I would say Somalis are straight shooters they are dacaad they’ll quickly call you out we don’t pretend and stab you in the back when you turn.
Somali twitter vs Spanish archaeologist
- Thread starter Chaseyourdreamzz
- Start date
We were the front liners for other Africans, have you seen Kenyan and Rwandan twitter, they discuss genetics and history deeply
What the hell am i reading.
Anti -infrastructural? is that the reason why there was already 3 other towers built in Berbera and that clan was building a 4th one.
These were structures that could go toe to toe with forts and castles of Europe in terms of scale might i add. Here is a an illustration of the Castle Towers.
Berbera Castles 1844
Where these castles and manaarh now . they appear to have been destroyed at some point
www.somalispot.com
The dispute was between trade access and it just ended up with the creation Bullaxaar as a sister port of Berbera being established. There was no savagery involved or subversiveness to permenant architecture because what they did was just expand the trade to accommodate it. Competition over trade routes and resources is a normal part of history worldwide—framing it as some nomadic rejection of structure is misleading.
There is nothing anti-infrastructural about these ports. They had watch towers(ilalos), storage facilities/warehouses, market place, harbour/docking areas for ships/boats, Mosques, forts and Quranic schools.
Bandar Qasim(Bosaso)
Whilst other minor settlements were actually coastal villages. Might i add wether people lived in houses that were wooden like cariishes or "stone houses" called Baraako/Dar that stood side by side had to do with wealth and status differences.
You guys can check the post i made about the types of homes:
Ancient Somali Homes
Hello everyone. I was wondering if anyone had any knowledge of how Somali homes used to look like. I’m talking pre-colonialism. Specifically what kinda floors they had, (was it tiled and if so, what kind of designs), if they had beds or sofas, or maybe just mattresses? What kind of decor and...
www.somalispot.com
Flat roofs suggest adaptation to a hot climate, allowing people to use the roof for cooling, sleeping, or storage. They also would create hole pipes for ventilation, so you see it stick out.
Multi-room(Cariishes), multi-story buildings (Baraako), indicate dense permanent urban centers rather than just temporary trading posts or seasonal settlements. Coastal towns using coral stone and wooden structures means seafarers and merchants built long-term settlements, not just seasonal ports.
The stone architecture is unique to the region as well. Use of coral stone & lime whitewashing shows technological advancement in construction, similar in ways to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cities. Lime whitewashing not only strengthened buildings but also created aesthetic uniformity, making cities look more refined and organized.
Now imagine the British and Italians who bombed every coastal settlement and raized our Castles, Forts, Towers and Villas to the ground. Bulldozed entire districts, never built any useful public infrastructure, not even a road. Who's sole goal was to disrupt the trade and economy of Somalis as the British layed out. Treated the place like an extraction site. Were not the anti-infrastructural and logistic subversives?
But it was Somalis who had normal political and economic competition with eachother, that you see anywhere else in the world. . Waa yab wallahi. I have told @Shimbiris before waa dad walaan.
The same guy tried to attribute the network of citadels and forts that the Darawish built all over Somalia as Italian infrastructure when in actuality the Italians just appropriated it.
I also noticed that he mentioned pirates in the text you shared., this of course s completely false , i've seen even Puntlandvault posts these qoutes from some of these colonal explorers and orientalists , where they would characterize salvaged shipwrecks off the Somali coast as piracy, when it was not. They even framed majerteen smuggling guns and weapons to bypass the trade blockage by the British as ''pirates'' , despite the fact they purchased them and relied on a network of legal international suppliers controlled by Somalis abroad. Through that they funded and armed resistance across Somalia and East Africa, including the Darawish and Ogaden. They even manufactured amunition locally as well.
You can read more about how the rely on improper definitions for this in this study.
Piracy in the Horn of Africa Waters: Definitions, History, and Modern Causes
They need stop and think logically, there wouldn't be this massive trade volume and visits/activity on the Somali coast if the locals engaged in piracy or logistic subversives or whatever.
The commercial activity in the past was significant this is documented. You can take Majerteen coast for example. They owned a dozen large merchant fleets called ''Dooni'' in Somali that was capable of carrying large cargo spread out across different ports and earned lot of revenue from seaborn trade.
Fishing via for example beden which means fishing-boat in Somali was particularly lucrative
Bebera for example in a trade journal from 1856 was described to be the freest port in the world and had trade volume twice that of Massawa and the most important trading place on the whole Arabian Gulf. This alone disproves any notion of a chaotic, "logistics-subversive" society.
The port of Berbera was a larger exporter to Jeddah than the closer Massawa port. Just highlighting the significance of the Berbera port.
No one would come to our waters, if we stole and hijacked their ships, it's completely ludicrous.
The Abaan system and concepts such as aman was utilized to ensure protection for visiting foreign traders and also safeguard local agency. It's a longstanding tradition that Somalis used for centuries and made our coast not only into trading hubs but safe havens.
This abaan system even existed in the interior, as well ensuring protection to traders and security to caravan's passing through. There was no subversive nomadic routes, instead what you saw was a highly organized system to facilitate trade and economic growth
This is very important to point out many colonial sources mislabeled wreck salvaging, arms smuggling, and independent trade as "piracy" to justify European intervention and economic control.
The British and Italians were the true disruptors, as seen in their destruction of Somali ports and infrastructure. Somali merchants were active participants in global trade, not anarchic sea raiders.
I have also covered in a different thread that "Piracy" is 100% their history and Europeans were big time pirates on the Indian Occean, reaching its peak between 1650s and the 1730s and it coincided with the trade decline along the indian occean and the red sea before the brief revival during the 1800s.
https://oxfordre.com/asianhistory/d...0277727.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277727-e-679
Whats strange about it , is that they glorify it and celebrate it in their popular culture.
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I take back what i said before about them not having any malicious intent, i had no idea before @The alchemist showed me that, i am baffled.
The claim of an "anti-infrastructural ethos" among Somalis is not just incorrect but a gross misrepresentation of historical facts. It's just provably, demonstrably and observably false.
The fact he relies on outdated orientalist sources , who had an openly racist bias, exposes a lack of critical scholarship in these academic papers.
It’s clear that some of these researchers come in with preconceived notions, fitting evidence into their framework rather than objectively analyzing Somali history.
