Harla

The Harla were pastoral traders of the Horn of Africa, in lowlands east of the Ethiopian highlands from Harar to the Ogaden. Their kingdom is placed as early as the sixth century; after Islam came in the eighth, the Makhzumi arose in the ninth, the Horn's earliest known Muslim kingdom, with rulers titled Garad.

Arab settlers under Abadir Umar al-Rida helped the Harla build Harar, or Gey, chief seat of Islamic learning there. Harla imam Salih fought with Ifat against Amda Seyon in the fourteenth century; by the sixteenth the Harla dominated Adal, their clans in the elite Malassay troops.

Ahmad al-Ghazi seized power through their emirs, but Oromo migrations overwhelmed their pastures; in 1577 survivors moved the Adal capital to Aussa. After the imamate fell in the following century the Harla vanished as a people, absorbed into Somali, Afar and Oromo groups or merged into walled Harar, whose Harari speech preserves their tongue.