Harar: The City of Saints
The colourful, maze-like alleys within the Mecca of Africa remain alive and busy during the holy month of Ramadan.
I have seen many times people claiming Harar to be the fourth holiest city in Islam. Why is this the case?
- Thread starter Abdixakim
- Start date
Probably it's early adoption of Islam pushed by the Dir, it became a centre for Islamic scholarship, religious legacy and tombs of saints, and it's important cultural and historical importance, especially for the spread of Islam in the horn.
Emir of Zayla
𝕹𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝕻𝖔𝖊𝖙𝖘
It’s a myth made up by travel agencies that work with Ethiopia to get people to visit their country.
This was my first though too. If there was ever s fourth holiest city in islam it would be somewhere like cairo or damascus. Not some small medieval town in the horn.
Sometimes it's not about being the brightest light in the sky, the oldest stars are usually the dimmest, it's not the present we're looking at but in the past, for 800 years, this city was home to some of the most learned men in the Islamic field, the trade that went through the region brought many riches, the Futah mentions the Muslim forces have several thousand knight fully kitted out in armour and regalia, including horses.
Mind you Harar used to be 25% Somali that is no longer because of the oromo pushed by the Ethiopian regime to replace us. They did the same in Dire Dhaba now it is happening in Jijiga next will be every Somali city.
Harar was fully/ or majority Somali as describe by visitors in the early 1800s and then it was 50% Somali from the 1840s
Finally i am also starting to wonder if the earlier Amirs of Harar were just Somalis before the Gurage oromo Emir took over the title of Emir. @Emir of Harar @Midas @Shimbiris. @Emir of Zayla
Here it is mentioned by a visitor in 1840.
i know that for a fact that Awsa Emirs were simply Harla Darood, that later politically intermarried with neighboring Issa . From the genealogies and chronicles they left behind. They saw Afar/Danakil as seperate people they warred with, who harrased caravans. The minute Afar took control, they dislodged the carvan going to Harar and Zayla and relied on trading rock salt from nearby. You can also see the conflict they had with the Awsa Emirs continues with their conflict with Issa. Danakil are mentioned to seperate from Awdal/Zayla and allied with Abyssinia in a number of sources Arab, Ottoman, Portuguese etc.
It is very important to point this out because it's Issa's who controlled the trade route from Awsa to Harar and from Harar to Zayla. They also have priestly/clergy group in both places called Sayhas. Sayhas Isa sub clan are mentioned to particularly inhabit Harar during the Egyptian occupation in the records. And the majority trace descent from Sayh Fiqi Umar.
Habesha and Oromos tend to take on somali provincial and city names(Harrar is named after a Somali tree as Richard Burton was told and similarly Awgoba was a province) after conversion and moving there and try to construct identities around them i have noticed, which ends up misleading people. Because those are place names not cultural identities.
Somalis don't tend to name themselves after place names, instead they refer to families from those places Reer(Family) Awdal (Zayla Somalis), Reer Xamar (Mogadishu Somalis, Reer Barawe, Reer Bari, Reer Waqooyi/Galbeed, Reer Goleed, Reer Kofur (Luuq Somalis), Reer Adare (Harar Somalis)
Because we don't identify with a single place but see ourselves as a network of connected families.
Big evidence to this is how Hararis just like Gurage have a supported recorded tradition that they are from Tigray and are of Tigrayan origin. Just like that early visitor in 1840 said of Gurage Oromo's
And they cannot support a connection to the city at all in any of their sources/traditions and the earliest mention of the inhabitants in year 1814 says they are Somalis by two different french visitors like i have shown in the other post. There is no mention of Harari as a population group until after 1840s when the Gurage Oromo Emir and the likes take control of the city.
She mentions archeological research on Awgoba in the last paragraph and they have done that: Came with predictable conclusion that they are from elsewhere with no connection to the place.
And their early Amirs of Harar used to claim Somali genealogy and wore our nisba. Ignore Burton's assertion in the last sentence.
Things changed when they went from marrying only Somali clans outside the city to marrying to also including Gurage/Oromo , that made their way inside the city who then made an identity around it. Somalis continued to control the commerce, be the head clergy, and be the bulk of the craftsmen, the average harar household was just filled with Somali furniture as well as described by Burton.
The City of Saints association is from the Somali Islamic culture of Saintlyhood and ancestor veneration ''Awliyo''.
@Step a side has also shown that Somalis used to live in the oldest parts of the city, where the oldest mosques exists and where majority of the earliest saints are buried. The oldest main markets and entregate Erer.
And it's even mentioned by Richard Burton who visited Harar, that Shaykh Jami Al-Bartirii's house was near Emir Nurs tomb , in the center of the city.
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The Fourth holiest city competition, this is shameless marketing tactic.
Incredible how people in the 1800s woukd have known that this city was established by somalis. But now that fact is probably not even known by most people in harar. Just goes to show how fluid historical memory is. And how migration can easily wipe it out. Like how i just recently found that arsi bale and sidamo provinces in ethiopia were just part of hargarhe until haile selassie split them apart.Harar was fully/ or majority Somali as describe by visitors in the early 1800s and then it was 50% Somali from the 1840s
And their early Amirs of Harar used to claim Somali genealogy and wore our nisba. Ignore Burton's assertion in the last sentence.
