AFAR HISTORY

By Rouyyan        

Afar people make up over 7 million out of the present more than 70 million population of the states in the Horn of Africa: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. The Afar nation has a single common mother tongue and basic common culture. The Afar language, Qafar Af, belongs to the eastern Kushitic group of languages. The Afar language is very closely related to Saho, with more than 80 percent of the words in common and distantly related to Oromo and Somali. Like Af Somali and Afan Oromo, the Afar

language is written in Roman (Latin Alphabet). The Afar Alphabet, known commonly as Qafar Feera, is created by Dimis and Redo, två Afar intellectual nationalists who published the fruit of their first work in the early seventies. In the 19th century, prior to what is known as the “scramble for Africa” which led to the incursion and occupation by European colonial powers (Italy, France, England) ofthe Afar triangle, the Afar nation was united and had its own well

functioning political, social and legal structure. Trade and various kinds of skills such as wood and metal works, weaving, pottery and tannery flourished. Pastoralism, fishery and salt production were

well developed. The Afar nation has an extraordinarily rich heritage of proverbs, stories, songs and riddles. They have very comprehensive plant and animal names. The Afar customary law and various customs pertaining to marriage, paternity, dress etc…

have elaborate descriptions and all those things have enriched Qafar Af. The political set up of the Afar land was organized under semi-independent Sultanates (most known amongst them are Sultanates of Awsa, Biru, Gobaad, Rahayto, Tagorri) that were a constituent of a federal Afar state in this part of the world known as

the Horn of Africa. At the advent of colonialism in the beginning of the last century, the Afar coastal regions (Part of present Eritrea now) witnessed several battles, where the Afar People showed unyielding resistance against the advancing foreign forces.           

To the Afars, the presence of foreign occupation on the coastal regions was regarded as strategically harmful to the sovereignty of the whole Afar Nation. However, the European army equipped with high military technological weapons succeeded to occupy the

coastal area from Dahlack to Zeila, despite the large and persistent resistance from indigenous Afar fighters. The colonialists methodically eroded the above-mentioned federation as they did everywhere in the rest of the African continent. The end result of that occupation has become that the Afar people have against their will been segmented into the present States of Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

By Rouyyan  misleena@hotmail.com