As I was reading about medieval guilds in the islamic wolrd and how towns were organized. In a section they talked about how empheral towns in the muslim world. I realized one of the key differences between somalia and other arid countries is that while we might get slightly more rain . We don't have any permanent water source such as an oasis. So outside of somewhere like harar or mogadishu. You couldn't permanent settle anywhere. Its why somalis didn't raise cattle like other nomads in the sahel or why we have less dialects and a more cohesive identity. Enrico centurllo in a paper mentions centuries where rainfall was much higher. I suspected that coincided with much higher rates of town settlement.
Limitations of medieval somali urbanism
- Thread starter Midas
- Start date
Agriculture on a decent scale was possible in northern and central Somalia until the 1600s. The region is still crisscrossed with river valleys now dry may have at one point been luscious rivers. I've seen some talk of Somalis shifting to camel pastoralism being an adaptation to the rather quick change in climate.
When Somalis don't need to they farm. You can see this in nexus regions where there is more water available. Dry agriculture practiced in the more fertile regions of Togadheer comes to mind. Although people still keep Animal herds they are secondary to farming.
Another example of this return to farming could be the farmers of Bari in the Oasis mountain valleys found throughout the region.
There was permanent urban settlements all over the Somali peninsula, it wasn't confined to Harar or Mogadishu. Harar as a town is actually a late comer, a density of much older urban settlements existed from the Ogaden plateu into Northern Somali coast during the medieval period.
Aside from from the usual Mogadishu, Barawa or Merca there was more coastal settlements that in the area that are now abandoned and interior urban ones as well , with Luuq being the oldest and later Bardheere along trade routes.
You are right about one thing though you cannot make an urban settlement anywhere, in the Somali context it was usually along strategic locations along trade routes &/or near water sources such as lakes, springs or wells.
You also need a rural community producing a surplus to supply food and resources to the towns. Otherwise the towns wouldn't exist. Wether it would be pastoral products or agricultural . And Somalis raised cattle, sheep and goats, not just camels.
The growth and proliferation of them had to with increase of trade and effective management of resources by local states. Somalis cohesive identity has do with our relationship to these trade routes connecting the regions and people with eachother.
Aside from from the usual Mogadishu, Barawa or Merca there was more coastal settlements that in the area that are now abandoned and interior urban ones as well , with Luuq being the oldest and later Bardheere along trade routes.
You are right about one thing though you cannot make an urban settlement anywhere, in the Somali context it was usually along strategic locations along trade routes &/or near water sources such as lakes, springs or wells.
You also need a rural community producing a surplus to supply food and resources to the towns. Otherwise the towns wouldn't exist. Wether it would be pastoral products or agricultural . And Somalis raised cattle, sheep and goats, not just camels.
The growth and proliferation of them had to with increase of trade and effective management of resources by local states. Somalis cohesive identity has do with our relationship to these trade routes connecting the regions and people with eachother.
In Northern Somalia there is evidence of terrace farming being practiced in the past even. There is also Darawish partial-succesful attempts at farming in the nuggal valley which they used for food supply, might give a clue to what might have been possible in previous past.
They had rain water collecting systems and grain storage systems in place, in both the south and the north. It points to the fact that rainfall in Somalia has always been irregular in varying degrees.
Environmental changes and the climate is definitely a factor, but i believe in a lot of cases it has more to do with that the fact that due to Somalia's environment that agricultural production can only be increased with centralized governmental control and coordination of resources and water and delegation of labor, because of the irregular rainfall, floods and erratic climate conditions that can set it back.
You see this hold prominence when it relates to stories about the southern interior leaders nicknamed Ajuuran(The Taxers) during the medieval period.
You see this also cordination with Awdal led North which was producing exorbitant amount of food and feeding the general regions nearby.
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I think the changing environment probably plays a huge role. I suspect it was becuase the environment got worse and more people switched to pastoralism which acclreated the degrading. Anatolia in the 10th century under the byzantine had a pouplation of of 8-13 million under the ottomans in the 15th century, it was 4-5 million. This all becuase nomads took up the farmland and made it pasture. Imagine somalia's case when it was always natural dry.
Wait can you please provide any source for the terrace farming up north??
This is really cool and adds to something else i saw- if they happen to be in the same area it would be amazing
I.M Lewis mentions it breifly:
There were still a number of farming villages in the Western part of Somaliland during the late 19th - 20th century.
The current environment isn't really that much different
Same can be observed for the medieval period in written sources between 1000-1600 but the difference being that they were in bigger scale and productivity.
In turn confirmed by archeology Medieval Archaeology in Somaliland:
The exorbitant amount of agricultural output in Northern Somalia was also observed by the Portuguese. The general region produced so much food that it exported much of it's surplus to regions nearby.
