Decline of mogadishu 17th-18th century

[AbdiBashirJR]

Mogadishu decline has to be studied from being ibn battutas most favourite city to slowly becoming more and more dominated by omani influence to and eventually becoming vassal state to oman before being handed to italy and although im HG and i know im not indigneous i will drum the hiraab card all i want dont come for me.

Someone needs to do a piece on why it declined so badly before colonialism, mogadishu zeila and harar were the 3 greatest somali cities where scholars around the world would travel to study Islam. We know why harar and zeila declined because of ethiopia but why mogadishu to this extent.

 

[Aseer]

Yacquubi's ruined Xamar.

 

[AbdiBashirJR]

Yacqubis ruined Xamar. Like the saying goes Good times create Weak men, Weak men create Hard times.

elaborate why and how

 

[Zak12]

Well first off, Mogadishu was never under any influence by Oman or made a vassal state. In fact, the local Geledi sultans used to extract tribute from the Omanis.

 

[AbdiBashirJR]

Well first off, Mogadishu was never under any influence by Oman or made a vassal state. In fact, the local Geledi sultans used to extract tribute from the Omanis.

View attachment 355065

View attachment 355066

Geledi were some G's i read about them freeing slaves in zanzibar. Rahanweyne need to get the respect they deserve. But denying oman influence of benadir ports its dumb. A madow called said barqash owned it, I automatically discredit any source that mentions ajuran because they simply didnt exist or arent what ppl said they are.

regardless oman influence or not this not same mogadishu that has 100s of camels slaughtered a day according to ibn battuta:
"a town of endless size. Its people have many camels, of which they slaughter hundreds every day"

I put that into chatGPT assuming by hundreds he meant 100-200

• Average meat per camel = 300 kg
• Meat consumption per person per day = 0.4 kg

Total Meat Supply​

• Minimum: 100 camels × 300 kg = 30,000 kg
• Maximum: 200 camels × 300 kg = 60,000 kg

Population Estimate​

• Minimum supply (100 camels):
  30,000 kg ÷ 0.4 kg = 75,000 people
• Maximum supply (200 camels):
  60,000 kg ÷ 0.4 kg = 150,000 people

So, the city’s population is likely between 75,000 and 150,000, depending on the exact number of camels eaten per day.

and this estimate is assuming that everyone is eating camel meat as only food so this is minimum population estimate,

and then we have 1940 census with population being 50,000 which includes italians
this is a major fall off.

 

[Zak12]

A madow called said barqash owned it

Source?

any source that mentions ajuran because they simply didnt exist

My sources are about the Geledi who are post Ajuran. And yes they did exist, stop spreading misinfo.

 

[AbdiBashirJR]

Source?

My sources are about the Geledi who are post Ajuran. And yes they did exist, stop spreading misinfo.

source for said barqash is every where you can google who sold banadir its that said nigga.

also your source is a secondary source its probably written in 60s retelling stories they heard. ajuran never has ever had a primary source. There would be foreign countries that traded with it, eye witness who wrote about. geledi hirab are all documented ajuran is a myth/folklore that has been spread.

 

[Midas]

source for said barqash is every where you can google who sold banadir its that said nigga.

also your source is a secondary source its probably written in 60s retelling stories they heard. ajuran never has ever had a primary source. There would be foreign countries that traded with it, eye witness who wrote about. geledi hirab are all documented ajuran is a myth/folklore that has been spread.

Yes ajuraan is mentioned by dozens of European sources. Who do you think built the gondareshe citadel? You obviously never read the somali history section if you legitimately think the ajuran never existed ? . I suspect you didn't even look at the refrences on the Wikipedia page for the ajuran sultanate. Your way out of your depth my guy.

 

[Zak12]

source for said barqash is every where you can google who sold banadir its that said nigga.

Then post it here.

your source is a secondary source its probably written in 60s retelling stories they heard

Again, the sources I posted here are about the Geledi and who owned Benadir and Mogadishu. Oman only had nominal rule.

That aside, Ajuran does in fact have evidence supporting its existence.

