EU5 Horn of Africa

[Neptune]

So there is a fifth installment of a super popular strategy game called Europa Universalis releasing soon and this is their planned depiction of the political and cultural environment during the 14th century in the horn. What are your thoughts on how realistic this is?

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/tinto-maps-15-horn-of-africa-feedback.1734732/

 

[Neptune]

They put Ajuran as being Walashma. I refuse to believe they even tried.

 

[Garaad Awal]

Ajuraan state never existed historically. Prove me wrong

 

[Neptune]

Ajuraan state never existed historically. Prove me wrong

There are oral stories in the south of them being overthrown. Now whether or not you believe in oral history is up to you.

 

[Shimbiris]

There are oral stories in the south of them being overthrown. Now whether or not you believe in oral history is up to you.

It's more than oral history, to be honest. It's also that the the tribe all the other Banaadiri tribes maintain was the "oldest" and at one point ruling tribe of Xamar are basically an off-shoot of the Ajuuraan. See this thread.

Then we also know some of these weren't really oral traditions originally as we see that in the days when European researchers were making contact with these narrators they were frequently stopping to consult manuscripts that are now sadly either lost or in the possession of families that have yet to come forward (like with this document).

Finally, classifying this as simply "oral stories" is silly. These aren't Fisherman's wives tales. They actually went to many different tribes and individuals all across Koonfur and noticed they were all telling more or less the same story, even when not really in contact with each other much then tried to connect this to contemporary traditions, dynamics (like that Banaadiri tribe) and even some rudimentary archaeological work. The odds of all of that being some grand conspiracy and made-up is quite low.

I'd read Virginia Luling's book on the Geledi to understand what the "Ajuuraan" was more or less really like, though:

Somali Sultanate : the Geledi city-state over 150 years : Luling, Virginia : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

xiv, 296 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : 24 cm

archive.org

I honestly haven't given Koonfur the deep dive its deserves and defer to @Idilinaa on all this in reality but the impression I get is that they were just a dominant tribe in the interior, like the Geledi, who managed to gain a stranglehold over the riverine south's agriculture and therefore essentially make the Banaadir towns, that were completely dependent on that agriculture, beholden to them and even establish and off-shoot of them as a dominant tribe within the greatest of the three main ports. Geledi before the Geledi, basically.

 

[Step a side]

Ajuraan state never existed historically. Prove me wrong

The state appears in medieval European records as the Ajan coast and sometimes as the kingdom of Mogadishu.

You can even see the Ajuraan flag flying over Mogadishu in 1576 - see bottom left and right of 2nd page which shows Mogadishu as last major town on the South East Coast of Africa - a symbol of its influence over the Shungwaya/Pate/Azania/Swahili which included minting indigenous Somali coins called Mogadishan coin

 

[Step a side]

They put Ajuran as being Walashma. I refuse to believe they even tried.

So there is a fifth installment of a super popular strategy game called Europa Universalis releasing soon and this is their planned depiction of the political and cultural environment during the 14th century in the horn. What are your thoughts on how realistic this is?

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/tinto-maps-15-horn-of-africa-feedback.1734732/

View attachment 358873

View attachment 358874

I doubt these are the default settings.

 

[Zak12]

I'm still only a layman when it comes to the Medieval Horn but I'm pretty sure Ifat was not that big, only Adal actually covered most of northern Somalia. And Oromos were not that close to galbeed yet either.

 

[Midas]

I've never understood why mogadishu which was much bigger than harar and has existed in its current form for at least a thousand years never became a center for manuscript production. I'M aware of the 4 13th century mosques but where are the city archives/qadi records. There should still be so much that survived after mogadishu's decline.

 

[NidarNidar]

I've never understood why mogadishu which was much bigger than harar and has existed in its current form for at least a thousand years never became a center for manuscript production. I'M aware of the 4 13th century mosques but where are the city archives/qadi records. There should still be so much that survived after mogadishu's decline.

