When I visited Harar, the price per parcel of twenty-seven pounds was a quarter of a dollar, and the hire of a camel carrying twelve parcels to Berberah was five dollars: the profit did not repay labour and risk.
TEN DAYS AT HARAR: THE TRADE OF THE CITY
1856 (describing January 1855)
Harar is essentially a commercial town: its citizens live, like those of Zayla, by systematically defrauding the Galla Bedouins, and the Amir has made it a penal offence to buy by weight and scale. He receives, as octroi, from eight to fifteen cubits of Cutch canvass for every donkey-load passing the gates, consequently the beast is so burdened that it must be supported by the drivers. Cultivators are taxed ten per cent., the general and easy rate of this part of Africa, but they pay in kind, which considerably increases the Government share. The greatest merchant may bring to Harar 50l. worth of goods, and he who has 20l. of capital is considered a wealthy man. The citizens seem to have a more than Asiatic apathy, even in pursuit of gain. When we entered, a caravan was to set out for Zayla on the morrow; after ten days, hardly one half of its number had mustered. The four marches from the city eastward are rarely made under a fortnight, and the average rate of their Kafilahs is not so high even as that of the Somal.
The principal exports from Harar are slaves, ivory, coffee, tobacco, Wars (safflower or bastard saffron), Tobes and woven cottons, mules, holcus, wheat, "Karanji," a kind of bread used by travellers, ghee, honey, gums (principally mastic and myrrh), and finally sheep's fat and tallows of all sorts. The imports are American sheeting, and other cottons, white and dyed, muslins, red shawls, silks, brass, sheet copper, cutlery (generally the cheap German), Birmingham trinkets, beads and coral, dates, rice, and loaf sugar, gunpowder, paper, and the various other wants of a city in the wild.
[Two paragraphs on the slave trade and the ivory monopoly are omitted here.]
The coffee of Harar is too well known in the markets of Europe to require description: it grows in the gardens about the town, in greater quantities amongst the Western Gallas, and in perfection at Jarjar, a district of about seven days' journey from Harar on the Efat road. It is said that the Amir withholds this valuable article, fearing to glut the Berberah market: he has also forbidden the Harash, or coffee cultivators, to travel lest the art of tending the tree be lost. When I visited Harar, the price per parcel of twenty-seven pounds was a quarter of a dollar, and the hire of a camel carrying twelve parcels to Berberah was five dollars: the profit did not repay labour and risk.
[Paragraphs on tobacco, safflower and woven cloth are omitted here.]
Three caravans leave Harar every year for the Berberah market. The first starts early in January, laden with coffee, Tobes, Wars, ghee, gums, and other articles to be bartered for cottons, silks, shawls, and Surat tobacco. The second sets out in February. The principal caravan, conveying slaves, mules, and other valuable articles, enters Berberah a few days before the close of the season: it numbers about 3000 souls, and is commanded by one of the Amir's principal officers, who enjoys the title of Ebi or leader. Any or all of these kafilahs might be stopped by spending four or five hundred dollars amongst the Jibril Abokr tribe, or even by a sloop of war at the emporium. "He who commands at Berberah, holds the beard of Harar in his hand," is a saying which I heard even within the city walls.
From Burton's footnote 40 to the same chapter:
In the best coffee countries, Harar and Yemen, the berry is reserved for exportation. The Southern Arabs use for economy and health, the bean being considered heating, the Kishr or follicle. This in Harar is a woman's drink. The men considering the berry too dry and heating for their arid atmosphere, toast the leaf on a girdle, pound it and prepare an infusion which they declare to be most wholesome, but which certainly suggests weak senna. The boiled coffee-leaf has been tried and approved of in England; we omit, however, to toast it.
Editor's note. Burton entered Harar on January 3, 1855, by his own account the first European to do so, and left on the 13th. The "dollar" is the Maria Theresa thaler. His figures give a clean sum: twelve parcels of coffee at a quarter-dollar each cost three dollars in the town; the camel to carry them to Berbera cost five. Burton's own conclusion follows in the same sentence. The saying he records, "He who commands at Berberah, holds the beard of Harar in his hand," is the earliest statement in this archive of a theme that runs through everything that follows: whoever holds the road to the port holds the coffee. Burton wrote as a Victorian officer and his language about the peoples he met reflects it; the text is reprinted as published. The bracketed omissions are ours. Public domain.
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