Tolerance in the City of Peace: history and belonging in Harar (Gêy), Ethiopia

Abstract

This thesis examines how notions of history and heritage emerge and are contested within Harari discourses of identity and belonging and how these understandings blend with the physical city of Harar to underpin Harari religiosity and kinship. I show that what it is to be Harari is deeply rooted in a sense of emplacement within the ancestral city of Harar and the sacrality of the region as well as how this is both challenged and upheld within contemporary Ethiopian political structures and discourse. The chapters pay particular attention to how responses to violence emerge in nuanced and intimate registers of everyday life through pre-existing cultural and religious practices that transform into prophylactic community responses and political tools. I show that the Harari community’s response to ongoing pockets of chaos and intimidation against their history and religion is to expand their notions of belonging and acceptance and cultivate a capacity to hope for peace by continuing to return to and cultivate these cultural and religious practices that reinforce these principles. Taken together, the chapters argue that threats of violence and living under a shadow of anxiety in fact re-grounds a core Harari value: tolerance, which rather than being imposed as a value by external actors such as UNESCO, is in fact nascent within Harari ethical systems.