HISTORY Did ajuran empire/state exist?

[CABDULWALI XASAN.]

Great sources everyone, definitely will be referencing this when people say there was no massive state back then. Just a few months ago there was a guy saying it was only barawe and muqdisho city states. Well then what was the unifiying force that fought against the portugese ? And if I remember correctly this is the same time we (somalis) were pushing away oromos.

 

[Cartan Boos]

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...

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holy shit didn't know mogadishu was that big, that would make it biggest sub saharen city

 

[Aseer]

They could have definitely been hawiye but we should be very careful of projecting our modern understanding of clans into a state that existed for several hundred years. Especially considering how clans were likely more fluid back then. For instance if you look at thee warsangeli genealogies online. You'll see the third guy from the tops name is hamargale. He even has a Wikipedia page. If a clan that far north has some connection with xamar it just goes to show how strange things were happening in the past that we don't fully understand

Yeah its so stupid how some users here try to approapriate somali civilisations as "muh qabiil!" I was literally explaining this concept to @Garaad Awal

 

[Aseer]

holy shit didn't know mogadishu was that big, that would make it biggest sub saharen city

I dont understand how we had small population but mogadishu was very large to accomodate lots of people.

 

[NidarNidar]

Wish we had a Ajuuraan on this forum. They live with us in Bale and Mogadishu. Always knew them as Hawiye. Olol Diinle carried the Hawiye title while the patriarch Gareen (royal family) himself is buried in Ximan Gareen. This was outlined by Hawiye elders during the infamous Tomaselli conference. Read below the red lines.

I've always viewed Ajuran as Hawiye, I haven't seen any other documents stating otherwise.

 

[Step a side]

I've always viewed Ajuran as Hawiye, I haven't seen any other documents stating otherwise.

Siyaad Barre tried his best to remove Hawiye from history. Notice it’s only certain people that will claim Ajuuraan is not Hawiye. I find that uber cringe. Then you have others claiming Ajuuraan never existed although RX, Hawiye and southern Dir will tell you Ajuuraan were the boss in south Somalia for centuries.

 

[Idilinaa]

holy shit didn't know mogadishu was that big, that would make it biggest sub saharen city

Yeah i did the calculations a settlement that stretches 5km² would hold a population of 500.000 people with the usual high density 1.000 per hectre that medieval cities had. This is just 1 test dig in one of the old quarters that was buried under san dunes, so it was probably larger than that.

It makes sense how Ibn Batuta said it was a city endless in size. It was also monumental as well built with large blocks of stones.

I dont understand how we had small population but mogadishu was very large to accomodate lots of people.

Even excavated metropolises like Awfat and Hobaad held large populations. The Somali population was significant by medieval standards, far from small.

For example the citadel that housed royalty and nobels in Awfat in the Sector B is almost as big as the city in Sector B. They were enclosed by massive walls as well made of

These are the only few large sites and places that have been excavated and investigated.

We will probably know more in the futures , how large the population was pinpointing more places and excavations. But based on Al-Umari the land between Awdal/Zayla and Awfat was extremely densily populated and cultivated throughout and we get a similar reference by European accounts between 1500-1700s describing a large agricultural output that could sustain a large population.

 

[Idilinaa]

Yeah its so stupid how some users here try to approapriate somali civilisations as "muh qabiil!" I was literally explaining this concept to @Garaad Awal

The large cities were multi-clan based, for example if you break down Xamar clans you will see they are diverse in lineage origin and come together under a confederation/occupation groupings and the sultanates based on Futuh and the surviving chronicles appointed Garaads/Emirs, Na'ibs, Wizier's to govern provinces/cities etc came from different origins and removed them and replaced with someone from another clan, so they could be from any qabil really, so it's difficult to boil them them down to 1 qabil.

 

[Midas]

The large cities were multi-clan based, for example if you break down Xamar clans you will see they are diverse in lineage origin and come together under a confederation/occupation groupings and the sultanates based on Futuh and the surviving chronicles appointed Garaads/Emirs, Na'ibs, Wizier's to govern provinces/cities etc came from different origins and removed them and replaced with someone from another clan, so they could be from any qabil really, so it's difficult to boil them them down to 1 qabil.

Considering how big are cities used to be. Shouldn't there be a lot of manuscripts that survived? You would think even with how strict and secretive somalis were . That these ajanabis should have been able to collect a few. I mean look at how many swahili or west african manuscripts they were able to collect.

 

[Diini23]

@Garaad Awal share your view on the historicity of an ajuran empire/state?

 

[Diini23]

So for the replies, there seems to be an assertion that the state existed but ajuran wasn’t its name. So what was it called and when was ajuran attributed to it?

 

[Garaad Awal]

@Garaad Awal share your view on the historicity of an ajuran empire/state?

I’m not well versed about them. But I never read any mention of them. I’ve read that Mogadishu had rulers but I don’t know to what extent they ruled the interior. If it was an advanced state like Adal, only Allah knows

 

[Step a side]

Just before the peak and the end of their rule, some of the Ajuran rulers adopted titles similar to the Adalite “Ad-din” “Al Ghazi” “Al Mujahid” “Al Mansur” etc. The title Al Muayid Al Mudafar meant “Conqueror”.

