While researching Armies of the Adowa Campaign 1896: Italian Disaster in Ethiopia, my latest book from Osprey, I traveled throughout Ethiopia. I loved the history and people so I returned earlier this year and spent two months living in Harar, a walled medieval city in the eastern part of the country. Set in a fertile plateau between the central Ethiopian highlands to the west and the Somali lowlands and Red Sea to the east, it commands an important trade route.
It’s unclear when Harar was founded. Its first recorded ruler was Emir Habobe from 969-1000 AD. For a time it was part of the Adal Sultanate, a Somali empire that spread inland deep into Abyssinia. The powerful rule of Ahmed Guray (“the Left-Handed”) saw its greatest age but the sultanate collapsed a generation after his death in 1543.
(A stretch of the Harar city wall)
Harar became an independent city-state again, speaking its own Semitic language and following its own traditions and localized form of Islam. Soon it faced a serious threat with the arrival of the Oromo, an animist, Cushitic speaking ethnic group that migrated up from the south. They were skilled horsemen and warriors and vastly outnumbered the Hararis.
(Several small portals exist in the wall to allow passage of people and at night, hyenas. The Hararis have a friendly relationship with the hyenas, which prowl the streets at night eating garbage.)
Harar managed to survive due to superior military technology. Guray’s successor and nephew Emir Nur (d. 1567) built a wall around the city. He also equipped some of his men with matchlocks. Fortifications and black powder weapons were unknown to the Oromo and while they could raid the hinterland, they couldn’t take the city. The two ethnic groups settled into an uneasy relationship of Oromo farmers and herders trading with Harari merchants, punctuated by periods of warfare. After a time, some Oromo began to convert to Islam, although this didn’t become widespread until the nineteenth century.
(One of the five city gates. This one is home to a large Oromo market.)
Relations continued to be tense. In 1840, the Emir commanded 200 matchlockmen, 100 spearmen, and a smaller number of cavalry. Such was the psychological power of the matchlock and city wall that these were considered sufficient, despite an 1875 census estimating a million Oromo surrounded only 30,000 Harari. Of course in times of emergency every Harari male would grab his spear and rally to defend his city, but the numbers speak for themselves. Another factor was Oromo disunity. They were split into clans that regularly raided one another. Youths had to prove their manhood by robbing and killing members of rival clans.
At times the Oromo got the upper hand. When the famous explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton became the first European to visit Harar in 1855, he found the Oromo playing a major part in Harari politics. They were even allowed to carry their spears in the streets, something most Hararis were forbidden to do. This shows how much Harari power had weakened by this time, but the wall continued to provide a means to keep the Oromo from taking over completely. In 1872 the Oromo leader Orfo Jilo Biko laid siege to Harar for three days until the Hararis bought him off. Oromo raids on caravans were a constant problem.
(One of the Egyptian-made bastions.)
The 1875 census marked the beginning of ten years of Egyptian rule. To guard their new possession, the Egyptians installed a large garrison equipped with modern weaponry. They, too, had trouble with the Oromo and could never entirely subjugate them. The Egyptians strengthened and heightened the city wall and added numerous bastions. They also installed a small fort atop a hill overlooking one of the gates and a much-used road. While I could clearly see some of the remains of this fort, the hill is owned by Ethiopian Telecom and fenced off. Perhaps on my return to Harar next year I’ll be able to get permission to investigate the fort.
(In some spots the city wall doubles as the back wall of private homes.)
The British wanted the Egyptians out of the Red Sea region and through political maneuvering got them to leave in 1885. A new independent ruler, Emir Abdullahi, took control but his rule was not to last. The Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II advanced on Harar. Abdullahi decided to meet Menelik to the west of town but his outnumbered and outgunned force was defeated at the Battle of Tchellenqo in January 1887. This battle was instrumental in giving Menelik access to the Red Sea arms trade. These arms, in turn, led to his victory over the Italians in 1896. I’ll be talking about the important but little-studied Battle of Tchellenqo in a future post.
The wall still exits. It’s made of rough stones and plaster with a plaster facing and measures approximately half a meter thick and 6-10 meters high. There’s no catwalk visible anywhere but houses abut its interior side in many spots. Defenders may have stood on the roofs. In some parts, triangular or chevron-shaped crenellations have been preserved. Some of these are Italian reproductions from their brief occupation in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
(A 19th century photo showing one of the city gates)
Burton sneered that the wall would “crumble at the touch of a six-pounder” but the Oromo had no six-pounders, or indeed any firearms until the late nineteenth century. Menelik did, which is probably why Abdullahi decided to face him before he reached town.
(The Wesen Seged Hotel, Rimbaud’s old warehouse.)
After Harar fell to Menelik it had one more chapter to contribute to Ethiopian military history. In 1880 famed French poet Arthur Rimbaud, having given up writing poetry, moved to Harar to work for a French merchant importing arms into Menelik’s expanding empire. The warehouse where he kept the guns is now the Wesen Seged Hotel, hourly rates only. The ground floor is a bar, and it’s the most decrepit, soul-killing dive I’ve seen in my 31 countries of travel. No, I didn’t rent a room. Two beers in honor of Rimbaud and I went home to wash my hands.
For more on my research for the Armies of the Adowa Campaign, check out my posts on researching in Ethiopia and Rome.
Sean McLachlan is the author of several Osprey books. You can find him on the web at his blog Civil War Horror.