The Somali people numbered less than a million yet had a profound impact on a geographic sphere stretching over 4 million sq km, from Suakin to Sofala we made our presence known through settlements, trade factories, conquests and being a hub of international commerce. Our cities were known from China to Venice. We repulsed the Portuguese, and nearly wiped out the much larger population of Abyssinians from the pages of history. Take any historic record regarding the African continent, be it Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Chinese or Arabic and you can bet the Somali peninsula features prominently, in-fact the oldest evidence of international trade in sub-Saharan Africa comes from Somalia.
If you go into the wider Islamic world, our influence is persistent, whether it be the al-Zaylaโi and al-Jabarti scholars in Cairo, Makkah and Jerusalem, or our settlements in the Arabian peninsula, our ancestors hosting Muslim families fleeing the Mongols and the Spanish Inquisition. Whether it be the Mogadishu trade factory in Malacca, or the sons of Mogadishu carrying her name in the Maldives and the Bengal area(Saโid and Abdaziz), or our saints bringing Islam to Sri-Lanka(Aw Barkhadle), and being revered by Muslims across East Africa (al-Barawi, Sheikh Hussein), the influence and impact originating from Somalia was profound.
Instead of focusing on the absence of a globally spanning empire that a population as small as that of Somalia 500 years ago could never sustain, ask yourself why all of these different ethnicities spent so much time and energy, including on this forum, in a futile bid to displace the Somali people from the heritage of their country? Is it because Somalia is blessed with a large amount of historically relevant cities, states, and heroic figures that one ethnicity should not have all of that to themselves?
What matters is that even with all of those big empires rampaging across the world, the Somali people emerged genetically, culturally, and religiously intact despite being located on two waterways connecting three continents. What matters is that when looking at our rich but yet to be properly researched historiography we can already see that we were an extremely relevant people in the global machine of commerce, religion and cultural diffusion. What matters is that today we can look across our landscapes and see the remains of ancient and medieval cities, harbours, fortresses and mosques.
What matters is that we have so much material to make amazing movies, tv-shows, anime and other forms of entertainment. This richness will only increase with proper research in archaeology, manuscripts and restoration of historic sites.