Most Somalis are nomadic pastoralists they look down on farming
Agriculture land by country, Africa
- Thread starter 𐒋𐒖𐒆𐒔𐒖𐒕𐒈
- Start date
Many are still settled farmers or agro-pastoral regardless. Pretty much in every region where the soil is fertile enough and you don't have issues like the tsetse fly you will find tribes that farm despite all the brouhaha around "qotis". Arabs are the same. The proud Badu spits on the man who farms and settles down but even so when they find an oasis...
Somalis are agro-pastoralists not nomads, they did both farming and herding. At times they combined both.
Geeljire means camel herding , it does not mean nomad. We didn't just keep camels, they kept a bunch of other livestock Donkeys, horses, cows even. There is no geeljire culture.
If anyone is curious about it you can check out my thread on Agriculture. Somalis engaged in farming in almost every region of Historical Somalia, with most of the dense farming communities being clustered in the NorthWest , Harar Uplands and South.Central.
Somali Agricultural Revolution( 900-1600s) ?
I have been looking at various historical trends and linkages and came across. The Arab Agricultural Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Agricultural_Revolution which took places through the entirety of the medieval period. Which made me think that Somalia might have been connected to...
www.somalispot.com
Bantus never existed in NorthWest Somalia, Ogaden/Harar Uplands etc where Somali farming communities cultivated and exported exorbinant of amount of wheat, coffee and sorghum out of the port of Berbera and Zayla.
And the date palm plantations along the Eastern coast of Bari was similarly cultivated by local clans, not Bantus.
Outsourcing of farm labour to slaves only happened in the 19th century in the Southern Somalia, to increase production capacity and cut costs. This is before industrialization and machinery undercut large human labour requirements. It was driven by pure profit motive rather than some aversion to farming. It's similar to what happened in the New Age Americas.
And the farmland that was labored on was owned by native Somali farming communities who had been farming for centuries, they were the ones who purchased them.
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Most farmers today in Somalia are not even Bantus. All communities where it's farmeable engage in farming, it's not restricted to a single sub-set or group.
Somalia was pretty much food secure or self-sufficient throughout the 1970s-1980s and prior to colonialism they was net food exporters , even during the middle ages. Back then they didn't just farm in the south along the two rivers, there was even small scale local substistence farming happening everywhere , even in places like Hafun people farmed and produced food locally to support their communities. They carry out similar subsistence activities in many places today throughout the north as well.
It's not because they are not good at farming or we have unproductive lands that there is higher food insecurity in many places today, it has to do with the fact that cheap outdated produce and aid from America and Western world is flooding the markets that undermine local production and they can't even compete with their produce in the markets, they end up losing money they invested in their farms and have to scale back.
What Somalia needs is better economic protection and some form of subsidies for farmers.
Watch this video it goes throughout it :
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Here is source from year 1876 describing that most Hawiye are settled farmers in the inland regions away from the drier coastal plains.
''In the inland regions most of them appear to be settled agriculturalists, which is doubtless due to the greater elevation of this region, which is also better watered and more fertile than the low-lying coastlands"
Source: The Earth and Its Inhabitants, Africa: South and east Africa by Elisée Reclus
Wherever the soil was fertile enough and where it was farmeable the same clans farmed the land.
You can also see this in the more fertile rainfed elevated interior of the NorthWest throughout the 1800s-1900s there was various farming villages labored by various Dir and Isaaq families. Towns like Gebiley, Burco, Borama and Hargeisa grew out of agricultural settlements.
Only the interior modern cities grew around fertile agricultural settlements like Burco, Borama and Hargeisa. They were essentially centers connected to farming villages . So i have no idea what @berberaboy66 @Garaad.XIV are on about, where there is suitable fertile land , Somalis farmed. Whether they farm or not has nothing to do with being lazy
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Arabsiyawi
HA Activist.
This is such a big lie. Southern tribes are agropastoral with a huge emphasis on the agro part. To say only slaves or "bantus" were farmers is not only insulting to them but to us as well. Somali culture isn't "geeljire culture" only.
