Yaldessa
Coordinates: 9 ° 43 ' N , 42 ° 8' E
Jaldessa (also written as Jaldēsa , Jeldessa or Ǧildessa ) is a small town in the Shinile Zone in the Somali region of Ethiopia .
The place name is derived from the Oromo word jaldeessa for "monkey" or "baboon"; these animals used to be numerous in the area. The place is in a valley and naturally has water, albeit of poor quality.
In the 19th century, Jaldessa was an important station on the trade route from Harar to the Red Sea . WC Barker mentions the place in 1842 as a caravan station in the area of the Nole- Oromo on the route from Zeila to Harar. In 1875, Jaldessa was in the Issa - Somali region, right on the border with the Nole-Oromo. Egyptian troops built a fort to secure supplies from the coast and a contingent of soldiers from Sudan were stationed with an Egyptian officer. The people built huts around the station, fortified with stones and thorn hedges, the Somali on one side and the Oromo on the other. The Ugas of Issa, Roble Farah , also moved his seat to Yaldessa. Its population rose to 1,500 and doubled or tripled on market days. After the Egyptians left Harar in 1885, Great Britain took possession of Jaldessa and stationed a garrison of 19 Indians and 20 Arabs and Somali.
In April 1886 an Italian traveler and his companions were attacked and killed in Jaldessa, which Menelik II served as a reason for an attack on the Sultanate of Harar. After Harar was conquered by Ethiopia in 1887, Jaldessa became, along with Darmi and Jijiga, one of the Ethiopian forts in the border area to the not yet subjugated Somali. The governors in Yaldessa were often of foreign origin, such as an Armenian who led successful campaigns against the Somali in the Ogaden . Jaldessa was badly hit by the great famine of the 1890s but retained its importance as a commercial center. It is mentioned as such in numerous colonial treaties. The borderline between the French Somali coast and British Somaliland or between today's Djibouti and Somaliland / Somalia was drawn from Loyada to Jaldessa in 1888 . The Anglo-Italian protocol of May 5, 1894 assigned Jaldessa Italy, and as early as 1890 Crispi Menelik II had asked permission to fly the Italian flag in Jaldessa in order to forestall British and French claims.
On March 3, 1900, the German naturalist Carlo von Erlanger reached Jaldessa and describes the place as a "trading center of importance" because it is the intersection of various caravan routes. However, the place is "notorious because of its terrible fever, caused by the poor quality of the water, and because of the terrible mosquito plague." With the construction of the railway line from Addis Ababa to Djibouti and the establishment of Dire Dawa in 1902, the importance of the traditional trade route and thus of Jaldessa declined. Customs was moved to Dire Dawa. The decline was somewhat delayed by the fact that Great Britain subsidized caravans from Zeila to Harar in order to keep this route competitive with the railway line.
During the Ogaden War , Somali troops took the place while advancing on Dire Dawa. On February 4, 1978, Ethiopian troops with Cuban equipment recaptured Jaldessa.
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- ↑ a b c d e Ewald Wagner: Ǧildessa , in: Siegbert Uhlig (Ed.): Encyclopaedia Aethiopica , Volume 2, 2005, ISBN 978-3447052382
- ^ Richard Pankhurst: Economic History of Ethiopia , 1968, ISBN? (P. 408)
- ^ WC Barker: Extract Report on the Probable Geographical Position of Harrar; With Some Information Relative to the Various Tribes in the Vicinity , in: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London Vol. 12, 1842, pp. 238-244
- ↑ Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia , 2001, ISBN 9780852557860 (p. 63)
- ↑ Didier Morin: Poésie traditional des Afars , Société d'études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France Vol. 364, Peeters Publishers 1997, ISBN 9789068319897 (p. 16)
- ^ Carlo von Erlanger: Like a look into the land of a more beautiful Eden , 1997 [1901] (p. 52)
- ^ Gebru Tareke: The Ethiopia-Somalia War of 1977 Revisited , in: International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, 2002