Actually, there’s solid evidence that contradicts your assumption.
Take Harar, for example many of the Ajami texts there were actually religious instructional texts written in one of the local languages using Arabic script. These weren't formal state documents, but rather tools for converting and educating new Muslims who didn’t understand Arabic like the Adare community. The modern Harari(Adare) community often mistakenly sees these as examples of formal writing systems, when in fact they were grassroots religious texts.
This ties into what I shared earlier about West African Islamic cultures, Ajami emerged as a practical response to limited Arabic literacy. It was part of what’s called “oligoliterature” where literacy exists among a small segment of society (usually religious elites), but written material is created for broader community use.
In Somalia, Arabic was a liturgical and scholarly language, widely known by the educated. So, there was less pressure to standardize a Somali Ajami script. Instead, Somalis developed informal, functional literacy systems like “Laqba” to teach both Somali and Arabic in religious schools.
The absence of a centralized Ajami standard doesn’t mean there wasn’t writing or literacy; it just means literacy wasn’t monopolized by the elite or tied to state bureaucracy. In fact, the opposite, it suggests literacy was widespread and decentralized.
You're applying modern urbanization standards retroactively, which doesn’t reflect how settlements historically functioned , not just in Somalia, but globally.
First, not every town needs to be “urban” in scale or have a defined elite class to be significant. Many of Somalia’s historic settlements Bosaso (Bandar Qasim), Las Qoray, Hafun, Luuq, Kismayo played critical roles as regional trade hubs, seasonal markets, and administrative centers, even if they weren’t massive in size.
Bosaso (Bandar Qasim) and Las Qoray each had estimated populations of 2,000–3,000 at their peaks during the mid 1800s, both were commercial hubs. . That’s notable in the pre-industrial context. The rest of the Somali coast was dotted with smaller port/coastal villages and towns that served important trade and seasonal functions, and inland you had agricultural settlements and key trade stations.
You also overlook that it's these network of coastal villages and inland agricultural centers that supported these hubs: Even between major cities like Mogadishu, Barawa, and Merca, there were secondary settlements and trade outposts like Gezeira, Nimow, Aw Make, Danane, Gendershe, and Gelib-Merca. These weren’t just passive fishing villages either, they played supporting roles in regional trade, storage, and food production.
They weren’t large, but they were economically vital and often deeply interconnected through trade, seasonal migrations, and communal labor. This mirrors how many societies functioned across the pre-modern world not everything was concentrated in mega-cities.
Berbera, Zeila, Harar, Luuq, and Mogadishu, Barawa, and Merca were all longstanding commercial hubs, and most continued functioning beyond the 16th-century disruptions caused by war(collapse), european piracy, and external interference(Oromo invasions). Many towns declined or were depopulated, but others rebounded or were re-established.
For example,
Hafun was nearly abandoned in the 16th century after a devastating Portuguese raid:
''This sea port had indeed , at the time, all the advantages of commerce over that of Aden, till the arrival of the portuguese fleet, in the year 1517, which utterly destroyed it: since which time Aden had gained the advantage"
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And you can see how new towns emerged and grew even in the 1800s. Kismayo, for instance, didn’t even exist in 1869 by 1873, it had a population of 8,600. That growth came from Somali initiative and expansion inland toward the coast, building infrastructure and establishing markets. That’s faster growth than many so-called “major cities” in the region at the time. It shows that Somali settlement patterns evolved with trade demand
As for water access, many Somali towns developed around wells, rivers, lakes , and seasonal streams. The idea that a lack of large rivers inherently stunted growth ignores the innovative irrigation, cistern, and rainwater harvesting systems used to support these communities.
If a dense urban class didn’t emerge everywhere, it wasn’t due to lack of capacity,it was due to the subsistence logic of the pastoral-agro economy, which didn’t require dense settlements to be effective
Your assumption that every Somali urban center needed to be large or urbanized by default is flawed. That’s never how development works, even today, you’ll find rural villages, small towns, and bustling cities coexisting in any developed country.
Urbanization is a process. Places grow, shrink, and transform based on trade routes, ecology, migration, and conflict. Somalia followed that same pattern. The idea that Somalis couldn't have a complex urban class or urban function simply because they relied on wells is a huge oversimplification and ignores how Somali trade systems were organized around seasonal movement, port activity, and merchant- agro-pastoralist exchanges.
