Somalis' Sewn-boats

[Shimbiris]

It's very sad that boat-making which was seemingly around as far back as 2,000 years ago based on the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea describing "sewn boats" like those of the more recent Indian Ocean being used along the Somali coast:

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea : travel and trade in the Indian Ocean : Schoff, Wilfred Harvey, 1874-1932 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Bibliography of the Periplus: p. 17-21

archive.org

These boats have a long history in our lands and were made and used in various different classes, sizes and forms until very recently:


Thought I'd share some pictures so some folks here can see this part of Somali culture and history:

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Coastal town dwellers and fisherman were always a part of the demographics of Somali society, making up about 10% of even areas like "Majeerteenia":

Of a total population of 82,653 for the Mijertein region, 59,554 are pastoralist, 5,297 agriculturalist-pastoralist, 920 sedentary cultivators, 9,692 fishermen and sailors, and 3,097 merchants. - Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar and Saho ​

Too bad this style of boat-making has mostly been lost now. I would to love to see a revival and resurgence as we share in this culture with groups like Khaleejis, Swahilis and various coastal Indians who still preserve these types of boats.

 

[𐒁𐒚𐒒𐒂𐒘𐒂𐒗 𐒎𐒚𐒗𐒗𐒒]

The Beden boats are so ancient, it's a shame this culture is lost. There are modern boat making companies in Puntland, but I don't think the old beden style is being made.

 

[Shimbiris]

From another thread but belongs here:

Might be so. I'm confused by him, though. In another thread I'm re-reading right now I see he seems to be equating Cushitic with the Kingdom of Kush (?), in another arguing for Bantus being "native" to Koonfur and Xamar being part of Zanj (?), and now this. Lots of "interesting" views.

Anyway, he DM-ed me asking about Somali ships and argued that Somalis only used fishing type boats that weren't really used to sail out to sea like the ones Neville Chittick describes below or the ones pictured here at Jstor that were locally made:



And that Somalis apparently needed Arabians to ship them to places like Yemen and elsewhere or that any ships Somalis might have used for sailing were built in Arabia. Well, I found him some sources that show Somalis definitely did seem to sail on their own and posses their own sail boats during the 1800s and 1900s and at no point can I see that any of the texts say the sailboats are made by outsiders:

This source from the mid 1800s is owed to Captain John Hanning Speke who was in the north for a time and describes that the Warsangeli and Isaaq had sea vessels for travelling to Yemen and conducting warfare at sea:

The Warsangali complained to me sadly of their decline in power since the English had interfered in their fights with the (Isaaq), which took place near Aden about seven years ago, and had deprived them of their vessels for creating a disturbance, which interfered with the ordinary routine of Traffic. They said that on that occasion, they had not only beaten (Isaaq) but had seized their vessels; and that prior to this rupture, they had enjoyed paramount superiority over all the tribes of the Somali; but now they were forbidden to transport Soldiers or make reprisals on the sea, every tribe was on an equality with them." (Chapter II the Voyage-Somali Shore, Gerad Mohamoud Ali Shire).

This source is from an Australian author named Alan Villiers (book: Sons of Sinbad) who seems to write about encountering Somali sailors during the early 1900s who sail and trade in "Somali Sambuks"

This source is from Richard Pankhurst and is basically an autobiography of a Warsangeli guy from around the late 1800s to early 1900s who settled in Britain after the end of World War I. Pankhurst's opening statement is:

The Somali people, notably those of the Gulf of Aden Coast, have a well-established tradition of sea-faring and travel to foreign lands.

He writes this as though it was common knowledge then he proceeds to give us the guy's account where he describes ending up in Aden by stowing away on a local Somali sailor's dhow which he in this case he actually refers to as a "dooni" (what the (10) reference points out):

One day I saw, on the beach, a man who was loading a dhow (10) with gum and incense, and was going to that city of dreams. I naturally begged and prayed that he should take me with him. At last he agreed and off we sailed. Though the captain of the boat happened to be a clansman of nine, no attention was paid to me during the voyage; but I had to watch when the food was ready, to put in an appearance, and I knew that they would never turn me away

Later this Warsangeli chap also describes other Somalis sailing this time in an "Arab Dhow" that he sails along on:

In Berbera I met a kinsman who was the boatswain i20) of a small Arabian dhow. I jumped, uninvited, on his boat and he let me work for my keep. For those who do not know what a small dhow is like, I may say that it is covered only by a small deck at the prow, on which the cooking is done and where the boys sit, and another small deck at the stern, where the men - sailors and occasional passengers - squat. The bottom of the boat is occupied by the cargo. It has a lateen sail fixed on a very tall mast, and a small similar sail further back.

