Accurate Adal Sultanate map

[Idilinaa]

Slightly off topic but how exactly did the Adal sultanate end? I believe it was dissolved duo to the Oromo migrations and was succeeded by the Harar emirate but according to wikipedia, the last member of the Walashma dynasty was killed by Ethiopians but I don't trust wikipedia when it comes to Somalo history

Adal Sultanate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It was the ensuing upheaval of the 16th century. When Imam Gurey came to power he pretty much led a revolutionary military coup and rendered the Walashma Sultans into mere figure head kings.

When he died unexpectedly without creating a mechanism for succession , the power split into two political factions , one based in Harar by Emir Nur and the other on based in Awsa by Mohamed Gasa. That's basically how it dissolved politically, it caused a civil war and fighting to fill the power vaccum.

2nd reason was economical one which was due the trade blockage blockage and disturbance in the Indian ocean and red sea by the Portuguese. The Oromo migrations created disturbance in the interior trade routes and decimated the lands.

This is all covered by the internal Arabic Manuscripts in the periods after the Conquest of Abyssinia. You should go to directly to the primary sources if you don't trust any other.

 

[Idilinaa]

Barawani had great clout in Muslim East Africa as well. Dar as Salaam in Tanzania was founded by them and until the riots of the 60s there was a Somali quarter in the city.

Interesting. A Qadi(Judge) in Mombasa was also from Barawa, when the Europeans visited the towns in the early 1800s.

It speaks to the translocality of Barawa as a town.

 

[Galool]

@Idilinaa

 

[peterpeter]

Adal Sultanate was a Somali run kingdom anyone who denies this is a moron, it extended from Somaliland all the way into Ethiopia and Djbouti

 

[Idilinaa]

Adal Sultanate was a Somali run kingdom anyone who denies this is a moron, it extended from Somaliland all the way into Ethiopia and Djbouti

Their language is actually described by Al-Umari so it's pretty much confirmed via this

AL UMARI's ACCOUNT OF AWFAT/ADAL's LANGUAGE

We have often seen scholars using the description of the calendar used by "al zayali'a" as a description of the language spoken only in the city of Zeila, However after reading al umaris book that's not what he actually says. Al umari says the words Bil and karam are used for the calendar in...

www.somalispot.com

And Awdal's territory moved eastwards and northern Somalia was it's political and economic base. Here is a post that goes through it:

I’ve seen a lot of maps underselling the true territory of the Adal sultanate. The map below being the biggest culprit and sadly however the most famous map of Adal. Any one with a basic understanding of Adal could tell all of it’s glaring flaws

Firstly we must establish the extent of Adal in the eastern direction. In the book Narrative of the Portuguese embassy to Abyssinia during the years 1520-1527 which was written written by a Portuguese visiting Ethiopia. When talking about Adal, he makes an offhand comment about Cape Guardafui (Raas Caseyr) and he mentions a ruler there that is subject to Adal.

Here is a Portuguese document talking about an event in which missionaries step foot in a port called Afum and were captured by the king of Adel. Afum is clearly modern day Hafun just below the Cape Guardafui.

To The West due to The Imam’s glorious conquest the Empire stretched all the way to Aksum and Lalibela. To South it encompassed all of Bali as well as conquering nearly every province of Ethiopia

View attachment 306117

Here is a rough estimate of how large it is I did on Google earth. This would make it the 4th largest African Empire after Songhai, Mali, and Aksum.

 

[Idilinaa]

@Idilinaa

Thats awsome. InshaAllah we can find more manuscripts that can complete picture for us.

Btw do you know that twitter user and his team?

 

[Galool]

Thats awsome. InshaAllah we can find more manuscripts that can complete picture for us.

Btw do you know that twitter user and his team?

No, I do not. I just came across the post on twitter.

 

[Idilinaa]

No, I do not. I just came across the post on twitter.

It has a some real good information, especially what happened in the aftermath when his brother succeeded him. His son Muhammad bin Badlay continued the conquest and took command of the army.