The alchemist
VIP
It depends. He has two functions. One is that the Spanish team relies on him (he is formally part of it now, it seems) to write the narrative on the formal work (that has elements of absurd racism in them which I will highlight later) and the other are his work that are written in journals. Not only can he latch himself to formal work (that got funding) that gives valuable raw information, but he also gets sweet spots in prestigious journals because the dearth of knowledge, so they give him that to fill the scanty area because Somali archeology is underrepresented.
The thing is, the guy is on one hand, competent but on the other, he is a fool that tries to be unorthodox but ends up just being an obscene hate child of all the ugly writings we've seen.
You can't say they ain't on some bullshit. Of all the pictures of a pastoralist available, they picked the one who was in tatters for their blogs. These guys think the most simple and poor conditioned picture approximates their image of the Somali:
This goes into the post I was going to post but partly deleted. You think this is funny, but it is even worse. Cause you might think I am reaching, maybe thinking this picture being just a coincidence, that there is no such intent behind it. But not really, and I will show you why later.
By the way, I checked again. Now he formally presents himself as part of the Spanish National Research Council researcher -- this is a very big learning institution in Europe. The bio, where he wrote he did not get funding, is gone.
Remember, these people have monopolized 40 sites in Somaliland. That means, primary data is theirs to manipulate. They never involved any formally educated Somalis and there are no Somali regulations that can filter their work. This is technically the biggest monopolization of archeological work seen by one team in a region. These people are not hobbyists, my friend. They are very much in the same line of business as the early American/Anglo-Saxon archeologists in the Nile Valley, very colonialist audacity. And the weird thing is, EU funded some of it.
I thought the Spanish were a bit better, but after this and the comments made by European imperialist high EU member, Josep Borell, I'm starting to think that people working in professional institutions in that country, are the very worst types of liberals. I should drop what I wrote a while back about how liberalism and the concept of Westernism is the continuation of the old imperialism and it is interwined with racial concepts.
The reason why I emphesize the negatives, which are damning, is that for years I have given these people an overdone level of props for giving us data where there was none before. We had to be grateful to some extent, but now when they constantly undermine us in our history, fabricate narratives, outwardly disrespect us, it gets too much for comfort. One expects a great deal of ignorance by callous Westerners whenever they approach Africa, more often than not, but this is over the top and is no different than writings you had 10 centuries back. The complicated parts is that, for us, the people who can parse out their bullshit, we can make work of their information to add new evidence, so we benenefit from this regardless. However, for most people, they will take those words uncritically and most citations will treat these as fundational sources going forward.
The alchemist
VIP
That is something that occurred within the last 5 years. You'd be pressed to find any Somali that deeply talked about genetics before 2018. Europeans don't need to talk about genetics and their origins because they get constant articles that talk about culture, ancestry, history in their news feed every day (and almost all of it is incremental things so they read and consume that, knowing a lot about their anthropology directly, or indirectly). We have no such thing. And as people want to consume such content, they have to find spaces and engage. This is something we had to carve out ourselves for years. So please don't make it seem as if we're unique in this or that it is a strange engagement.
The amount of insight we have on this forum alone is way deeper than anywhere else. That is cultural capital that is beneficial. I see people talking about things in random places, I know for a fact we're only conveyed here first by how unique it was and the way it was said. Don't underestimate the second and third order effect of this.
And I know many ajnabi read the History and Culture section in silence. Well, I speculate.
It's always funny when they do that with the photos. It's like me finding this unflattering pic of a Maghrebi Bedouin family and using it to represent all Bedouin Arabs:
Or a pic I remember from ages back where there were some Shammaris deep in the desert in tatters, seated around a fresh hunting catch. Or sharing this as a representation of Mehris:
Sneaky rats...
Wallahi, when I finally go back and move some lacag and influence around, if I live long enough, I'll legit push the odays to ban western researchers for good. Anyone not of a Somali background carrying a western passport will be forced to either simply be a tourist in the magalaad or leave. Time to bring back the Abanship system our ancestors maintained:
Somalis literally always had a system of sponsorship and monitoring with ajanabis. If you came onto a coastal town from both Woqooyi to Koonfur you had to be given a local Somali "Abaan" which people like Burton and Speke describe and even Ibn Battuta basically describes. Your abaan keeps an eye on you, takes a certain cut of all your business transactions and is usually also tasked with making sure you do not go into the interior of the country without express permission from someone like a local Suldaan and even after that the Abaans were always very suspicious of ajanabis and watched them closely. Our ancestors were very suspicious of letting ajanabis onto their lands. I've seen accounts that show Indians who settled in places like Xamar basically would spend their entire lifetime in the magaalad inside its walls. Never venturing into even Afgooye.
This is probably a big reason why we weren't really enslaved historically. Not just a matter of being Muslims but also being very cautious with foreigners and not letting them wander the interior where they can kidnap rural women and kids.
- Source
@The alchemist Spaniards seem particularly problematic. I remember it was a Spanish archaeologist in Ethiopia whom some silly Xabashis on Wikipedia were using as a source to claim Somalis were "peripheral" and merely "mercenaries" in the Adal army. Where he got this impression, if the moron had ever even skimmed the Futuh, I don't know.
No reason why we can’t do this work ourselves. If they ever find something very significant you just know we’ll never see it again and it’ll end up in their museums just like they do with certain Greek and Egyptian artifacts that they refuse to return on the basis of ‘western’ or ‘world’ heritage
I dont think this is a bad thing at all. I actually find it fascinating and it makes me hopeful. It's definitely recent though that's for sure. I couldn't find anything online befofe a couple years ago. It's also not just a diaspora thing either if you look at tiktok or better yet youtube. The amount of videos people make on topics like culture,history,literature,etc has skyrocketed over the last 5 or 6 years. While most of these videos aren't of very high quality they're light years better than what used to be available on YouTube.
I'm honestly curious what's causing this trend ?
I think what makes this worse is that it's not blatantly obvious. The wording is vague enough that if you don't have that much context or background knowledge it won't ring any alarm bells at all. But the damage done will be tremendous since you'll always see everything that goes against this narrative as an exception and not realize that It was in actuality the narrative that was flawed.
What needs to be studied is why Oromos love being in Somali spaces. Following us around like a shadow everywhere we go.
They hate Somalis so much that they study them just so they could find a weakness to use against them later on to rob land. Somalis were so naive allowing these so called miskeen muslims who into their land. I urge all Somalis that live outside the Ogaden (Somali region of Ethiopia) to read up on all the atrocities they have caused to the Somalis communities there.
Especially since there are photo of Somalis pastoralists that are more regal in appearance and condition.