From medieval accounts all the way to the early 1700s , there was state with its commercial capital in Mogadishu that covered most of the southern coast up to Mareeg and stretched into the far interior until it reach the state of Hadiyah (called Adea) and at times it was tributary to it and even Shoa ended paying tribute to it as European account relate about it. It was very powerful.

It also collaborated by archeology with many abandoned ruins, even a whole city in Mareeg with villages surounding it and one of the abandoned quarters of Mogadishu called Hamar Jabab covered 5km2 , which essentially made it hold around a population of 500.000 people. Thats just 1 quarter, not even El Garweyne was excavated yet crazyy right

So yeah the empire/sultanate existed.but it wasn't called Ajuuran. The name Ajuuran was mostly just a local umbrella name for state administrators who usually were called amirs, naibs, wakils, imam's that taxed and coordinated production from the rural's and urban people, we have epigraphical and textual accounts of these titles being used. It was the same situation in northern and western Somalia with Awdal if we look at the details in Futuh

The tradition Somali relate about it is not even that specific to the southern coast and what they are actually remembering is how centralized Somalia was throughout during the medieval period and it was governed by state actors and divided into provinces.

The name itself means taxation

It's still kinda of a mystery what happened to it, because we have an account by a British that was held captive in Mogadishu in the year 1700 and he wrote a whole diary filled drawings of the city and its monuments and it describing how wealthy and glamorous they were.

1700 Early Modern Tombs in Mogadishu

Tomb of the Kings Tomb of the Queens Tomb of the Princes Tomb of Duke & Duchesses Tomb of Imams Tomb of the Mujahideen Army Drawing of Mogadishu

www.somalispot.com

Sultan of Mogadishu rode Elephants

A description of Magadoxa

www.somalispot.com

and this was after the leadership was replaced and the rural rebellions they remember took control of the city in the late 1600s supposedly by Hiraab. It creates a gap in the memory. Because it was by early 1800s reduced and impoverished

I hypothesized to that it might have succumb to a natural catastrophe in a thread:

Locust plague and Famine the cause of medieval collapse of the sultanates?

The two most prominent explanations given for the collapse is Oromo expansion and Portuguese maritime disturbance, both don't seem like very convincing explanations. I am extremely doubtful of the Oromo invasion argument, firstly the portuguese noted that Awdalites weren't weakened by the war...

www.somalispot.com

We have various names of the Sultans from the same dynastic line of the Somali sultan who met Ibn Batuta and other arabic textual mentions of other Sultans names and the surviving coins with their names engraved in them.

Sultan Ali ibn Yusuf of Mogadishu mentioned by Ibn Hajar al Asqalani

In Ibn Hajar Al Asqalani mentions the Sultan of Mogadishu Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Umar ibn Anwar died in 1432 funnily enough Ibn Battuta mentions Abu Bakr ibn Umar as the ruler of Mogadishu in 1331. Can we assume that Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Umar who died in 1432 is the Nephew of Abu Bakr ibn Umar who was...

www.somalispot.com

 

[Idilinaa]

The decline of Mogadishu and the cities in the Greater Somali region in general from 1600-1700s, has to do with the Oromo invasion that cut into and disturbed the interior trade routes . @AbdiBashirJR mentioned many camels being slaughtered everyday during Ibn Batutas visit, there was thousands of camels in caravan passing through the interior to the coast , connected to trade routes carrying goods.

Drawing of a camel Caravan going to Mogadishu in the 1800s

So the interior trade routes was a vital lifeline to the city.Out of the 5 gates that surrounds the city, 4 of them go to different routes into the interior , and most of the town inhabitants act like middle men that have clan connections to the interior producers .

