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Christian highlands and Islamic east shaped Ethiopia together.
When Ethiopians speak of their country’s civilizational origins, the conversation almost invariably begins with Axum. The ancient kingdom’s obelisks, royal tombs, inscriptions, and association with Ethiopian Christianity have made it the dominant symbol of Ethiopia’s antiquity.
Yet a fuller account of Ethiopian civilization requires looking east as well as north. Alongside Axum’s Christian and imperial legacy emerged another enduring center of urban life, commerce, scholarship, and statecraft: Harar and the wider Harla-Harar world.
Recognizing this eastern tradition does not diminish Axum’s significance. Rather, it suggests that Ethiopian civilization developed through the interaction of two long-standing historical streams. One emerged in the northern highlands and became associated with Christianity, monarchy, and the Ge’ez literary tradition. The other grew in the eastern highlands and lowlands, linking Ethiopia to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean through trade, Islamic scholarship, and urban culture.
This argument should not be mistaken for a claim that only two peoples built Ethiopia. Oromo institutions such as Gadaa, Gurage entrepreneurship, Sidama and Wolayta agricultural systems, Afar and Somali trading networks, and the contributions of numerous other communities have all shaped the country. Ethiopia is the product of many hands. Yet among its many traditions, Axum and Harar stand out as two unusually enduring centers of institutional continuity.
The archaeological record increasingly supports this interpretation. In the north, Axum produced monumental architecture, royal inscriptions, coinage, and a written tradition that connected the Horn of Africa to the wider ancient world.
The largest fallen stele measured 33 meters, taller than any obelisk ever erected. In the east, excavations at Harla, Ganda Harla, Fedis, and Harar reveal a parallel history of urban settlement, long-distance commerce, religious institutions, and regional influence. Radiocarbon dating places Harla’s urban occupation from the 6th to 15th centuries CE, a millennium of continuous settlement.
These discoveries demonstrate that complex societies developed in both regions through different historical pathways. Neither civilization was merely an appendage of the other. Each developed its own institutions, religious traditions, and external connections while remaining firmly rooted in Ethiopian soil.
Northern Legacy
Axum emerged from earlier state traditions in the northern Horn and developed into one of the most influential kingdoms of late antiquity. By the third and fourth centuries CE, it was recognized as a major regional power with commercial connections extending across the Red Sea and into the Mediterranean world.
Its most visible legacy remains its monumental architecture. The great stelae of Axum continue to rank among the most remarkable achievements of ancient Africa. Royal tombs, palace complexes, inscriptions, and coinage reveal a sophisticated state capable of mobilizing labor, managing trade, and projecting political authority over vast territories.
Yet Axum’s greatest contribution to Ethiopia may not be its monuments but its institutions. Through Ge’ez, it established the foundation of Ethiopia’s written tradition. Through Christianity, it created a religious culture that shaped state formation for more than a millennium. Through the Solomonic tradition, it provided successive dynasties with a narrative of legitimacy that survived long after the kingdom itself declined.
King Ezana’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century transformed Axum into one of the earliest Christian states in the world. The inscriptions associated with his reign demonstrate a kingdom conscious of its place between Africa, Arabia, and the Mediterranean. Axum adopted foreign influences while maintaining an unmistakably Ethiopian character.
Even after political power shifted elsewhere, Axum retained enormous symbolic authority. Emperors continued to draw legitimacy from its memory. Monasteries preserved its traditions. Chroniclers celebrated its kings. Modern Ethiopia inherited not only Axum’s historical prestige but also many of the religious and literary institutions that originated there.
The influence of Axum can still be seen in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, in the continued liturgical use of Ge’ez, and in the powerful historical narratives that have shaped Ethiopian identity for centuries.
Eastern Legacy
The eastern highlands of Ethiopia contain a civilizational history that has long been overshadowed by the prominence of Axum.
Yet archaeological and textual evidence now makes clear that this region developed its own dense tradition of settlement, trade, religious life, and political organization that cannot be reduced to a late medieval Islamic frontier narrative.
At the heart of this history lies the Harla civilization, centered in the eastern Ethiopian highlands between present-day Harar and Dire Dawa. Its principal archaeological site, Harlaa, lies roughly 40 kilometers northwest of Harar and about 15 kilometers southeast of Dire Dawa.
Together with related sites at Ganda Harlaa and Fedis, it formed part of a broader settlement network that occupied a strategic position between the Ethiopian interior and the trade routes linking the Horn of Africa to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Excavations at Harla, Ganda Harla, and related sites have revealed a large urban settlement system rather than a single isolated town.
The main Harla site itself covers an extensive area with evidence of planned occupation zones, including residential structures, craft production areas, water installations, and burial grounds extending beyond the settlement core. Radiocarbon dating places occupation broadly between the 6th and 15th centuries CE, suggesting long-term continuity.
Material evidence from Harla indicates a society integrated into long-distance exchange networks. Imported ceramics, glass fragments, and semi-precious stones such as carnelian point to commercial links stretching across the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean world.
The presence of such goods in non-elite contexts suggests that trade was embedded in the wider urban economy. Archaeological finds also include metal objects, beads, and tools consistent with specialized craft production, indicating economic differentiation and occupational complexity.
Equally significant is the evidence for religious and institutional life. Early mosque remains within the Harla complex demonstrate the early rooting of Islam in the region, not as a later overlay but as part of its formative urban development.
These structures, modest in scale but clear in function, indicate communal religious organization and the emergence of local Islamic authority. Their presence alongside industrial and residential zones reflects an integrated urban fabric rather than a segregated sacred landscape.
