Decline of mogadishu 17th-18th century

[AbdiBashirJR]

Mogadishu decline has to be studied from being ibn battutas most favourite city to slowly becoming more and more dominated by omani influence to and eventually becoming vassal state to oman before being handed to italy and although im HG and i know im not indigneous i will drum the hiraab card all i want dont come for me.

Someone needs to do a piece on why it declined so badly before colonialism, mogadishu zeila and harar were the 3 greatest somali cities where scholars around the world would travel to study Islam. We know why harar and zeila declined because of ethiopia but why mogadishu to this extent.

 

[Aseer]

Yacquubi's ruined Xamar.

 

[AbdiBashirJR]

Yacqubis ruined Xamar. Like the saying goes Good times create Weak men, Weak men create Hard times.

elaborate why and how

 

[Zak12]

Well first off, Mogadishu was never under any influence by Oman or made a vassal state. In fact, the local Geledi sultans used to extract tribute from the Omanis.

 

[AbdiBashirJR]

Well first off, Mogadishu was never under any influence by Oman or made a vassal state. In fact, the local Geledi sultans used to extract tribute from the Omanis.

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Geledi were some G's i read about them freeing slaves in zanzibar. Rahanweyne need to get the respect they deserve. But denying oman influence of benadir ports its dumb. A madow called said barqash owned it, I automatically discredit any source that mentions ajuran because they simply didnt exist or arent what ppl said they are.

regardless oman influence or not this not same mogadishu that has 100s of camels slaughtered a day according to ibn battuta:
"a town of endless size. Its people have many camels, of which they slaughter hundreds every day"

I put that into chatGPT assuming by hundreds he meant 100-200

• Average meat per camel = 300 kg
• Meat consumption per person per day = 0.4 kg

Total Meat Supply​

• Minimum: 100 camels × 300 kg = 30,000 kg
• Maximum: 200 camels × 300 kg = 60,000 kg

Population Estimate​

• Minimum supply (100 camels):
  30,000 kg ÷ 0.4 kg = 75,000 people
• Maximum supply (200 camels):
  60,000 kg ÷ 0.4 kg = 150,000 people

So, the city’s population is likely between 75,000 and 150,000, depending on the exact number of camels eaten per day.

and this estimate is assuming that everyone is eating camel meat as only food so this is minimum population estimate,

and then we have 1940 census with population being 50,000 which includes italians
this is a major fall off.

 

[Zak12]

A madow called said barqash owned it

Source?

any source that mentions ajuran because they simply didnt exist

My sources are about the Geledi who are post Ajuran. And yes they did exist, stop spreading misinfo.

 

[AbdiBashirJR]

Source?

My sources are about the Geledi who are post Ajuran. And yes they did exist, stop spreading misinfo.

source for said barqash is every where you can google who sold banadir its that said nigga.

also your source is a secondary source its probably written in 60s retelling stories they heard. ajuran never has ever had a primary source. There would be foreign countries that traded with it, eye witness who wrote about. geledi hirab are all documented ajuran is a myth/folklore that has been spread.

 

[Midas]

source for said barqash is every where you can google who sold banadir its that said nigga.

also your source is a secondary source its probably written in 60s retelling stories they heard. ajuran never has ever had a primary source. There would be foreign countries that traded with it, eye witness who wrote about. geledi hirab are all documented ajuran is a myth/folklore that has been spread.

Yes ajuraan is mentioned by dozens of European sources. Who do you think built the gondareshe citadel? You obviously never read the somali history section if you legitimately think the ajuran never existed ? . I suspect you didn't even look at the refrences on the Wikipedia page for the ajuran sultanate. Your way out of your depth my guy.

 

[Zak12]

source for said barqash is every where you can google who sold banadir its that said nigga.

Then post it here.

your source is a secondary source its probably written in 60s retelling stories they heard

Again, the sources I posted here are about the Geledi and who owned Benadir and Mogadishu. Oman only had nominal rule.

That aside, Ajuran does in fact have evidence supporting its existence.

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

 

[Idilinaa]

The decline of Mogadishu and the cities in the Greater Somali region in general from 1600-1700s, has to do with the Oromo invasion that cut into and disturbed the interior trade routes . @AbdiBashirJR mentioned many camels being slaughtered everyday during Ibn Batutas visit, there was thousands of camels in caravan passing through the interior to the coast , connected to trade routes carrying goods.