But also they wont utilize pictures of State soldiers, religious scholars, political elites or wealthy merchants to approximate their image of Somali.
It's always funny when they do that with the photos. It's like me finding this unflattering pic of a Maghrebi Bedouin family and using it to represent all Bedouin Arabs:
Or a pic I remember from ages back where there were some Shammaris deep in the desert in tatters, seated around a fresh hunting catch. Or sharing this as a representation of Mehris:
Sneaky rats...
It would be the equivalent of me showing this photo as the approximate representation of Europeans (French, Russians, Americans or British)
Or this picture to represent the chinese
You can find unflattering vintage photos of different populations in tattered clothes and poor conditions from other parts of the world, but they wont utilize them as some representative image of a group.
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Whats interesting is that it's not just Mogadishu during Ibn Batuta's visit that they desribe the Abaan system
I remember @Midas shared a text from incredibly terrible researched book(lazy research) , but they qoute a rasulid document that mentions the ''Nazil" which is an Arab naming of "Abaan" operational in Zayla and Awdal . In reality it functioned differently from what they called ''Nazil'
See the quote at the very bottom and ignore nonsense ramblings by the researcher. I go over the inaccuracies in that text, in this post under.
That is a very lazy researched book and they cite sources in a vaccum in isolation to eachother.
Yes you are correct Mogadishu was refereed to as part of Bilad Al-Barbar in most cases and it was connected by cultural geography that stretch as far as Zayla in most Arabic sources, especially by those who visited the place. And what was further south of it was called bilad al-zunuj
Also Nazil is most likely an Arab reference to an Abaan which is a Somali intermediary or broker that receives guests in coastal ports and we also have reference to locals from Zayla having a trading station in Aden and Zabid, so they also conducted the overseas trade and brought with them the goods directly as well to stock land it. Similar also to Mogadishu merchants also set up trading stations elsewhere.
The Abaan system in use when Ibn Battuta visited Mogadishu
Jabarti's are actually Somalis because it's in refrence to Northern Somalia & Galbeed and Habash are christian highlanders and slaves who are often Tigray or Amhara that are trafficked by Somali merchants and yes it's not just a seperation between Christian and Muslims but also those who are slaves and not slaves.
Jabarti in original usage is seperate from how it became adopted by Swahili slaves in Yemen in the 19th century traded by Somalis and a minority Tigray converts in late 18th century. It continued to be used by an Somali inland trading group into 19th and 20th century as Burton and others clarified.
As i have clarified in a different thread:
Did you know that there was a mosque in Damascus that only Somalis could be the Imam of?
".. Our friend the scholar Abd al-Samad al-Jabarti al-Hanafi took the imam position then he died and Ibn Ma’ruf al-Jabarti took his place.. then its a condition that the imam be from the blessed Jabarti race and he be a Hanafi and have 10 students of his own kind to teach them Qur’an.. If there...www.somalispot.com
In those medieval Arabic sources that pertains to that period they directly mention Amhara and Tigrayan identity when talking about the Ethiopian slaves in Yemen that was purchased and sold to them by the Muslim Jabartis. So we can see where the source of slaves came from
This from a Rasulid Chronicle:
We also have direct reference to this by Portuguese visitors confirming this that they were often captured in war by Muslim forces
and even the Awdal chronicles mentioning this as well particularly during the reign of of sultan Jamal ad-din
The Zanji slaves are actually swahili slaves from the interior raided by coastal muslims from further south, as Ibn Batuta noted when he visited Kilwa and Al-Maqrizi mentions it when talking about Mombasa.
Even when those Spanish and other non-Somali researchers mention the Abaan in the passing they don't really don't understand the implication and function behind the Abaan when they mention it, because it was essentially Somali clan institution that limited and restricted the role, influence and access by foreigners and to ensure Somali dominance and control in trade.
Abaans acted as brokers, security providers, and intermediaries between foreign merchants and Somali traders. This system controlled and limited foreign influence in Somali affairs. They ensured that local Somali interests were protected in commercial dealings.
This functioned similarly to the customs houses and port authorities seen in other regions.
Abaans ensured that foreigners were merely visitors or traders, rather than rulers or political figures.
Somali merchants dominated trade and did not allow foreign merchants to control local commerce or land. The system ensured that Somali businesses and traders remained at the center of commerce rather than being displaced by Arab, Indian, or European traders.
We can also see in how the Abaan sponsorship system acted as a built-in security and intelligence network. Foreigners could not freely explore, acquire local intelligence, or exert influence, making it harder for colonial powers to infiltrate Somali trade networks.
It actually played into why the colonialist sought to create mis-portrayals of Somalis, it comes from the fact that they were frustrated by that resistance and the fact that Somalis never regarded them as superior to them in the way they made Arabs, Indians and other Africans see them. Arabs, Indians, and Africans often assimilated colonial hierarchies—Somalis never accepted European superiority, leading to a uniquely defiant and independent historical trajectory
Because Somalis restricted them in knowledge about their lands and entry, they sought make it seem like an isolated outpost area of the world , when in contrary to that Somalia was deeply connected to Global trade for many centuries , experienced great traffic and interplays and Somalis had a wide diaspora presence on the account of their seafaring tradition.
Just because you lack deep knowledge about our inner workings, does not mean you just happened to discover us. Yaab walalhi.
This further highlights how Somalis maintained a highly structured system of economic and territorial control, which contrasts sharply with colonial narratives and spanish researchers who follow suit portraying them as "nomadic anarchists."
The mere existence of the "Abaan" institution dispells any notion that foreigners set up eclaves or founded settlements on the coast, or even the interior or had a large presence. and Somalis were some ''nomadic''herders in the periphery. Somalis controlled , operate all areas of their diverse economic activities that extended beyond herding.
They were that dominant and independant in trade that they could set up exclusive trading quarters and stations abroad, whilst the opposite never happened by foreigners.
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btw this not to say that they depended on import of arms.
because i read that the Darawish had arms production, repair facilities, and military-industrial capabilities. This is how they bypassed the British blockage and held out the fight for 20 years straight.
It speaks to how The Dervishes were not just a guerrilla force; they had a semi-industrial war economy, capable of producing and repairing weapons locally.
The fortifications were comparable to European style garrisons which had stone fortresses, watchtowers, storehouses, mosques, wells, and training grounds.
They were also known for wearing distinct white garments and red turbans, which required organized textile production.
