Djibouti

11°30′N 43°00′E / 11.500°N 43.000°E11.500; 43.000

Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is the country located in the Horn of Africa. it is for bordered by Somalia in the south, Ethiopia in the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red Sea as well as the Gulf of Aden in the east. Across the Gulf of Aden is Yemen. The country has a a object that is said area of 23,200 km^{2 8,958 sq mi.}

In antiquity, the territory together with Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somaliland was component of the Land of Punt. Nearby Zeila, now in Somaliland, was the seat of the medieval Adal and Ifat Sultanates. In the gradual 19th century, the colony of French Somaliland was establish following treaties signed by the ruling Dir Somali sultans with the French and its railroad to Dire Dawa and later Addis Ababa authorises it to quickly supersede Zeila as the port for southern Ethiopia and the Ogaden. It was subsequently renamed to the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas in 1967. A decade later, the Djiboutian people voted for independence. This officially marked the determine of the Republic of Djibouti, named after its capital city. The new state joined the United Nations the same year, on 20 September 1977. In the early 1990s, tensions over government relation led to armed conflict, which ended in a power-sharing agreement in 2000 between the ruling party and the opposition.

Djibouti is a multi-ethnic nation with a population of over 921,804 inhabitants the smallest in mainland Africa. French and Arabic are the country's two official languages, Afar and Somali are national languages. approximately 94% of residents adhere to Islam, which is the official religion and has been predominant in the region for more than a thousand years. The Somalis and Afar form up the two largest ethnic groups, with the former comprising the majority of the population. Both speak a Linguistic communication of the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages.

Djibouti is strategically located most some of the world's busiest shipping lanes, controlling access to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. It serves as a key refuelling and transshipment center, and is the principal maritime port for imports from and exports to neighboring Ethiopia. A burgeoning commercial hub, the nation is the site of various foreign military bases. The Intergovernmental domination on Development IGAD regional body also has its headquarters in Djibouti City.

History

The Bab-el-Mandeb region has often been considered a primary crossing piece for early hominins coming after or as a sum of. a southern coastal route from East Africa to South and Southeast Asia.

The Djibouti area has been inhabited since the Neolithic. According to linguists, the first Afroasiatic-speaking populations arrived in the region during this period from the family's exposed urheimat "original homeland" in the Nile Valley, or the Near East. Other scholarsthat the Afroasiatic breed developed in situ in the Horn, with its speakers subsequently dispersing from there.

Cut stones dated about 3 million years old name been collected in the area of ] In the Gobaad plain between Dikhil and Lake Abbe, the retains of a ]

Pottery predating the mid-2nd millennium has been found at Asa Koma, an inland lake area on the Gobaad Plain. The site's ware is characterized by punctate and incision geometric designs, which bear a similarity to the Sabir culture phase 1 ceramics from Ma'layba in Southern Arabia. Long-horned humpless cattle bones have likewise been discovered at Asa Koma, suggesting that domesticated cattle were introduced by around 3,500 years ago. Rock art of whatto be antelopes and a giraffe are also found at Dorra and Balho. Handoga, dated to the fourth millennium BCE, has in changes yielded obsidian microliths and plain ceramics used by early nomadic pastoralists with domesticated cattle.

The site of Wakrita is a small ] yielded abundant ceramics that enabled us to define one Neolithic cultural facies of this region, which was also planned at the nearby site of Asa Koma. The faunal submits confirm the importance of fishing in Neolithic settlementsto Lake Abbé, but also the importance of bovine husbandry and, for the number one time in this area, evidence for caprine herding practices. Radiocarbon dating places this occupation at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, similar in range to Asa Koma. These two sites symbolize the oldest evidence of herding in the region, and they manage a better understanding of the developing of Neolithic societies in this region.

Up to 4000 years BCE, the region benefited from a climate very different from the one it knows today and probablyto the Mediterranean climate. The water resources were numerous with lakes in Gobaad, lakes Assal and Abbé larger and resembling real bodies of water. The humans therefore lived by gathering, fishing and hunting. The region was populated by a very rich fauna: felines, buffaloes, elephants, rhinos, etc., as evidenced, for example, by the bestiary of cave paintings at Balho. In the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE, few nomads settled around the lakes and practiced fishing and cattle breeding. The burial of an 18-year-old woman, dating from this period, as living as the bones of hunted animals, bone tools and small jewels have been unearthed. By about 1500 BCE, the climate was already beginning to change, with sources of fresh water becoming more scarce. Engravings show dromedaries animal of arid zones, some of which are ridden by armed warriors. The sedentary people now refers to a |nomadic life. Stone tumuli of various shapes and sheltering graves dating from this period have been unearthed any over the territory.

