The Wilwal Horse
In the eastern lowlands of Ethiopia, around Jijiga and across the Somali Region, exists a little-known horse population whose history is inseparable from the dry landscapes and pastoral societies of the Horn of Africa. Known variously as the Wilwal, Ogaden, Dirdaa’u or Somali horse, it belongs to a regional equine tradition that has received remarkably little historical or scientific documentation. Yet the horse occupies a distinctive place within Ethiopia’s extraordinary diversity of indigenous horse populations.
The Wilwal is concentrated around Jijiga, the capital of the Somali Region, and in surrounding settlements including Dhik, Kebribeya and Waju. Horses identified with the population are also reported around Aware, close to the Somali border, where some have lived in a free-ranging or feral state. The 2012 study Morphological Diversities and Ecozones of Ethiopian Horse Populations identified the Ogaden/Wilwal population as characteristic of the Somali lowlands around Jijiga, Waju and Aware.
Unlike the better-known Ethiopian highland horses, the Wilwal belongs to an environment of heat, seasonal water scarcity and extensive pastoralism. Its physical character reflects this setting. Contemporary literature describes it as a well-conformed, relatively large and elegant horse, while an earlier morphological study characterised the Ogaden/Wilwal as a heavier horse with sound conformation. Mares were noted as tending towards a dipped topline and a somewhat paunchy belly.
Its uses have historically been practical rather than ornamental. Wilwal horses are used both as saddle horses and cart horses, placing them within the everyday economy of the region rather than within a narrowly defined sporting tradition. This distinction is important. The Wilwal is not simply an Ethiopian version of a European riding horse; it is a horse shaped by the needs, landscapes and mobility of communities living across one of the Horn of Africa's most demanding environments.
The history of the Wilwal, however, is unusually elusive. There is no established studbook, no reliable population census and no secure written account of the breed's origins. Recent scholarship stresses that its provenance remains unknown precisely because written historical sources are absent.
One oral tradition holds that the horses arrived in Ethiopia from neighbouring Somalia, specifically from the Nugaal Valley. This would place the Wilwal within the much wider movement of horses, people, livestock and pastoral knowledge across the political borders of the modern Horn of Africa. Such movement long predates contemporary national boundaries, making the distinction between an "Ethiopian" and "Somali" horse less straightforward than modern maps might suggest. The Nugaal origin, however, remains an oral tradition rather than a historically demonstrated fact.
The most intriguing element of the Wilwal's story concerns its name. Local elders recorded in the 2012 research associated the name Wilwal with Wilwal Farah Hersi, a prominent Somali leader and governor who was remembered for using these horses during conflict with British colonial forces. The account further describes horses being used in communication and in the movement of weapons.
This story gives the horse a particularly compelling place within the history of the Horn: not merely as an animal of transport, but as an instrument of mobility, communication and resistance. Yet it must be treated carefully. The researchers themselves state that the proposed connection between the horse's name and Wilwal Farah Hersi requires further demographic and historical study. Later scholarship likewise describes the explanation as unconfirmed.
That uncertainty is not a weakness in the story. In many ways, it is central to it.
The absence of a written provenance means that the history of the Wilwal survives partly through oral memory: through the names people give their horses, the places where they are found, the stories attached to particular animals and the knowledge transmitted between generations. This makes the Wilwal an especially interesting subject within the wider history of African horse cultures, where formal breed classifications have often lagged behind the living knowledge of the communities that breed and use horses.
Ethiopia possesses one of Africa's richest horse populations. National livestock documentation recognises multiple indigenous horse populations, including Abyssinian, Bale, Borena, Horro, Kafa-Sheka, Kundudo, Ogaden/Aware/Wilwal and Selale/Oromo. The Wilwal therefore belongs not to a single Ethiopian horse tradition but to a much larger mosaic of regional horse cultures, each adapted to its own ecology and social history.
Its geographical position is particularly significant. Jijiga lies within the Somali lowlands, a region historically connected through movement across today's Ethiopia-Somalia border. The Wilwal consequently occupies a space between categories: Ethiopian and Somali, domestic and free-ranging, working animal and cultural symbol. Some individuals are found in towns and are used for riding and transport; others have been recorded living freely around Aware.
There is also something revealing in the fact that the population remains comparatively poorly documented. The most recent scholarly account notes that there is no inventory of the Wilwal population in the DAD-IS database, while the absence of a studbook further illustrates how little formal infrastructure surrounds the breed. A horse population can therefore exist as a living tradition without necessarily having the institutional recognition normally associated with a "breed."
This raises an important question about what constitutes a breed in the first place.
The Wilwal is not defined by a modern registry, a controlled breeding programme or a closed studbook. Its identity instead emerges from place, morphology, use and local naming. It is a horse associated with a particular ecological zone and cultural landscape. In that sense, the word "breed" can be less useful than the idea of a regional horse population or landrace: an animal shaped over generations by environment, human selection and local practice.
For a project concerned with disappearing horse cultures, this makes the Wilwal particularly compelling. Its story is not one of a famous European breed exported into Africa and subsequently adopted. It belongs to a much older African equestrian landscape in which horses have moved with people, crossed ecological zones and participated in pastoral economies, warfare, trade and communication.
And yet its future is difficult to define. The lack of reliable population data makes it impossible to state with confidence how numerous Wilwal horses are today or whether the population is increasing or declining. What can be said is that the horse remains associated with Jijiga and the surrounding Somali lowlands, while its history and genetic identity remain insufficiently studied.
The Wilwal therefore represents something larger than a little-known Ethiopian horse breed. It is a fragment of a much broader Horn of African equestrian history, one in which political borders are relatively recent but the movement of horses and pastoral communities is centuries old.
Its obscurity is part of its significance. There is no polished mythology, no definitive founding date and no authoritative studbook telling us exactly where the horse came from. Instead there are landscapes, oral histories, regional names and living animals. There is the memory of horses associated with Wilwal Farah Hersi; the tradition of an origin in Somalia's Nugaal Valley; the working horses of Jijiga; and the free-ranging animals near Aware.
What survives is therefore not a complete history, but a constellation of fragments.
And perhaps that is precisely what makes the Wilwal worth documenting: a horse whose history still exists most vividly not in archives, but in the landscape and in the memories of the people who know it.
