Agadez is a city of central Niger at the southern edge of the Aïr massif, on the Sahel-Sahara contact zone. It is the capital of the Aïr region and the largest urban centre of the Tuareg in West Africa.
The Sultanate of Aïr, founded around 1449, made Agadez its capital and established the city as the principal Tuareg political and religious centre south of the Sahara. The grand mosque, with its sixteenth-century pyramidal minaret of mudbrick reinforced by projecting palm beams, is among the most distinctive earthen monuments in the Sahel.
The city was for centuries a node of trans-Saharan trade, exchanging salt from Bilma and dates from the northern oases for Sahelian millet, gold, and slaves; it was also the southern terminus of the Azalaï, the seasonal salt caravan that still crosses the Ténéré desert each autumn between Bilma and Agadez.
The historic centre was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2013 for the integrity of its earthen architecture and the persistence of the Sultanate's institutions. The contemporary city has been transformed by mining of uranium at Arlit, by Tuareg rebellions in the 1990s and again from 2007, and by the migration corridor that runs north toward Libya through Dirkou and Sebha.