Harar

Harar stands on a plateau above the dry lowlands of eastern Ethiopia. Its fortified old town, the Jugol, encloses a maze of narrow lanes, mosques, shrines and houses whose interiors reflect distinctive Harari traditions. Five historic gates opened onto the roads leading to the city, a renowned centre of Islamic learning and commerce between the coast and the highlands.

In 1520 Sultan Abu Bakr moved the seat of the Adal sultanate from Dakkar to Harar. The city became the base of Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi's campaigns against Christian Ethiopia. Later in the sixteenth century, Emir Nur ibn Mujahid fortified Harar as the region faced renewed warfare and the expansion of Oromo peoples. When the sultanate's political centre moved elsewhere, Harar remained a city of merchants and scholars; in the seventeenth century it became an independent emirate under a new dynasty. Its religious institutions and markets sustained connections across the Horn of Africa.