The second reason is Portuguese trade blockage in the Indian ocean. The Omanis came under the Portuguese for a century or so, while our ancestors kept the latter at bay and nearly extinguished their continental rival, Abyssinia. The price our ancestors paid in the process was that their trade network and cities were significantly reduced in stature and wealth. While Muscat benefited from their ability to trade under the Portuguese domination. Only when the latter were at their weakest, did Omanis find the opportune moment to shake off their rule

And its only then that they assumed a role on the East African coast that prior to the Portuguese presence had been contested between Mogadishu and Kilwa

Whereas for Somalia most of the 1800s was actually a revival period , rebuilding/repairing of trade routes and diplomatic channels , that resulted in urban growth, rural agricultural production and trade increase like you said by early 1900s Mogadishu had a population of 30.000 -40.000.

The town was a major outlet for agricultural exports:

The omanis or Zanzibari's didn't have real authority over Mogadishu. Numerous travelers, including Guillain in the 1840s, Rigby in the 1860s, and Kirk in the 1870s, observed that the Zanzibari sultans exerted no authority over coastal southern Somali cites.

The Omanis/Zanzibaris, established a trading fort under the permission of Geledi, local Somali authorities to protect their own traders and economic interest, they ended up leasing or selling it later on.

Imam Mohamed opposed the proposal, while Sultan Ahmed of Geledi advocated for it, believing that a Zanzibari trading station would enhance economic opportunities by facilitating the export of agricultural produce.

The governors they sent out were largely a ceremonial ones,

The city itself was governed under council of elders internally. That represented the different lineages that made up the inhabitants.


What Zanzibaris were used for was more or less a political leverage tool between internal power struggles between the inhabitants (succession rulership etc) and also between the Imam Yaqubi and the sultan of Geledi.

The late 1800s and early 1900s actually represented a period of impoverishment and economic decline for Mogadishu and coastal towns because of the Italians and British East India company. (This also happened up north as well). Part of colonization was to appropriate Somali commercial activity or dismantle it to weaken us. What they did to us was similar to what happened to Algerians vs French.

''The period after 1880s was fraught with social and economic crisis''

 

[Idilinaa]

As far as how large the Mogadishu population would have been during it's height in the middle ages, at the time of Ibn Batuta's visit. All we can do is create guesstimates but only archeological research will reveal the real true extant of it.

My best guess it was in the hundreds of thousands. A single abandoned quarter called Xamar Jajab strenched 5km2 and the size of the buildings and walls was monumental.

There is probably more stuff we can discover that's not damaged or fully destroyed, because some of the ruins and graveyards are covered in mass of sand dunes that took 5 days to remove and dig out. They only dug 1 trench in Hamar Jajab.

 

[Abdifataax98]

It had little to do with the Oromo invasion. Ajuuraan had no problem keeping them at bay.

The decline actually started a bit earlier, in the late 15th century with the Portuguese discovery of the cape of good hope(more bad hope ).
It nuked the Red Sea trade. Not only that, they also started blockading the Indian Ocean trade and launching none stop naval invasions and even managed to bombard Xamar and other costal towns a few times.
Forget Ajuuraan, the mamluk rulers of Egypt collapsed soon after and Egypt was easily annexed by the Ottomans. Ottomans controlled the inland Silk Road trade routes, so they weren’t affected nearly as much.


Like the Mamluks, Ajuuraan failed to adapt. Instead, they opted to increase internal taxation, which kinda managed to keep them afloat for another 150 years. Until people had enough and kicked them out. The chaos led to two massive great back to back famines that some elders say wiped out more than half of the population.

The Hiraab did end the civil war by crushing every one else including failed Oromo invasion who tried to take advantage of the chaos.
They stabilized the situation but failed to maintain the dams and infrastructure. Without infrastructure it’s impossible to sustain large urban populations. So people kept leaving cities/ towns and turning into pastoralism or small scale farming to survive.


Cities like Xamar, marka, barawa, hobyo and ceel Buur declined significantly, while others like mareeg became literal ghost town. And still is to this day.

