Aouderas  Aouderas (alt: "Adharous", "Auderas") is an oasis village in the Aïr Mountains of northeastern Niger, about north-northeast of the regional capital of Agadez. It is also the name of the valley in which the town is located. Aouderas village is in the top of the Aouderas valley, at the base of Mount Todra and is just south of the Todgha range, which runs east to the Mount Bagzane (the highest point in Niger, part of the high Bagzane Massif), and the Assada plateau further north. Aouderas valley is locally called a "kouri", a Hausa term for a seasonal wash. The washed soil sprouts grasses in the brief rainy season, some small "Dun palms" (Hyphaene thebaica), Acacia and Calotropis procera, while the sandy bottom land to the west of the town can be thick with palms and is suitable for irrigated agriculture. Outside of that, the land is almost completely barren except for seasonal grasses. A Tuareg community, the small sedentary population is today made up of several hundred mostly Ikelan (or "Bouzou" in Hausa / "Bella" in Songhai), former slaves and captives of the Kel Owey Tuareg from Hausa and other southern peoples. These peoples were settled in Aouderas, as in other northern oases, to tend the date palm plantations fed by the oasis held by the noble clans. Situated on a plateau surrounded by mountains, Aouderas expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 1970s, French geographers estimated there were 15000 date palms in Aouderas, more than the other older date plantations in In Gall, but half the number of the newer plantations at Telwa and Timia to the north. As of 1972, the number of farms expanded since Heinrich Barth's visit in 1850, and the number of hectares under cultivation has expanded from 19.5 in 1946 to 59.3. As the area of cultivation expanded, so too has the diversity, as Aouderas's existence as a servile date plantation for Tuareg caravans has declined. While the early history of the Aïr Massif is speculative, the area has been populated since at least 10,000 years ago, when the surrounding deserts were lush grasslands.