Djibouti

Sister cities

• Jizan
• Izola
• Rimini
• Malé
• Victoria
• Khartoum
• Rabat
• Kailua-Kona
• Key West
• Algeciras
• La Paz
• Port Sudan

History

There is evidence of human settlement on the eastern coastline of Djibouti dating back to the Bronze Age. From 1862 until 1894, the land to the north of the Gulf of Tadjoura was called Obock and was ruled by Issa and Afar Sultans, local authorities with whom France signed various treaties between 1883 and 1887 to first gain a foothold in the region. The exchange of Franco-British diplomatic notes of 2 and 9 February 1888 fixed the territorial limit between the colonies of the two countries; leaving explicitly under French authority the southern coasts of the Gulf of Tadjoura, including a peninsula composed of insubmersible plateaux, Ras Djibouti as a highly strategic location, a future bridgehead for French designs in the rest of Africa and Asia. It is then that this point begins to be used as departure for caravans towards Harar. The French subsequently founded Djibouti in 1888, in a previously uninhabited stretch of coast. According to one account, this was due to "its superiority to Obok both in respect to harbour accommodation and in nearness to Harrar." Ambouli was a small village before the French arrived, about south of Ras Djiboutil. Ambouli is identified with the city of Canbala by O.G.S. Crawford, appearing in Muhammad al-Idrisi's map of 1192 on the coast of the Horn of Africa, southeast of the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and with Cambaleh, a town where the Venetian traveler Bragadino, a thirteenth-century European visitor to Ethiopia, resided for eight years. In 1896, the settlement was made the capital of French Somaliland. The main purpose of the French interest in colonizing the region was to protect their trade routes to Madagascar and Indochina from the encroachment of other European powers. The town later grew considerably in size following the…

Most-observed species

• House Crow

  Corvus splendens Vieillot, 1817 · Aves
  209
• Rose-ringed Parakeet

  Psittacula krameri (Scopoli, 1769) · Aves
  127
• Speckled Pigeon

  Columba guinea Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  118
• Rock Pigeon

  Columba livia J.F.Gmelin, 1789 · Aves
  106
• Graceful Prinia

  Prinia gracilis (Lichtenstein, 1823) · Aves
  93
• Common Sandpiper

  Actitis hypoleucos (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  72
• Blue-cheeked/Blue-tailed Bee-eater

  Merops persicus Pallas, 1773 · Aves
  70
• Western Reef-Heron

  Egretta gularis (Bosc, 1792) · Aves
  70

Most recent

• M 3.7 — 2026-02-03
  14 km NNE of Arta, Djibouti
• M 4.5 — 2025-07-28
  14 km NW of Arta, Djibouti
• M 4.3 — 2024-02-10
  21 km NNE of Djibouti, Djibouti
• M 3.9 — 2024-02-06
  14 km NNE of Loyada, Djibouti
• M 4.4 — 2024-02-06
  20 km NNE of Loyada, Djibouti
• M 4.4 — 2024-02-03
  23 km NNE of Loyada, Djibouti