 

[Aseer]

elaborate why and how

Yaquubis were bedouins who assasinated the sultan and true royal family of mogadishu and took over the city claiming their title, they were the most incompetent rulers ever and when two brothers had a dispute each locked themselves in one part of the city and one of them called the omanis to help him kill his brother but when the omanis arrived they ransacked the city and stripped it out of all its marble, inscriptions and beauty, when cerulli more than a century later arrived in the city he went to the outskirts and found the magnificent mogadishan tombs where the sultan and his family were buried, it was described as big mausoleums of every sultan full of marble and just a work of pure art but when he arrived it was only ruins and dust, stripped off all its marble, same for the city as well it just declined alot and basically fell off to the point they were leasing out forts to the zanzibaris and later on signed off the entire dominion as a protectorate of italy. It was deserved anyways, thats what happens when you overthrow a comeptent rightful ruling monarchy and replace it with your own incomepetent one.

 

[Idilinaa]

Yaquubis were bedouins who assasinated the sultan and true royal family of mogadishu and took over the city claiming their title, they were the most incompetent rulers ever and when two brothers had a dispute each locked themselves in one part of the city and one of them called the omanis to help him kill his brother but when the omanis arrived they ransacked the city and stripped it out of all its marble, inscriptions and beauty, when cerulli more than a century later arrived in the city he went to the outskirts and found the magnificent mogadishan tombs where the sultan and his family were buried, it was described as big mausoleums of every sultan full of marble and just a work of pure art but when he arrived it was only ruins and dust, stripped off all its marble, same for the city as well it just declined alot and basically fell off to the point they were leasing out forts to the zanzibaris and later on signed off the entire dominion as a protectorate of italy. It was deserved anyways, thats what happens when you overthrow a comeptent rightful ruling monarchy and replace it with your own incomepetent one.

This Yaqubi change in leadership happened in the late 1500s , there is a Mogadishu state document that covers this , that Cerulli did a commentary on, that replaced the previous rulers. It was part of wider rebellion that is remembered in the Ajuuran traditions

This occurred in the year 981 Hijri .This puts it in year 1573. And we have eyewitnesses to collaborate it.

There is no evidence that bedouins forcibly overran the city or destroyed it. The Yaqub imams shared the power with the local inhabitants, while playing a titular role.

When Europeans visited Mogadishu during the early 1700s, the Sultanate was still functioning well despite the decline in commerce that reduced it's size and they still issued coinage.

This was around the time Sultan ''Imam Muhammad bin Imam Ahmad bin Imam Mahmoud bin Imam Omar Halul al-Yaqoubi.'' was the leader. They are even recorded in internal and external sources to have repulsed European incursions, so i wouldn't say they were fully incompetent.

The history of the pyrates: containing the lives of Captain Mission. Captain Bowen. Captain Kidd ... and their several crews
a description of Magadoxa

All those Ajuuran rebellion stories make no sense to explain Mogadishu's decline because that British pirate saw the place in the early 1700s and was just awe struck by the splendour of the city

And also explains how the bureaucracy and state structure was fully operational as well.
Notice mentions governors of towns, among other titles.

Ajuuran rebellion traditions they are recalling something that happened in the late 1500s(1573-1574) if we go by the document reviewed by Cerrulli. The Yacqub Hiraab replaced the leadership in the early 1600s and at the time of these pirates were repulsed by Sultanate, as someone on this forum shared a text that said the ruler at the time was Sultan ''Imam Muhammad bin Imam Ahmad bin Imam Mahmoud bin Imam Omar Halul al-Yaqoubi.''

It sounds like they just maintain things.

So that leaves us with unanswered questions. What the hell happened to the state? We need to search for an alternate explanation. It must have been some economic collapse or natural catastrophe.

Large parts of the city fell to ruin or became buried by sand dunes when it was abandoned through the century. You can see this with the older quarters of Xamar Jajab and El Garweyne.

If there is sources that say Omani/Zanzibaris sacked the city and stripped it i would like to see it. It would honestly explain some stuff or they started leasing out forts to them.

From reading Scott Reeses book which includes Reer Xamar interviews and archive data what happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s is that a lot of Somali urban families in Mogadishu were bankrupted by a flood of Arab/Indian merchants connected to the British Company and were forced the sell off or lease their property because of the unequal trading relationships that the British India company created.

