Did ajuran empire/state exist?

[Midas]

Both were restricted to a small educated elite , especially Ottoman Turkish which persian and arabic accounted for 88% of the vocabulary, was unintelligable to the ordinary Turk and was essentially used by the administrative elite that would also create poetry with it.

The average Turk was not literate in Arabic.

Laqbo would make the average Somali bilingual and literate in Arabic from a young age, so it wasn't restricted to a small educated elite.

I dont think we can claim that literacy was more widespread in somalia than in iran or turkey. I mean think about it for a second. The only use for literacy in somalia would be by the relegious class and the occasional merchant. While in a centralized state with a massive beuracrcy like you have in iran or turkey there's a massive need for literacy way more than in a society where most people are pastoralists like in somalia. Second even in the arab world I don't think literacy in Arabic exceed 10% and that's being generous it was probaly closer to 5%. Forget mass literacy Even 50% literacy is simply impossible without printing and on top of the fact that most of the pouplation is rural

 

[Midas]

That's actually one of the way we can know that somalia was never extremely centralized. Since once your state is centralized for a certain period of time you develops beauraracry . Which requires you to develop a written vernacular to facilitate everything. Thags what happned with the turks,the English, the French,malays,etc,You eventually reach a point where it's just quicker to to have them write down everything in the native language.

 

[Idilinaa]

I dont think we can claim that literacy was more widespread in somalia than in iran or turkey. I mean think about it for a second. The only use for literacy in somalia would be by the relegious class and the occasional merchant. While in a centralized state with a massive beuracrcy like you have in iran or turkey there's a massive need for literacy way more than in a society where most people are pastoralists like in somalia. Second even in the arab world I don't think literacy in Arabic exceed 10% and that's being generous it was probaly closer to 5%. Forget mass literacy Even 50% literacy is simply impossible without printing and on top of the fact that most of the pouplation is rural

Thats not accurate, with Somalis literacy was spread to rural areas and even among pastoralists.

They wrote on wooden slates with ink , so they had no need for massive numbers of expensive/or inexpensive paper.

So it is not surprising when you find observations like this about Bedouins(Pastoralists) in the area by late 1800s visitors about them being able to read and write Arabic. There is a reason it astonished them.

But yeah i was talking about mainly about the knowledge of the Arabic language. All those places also had a large rural populations that didn't have equal access to even basic education/learning and were not literate in Arabic, even if they were literate. Unlike what you saw in Somalia.

When you mention all that bureaucracy etc you don't stop to understand that they all are centered in urban centers. Means that there is a wider disparity between rural population that were agricultural and urban population.

That's why literacy was 10-20% among them. Basic education was inaccessible to most.

 

[Midas]

Thats not accurate, with Somalis literacy was spread to rural areas and even among pastoralists.

They wrote on wooden slates with ink , so they had no need for massive numbers of expensive/or inexpensive paper.

So it is not surprising when you find observations like this about Bedouins(Pastoralists) in the area by late 1800s visitors about them being able to read and write Arabic. There is a reason it astonished them.

But yeah i was talking about mainly about the knowledge of the Arabic language. All those places also had a large rural populations that didn't have equal access to even basic education/learning and were not literate in Arabic, even if they were literate. Unlike what you saw in Somalia.

When you mention all that bureaucracy etc you don't stop to understand that they all are centered in urban centers. Means that there is a wider disparity between rural population that were agricultural and urban population.

That's why literacy was 10-20% among them. Basic education was inaccessible to most.

Literacy exploded with printing right why? Becuase we could make more books. Likewise in a society where most people are pastoralists and always on the move it's impossible for them to do something as intensive as book production. Which means there are less books available and when there are less books available literacy is lower.

There is also the fact that the looh was used to teach quran. You can't learn Arabic through the quran you have to learn grammar and read other texts. Which requires you stay in one place for a long time. Are you seeing the pattern here? Indepth learning requires a sedentary lifestyle.

Plus you have to look at the demand for literacy in a society. When people are settled in villages and towns permanently they encounter more complex situations more often. Since living with so many other people means there are more disputes and other situations which require you to write stuff done. Wether it's buying goods or settling a legal disagreement. Or sending a letter somewhere far away.

 

[Idilinaa]

Literacy exploded with printing right why? Becuase we could make more books. Likewise in a society where most people are pastoralists and always on the move it's impossible for them to do something as intensive as book production. Which means there are less books available and when there are less books available literacy is lower.

There is also the fact that the looh was used to teach quran. You can't learn Arabic through the quran you have to learn grammar and read other texts. Which requires you stay in one place for a long time. Are you seeing the pattern here? Indepth learning requires a sedentary lifestyle.

