Harari
The people of the walled city of Harar — Islam's fourth holy city, a UNESCO world heritage of 82 mosques within five gates, whose merchants traded the Horn, whose women's dress is famous, and whose hyenas are fed by hand at the walls each night.
Identity
Population: ≈ 30,000–50,000 Harari (Gey Usu, 'people of the city'), with a large diaspora
Location: Harar Jugol — the walled old city of eastern Ethiopia — and its immediate hinterland, now the Harari regional state
Language: Harari (Gey Sinan, 'language of the city')
Language family: Afro-Asiatic → Semitic → Ethiopian Semitic
Traditional governance: Historically an independent emirate and city-state with an emir, qadis and merchant notables governing the walled city and its trade; conquered by Egypt (1875) then Ethiopia (1887); today the Harari People's National Regional State — Ethiopia's smallest region, built around one city.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (4)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups — clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes — each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Gey Usu (people of the city)
The Harari proper — the city's original Semitic-speaking Muslim inhabitants.
The five gate quarters
The old city's neighbourhoods, each associated with one of Jugol's five historic gates.
Oromo and Somali neighbours
The surrounding peoples with whom Harar has traded, intermarried and contended for centuries.
Harari diaspora
Communities in Addis Ababa and abroad who maintain the language, cuisine and marriage networks.
Culture
Clothing: The Harari woman's celebrated dress — vivid layered fabrics with distinctive headwrap and silver jewellery, considered among Ethiopia's most beautiful; men's white robes and skullcaps; imported silks and Indian textiles from the trade.
Food: Harari cuisine is distinct — hulbat, fatira, spiced meats and the famous Harari coffee ceremony with its own vessels and etiquette; coffee is native to these hills and Harar's beans are world-famous; khat chewing is a daily social institution.
Ceremonies: Shewalid (the Prophet's birthday) and other Islamic festivals with processions to the shrines; the elaborate Harari wedding cycle over days; hyena feeding at the walls each night — a centuries-old practice; visits to the many saints' shrines (awach).
Marriage customs: Endogamy within the Harari community historically strong, preserving language and property; elaborate multi-day weddings with distinctive dress, food and gift exchange; Islamic contract with rich local ceremony.
Initiation rites: Quranic schooling as universal grounding — Harar has been a centre of Islamic learning for centuries; apprenticeship in trade and craft; young men's afocha mutual-aid associations, which structure adult social life and obligation.
Greetings, Prayer & the Table
The everyday practices a visitor meets first — how people greet, pray, eat and host. Forms vary by family, region and generation, and many coexist with Islam and Christianity rather than being replaced by them.
Greetings & respect
Arabic and Harari salutations mix — 'Assalamu alaikum' with local formulas — and greetings are elaborate within a small, closely-related community where everyone's family is known. Elders and shrine custodians are greeted with marked deference.
Prayer & devotion
Harar counts 82 mosques and more than a hundred saints' shrines within and around the walls; Sunni Islam with strong Sufi devotion structures the day, and visits to the awach (saints) for baraka are routine. The afocha mutual-aid associations combine religious, social and welfare functions.
Eating & feeding
Harari cuisine is distinct — hulbat, fatira and spiced meats — served in the tiered nadaba reception room whose walls are hung with baskets and porcelain. Right hand; guests seated on the highest platform. Khat chewing sessions are a daily social institution with their own etiquette.
Hospitality
The coffee ceremony with local vessels, and the display of the household's baskets and imported bowls, are part of receiving a guest — the room itself is arranged to honour visitors.
Avoidances & etiquette
Left hand avoided; shrine etiquette and Ramadan observance are strictly kept.
Stories & Oral Literature
The City of SaintsReligious tradition
Within and around Harar's walls stand 82 mosques — three from the 10th century — and more than a hundred shrines to saints. Muslims count Harar as the fourth holy city of Islam after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. It grew as a centre of scholarship, Sufi devotion and trade, and remains a place where the sacred is measured in doorways.