The Darawish also built/or/used their own ships to bypass the British patrols. Their ability to build ships, weave textiles, and forge weapons shows an advanced industrial economy.
They also were self-sufficient in food production they cultivated the nuggal plains, brought Somalis from their Darawish centers in the southern interriverrines and benadir to develop and transfer more advanced farming technical skills. I remember someone on twitter posted an excerpt by a research paper into the Darawish by Yasin Kenadiid in Italian, you can probably find it in Somalia archivio called "Ina Cabdille Xasan e la sua attività letteraria''
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The alchemist
VIP
This was my initial response to how this Rubial guy mentioned Somalis as "nomads" and only that, while calling the incoming traders as "merchants" - alluding to that they came to our shores and established the grounds for trade. Somalis are the simple ones coming to exchange with people that have more of an established background, thus doing the facilitation. Let me debunk that here.
I want to further elaborate that, proof is in the text. Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a text written by a Greco-Roman Egyptian of some kind, wrote that they did trade with the locals that had pre-existing markets (there was never a mention of any make-shift set-up by that traveler who had keen observation across different places along the northern Somali strip and deep into the southern regions). He never mentioned that foreigners established shops (no foreigners at all).
This is probably around Zeila:
Here, the Berbera region:
These places are somewhere east of Berbera, but likely within the Sahil region of Somaliland, and perhaps even into the Sanaag region for "Mosyllon":
Clearly, this describes the cape of Puntland's northern tip:
This last place is somewhere south of Puntland. It makes sense, for that region likely transported spices from more green areas in southern Somalia. Spices could easily have been grown there:
The last one was a port in central Somalia or even more south. Not sure I would say it is in the South.
To re-emphasize, notice that none of the descriptions mention any foreigners setting up a colony, shop, or anything of the sort, no Arab main population, etc., but the locals are mentioned only. This is significant since the text is discerning and mentions nuances of people readily whenever it encounters their diverse ways.
Notice how the land is called, land of the Barbaroi; an ethno-spatial relations and ownership is implied by that, and unlike the Southern Arabians and the Blemmye and Habash, we see no distinctive ethnic distinguishers addressed between each port. Meaning, ancient Somalis referred to themselves as the same people as the rest, and the Greco-Romans registered that in more than one way. At that point, Somalis had been in the region for not that long (from deep time-perspectve), so there could not have been much marked difference (not even distinctive languages, or high divergence in dialects) and since economic trade took off, the internal diffusive nature meant high contact between the people that lived across the region.
Have those points in mind for what I am going to state below for how these Spanish fools try to insult our ancestors, imagining them to be naked savage dead-fish-eaters by a desperate pure fabrication.
We have archaeology that attests that these people had a high excess of luxury goods, indicating they were very wealthy per capita, shown through the work of the Spanish team:
Now, to the glaring racism. Although the Periplus text only mentions some specific Arab fishermen being almost naked (and it was not all of them, only one specific small group), these Spanish guys, out of nowhere, without evidence, suddenly started to associate Somali with nakedness:
"As for Ceel Gerdi, it is impossible not to think of the Ichtyophagoi, the Fish-Eaters, situated by Greek writers from the sixth century BCE onward along the Red Sea coast and the Gulf of Aden. They are a topos of savagery in Hellenistic to Byzantine literature, in which they are variously described as naked, living on shellfish and fish cast upon the shore, eating them raw, dwelling in small, poor villages, and using wooden and lithic implements.101 The cliché, as is almost always the case, includes both an element of truth and a distortion of reality. The Ichthyophagoi of Ceel Gerdi may have looked primitive from the perspective of Mediterranean cultures, but they were also engaged in commercial networks involving the Byzantine empire, Oman, and the kingdoms of Himyar and Aksum, and were well acquainted with their material culture. This participation in long-distance and regional trade is actually hinted at by Artemidorus (ca. 100 BCE) and the author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei, who mention the Ichthyophagoi of the Horn of Africa providing myrrh and turtle shell to merchants.102 Now we know that they maintained their involvement in trading networks until late antiquity—and later."
Those were specific people from modern Oman, according to the direct account of the Periplus. They had nothing to do with Somalis, and the Spanish knowing that (since they speculated on where ports lie using this very same source), projected nakedness, and as they intended (although I don't even consider the ancient Omanis as such), with savagery:
I have checked, Somalis were never called Ichthyophagoi in the Periplus text (a term meaning fish-eater, i.e., people who primarily subsist on fishing on the coast); only a minor section of the Beja that lived out of the ordinary and some Arabs. But the interesting thing is, this Jorge Torres never mentions the Arab as Ichthyophagoi -- despite them being the "naked" ones, with zero mention of nudity described for the Beja.
The Beja, as the source he referenced, that a small section of fishermen, mentioned as having their fishing techniques and sometimes consumed fish that were stranded ashore at the coast. Now, let me expose the inherent nastiness in this writing; the Beja sub-group, which I speculate to be lower caste (since the source claimed only some fished), were framed as typical fishermen in the cited source. Notice how this guy left out the "fishermen" part and portrayed them as savage as possible to make the reader think they might as well be naked marauders just out to consume raw fish off the shore. Yet, no source ever mentions those people to be naked in the first place. Only the ancient Omanis, who strangely in this context are seen to be the ones taken aback by how the Somalis might have been primitive? Secondly, Somalis were not called Ichthyophagoi in the texts, neither was nakedness mentioned either, yet not only are we given attributes of lifestyle by non-Somalis (who I know to be a minor element with the coastal Beja since these people had clothes) and near-naked Omanis, with this guy through pure fabrication, setting an image of portraying the wealthy merchants and inhabitants of Ceel Geerdi (the port in Somaliland) as "Ichthyophagoi," perceived as primitive in the eyes of "Mediterranean" cultures, including the very people who brought that Ichthyophagoi naked fisherman stereotype in the first place.
First, if you noticed, I distinguish texts like Periplus that describe direct travel and encounter with fake stories concocted by sedentary fools from Greco-Roman lands that tell their children some wacky stories. Because, although I considered the source of that guy, it is really just an interpretation of those wacky stories that are too out of touch with reality, which the Periplus never was. That is, we see when real truth is conveyed with travel, and fake stories illustrated, describing diverse peoples across separate continents based on few descriptions, the common denominator of eating fish.
I want to further elaborate that, proof is in the text. Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a text written by a Greco-Roman Egyptian of some kind, wrote that they did trade with the locals that had pre-existing markets (there was never a mention of any make-shift set-up by that traveler who had keen observation across different places along the northern Somali strip and deep into the southern regions). He never mentioned that foreigners established shops (no foreigners at all).
