Afar Sultanate
| Sultanate of Aussa | ||||||||||
| Afar Sultanate | ||||||||||
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| Capital | Aussa | |||||||||
| Languages | Afar, Arabic | |||||||||
| Religion | Sunni Islam | |||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | |||||||||
| Sultan | ||||||||||
| • | 1734–1749 | Kedafu | ||||||||
| History | ||||||||||
| • | Established | 1734 | ||||||||
| • | Disestablished | 1936 | ||||||||
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The Sultanate of Aussa (alternate spelling: Awsa, also known as the Afar Sultanate) was a kingdom that existed in the Afar Region of eastern Ethiopia in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was considered to be the leading monarchy of the Afar people, to whom the other Afar rulers nominally acknowledged primacy.
The Sultanate was incorporated into Italian East Africa in 1936, and became part of Ethiopia in 1945, although nominal Sultans continued to be named under Ethiopian rule and the region continued to enjoy considerable autonomy within Ethiopia during the 1950s to 1970s.
Afar society has traditionally been divided into petty kingdoms, each ruled by its own Sultan.
The Imamate of Aussa was carved out of the Sultanate of Harar and the Adal Sultanate in 1577, when Muhammed Jasa moved his capital from Harar to Aussa (Asaita) with the split of the Adal Sultanate into Aussa and the Sultanate of Harar.
In 1647, the rulers of the Emirate of Harar broke away to form their own polity. The Imamate of Awsa was later destroyed by the local Mudaito Afar in 1672. Following the Awsa Imamate's demise, the Mudaito Afars founded their own kingdom, the Sultanate of Aussa. At some point after 1672, Aussa declined in conjunction with Imam Umar Din bin Adam's recorded ascension to the throne.
In 1734, the Afar leader Kedafu, head of the Mudaito clan, seized power and established the Mudaito Dynasty. This marked the start of a new and more sophisticated polity that would last into the colonial period. The primary symbol of the Sultan was a silver baton, which was considered to have magical properties. The influence of the sultanate extended into the Denkel lowlands of what is now Eritrea.
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