Located in the eastern part of Ethiopia, more than 500km from Addis Ababa, the city was founded around the 7th century by the extinct Harla people. Over the centuries, Harar was always under the ambition of any neighbour for its attractive fertile area and for being the crucial crossroads of the trade routes to the Red Sea and Egypt. Merchants from the Arabian Peninsula had a strong presence and spread Islam, turning several small states in the Horn of Africa into sultanates and embracing the new faith. Harar later became part of the Zeila Confederacy Alliance, the Sultanate of Showa and the Sultanate of Adal, the latter being the most prominent period of the city's history in the 16th century. Wars with the neighbouring Christian kingdom of Abyssinia weakened the prosperous Harar and allowed the Oromo to expand and play their role in the region. The emirate of Harar ended under Egyptian occupation in the late 19th century. With the newly opened Suez Canal, Egypt envisioned a Nile-Africa empire occupying the entire Red Sea littoral. A few years later, however, Egypt suffered a financial crisis and eventual British invasion. Menelik II, king of Shewa who was to become Emperor of Ethiopia, did not hesitate to move in with his army and incorporate Harar and its region into Ethiopia to this day. From the 19th century onwards, European explorers and traders began to visit and settle in Harar, such as British explorer Richard Burton and French poet Arthur Rimbaud, who lived there for a decade and traded coffee and arms. During World War II, Harar was invaded by the Italian fascist army for a few years.
The Gey Sinan or Harari language still survives in the streets and houses of Harar, in addition to Amharic and Oromo. This Semitic language, derived from the Harar language, is accompanied by a remarkable literature and immemorial oral histories. Folklore and traditions are sung and danced reviving the ancestors and the best days of the city. These songs, known as Gey Faqar, are performed during feasts and weddings, with the newlyweds usually getting engaged on the day of Shewal Eid in the month of Ramadan. And Harar is Islam's fourth holiest city. With more than 80 mosques, 100 shrines and madrasas within its centuries-old walls, Harar has played an important role in the training of Ulamas or Muslim scholars in East Africa. Although the majority of its inhabitants are Sunni, there are other faiths in the city. When Menelik II, representative of the thousand-year-old House of Solomon, the stronghold of Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, conquered Harar, he did not seek conversion to Christianity and proclaimed "Let the Muslim live like his father before him". This wise decision allowed Christians and Indians to settle and become part of the great melting pot of cultures, ethnicities and faiths throughout Ethiopia.
And this coexistence of ethnicities and faiths has become Harar's other wall, another symbol. A wall that embraces and integrates others, a wall that provides spaces for understanding and unity, a wall that protects against adversity and tyranny, a wall that brings peace. That peace lost in Ethiopia and many other places, that peace that needs to return to that wall.
Peace. Selam.