He's a hooyo mataalo who seems to know close to nothing about the homeland. The way these kids talk you'd think they believe the Raxanweyn are Bantus or something. Every idiot knows practically half of the RX tribes living along the Jubba and Shabelle valley were historically settled agriculturalists or agro-pastoral and are certainly not Bantus. It's literally in the name of one of their main tribal divisions:
Rahanweyn - Wikipedia
Digil iyo Mirifle. Though even the tribes who don't come under Digil practice cattle keeping and agriculture. My own mtDNA N1a1a3 comes from my maternal great grandmother who mothered my paternally Majeerteen grandmother and was Raxanweyn herself of the Maalin Weyn who are "Mirifle". She herself belonged to a settled cultivator family and owned many cattle. And guess what? There's no genetic difference between her and northern Somalis. These kids are cringe to read, wallahi.
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Part of the problem is that there is this narrative spread by revisionist somali scholars that the authcnous pouplation of the jubba River valleys are actually somali bantu. And that the other somalis are recent arrivals and that they taught us agriculture. One of the biggest scholars behind this Theory was omar eno.He's a hooyo mataalo who seems to know close to nothing about the homeland. The way these kids talk you'd think they believe the Raxanweyn are Bantus or something. Every idiot knows practically half of the RX tribes living along the Jubba and Shabelle valley were historically settled agriculturalists or agro-pastoral and are certainly not Bantus. It's literally in the name of one of their main tribal divisions:
Rahanweyn - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Digil iyo Mirifle. Though even the tribes who don't come under Digil practice cattle keeping and agriculture. My own mtDNA N1a1a3 comes from my maternal great grandmother who mothered my paternally Majeerteen grandmother and was Raxanweyn herself of the Maalin Weyn who are "Mirifle". She herself belonged to a settled cultivator family and owned many cattle. And guess what? There's no genetic difference between her and northern Somalis. These kids are cringe to read, wallahi.
If that is true why is that the case? Any armchair here or elsewhere knows that Bantus being the main farmers is blatantly wrong.
People started propagating this narrative after the collapse of the Somali govt. But the reason is that there's no real proper books on somali history. There's some papers and articles here and there . But it's all fragmented nobody has gathered manuscripts and other materials to write even a basic survey of somali history. Let alone books on the different sultnates.
I think if you were gonna write a basic history of somalia i would first focus on the last 500 years. My sources at minium would be
1) futuh al habesha
2) the gadbursui chronicles
3) that one majeeerten chronicles idinlaa mentioned
4) the sources sharif aydrus used in his book on somali history
5) books on the darwish
6) geledi chronicles
7) European Explorer accounts
8) the later chronicles from harar
He's a hooyo mataalo who seems to know close to nothing about the homeland. The way these kids talk you'd think they believe the Raxanweyn are Bantus or something. Every idiot knows practically half of the RX tribes living along the Jubba and Shabelle valley were historically settled agriculturalists or agro-pastoral and are certainly not Bantus. It's literally in the name of one of their main tribal divisions:
Rahanweyn - Wikipedia
Digil iyo Mirifle. Though even the tribes who don't come under Digil practice cattle keeping and agriculture. My own mtDNA N1a1a3 comes from my maternal great grandmother who mothered my paternally Majeerteen grandmother and was Raxanweyn herself of the Maalin Weyn who are "Mirifle". She herself belonged to a settled cultivator family and owned many cattle. And guess what? There's no genetic difference between her and northern Somalis. These kids are cringe to read, wallahi.
Remember in another thread where i was explaining that Raxanweyn are just a confederation of different Somali clans and a big chunck of them are from other neighboring pasotral clans that integrate with the nucleas founding Somali clans.
For example certain Tunni clans like the Da'faarat, include Hawiye clans like Abgaal/Habr Gidir and Ajowa include Hawiye and Ajuuran clans like Waaqsheyn and Nijey. Daqitira includes Bimaal clans like Kumurto and Goygal includes Sheekhaal and Hawiye clans like Hamar and Doyle.
But the largest chunk of them actually seem to be Garre, like Gaafle, Geesi, Madowe, Matangalle, that exist across all 4 out of the 5 confederations. The rest being Mirifle and Digil clans.
Tunni were sedentary agro-pastoralists that engaged in farming acitvities
But it goes to show what i try to stress this but often falls on deaf ears. The simple fact that Somali clans are not political units, they are fluid economic units meant to facilitate cooperation and resource sharing. People are not grouped into them to separate and distinguish themselves from each-other but to create family networks coordinate production and trade
We were all part of a shared economic system and also that almost all Somali clans engaged in diverse economic activities, they weren't strictly herders who tended to only livestock
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Do people forget that those Bantus were farming in servitude on land belonging to Somalis? When the Italians abolished slavery in the early 1900s, much of the land owned by the Somali plantation-owning class was then gifted to these freed slaves.