The dhow I was on carried rice, dates, durra, and other foodstuffs between various settlements on the Somali coast, mainly Berbera, Karin and Bulhar.

I was employed as a « boy » and helped to cook the food, to row the seamen to and from the coast, and when they were ashore to bring them their meals from the boat. I was always at the beck and call of the sailors and if I was not quick enough to obey I was thrashed with a rope (21).

Another source based on an Italian document from the late 1800s also describes that the Majeerteen came down to Koonfur using dhows:

In the years that followed, increasing numbers of traders from Hobya and Majeerteenia came in dhows to Marka and to the new town of Kismaayo.

And there's also this source published in 1815 describing how Somalis (Majeerteens, basically) from around the northeast coast trade in their own vessels with Aden and Mocha:

Alongside a rather funny story from the late 1800s of runaway Swahili slaves stealing a sailing boat from their Majeerteen masters and being rescued by the British who refused to give them and the ship back when the MJs tried to pull a fast one and claim the slaves were just deserting soldiers:

From Sultan Uthman b. Mahmud. Praise be to God alone. To the paragon of commanders, our beloved and our friend, the governor of Aden, kind sir. What we want is two things: First, to be in communication with you. Second, soldiers of ours disappeared taking a sanbuq. What we want is that you send the soldiers and [the] sanbuq to us, in as much as we protect your friends. As for Samatar Uthman, he has complained about you, but (we think that) negotiations will bring agreement.

Then there's this later source from the early 1900s talking of seizing Majeerteen merchant boats:

By neutralising Hobyo, the fascists could concentrate on the Majeerteen. In early October 1924, E. Coronaro, the new Alula commissioner, presented Boqor Osman with an ultimatum to disarm and surrender. Meanwhile, Italian troops began to pour into the sultanate in anticipation of this operation. While landing at Haafuun and Alula, the sultanate's troops opened fire on them. Fierce fighting ensued and to avoid escalating the conflict and to press the fascist government to revoke their policy, Boqor Osman tried to open a dialogue. However, he failed, and again fighting broke out between the two parties. Following this disturbance, on 7 October the Governor instructed Coronaro to order the Sultan to surrender; to intimidate the people he ordered the seizure of all merchant boats in the Alula area. At Haafuun, Arimondi bombarded and destroyed all the boats in the area.

I've also seen some 19th century pictorial examples of Somalis sailing like this which is from Le Tour du Monde. Nouveau Journal des Voyages. 1er et 2nd semestre Hardcover – January 1, 1885 and is apparently of Somalis, as you can tell, transporting some ajanabis though I have to get my hands on the original and see:

Not to mention that I can't find any sources claiming the Somalis' sailboats are from Arabia and not locally made like the fishing boats which we have evidence of being made locally. That just seems made up on his part. But anyway, what you see above is all just stuff I managed to dig up in about a day. Weird that the saaxiib has held these views seemingly for at least 2 years or more and never encountered any of this. "Orientalist" confirmation bias is quite something, it seems.

 

[Shimbiris]

A continuation of the above from the other thread:

I'm really giggling over here at how I've derailed my own thread but I found yet more sources.