Plus you have to look at the demand for literacy in a society. When people are settled in villages and towns permanently they encounter more complex situations more often. Since living with so many other people means there are more disputes and other situations which require you to write stuff done. Wether it's buying goods or settling a legal disagreement. Or sending a letter somewhere far away.

I am explaining how it was with Somalia. Obviously there weren't Quranic/arabic teachers going from village to village, settlement to settlement and camp to camp teaching in other societies. They would stay in 1 place place seasonally with the pastoralists which might be months and many weeks.

In those quranic schools you learn both Arabic and the Quran and you learned to read and write.

Which gave them decent level of familiarity with Arabic and the arab script from an early age.

Which facilitated in many Somalis just growing up to be bilingual. Imagine how this would be like if they moved on to taking their education to a higher level, they would continue in the Arabic language that they are taught in and become more proficient at it.

Do you catch my drift?

 

[Midas]

I am explaining how it was with Somalia. Obviously there weren't Quranic/arabic teachers going from village to village, settlement to settlement and camp to camp teaching in other societies. They would stay in 1 place place seasonally with the pastoralists which might be months and many weeks.

In those quranic schools you learn both Arabic and the Quran and you learned to read and write.

Which gave them decent level of familiarity with Arabic and the arab script from an early age.

Which facilitated in many Somalis just growing up to be bilingual. Imagine how this would be like if they moved on to taking their education to a higher level, they would continue in the Arabic language that they are taught in and become more proficient at it.

Do you catch my drift?

I domt doubt that but you realize that literacy will always increase as a society becomre more urbanized right? Both turkey and Iran were more urbanized than somalia right.

To learn to actually read or write Arabic you need more than just the quran you have to learn grammar and actually read books. Thats how it is for every language. Now as a result of both iran and turkey being far more urbanized than somalia. There was way more manuscript production so books were far cheaper than in somalia. I rember you even posted a source where a person exchanged multiple camels for a manuscript somewhere in the ogaden region or waqooyi.

Cheaper books = more books available = more literacy

 

[Idilinaa]

I domt doubt that but you realize that literacy will always increase as a society becomre more urbanized right? Both turkey and Iran were more urbanized than somalia right.

To learn to actually read or write Arabic you need more than just the quran you have to learn grammar and actually read books. Thats how it is for every language. Now as a result of both iran and turkey being far more urbanized than somalia. There was way more manuscript production so books were far cheaper than in somalia. I rember you even posted a source where a person exchanged multiple camels for a manuscript somewhere in the ogaden region or waqooyi.

Cheaper books = more books available = more literacy

You are stuck repeating the same thing about urbanization and bureacratic thing, you are missing my point.

Every society has a large rural population, even Turkey had 80-90% rural population and only 10-20% of the population lived in urban towns and what i am saying is that most Somalis whether they be rural or urban have exposure/familiarity with the arabic language and script at an early age in comparison and if they have opportunity to progress into higher scholarship/education they just extend it.

I am not saying pastoralists outside of towns were farting out manuscripts or were Arabic language wizards. They were definitely not. Multiple camels for a manuscripts? Do you know how expensive a single camel is?

 

[Midas]

You are stuck repeating the same thing about urbanization and bureacratic thing, you are missing my point.

Every society has a large rural population, even Turkey had 80-90% rural population and only 10-20% of the population lived in urban towns and what i am saying is that most Somalis whether they be rural or urban have exposure/familiarity with the arabic language and script at an early age in comparison and if they have opportunity to progress into higher scholarship/education they just extend it.

I am not saying pastoralists outside of towns were farting out manuscripts or were Arabic language wizards. They were definitely not. Multiple camels for a manuscripts? Do you know how expensive a single camel is?

But their 80% rural pouplation lived in villages and small towns. Everyone of those villages probably had a demand for people who could write and likley did have scribes who generated documents for fatwa, legal contracts, sale contracts, etc. Also why would you assume these people were not familiar with arabic in rural turkey/iran?


Ultimately my argument comes down to the idea that people in these societies had higher literacy because even village life has a higher demand for people who could write then the life of a pastoralist does.

 

[Idilinaa]

But their 80% rural pouplation lived in villages and small towns. Everyone of those villages probably had a demand for people who could write and likley did have scribes who generated documents for fatwa, legal contracts, sale contracts, etc. Also why would you assume these people were not familiar with arabic in rural turkey/iran?


Ultimately my argument comes down to the idea that people in these societies had higher literacy because even village life has a higher demand for people who could write then the life of a pastoralist does.

They lived in villages and were agricultural based . I am not assuming i read about it.
They had to hire scribes from the outside to write letters to the government.

Not only did they have a literacy rate of less than 10% but they could neither read or write Arabic which was restricted to an educated elite and the Ottoman Turkish was completely unintelligeable to the average Turk.

