The Argobba are a Muslim people group that is spread out through isolated village networks and towns in the northeast and east of Ethiopia. The Argobba have typically been astute traders and merchants, and have adjusted to the economic trends in their area. These factors have led to the decline of the Argobba language.

Argobba communities can be found in the Afar, Amhara, and Oromia Regions, in and along the Great Rift Valley. They include Yimlawo, Gusa, Shonke, Berehet, Khayr Amba, Melkajillo, Metehara, Shewa Robit, and the surrounding rural villages.

In some places the Argobba language has homogenized with Amharic. In other places the people have shifted to neighboring languages for economic reasons. At this time there are only a few areas left where the Argobba are not at least bilingual in Amharic, Oromiffa or Afar. All of these languages have a literature that can be used to serve the Argobba, even though their current literacy rate in any language is low; the Argobba reportedly do not like to send their children to school because they will be influenced by the non-Moslem world. This is the same reason that the Argobba do not go to court.

The Afar (Afar: Qafár, Feera: ዐፋር ʿāfār, Arabic: عفار‎, Amharic: አፋር^? āfār), also known as the Danakil, are an ethnic group in the Horn of Africa. They primarily live in the Afar Region of Ethiopia and in northern Djibouti, although some also inhabit the southern point of Eritrea. Afars speak the Afar language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

Afar society has traditionally been organized into independent kingdoms, each ruled by its own Sultan.

The earliest surviving written mention of the Afar is from the 13th century Arab writer Ibn Sa'id, who reported that they lived in the area around the port of Suakin, as far south as Mandeb, near Zeila. They are mentioned intermittently in Ethiopian records, first as helping Emperor Amda Seyon in a campaign beyond the Awash River, then over a century later when they assisted Emperor Baeda Maryam when he campaigned against their neighbors the Dobe'a.

Along with the closely related Somali and other adjacent Afro-Asiatic-speaking Muslim peoples, the Afar are also associated with the medieval Adal Sultanate that controlled large parts of the northern Horn of Africa. During its existence, Adal had relations and engaged in trade with other polities in Northeast Africa, the Near East, Europe and South Asia. Many of the historic cities in the Horn region, such as Maduna, Abasa, Berbera, Zeila and Harar, flourished with courtyard houses, mosques, shrines, walled enclosures and cisterns during the kingdom's Golden Age.