Hubat (Harari: ሆበት Hobät), also known as Hobat, or Kubat was a historical Muslim state located in present-day eastern Ethiopia.[1][2][3] Historically part of the Adal region alongside Gidaya and Hargaya states on the Harar plateau.[4] Hubat is today within a district known as Adare Qadima which includes Garamuelta and its surroundings in Oromia region.[5] The area is 30 km north west of Harar city at Hubeta, according to historian George Huntingford.[6][7] Trimingham locates it as the region between Harar and Jaldessa.[8] Archaeologist Timothy Insoll considers Harla town to be Hubat the capital of the now defunct Harla Kingdom.[9]
History
According to Dr. Lapiso Delebo, Hubat was one of the Islamic states that had developed in the Horn of Africa from the ninth to fourteenth centuries.[10] In 1288 AD Sultan Wali Asma of the Ifat Sultanate invaded Hubat following collapse of the Makḥzūmī dynasty.[11][12] Hubat was also invaded by Ethiopian Emperor Amda Seyon in the early 1300s.[13] Hubat was an Ifat protectorate in the fourteenth century and an autonomous state within Adal Sultanate in the fifteenth century.[14]
The sixteenth-century ruler of Adal who conquered Abyssinia, Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, was born in Hubat.[17][18][19] In his early career Ahmed defeated an Abyssinian militia at the Battle of Hubat led by Degalhan a general of Emperor Dawit II.[20] Ahmed Ibrahim also achieved a second stunning victory over an Abyssinian raiding party led by Fanuel in Hubat which gained him fame.[21]Merid Wolde Aregay states the Hubat and Harla principalities demonstrated ability to defeat Abyssinians meant it was necessary to replace Sultan Badlay's descendants.[22] Hubat would later play an important role for Ahmad ibn Ibrahim in his struggle against Adal Sultan Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad.[23] According to sixteenth century Adal writer Arab Faqīh, the ruler of Hubat was Abu Bakr Qatin during the Ethiopian-Adal war.[24]
Hubat was invaded and settled by the Barento Oromo in the following centuries who came at loggerheads with the Adal Sultanate.[25] The Emirate of Harar the successor state of Adal would continue to influence the region as numerous Oromo people converted to Islam during the reign of emir Abd ash-Shakur and this trend even continued following the Abyssinian annexation of the region.[26]