Djibouti

Located on the Horn of Africa, Djibouti, a country bordered today by Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia, was a vital link in the spread of Islam in Africa, with only the 14-mile (23 km) Strait of Mandeb separating the African continent from the Arabian Peninsula.

The walled seaport of Zeila mainly consisted of Arab and Persian traders, but its population also incorporated a minority of the Danakil or Afar peoples who typically lived in the rural areas surrounding the city. Trade in slaves (see slavery) and silver supported the growth of the seaport and eventually led to the rise of the Adal kingdom, with Zeila as its center and capital. Zeila was one of the principal points of entry for Islam into the Horn of Africa. By the eighth or ninth century, Islam was the dominant religion on the coast of Djibouti. Its spread to the rural areas was a longer process, and Islam only established itself in Zeila’s hinterland in the 10th and 11th centuries.

Djibouti’s connection to Islam and the Middle East gave the Adal and other Islamic kingdoms on the Horn power to assert their independence from the Christian empire of Abyssinia. Throughout the 13th century and continuing as late as the 16th, power struggles frequently disrupted the region. Djibouti remained predominantly Muslim in this period, even after Western invaders defeated the Adal in the late 16th century.

Further reading: Basil Davidson, The Lo. st Cities of Africa (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987); Ari Nave, “Djibouti,” in Afri-cana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, eds. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), 607.

—Lisa M. Brady

Aries traveled to eastern Europe, the Philippines, Africa, India, Mesopotamia, and the Western Hemisphere. In the Americas Dominican preachers sometimes criticized colonial abuses of the Indians. In 1511, for example, Fray Anton de Montesinos preached a sermon in which he warned the colonists of Hispaniola that their mistreatment of the Indians merited punishment in hell. The most famous defender of the Indians, Bartolome de Las Casas, was also a Dominican.

Further reading: Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation (London: Burns and Oates, 1977); Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); W. A. Hinnebusch, “Dominicans” in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4, ed. William J. McDonald, et al. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 974-982; Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492-1700 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

—Martha K. Robinson