One of the old Ajuran rulers named Ali Yusuf Omar Ahmed of the Reer Anwar or Ow Nuur of Ajuran

Egyptian scholar Al Sakhawi also confirms the family background of Ali Yusuf Ownuur/Anwar, from the descendant of Sheikh Abu Bakr bin Sheikh Omar who met Ibn Battuta a century earlier

 

[Idilinaa]

So for the replies, there seems to be an assertion that the state existed but ajuran wasn’t its name. So what was it called and when was ajuran attributed to it?

It's not an assertion, its documented that there was a large polity with Mogadishu as it's center. People visited the area and described it in detail.

@Garaad Awal They called the interior Machida/Mogadishu as well and it was seen as the northern most interior extant of it near the river and was seen as powerful. Machida is how the Abyssinians used to pronounce Mogadishu

They connected Mogadishu the capital city to a wider country and to the interior, various medieval authors mentioned it with production of the riverrines which produced grains, fruits and livestock.

I think we should treat Ajuuran/Mogadishu as more of a footholder name for it. Kinda like we do it with Adal , because the state was not called that, it was called Bar Sa'Adin and the Eastern horn Bari-Makhir was called Bar Khazain.

Same people calling the northern polity Adal will have you believe the polity in the south was called Ajan. Adal is Awdal which was the name for Zayla and its surounding hinterland which Europeans applied to the whole state and Ajan was Ajam the Arabic name for non-arab speakers.

 

[Idilinaa]

Considering how big are cities used to be. Shouldn't there be a lot of manuscripts that survived? You would think even with how strict and secretive somalis were . That these ajanabis should have been able to collect a few. I mean look at how many swahili or west african manuscripts they were able to collect.

No on the contrary, it was the same with the collapse of of other states/civilizations for example the Roman Empire, much of the writings and texts disappeared along with the ruins.

It's not really strange its what happens when civilizations and empires collapse , the bulk of it's written literature disappears with it. The same happened in Europe with the Roman collapse


During the Middle Ages, all but a tiny fraction of Greek and Roman literature disappeared.
None of the Roman history survived in Italy or Rome or its important centers, it was preserved in Byzantium in Constantinople that remained intact or some far fringes and other times it was preserved by Arabs that came in contact with it. That innit of itself is just a tiny fraction, very few sources and very fragmentary. Some literature fragments was also found in some ancient garbage dump by accident in Egypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri

It really is a shame, Zayla was referred to as being a manuscript production place, that distributed books and Mogadishu was described as a place of ''high arts and sciences'' and had many schools.

There are not that many swahili manuscripts tbh, most of the ones i have seen available online are just a handful from the 19th century from mosques. We have similar private collections from Mogadishu, Merca and other areas of Somalia.

Hopefully there are murid/faqih families out there have preserved some of it. And perhaps we will get some epigraphic writings written on monuments, tombs and graves to learn more.

 

[Rayaale]

holy shit didn't know mogadishu was that big, that would make it biggest sub saharen city

Yeah the current population is close to 4 million

 

[Idilinaa]

There are not that many swahili manuscripts tbh, most of the ones i have seen available online are just a handful from the 19th century from mosques. We have similar private collections from Mogadishu, Merca and other areas of Somalia.

Hopefully there are murid/faqih families out there have preserved it some of it. And perhaps we will get some epigraphic writings written on monuments, tombs and graves to learn more.

Something said by another poster:

Mogadishu was not subjugated by the Portuguese the way Kilwa, Pate and other cities were. This is why someone like Jaoa De Barros had zero access to Mogadishu’s written heritage or local history, but did record the oral history of Kilwa, and others, which were under Portuguese control. The Arabic version of the Kilwa chronicle was then written as a response to the Portuguese version.

That sort of incentive to regain the narrative against an occupying power didn’t exist in medieval Mogadishu because it was independent. There were also a higher frequency of succeeding dynasties in Mogadishu than in the aforementioned cities, so it’s very unlikely that you would have one specific all-encompassing chronicle covering the entire period, since they would have different record keepers.

Somali researchers have also pretty much neglected Somalia’s ‘Muriids’ who held the keys to saints’ tombs and kept the records. @Khaemwaset posted this a while back, showing an example of one such record-keeper who lived in the 1970s, but today you will not find that family chronicle on the internet or any library in the world, its just out there in the wind with a relative;

View attachment 326683

Richard Pankhurst, Enrico Cerulli and I'M Lewis tried accessing some of these private collections, and all were only able to examine a small examples of them and comment on how inaccesible most traditional Somali manuscripts were

 

[Rayaale]

Something said by another poster:


Richard Pankhurst, Enrico Cerulli and I'M Lewis tried accessing some of these private collections, and all were only able to examine a small examples of them and comment on how inaccesible most traditional Somali manuscripts were

Where did most of the transcripts go was it looted or destroyed in the civil war

 

[Idilinaa]

Where did most of the transcripts go was it looted or destroyed in the civil war

I just know the ones donated to the museum was looted and some other manuscripts were taken abroad by families or are still kept by them

 

[Burqad]

They could have definitely been hawiye but we should be very careful of projecting our modern understanding of clans into a state that existed for several hundred years. Especially considering how clans were likely more fluid back then. For instance if you look at thee warsangeli genealogies online. You'll see the third guy from the tops name is hamargale. He even has a Wikipedia page. If a clan that far north has some connection with xamar it just goes to show how strange things were happening in the past that we don't fully understand

That’s true, many of the clan confederations that exist today didn’t exist back then.