Scattered around the town are the modest remains of the Sultanate of Hobyo, the small Somali polity that flourished here from 1878 to 1925. The most visible traces are fragments of the old sultan's palace and stone-built houses near the coast, much of it in ruins or absorbed into later buildings.
This was once an important node in the dhow trade across the Indian Ocean — Hobyo's natural harbour gave it a strategic position between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Little of that prosperity is visible today, but the ruins are a reminder that this remote coast was once a small kingdom in its own right.