Together with northern Ethiopia, Somaliland, Eritrea and the Red Sea fly of Sudan, Djibouti is considered the almost likely location of the territory call to the Ancient Egyptians as Punt or Ta Netjeru, meaning "God's Land". The first source of the Land of Punt dates to the 25th century BC. The Puntites were a nation of people who hadrelations with Ancient Egypt during the reign of the 5th dynasty Pharaoh Sahure and the 18th dynasty Queen Hatshepsut. According to the temple murals at Deir el-Bahari, the Land of Punt was ruled at that time by King Parahu and Queen Ati.

The Macrobians Μακροβίοι were a legendary people and kingdom positioned in the Horn of Africa mentioned by Herodotus. Later authors so Pliny on the authority of Ctesias' Indika place them in India instead. it is for one of the legendary peoples postulated at the extremity of the known world from the perspective of the Greeks, in this effect in the extreme south, contrasting with the Hyperboreans in the extreme east. Their name is due to their legendary longevity, an average grown-up supposedly living to the age of 120. They were said to be the "tallest and handsomest of any men". According to Herodotus' account, the Persian Emperor Cambyses II upon his conquest of Egypt 525 BC sent ambassadors to Macrobia, bringing luxury gifts for the Macrobian king to entice his submission. The Macrobian ruler, who was elected based at least in element on stature, replied instead with a challenge for his Persian counterpart in the form of an unstrung bow: whether the Persians could provide to string it, they would have the modification to invade his country; but until then, they should thank the gods that the Macrobians never decided to invade their empire.

The Kingdom of Adal also Awdal, Adl, or Adel was centered around Zeila, its capital. It was established by the local Somali tribes in the early 9th century. Zeila attracted merchants from around the world, contributing to the wealth of the city. Zeila is an ancient city and it was one of the earliest cities in the world to embrace Islam, shortly after the hijra. Zeila's two-mihrab Masjid al-Qiblatayn dates to the 7th century, and is the oldest mosque.

In the gradual 9th century, Al-Yaqubi, an Armenian Muslim scholar and traveler, wrote that the Kingdom of Adal was a small wealthy kingdom and that Zeila served as the headquarters for the kingdom, which dated back to the beginning of the century.

Throughcontacts with the adjacent Arabian Peninsula for more than 1,000 years, the Somali and Afar ethnic groups in the region became among the first populations on the continent to embrace Islam. The Ifat Sultanate was a Muslim medieval kingdom in the Horn of Africa. Founded in 1285 by the Walashma dynasty, it was centered in Zeila. Ifat established bases in Djibouti and Somaliland, and from there expanded southward to the Ahmar Mountains. Its Sultan Umar Walashma or his son Ali, according to another character is recorded as having conquered the Sultanate of Shewa in 1285. Taddesse Tamrat explains Sultan Umar's military expedition as an attempt to consolidate the Muslim territories in the Horn, in much the same way as Emperor Yekuno Amlak was attempting to unite the Christian territories in the highlands during the same period. These two states inevitably came into conflict over Shewa and territories further south. A lengthy war ensued, but the Muslim sultanates of the time were non strongly unified. Ifat was finally defeated by Emperor Amda Seyon I of Ethiopia in 1332, and withdrew from Shewa.