Here is one from the start of the 1900s describing Somali Dhows that make their way all the way to Dubai and Sharjah as well as Muscat and generally in the Perso-Arabian Gulf waters:

Here is also another source from around the same period of time describing Somali Dhows off the coast of Cape Guardafui rescuing some 500 passengers and crew and plundering wreckage as well:

This same book mentions quite a lot of interesting cultural stuff around seafaring and fishing among Red Sea and Indian Ocean peoples like Bejas, Tigres, Afars, Somalis, Afars and Arabs. Really recommend giving it a read. One little interesting tidbit from it that calls back to that Pankhurst source on that man's autobiography is that Somalis seem to often refer to dhows as "Dooni" ("Doon" being the Somali word for boat) whilst Afars also use "Doonik/Dhoonik":

The guy it mentions, Henri de Monfreid, is also very interesting because he apparently sailed with Somali sailors during the early 20th century and eventually acquired and manned his own ship:

Even apparently had himself a longtime and faithful Somali boatswain (ship's officer) among them named Abdi. Though this is seemingly an instance of Somalis manning a non-Somali's boat. If you are more interested in Somalis with their own boats then I also found more from that author Alan Villiers' book (Sons of Sinbad). A part where he describes Somali sailors all the way in Zanzibar with their "Sambuks" and he shows us what a "Sambuk" looks like:

​

This one is a source I just have excerpts of unlike the others. Really wanna get my hands on the original but can't find digital copies so far. I'm told he even mentions Hafun and I'm not sure but I think he mentions that it's a shipbuilding spot like we know it was in the late 1900s for smaller fishing type vessels.

@Apollo @Som @Periplus How did I find all of this after like a day and a half and this @Grant fellow apparently didn't for years whilst seeming so sure Somalis didn't sail beyond their own shores? In that short time frame I've managed to dig up several sources pointing to there being Somali sailors from the early 1800s to the early 1900s going anywhere from Mocha to Aden to Muscat to Dubai to Sharjah to Zanzibar.

 

[Shimbiris]

Yet another continuation:

You're welcome. I found some more recent stuff as well. Like the French showing that, much like the smaller fishing vessels we saw in the northeast accounted for by Chittick, the sailboat "Sambuks" were being constructed locally until very recently by reer Jabuuti Somalis:

They also show us examples of both smaller fishing type vessels ("Huori") and the larger sailing vessels ("Sambouk"), the latter of which looks an awful lot like what we see in Sons of Sinbad almost half a century prior:

They further show us two other types of boat types on the Somali coast named "Zeima" and "Zaroug" (-):

Including, as a random aside, this picture of what looks like the smaller fishing vessel variety around 1915, though I can't confirm the men on board are not Afar even though the French wikipedia page for Dhows seems to claim they're Somalis:

I've even seen many Somali Sambuks/Dhows in recent times though they're not really sailboats nowadays and are made to run on motors. Here is one off the coast of Mombasa:

And I only share it because what little I can see of its look reminds me of this illustration from the Somali Shilling of local boatbuilding:

They didn't put boat-building on the currency the way they did basket weaving for no reason. It clearly seems to have been a normal, provable part of the culture like basket weaving. @Grant How have you gone years without finding all the stuff I've shared so far? This man actually claimed to me that only Banjunis historically had boats that could sail off the Somali coast.

 

[Shimbiris]

@Pwyneth Galtrow

 

[Hamzza]

 

[Hamzza]

 

[Shimbiris]

View attachment 215357

View attachment 215357

Where did you find these?

 

[Hamzza]

The majerten daring navigators were known to sail with their lightweight vessels to bombay and zanzibar

 

[Hamzza]

Where did you find these?

From italian book

 

[Hamzza]

 

[Shimbiris]

View attachment 215365

When is the dating, walaal, and can you link the book as well, please?

 

[Hamzza]

When is the dating,

1892

When is the dating, walaal, and can you link the book as well, please?

The Earth And Its Inhabitants - Africa - Vol. IV​

 

[Shimbiris]

1892

The Earth And Its Inhabitants - Africa - Vol. IV​

Thank you very much, walaal.

View attachment 215365

And this? Dating and source?

 

[Dima&Damo]

 

[Shimbiris]

View attachment 215378

I think these specific ones are Bajuni boats. The source says:

Somalia, Dhows at sail off the coast of the island of Ciula, Somalia.Typescript caption on "Governo della Somalia Italiana" label: Vita SomalaIsola di CiulaImbarcazioni locali 1930

This is the island:

Chula · Somalia

★★★★★ · Island

www.google.com

"Juula/Chula/Ciula". It's apparently the most inhabited of their islands. It's perfectly possible they're ethnic Somali dhows being manned by ethnic Somalis but it's more likely Bajunis.

 

[Som]

A continuation of the above from the other thread:

I'm really giggling over here at how I've derailed my own thread but I found yet more sources.