This is probably around Zeila:
Here, the Berbera region:
These places are somewhere east of Berbera, but likely within the Sahil region of Somaliland, and perhaps even into the Sanaag region for "Mosyllon":
Clearly, this describes the cape of Puntland's northern tip:
This last place is somewhere south of Puntland. It makes sense, for that region likely transported spices from more green areas in southern Somalia. Spices could easily have been grown there:
The last one was a port in central Somalia or even more south. Not sure I would say it is in the South.
To re-emphasize, notice that none of the descriptions mention any foreigners setting up a colony, shop, or anything of the sort, no Arab main population, etc., but the locals are mentioned only. This is significant since the text is discerning and mentions nuances of people readily whenever it encounters their diverse ways.
Notice how the land is called, land of the Barbaroi; an ethno-spatial relations and ownership is implied by that, and unlike the Southern Arabians and the Blemmye and Habash, we see no distinctive ethnic distinguishers addressed between each port. Meaning, ancient Somalis referred to themselves as the same people as the rest, and the Greco-Romans registered that in more than one way. At that point, Somalis had been in the region for not that long (from deep time-perspectve), so there could not have been much marked difference (not even distinctive languages, or high divergence in dialects) and since economic trade took off, the internal diffusive nature meant high contact between the people that lived across the region.
Have those points in mind for what I am going to state below for how these Spanish fools try to insult our ancestors, imagining them to be naked savage dead-fish-eaters by a desperate pure fabrication.
We have archaeology that attests that these people had a high excess of luxury goods, indicating they were very wealthy per capita, shown through the work of the Spanish team:
Now, to the glaring racism. Although the Periplus text only mentions some specific Arab fishermen being almost naked (and it was not all of them, only one specific small group), these Spanish guys, out of nowhere, without evidence, suddenly started to associate Somali with nakedness:
"As for Ceel Gerdi, it is impossible not to think of the Ichtyophagoi, the Fish-Eaters, situated by Greek writers from the sixth century BCE onward along the Red Sea coast and the Gulf of Aden. They are a topos of savagery in Hellenistic to Byzantine literature, in which they are variously described as naked, living on shellfish and fish cast upon the shore, eating them raw, dwelling in small, poor villages, and using wooden and lithic implements.101 The cliché, as is almost always the case, includes both an element of truth and a distortion of reality. The Ichthyophagoi of Ceel Gerdi may have looked primitive from the perspective of Mediterranean cultures, but they were also engaged in commercial networks involving the Byzantine empire, Oman, and the kingdoms of Himyar and Aksum, and were well acquainted with their material culture. This participation in long-distance and regional trade is actually hinted at by Artemidorus (ca. 100 BCE) and the author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei, who mention the Ichthyophagoi of the Horn of Africa providing myrrh and turtle shell to merchants.102 Now we know that they maintained their involvement in trading networks until late antiquity—and later."
Those were specific people from modern Oman, according to the direct account of the Periplus. They had nothing to do with Somalis, and the Spanish knowing that (since they speculated on where ports lie using this very same source), projected nakedness, and as they intended (although I don't even consider the ancient Omanis as such), with savagery:
I have checked, Somalis were never called Ichthyophagoi in the Periplus text (a term meaning fish-eater, i.e., people who primarily subsist on fishing on the coast); only a minor section of the Beja that lived out of the ordinary and some Arabs. But the interesting thing is, this Jorge Torres never mentions the Arab as Ichthyophagoi -- despite them being the "naked" ones, with zero mention of nudity described for the Beja.
The Beja, as the source he referenced, that a small section of fishermen, mentioned as having their fishing techniques and sometimes consumed fish that were stranded ashore at the coast. Now, let me expose the inherent nastiness in this writing; the Beja sub-group, which I speculate to be lower caste (since the source claimed only some fished), were framed as typical fishermen in the cited source. Notice how this guy left out the "fishermen" part and portrayed them as savage as possible to make the reader think they might as well be naked marauders just out to consume raw fish off the shore. Yet, no source ever mentions those people to be naked in the first place. Only the ancient Omanis, who strangely in this context are seen to be the ones taken aback by how the Somalis might have been primitive? Secondly, Somalis were not called Ichthyophagoi in the texts, neither was nakedness mentioned either, yet not only are we given attributes of lifestyle by non-Somalis (who I know to be a minor element with the coastal Beja since these people had clothes) and near-naked Omanis, with this guy through pure fabrication, setting an image of portraying the wealthy merchants and inhabitants of Ceel Geerdi (the port in Somaliland) as "Ichthyophagoi," perceived as primitive in the eyes of "Mediterranean" cultures, including the very people who brought that Ichthyophagoi naked fisherman stereotype in the first place.
First, if you noticed, I distinguish texts like Periplus that describe direct travel and encounter with fake stories concocted by sedentary fools from Greco-Roman lands that tell their children some wacky stories. Because, although I considered the source of that guy, it is really just an interpretation of those wacky stories that are too out of touch with reality, which the Periplus never was. That is, we see when real truth is conveyed with travel, and fake stories illustrated, describing diverse peoples across separate continents based on few descriptions, the common denominator of eating fish.
The alchemist
VIP
Here is one of the sources that the Spanish team showed:
These are from Farasan Islands, Arabians... again. These are clearly just people that reduced their living to the point where they just lived simple, forgot to live properly and such (if it is even rea)l. But one thing, the source does not describe like this, Bejas.
Now, there are one island opposite of Adulis called Diodoris Island (Dahlak Island) described by Periplus to be "overrun" by Barbaroi, i.e., Beja were situated there. But again, no mentions of naked people at all, though some fishing were done on that island.
This guy, from out of nowhere in what is an academic paper, imagined the ancestral Somali locals to be naked, akin to mythologized dead fish eaters who looked savage and primitive, appearing such to people who were a more cultured and superior, without any shred of evidence.
This is clear-cut racism.
This bullshit is glaring and runs in a theme. The Ichthyophagoi fabrication is the same as the "simple nomad" narrative we see later. They find these disgusting primitivist placeholders for us in contemptful ways. It's all the same. Racism that in some weird way holds contempt for Africans that seemed to be too good for their own good. They're too wealthy so let's imagine them as naked and savage. The Mediterranean had to be shocked seeing naked savages.
