaï 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 1913–14 devastated Ouaddaï. 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 Ouaddaï 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 the region continued sporadically into the 21st century.