- Aussa Sultanate
The Aussa Sultanate (also spelled Awsa and sometimes called the Afar sultanate) was a kingdom of the
Afar people that existed in easternEthiopia in the area borderingEritrea andDjibouti . It was considered to be the leading monarchy of theAfar people , to whom the other Afar rulers acknowledged (at least in theory) primacy.The Sultanate of Aussa succeeded the earlier
Imamate of Aussa , which had come into existence in1577 whenMuhammed Jasa moved his capital fromHarar toAussa with the split of theAdal Sultanate into Aussa and the Harari city-state. Aussa declined and came to an end (temporarily) at some point after1672 , when ImamUmar Din bin Adam is recorded to have ascended the throne. [Mordechai Abir, "The era of the princes: the challenge of Islam and the re-unification of the Christian empire, 1769-1855" (London: Longmans, 1968), p. 23 n.1] The Sultanate was afterwards re-established byKedafu around the year 1734. [Abir, pp. 23-26.] The primary symbol of the sultan was a silver baton, which was considered to have magical properties. [J. Spencer Trimingham, "Islam in Ethiopia" (Oxford: Geoffrey Cumberlege for the University Press, 1952), p. 262]Sultan
Mahammad ibn Hanfadhe defeated and killedWerner Munzinger in1875 , who was leading an Egyptian army into Ethiopia. [Edward Ullendorff, "The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People", second edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 90. ISBN 0-19-285061-X.] In 1865, the newly unifiedItaly boughtAsseb from a local sultan (which became the colony ofEritrea in1890 ), and led Sultan Mahammad to sign several treaties with that country. As a result, the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II stationed an army near Aussa to "make sure the Sultan of Awsa would not honor his promise of full cooperation with Italy" during theFirst Italo–Ethiopian War . [Chris Proutky, "Empress Taytu and Menilek II" (Trenton: The Red Sea Press, 1986), p. 143. ISBN 0-932415-11-3.]During the second Italian-Ethiopian War, the Sultan
Mahammad Yayyo again agreed to cooperate with the Italian invaders. [Anthony Mockler, "Haile Selassie's War" (Brooklyn: Olive Branch Press, 2003), p. 111.] As a result, in1943 the reinstalled Ethiopian government sent a military expedition that captured Sultan Muhammad, and made one of his relatives Sultan. [Trimingham, p. 172.]The current sultan of the Afars is
Alimirah Hanfadhe . He was exiled to Saudi Arabia in 1975, but he returned after the fall of theDerg regime in 1991.ee also
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Afar Region
*Mudaito dynasty Notes
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