Just tell me this is not racism. The dude really formally called us naked dead-fish-eating savages (totally made up) that scared the civilized peoples that came to our shores because the archeology showed too much luxury and he was just too racist and disgustingly unconvinced he could not portray a dignified people to go with it. This guy even said that these people were so nomadic they had no use for the goods so they just threw them at the scene because they probably just needed perishable materials for nomadic living:
"Another possible explanation for the Xiis amphoras is that nomads transferred the contents of the amphoras to animal skins in order to transport the wine to the interior and discarded the containers in situ."
We bought things that we had no use for, so we left luxury goods at the scene. We were so savage we did not know the value of anything or what benefited us, and we did not have sedentary elements to furnish the goods we unwisely bought.
That is the stupidity they think we're going to buy.
Tell me this is not outward racial bias. Periplus stated that the ancestors of Somalis, who he never claimed to be naked, and what else bullshit these writers made up out of their racist imaginative minds, were tough to bargain with. What does this imply? It implies knowledge about relative economic measurement of value where you know what worth you hold and what others offer. You can't have this if you're a "primitive" people. You don't know what the level of exchange worth is if all you do is be this fake nomadism that only has limited practical material. What Periplus is implying is that there was keen knowledge of goods and their value and big confidence in what they had to leverage, i.e., why you see high wealth. It all aligns. However, these Spanish guys are undermining everything because they can't divorce their nasty bias, constantly stumbling upon their own work which is good in the description on the material level (buildings, goods, and other materials, and the basic classifications of those), which is messed up because they have monopolized parts of the archeology of our region to define it themselves. When they make such insidious interpretive statements, it directly affects our history. Had they done this about any European history, they would have been highly criticized on all levels.
Furthermore, no Mediterranean will sail all the way to the Somali region if there was no expected gain for value. Meaning, the products was undoubtedly premium and rare, the service systems and merchants were capable and stable for exchange purposes and reliance, and we probably had different and more to offer than Axum, as these people did trade with the Axumites and Bejas, yet still did way more stops in our region. What I am saying is that there was a vibrant economy that rivaled the regional productivity. These Spanish writers, on one hand, try to undermine everything that is needed to produce what happened because it would involve reconsidering their racist primitivist perspectives about Somalis in being the ones that actually established this reality, while at the same time, saying high wealth existed, confirming with consistent material evidence that cannot be explained away.
Let me give you an explanation. A market in such a land does not exist by itself. It's part of a broader economy that is part of internal logistics, productivity of ecological handling that is worked on by people on a long-term, seasonal basis. These are specialized over time to be produced. Some of the products come from inland regions, in typographically diverse sub-regions. This means there is a network of internal economy. What you see at the coast is merely a market expression presented for what occurs across the land. And remember, this was during a time where things were not as dry as today. Green areas that we have today were much larger, more complex flora systems that are extremely reduced and/or went completely extinct, existed. What this means is that there was a unique economic complex that operated in the entire region, so lucrative and abundant that people came to us, traveling for months, when they are supposed to be greater civilizations that should have access to every good through land networks in their own regions. Hm, makes you think, right? No one comes to us if we had only minor things to offer. People did not operate engine ships, it took too much time to arrive in our shores, and that had to be worth the trip in a very predictable way.
So this commentary of Mediterranean "merchants" coming to shore and with some "nomads" included is false. As described in the Periplus of direct access, markets were up and running by the time people came there, and goods were presented with competent locals that dealt with incoming foreign traders from diverse places. With things like metal clearly from foreign origin, being re-sold there, confirming the market had separate streams and did not open suddenly when the Greco-Romans came.
What I wrote above is not some speculation, it is in fact, a necessity.
Now, you might wonder why I went into the fish eater things and then suddenly delved into explaining the economic matters that affirm something they try hard to undermine. Well, it is because the Spanish team out of nowhere associate us with these naked primitive fish-eater savages that likely spooked the civilized Mediterranean merchants that came to our ancestors. This is exactly what they wrote. Remember, so far, the only people who were said to have been spotted were naked Arab peoples that lived off the coast of Arabia (five centuries after), another group in modern Oman, with the Dahlak people not portrayed as naked, though they were described as Barbaroi who settled there and might have taken up fishing. So why did these people reference texts that had nothing to do with us, then lie about the sources that never associated the Somali coasts, by stating that is how we could have appeared to Mediterranean peoples?
Here is the guy straight up lying, saying the text I quoted above, Periplus, mentions Somalis as fish-eaters:
"The Ichthyophagoi of Ceel Gerdi may have looked primitive from the perspective of Mediterranean cultures, but they were also engaged in commercial networks involving the Byzantine empire, Oman, and the kingdoms of Himyar and Aksum, and were well acquainted with their material culture. This participation in long-distance and regional trade is actually hinted at by Artemidorus (ca. 100 BCE) and the author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei, who mention the Ichthyophagoi of the Horn of Africa providing myrrh and turtle shell to merchants."
You find some fish remains there, but the people were not primary fish-eaters... See how this piece of shit took people eating fish, a universal thing among humans (and uncommon among Cushites in general), to be associated with a term that specifically means a heap of things unrelated to us entierly. They don't call Romans fish-eaters when they consumed the smelly fish sauce, I'll tell you that.
There was no mention of anything primitive at all in that text as it pertains to people of that land. He made that up completely based on the notion that, if we're getting attribution for what took place, might as well peg us down to the bottom being associated with inhuman level savage descriptions.
Here is literally the Periplus texts mentioning that Barbaroi type clothing was sold in ancient Zaila:
These are from Farasan Islands, Arabians... again. These are clearly just people that reduced their living to the point where they just lived simple, forgot to live properly and such (if it is even rea)l. But one thing, the source does not describe like this, Bejas.
Now, there are one island opposite of Adulis called Diodoris Island (Dahlak Island) described by Periplus to be "overrun" by Barbaroi, i.e., Beja were situated there. But again, no mentions of naked people at all, though some fishing were done on that island.
This guy, from out of nowhere in what is an academic paper, imagined the ancestral Somali locals to be naked, akin to mythologized dead fish eaters who looked savage and primitive, appearing such to people who were a more cultured and superior, without any shred of evidence.
This is clear-cut racism.
This bullshit is glaring and runs in a theme. The Ichthyophagoi fabrication is the same as the "simple nomad" narrative we see later. They find these disgusting primitivist placeholders for us in contemptful ways. It's all the same. Racism that in some weird way holds contempt for Africans that seemed to be too good for their own good. They're too wealthy so let's imagine them as naked and savage. The Mediterranean had to be shocked seeing naked savages.