It was clear that Somalis saw the value of agriculture; that’s why we see vast banks of the Jubba and Shabelle rivers turning into plantations in the 19th century. It’s also why Somalis swiftly expanded into Kenya and Ethiopia, seeking more fertile land—partly to profit from this new way of life. Lets be clear a lot of Somalis double dipped, doing what can be described as agro pastoralism.
While Somalis did look down on farming, the strongest disdain was found among those farthest from agricultural communities. Once small Darood and Hawiye communities started successfully farming and relayed that information back to their kinsmen, more Somalis began moving further and further south.
It reminds me of those who hate/fear Jeraarweyne, rarely are they hated among the Somalis closest to them, its the Somalis far away that feel somehow threatened by them.
It was clear that Somalis saw the value of agriculture; that’s why we see vast banks of the Jubba and Shabelle rivers turning into plantations in the 19th century. It’s also why Somalis swiftly expanded into Kenya and Ethiopia, seeking more fertile land—partly to profit from this new way of life. Lets be clear a lot of Somalis double dipped, doing what can be described as agro pastoralism.
While Somalis did look down on farming, the strongest disdain was found among those farthest from agricultural communities. Once small Darood and Hawiye communities started successfully farming and relayed that information back to their kinsmen, more Somalis began moving further and further south.
It reminds me of those who hate/fear Jeraarweyne, rarely are they hated among the Somalis closest to them, its the Somalis far away that feel somehow threatened by them.
Bantus was not given land that was owned by Somali farmers that they worked on, only a small group of them were allocated a separate land elsewhere. The same Somali farming families continue to live and farm the land to this day, nothing has truly changed except that they no longer use slaves.
Hawiye, Bimaal or even Darood established the farm lands and was farming them much like the Isaaq and Gadabursi families in the NorthWest ,and Darood commmunities in the Harar Uplands did , before they imported slaves. Living in settled villages.
Their use of slaves was a profit driven thing, they needed a large cheap labour pool to produce crops for exports. They had built up a significant purchasing power before they bought them as well.
There is a difference between ""cash crop"" farming and "food crop" farming. They did not need/depend on Bantu slaves to cultivate food crops for them to live off like Sorghum etc but they needed a large labor pool for large scale cash crops like Millet etc so they could make money from it as it wasn't meant for domestic consumption but for foreign markets instead. It had more to do with scaling of production and output to increase profits.
They did not look down on farming it's completely false misrepresentation. If yall honestly want to believe this you will just be met with contradictions.
Nobody fears or hates J-weyne and other Somali clans hardly bring them up or talk badly about them. They are just treated as people that share the land with them and are their neighbors.
It's more the opposite, its J-weyne and other smaller communities who feel threatened by the wider Somali collective and thats why we have people like you and others on this thread who seek to divorce them from their lands and reduce their role. In the process you have to imagine realities that are not real.
It's similar to the rabid intense grudge , fear and slander spewed by Kenyans online, who also want to believe we are strangers to our land and they are entitled to it. Whereas Somalis intead behave in the line of mutual cooperation and sharing, they have no trouble tolerating others as shared neighbors.
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My mother's maternal fam are basically reer Baydhabo MJ migrants from the north who assimilated quite a bit into the local RX culture. They even speak Af-Maay alongside Af-Maxaa. My mother, my ayeeyo and great ayeeyo all speak it (spoke in the case of my great ayeeyo, AUN). So she's quite privy to their culture, origins and customs. Growing up she'd confuse me a bit by telling me that the Raxanweyn aren't a "real tribe" but a "coming together" of different Somali peoples and she even translated the name to mean something along those lines that I now forget.
Then when I got older I began reading the sorts of things you're talking about and it tracked with what she'd often tell me. They're like an amalgam of the different Somaloid groups found across Koonfur. Hawiyes, some Daroods, Garres, Jiddus, Tunnis etc.
Mind you, I think this is characteristic of all the Somali tribes in reality. Somali Y-DNA sampling is making it pretty clear that the 4 other tribes of Darood, Isaaq, Hawiye and Dir (especially the first three) aren't truly patrilineal tribes but confederacies of different mainly E-Z813 and T lineages. Somalis banding together to share resources and form beneficial political alliances then creating a shared tribal origin myth and exchanging daughters to cement the union. The exchanging daughters part seems very obvious from their origin myths like how the Darood's mother is a Dir woman and how all the tribes show the same mtDNA diversity, even supposedly Cadcads.
