The hottest country of the Horn: the long trough of the Danakil depression under the Tigray escarpment, with the salt plain of Lake Assale (Karum) and the sulphur springs of Dallol below sea level, and east of it the volcanic coast ranges and the Red Sea shore with its anchorages (the Buri peninsula, Mersa Fatma, Thio, Edd, Beylul, Assab, Rahaita).
The Afar here herd goats, sheep and camels, fish and dive, and cut the rock salt of the plain, which caravans carry up the escarpment to the markets of Tigray (a trade described in the sixteenth century and probably much older). Ibn Sa'id's Dankal of the mid-thirteenth century are placed on this coast towards the Bab al-Mandab. The 'kingdom of Dankali' with its seat near Beylul, which Alvares described in the 1520s, is later.
Who holds it
- Name
- Not known for 1200
- Title
- Afar clan chiefs and elders
- Since
- Not applicable
- Confidence
- low
How things stand that morning
No war recorded. North-west the Saho of the escarpment; west the Zagwe province of Tigray (eth sheet); across the sea the Yemeni Tihama (arb sheet).
Customs
Clan law (madaa) under chiefs and elders; salt-cutting by custom on the plain; dues from the salt caravans.
Assemblies
Not recorded for 1200.
Overlord claims
None known in 1200; the Zagwe kingdom above the escarpment buys their salt but is not known to rule them.
Where the sources disagree
- The salt trade's antiquity is inferred; the first full description is sixteenth-century.
Evidence: Ibn Sa'id's mention and later accounts; no archaeology of the period read.
On the map: The western edge follows the foot of the escarpment roughly.
Primary sources for Afar
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- The History of the Observant Traveller: the pages on Zeila, Berbera, Mogadishu and Dahlak, Ibn al-Mujawir (Yusuf ibn Yaqub ibn al-Mujawir) (about 1221 to 1230). The closest description of the Horn's ports to 1200, written about twenty-five years later by a trader and official who worked the Aden trade: Zeila and its traffic in slaves, ivory and the goods of the Ethiopian interior; the Barbar (Somali) coast with Berbera and Mogadishu, and the sea route from Aden to Mogadishu and on to Kilwa with its sailing seasons; the Dahlak islands with their own sultan and his dues; Socotra; and the customs and prices of Aden under the Ayyubids of Yemen. Read online
Sources and studies
- Wikipedia: Afar people
- Taddesse Tamrat, Ethiopia, the Red Sea and the Horn, in Cambridge History of Africa vol. 3 (1977); from the researcher's knowledge and the Wikipedia summaries citing it, not re-read
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.