My point is that compared to other non-arab speaking populations elsewhere is that the average Somali had greater exposure and familiarity to the Arabic language and script. That just carried on further when they started to produce manuscript and become more educated because they would just write in the Arabic language.

 

[Idilinaa]

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

Btw @Midas @Cartan Boos @Aseer @Step a side @Zak12 @Galool

There is great potentiality to this. Because if the ancient quarters of mogadishu and the rest of of the old coastal settlements are buried under sand dunes , we might reclaim a lot of that past and their monuments, if they aren't destroyed before being abandoned that is.

They unearthed basically thousands of year old monuments. tombs and cities under sand in good perservation across Egypt, Sudan, Middle east and Meso-America.

They also discover manuscripts, libraries and textual fragments in the sand as well.

The Mysterious Library Hidden in the Sand​

The Enigma of the Dead Sea Scrolls.​

Libraries in the sand reveal Africa's academic past​

https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/science/libraries-in-the-sand-reveal-africa-s-academic-past-idUSL10685745/

Even in Egypt , thanks to the preservation in sand they have a collection of papyrus documents and fragments.

The majority of surviving papyrus documents have either come from the desert areas in Egypt, where many had been buried by sand until they began to be excavated in the late 19th century,

As they add

Sand is also a great preservative, as Egyptologists have found. In fact, there is no knowing what you may find, in the sand grains themselves or in the dunes behind the beach, along a river, or far out in the desert. It is always worth looking.

Lucky for us but that semi-arid climate coupled with Sand is good perservation material.

Predicting the preservation of cultural artefacts and buried materials in soil

This study identifies factors affecting the fate of buried objects in soil and develops a method for assessing where preservation of different materia…

www.sciencedirect.com

In dry and more arid climates, bones, teeth and shells, metals, glass, plaster and organic materials will be preserved better.

Coastal towns becoming buried under sand dunes is something continues to this day

‘Swallowed by the sand’: Somalia’s coastal towns succumb to the desert​

‘Swallowed by the sand’: Somalia’s coastal towns succumb to the desert

As deforestation removes protection from the ferocious winds, compounding damage from climate crisis-driven drought, sand dunes are burying the medieval port of Hobyo. Will pledges to green the desert save communities already displaced by war?

www.theguardian.com

Somalia's coastal towns succumb to the desert. As deforestation and fierce winds compound the climate crisis-driven drought, sand dunes are burying the medieval port of Hobyo.

Even the tomb of Sultan Ali Yusuf on the coastal town of Hobyo is buried today under sand dunes, i remember seeing Puntlandvault post the current situation, where you can only see the edge barely visible above ground.

When you look at the descriptions by the British Pirate that was captured in Mogadishu in year 1701 on the royal monuments & tomb and the Mujahideen/army tombs it says it is located 2 miles awfay from the Old town , it is more than likely buried deep under sand and not visible to people above ground

@Three Moons
One fascinating thing I’ve read in the book is a detailed description of the Royal Tombs in Mogadishu. It even marks the place where the tombs are located in; 2 miles away from the Old Town in a valley in between two hills.

Each succeeding Sultan and their wives are buried in their own separate tombs built of white and black marble filled with gold and marble pedestals with a cupola built on top of the chamber. The European traveler compares it even to tombs of nobility in Europe.

Even the Sultan’s kin, court officials, generals and governors/emirs receive the same privilege of residing in the royal tombs.

 

[Midas]

Btw @Midas @Cartan Boos @Aseer @Step a side @Zak12 @Galool

There is great potentiality to this. Because if the ancient quarters of mogadishu and the rest of of the old coastal settlements are buried under sand dunes , we might reclaim a lot of that past and their monuments, if they aren't destroyed before being abandoned that is.

They unearthed basically thousands of year old monuments. tombs and cities under sand in good perservation across Egypt, Sudan, Middle east and Meso-America.

They also discover manuscripts, libraries and textual fragments in the sand as well.

The Mysterious Library Hidden in the Sand​

The Enigma of the Dead Sea Scrolls.​

Libraries in the sand reveal Africa's academic past​

https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/science/libraries-in-the-sand-reveal-africa-s-academic-past-idUSL10685745/

Even in Egypt , thanks to the preservation in sand they have a collection of papyrus documents and fragments.


As they add


Lucky for us but that semi-arid climate coupled with Sand is good perservation material.

Predicting the preservation of cultural artefacts and buried materials in soil

This study identifies factors affecting the fate of buried objects in soil and develops a method for assessing where preservation of different materia…

www.sciencedirect.com

Coastal towns becoming buried under sand dunes is something continues to this day

‘Swallowed by the sand’: Somalia’s coastal towns succumb to the desert​

‘Swallowed by the sand’: Somalia’s coastal towns succumb to the desert

As deforestation removes protection from the ferocious winds, compounding damage from climate crisis-driven drought, sand dunes are burying the medieval port of Hobyo. Will pledges to green the desert save communities already displaced by war?

www.theguardian.com

Even the tomb of Sultan Ali Yusuf on the coastal town of Hobyo is buried today under sand dunes, i remember seeing Puntlandvault post the current situation, where you can only see the edge barely visible above ground.