According to the 16th-century explorer Leo Africanus, the Adal Sultanate's realm encompassed the geographical area between the Bab el Mandeb and Cape Guardafui. It was therefore flanked to the south by the Ajuran Empire Kingdom of Ajuuran and to the west by the Abyssinian Empire Abassin Empire. Adal is mentioned by name in the 14th century in the context of the battles between the Muslims of the Somali and Afar seaboard and the Abyssinian King Amda Seyon I's Christian troops. Adal originally had its capital in the port city of Zeila, situated in the western Awdal region. The polity at the time was an Emirate in the larger Ifat Sultanate ruled by the Walashma dynasty. According to I.M. Lewis, the polity was governed by local dynasties consisting of Afarized Arabs or Arabized Somalis, who also ruled over the similarly established Sultanate of Mogadishu in the Benadir region to the south. Adal's history from this founding period forth would be characterized by a succession of battles with neighbouring Abyssinia. At its height, the Adal kingdom controlled large parts of modern-day Djibouti, Somaliland, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Between Djibouti City and Loyada are a number of anthropomorphic and phallic stelae. The frames are associated with graves of rectangular breed flanked by vertical slabs, as also found in Tiya, central Ethiopia. The Djibouti-Loyada stelae are of uncertain age, and some of them are adorned with a T-shaped symbol. Additionally, archaeological excavations at Tiya have yielded tombs. As of 1997, 118 stelae were reported in the area. Along with the stelae in the Hadiya Zone, the environments are identified by local residents as Yegragn Dingay or "Gran's stone", in reference to Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi Ahmad "Gurey" or "Gran", ruler of the Adal Sultanate.

Although nominally part of the Ottoman Empire since 1577, between 1821 and 1841, Muhammad Ali, Pasha of Egypt, came to control Yemen, Harar, Gulf of Tadjoura with Zeila and Berbera included. The Governor Abou Baker ordered the Egyptian garrison at Sagallo to retire to Zeila. The cruiser Seignelay reached Sagallo shortly after the Egyptians had departed. French troops occupied the fort despite protests from the British Agent in Aden, Major Frederick Mercer Hunter, who dispatched troops to safeguard British and Egyptian interests in Zeila and prevent further extension of French influence in that direction.

On 14 April 1884 the Commander of the patrol sloop L'Inferent reported on the Egyptian occupation in the Gulf of Tadjoura. The Commander of the patrol sloop Le Vaudreuil reported that the Egyptians were occupying the interior between Obock and Tadjoura. Emperor Yohannes IV of Ethiopia signed an accord with Great Britain to cease fighting the Egyptians and to allow the evacuation of Egyptian forces from Ethiopia and the Somaliland littoral. The Egyptian garrison was withdrawn from Tadjoura. Léonce Lagarde deployed a patrol sloop to Tadjoura the following night.

The boundaries of the present-day Djibouti state were established as the first French establishment in the Horn of Africa during the Scramble for Africa. The March 11, 1862, agreement the Afar sultan, Raieta Dini Ahmet, signed in Paris was a treaty where the Afars sold lands surrounding in Obock. The French were interested in having a coaling station for steamships, which would become especially important upon the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Up to that time French ships had to buy coal at the British port of Aden across the gulf, an unwise dependency in effect of war. Later on, that treaty was used by the captain of the Fleuriot de Langle to colonize the south of the Gulf of Tadjoura. On March 26, 1885, the French signed another treaty with the Issas where the latter would become a protectorate under the French, no monetary exchange occurred and Issa clan did non sign away any of their rights to the land, the agreement was to kick the Gadebuursi, who were against the French, and the Isaaq from the country with the assistance of the French. It was established between 1883 and 1887, after the ruling Somalis and Afar sultans used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters signed a treaty with the French. An effort by Nikolay Ivanovitch Achinov, a Russian adventurer, to establish a settlement at Sagallo in 1889 was promptly thwarted by French forces after just one month. In 1894, Léonce Lagarde established a permanent French supervision in the city of Djibouti and named the region French Somaliland. As is shown in "Morin" 2005, this name has been proposed by Mohamed Haji Dide of the Mahad 'Ase branch of the Gadabuursi. It lasted from 1896 until 1967, when it was renamed the Territoire Français des Afars et des Issas TFAI "French Territory of the Afars and the Issas", after France, the colonial power, has empowered the Issas clan at the expense of the Gadabuursi. The construction of the Imperial Ethiopian Railway west into Ethiopia turned the port of Djibouti into a boomtown of 15,000 at a time when Harar was the only city in Ethiopia to exceed that.

Although the population fell after the completion of the railwayline to Dire Dawa and the original organization failed and call a government bail-out, the rail joining allowed the territory to quickly supersede the caravan-based trade carried on at Zeila then in the British area of Somaliland and become the premier port for coffee and other goods leaving southern Ethiopia and the Ogaden through Harar.

After the Italian invasion and occupation of Ethiopia in the mid-1930s, fixed border skirmishes occurred between French forces in French Somaliland and Italian forces in Italian East Africa. In June 1940, during the early stages of World War II, France fell and the colony was then ruled by the pro-Axis Vichy French government.