Just tell me this is not racism. The dude really formally called us naked dead-fish-eating savages (totally made up) that scared the civilized peoples that came to our shores because the archeology showed too much luxury and he was just too racist and disgustingly unconvinced he could not portray a dignified people to go with it. This guy even said that these people were so nomadic they had no use for the goods so they just threw them at the scene because they probably just needed perishable materials for nomadic living:
"Another possible explanation for the Xiis amphoras is that nomads transferred the contents of the amphoras to animal skins in order to transport the wine to the interior and discarded the containers in situ."
We bought things that we had no use for, so we left luxury goods at the scene. We were so savage we did not know the value of anything or what benefited us, and we did not have sedentary elements to furnish the goods we unwisely bought.
That is the stupidity they think we're going to buy.
Tell me this is not outward racial bias. Periplus stated that the ancestors of Somalis, who he never claimed to be naked, and what else bullshit these writers made up out of their racist imaginative minds, were tough to bargain with. What does this imply? It implies knowledge about relative economic measurement of value where you know what worth you hold and what others offer. You can't have this if you're a "primitive" people. You don't know what the level of exchange worth is if all you do is be this fake nomadism that only has limited practical material. What Periplus is implying is that there was keen knowledge of goods and their value and big confidence in what they had to leverage, i.e., why you see high wealth. It all aligns. However, these Spanish guys are undermining everything because they can't divorce their nasty bias, constantly stumbling upon their own work which is good in the description on the material level (buildings, goods, and other materials, and the basic classifications of those), which is messed up because they have monopolized parts of the archeology of our region to define it themselves. When they make such insidious interpretive statements, it directly affects our history. Had they done this about any European history, they would have been highly criticized on all levels.
Furthermore, no Mediterranean will sail all the way to the Somali region if there was no expected gain for value. Meaning, the products was undoubtedly premium and rare, the service systems and merchants were capable and stable for exchange purposes and reliance, and we probably had different and more to offer than Axum, as these people did trade with the Axumites and Bejas, yet still did way more stops in our region. What I am saying is that there was a vibrant economy that rivaled the regional productivity. These Spanish writers, on one hand, try to undermine everything that is needed to produce what happened because it would involve reconsidering their racist primitivist perspectives about Somalis in being the ones that actually established this reality, while at the same time, saying high wealth existed, confirming with consistent material evidence that cannot be explained away.
Let me give you an explanation. A market in such a land does not exist by itself. It's part of a broader economy that is part of internal logistics, productivity of ecological handling that is worked on by people on a long-term, seasonal basis. These are specialized over time to be produced. Some of the products come from inland regions, in typographically diverse sub-regions. This means there is a network of internal economy. What you see at the coast is merely a market expression presented for what occurs across the land. And remember, this was during a time where things were not as dry as today. Green areas that we have today were much larger, more complex flora systems that are extremely reduced and/or went completely extinct, existed. What this means is that there was a unique economic complex that operated in the entire region, so lucrative and abundant that people came to us, traveling for months, when they are supposed to be greater civilizations that should have access to every good through land networks in their own regions. Hm, makes you think, right? No one comes to us if we had only minor things to offer. People did not operate engine ships, it took too much time to arrive in our shores, and that had to be worth the trip in a very predictable way.
So this commentary of Mediterranean "merchants" coming to shore and with some "nomads" included is false. As described in the Periplus of direct access, markets were up and running by the time people came there, and goods were presented with competent locals that dealt with incoming foreign traders from diverse places. With things like metal clearly from foreign origin, being re-sold there, confirming the market had separate streams and did not open suddenly when the Greco-Romans came.
What I wrote above is not some speculation, it is in fact, a necessity.
Now, you might wonder why I went into the fish eater things and then suddenly delved into explaining the economic matters that affirm something they try hard to undermine. Well, it is because the Spanish team out of nowhere associate us with these naked primitive fish-eater savages that likely spooked the civilized Mediterranean merchants that came to our ancestors. This is exactly what they wrote. Remember, so far, the only people who were said to have been spotted were naked Arab peoples that lived off the coast of Arabia (five centuries after), another group in modern Oman, with the Dahlak people not portrayed as naked, though they were described as Barbaroi who settled there and might have taken up fishing. So why did these people reference texts that had nothing to do with us, then lie about the sources that never associated the Somali coasts, by stating that is how we could have appeared to Mediterranean peoples?
Here is the guy straight up lying, saying the text I quoted above, Periplus, mentions Somalis as fish-eaters:
"The Ichthyophagoi of Ceel Gerdi may have looked primitive from the perspective of Mediterranean cultures, but they were also engaged in commercial networks involving the Byzantine empire, Oman, and the kingdoms of Himyar and Aksum, and were well acquainted with their material culture. This participation in long-distance and regional trade is actually hinted at by Artemidorus (ca. 100 BCE) and the author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei, who mention the Ichthyophagoi of the Horn of Africa providing myrrh and turtle shell to merchants."
You find some fish remains there, but the people were not primary fish-eaters... See how this piece of shit took people eating fish, a universal thing among humans (and uncommon among Cushites in general), to be associated with a term that specifically means a heap of things unrelated to us entierly. They don't call Romans fish-eaters when they consumed the smelly fish sauce, I'll tell you that.
There was no mention of anything primitive at all in that text as it pertains to people of that land. He made that up completely based on the notion that, if we're getting attribution for what took place, might as well peg us down to the bottom being associated with inhuman level savage descriptions.
Here is literally the Periplus texts mentioning that Barbaroi type clothing was sold in ancient Zaila:
The alchemist
VIP
Again, the Spanish team had studied these texts, even refrenced them. They avoided the truth, and started to refrence wrong things for us to lie about how those people were, to reduce them in the social darwinian way. Like they're telling like the typical Orientalists; don't get it confused, all these nice observations don't mean anything. These people had to be savage. The Spanish team subscribe to a hardcore level racist orientalism. In fact, the Rubial guy has a whole hypothesis that the Somalis were throughout the entire history a consistent broken society as you see today. That what you see today in Somalia, for example, is no different than thousands of years ago. Not only does that go well with their Medieval claims, but it also reveals what they think about is in the extant, as they explicitly described our ancient ancestors. Basically the dysfunction you see in the Somali region is just part of how we have operated, not a set of historically new issues that cascaded into destruction. To make this claim, you have to fabricate fake anti-ethoses, you have to assume people have some sort of genetic tendency to be lower.