UNESCO designated Harar Jugol a World Heritage Site in 2006, describing it as “the most extraordinary example of a continuous Islamic urban settlement in East Africa”. The wall contains more than 82 mosques, three of which date to the 10th century, and 102 other sacred sites, earning Harar its epithet as the “City of Saints.”
Beyond Harla itself, the broader eastern Ethiopian landscape contains a continuum of related sites. Ganda Harla, for instance, shows similar patterns of settlement and material culture, reinforcing the interpretation of a wider Harla cultural sphere rather than a single city-state.
Fedis adds another layer of complexity, offering evidence of a medieval Islamic principality with fortified architecture, stepwell water systems, storage pits, burial grounds, and inscribed seals. The discovery of Arabic-inscribed carnelian seals at Fedis is particularly important, as it points to administrative literacy and formalized governance structures.
Together, these sites suggest a regional system characterized by fortified settlements, agricultural intensification, and participation in transregional exchange. Rather than being peripheral to Ethiopian history, the eastern highlands appear as a parallel zone of early urban development, contemporaneous in part with late Axum and its successors, yet oriented toward different trade routes and cultural horizons.
This trajectory culminates in the rise of Harar as a walled urban center from the medieval period onward. The Jugol walls, enclosing a dense network of mosques, shrines, and residential quarters, represent the architectural crystallization of earlier settlement traditions. Harar did not emerge ex nihilo in the Islamic period; it inherited and reorganized older patterns of Harla habitation, trade, and territorial organization into a more formalized urban polity.
Harar’s later development as an Islamic city-state thus rests on a deeper foundation of eastern Ethiopian urbanism. Harari scholars produced original legal works such as the Kitāb al-Farā’id, a compendium of Shafi‘i law adapted specifically to the Horn of Africa’s conditions: camel inheritance, water rights, and interfaith transactions.
Its political institutions, religious networks, and commercial reach were built upon centuries of prior settlement in which the Harla civilization played a formative role. In this sense, Harar represents the consolidation of its past into a durable urban and spiritual center that linked the Ethiopian interior to the wider Islamic and Indian Ocean worlds.
Contemporary Lessons
The histories of Axum and Harar are often presented as competing narratives. In reality, they reveal complementary dimensions of Ethiopian civilization.
Axum connected Ethiopia to Christian Africa and the Mediterranean world. Harar connected Ethiopia to the Islamic world, the Red Sea, Arabia, and the Indian Ocean. Axum produced institutions associated with monarchy, ecclesiastical authority, and Ge’ez literacy. Harar cultivated traditions of Islamic scholarship, commerce, and urban autonomy.
Neither tradition alone explains Ethiopia. The country’s history emerged through centuries of interaction among diverse peoples, faiths, and regions. Conflict certainly occurred. Yet so did exchange, coexistence, and mutual influence.
This broader perspective is particularly important today. Ethiopia’s history cannot be reduced to a single religious or cultural tradition. Christianity and Islam have both been present in the country for well over a millennium. Both have produced institutions, scholarship, architecture, and communities that form part of the national inheritance.
The Axumite kingdom offered refuge to the earliest Muslim migrants fleeing persecution in Arabia. Harar, despite its overwhelmingly Muslim character, developed long-standing traditions of coexistence with neighboring communities of different faiths. These histories demonstrate that religious identity and civic coexistence are not contradictions but established features of Ethiopian life.
Contemporary disputes over religious freedom, heritage, and belonging should therefore be approached with humility. No community possesses a monopoly over Ethiopian civilization. The country’s achievements were built collectively over centuries by peoples of different languages, regions, and faiths.
A final contradiction must be stated plainly.
In Harar, widely regarded as one of Islam’s most important cities in Africa, Christian communities live without systematic restriction. Churches function, festivals are observed, and religious coexistence is embedded in daily life. This reflects both constitutional principle and a long urban tradition of regulated pluralism within the Jugol walls.
In Axum, however—the symbolic heart of Ethiopian Christianity—reports of discrimination against Muslims, restrictions on mosque construction, and social marginalization of Islamic practice have become increasingly difficult to ignore.
Whatever the historical grievances or local tensions, such conditions contradict both Ethiopia’s constitutional order and Axum’s own foundational legacy of sanctuary, which once sheltered early Muslim refugees in the 7th century.
This is therefore a civic issue.
A state cannot invoke Axum as a symbol of universal heritage while permitting exclusion within its own sacred geography. Nor can religious elites appeal to history while ignoring the covenant of protection embedded in that same history.
If Harar demonstrates that a deeply Islamic city can sustain Christian presence without fear, then Axum must demonstrate that a deeply Christian symbolic center can sustain Muslim presence without stigma.
Harar’s Muslims protect Christian worship within their historic city. Axum’s Christians must extend the same protection to Muslims, or forfeit the moral authority of their own history.
Ethiopia’s survival as a coherent civilization depends on whether its two pillars remain aligned with the ethical demands of their own traditions, or collapse inward under selective memory and exclusionary practice.
The monuments of Axum and the walls of Harar still stand. They testify to different traditions, different histories, and different visions of community. Yet together they reveal a deeper truth: Ethiopia was never built by a single civilization. It emerged from the encounter of many traditions, among which Axum and Harar remain two of the most enduring.
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While this commentary contains the author’s opinions, Ethiopia Insight will correct factual errors.
Main photo: Rimbaud House in Harar, a landmark of the city’s historic urban heritage. Source: Social media.
Published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
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