Exploring Harar, a medieval city in Ethiopia

by Sean McLachlan on

In my last post I wrote about how Harar is an alluring walled city that made me throw away my travel plans and stay for three weeks. A serene atmosphere and an ever-widening circle of knowledgeable, hospitable acquaintances were what kept me there, but what is there to actually see?

Plenty.

The main attraction, of course, is the city itself, with its crowded markets, quiet back alleys, and mixture of Ethiopian, Egyptian, Arab, and Italian architecture. A long wander in the Jegol, as locals call the old city, will give you a feel for life in this unique place. Don’t worry about getting lost. While the winding little alleyways make it inevitable, the city is so small you won’t stay lost for long. Walking at night is safe and very romantic with the right company and a full moon.

Harar’s most famous attraction is the hyena man. Yusuf Mumé Salih is a local farmer who lives just outside the walls. He sits out every night feeding the hyenas with raw donkey meat just like his uncle did before him. The Hararis and the hyenas have an unusual relationship. The city wall has small gates to allow the hyenas in at night and one Harari told me he was more afraid of dogs than hyenas! Hyenas are useful for eating garbage left on the streets and also take away djinn, harmful spirits that sometimes possess people. The hyena man will allow you to feed the animals yourself, and they’re surprisingly gentle. Walking in Harar at night one will occasionally slip by you and disappear down an alley. After visiting the hyena man, I didn’t worry about it.

%Gallery-91953%There are also a few museums. The Harar Museum and Cultural Center has a reconstructed traditional home that should not be missed. Harari homes consist of several rooms, including a common room with different platforms for sitting and colorful basketry hanging from the walls. If you stay in Harar for any length of time you’ll be invited into a real home, but it’s nice to poke about here because you can see the private quarters that are otherwise off-limits. Another excellent museum is the Abdullahi Sherif Private Museum, run by a descendant of the prophet Muhammad who has devoted his life to collecting, preserving, and studying artifacts from Harar’s past. The museum is housed in the palace that Emperor Haile Selassie grew up in. Examining the various coins, swords, dresses, and medieval manuscripts will show just how eventful Harar’s history was, and how it was a nexus of influences from all over the world.

Admirers of literature will want to see Rimbaud’s House, an elegant mansion that, in a surprising display of honesty, the curator told me was never Rimbaud’s. Be that as it may, it is now devoted to the memory of the poet, with many of his photos of old Harar and information about his life and work. Rimbaud introduced photography to Harar when he moved here in 1880 and his photos are priceless documents of life in the city more than a hundred years ago.

And there’s much more to explore. I’m planning to go back for two months next year to do an in-depth research project on some aspect of Harari culture. Exactly what aspect I’m not sure. As one Harari friend advised, “Don’t come here with an idea in your head. Let the city give you the subject.” Harar is that kind of place.

An excellent introduction to the city and its people is Harar: A Cultural Guide (Shama Books, 2007) by David Vô Vân and Mohammed Jami Guleid, with beautiful photographs by Alain Zorzutti.

Don’t forget to read the rest of my series on travel in Ethiopia.

Next time: some final thoughts on travel in Ethiopia.

Harar: Ethiopia’s medieval masterpiece

by Sean McLachlan on

If you’re lucky, every now and then when you’re on the road you’ll come to a place where a little voice will say, “Stop here. This is what you were looking for.” You’ll have other plans, a nice neat schedule you made up in your head of what you wanted to see in the time you have for your trip. If you stop, if you listen to the little voice, you’ll miss a lot of things you had planned to see.

Do it.

For me that place was Harar, a walled medieval city I visited halfway through my two-month trip around the Horn of Africa. My wife had flown home, having thoroughly enjoyed the lifetime of memories I gave her as a tenth anniversary present. Now I was free to go anywhere I liked without consulting anyone else. Or I was free to go nowhere.

Harar is reached on a ten-hour bus ride from Addis Ababa. That’s not as bad as it sounds. The road is paved and the two main bus companies, Salaam Bus and Sky Bus, offer modern, comfortable transport. The scenery gradually changes from the hilly green of the Amhara and Oromo provinces to the rockier, drier region around Harar. The city is at a lower elevation than Addis or most of the north and I could feel the change in temperature.

Nobody knows how old Harar is. Hararis say it was founded in the early part of the Muslim era, perhaps in the 7th century AD, but given its location on the border between the core of the Ethiopian empire in the western and northern highlands, and the Somali lowlands and the sea to the south and east, it was probably a trading center long before that. Harar has always been a place where different cultures meet.