It's very unlike neighboring medieval Abyssinia which was characterized by food shortages, famines and poverty. And it was mainly due to it's leadership policies. Despite the fact that they occupy a more fertile land than Somalis.
In Somalia the growth of urban settlements and farming communities had to with the cordination by a central state. The decline of them is owed to the state collapse and trade disturbance.
The region always had a large dominant nomadic population, as it was a rooted in an exchange system between farmers, towns people and herders. That's basic recipe that shaped it's economy.
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I think it's possible that there was actually a lot more but that these were made of more fragile material that wouldn't survive in the record say like thatched huts, etc.
You'd see the same in Berbera and Saylac late into when the colonials came the old stone town and also these other homes not made of stone around them.
Yeah it's honestly sad. Somalia in the medieval period would probably be unrecognizable to us in some ways. I wonder how much of this history can be recovered from oral traditions and folklore. It's always surprising to me that the only 2 figures I'm aware of before the 15th century. Is aw barkhadle and arawelo.
The settlements ranged from hamlets to villages to towns depending on the locations . Not all of them were stone houses lets be clear , a lot of them were built in perishable material like wood.
There were a number of them scattered so they would probably add up to 50.000 - 200.000 put together. Something i am estimating based on the army recruit numbers , we can gain more accurate estimates if we survey the nearby cemeteries.
It's not unrecognizable to Somalis at all. When Richard Burton and other explorers visited area some 300 years later, local Somalis were relaying accounts of events about the Awdal and Sultans Sa'Ad Din etc . They were pretty familiar with it as if they took place recently
99% of what we know from Medieval history, is not from oral traditions or forklore. What we know is pulled from written sources and archeology. The written sources go back before the 15th century.
Tarikh Al Gadabursi written document that i mentioned in another thread and other Northern manuscripts is a good example of this: Mentions their ancestor Imam Ali Said (Samaroon) fighting in the Adal army during the 14th century
I have seen mentiones of a few texts about Mogadishu and Southern-central of the ones that survived(it is mostly covers the 1600s rebellion against the Ajuran(The taxers) Sultan/Imam, the political and economic upheaval), similar to the surviving chronicles in Northern-Western area. Midas you posted a screen shot discussing a few of them in a different thread, Tarikh Al-Mulikh (History of kings), Tarikh Al-Walasma (History of Walashma Dynasty), Tarikh Al-Mujahidin(The history of the Mujahiduns against the Habesha) and the early Awsa texts .
What was left out from it is that there is also the chronicle Tarikh Al-Gadabursi (Mentions their patriarch Imam Ali Said's alliance with the Awdal sultans in their fight against Abyssinia and Ugas Malik resistance against Oromo invasion in year 1575) it was copied by I'M Lewis and Wagner from private hands and a few other manuscripts from Northern Somalia was brought to European Libraries.
I asked Jama Muse Jama about this a few years back and he said they donated this chronicle to the Somali museum before the civil war in 1990. It was 1 of the thousands of historical manuscripts donated to the Somali Museum.
A lot of the chronicles/documents about that regions history do not always come from Harar, a big chunk of them were written on the northern coast or produced/survived elsewhere even as far as Yemen and then was brought there to Harar. There was widespread circulation of texts and Harar sometimes acted as a central collection place
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Is anybody working on publishing them or having acess to them? Also how large are these chronicles (100?200?) and do they cover just wars or is their descriptions of the land and trade.The settlements ranged from hamlets to villages to towns depending on the locations . Not all of them were stone houses lets be clear , a lot of them were built in perishable material like wood.
There were a number of them scattered so they would probably add up to 50.000 - 200.000 put together. Something i am estimating based on the army recruit numbers , we can gain more accurate estimates if we survey the nearby cemeteries.
It's not unrecognizable to Somalis at all. When Richard Burton and other explorers visited area some 300 years later, local Somalis were relaying accounts of events about the Awdal and Sultans Sa'Ad Din etc . They were pretty familiar with it as if they took place recently
99% of what we know from Medieval history, is not from oral traditions or forklore. What we know is pulled from written sources and archeology. The written sources go back before the 15th century.
Tarikh Al Gadabursi written document that i mentioned in another thread and other Northern manuscripts is a good example of this: Mentions their ancestor Imam Ali Said (Samaroon) fighting in the Adal army during the 14th century
The chronicles general focus is on political formations and conflict, but they also feature details about trade, settlement and migrations. Based on references i have seen they even mention details about environment in the region, which had more rivers and there were large herds of elephants and antelopes in the lowlands where forests were also prevalent.
Not sure. I hope they publish, translate them and make them available.
Speaking of somali history what do you guys think of this guy's post it's a bit schizo but it's interesting . @The alchemist @shimbird
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