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Somalia Coastal Towns
The expansion into the peninsula as far as the Red Sea and
Indian Ocean put the Somalis in sustained contact with Persian
and Arab immigrants who had established a series of settlements
along the coast. From the eighth to the tenth centuries, Persian
and Arab traders were already engaged in lucrative commerce from
enclaves along the Red Sea and Indian Ocean as far south as the
coast of present-day Kenya. The most significant enclave was the
renowned medieval emporium of Saylac on the Gulf of Aden. In the
sixteenth century, Saylac became the principal outlet for trade
in coffee, gold, ostrich feathers, civet, and Ethiopian slaves
bound for the Middle East, China, and India. Over time Saylac
emerged as the center of Muslim culture and learning, famed for
its schools and mosques. Eventually it became the capital of the
medieval state of Adal, which in the sixteenth century fought off
Christian Ethiopian domination of the highlands. Between 1560 and
1660, Ethiopian expeditions repeatedly harried Saylac, which sank
into decay. Berbera replaced Saylac as the northern hub of
Islamic influence in the Horn of Africa. By the middle of the
sixteenth century, Saylac and Berbera had become dependencies of
the sharifs of Mocha and in the seventeenth century passed to the
Ottoman Turks, who exercised authority over them through locally
recruited Somali governors.
The history of commercial and intellectual contact between
the inhabitants of the Arabian and Somali coasts may help explain
the Somalia's connection with the Prophet Muhammad. Early in the
Prophet's ministry, a band of persecuted Muslims had, with the
Prophet's encouragement, fled across the Red Sea into the Horn of
Africa. There the Muslim's were afforded protection by the
Ethiopian negus, or king. Thus, Islam may have been introduced
into the Horn of Africa well before the faith took root in its
Arabian native soil. The large-scale conversion of the Somalis
had to await the arrival in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
centuries of Muslim patriarchs, in particular, the renowned
Shaykh Daarood Jabarti and Shaykh Isahaaq, or Isaaq. Daarood
married Doombira Dir, the daughter of a local patriarch. Their
issue gave rise to the confederacy that forms the largest
clan-family (see Glossary) in Somalia, the Daarood. For his part,
Shaykh Isaaq founded the numerous Isaaq clan-family in northern
Somalia. Along with the
clan (see Glossary) system of
lineages (see Glossary), the Arabian shaykhs probably introduced into
Somalia the patriarchal ethos and patrilineal genealogy typical
of Indo-Europeans, and gradually replaced the indigenous Somali
social organization, which, like that of many other African
societies, may have been matrilineal
(see The Segmentary Social Order
, ch. 2).
Islam's penetration of the Somali coast, along with the
immigration of Arabian elements, inspired a second great
population movement reversing the flow of migration from
northward to southward. This massive movement, which ultimately
took the Somalis to the banks of the Tana River and to the
fertile plains of Harear, in Ethiopia, commenced in the
thirteenth century and continued to the nineteenth century. At
that point, European interlopers appeared on the East African
scene, ending Somali migration onto the East African plateau.
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