''"He took over the Kingdom after the martyr of his father on the 26th day of Ramadan in the year 849.. He fought renowned battles in his struggle against the infidels of Abyssinia, defeating them repeatedly. He then descended back to the land of Sa’ad al-Din.."

Sultan Badlay died via stomach disease on his bed on the western frontiers while carrying out a conquest and by Islamic tradition that would makes him a martyr. In his long reign he conquered various christian lands and rescued Muslim inhabitants in the far western frontier regions and his fame reached throughout the Muslim world.

Shared a translate of a medieval Muslim news reporting about it before:

Text on how Sultan Badlay ''' Camped a thousand Muslim families there'' in one of the southwestern territories.

Someone one this this forum said his name ''Badlay'' was a nickname in Somali that meant ''Slayer of Bandits'' because ended injustices carried against the people

@daljirkadahsoon
First of all i should clarify that sultan's name wasn't badlay but Shihab al din ahmed, badlay acted as his nickname.

The somali etymology would be:
Baad-laay
Baad meaning the money the bandits take in af somali
Laay meaning their slayer so:
Slayer of bandits (He was known for being righteous so makes sense).
The xabashis had their own nickname for him too which was awre meaning snake, probably linked to him because he used snakes as a symbol.

Read al maqrizi
He speaks about how he brought order, made the caravan routes (or just routes) peaceful and dimimued the high prices, basically before him it was a society suitable for bandits so my etymology makes much sense.

 

[Midas]

I csmt imagine How many other manuscripts must be out there that'll allow us to reconstruct the last 500 years of somali history. We actually need conferences on this stuff though. Since all those somali studies conferences just focus on stuff like climate change and conflict resolution or the occasional lingustics paper.

 

[Midas]

It seems like we have way more source material to reconstruct history in the horn of africa. But I never see even ethiopia get the attention that west african or the swahili coast get from african historians/africanists.

 

[Galool]

I csmt imagine How many other manuscripts must be out there that'll allow us to reconstruct the last 500 years of somali history. We actually need conferences on this stuff though. Since all those somali studies conferences just focus on stuff like climate change and conflict resolution or the occasional lingustics paper.

Those conferences are pushed by western ngo's. They never accomplish anything except a waste of time and resources. Do not expect anything good from those.

Once Somalis can conduct our own conferences for our own benefit, you would find it bearing fruit and they would be exploring topics that actually benefit us. The other stuff is foreign and has a different agenda.

It seems like we have way more source material to reconstruct history in the horn of africa. But I never see even ethiopia get the attention that west african or the swahili coast get from african historians/africanists.

Ethiopia does not have much interesting history as @Idilinaa has done a lot of work sharing. It mainly consists of them lying or exagerating. Or claiming Somali history as their own since the British annexed some of our country to be occupied by them, so they claim the history of our region. What is uniquely their history consists of their hatred for Islam and Muslims, a series of wars they fought against Muslims and lost. It is them crying about wanting access to the sea and their leaders being killed by Muslims. Not much else, and not much has changed.

 

[Idilinaa]

It seems like we have way more source material to reconstruct history in the horn of africa. But I never see even ethiopia get the attention that west african or the swahili coast get from african historians/africanists.

I think it's because of lack of interest by the Somali western intellectuals like you said, political issues in the horn of africa that prevent things and the somali state collapse.

Before the war there was pioneering preliminary work done on synthesizing and reconstructing Somali history by Aw Jama Umar Issa ''Tarikh al-Sumal fi al-Usur Wusta Wa-al Haditha''((The Modern and Medieval History of Somalia) and Kashf al-Sudul An Tarikh al-Sumal Wa-Mamalikihim al-Sab'ah (The History of Somalia and the Seven Muslim Kingdoms) by Shaykh Ahmad Abdallah

And a couple of other ones mentioned in the ''Arabic sources on Somalia''.

 

[Idilinaa]

Those conferences are pushed by western ngo's. They never accomplish anything except a waste of time and resources. Do not expect anything good from those.

