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Handoga: a medieval town of nomads in Djibouti, about 1100–1500
Handoga, 10 km west of Dikhil in southern Djibouti, is the only medieval town known in Djibouti. It began as a camp of huts in the 12th–13th centuries, was rebuilt in stone in the 14th, and was abandoned without signs of violence by about the end of the 15th. It covers 20 hectares with about 320 buildings, three mosques and a cemetery of about a thousand graves. Its excavators note that its round rooms round open yards, its few imports of beads, bangles and cowries, and its graves resemble nomad practice more than the stone towns of Somaliland, and they argue that it rose while the Ifat sultanate declined and emptied once trade on the Zeila–Harar route was restored.
In short
This page follows the main report on Handoga by two members of the Incipit-CSIC team of Spain (Rouco Collazo and de Torres Rodríguez, "Gone with the wind. Urbanization and deurbanization processes in the medieval Muslim Horn of Africa: the case of Handoga (Djibouti)", World Archaeology, 2025, open access). Section numbers below refer to it. The authors describe the people of the area today as Afar (§3.1). Handoga belongs to the same medieval Muslim world as the towns of Somaliland, and its excavators compare it closely with them. See Ruined towns of the Somali interior.
Research
French archaeologists dug several houses in the 1970s, and a short visit in 2006 found iron slag and copper ingots in what was identified as a metal workshop. Since 2021 the StateHorn project has mapped the site and dug two complete compounds, a foundry, two mosques and test pits (§2).
Two phases
- A camp, 12th–13th centuries. Under the stone buildings are post holes and trenches of huts and fences, radiocarbon dated to the 12th and 13th centuries. The authors suggest the place began as a gathering centre for nomads and a watering stop for caravans between the Red Sea coast and the interior (§§2, 3.2).
- A stone town, 14th–15th centuries. Early in the 14th century the huts were replaced by stone buildings with no break in use. The authors compare the town at its height with Aw Bare and Fardowsa in size (§2). See Fardowsa and Aw Bare.
- The end. They describe the town as "peacefully but comprehensively abandoned", with no trace of burning, by the end of the 15th century (§2). In one passage the paper puts the end in the 16th century (§3.5).
The town
Handoga stretches 540 metres along an escarpment above the Chekeiti wadi and covers about 20 hectares with about 320 buildings. There are no streets or squares, and no public buildings except mosques (§§2, 3.1). Allowing five people to a household, the authors estimate about 1,600 people at its peak (§3.1).
Three mosques are known. Two in the north, of about 10 by 14 and 12 by 13 metres, are joined, the courtyard wall of one built against the qibla wall of the other. The authors suggest they may have served different groups, or men and women (§3.1).
Round houses round open yards
Each house is a compound of round or oval rooms with stone footings, set round an open yard where most cooking was done. The authors contrast this with the square, many-roomed stone houses of Fardowsa and the sultanate towns, and note that it is close to the camps that nomads in the region still build (§3.2).
Farming and trade
- Grinding stones. About 200 grinding-stone fragments were found, but a study of 88 of them found them "minimally curated", which the authors take as a sign that farming had lower standing than herding or trade (§3.3).
- Imports. Thousands of cowries were found, many with their backs cut off on site, along with glass beads and bangles, stone beads, mother-of-pearl pendants, a bronze dinar weight and two Chinese coins. Imported pottery and softstone vessels, common in Somaliland, are almost absent. The authors note that the imports are "light and easily transportable" and worn on the body, and suggest they suited a nomadic population (§3.3).
The cemetery
The cemetery runs for more than a kilometre south of the town, with about a thousand graves and open-air prayer places. The slab-lined cists common in Somaliland and eastern Ethiopia are absent; most graves are rings or ovals of stones. At its core is a row of cairn-like tombs on the escarpment, some walled with an entrance to the south, which the authors compare with the das tombs recorded among the Afar (§3.4). Because a thousand graves seem too few for the town, they suggest that many people were buried in the cemeteries of the nomad groups they came from (§3.4). See From cairns to cemeteries.
How the authors explain its rise and end
They link the stone town to the decline of the Ifat sultanate, when the last sultan of Ifat was killed at Zeila and the main route inland came under Ethiopian control. They argue that this opened a chance for places on the margins, and that once the sultanate of Barr Sa'd al-Din restored the Zeila–Harar route, "there was no reason for Handoga to remain as a permanent settlement" (§4). They found no clear evidence that a drier climate caused the end (§4). They compare it with later coastal towns founded by nomads, such as Kismaayo, Mareeg, Hobyo, Boosaaso and Bulhar, but note that Handoga alone was completely abandoned (§4).
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