Here is one from the start of the 1900s describing Somali Dhows that make their way all the way to Dubai and Sharjah as well as Muscat and generally in the Perso-Arabian Gulf waters:

Here is also another source from around the same period of time describing Somali Dhows off the coast of Cape Guardafui rescuing some 500 passengers and crew and plundering wreckage as well:

This same book mentions quite a lot of interesting cultural stuff around seafaring and fishing among Red Sea and Indian Ocean peoples like Bejas, Tigres, Afars, Somalis, Afars and Arabs. Really recommend giving it a read. One little interesting tidbit from it that calls back to that Pankhurst source on that man's autobiography is that Somalis seem to often refer to dhows as "Dooni" ("Doon" being the Somali word for boat) whilst Afars also use "Doonik/Dhoonik":

The guy it mentions, Henri de Monfreid, is also very interesting because he apparently sailed with Somali sailors during the early 20th century and eventually acquired and manned his own ship:

Even apparently had himself a longtime and faithful Somali boatswain (ship's officer) among them named Abdi. Though this is seemingly an instance of Somalis manning a non-Somali's boat. If you are more interested in Somalis with their own boats then I also found more from that author Alan Villiers' book (Sons of Sinbad). A part where he describes Somali sailors all the way in Zanzibar with their "Sambuks" and he shows us what a "Sambuk" looks like:

​

This one is a source I just have excerpts of unlike the others. Really wanna get my hands on the original but can't find digital copies so far. I'm told he even mentions Hafun and I'm not sure but I think he mentions that it's a shipbuilding spot like we know it was in the late 1900s for smaller fishing type vessels.

@Apollo @Som @Periplus How did I find all of this after like a day and a half and this @Grant fellow apparently didn't for years whilst seeming so sure Somalis didn't sail beyond their own shores? In that short time frame I've managed to dig up several sources pointing to there being Somali sailors from the early 1800s to the early 1900s going anywhere from Mocha to Aden to Muscat to Dubai to Sharjah to Zanzibar.

Great job bro. As I said before these documented sources by colonial officials but we can easily conclude Somalia were active in seafaring since before these accounts because obviously it's unlikely somalis suddenly started to travel these seas in the 1800s without having any prior tradition.
Grant himself admitted in another post that QUOTE : The Mogadishu merchants sent about 20 "pangaios", small rudderless boats only capable of inshore travel, with Mir Ali Bey during the 1585 raid on Lamu.
This is from a Portuguese source.
Pangaios are Also called Penjajap and are boats used by Austronesian and southasia people in Indonesia, Malaysia etc.
This is a drawing of the boats

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Detroit_de_Malacca_Amiral_E_Paris_Pindjajap.jpg/1280px-Detroit_de_Malacca_Amiral_E_Paris_Pindjajap.jpg

While we don't know if the Portuguese correctly identified the boat types we can assume somalis in Mogadishu had medium sized boats. These vessels were mostly used for small distance travel to Yemen, Arabia, Swahili coast etc but they could potentially reach India if equipped with a rudder

 

[Som]

I think these specific ones are Bajuni boats. The source says:

Somalia, Dhows at sail off the coast of the island of Ciula, Somalia.Typescript caption on "Governo della Somalia Italiana" label: Vita SomalaIsola di CiulaImbarcazioni locali 1930

This is the island:

Chula · Somalia

★★★★★ · Island

www.google.com

"Juula/Chula/Ciula". It's apparently the most inhabited of their islands. It's perfectly possible they're ethnic Somali dhows being manned by ethnic Somalis but it's more likely Bajunis.

I think we should establish one thing . Dhows, sambuks. Beden or whatever you want to call it are all boats that were adopted by coastal peoples in east Africa and Arabia. We should not focus too much on the paternity of the ships, boats are just boats. It's likely Somali built boat were exactly like Swahili or Arab built boats because that was the technique in the region.

 

[Som]

We should bring back traditional boats. The Swahili people in Tanzania and Kenya still use them to fish and as a tourist attraction. It's unfortunate that almost all Somali fishermen only use modern boats with engines.
Does anyone have recent pictures of somalis using bedens in Xamar, Bosaso, Berbera etc?