The first thing I noticed about Harar is how small it is. It’s more of a town than a city, with a bit of sprawl in the surrounding hills. The area encompassed by the 16th century walls can be walked across in fifteen minutes, and walked around in little more than an hour. It’s slightly less than 120 acres. Yet within these walls there’s an entire history and a unique culture rich in symbolism. For example the Jegol, as the old city is called, has five gates, corresponding to the five pillars of Islam. There used to be 99 mosques in the Jegol to correspond to the 99 names of Allah. The list of symbols both in the geography of the city and in the shape and layout of the buildings could and does fill volumes.

%Gallery-91809%Walled cities have an atmosphere all their own. Damascus, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Segovia. . .they all feel like they’re worlds unto themselves. The wall is more than just a physical barrier. In the days when city gates were closed at night the walls provided a very real social and psychological barrier. The people who grew up inside the city will be subtly different than those who lived only a few miles away. In the case of Harar the difference isn’t so subtle. Hararis have their own language spoken only within the walls of the Jegol.

My education in the ways of Harar started on the first day. I hadn’t been inside the Jegol for more than an hour before I was invited to join a meeting of the Harar Revitalization group, which is rebuilding dilapidated old buildings and wants to restore three of the five city gates that the Emperor Haile Selassie knocked down in order to allow access to cars. We sat on a carpet on the floor in the back room of one of the museums as a local poet and songwriter coached a group of young people who were recording a CD of songs about their city.

I soon found that the shopkeepers and office workers sitting around me were some of Harar’s intelligentsia–writers and historians and lexicographers. I’d tapped into a rich vein of scholars who cared about their city so deeply that they spent their spare hours learning its secrets and preserving it for future generations. As a former archaeologist turned writer, I couldn’t ask for better company. Over the following days and weeks I found many doors open for me, and over endless rounds of rich Harari coffee I met people who shared vast amounts of knowledge, and were curious to learn what I knew.

I soon settled into a rhythm. Every morning I’d sit at my favorite cafe on the main square sipping an excellent macchiato and watching the world go by. A Somali friend would often join me, and sometimes some of the Harari researchers. After some leisurely conversation it was time for a stroll around town, followed a conversation in some shaded alley or courtyard. Afternoons were spent in one of three homes, drinking coffee and talking about everything from linguistics to travel to history. Then as the sun set it came time to walk the darkened streets of the Jegol under the light of the moon.

It wasn’t long before I became a familiar face. The touts in the main square stopped trying to get me to go on tours and people always knew where to find me. Once I was headed down one of the main streets to find Amir, the assistant curator of a local museum. As I passed down the street someone I didn’t know said, “Amir is in the cafe.” He didn’t tell me which cafe, but I figured it was the one people usually saw me at. Sure enough, there sat Amir. Now this fellow couldn’t have known I was looking for Amir, hell, Amir didn’t know I was looking for Amir, but Harar is that sort of place.

So when you get to Harar, slow down. Skip the sights for a while and sit in the shade with a good companion. Or don’t. Perhaps you need to stop somewhere else.

Don’t forget to read the rest of my series on travel in Ethiopia.

Next time: more on Harar (with suggestions on what you can actually see there)

Exhibit highlights 1001 inventions of the Muslim world

by Sean McLachlan on

A new exhibit at London’s Science Museum explores the often-forgotten contributions to science from Muslim scholars.

1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in our World follows the contributions of Muslim civilization from the 7th to the 17th centuries. After the disintegration of the Roman Empire, scientific study lapsed in Europe, but soon dynamic civilizations based in the Middle East took up the slack. From important centers such as Damascus and Baghdad came developments in medicine, mathematics, astronomy, geography, and a host of other studies. Muslim scholars were the first to build gliders, the first to create free public hospitals, and the first to use carrier pigeons s a means of quick, long distance communications.

The exhibition is divided into sections such as Home, Town, and Market, each highlighting different contributions to science and daily life. Also discussed is how civilizations in the Middle East preserved many ancient Greek and Latin books in Arabic translations when they were lost in Europe. Later they were translated back into Greek and Latin so Renaissance scholars could read them, thus bringing much of Europe’s heritage back to Europe.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a replica of a 13th century clock by the Arab scholar Al-Jazari that stands more than twenty feet high and celebrates the diversity of knowledge by having an Indian elephant holding up an Egyptian phoenix, Arab figures, a Persian carpet, and Chinese dragons. The clock runs on moving water following a system invented by the Greeks.

