Dire Dawa

History

The region was already inhabited in Mesolithic times, as revealed by rock paintings and Middle Stone Age artifacts in the cave of Porc-Épic and Laga-Oda only a few kilometers from Dire Dawa. The area surrounding Dire Dawa is believed to have been a settlement of the extinct Harla people. Historically, the area used to be part of Adal Sultanate during the medieval times. During the 17th century onwards, the region was considered the domain of the Emirate of Harar until Menelik's conquest of the kingdom in 1887 and consequently became incorporated into modern Ethiopia from thereon. The present-day town of Dire Dawa (327km by rail from Djibouti), however, is of very recent origin. It owes its foundation to a technical problem: when it became impossible to lay the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway via Harar because of the steep access to the town, Emperor Menelik II accepted (in a letter dated 5 November 1896) that the first part of the line might finish at a village at the foot of the mountains, which should be named Addis Harar ("New Harrar"). The new name, however, did not win recognition. For financial and diplomatic reasons the railway was not continued until 1909 and the final inauguration of the whole line from Djibouti to Addis Ababa-again delayed by the revolution of 1916-only took place on 7 June 1917. During all this time, Dire Dawa was practically the town profited much and became a "boom city", attracting most of the trade which formerly passed through Harar. By 1902 the Ethiopian government, anticipating the future economic importance of Dire Dawa, had already transferred the customs station for trade with the Red Sea from Gildessa to Dire Dawa. During the 1920s, the south-eastern part of the town also started to develop. Its inhabitants were mostly Gurgura…