Islam came from the north(Zeila), and spread throughout the whole of the Somali inhabited regions quite fast, which just shows how connected the region was; it spread via trade at least in the North via various Islamic scholars from various Somali clans(main one being Gurgura in the north and the Garre in the south.) the Garre are broken into the Tuff and Quranyoow, the Tuff claim descent from Gardheere(Irir brother, the term used by genetist to describe them are prehawiye the went south quite early) while the Quranyoow are Mahe Dir.

The Gurgura and Garre penetrated pretty deep into parts of Ethiopia and Kenya for their trade, the Gurgura were connected to Adal while the Garre to Ajuuran and the other various states in the south.

 

[Riftvalley]

It's more than oral history, to be honest. It's also that the the tribe all the other Banaadiri tribes maintain was the "oldest" and at one point ruling tribe of Xamar are basically an off-shoot of the Ajuuraan. See this thread.

Then we also know some of these weren't really oral traditions originally as we see that in the days when European researchers were making contact with these narrators they were frequently stopping to consult manuscripts that are now sadly either lost or in the possession of families that have yet to come forward (like with this document).

Finally, classifying this as simply "oral stories" is silly. These aren't Fisherman's wives tales. They actually went to many different tribes and individuals all across Koonfur and noticed they were all telling more or less the same story, even when not really in contact with each other much then tried to connect this to contemporary traditions, dynamics (like that Banaadiri tribe) and even some rudimentary archaeological work. The odds of all of that being some grand conspiracy and made-up is quite low.

I'd read Virginia Luling's book on the Geledi to understand what the "Ajuuraan" was more or less really like, though:

Somali Sultanate : the Geledi city-state over 150 years : Luling, Virginia : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

xiv, 296 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : 24 cm

archive.org

I honestly haven't given Koonfur the deep dive its deserves and defer to @Idilinaa on all this in reality but the impression I get is that they were just a dominant tribe in the interior, like the Geledi, who managed to gain a stranglehold over the riverine south's agriculture and therefore essentially make the Banaadir towns, that were completely dependent on that agriculture, beholden to them and even establish and off-shoot of them as a dominant tribe within the greatest of the three main ports. Geledi before the Geledi, basically.

Some people are willing to believe Ethio semites once lived deep into north western Somalia based on one cadaan linguist small study. Ajuuraan did not exist though

 

[Espaa_]

Islam came from the north(Zeila), and spread throughout the whole of the Somali inhabited regions quite fast, which just shows how connected the region was; it spread via trade at least in the North via various Islamic scholars from various Somali clans(main one being Gurgura in the north and the Garre in the south.) the Garre are broken into the Tuff and Quranyoow, the Tuff claim descent from Gardheere(Irir brother, the term used by genetist to describe them are prehawiye the went south quite early) while the Quranyoow are Mahe Dir.

The Gurgura and Garre penetrated pretty deep into parts of Ethiopia and Kenya for their trade, the Gurgura were connected to Adal while the Garre to Ajuuran and the other various states in the south.

I heard that northerners were the first to convert in the 7-8th century then us southerners converted around 11-13th century with Islam being consolidated in the late 13th early 14th century.

 

[Midas]

Islam came from the north(Zeila), and spread throughout the whole of the Somali inhabited regions quite fast, which just shows how connected the region was; it spread via trade at least in the North via various Islamic scholars from various Somali clans(main one being Gurgura in the north and the Garre in the south.) the Garre are broken into the Tuff and Quranyoow, the Tuff claim descent from Gardheere(Irir brother, the term used by genetist to describe them are prehawiye the went south quite early) while the Quranyoow are Mahe Dir.

The Gurgura and Garre penetrated pretty deep into parts of Ethiopia and Kenya for their trade, the Gurgura were connected to Adal while the Garre to Ajuuran and the other various states in the south.

I think it came to mogadihsu at a similar time or maybe a decade or two later . we have a grave inscription for 720 and I think I've seen someone on here post one that dated back to 712. There are probably ones that are even older that haven't been discovered in Mogadishu.

its kinda crazy to realize it's an actual possibility that this person's parents met the prophet and qualify as being sahaba. If this person died in 720 and was between 60-80. They would have been between 640-660. Their parents easily might have been old enough to have actually traveled to mecca when the prophet was alive.

