Afar

The Afar, long called the Danakil, are East Cushitic-speaking pastoralists of the arid triangle between the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Ethiopian highlands, herding camels, mining desert salt. The writer Ibn Sa'id placed them on the coast from Suakin to Zeila in the thirteenth century, and Ethiopian chronicles call their country Adal.

Organized into more than a hundred and fifty clans in two ranked divisions, noble Asaimara and commoner Adoimara, they lived from caravan and salt trades, split among petty sultanates.

In 1577 the Adal imam Muhammed Jasa moved his capital from Harar to Aussa, but the local Mudaito clan destroyed the imamate in 1672 and in 1734 founded the Sultanate of Aussa, the leading Afar monarchy over the lower Awash. The Mudaito consolidated at the Battle of Darma in 1834 and kept Danakil independent through the mid-nineteenth century.