Horn of Africa Horn of Africa The Horn of Africa (, , , , ) (shortened to HOA; alternatively Somali Peninsula) is a peninsula in Northeast Africa. It juts hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. The area is the easternmost projection of the African continent. Referred to in ancient and medieval times as "Land of the Berbers" and "Habesha", the Horn of Africa denotes the region containing the countries of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. It covers approximately 2,000,000 km (770,000 sq mi) and is inhabited by roughly 115 million people
Horn of Africa to wall paintings of the 7th century CE. Somali architecture includes the Fakr ad-Din Mosque, which was built in 1269 by the Fakr ad-Din, the first Sultan of the Sultanate of Mogadishu. Ethiopia is renowned for its ancient churches, such as at the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Lalibela. The Horn has produced numerous indigenous writing systems. Among these is Ge'ez script ( ') (also known as "Ethiopic"), which has been written in for at least 2000 years. It is an abugida script that was originally developed to write the Ge'ez language. In speech communities that use it, such as