 

[NidarNidar]

I think it came to mogadihsu at a similar time or maybe a decade or two later . we have a grave inscription for 720 and I think I've seen someone on here post one that dated back to 712. There are probably ones that are even older that haven't been discovered in Mogadishu.

its kinda crazy to realize it's an actual possibility that this person's parents met the prophet and qualify as being sahaba. If this person died in 720 and was between 60-80. They would have been between 640-660. Their parents easily might have been old enough to have actually traveled to mecca when the prophet was alive.

Individuals yes? but the not the whole region, it would be the same for the north, it was a gradual progress out from the core centers like Zeila and then Harar later, these early centers of power used trade and soft power to convert people.

 

[Idilinaa]

Ajan is not a term for Ajuran, it's a European mispelling/pronunciation of Ajam which meant non-Arab speakers. Can't stress this enough. They would even apply it other non-arab speaking lands not just Somalia.

It's more than oral history, to be honest. It's also that the the tribe all the other Banaadiri tribes maintain was the "oldest" and at one point ruling tribe of Xamar are basically an off-shoot of the Ajuuraan. See this thread.

Then we also know some of these weren't really oral traditions originally as we see that in the days when European researchers were making contact with these narrators they were frequently stopping to consult manuscripts that are now sadly either lost or in the possession of families that have yet to come forward (like with this document).

Finally, classifying this as simply "oral stories" is silly. These aren't Fisherman's wives tales. They actually went to many different tribes and individuals all across Koonfur and noticed they were all telling more or less the same story, even when not really in contact with each other much then tried to connect this to contemporary traditions, dynamics (like that Banaadiri tribe) and even some rudimentary archaeological work. The odds of all of that being some grand conspiracy and made-up is quite low.

I'd read Virginia Luling's book on the Geledi to understand what the "Ajuuraan" was more or less really like, though:

Somali Sultanate : the Geledi city-state over 150 years : Luling, Virginia : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

xiv, 296 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : 24 cm

archive.org

I honestly haven't given Koonfur the deep dive its deserves and defer to @Idilinaa on all this in reality but the impression I get is that they were just a dominant tribe in the interior, like the Geledi, who managed to gain a stranglehold over the riverine south's agriculture and therefore essentially make the Banaadir towns, that were completely dependent on that agriculture, beholden to them and even establish and off-shoot of them as a dominant tribe within the greatest of the three main ports. Geledi before the Geledi, basically.

Ajuuran traditions is not purely oral , it is documented in text. For example Le Cassaneli qoutes a a translation of arabic document under it that describes their rulership.

You can kinda see from this , that the name was actually attributed to taxing and administrative authorities that collected taxes and coordinated rural production and labour. It wasn't a name for a state per say, the way authors misrepresent in modern time.

Its not really different from how Imam Ahmed sent out administrators in the same way or acted out the role himself.

Wether you call it Mogadishu sultanate or Ajuuran sultanate, people should view it as placeholder names.


And there is even local Arabic documents of an individual like the one about Sheikh Ali Burale who lived in the 1600s who rebelled against the rule

Lee Cassaneli mentions few examples of these documents recording local histories on Southern/Benadiri area or about Ajuran(The Taxers) from families/individuals in the interior and on the coast

The Benaadir Past: Essays in Southern Somali History​

Can't find the full text unfortunately but i have seen elsewhere that he makes references to them in this. But one of the documents he talks about is a chronicle set in the 17th century about Sheikh Hassan Buraale , who lived some thirteen generations ago ( c . 1625-1675 ) .

Hassan was a cousin of the Ajuran Imam and was reported to the latter for not cooperating in the tasks of the realm . The sultan was angered . His name was Omar . He sent a messenger to bring Hassan Buraale to him ..

We also have external collaboration from a letter in 1624 that refers to a ruler using the title "Imam" much like how it is remembered.

