Mogadishu (, popularly Xamar; ) is the largest city in Somalia and the nation's capital. Located in the coastal Benadir region on the Indian Ocean, the city has served as an important port for centuries.
Antiquity
Sarapion The ancient city of Sarapion is believed to have been the city state of Mogadishu. It is mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek travel document dating from the first century AD, as one of a series of commercial ports on the Somali littoral. According to the Periplus, maritime trade already connected peoples in the Mogadishu area with other communities along the Somali Sea coast.
During ancient times Mogadishu was part of the Somali city-states that engaged in a lucrative trade network connecting Somali merchants with Phoenicia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Greece, Parthian Persia, Saba, Nabataea and the Roman Empire. Somali sailors used the ancient Somali maritime vessel known as the beden to transport their cargo.Journal of African History p.50 by John Donnelly Fage and Roland Anthony Oliver
Foundation and origins The founding ethnicity of Mogadishu and its subsequent sultanate has been a topic of serious intrigue in Somali Studies. Ioan Lewis and Enrico Cerulli believed that the city was founded and ruled by a council of Arab and Persian families.I.M. Lewis, Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar, and Saho, Issue 1, (International African Institute: 1955), p. 47.I.M. Lewis, The modern history of Somaliland: from nation to state, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 1965), p. 37Renewers of the Age Holy Men and Social Discourse in Colonial Benaadir - Page 44 However, the reference I.M Lewis and Cerulli received traces back to one 19th-century text called the Kitab Al-Zunuj, which has been discredited by modern scholars as unreliable, and unhistorical.H. Neville Chittick, "The East Coast, Madagascar and the Indian Ocean", in J. D. Fage and R. Oliver (eds.), The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 3: From c.1050 to c. 1600 (Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 183–231, at 194–195 and 198. The account in the Book of the Zanj of pre-Islamic immigration of Arabs from Himyar in southern Arabia, their founding of most of the more important towns of the coast from Mogadishu to Mombasa, and also Kilwa, together with their subsequent conversion to Islam, is uncorroborated by other sources and unsupported by the archaeological evidence and must be dismissed as unhistorical. The suggestion that these families must have come from Siraf to the Somali coast before the eleventh century must therefore be regarded as unproven.The Cambridge History of Africa, Volum 3 - Page 198The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa By Timothy Insoll - Page 62Gervase Mathew, "The East African Coast until the Coming of the Portuguese", in R. Oliver and G. Mathew (eds.), History of East Africa, Volume 1 (Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 94–127, at 102. More importantly, it contradicts oral, ancient written sources and archeological evidence on the pre-existing civilizations and communities that flourished on the Somali coast, and to which were the forefathers of Mogadishu and other coastal cities. Thus, the Persian and Arab founding "myths" are regarded as an outdated false colonialist reflection on the Africans' ability to create their own sophisticated states. It has now been widely accepted that there were already existing communities on the Somali coast with local African leadership, to whom the Arab and Persian families had to ask for permission to settle in their cities. It also seems the local Africans still retained their political and numerical superiority while the Muslim immigrants would eventually assimilate into the dominant African culture.Cities of the Middle East and North Africa: A Historical Encyclopedia edited by Michael Dumper, Bruce E. Stanley Page 252
Mogadishu along with Zeila and other Somali coastal cities was founded upon an indigenous network involving hinterland trade and that happened even before significant Arab migrations or trade with the Somali coast. That goes back approximately four thousand years and are supported by archaeological and textual evidences.Divine Fertility: The Continuity in Transformation of an Ideology of Sacred Kinship in Northeast Africa by Sada Mire Page 129
This is corroborated by the 1st century AD Greek document the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, detailing multiple prosperous port cities in ancient Somalia, as well as the identification of ancient Sarapion with the city that would later be known as Mogadishu.Making Sense of Somali History: Volume 1 - Page 48 Archaeologist Ahmed Dualeh Jama has identified the now entirely ruined Xamar Jajab—covering roughly 5 km²—as the oldest quarter and former core of Mogadishu, predating the still extant Shingani and Xamarweyne). Gualtiero Benardelli describes Xamar Jajab as a significant urban center once inhabited by a wealthy, sedentary population that practiced agriculture. Moreover, older inland settlements have been found at Afgooye and Gezeira in the Mogadishu hinterland, further supporting the city’s early rise.
When Ibn Battuta visited the Sultanate in the 14th century, he identified the Sultan as being of Barbara origin,he Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325-1354: Volume II Page 375 an ancient term to describe the ancestors of the Somali people. According to Ross E. Dunn neither Mogadishu, or any other city on the coast could be considered alien enclaves of Arabs or Persians, but were in-fact African towns.The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century Page 124
Yaqut al-Hamawi, a famous Muslim medieval geographer in the year 1220 describes Mogadishu as the most prominent town on the coast. Yaqut also mentioned Mogadishu as being a town inhabited by Berbers, described as ”dark-skinned” and considered ancestors of modern Somalis.The History of Somalia - Page 36 by Raphael Chijioke Njoku · 2013 By the thirteenth century, Ibn Sa'id described Mogadishu, Merca and Barawa located in the Benadir coast had become Islamic and commercial centers in the Indian Ocean. He said the local people in the Benadir coast and the interior were predominantly inhabited by Somalis with a minority of Arab, Persian and Indian merchants living in the coastal towns. Ibn al-Mujawir mentions the Banu Majid who fled the Mundhiriya region in Yemen in the year 1159 and settled in Mogadishu and also traders from the port towns of Abyan and Haram.