𐒋𐒖𐒆𐒔𐒖𐒕𐒈
VIP
Other favourable factors to consider: a) blue economy, and b) size of Somali territories both of which greatly benefit Somalis if only stability and growth in human capital could be prioratised.
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Even more so with .So having more arable land than agriculture.
Difference: according to NCESC, arable land is defined as land that is capable of being plowed or tilled regularly. This type of land is typically used for the cultivation of various crops, such as cereals, vegetables, and fruits. Arable land is characterized by nutrient-rich soils, ample sunlight, and predictable temperatures, which are essential for crop production. Farmers often employ crop rotation systems to maintain the fertility of arable land and maximize its productivity.
On the other hand, agricultural land encompasses a broader category that includes arable land, as well as land under permanent crops and permanent pastures. Permanent crops refer to land dedicated to the cultivation of crops that are not replanted after each harvest, such as orchards, vineyards, and plantations. Permanent pastures, on the other hand, are grazing lands used for livestock farming.
While arable land is a subset of agricultural land, it is important to note that not all agricultural land is arable. For example, land used for permanent crops or permanent pastures may not be suitable for plowing or tilling and may not support the growth of temporary crops. Therefore, arable land is a specific type of agricultural land that is capable of being cultivated and is primarily used for crop production.
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Overview
The Somali government has recently proposed an ambitious plan to grow its “blue economy.” The blue economy— referring to the economic activities in the ocean and coastal areas, including fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, shipping, and offshore oil and gas extraction—is seen as a significant future engine for Somali that will help drive economic prosperity. With the longest coastline in continental Africa (bordering both the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean) at approximately 3,333 kilometers, a large Exclusive Economic Zone, and productive marine ecosystems, fisheries and the blue economy could play an essential role in the rebuilding and the stabilization of the country with suitable investment and support. According to the newly renamed Ministry of Fisheries and Blue Economy, the country has about 1,000,000 square kilometers of maritime territory extending 200 nautical miles offshore, but the full economic potential of Somalia’s marine resources has not been exploited. The African Union hails the blue economy as the “new frontier of African renaissance.”
www.trade.gov
Postscript:
Even more so with .So having more arable land than agriculture.
Difference: according to NCESC, arable land is defined as land that is capable of being plowed or tilled regularly. This type of land is typically used for the cultivation of various crops, such as cereals, vegetables, and fruits. Arable land is characterized by nutrient-rich soils, ample sunlight, and predictable temperatures, which are essential for crop production. Farmers often employ crop rotation systems to maintain the fertility of arable land and maximize its productivity.
On the other hand, agricultural land encompasses a broader category that includes arable land, as well as land under permanent crops and permanent pastures. Permanent crops refer to land dedicated to the cultivation of crops that are not replanted after each harvest, such as orchards, vineyards, and plantations. Permanent pastures, on the other hand, are grazing lands used for livestock farming.
While arable land is a subset of agricultural land, it is important to note that not all agricultural land is arable. For example, land used for permanent crops or permanent pastures may not be suitable for plowing or tilling and may not support the growth of temporary crops. Therefore, arable land is a specific type of agricultural land that is capable of being cultivated and is primarily used for crop production.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Overview
The Somali government has recently proposed an ambitious plan to grow its “blue economy.” The blue economy— referring to the economic activities in the ocean and coastal areas, including fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, shipping, and offshore oil and gas extraction—is seen as a significant future engine for Somali that will help drive economic prosperity. With the longest coastline in continental Africa (bordering both the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean) at approximately 3,333 kilometers, a large Exclusive Economic Zone, and productive marine ecosystems, fisheries and the blue economy could play an essential role in the rebuilding and the stabilization of the country with suitable investment and support. According to the newly renamed Ministry of Fisheries and Blue Economy, the country has about 1,000,000 square kilometers of maritime territory extending 200 nautical miles offshore, but the full economic potential of Somalia’s marine resources has not been exploited. The African Union hails the blue economy as the “new frontier of African renaissance.”
Somalia - Fisheries and Blue Economy
This is a best prospect industry sector for this country. Includes a market overview and trade data.