When you look at the descriptions by the British Pirate that was captured in Mogadishu in year 1728 on the royal monuments & tomb and the Mujahideen/army tombs it says it is located 2 miles awfay from the Old town , it is more than likely buried deep under sand and not visible to people above ground

This is partly why I'm so hopeful that we'll find a lot once real archeological excavation take off in somalia. There is also the other fact that the cairns building practice of somalis which was extreme common in the preislamic period. Means all those cairns that you see everywhere in somalia have the potential to hold burial goods. That spanish team that excavated the tombs at xiis found burial goods in 1 of the tombs that was intact. Undoubtedly some of these cairns/tombs were looted but consideredi the sheer amount of them . I wouldn't be supervised if we found manuscripts fragments from the the preislamic period.

 

[Idilinaa]

The history of the pyrates: containing the lives of Captain Mission. Captain Bowen. Captain Kidd ... and their several crews
a description of Magadoxa

All those Ajuuran rebellion stories make no sense to explain Mogadishu's decline because that British pirate saw the place in the early 1700s and was just awe struck by the splendour of the city

And also explains how the bureaucracy and state structure was fully operational as well.
Notice mentions governors of towns, among other titles.

Ajuuran rebellion traditions they are recalling something that happened in the late 1500s(1573-1574) if we go by the document reviewed by Cerrulli. The Yacqub Hiraab replaced the leadership in the early 1600s and at the time of these pirates were repulsed by Sultanate, as someone on this forum shared a text that said the ruler at the time was Sultan ''Imam Muhammad bin Imam Ahmad bin Imam Mahmoud bin Imam Omar Halul al-Yaqoubi.''

It sounds like they just maintain things.

So that leaves us with unanswered questions. What the hell happened to the state? We need to search for an alternate explanation. It must have been some economic collapse or natural catastrophe.

 

[Midas]

The history of the pyrates: containing the lives of Captain Mission. Captain Bowen. Captain Kidd ... and their several crews
a description of Magadoxa

All those Ajuuran rebellion stories make no sense to explain Mogadishu's decline because that British pirate saw the place in the early 1700s and was just awe struck by the splendour of the city

And also explains how the bureaucracy and state structure was fully operational as well.
Notice mentions governors of towns, among other titles.

Ajuuran rebellion traditions they are recalling something that happened in the late 1500s(1573-1574) if we go by the document reviewed by Cerrulli. The Yacqub Hiraab replaced the leadership in the early 1600s and at the time of these pirates were repulsed by Sultanate, as someone on this forum shared a text that said the ruler at the time was Sultan ''Imam Muhammad bin Imam Ahmad bin Imam Mahmoud bin Imam Omar Halul al-Yaqoubi.''

It sounds like they just maintain things.

So that leaves us with unanswered questions. What the hell happened to the state? We need to search for an alternate explanation. It must have been some economic collapse or natural catastrophe.

Does this time period perfectly correlates with the rise of the omanis taking over the swahili towns as well as the era of princes in ethiopia? It's possible that whatever trade was still happening between ethiopia and somalia declined massively after the central govt in ethiopia lost power and the princes began fighting. Then as the omanis invaded the swahili towns and took them over the could likley redirect trafs to the swahili towns. I mean don't a lot of the stone buildings in the town date from the 1700s and the 1800s? . With both source of trade cut off its likely that there was not enough money coming in and Mogadishu decline over the next 2 centuries.

 

[Idilinaa]

Does this time period perfectly correlates with the rise of the omanis taking over the swahili towns as well as the era of princes in ethiopia? It's possible that whatever trade was still happening between ethiopia and somalia declined massively after the central govt in ethiopia lost power and the princes began fighting. Then as the omanis invaded the swahili towns and took them over the could likley redirect trafs to the swahili towns. I mean don't a lot of the stone buildings in the town date from the 1700s and the 1800s? . With both source of trade cut off its likely that there was not enough money coming in and Mogadishu decline over the next 2 centuries.

I'm not sure, Harar was still functional , it was connected to a trade route from the highlands through shoa and agroba/ifat as well, with the most important one being being through Berbera and Zayla. Mogadishu trade went up in the direction of Harar up shabelle and through luuq into southern ethiopia.

Omanis trade redirection having involvement in it's decline is a possibility and some interior trade/production disturbances.

This will be an important research topic, to look into. Perhaps we may even find answers from archeology.