Was Ifta/Adal the Somali Ummyads and Ajuran the Somali Abbasids

[ZBR]

Adal like other even Syria /Levant based Islamic governments was focused on frontier defense, more self sufficient, locally fielded military from the zeal of the locals , was basically a project of the nobility rather than a public service despite being the the first line of defense of Muslims at large

Ajuran like Abbasids was more focused on the hinterlands, careful maintenance, public services, incorporating a cosmopolitan society and especially spreading the religion to eventually hand over the metaphorical baton

 

[ZBR]

Ottomans kinda fit the mold of the ummyads and Abbasids but ummyads more as a state focused of victory and jihad

 

[ZBR]

Spoiler: S

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[Guure⁸]

Adal like other even Syria /Levant based Islamic governments was focused on frontier defense, more self sufficient, locally fielded military from the zeal of the locals , was basically a project of the nobility rather than a public service despite being the the first line of defense of Muslims at large

Ajuran like Abbasids was more focused on the hinterlands, careful maintenance, public services, incorporating a cosmopolitan society and especially spreading the religion to eventually hand over the metaphorical baton

Ummayads and abbasids were families but adal and ajuran weren't

 

[Barkhadle1520]

Ummayads and abbasids were families but adal and ajuran weren't

Ajuran is a clan

 

[Guure⁸]

Ajuran is a clan

The Sultanate wasn't even called ajuran but I used that term cause ppl know it like that

 

[Barkhadle1520]

The Sultanate wasn't even called ajuran but I used that term cause ppl know it like that

Everyday you guys invent some fake history

 

[Guure⁸]

Everyday you guys invent some fake history

Who? The Sultanate's name was magadaxo/Mogadishu

 

[Barkhadle1520]

Who? The Sultanate's name was magadaxo/Mogadishu

So wheres the connection with ajuran ? I dare you to bring primary evidence, ajuran have nothing to do with xamar

 

[Guure⁸]

So wheres the connection with ajuran ? I dare you to bring primary evidence, ajuran have nothing to do with xamar

I don't remember exactly but I've heard the reasoning, I'm will search it for u

 

[Bataati]

"So wheres the connection with ajuran ? I dare you to bring primary evidence, ajuran have nothing to do with xamar"
Gaala @Barkhadle1520, this is for 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.

I saw recently that @Jacko made this post:



What he doesn't seem to realize and I think a majority of you on here oddly don't know is that not all Benadiris are cadcads. The majority were historically "Gibil-Madow" Benadiris who were basically indistinguishable from other Somalis. These include Benadiri tribes like the Moorshe, Iskashato, Bandawoow and Dhabarweyne who basically look like this. As far as I know, the Asharaaf and Reer Maanyo are not counted among them but are basically the same and looked like this and this respectively. These groups together made up the majority of Benadiris and faced much less discrimination during the civil war era due to their appearance when compared to Gibil-Cads like Shanshiyos:

According to representatives from Shansiye interviewed by Landinfo in Nairobi in September 2005, the socalled dark-skinned Benadiris, i.e. Moorshe, Bandawow and Dhabarweyne, were protected by their Somali neighbours because they were dark-skinned (and presumed to be more native Somali), while most of the lightskinned Benadiris had fled at the beginning of the civil war (1991-1992). - Source
​

As far as I know the Gibil-Madows are thought to originally be of origins like Ajuuraan and Raxanweyn and are, as the local traditions maintain, Xamar's equivalent to the Tunni of Barawe whom that town's founding tradition holds were the original inhabitants who accepted foreign settlers and founded the medieval predecessor of the town with them. It's even interesting that Reer Asharaaf's dialect is supposedly about as divergent from Af-Maxaa (variety of dialects spoken historically by Dir, Isaaq, Darood and Hawiye) as Af-Maay which tells you that there were seemingly several pre-Hawiye-Darood "Soomaali group" speakers in the south like Maay folk, Asharaafs, Tunnis and Jiddus:

Source
​

These were probably the sorts of folks alongside the Hawiye and Ajuuraan (depending on whether you want to count the latter among the Hawiye) who were the "Berbers" (Somalis) authors like Ibn Battuta describe during the 1300s and claimed they kept many camels and sheep and were a dark-skinned people living from Zeila down to the vicinity of Xamar and Marka.

Yet another saxiib who doesn't know what he's talking about spreading misinformation. I suppose it isn't enough that you can see in a literal census that shows Hawiyes are part of the settled population of the city? In fact, the "Jacub" (Hiraab) are noted by the Italians to basically be the foremost tribe in the city that tended to lead. Murarsade are present too and have one of the city's 4 gates named after them unlike any other tribe. Not to mention the Dhabarweyne who are actually Hawiye in origin and the Moorshe who will make it clear to you that they were basically Ajuran (if you believe Ajuran is a Hawiye subtribe) and are traditionally regarded as the city's oldest tribe:

The Murshow, widely regarded as Mogadishu's oldest clan, regard themselves as an offshoot of the Ajuran, a pastoral gorup popularly believed to have ruled the southern interior during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Dubbarwayn claim descent from the Hawadle and Murusade clans , while the commerically influential Bandawow are descended largely from various pastoral groups - source​

