📞 +251-932-371-898 ✉ info@milanethiopiatours.com
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📞 +251-932-371-898 ✉ info@milanethiopiatours.com
Facebook | Instagram | Google | Tripadvisor
Harar is unlike any other city in Ethiopia — or anywhere in Africa. Enclosed within its ancient walls (the Jugol), the old city contains 99 mosques and shrines, 362 narrow alleyways, and centuries of Islamic trading culture that stretches back to its foundation in the 7th century. It is simultaneously a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a living city — its merchants trading coffee, khat, and textiles in markets that have operated continuously for 500 years.
The Jugol’s five gates — Arthur Rimbaud, Erer, Fallana, Harar, and Sanga — were traditionally locked at night, and even today the old city retains an intimacy and coherence that makes wandering its narrow streets one of the great urban experiences in Africa. The architecture is distinctive: Harari houses with elaborately decorated interior walls covered in baskets, pottery, and Islamic calligraphy. The French poet Arthur Rimbaud, who abandoned poetry to become a trader in Harar in the 1880s, lived in a house that is now a museum.
Every evening, outside the Jugol walls, a man who has inherited this role from generations of family members calls spotted hyenas by name from the surrounding darkness and hand-feeds them strips of raw meat. The hyenas — wild animals, not tame — come within touching distance. The ritual began 500 years ago as an offering to prevent hyenas from raiding the city. Today it is one of the most extraordinary wildlife encounters available anywhere in Africa.
Harar is one of Ethiopia’s oldest and most renowned coffee-producing regions. The Harari coffee ceremony — performed in the traditional way in local homes — is an experience of genuine cultural generosity. The city’s coffee market is one of the most atmospheric trading places in Ethiopia.
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