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Updated: June 14, 2025
Harar is still, as of old , the great "half way house" for slaves from Zangaro, Gurague, and the Galla tribes, Alo and others : Abyssinians and Amharas, the most valued , have become rare since the King of Shoa prohibited the exportation.
Three of his cousins, however, were, when I visited Harar, in confinement: one of them since that time died, and has been buried in his fetters. The Somal declare that the state-dungeon of Harar is beneath the palace, and that he who once enters it, lives with unkempt beard and untrimmed nails until the day when death sets him free. The Amir Ahmed's health is infirm.
This appearing satisfactory, I added, in lively remembrance of the proverbial delays of Africa, where two or three months may elapse before a letter is answered or a verbal message delivered, that perhaps the Prince would be pleased to dismiss us soon, as the air of Harar was too dry for me, and my attendants were in danger of the small-pox, then raging in the town.
The pretty wife Sudiyah and the good Khayrah were made happy by sundry gifts of huge Birmingham ear-rings, brooches and bracelets, scissors, needles, and thread. The evening as usual ended in a feast. "We halted a week at Wilensi to feed, in truth my companions had been faring lentenly at Harar, and to lay in stock and strength for the long desert march before us.
The skin, amongst the tribes inhabiting the hot regions, is smooth, black, and glossy; as the altitude increases it becomes lighter, and about Harar it is generally of a cafe au lait colour. The Bedouins are fond of raising beauty marks in the shape of ghastly seams, and the thickness of the epidermis favours the size of these stigmates. The male figure is tall and somewhat ungainly.
Friendship between the Amir of Harar and the governor of Zayla had been broken; the road through the Eesa Somal had been closed by the murder of Masud, a favourite slave and adopted son of Sharmarkay; all strangers had been expelled the city for some misconduct by the Harar chief; moreover, small-pox was raging there with such violence that the Galla peasantry would allow neither ingress nor egress.
Harar is essentially a commercial town: its citizens live, like those of Zayla, by systematically defrauding the Galla Bedouins, and the Amir has made it a penal offence to buy by weight and scale. He receives, as octroi, from eight to fifteen cubits of Cutch canvass for every donkey- load passing the gates, consequently the beast is so burdened that it must be supported by the drivers.
"At 10 a.m. on the 2nd January," says Burton, "all the villagers assembled, and recited the Fatihah, consoling us with the information that we were dead men." The little company, carrying their lives in their hands, then set forward, and presently came in sight of Harar, "a dark speck upon a tawny sheet of stubble."
Wearied by delay at Harar, I employed myself in meditating flight; they drily declared that after-wit serves no good purpose: whilst I considered the possibility of escape, they looked only at the prospect of being dragged back with pinioned arms by the Amir's guard. Such is generally the effect of the vulgar Moslems' blind fatalism.
The furniture of a house at Harar is simple, a few skins, and in rare cases a Persian rug, stools, coarse mats, and Somali pillows, wooden spoons, and porringers shaped with a hatchet, finished with a knife, stained red, and brightly polished.
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