I think making the argument that no part of Somali society had a negative view of settled farming is untenable given the breadth of evidence. Two things are not mutually exclusive, Somalis have had a millennia-spanning crop-based agricultural tradition while, at the same time, certain aspects of Somali society harbored resentment against it.
The disdain pastoralists had for settled farming was so strong that it was observed by different witnesses over the span of decades.
- Lee Cassanelli, in The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600-1900, describes how Somali nomadic groups often saw settled farming as a lower-status activity, sometimes even associating it with servitude or foreign influence.
- I.M. Lewis, in A Pastoral Democracy, highlights how agricultural communities, such as those along the Shabelle and Juba rivers, were sometimes marginalized by dominant pastoral groups.
- Unraveling Somalia discusses the social hierarchy in Somali society, where farmers (often associated with minority groups like the Rer Shabelle) were considered socially inferior to nomadic herders.
There were small communities of nomadic clans that settled down, but they were not numerous enough to support the conclusion that agricultural production was not primarily driven by the labor of slaves and the Raxanweyn, a non-pastrolist clan mostly.
One important question is when this disdain for settled farming arose and what its origins were.
"Client farmers were those attached in some way to more powerful individuals or groups in the areas where they were settled. While a 'noble' pastoralist who had lost his livestock in war or drought might occasionally attach himself as a client to a wealthy landowner, most client farmers in the riverine areas were considered (by local Somalis) to be hereditarily of low status. Some were believed to be descendants of non-Somali (probably Bantu-speaking) farming communities, while others were presumed by the dominant groups in society to have servile origins. In any case, their perceived lowly status, combined with their role as sedentary cultivators in an essentially pastoralist society, gave them a subordinate position in southern Somali life, even while they performed most of the essential agricultural work."
"Whatever the origins of this sizable segment of client farmers, by the nineteenth century most of them belonged to their own lineage groups with certain rights to blood compensation and (limited) representation in the shir (assembly) of the local Somali clan to which they owed allegiance. It is also important to note that these client farmers usually enjoyed uncontested rights to the land they cultivated. Such rights were sustained partly because their Somali patrons were more interested in herding than in farming and needed the labor of their clients, and probably also because many of the riverine farmers were believed to possess secret supernatural powers that gave them control over the behavior of river creatures such as crocodiles. The client farmers thus formed part of a division of labor in southern Somalia that left their patrons free to manage livestock, engage in raiding and warfare, and practice trade."
Somali nationalism, and the refusal to acknowledge or empathize with the jeraars, does no one any good. The truth is, we kidnapped them from the Congo, made them enslaved to us, and ever since they were emancipated from slavery, they have been treated as second-class citizens. They have continuously been exploited, often used as cannon fodder by whatever larger clan or leader controls them. Why shouldn’t they feel threatened? We once put them in chains, and their freedom was not granted by us but by a white man.
Somali society has been too exclusionary toward groups of different racial backgrounds within our own country. This exclusion has created fertile ground for radicalization, either through sectarianism or through recruitment into groups like Al-Shabaab.
Regarding the claim that Somali Bantus were given land by the Italians—this was, in effect, what happened when the Italians pulled out of Somalia. It is one reason why Somali Bantus are not distributed organically across the country like clans are but instead exist in small clusters along the rivers and valleys near former Italian plantations, which they de facto inherited until 1969.
"In the beginning of the 20th century, Italian colonizers in Somalia abolished slavery (Besteman, 2016). However, in the years following, Italy proceeded to establish over 100 plantations in the Jubba and Shebelle River Valleys and introduced labor laws that forced Bantu people to work as farm laborers on plantations exclusively owned by the Italian government."
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Yes, nomadic clans did engage in farming to some extent, but most of the agricultural work was historically carried out by the Raxanweyn and minorities . It wasn’t until the late 19th and 20th centuries that we saw a significant shift in this dynamic. We could probably say that a significant portion of this nomad-to-farmer shift happenend during colonization as a direct response of the abolishment of slaveryand the hit it gave the Somali food supply.
Some farms and plantations were owned by pastrolist Somali individuals or entire clans, who made agreements with minority groups in exchange for protection.
Many of the pastrolist "agricultural" clans with a history of farming were likely more akin to overseers, tasked with managing and controlling the agricultural production carried out by these marginalized groups.
The truth is, slavery in Somali history is something we are, rightfully, intuitively ashamed of. However, refusing to acknowledge that it played a role in our past is simply dishonest.
