Ouadane or Wādān (Arabic: وادان) is a small town in the desert region of central Mauritania, situated on the southern edge of the Adrar Plateau, 93 km northeast of Chinguetti.

In the middle of the 11th century, the Arabic geographer al-Bakri described a trans-Saharan route that ran between Tamdoult near Akka in Morocco to Aoudaghost on the southern edge of the Sahara.

[4] The volume of caravan traffic would have declined from the beginning of the 13th century when the oasis town of Oualata located 360 km to the east replaced Aoudaghost as the southern terminus of the trade route.

[5] The first written reference to the town is in Portuguese by Ca' de Mosto in middle of the 15th century in a muddled account that confused the salt mines of Idjil with those of Taghaza.

[7] Fifty years later Valentim Fernandes wrote a detailed account of the trade in slabs of salt from the Idjil mines and role of Ouadane as an entrepôt.

[9] By contrast Duarte Pacheco Pereira in his Esmeraldo de situ orbis (written in 1505-1508) described the town as having approximately "300 hearths" which would suggest between 1,500 and 1,800 people.

[13] According to Pereira, in 1487 the Portuguese built an entrepôt in Ouadane in an attempt to gain access to the trans-Saharan gold, salt and slave trade.