P2:Welcome to the Ogaden-Mystic Land: A Travelers Guide

[Queen_Arawello]

Part Two:

The traveller, driving up the meandering road from the torrid lowlands to the cool Harar highlands, passes between mountain ranges divided by narrow valleys, punctuated with wonderful charming scenes. What a beautiful panoramic scenes: - sheer walls of naked rock, lofty slopes wooded to the summit with acacia, eucalyptus, and various types of cactus. The mountainsides are terraced for the cultivation of coffee or other crops. Emerging from the precipitous mountains to the broad level plateau, the road then proceeds through richly cultivated fields of maize, sorghum, and various other cereals. Finally, the bus stops at Lake Adale located on the summit of Dangago mountains .There are huge numbers of trucks at Adale hurriedly waiting for hundreds of tons of khat to be taken to Diridhaba where it is exported daily to Djibouti and Somaliland by air. It is in this district where the famous "Awday-khat" chewed by middle class businessmen is grown.

Now, we are in Harar; the city we heard about its past historical glory; a city of 90 mosques and minarets´; the city of saints and sheikhs who came from Arabia to spread Islam in east Africa.

Harar is a splendid city in the real sense of the word: the natural beauty of its surrounding evergreen hills from which the endless streams and rivers that carry fertile soils into the lowland farming areas have their sources; its tall eucalyptus trees that cast long shadows over its labyrinthine streets; the white and blue doomed mosques rising high from the old part of the city; the high and wide gates that once defended the city from the invading enemies and the magnificent historical castles that gave Harar its sobriquet as the "Switzerland" of east Africa. The best way to visit the ancient walled party of the city that has five entrance gates symbolizing the five pillars of Islam is, by taking a horse drawn couch.

Hand-feeding local hyenas are part of the tourist´s attraction. There is an old man who hand-feeds some 50 hyenas every night, treating them like kittens. The "heynaman" is considered as the main tourist attraction of Harar. He inherited the art of communicating with hyenas from his late father. It goes without saying that Harar was named a UNESCO World Heritage site last year, joining some of the world´s top landmarks as the Grand Canyon in the United Sates, the Great Wall of China and the Acropolis in a Greece.

The city is rich in history. It was the first Islamic state in Africa. The first European who set foot in Harar was Sir Richard Francis Burton (1553), the famous British explorer and the translator of "Arabian Nights" into English. He saw a flourishing Islamic city when it was ruled by Amir Nur, the grandson of Imam Ahmed Gurey, whose army reached the Sudan border before he was killed by Emperor Gladios. It had a trade relationship with Awdal kingdom whose capital city was Zeylac in Somaliland,[/b]

[Queen_Arawello]

Harar city wall

[Queen_Arawello]