We haven’t even touched on the fact that the Raxanweyn themselves could arguably only be considered fully emancipated post-1990s, when nomadic clans realized they were numerous and strong enough to resist them. The fact is because most of them were farmers, and nomads associated farming with weaker minorities, it then rubbed off on the raxanweyn.
The Raxanweyn were probably the only Somali clan to have fully committed to farming at all levels of society, from top to bottom, but even they engaged in the enslavement of bantus to the same or greater extend as pastrolist clans.
Abaq
VIP
After the conquest of Jubaland, the conquerers started to farm the territory using their newly acquired slaves in addition to rearing livestock. Janay Abdalle in Lower Jubba was a hub for agriculture then producing grain that supplied Kismayo and was exported.
Further west, along the fertile Lag Dheera basin in Wajir South, the locals used to grow crops such as sorghum and millet which they would store it in a 'bakaar' (a sack underground, pl us bakaaro, this is where the word Bakaaro Market in Xamar comes from). The 'bakaar' would be dug up in the event of a drought or any other calamity so they could survive till the rains came, sometimes even for 2 to 3 years. They also used to make a form of powdered milk from their milk surplus which would likewise be stored and used during the dry season or droughts, they would just add milk.
All of this stopped in the 90s when aid agencies started bringing relief food, they said why toil when someone will give us free food anyway. Aid needs to be banned.
They are not nomadic clans, they lived in settled villages. It's also not true what you are saying you literally have historical documentation that Hawiye communities farmed alongide the Shabelle river as early as the 12th century
This can be seen in historical documentation and in their tradition for several centuries
"Hawiye of the central region have had a long history of agricultural practices. Oral traditions of those clans show that their settlement and subsequent farming practices have been going on for several centuries""
Some references to other Hawiye clans besides Abgal Wadaan or Hinitire. This is from the mid-1800s.
Bimaal communities also farmed for generations after moving into the area before the 19th century and long before they even imported slaves.
''The arable portion of the land was held by the lineage until individuals under took to clear and plant it. Individual occupation of farms became common, the Bimaal say six to eight generations ago"
Any clan that moved in or was settled in fertile patches of land engaged in farming and the same goes Darood who settled in Wamo/Juba areas in the 19th century, they immediately picked up farming because the land was arable.
The Raxanweyn engaged in pastoralism and combined it with farming for many centuries as well like Hawiye but they are in reality just a confederation of the same Somali clans they neighbor. Not distinct from them. Just so you know.
And Raxanweyn and Tunni were the largest slave owners and plantation owners, it wasn't just Hawiye or Bimaal or Darood or Reer Xamar.
Whether clans engaged in farming or not depended on the land they inhabited, Raxanweyn was mostly just concentrated betweeen the two rivers so most of the land was arable and there was enough water, whereas other clans like Hawiye & Bimaal for example was scatterred into both across the arable shabelle river zones and outside of it in the central & lower coastal plains that wasn't arable and was more suitble for grazing primarily livestock. You can see it described in the text above about Bimaal distribution that makes distinction between arable and non-arable portion of land.
This dispersal was intentional as to not create resource depletion in a single area, so they lived in both the arable areas and the non-arable areas.
Then you also had the Harar Uplands that was irrigated by the tributaries of upper shabelle river and the higher elevation made it better watered, so the Darood Kombe clans like Geri, Abaskul, Usbahyan and Bartiree were largely just sedentary agro-pastoralists/farmers settled into villages for many generations and centuries prior because most of the land was arable and they did not use Bantus or slaves.
As Richard Burton noted when he visited the area:
The last part of what i said is important to point out because in North West(Awdal-Waqooyi-Galbeed) and the Harar Uplands there is no Bantu's and neither do they use slaves for large scale cash crop plantation either and frankly it was the same in the South Central of Somalia prior to the 19th century.
Before the 19th century there is zero documentation of slave plantations in Southern Somalia and yet you had farming communities throughout the medieval period.
The legacy of Ethiopian slavery in Mogadishu is reflected on (Xabash) being synonymous with a slave and it's persistence in the southern dialects both on the benadiri coast and in the interriverine interior. Which still continue to call slaves Xabash.
Somali dictionary synonyms:
I also remember reading that Portuguese mentioned Ethiopian slave in Mogadishu, but i can't really find where i read it.
So if anyone could help me out and find it, it will be good.
It will offer strong proof against the false notion that Southern Somalia had Bantu plantation slaves during the medieval period.
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