Zeila’s prosperity and importance came from its role as Abyssinia’s chief Red Sea port.

Evidence

Thus at present, of the northern ports as a whole, most is known of Zeila. This town was politically the most important of the Arab settlements in the north and owed its economic prosperity, at times considerable, to its geographical position as one of the chief ports of the Abyssinian hinterland in the trade with Arabia and the Orient. Through Zeila local Somali produce, consisting chiefly of hides and skins, precious gums, ghee, and ostrich feathers, and slaves and ivory from the Abyssinian highlands, were exported: and cloth, dates, iron, weapons, and chinaware and pottery imported. Politically, Zeila was originally the centre of the Muslim emirate of Adal, part of the state of Ifat, which lay in the plateau region of eastern Shoa. … From the time at which the port enters Islamic history, it had apparently a mixed Arab, Somali, and Danakil (‘Afar) population. In the course of time, no one knows exactly when, these three separate elements to some extent fused to form a distinctive Zeila culture and Zeila dialect which was a blend of Arabic, Somali, and ‘Afar. — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 88

Categorization

• XREF: Zeila as center of Adal/Ifat sets up the linkage to the sixteenth-century conquest of Abyssinia.

Related

• Zeila in 1854 was a small thriving trade town with a dilapidated wall (similarity 0.86)