Alternate History Somalia

[Internet Nomad]

What prevented the Somalis from extending their empire in this region of Africa? There is hardly any empire or significant army.
Somalians could have colonised a large area of territory if they had banded together and truly desired it.
The Swahili empire is the only ancient history that exists for Kenya.
We could have conquered by using religious reasoning.
If we had invested all that energy in the south, we might have had a lot more territory instead of the back and forth between Ethiopia and Somalia.
Additionally, Somalia is not a fertile land, therefore that would have given us justification for growth just like the europeans.

So the big question why did Somalis not expand further into africa?

 

[Nomadic lord]

I believe Somalis had a colony in Mozambique but just used it to export gold.

 

[Odious Delirium]

View attachment 260175
What prevented the Somalis from extending their empire in this region of Africa? There is hardly any empire or significant army.
Somalians could have colonised a large area of territory if they had banded together and truly desired it.
The Swahili empire is the only ancient history that exists for Kenya.
We could have conquered by using religious reasoning.
If we had invested all that energy in the south, we might have had a lot more territory instead of the back and forth between Ethiopia and Somalia.
Additionally, Somalia is not a fertile land, therefore that would have given us justification for growth just like the europeans.

So the big question why did Somalis not expand further into africa?

That actually seemed to be the plan however it was to late they started to expand into Kenya but the brits didn't want the somalis messing things up for them so they pushed back and made sure there kenyan colony wasn't under attack

 

[Garaad diinle]

There is great somalia and now we have even greater somalia? Not gonna lie it has a good ring to it. Somalis might not have spread that far but somaliod population did. That's why you'll find rendille, daasanach, arbore, el molo, bayso and aweer people in kenya. You'll also find sakuye gabra garre and ajuraan that were oromoised in kenya. Jiddo dabare irole kilio and madanle also use to live in kenya and still do to some extent.

Today roughly speaking 2/3 of kenya population is cushite but if you were to go back say 1000 years almost all of kenya would have been cushitic. Cushite's spread as far south as south africa and angola spreading pasoralism way before the bantu expansion. Eventually people of west african origin conquered southern africa up to modern day kenya where they've absorbed the cushitic inhabitants of land. Cushitic vocabulary can still be found among people that have absorbed this cushites such as the kalenjin who call rain in their language rooba in somali it would be roob.

Who knows somalis that live in kenya might re-establishes cushitic population and became the last cushitc push southward. If it weren't for the bantu expansion or the nilotic southward movement the whole of east africa might have consisted of cuhitic speaking people with different level of intelligibility.

Imagine travelling to mozambique and somewhat understand what they say. Well that's exactly what someone from the congo travelling to mozambique would experience. You can have the same experience as the congo guy from my example if you travel to kenya and meet a rendille.



Here is an interesting video about cushites.

 

[Burqad]

Camels can’t reproduce if the climate is too wet