 

[Garaad Awal]

I heard that northerners were the first to convert in the 7-8th century then us southerners converted around 11-13th century with Islam being consolidated in the late 13th early 14th century.

Nomadic Somalis of SL & Eastern Ethiopia were Islamized much later after the 12th century which is by the time of the Imam Ahmed they were fully Islamized. Urban centers & agricultural settlements of North Somaliweyn were likely the earliest Muslims of the region

 

[Idilinaa]

Nomadic Somalis of SL & Eastern Ethiopia were Islamized much later after the 12th century which is by the time of the Imam Ahmed they were fully Islamized. Urban centers & agricultural settlements of North Somaliweyn were likely the earliest Muslims of the region

That's not true. Pastoralist Somalis are connected to the coast and urban settlements they even live on the coast and urban settlement for a part of the year and have extended families tied to it. There is no separation, so they most likely were mostly Muslims by at least 800s .

The interior people were already farming in the area before the arrival of Islam and engaged internal long distance trade with coast .

It was the same for every other part of Somalia.

I know how you guys are all about trolling cause yall have nothing better to do, so what the facts are matter not to yall but i went through it in another thread:

I get your point about gradual Islamization in places like Morocco and Tunisia, but that model doesn’t really fit Somalia’s social and geographic context.

Somalis have always been highly mobile across the Horn of Africa , there weren’t rigid urban-rural or coastal-inland divides like in North Africa. Clan-lineage/family structures also meant that once a leader converted, entire groups followed quickly. Islam spread much faster because society was so interconnected.

Archaeological findings also challenge the idea of slow Islamization. In the deep interior (Ogaden), they've found evidence of a halal-compliant diet dating back to the 8th–9th centuries ,50,000 animal bones butchered according to Islamic law, plus imported fish from the coast. https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/05/early-muslims-in-africa-had-a-cosmopolitan-halal-diet/129456

To quote the paper

New excavations at three sites in the east of the country completed by the University of Exeter and the Ethiopian Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage have uncovered around 50,000 animal bones dating from the eighth/ninth centuries onwards, and showing people living there at this early time ate a Muslim diet 400 years before major Mosques or burial sites were built in the 12th century.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/05/early-muslims-in-africa-had-a-cosmopolitan-halal-diet/129456

That's long before the 12th-century mosques and burial sites we usually hear about. It shows Islam was already deeply rooted even far from the coast within 100–200 years of its arrival.

So no, Somalia wasn't a place where Islam took 400 years to slowly trickle inland like in North Africa. The mobility, clan structures, and archaeology all point to a much faster, widespread adoption

 

[Idilinaa]

I've never understood why mogadishu which was much bigger than harar and has existed in its current form for at least a thousand years never became a center for manuscript production. I'M aware of the 4 13th century mosques but where are the city archives/qadi records. There should still be so much that survived after mogadishu's decline

During the 1800s, Harar had a population of about 12,000–14,000 people, making it much larger than Mogadishu at that time.

It was probably the only major city left standing after the 16th-century upheavals, while many older cities and towns across the region fell into decline or were abandoned after the Oromo invasions. Harar’s survival was mainly due to its defensible location, self-sustaining hinterland, and its city walls, which protected it from the surrounding instability. Whereas many other urban centers were exposed and collapsed alongside the disrupted trade routes. Other cities, like Mogadishu, were heavily dependent on trade and especially on interior trade routes that collapsed during this period.

Before Harar rose to prominence, Zayla (on the northern coast) was a major center for manuscript production and Islamic scholarship. Ottoman navigator Salman Reis, writing in the early 1500s, described Zayla as a vibrant intellectual hub:

''and near a port which is known as Zaila stands a city called Janasir. They call it's rulers Mujahidin and they are all very pious. Most learned books are distributed from Zaila. That province is the frontier of Islam. Every year raids are carried against the infidel Habes, on the path of Allah, by way of holy war and they fight hard...

As for Mogadishu itself: even in the 1800s, there is evidence of manuscript production and intellectual activity. European travelers noted that in southern Somalia:

''"They have many books, which are written with the Arabic character, but in a different language, and that there are learned men among the Somali, who make books.".''

