Dankali, also known as Dancaly, Dancale, Dandali and Dangalli was a medieval Muslim kingdom ruled by the Afar people located in the Horn of Africa.

[citation needed] The earliest surviving written mention of the Dankali is from the 13th-century Andalusian writer Ibn Sa'id, who reported that the domain of the Danakil inhabited the area around the port of Suakin, as far south as Bab-el-Mandeb.

According to an Ethiopian royal chronicle, the ruler of Dankali on the occasion of Baede Maryam's conquest against the Dobe'a offered him military support.

James Bruce stated that he had gifted the Emperor a horse and a mule laden with dates, together with a shield made of elephant hide and two spears.

[5] In Suseynos' chronicle, it reports that the Dankali king Kamil had recently overthrown his brother Sahim, had travelled up to the Emperor's camp at Dehana in 1620.

And he gave him valuable robes and men, with whom he regained his kingdom, and he granted that he should pay only half of the tribute that he paid every year"[8] In 1625, Jeronimo Lobo and his Portuguese companions had arrived at Baylul to travel to Emperor Suseynos' court.

[9] "It was a small town of no more than fifty inhabitants, straw houses, not much in the way of provisions beyond a few goats and kids which the Muslims sold them since all the people in that kingdom are poor, rough and usually very wretched.

"[10]The Portuguese had given elaborate gifts to the Arabian merchants and also gave some to other less important people; for many gathered round to watch the distribution.

During the thirteen days they stayed there, with nothing remarkable happening to them, they hired camels for their belongings and bought a few donkeys of which they could avail themselves when greatly fatigued and which would, in the meantime, carry the bags containing the breviaries and each one's little books.

The Muslim inhabitants were also motivated by something else in taking us on this detour, and this was that they had received payment for the hiring of the camels much larger than what was normally paid in that land, although we considered it cheap, and gave Lobo and his men so much work in order to deserve the pay.

Murad then later gave additional information during his journey to Batavia in 1689 that he had observed Ethiopia's shores were all occupied by the Turks with the sole exception of Baylul.

whose inhabitants, the Arabs, come there with their ships, taking provisions of corn, butter, honey and also tusks, cow-hides and civet, which together with a few slaves are brought there from the highlands and are exchanged for spices, pepper, broadcloath, etc.

[13][14] Reverting to conditions in the Afar country on a later visit to Batavia, in 1697, Murad had reiterated that the Danakil king continued to be "subject to the emperor of Abyssinia".

They were inhabited by "wild people" with "a religion of their own" who walk around "completely naked", but who, when sitting, covered their nakedness with a piece of cloth.

Thus in the 18th century, the Dankali Kingdom had lost the salt plains of Arho, and the northern tribes had chosen to obey their elders of each clan.

It was largely confined to the age-old carriage of bars of rock salt, which were excavated in the Afar lowlands, and had to be transported through the "dry and burning deserts".