Abasa (Darbiyah Kola): a medieval town in Awdal and its neighbours Hasadinle and Iskudarka

In short

Abasa is one of about 20 medieval town sites known in western Somaliland and the neighbouring part of Ethiopia. It lies about 9 km south-east of the village of Boon and about 20 km north of Borama, close to the Ethiopian border. Almost everything on this page comes from one study, which brings together a 2018 survey by the Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit) of the Spanish National Research Council, the objects and photographs A. T. Curle gave to the British Museum in the 1930s, and old maps (de Torres Rodríguez, "Kola's Kingdom: The Territory of Abasa (Western Somaliland) during the Medieval Period", International Journal of Historical Archaeology 28, 2024, pp. 545–575, open access). For the other ruined towns of the region, see Ruined towns of the Somali interior.

Burton's "Kola's fort", 1854

On his way to Harar, Richard Burton followed the Abasa valley and described a ruined city:

"This is the site of Darbiyah Kola,—Kola's Fort,—so called from its Galla queen. It is said that this city and its neighbor Aububah fought like certain cats in Kilkenny till both were 'eaten up:' the Gudabirsi fixed the event at the period when their forefathers still inhabited Bulhar on the coast,—about 300 years ago… The mosque is a large roofless building containing twelve square pillars of rude masonry… for a mile and a half in length all was ruins—ruins—ruins."

(Burton, First Footsteps in East Africa, quoted in de Torres Rodríguez 2024, pp. 549–550; "Galla" is an older outside name for the Oromo that is now considered offensive, as de Torres notes on p. 545.)

The name Darbiyah Kola is no longer used locally. De Torres writes that an Italian map of 1894 marks "Darbija-Cola" in this area and a British map of 1926 "Darbiya Kola", while British boundary maps of the 1930s mark "ruins" with the name Abasa, which has been used since. On the strength of the maps and Burton's description, he identifies Abasa with Darbiyah Kola (p. 550).

Who has visited

• A. T. Curle, mid-1930s, an officer of the British–Ethiopian boundary commission. He described the main mosque, photographed its mihrab before it collapsed, and estimated about 200 houses. His photographs and finds are in the British Museum (pp. 546, 550).
• The Soviet–Somali expedition, 1971, and Neville Chittick, 1975, who drew the first sketch plan of the mosque and recorded that the mihrab arch had fallen (pp. 550, 552).
• Fauvelle-Aymar and Hirsch, 2001, who recorded the site's decay and heard of a second site of the same name (p. 550).
• The Incipit team, 2018, who mapped the main mosque by drone and dug one small test pit inside it (p. 552).

The town

De Torres describes the site as follows (pp. 549–553):

• Size. 56.5 hectares in a basin 2 km south of the Abasa river. The team recorded 97 houses and thinks the total is closer to Curle's 200. The houses are spread out, with no sign of a planned street layout.
• Houses. Rectangular or square, usually 20 to 40 square metres, with two or three rooms. The walls are of flat stones set in mud mortar, and some still stand about 1.5 metres high.
• The main mosque. 18 by 17 metres, on the east edge of the town, not in the centre. It has 12 pillars in three rows, round or cross-shaped rather than the square ones Burton described, with wooden beams set into them. Its mihrab, now fallen, stood out 2 metres from the qibla wall. It had no minaret or minbar, which de Torres notes are also missing from the other medieval mosques of Somaliland except at Zeila. A lower wall around it probably enclosed a courtyard.
• The test pit. It reached the levelled bedrock on which the mosque was built. No older building was found under it, and the only find was a fragment of a bronze bangle.
• A second, smaller mosque, 4.1 by 3.8 metres inside, at the far east of the site (p. 555).
• A large building of about 300 square metres across the ravine on the west side, with a curved stone entrance corridor. Nothing was found in it. De Torres lists several possible uses, among them a stronghold, the house of a local sheikh, a trade post or a prison, and calls it most likely a public building (pp. 555–557).
• Two cemeteries (p. 558). The northern one has only slab-lined Muslim graves facing Mecca, the kind found at Fardowsa and other medieval sites. The south-western one has mostly graves marked by a line of small slabs, and also small cairns with two stones on top marking head and feet.

What was found

Curle recorded celadon, a piece of Chinese Ming porcelain, hammer stones and an iron arrowhead. Chittick dated the Islamic and Chinese pottery to the 15th and 16th centuries (p. 560). In 2018 the team found very few imports: one celadon sherd, one sherd of "speckled ware", one piece of blue-and-white fritware, two sherds of Yemeni white cream ware, eight pierced cowries and some softstone objects. De Torres calls speckled ware a kind of "fossil type" for the Adal period, and dates the group to the 15th–16th centuries (pp. 560–562). Most of the pottery was local and handmade, and grinding stones lay all over the site, which he takes as a sign that farming mattered there (p. 562).

The two neighbouring sites

• Hasadinle, about 6 km from Abasa across the Wenole hills, near the Okholale river. Curle called it a minor site, but in 2018 the team found a village of about 60 houses over 11 hectares, and a mosque of 11 by 13 metres with four square pillars that Curle had not recorded. Stone circles there may be bases for haystacks, as local people still use them. Two polished sherds probably came from the northern Ethiopian highlands (pp. 563–566).
• Iskudarka Dayeergalka Kifiile, about 8 km north of Abasa, known to the Somaliland Department of Archaeology as "Abasa 2". The team used the local name, which it translates as "the mountain where monkeys meet". It is a hamlet of about 20 small houses on 1 hectare, with a mosque of 9 by 6 metres along a short L-shaped street, a well over 10 metres deep and a nearby old river bend still farmed today. Half of a bored stone, which de Torres reads as the weight of a digging stick, is the first found in an archaeological context in Somaliland (pp. 567–569).

How de Torres reads the sites

• Farming, not long-distance trade. The sites sit on a route from the coast towards Harar, but de Torres notes that 19th-century reports put the main caravan route further west, through what is now Djibouti, and that imports at Abasa are far fewer than at Fardowsa. He suggests that farming was the main activity (pp. 548–549).
• One shared culture. The same pottery, building methods and mosque plan at all three sites suggest to him "a common identity" across the region in the 15th and 16th centuries, the period of the sultanate of Barr Sa'd al-Din. He notes that the mosques of western Somaliland differ in plan from medieval mosques in Shewa and the Harar region (pp. 569–572).
• Who lived there. He writes that it is "unclear who were, ethnically speaking, the inhabitants", since the Arab texts describe the Somali as nomads distinct from the people of the sultanate. He finds few cairns, the usual nomad burial, near the sites (pp. 571–572).
• The legend of Kola. He links the story to Somali traditions of rulers called "Galla" defeated by Muslim holy men, such as the story of Aw Barkhadle. Aw Boba, the town Burton named as Kola's enemy, carries the name of a holy man whose descendants, de Torres writes citing Stenhouse and Pankhurst, fought for Imam Ahmad in the 16th century. He suggests the legend may combine the westward spread of the Somalis and the arrival of Islam (pp. 572–573).
• The end. He found no sign of destruction and suggests the towns were left gradually after the sultanate broke up in the late 16th century (p. 573).

Related pages

• Ruined towns of the Somali interior
• The sultanate of Shewa and the founding of Ifat
• Imam Ahmad and Adal, 1527–1543
• Early Zeila and the Qiblatayn mosque