Wargla occupied a strategic position in the northern Sahara, on a caravan route connecting Numidia with the Hoggar and probably the Niger Bend. The oasis already contained primitive dwellings and several established towns when the first Arab conquerors reached the Maghrib around the middle of the seventh century. Later sources describe a settlement network whose ruins remained visible, indicating that Wargla was not a single isolated town but a wider oasis society.

Arab sources first mention Wargla during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, and al-Zuhrī associates this period with the conversion of its inhabitants to Islam. The population soon adopted Ibāḍī doctrine, apparently as a response to the authority of the orthodox government, and entered into close relations with the Ibāḍī imams of Tāhert. Ibāḍī communities coexisted with Mālikite Muslims and with several Berber groups, including branches associated with the Zanāta, Lawāta, and Sanhāja worlds.

Wargla developed a complex political and civic organization. In the early tenth century a chief, or rāʾis, resided at Tāghyārt, while governors and later town administrators exercised authority across the oasis. Notables, probably including leading merchants, were known as aʿyān and akābir. Councils representing inhabitants from the villages met at Tamāwāt, suggesting that collective institutions complemented the authority of chiefs and governors.

After the fall of the Rustumid imamate, Wargla became independent despite Fatimid attempts to conquer it. It was later connected with the Banū Ḥammād, whose sultan al-Nāṣir ibn ʿAlannās appointed a governor there. Its commercial importance rested on its position at the starting point of routes used by North African and Egyptian merchants travelling toward the Western Sudan, with links to Tāhert, Sidjilmāsa, Tādmekka, Gao, and Ghana.