The Dahlak Archipelago is an island group located in the Red Sea near Massawa, Eritrea. It consists of
two large and 124 small islands. The pearl fisheries as they were
known to the Romans, still produce a few pearls. Only four of the islands are permanently inhabited, of which Dahlak Kebir is the largest and most populated. The islands are a home for diverse marine life and sea-birds, and attract some tourists.
The people of the archipelago speak Dahlik. Some
of the islands can be reached by boat from Massawa.
Other inhabited islands of this archipelago, besides Dahlak Kebir are: Dhuladhiya, Dissei, Dohul, Erwa, Harat, Hermil,
Isra-Tu, Nahaleg (Nahleg), Norah and Shumma, although not all
are permanently inhabited.
History
G.W.B. Huntingford has identified a group of islands near Adulis called "Alalaiou" in the
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which were a source of tortoise
shell, with the Dahlak archipelago. According to Edward Ullendorff, the Dahlak
islanders were amongst the first in East Africa to convert to Islam, and a number of
tombstones in Kufic writing attest to this early connection. In the 7th century an independent
Muslim state emerged in the archipleago, but it was subsequently conquered by Yemen, then
intermittently by the Emperor of Ethiopia and subsequent petty kingdoms of Abyssinia and about 1559 by the Ottoman Turks, who placed the islands under the rule of their
Pasha at Suakin.
In the late 19th century, the islands became part of the Italian colony of Eritrea, which was formed in 1890. The Islands were home to little else except a
prison operated by the Italian Colonial forces.
After Ethiopia allied itself with the Soviet Union during the Cold War after the rise of
the Derg, the Dahlak Archipelago was the location of a Soviet
Navy base[1]. In 1990, Ethiopia lost control of the
Dahlak Archipelago and the northern Eritrean coast to the Eritrean independence movement EPLF and by 1991 Ethiopia had lost control of all of Eritrea. Following the
international recognition of Eritrean independence in 1993, the Dahlak islands became a part of Eritrea.
References
External links
Coordinates:
15°50′N,
40°12′E
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