In an interview with the BBC, Professor Salim Al-Hassani, one of the exhibition’s organizers, suggested that science lapsed in Islamic civilization after the twin blows of the Crusades and the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols. Much of the Muslim world was taken over by the Ottomans, a bureaucratic state that stifled scientific initiative. Then the scientists of Renaissance Europe adopted their learning and progressed it further, much like the Muslim world took the learning of the Classical World and developed it.

1001 Inventions runs until April 25. Admission is free.

Interfaith tourism in Syria

by Sean McLachlan on

Who says the Middle East has to be a place of religious tension?

Not the worshipers at Deir Mar Mousa monastery. This medieval Christian monastery is a pilgrimage center for Christians and Muslims alike thanks to an open policy of worship and tolerant religious discussion.

Christians make up about ten percent of Syria’s population and there are churches in many cities, like the one in Hama pictured here. Byzantine monasteries dot the countryside, although most have been empty for centuries.

Deir Mar Mousa is located atop a rugged hill in the desert fifty miles north of Damascus. Long abandoned, its buildings and historic frescoes were restored over the past two decades and it’s now open to all. Pilgrims are welcome to stay the night for free in a stone hut in exchange for light work such as cleaning the dishes. Much of the pilgrims’ time is spent participating in long, patient discussions with people who believe differently than they do. Sounds a bit like the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

You don’t have to be of a particular religion or indeed any religion to stay, but getting there is a bit complicated and you’ll need some basic equipment. Instructions are on the monastery’s website.

The monastery is run by the Jesuit priest Rev. Paolo Dall’Oglio and a group of monks, nuns, and lay volunteers. This group has taken a vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience like in most monastic communities, but unusually they have also dedicated themselves to “being in service and love for the Muslim world.” People gather regularly for prayer meetings that involve silent meditation, multilingual services, and interfaith discussion.

Father Dall’Oglio explains his life’s work by saying, “Jesus loves Muslims, the same Jesus who is alive in me.”

When speaking with the New York Times for a recent article, he put it more simply.

“We’re all in this together.”

Evolution of travel complaints: TSA just the latest target

by Mike Barish on

This week saw the vitriol of travelers (and travel writers) directed at the TSA. The new TSA regulations that were imposed in light of the terrorist attempt on a Northwest Airlines flight led many to unleash the proverbial hounds and attack both the TSA and Department of Homeland Security with great fervor. It became quite fashionable (and deservedly so) to use blogs and Twitter to mock the TSA’s plans for keeping us safe.

However, this hysteria is not new in the travel community. Travelers have a long history of finding a target for their angst and attacking it like cat on a Roomba. The TSA is just the latest object of travelers’ derision. There were others before it and there will be others after it.

Let’s take a look back at travel complaints through history.God – The Garden of Eden was the original all-inclusive resort. Despite the absence of a “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” policy, the Almighty actually had pretty stringent rules. While there was a veritable buffet for Adam and Eve, apples were off limits. The first guests to violate this policy were removed from the property and led management to blacklist all human visitors. Is that species profiling? Sure seems like it.

Christianity vs. Islam – Europeans have always enjoyed traveling. However, their motives for getting out and about during the Crusades were pretty shady.

India – Christopher Columbus never forgave India for not being in the Americas. Annual parades have yet to appease him.

Lack of produce – Scurvy was no joke back in the day. Now it’s a pretty good joke anytime someone offers you an orange.

Babies – They cry. They kick the back of your seat. They have little comprehension of the expletives that you’re shouting at their mothers.

People who recline their seats – I am one of these people. I make no apologies to anyone.

Airline food – Did you hear that airline food is gross? Yeah, so did every comedian in the 1990s.

Travelers vs. Tourists – The travelers vs. tourists debate is an epic one pitting blowhards against windbags. It has, however, kept the soapbox industry in business.

Cruises – When you’re the cause of a Twitter hashtag getting hijacked, you’ve officially made it as a preeminent target for travel complaints.

TSA – They’ve been accused of racial profiling, enforcing their policies arbitrarily and reacting to incidents with asinine updates to their rules. This latest episode is practically old hat for them. A hat that must be removed during the screening process, of course.

So, what’s my point here? At the end of the day, travelers will always find something about which to complain. Sometimes it will be justified while other times it will simply be a matter of opinion. People will always enjoy pointing fingers, making judgments and mounting their high horses.

But I think we can all agree that people who wear socks with sandals are just plain wrong.

Photo by Flickr user Aardvark of Fnord.