The Hyena MenLiving tradition
Each night outside the walls a man calls the spotted hyenas by name and feeds them scraps of meat from his hand and from a stick held in his teeth. The practice is generations old, tied to older rites of feeding hyenas porridge on Ashura so they would not take livestock — and to the belief that the hyenas clear the city of evil spirits and refuse alike.
Rimbaud in HararHistorical footnote
The French poet Arthur Rimbaud, having abandoned poetry, spent his last years as a trader in Harar in the 1880s. The 'Rimbaud House' — actually a later Indian merchant's mansion — is now a museum. Harar collects such stories: a city that traded with Arabia, India and Europe kept meeting the world at its gates.
Proverbs
“The city is small, but its gates open on every road.”
Harar's mercantile cosmopolitanism.
“Feed the hyena and sleep soundly.”
Managing what you fear is wiser than fighting it.
“A house without guests is a house without blessing.”
Hospitality as religious and social obligation.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Islam frames Harari cosmology entirely — Allah the creator, the Prophet's tradition, and a deeply Sufi devotional culture centred on the awach (saints) whose shrines ring the city; the saints mediate blessing (baraka) and their annual celebrations structure the religious year.
Beliefs: Sunni Islam with strong Sufi orders (Qadiriyya prominent); saint veneration at more than a hundred shrines; belief in jinn and the protective role of the hyenas; the afocha associations combining religious, social and welfare functions.
Ancestors: Saints and scholarly lineages are the honoured dead; family genealogies within the small endogamous community are carefully kept; the shrines make ancestry and sanctity the same landscape.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Allah
God — Harar has been a Muslim city for over a millennium
The awach (saints)
Local saints whose shrines ring the city and whose baraka is sought
Sheikh Abadir
The revered figure credited with organising the city's Islamic community
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Jugol — the walled old city (UNESCO), five gates, narrow winding alleys, 82 mosques and over a hundred shrines; the celebrated Harari house (gegar) with its raised, carpeted, tiered reception room (nadaba) whose walls are hung with baskets and imported bowls.
Building techniques: Stone and lime masonry with the distinctive interior tiered platforms; niche-walls displaying decorated basketry and Chinese and Indian porcelain — the interior as a merchant family's museum; the 16th-century city wall itself.
Village layout: The walls with their five gates enclosing a maze of alleys; mosques and shrines distributed through every quarter; the market outside the gates; the whole a compact urban world under four kilometres of wall.
Artifacts
Harar Jugol walled city
Architecture
The 16th-century walls, five gates, 82 mosques and shrine landscape — UNESCO World Heritage.
Harari house interior (nadaba)
Architecture & décor
The tiered reception room with basketry- and porcelain-hung walls — a distinctive domestic art.
Harari basketry
Craft
Brilliantly coloured coiled baskets that decorate the house walls and mark a bride's trousseau.
Harari manuscripts
Manuscripts
Centuries of Islamic scholarship in Arabic and Harari, held in family and shrine libraries.
Historical Timeline
c. 10th–13th c.
Harar emerges as a Muslim trading and scholarly centre in the eastern highlands; earliest mosques founded.
1520–1568
Harar becomes the capital of the Adal Sultanate; Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim (Gragn) campaigns from here; the city walls are built (c. 1551) against Oromo expansion.
1647–1875
The independent Emirate of Harar — a closed city where non-Muslims were forbidden; Richard Burton enters in disguise in 1855.
1875–1887
Egyptian occupation, then Menelik II's conquest at the battle of Chelenqo incorporates Harar into Ethiopia.
2006–present
Harar Jugol inscribed by UNESCO; the Harari regional state administers Ethiopia's smallest region; the hyena-feeding, shrine and house traditions continue.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Harar Jugol, the Fortified Historic Town — UNESCO World HeritageUNESCO
- Britannica: HararEncyclopaedia Britannica
Premium & scholarly sources