Once Somalis can conduct our own conferences for our own benefit, you would find it bearing fruit and they would be exploring topics that actually benefit us. The other stuff is foreign and has a different agenda.

Somali studies conferences aren't pushed by ngo's, its set up by Somali academics that fled the war, they even used to set some up in Djibouti and continued to do yearly journals such as halabuur, most now are based in the west.

I think there is some merit to what you say until we can stabilise, collect and relocate back to Somalia as a base and have funding allocated for it don't think there would be much meaning full progress.

Ethiopia does not have much interesting history as @Idilinaa has done a lot of work sharing. It mainly consists of them lying or exagerating. Or claiming Somali history as their own since the British annexed some of our country to be occupied by them, so they claim the history of our region. What is uniquely their history consists of their hatred for Islam and Muslims, a series of wars they fought against Muslims and lost. It is them crying about wanting access to the sea and their leaders being killed by Muslims. Not much else, and not much has changed.

Ethiopia does have some interesting history. But yeah a lot of it seem to be exaggerated, some straight up lies and new revelations shows that their medieval chronicles are more or less epic fiction pieces and have a few recorded and documented facts events framed around a grand epic narrative.

I think we can find interesting stuff if we are able to carefully separate the facts from the fiction.

 

[Galool]

Somali studies conferences aren't pushed by ngo's, its set up by Somali academics that fled the war, they even used to set some up in Djibouti and continued to do yearly journals such as halabuur, most now are based in the west.

I think there is some merit to what you say until we can stabilise, collect and relocate back to Somalia as a base and have funding allocated for it don't think there would be much meaning full progress.



Ethiopia does have some interesting history. But yeah a lot of it seem to be exaggerated, some straight up lies and new revelations shows that their medieval chronicles are more or less epic fiction pieces and have a few recorded and documented facts events framed around a grand epic narrative.

I think we can find interesting stuff if we are able to carefully separate the facts from the fiction.

I was more commenting on the climate change type conferences that he referred to in his post. Not what you are mentioning, which sounds interesting.

When I say Ethiopia I mean the history that began with the amhara kings, which is most of their recorded history. Which is a story of lies, exaggeration, and is almost entirely about their wars with Somalis/Muslims.

 

[Idilinaa]

I was more commenting on the climate change type conferences that he referred to in his post. Not what you are mentioning, which sounds interesting.

When I say Ethiopia I mean the history that began with the amhara kings, which is most of their recorded history. Which is a story of lies, exaggeration, and is almost entirely about their wars with Somalis/Muslims.

The good potential on the Somali side is that if we collect enough sources and synthesize it , to gain control of the narrative back and especially from distortions.

Especially important to access primary sources directly for ourselves, you can see it in the misrepresentation by Enrico Cerulli that framed an envoy visit to Egypt as if they were gathering support because they were weakened after the death of Badlay but as you can see his son built on the success of his father, they were not weakened.

Somalis/Muslims almost all the time was defeating them without much outside assistance and the ottomans didn't really help us at all in conquering Abyssinia

The Ottomans really didn't play that big of a partnership with Adal as people make them out to. If you look closely at the sources from that period . Even in the war against Ethiopia/Abyssinia and Portugal.

Key Dimensions in Abyssinia-Ottoman Relations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Critical Review of Literatures

https://www.jpanafrican.org/docs/vol10no1/10.1-16-Miftah.pdf

They had more active and direct relationship with Ethiopia and the Eritrean coast instead.

They are mainly making nonsense up via secondary reporting on what primary sources say
And then the Ethiopian epic fiction pieces adds another distorted dimension to it.

There is a lot of corrections that need to be made in the writing of Horn of African historiography.

 

[Webb]

@Idilinaa

That book is in print and available on Shaamilah how is it a new discovery

 

[Midas]

That book is in print and available on Shaamilah how is it a new discovery

You would think if that's the case that people in somalia or in the middle east who know arabic would have been familiar with these texts

 

[Idilinaa]

You would think if that's the case that people in somalia or in the middle east who know arabic would have been familiar with these texts

They are probably recently uploaded manuscripts in online libraries.