They pretty much bypassed a lot of the local economic protection barriers, the abaan system, export control and prohibition of foreign traders to enter the interior, and they assigned fixed false prices to goods that undervalued them in the market that ended up bankrupted local merchants and making them indebted to them.

 

[Idilinaa]

It had little to do with the Oromo invasion. Ajuuraan had no problem keeping them at bay.

The decline actually started a bit earlier, in the late 15th century with the Portuguese discovery of the cape of good hope(more bad hope ).
It nuked the Red Sea trade. Not only that, they also started blockading the Indian Ocean trade and launching none stop naval invasions and even managed to bombard Xamar and other costal towns a few times.
Forget Ajuuraan, the mamluk rulers of Egypt collapsed soon after and Egypt was easily annexed by the Ottomans. Ottomans controlled the inland Silk Road trade routes, so they weren’t affected nearly as much.


Like the Mamluks, Ajuuraan failed to adapt. Instead, they opted to increase internal taxation, which kinda managed to keep them afloat for another 150 years. Until people had enough and kicked them out. The chaos led to two massive great back to back famines that some elders say wiped out more than half of the population.

The Hiraab did end the civil war by crushing every one else including failed Oromo invasion who tried to take advantage of the chaos.
They stabilized the situation but failed to maintain the dams and infrastructure. Without infrastructure it’s impossible to sustain large urban populations. So people kept leaving cities/ towns and turning into pastoralism or small scale farming to survive.


Cities like Xamar, marka, barawa, hobyo and ceel Buur declined significantly, while others like mareeg became literal ghost town. And still is to this day.

All the urban settlements depended on network of internal trade routes and rural production. Even though Oromos were eventually repulsed and even defeated in many areas they did a lot disturb it and make the routes un-safe. Mogadishu even was connected partially to a route that led into Bali , Hadiyah and Harar.

The Somali medieval sultanates used both locally minted ones and international coins. and wide internal trade market where the coins were used in wide circulation.

If you read that text above by descriptions of European visitors in the 1500s and Arab documents on Awdal , both Muslim and Christian leaders made efforts to safeguard the trade routes and keep commerce alive. It was like a lifeline. That's why despite the constant war between the two , they never disrupted the economic system but with Oromo's they didn't care nor have an incentive to maintain it. Their migrations didn't bring anything good, it even brought seperation and isolation.

That is some of the explanation, the other one would probably be climate change or climate disasters like floods of the coast that damaged it, disappearance of rivers and locust plagues that some accounts report.

Then 1650s and the 1730s, was the Golden Age of Piracy which made the waters in the Indian Ocean unsafe that the Europeans brought with them. Prior to the Euopean incursion, the Indian Ocean operated on diplomatic contracts between regional rulers and translocalism, that ensured protection for all parties.

It's not hard to see how overseas commerce might have been impacted by this.

European Piracy in the Indian Ocean

"European Piracy in the Indian Ocean" published on by Oxford University Press.

oxfordre.com

European piracy in the Indian Ocean thus rose and fell in various cycles from the 16th to early 19th centuries.

It was not only Europeans who were engaged in piracy. European records from the 17th and 18th centuries are rife with descriptions of Indian and Arab pirates, also called “rovers”, who made the waters of western Indian Ocean especially close to the coasts dangerous places.

 

[AbdiBashirJR]

All the urban settlements depended on network of internal trade routes and rural production. Even though Oromos were eventually repulsed and even defeated in many areas they did a lot disturb it and make the routes un-safe. Mogadishu even was connected partially to a route that led into Bali , Hadiyah and Harar.




If you read that text above by descriptions of European visitors in the 1500s and Arab documents on Awdal , both Muslim and Christian leaders made efforts to safeguard the trade routes and keep commerce alive. It was like a lifeline. That's why despite the constant war between the two , they never disrupted the economic system but with Oromo's they didn't care nor have an incentive to maintain it. Their migrations didn't bring anything good, it even brought seperation and isolation.
View attachment 355088

That is some of the explanation, the other one would probably be climate change or climate disasters like floods of the coast that damaged it, disappearance of rivers and locust plagues that some accounts report.

