Qualla: Assab https://qualla.com/assab en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/q/3/assab-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Assab https://qualla.com/assab Assab: Introduction https://qualla.com/assab/ Photo credit .Jacopo. from Italy, CC BY 2.0. On 15 November 1869, an Italian missionary named Giuseppe Sapeto stepped ashore on the Bay of Assab and handed over 6,000 Maria Theresa thalers to two Afar sultans, the brothers Hasan ibn Ahmed and Ibrahim ibn Ahmed. They signed the bay over to him. Sapeto was working for the Rubattino Shipping Company, but his real client was Italy itself, which had no African colony yet and saw Assab - a fishing village of about 100 people living in twenty huts - as a foothold on the Red Sea close to the Bab-el-Mandeb chokepoint. The purchase was controversial. The Italian press and parliament opposed it. The Egyptians declared it illegal. None of that mattered. In 1882 the Italian government took control of the port, and the quiet Afar harbor at the edge of the Danakil Depression became the seed of Italian Eritrea, the colony that would eventually lead - more than a century later - to the independent nation of Eritrea.

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Image: .Jacopo. from Italy | CC BY 2.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/q/3/assab-wp/sfq3-assab-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Assab: Rifles for an Emperor https://qualla.com/assab/ Photo credit meg and rahul, CC BY 2.0. Italy wanted Assab as a gateway to Ethiopia. In the 1880s, Count Pietro Antonelli, Italian envoy to the Shewan king Menelik II, signed a contract to supply Menelik with 2,000 Remington rifles, shipped in through Assab. In 1883 Antonelli extended the deal: a treaty of commerce wit...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/q/3/assab-wp/sfq3-assab-rifles-for-an-emperor.mp3 0:06 2 full Assab: Forgotten and Remembered https://qualla.com/assab/ Photo credit Reinhard Dietrich, CC0. In 1885 Italy captured the much larger port of Massawa further up the coast, and Assab slid into the shadow of its northern rival. Menelik II broke off relations with the Italians after his crushing victory at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. Ethiopia thereafter preferred to trade thr...

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Image: Reinhard Dietrich | CC0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/q/3/assab-wp/sfq3-assab-forgotten-and-remembered.mp3 0:06 3 full Assab: The War and After https://qualla.com/assab/ Photo credit M.Bitton, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the Second Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-36, the fascist government in Rome rebuilt Assab's port and pushed a road inland to Dessie. Assab became one of the last Italian strongholds in East Africa to fall during the Second World War. On 11 June 1941, the 3/15th Punjab Regimen...

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Image: M.Bitton | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/q/3/assab-wp/sfq3-assab-the-war-and-after.mp3 0:06 4 full Assab: Closed Border, Empty Harbor https://qualla.com/assab/ Photo credit Voice of Clam, Public domain. Then everything stopped. When the Eritrean-Ethiopian War broke out in 1998, the land border between the two countries slammed shut. Ethiopia, suddenly without a coastline of its own, redirected its trade through Djibouti. Assab's shipping traffic collapsed. The oil refinery had a...

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Image: Voice of Clam | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/q/3/assab-wp/sfq3-assab-closed-border-empty-harbor.mp3 0:06 5 full Assab: A New Geopolitics https://qualla.com/assab/ Photo credit sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2015, the United Arab Emirates arrived. The UAE built a deep-water port and expanded the airstrip at Assab International, and used the facility as a launching base for the Saudi-led intervention in the Yemeni civil war that had broken out next door across the Bab-el-Mandeb. Hu...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/f/q/3/assab-wp/sfq3-assab-a-new-geopolitics.mp3 0:06 6 full