Hargeysa
| Hargeysa هرجيسا Hargeysa |
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| Coordinates | 9 ° 34 ' N , 44 ° 4' E | ||
| Basic data | |||
| Country | Somalia | ||
also claimed by Somaliland
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| Woqooyi Galbeed | |||
| ISO 3166-2 | SO-WHERE | ||
| height | 1260 m | ||
| Residents | 861,000 (calculated in 2017) | ||
| politics | |||
| mayor | Hussain Mohammoud Jiciir | ||
 View over Hargeysa
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Hargeysa or Hargeisa ([ harˈga͜iza ], Somali : Hargeysa ; Arabic هرجيسا), translated as Little Harar, is a city in northern Somalia and is considered the capital of Somaliland, which has been de facto independent since 1991 . It has between 500,000 and 800,000 inhabitants - some estimates even assume over a million - and thus has more than twice as many inhabitants as the Ethiopian namesake Harar .
The city is located in a valley in northwest Somalia at an altitude of about 1330 meters. It is also the capital of the Woqooyi Galbeed region or (according to Somaliland subdivision) Hargeysa. Near Hargeysa are the Naasa Hablood hills and the caves of Laas Geel , which contain cave paintings.
history
Hargeysa was probably from a settlement of Qadiriyyah - Sufi forth. The name is possibly derived from the nickname Harär as-ṣaġīr ("the little Harar "). The British colonial officer Harald Swayne , who visited Hargeysa at the end of the 19th century, described the successes that had been achieved with the cultivation of sorghum . In 1870 the place was occupied by Egyptian troops who left northern Somalia in 1884.
During the time of the Protectorate of British Somaliland , Hargeysa rose to become a larger town and trading center. At the beginning of the 20th century it was affected in the war between the colonial power and Mohammed Abdullah Hassan . In 1941 it replaced the port city of Berbera as the capital of British Somaliland.
When British Somaliland became independent in 1960 and merged with Italian Somaliland to form Somalia with Mogadishu as the capital, Hargeysa declined, but it remained the country's second largest city. The population was estimated at 70,000 in the 1980s. During the Ogaden War of 1977/78, Hargeysa served as a logistics center and headquarters for military operations.
During the civil war in 1988 Hargeysa was largely destroyed by a heavy bombardment by the Somali military in order to fight the rebels of the Somali National Movement . To commemorate the attack, a war memorial in the form of a MiG was erected in the city .
After Somaliland's declaration of independence, the reconstruction of the city began in 1991. Today it is more progressive and possibly more populous than the state capital Mogadishu and the second most important business location in Somaliland after Berbera . The reconstruction was largely financed by Somalis living abroad, as official donations went very little to Somaliland.
Population development of the agglomeration according to the UN
| year | population |
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| 1950 | 32,000 |
| 1960 | 52,000 |
| 1970 | 84,000 |
| 1980 | 136,000 |
| 1990 | 224,000 |
| 2000 | 368,000 |
| 2010 | 607,000 |
| 2017 | 861,000 |
Infrastructure
The city has an international airport from which flights to Addis Ababa , Djibouti and Dubai are possible. A road that has been repaired with EU support connects Hargeysa with the port of Berbera in the north and with Jijiga in Ethiopia. Another connection goes to Burao .
Personalities
- Muse Bihi Abdi (* 1948), politician
Climate table
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Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Hargeysa
Source: wetterkontor.de
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literature
- Federico Battera: Hargeisa , in: Siegbert Uhlig (Ed.): Encyclopaedia Aethiopica , Volume 2, 2005, ISBN 978-3-447-05238-2
Web links
- Michaela Maria Müller: Somaliland's silent success story: A lighthouse for Africa? In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . September 2, 2015, accessed September 4, 2015 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Somaliland. Encycloaedia Britannica, accessed October 11, 2017 .
- ↑ bevölkerungsstatistik.de
- ↑ a b Hargeysa. Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed October 11, 2017 .
- ↑ World Urbanization Prospects - Population Division - United Nations. Retrieved July 23, 2018 .