This suggests a revival of literary activity was underway, even if much earlier archives were lost during centuries of upheaval, european/indian ocean piracy, shifting trade patterns, and external attacks (e.g., Portuguese bombardments in the 1500s).

In short, manuscript production and scholarship existed across the Somali coast including Mogadishu but political turmoil, shifts in trade, and external invasions disrupted much of it. Harar's survival was exceptional, not the norm for the broader region.

My guess is that most the surviving texts, manuscripts and documents are private hands. Surviving manuscripts likely remained within families rather than centralized in institutions vulnerable to attacks.

 

[Step a side]

Ajan is not a term for Ajuran, it's a European mispelling/pronunciation of Ajam which meant non-Arab speakers. Can't stress this enough. They would even apply it other non-arab speaking lands not just Somalia.

View attachment 358938

I am afraid you are wrong and that source you are using is wrong on all levels. If you could provide an Arab map with the word Cajam for the Somali Indian Ocean coast then I stand corrected but you will never will be able to find it anywhere.

Ajan is a corrupted meaning for Hawiye. The root of the word Ajan is Accannæ, a Latin word. The latin writers as late as 1590 were confirming the modern name for their reference to Ajan is Hawiye.

Its more than likely they took Arabic bearings of the Coast (Idrisi and ibn Said mention the country of Hawiye, Dimashqi goes a bit further and calls the south the coast of Hawiya named for its heat - he believed Hawiye is a misreading for Haawiyah and thought its named the area due to its hot hell bound surface).

Text below confirms the meaning of the Latin word Accane (Ajan)

Arabic was a lingua franca in mogadishu in several sources and mogadishu was more "Arab" than Zeila in customs and presence. Also ajam (عجم) is spelt differently to (اجان). Unless the whole region from Zeylac to Mogadishu was called Cajam, it makes no sense why only a portion of Berber land between Xamar to Bari in this context would be called Cajam.


For map evidence here is how Ajan is spelt in Arabic. Both states read as Caadil and Ajaan which shows they are both not Arabic terms but Arabised, Caadil is really Awdal here.

In the same era, here is what Arabs called the lands of the Persians (the traditional rival of the Arabs who were the first to be called Cajam)

 

[Idilinaa]

I am afraid you are wrong and that source you are using is wrong on all levels. If you could provide an Arab map with the word Cajam for the Somali Indian Ocean coast then I stand corrected but you will never will be able to find it anywhere.

Ajan is a corrupted meaning for Hawiye. The root of the word Ajan is Accannæ, a Latin word. The latin writers as late as 1590 were confirming the modern name for their reference to Ajan is Hawiye.


View attachment 358947

Its more than likely they took Arabic bearings of the Coast (Idrisi and ibn Said mention the country of Hawiye, Dimashqi goes a bit further and calls the south the coast of Hawiya named for its heat - he believed Hawiye is a misreading for Haawiyah and thought its named the area due to its hot hell bound surface).

View attachment 358945

Above text confirms the meaning of the Latin word Accane (Ajan)

View attachment 358944


Arabic was a lingua franca in mogadishu in several sources and mogadishu was more "Arab" than Zeila in customs and presence. Also ajam (عجم) is spelt differently to (اجان). Unless the whole region from Zeylac to Mogadishu was called Cajam, it makes no sense why only a portion of Berber land between Xamar to Bari in this context would be called Cajam.


For map evidence here is how Ajan is spelt in Arabic. Both states read as Caadil and Ajaan which shows they are both not Arabic terms but Arabised, Caadil is really Awdal here.


View attachment 358948

In the same era, here is what Arabs called the lands of the Persians (the traditional rival of the Arabs who were the first to be called Cajam)

View attachment 358946

Also, the Arabs since antiquity described East Africa as split between Habasha, Berbers and Zinjis. All traditionally non Arab entities. Unless the whole region was called Cajam, it makes no sense why only a portion of Berber land between Xamar to Bari in this context would be called Cajam.

Sigh.. you never rest do you