Things changed when they went from marrying only Somali clans outside the city to marrying to also including Gurage/Oromo , that made their way inside the city who then made an identity around it. Somalis continued to control the commerce, be the head clergy, and be the bulk of the craftsmen, the average harar household was just filled with Somali furniture as well as described by Burton.
The City of Saints association is from the Somali Islamic culture of Saintlyhood and ancestor veneration ''Awliyo''.
View attachment 343790
@Step a side has also shown that Somalis used to live in the oldest parts of the city, where the oldest mosques exists and where majority of the earliest saints are buried. The oldest main markets and entregate Erer.
And it's even mentioned by Richard Burton who visited Harar, that Shaykh Jami Al-Bartirii's house was near Emir Nurs tomb , in the center of the city.
So true. it's nuts to see how visitors before the mid 1800s just plainly saw it as a Somali city and inhabited by Somalis.
French voyager 1814 visits the town:
And another source around 1830s
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Finally i am also starting to wonder if the earlier Amirs of Harar were just Somalis before the Gurage oromo Emir took over the title of Emir. @Emir of Harar @Midas @Shimbiris. @Emir of Zayla
Here it is mentioned by a visitor in 1840.
Btw when he says ''She is at war with the Ala tribe(Oromo) and the race of Gran is completely destroyed''
The race of Gran are Somalis btw. Because in Ethiopian tradition they see Somalis as the the descendants of Ahmed Gurey(Gragn). It's a deepseated memory.
Much like how the local Oromo's saw Somalis as the people of Shaykh Hussayn Bali , each time we visited the area and treated us kindly. Their memory of us is a fond one.
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It seems like all the early historical islamic figures in the memory of both ethiopian muslims and christans are Somalis.Btw when he says ''She is at war with the Ala tribe(Oromo) and the race of Gran is completely destroyed''
The race of Gran are Somalis btw. Because in Ethiopian tradition they see Somalis as the the descendants of Ahmed Gurey(Gragn). It's a deepseated memory.
Much like how the local Oromo's saw Somalis as the people of Shaykh Hussayn Bali , each time we visited the area and treated us kindly. Their memory of us is a fond one.
View attachment 343830
Somalis used to border Amharas 400 years ago.
This is different Harar was inside the core political, cultural and economic heartland of Somalis, Galbeed.
The more far western borders near Showa were we bordered Amhara was more like Somalis setting up occupational garrison towns in a region they conquered: relocated from the East in the 13th century. Went through this in another thread:
@Emir of Zayla @Midas @World @NidarNidar
A carry on from what i said above. I have been learning more and i am pretty sure that AwFat and a lot of western frontier settlements were actually not regular cities, but military garrisons which is called Amsar ''Garrison towns'' which in Muslim/Arab polities are positioned in the borders. The archeology and descriptions by Al-Umar describes Awfat and other towns with the same plan with walls, fortified buildings, fortresses/castles on hills and houses far apart from eachother. This lack of defenses is surprising if we consider the permanent state of war between Christians and Muslims described in the written sources, and should be explained by the backward position of the Somaliland sites with respect to the border with the Christian kingdom. Fortresses and fortified settlements are more common the closer they are to the Ethiopian highlands(Fauvelle-Aymar and Hirsch2010a: 33-34).
Any time they conquered areas they resettled muslim families there, which i assume most are Somalis and built fortresses, mosques and public facilities.
Look at this information on Arab Muslim/Garrisons and compare it to medieval sources about Awdal, it's exactly what they were doing.
Garrison - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Arab, non-Islamic areas, nomadic Arab tribesmen were taken from the desert by the ruling Arab elite, conscripted into Islamic armies, and settled into garrison towns as well as given a share in the spoils of war. The primary utility of the Arab-Islamic garrisons was to control the indigenous non-Arab peoples of these conquered and occupied territories, and to serve as garrison bases to launch further Islamic military campaigns into yet-undominated lands.
In the frontier area of the Arabic expansion, military forts (al-Amsar, Pl. Arabic: أمصار, amṣār), or Ribat (Arabic: رباط ribāṭ, fortress) were founded. Militarily speaking, the structure and function of amṣār are similar to ancient Roman colonia.
Ibn al-Kalbi reported, Arfajah ibn Harthamah were the first who built Amsar, that accommodated the settlements of Muslim soldiers in the annexed territories permanently and also setting up the public facilities and mosques in the city.[
Amsar - Wikipedia
Text on how Sultan Badlay ''' Camped a thousand Muslim families there'' in one of the southwestern territories.
This is just a detailed example a century before Futuh , you see similar things play out all over Futuh resettling nomadic and agro-pastoral families into conquered territories and appointing them as governor garrisons.
And Wali Asma which was the ancestor of Umar was just one of the numerous governors or Emirs and military generals from Awdal in the eastern provinces. Later his grandson Umar himself was appointed into the position by a regional Muslim leader in the western frontier.
.
It explains why the Sultans/Emirs ended up abandoning it, later on to center themselves back to their place of origin Al-Jabartiyyah (Guban) and Awdal.
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