Mogadishu is traditionally inhabited by 4 main Reer Hamar Gibil Madow (Dark skins) clan groupings (Somali: afarta reer xamar). These are the Moorshe, Iskashato, DhabarWeyne, and the Bandawow. With Moorshe being regarded as the oldest group in Mogadishu and is considered to be a sub-clan of Ajuran who established one of the most powerful medieval kingdoms in Africa called Ajuran Sultanate. The Gibil Madow(Dark skins) faction of the Benadiri are said to hail from various Somali clan groups and make up the majority of Benadiris with a small minority being Gibil Cads(Light skins) which descend from Muslim immigrants.Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: Culture, History, Society By I'M LewisReer Xamar
Medieval Period Mogadishu Sultanate
Mogadishu Sultanate was a medieval Somali sultanate centered in southern Somalia. It rose as one of the pre-eminent powers in the Horn of Africa under the rule of Fakhr ad-Din before becoming part of the expanding Ajuran Empire in the 13th century. The Mogadishu Sultanate maintained a vast trading network, dominated the regional gold trade, minted its own currency, and left an extensive architectural legacy in present-day southern Somalia. A local city-state which much influence over the hinterland neighboring coastal towns. For many years Mogadishu functioned as the pre-eminent city in the (Bilad al Barbar – "Land of the Berbers"), as medieval Arabic-speakers named the Somali coast.M. Elfasi, Ivan Hrbek "Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century", "General History of Africa". Retrieved 31 December 2015.Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco Da Gama, (Cambridge University Press: 1998), p. 121.J. D. Fage, Roland Oliver, Roland Anthony Oliver, The Cambridge History of Africa, (Cambridge University Press: 1977), p. 190.George Wynn Brereton Huntingford, Agatharchides, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: With Some Extracts from Agatharkhidēs "On the Erythraean Sea", (Hakluyt Society: 1980), p. 83. Following his visit to the city, the 12th-century Syrian historian Yaqut al-Hamawi (a former slave of Greek origin) wrote a global history of many places he visited Mogadishu and called it the richest and most powerful city in the region and was an Islamic center across the Indian Ocean.Roland Anthony Oliver, J. D. Fage, Journal of African history, Volume 7, (Cambridge University Press.: 1966), p. 30.I.M. Lewis, A modern history of Somalia: nation and state in the Horn of Africa, 2nd edition, revised, illustrated, (Westview Press: 1988), p. 20.
Ajuran Sultanate In the early 13th century, Mogadishu along with other coastal and interior Somali cities in southern Somalia and eastern Abyissina came under the Ajuran Sultanate control and experienced another Golden Age.Lee V. Cassanelli, The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600-1900, (University of Pennsylvania Press: 1982), p.102. By the 1500s, Mogadishu was no longer a vassal state and became a full fledged Ajuran city. An Ajuran family, Muduffar, established a dynasty in the city, thus combining two entities together for the next 350 years, the fortunes of the urban cities in the interior and coast became the fortunes of the other.
During his travels, Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi (1213–1286) noted that Mogadishu city had already become the leading Islamic center in the region. By the time of the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta's appearance on the Somali coast in 1331, the city was at the zenith of its prosperity. He described Mogadishu as "an exceedingly large city" with many rich merchants, which was famous for its high quality fabric that it exported to Egypt, among other places.P. L. Shinnie, The African Iron Age, (Clarendon Press: 1971), p.135 He also describes the hospitality of the people of Mogadishu and how locals would put travelers up in their home to help the local economy. Battuta added that the city was ruled by a Somali Sultan, Abu Bakr ibn Shaikh 'Umar,David D. Laitin, Said S. Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State, (Westview Press: 1987), p. 15. He noted that Sultan Abu Bakr had dark skin complexion and spoke in his native tongue (Somali) but was also fluent in Arabic. Chapurukha Makokha Kusimba, The Rise and Fall of Swahili States, (AltaMira Press: 1999), p.58 The Sultan also had a retinue of wazirs (ministers), legal experts, commanders, royal eunuchs, and other officials at his beck and call. Ibn Khaldun (1332 to 1406) noted in his book that Mogadishu was a massive metropolis. He also claimed that the city was a very populous with many wealthy merchants.
This period gave birth to notable figures like Abd al-Aziz of Mogadishu who was described as the governor and island chief of Maldives by Ibn Battuta After him is named the Abdul-Aziz Mosque in Mogadishu which has remained there for centuries.
The island's appellation "Madagascar" is not of local origin but rather was popularized in the Middle Ages by Europeans.Cousins (1895), pp. 11–12 The name Madageiscar was first recorded in the memoirs of 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo as a corrupted transliteration of the name Mogadishu, the famous port with which Polo had confused the island.Room (2006), p. 230