Harar Jugol, the Fortified Historic Town!

The fortified historic town of Harar is located in the eastern part of the country on a plateau with deep gorges surrounded by deserts and savannah.

The walls surrounding this sacred Muslim city were built between the 13th and 16th centuries. Harar Jugol, said to be the fourth holiest city of Islam, numbers 82 mosques, three of which date from the 10th century, and 102 shrines, but the townhouses with their exceptional interior design constitute the most spectacular part of Harar’s cultural heritage.

The impact of African and Islamic traditions on the development of the town’s building types and urban layout make for its particular character and uniqueness.

Related Attractions

Yeha Temple

Yeha Temple

Basic CharacteristicsThe wall are smooth, with long well-cut blocks, excellent straightness and tightness of joints. Other faces, edges and corners are unemotionally dressed with great precision. The wall thickness is about 60cm, is not just a single structure but...

Lalibela

Lalibela

Ethiopia is one of the countries in the world known for its ancient rock churches. Lalibela is a medieval settlement in Northern Ethiopia famous for its 11 beautifully carved rock hewn churches, registered as World Heritage Site in 1978. The rock-hewn and cave...

Lake Tana Monastries

Lake Tana Monastries

Lake Tana - Churches and Monasteries The Lake Tana area was important in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in view of its role in maintaining the Christian faith against contemporary pressures, and the rise of the Solomonic Dynasty which patronized the...

Harla

Harla

Harla- "the giants" - Ethiopia's lost civilization Scattered around eastern Ethiopia all the way to Somaliland and the Red Sea are the ruins of towns with large stone buildings. They were a race of giants, people say, and immensely strong. They’d perform amazing feats...

Gondar

Gondar

During the time of the Portuguese travels in the Ethiopian region (1520 - 1527 CE), Gondar was but little more than a small village community of peasants and military composts. For in the 1520's it showed absolutely no sign of any advancement to come, neither from any...

Axum

Axum

Aksum’s foundation is suggested to be as early as 300 BCE. Very little is known of the time period between the mid-first millennium BCE to the beginning of Aksum’s flourish, thought to be around the first century CE. There is little in common between the Aksumites and...

Al-Negashi Mosque

Al-Negashi Mosque

Historical manuscripts indicates that Islam in Ethiopia dates back to the year 615 AD when the first Muslim, among them Prophet Mohammad's wife came to Ethiopia as refugees and settled in Negash, a small village located 60 km east of Mekelle, the capital of Tigray...