Just 3 of these 4 tribes seem to outnumber the number of cadcad people in the city from going off the Italian census. Just observe who is listed as a resident of each of the two old districts:

Xamarweyne: Shanshiyo, Gudmani (Bandawoow subgroup), Dhabarweyne, Moorshe, Iskashato and Bandawoow

Shingani: Jacub, Asharaaf, Amudi, Ba Fadal, Reer Shaykh, Saddex Geedi and Murursade

This is incredibly weird, saxiib. Just like Jacko you don't seem to read your own sources fully. If you did you would have realized that this is referring to a time before the 1600s when the Hiraab had not come to enter Xamar and become dominant within its walls. It does not pertain to anytime after the overthrow of the Ajuran during the 1600s:

‘After entering Muqdisho, the Darandoolle quarrelled with the Ajuraan. They quarrelled over watering rights. The Ajuraan had decreed: ‘At the wells in our territory, the people known as Darandoolle and the other Hiraab cannot water their herds by day, but only at night’’…Then all the Darandoolle gathered in one place. The leaders decided to make war on the Ajuraan. They found the imam of the Ajuraan seated on a rock near a well called Ceel Cawl. They killed him with a sword. As they struck him with the sword, they split his body together with the rock on which he was seated. He died immediately and the Ajuraan migrated out of the country.’


​

 

[Barkhadle1520]

"So wheres the connection with ajuran ? I dare you to bring primary evidence, ajuran have nothing to do with xamar"
Gaala @Barkhadle1520, this is for you.

Yap fest + not a primary source

This how you know im right, all you have to do is mention one primary source literally one or two words lol

 

[Bataati]

Gaala @Barkhadle1520

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The Ajuran state certainly existed, the real question is how far back did they begin from and when did they end. You cannot envision any kingdom in Somalia that was described with this type of power in that period of time except them. But you'll find other small chiefdoms and lineages gassed up beyond belief to massage egos. Historians themselves will confirm no centralised level of large numbers existed between the advent of the Ajuran and Siad Barre era.

Also, there is an old Hawiye saying "Gob waa Gareen ama Gaabane ayay gashaa". This is in reference to the overthrow of Ajuran by Hiraab, as Gaabane is the Owbakar Gaabane of the current Mudulood Imam. The oral stories state the wars against Ajuran, whilst bloody, there was a mutual tradition of succession as the Ajuran Imam threw his crown and it landed on a man from the Gaabane clan.

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It says Ajan ou Haouya which means Ajan OR Hawiye. So Ajan is clearly a latin form of Hawiye, used by Europeans to describe the Haawiya of medieval Arabs. The Arabs like Hamawi and Dimashqi of the 14th century believed the Hawiye tribe of Berbers had the name Haawiya due to the extreme heat of their coast which is ignorance on their part. You'll notice before this era, the term Ajan barely existed, the coast was called Berberia, Punt, Cush, troglodytes/sabeans etc which suggests further the use of Ajan correlates strongly with Hawiyes reported presence in the last millenia. The real Somali meaning of Hawiye might be lost in time but the point of the matter is Hawiye have played a foremost role in understanding mediavel Somali history. Trying to bypass them to understand precolonial Somali history is why you have theorists on Sspot overanalysing very obvious tropes as if it were dark matter. Most who try to discredit the history of the Ajuran are northern or western based Somalis, who themselves have little to account for outside of their camel tussling culture of the last 2 mere centuries.

 

[Bataati]

Gaala @Barkhadle1520

The state wasn’t called Ajuuraan. It was called the Ajan coast by the Portuguese (primary sources) with Mogadishu, Merca and Baraawe as their main cities. They mention Hawiye as its rulers. Also the RX and Hawiye all agree that Ajuuraan were the boss in the south back in the days.



Follow this thread. It saves me time from posting all the maps and stuff

 

[Bataati]

I'm feeling Generous today Gaala @Barkhadle1520 Here's another

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

 

[Barkhadle1520]

I'm feeling Generous today Gaala @Barkhadle1520 Here's another

Cornball + still no primary mentioned stop @ me

 

[Bataati]

Cornball + still no primary mentioned stop @ me

I aint reading all that

 

[ZBR]

guys be nice to each other

 

[Barkhadle1520]

guys be nice to each other

 

[Idilinaa]

Adal like other even Syria /Levant based Islamic governments was focused on frontier defense, more self sufficient, locally fielded military from the zeal of the locals , was basically a project of the nobility rather than a public service despite being the the first line of defense of Muslims at large

Ajuran like Abbasids was more focused on the hinterlands, careful maintenance, public services, incorporating a cosmopolitan society and especially spreading the religion to eventually hand over the metaphorical baton

Awfat/Awdal/Bar Sa’ad-Din actually did build public infrastructure cisterns, water supply and drainage systems, road networks, caravan stations, workshops, even mining ops across Waqooyi-Galbeed, based on what archaeology shows. So they weren’t just a frontier defense project.

You're right though they did focus on frontier security too. They built what is called ''amsar' (garrison towns/cities) to act as a buffers between the Muslim lowlands and the Christian highlands. A smart military and settlement strategy.

Their structure and balance between defense, trade, and local development is honestly underrated. So you are touching on something really interesting there, that is worth exploring more in the future down the line.