The fishing village was originally built on the plateau of Dala-h Húgub near the Dar'i Wadi, with some houses constructed of mud and stone and Daboyta.

Although nominally part of the Ottoman Empire since 1554, between 1821 and 1841, Muhammad Ali, Pasha of Egypt, came to control Yemen and modern-day Eritrea, and claims on Ethiopia as far as Harar.

[3] In actuality, however, Egypt had little authority over the interior and their period of rule on the coast was brief, lasting only a few years before the Egyptian garrison was withdrawn from the area in 1862, During the Scramble for Africa, growing French interest in the area took place against a backdrop of British activity in Egypt and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

Between 1883 and 1887, France signed various treaties with the then ruling Somali and Afar Sultans, which allowed it to expand the protectorate to include the Gulf of Tadjoura.

[4] Obock was originally significant as the site of the first French colony in the region, established by treaty with the local Afar rulers on March 11, 1862.

(Up to that time French ships had to buy coal at the British port of Aden across the gulf, an unwise dependency in case of war.)

The site was not the subject of any occupation, just visited by the ships of the naval divisions assigned to the Indian Ocean, until the installation of trader Pierre Arnoux in 1881, followed by Paul Soleillet.

The locals named the blockade the carmii, a word for a type of sorghum usually reserved for cattle, but used as human food at the height of the famine.

The Japanese declaration of war (7 December 1941) gave the colony some respite, since the British were forced to withdraw all but two ships from the blockade for use in the Far East.

Christian Raimond Dupont surrendered and Colonel Raynal's troops crossed back into French Somaliland on 26 December 1942, completing its liberation.

[12][13] Obock has become a key stop in the route for illegal migration from Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia, being the location from where smugglers take migrants on boats to Yemen.