Aussa was once home to the extinct Harla people, their moniker still exists within clans in rural areas. Aussa is unique to the Afar region since it is the only area today that Afar people are engaged in agriculture. Farming was established by Harla as far back as the fourteenth century. The town also seems to have been a haven for mutineers of the Harari kingdom early on. Aussa became prominent when it served as capital of the Adal Sultanate in 1577. After Adal's demise, the Imamate of Aussa was established by Hararis and continued ruling the southern parts of Afar region until they were overthrown in the eighteenth century by the Mudaito dynasty of Afar who later established the Sultanate of Aussa. Aussa is unique to the Afar region since it is the only area today where Afar people are engaged in agriculture. Farming is believed to be introduced by Harla as far back as the fourteenth century. Asaita was flooded by the Awash River in August 1954, and again in September, 1998. In late June 1971 a fight during the market between the Afar and highland people left 16 workers dead and 34 wounded. Of more than 1,000 small farmers who had moved from the highlands to Awsa there were only 250-300 still living in Asaita after the violence. In March 1975 the Derg nationalized all rural lands, including those of Ras BitwodedAlimirah Hanfadhe, Sultan of the Afar. When they offered to fly him to Addis Ababa to negotiate the transfer of his lands, he refused the offer. That June, the Derg dispatched a battalion of troops to capture the sultan. Although the Ottaways note their sources agree that the ensuing two-day battle was a "massacre", they differ in the details: Jon Kalb, who was working in the Afar region at the time, provides a narrative which reconciles the two accounts. According to Kalb, Ras Alimirah had fled in May across the border to Djibouti, where his brother-in-law was in charge. Following the fall of the Derg, Ras Alimirah, who had in the meantime founded the Afar Liberation Front, returned to Asaita with his son, Hanfadhe Alimirah. However, on 8 November 1995, Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front troops surrounded their family residence in Assayita, then after exchanging gunfire overpowered Alimirah's guards, and entered the residence, where they confiscated weapons and other items. According to observers, this action against the Sultan and the ALF was another effort to reduce his influence in the Afar Region. Despite the EPRDF's persistent efforts to bring the group under its control, the ALF is said to have remained independent.