Then 1650s and the 1730s, was the Golden Age of Piracy which made the waters in the Indian Ocean unsafe that the Europeans brought with them. Prior to the Euopean incursion, the Indian Ocean operated on diplomatic contracts between regional rulers and translocalism, that ensured protection for all parties.

It's not hard to see how overseas commerce might have been impacted by this.

European Piracy in the Indian Ocean

"European Piracy in the Indian Ocean" published on by Oxford University Press.

oxfordre.com

Do you have any idea who ruled mogadishu when ibn battuta visited. I read that it was berber sultan probably meaning Somali but what dynasty. Ik that was too early for it to be ajuran.

 

[AbdiBashirJR]

As far as how large the Mogadishu population would have been during it's height in the middle ages, at the time of Ibn Batuta's visit. All we can do is create guesstimates but only archeological research will reveal the real true extant of it.

My best guess it was in the hundreds of thousands. A single abandoned quarter called Xamar Jajab strenched 5km2 and the size of the buildings and walls was monumental.

can the ruins still be excavated or is it already built on.

 

[Farah717]

It was still a shithole when the Arabs ran it. The real Mogadishu is when the Italians built it great architecture, clean streets, and aesthetics.

 

[Idilinaa]

can the ruins still be excavated or is it already built on.

No idea, my best guess they are still surrounded and buried under sand dunes. A lot coastal settlements have become buried under san dunes recently, so it will take a lot to of man-power and time just to clear it. They only managed to dig 1 trench before stopping.

Do you have any idea who ruled mogadishu when ibn battuta visited. I read that it was berber sultan probably meaning Somali but what dynasty. Ik that was too early for it to be ajuran.

There was no dynasty, but we have more information on the names of a few rulers that came after him.
Read through this thread:

Sultan Ali ibn Yusuf of Mogadishu mentioned by Ibn Hajar al Asqalani

In Ibn Hajar Al Asqalani mentions the Sultan of Mogadishu Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Umar ibn Anwar died in 1432 funnily enough Ibn Battuta mentions Abu Bakr ibn Umar as the ruler of Mogadishu in 1331. Can we assume that Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Umar who died in 1432 is the Nephew of Abu Bakr ibn Umar who was...

www.somalispot.com

Ajuran was just local umbrella name for urban state administrators, that coordinated rural production.

 

[Midas]

All the urban settlements depended on network of internal trade routes and rural production. Even though Oromos were eventually repulsed and even defeated in many areas they did a lot disturb it and make the routes un-safe. Mogadishu even was connected partially to a route that led into Bali , Hadiyah and Harar.




If you read that text above by descriptions of European visitors in the 1500s and Arab documents on Awdal , both Muslim and Christian leaders made efforts to safeguard the trade routes and keep commerce alive. It was like a lifeline. That's why despite the constant war between the two , they never disrupted the economic system but with Oromo's they didn't care nor have an incentive to maintain it. Their migrations didn't bring anything good, it even brought seperation and isolation.
View attachment 355088

That is some of the explanation, the other one would probably be climate change or climate disasters like floods of the coast that damaged it, disappearance of rivers and locust plagues that some accounts report.

Then 1650s and the 1730s, was the Golden Age of Piracy which made the waters in the Indian Ocean unsafe that the Europeans brought with them. Prior to the Euopean incursion, the Indian Ocean operated on diplomatic contracts between regional rulers and translocalism, that ensured protection for all parties.

It's not hard to see how overseas commerce might have been impacted by this.

European Piracy in the Indian Ocean

"European Piracy in the Indian Ocean" published on by Oxford University Press.

oxfordre.com

Hopefully some of the tombs survived somehwat intact under the dunes. It's honestly crazy how there is so much that we will probably never know because of how little archecture in somalia has survived. Even the old large forts in Bari that used to exist there mentioned by some Europeans dont exist anymore. Ane this is stuff from like 200-300 years ago at best. Nothing that's truly ancient like more than thousand years old seems to have survived.