Drawing of a camel Caravan going to Mogadishu in the 1800s

So the interior trade routes was a vital lifeline to the city.Out of the 5 gates that surrounds the city, 4 of them go to different routes into the interior , and most of the town inhabitants act like middle men that have clan connections to the interior producers .

The second reason is Portuguese trade blockage in the Indian ocean. The Omanis came under the Portuguese for a century or so, while our ancestors kept the latter at bay and nearly extinguished their continental rival, Abyssinia. The price our ancestors paid in the process was that their trade network and cities were significantly reduced in stature and wealth. While Muscat benefited from their ability to trade under the Portuguese domination. Only when the latter were at their weakest, did Omanis find the opportune moment to shake off their rule

And its only then that they assumed a role on the East African coast that prior to the Portuguese presence had been contested between Mogadishu and Kilwa

Whereas for Somalia most of the 1800s was actually a revival period , rebuilding/repairing of trade routes and diplomatic channels , that resulted in urban growth, rural agricultural production and trade increase like you said by early 1900s Mogadishu had a population of 30.000 -40.000.

The town was a major outlet for agricultural exports:

The omanis or Zanzibari's didn't have real authority over Mogadishu. Numerous travelers, including Guillain in the 1840s, Rigby in the 1860s, and Kirk in the 1870s, observed that the Zanzibari sultans exerted no authority over coastal southern Somali cites.

The Omanis/Zanzibaris, established a trading fort under the permission of Geledi, local Somali authorities to protect their own traders and economic interest, they ended up leasing or selling it later on.

Imam Mohamed opposed the proposal, while Sultan Ahmed of Geledi advocated for it, believing that a Zanzibari trading station would enhance economic opportunities by facilitating the export of agricultural produce.

The governors they sent out were largely a ceremonial ones,

The city itself was governed under council of elders internally. That represented the different lineages that made up the inhabitants.


What Zanzibaris were used for was more or less a political leverage tool between internal power struggles between the inhabitants (succession rulership etc) and also between the Imam Yaqubi and the sultan of Geledi.

The late 1800s and early 1900s actually represented a period of impoverishment and economic decline for Mogadishu and coastal towns because of the Italians and British East India company. (This also happened up north as well). Part of colonization was to appropriate Somali commercial activity or dismantle it to weaken us. What they did to us was similar to what happened to Algerians vs French.

''The period after 1880s was fraught with social and economic crisis''

 

[Idilinaa]

As far as how large the Mogadishu population would have been during it's height in the middle ages, at the time of Ibn Batuta's visit. All we can do is create guesstimates but only archeological research will reveal the real true extant of it.

My best guess it was in the hundreds of thousands. A single abandoned quarter called Xamar Jajab strenched 5km2 and the size of the buildings and walls was monumental.

There is probably more stuff we can discover that's not damaged or fully destroyed, because some of the ruins and graveyards are covered in mass of sand dunes that took 5 days to remove and dig out. They only dug 1 trench in Hamar Jajab.

 

[Abdifataax98]

It had little to do with the Oromo invasion. Ajuuraan had no problem keeping them at bay.

The decline actually started a bit earlier, in the late 15th century with the Portuguese discovery of the cape of good hope(more bad hope ).
It nuked the Red Sea trade. Not only that, they also started blockading the Indian Ocean trade and launching none stop naval invasions and even managed to bombard Xamar and other costal towns a few times.
Forget Ajuuraan, the mamluk rulers of Egypt collapsed soon after and Egypt was easily annexed by the Ottomans. Ottomans controlled the inland Silk Road trade routes, so they weren’t affected nearly as much.


Like the Mamluks, Ajuuraan failed to adapt. Instead, they opted to increase internal taxation, which kinda managed to keep them afloat for another 150 years. Until people had enough and kicked them out. The chaos led to two massive great back to back famines that some elders say wiped out more than half of the population.

The Hiraab did end the civil war by crushing every one else including failed Oromo invasion who tried to take advantage of the chaos.
They stabilized the situation but failed to maintain the dams and infrastructure. Without infrastructure it’s impossible to sustain large urban populations. So people kept leaving cities/ towns and turning into pastoralism or small scale farming to survive.


Cities like Xamar, marka, barawa, hobyo and ceel Buur declined significantly, while others like mareeg became literal ghost town. And still is to this day.