"I will take a long-term approach to state ecology and state resistance so as to eschew the presentist bias that is all too frequent in political analyses, particularly in Africa, and that prevents us from understanding some of the deep undercurrent that explain contemporary phenomena."
Here above, there is an abstract that described exactly what I said.
By the way, on the text itself, it mentions that these ancestral Somalis used rafts to export goods to Muza and Okelis, today modern southern Arabia. These rafts were probably just smaller sailing boats and not actual rafts. Or maybe they were more elaborate rafts. I don't know.
They also defined our existence as "peripheries of the Roman empire," as if we were not a center of our own, with Romans just being one of several of the people we traded with. The reason this is important to emphasize is that these people assume an economy could form through being a consequence of Roman expanse, an unfounded claim. This is another nonsense trying to define our expression of perceived refined economic generation as a mere residue of the Mediterranean. Even when it comes to Berenike, Romans did have some involvement there, but the ones that did the trading, that did majorly inhabit the city were Blemmyes. Romans and other foreigners were minor in comparison. These people fail to capture the value that this entire region encompassed an economic region before there ever was a thing called Rome. People had seen all types of luxury before civilization ever hit the entire European continent. These people need to come in more humble and show some basic respect when they involve themselves in other people's history. We had seen whatever this value judgment called civilization long before the Europeans. It's embarrassing to even say this but it is important to set things to scale, be acquainted with historical reality.
So here we have the archeological record of what is descriptive pointing out the obvious, and yet you have these Spanish guy who knows this information (as he is one of the chief guys of these projects) still peddling the racist nonsense he had put forth in the screenshot. Tell me that is not racism. And notice how often they mention the most nasty Orientalist works and quotes.
I notice they start to do slight pivots lately. They are trying to give themselves the plausible deniability route by minorly mentioning things that might allude to Somalis being the main guys, but that is one sentence in a heap of crap (so they contradict themselves in the focus of the main text, so you know it is placed there to protect themselves as they see they have built a false narrative). And they do this (in extreme reluctance) because they are starting to realize their bullshit, while also doing nonsense peddling. And remember, this is after many years of crap and distortions. If these people had worked with the Nubiologists (really professional guys), they would have been humbled quickly and been set straight where their material work (which is very good as I have said), could be used to better overall refinement and built upon the known history of Somalis instead of wrestling with the truth by attributing other aspects.
So this is why I don't think it is a coincidence they showed the poorest looking pastoralist as a representative of the Somali. It is all deliberate, projected from their image that we have historically been nomadic savages. Plain and simple. They did not get influenced by Burton, they agree and express it in their own ways. This is just another living legacy of the new form of Orientalism. I wonder if there is agenda behind this because how they mix competency with disrespect and stupidity is almost coordinative. It's like when someone tries to do harm on purpose out of spite. But it does not need to be that because racism produces such outcomes.
These people have never explicitly given Somalis any placements in the role of the Somali historical economy. But they have done so for others:
Here he was claiming the societies were diverse without any evidence when every information so far point to fairly homogenous peoples:
"The world that is emerging is one of interactions with the wider world and cosmopolitan communities (Insoll 1997; Hirsch and Fauvelle-Aymar 2011; Insoll et al. 2014; Mire 2015), but also of complex and diverse indigenous societies of which little or nothing was known before"
Notice the notion of how cosmopolitan is used. That is used when urbanism is involved on Somali soil in every context, and here strictly means a foreign establishment of long-term systems.
Here it explicitly says these trading hubs were foreign outposts:
"Places like the coastal site of Bender Abbas are witness to the presence of diasporic communities living in their own settlements along the Somali coast but interacting in different ways with indigenous groups. Coastal sites, however, where not just foreign outposts: the documentation of indigenous materials and religious practices in the port of Bulahar offers a glimpse at the role of local groups in the creation of trading centers."
By the way, these were their earliest writings, so here they lay out what they really think while the newer narratives keep it as vague as possible but keep it explicit with the nomad narrative. Here they clearly state the locals as a secondary element at best. Not only that his fake hypothesis basically lays it out that there were stateless people at the "frontier" or even in the state. This describes a conditions where Somalis are a stateless people by definition, so who establishes the state? Clearly it must be different people, expressed in their text. What these people call "the state" is like "nomad" an unserious terms they manipulate to their advantage. It's like when European define every petty medieval local ruler as king, while they call more powerful rulers in later Nubia as "chiefs."
As they had no evidence for this garbage, they later they kept these notions indirectly alluding to "cosmopolitanism," urbanist and nomad dichotomy, going so far as attributing clear regional formations to wacky claims of Oromos long before the Oromo expansion, disassociate Somalis (or not even considering the possibility) that Ifat-Adal are Somali but thinking of it as an Ethiopian (a false concept at this time) extending into the Somali region while pushing Somalis into desert periphery (while now realizing they can't keep up their bullshit, so they have to be more creative about it), and more racist notions that go deep into their imaginations and reveals how they view Somalis as primitive, and a lot of consequential errant racist stupidity.
"Finally, a comparative study of ruined “towns” is showing the internal diversity of the sedentary settlements of Somaliland. Overall, the picture that emerges is one of complex articulations between nomads, town-dwellers, diasporic communities and cosmopolitan merchants."
These are their final conclusions in the older source. The notions of diasporic communities have not been shown any evidence. Remember, cosmopolitan merchants are the ones setting shops, and it does not include Somalis. I told you earlier that "merchant" is never used for Somalis.
There is a vile racial hierarchy imposed on their reading of our history. They can't help themselves, projecting some kind of racial supremacy. It's so baked into their ways and clearly we are very low on that totem pole, so all they percieve as higher, needs to be delegated differently to foreign colony as it pertains to the medieval history, while the empty and foolish term such as nomad (scholarship never use this word for pastoralism unless it is a unique one that is far different from what we historically practiced) consistently used for Somali.
You guys need to understand only nomad has been explicitly associated with Somali. I have yet to read any urban being Somali ever in their writing. Clearly there are "cosmopolitan" (this word comes up nearly every time urbanism is mentioned) and diasporic communities that fit that bracket more. They came, kickstarted the economy and taught Islam to the savage nomads who somehow kept themselves savage (despite nomads showing signs of Islamic slaughtering practice in Harlaa before urbanism appeared there in the 8th century (if I recall correctly) or so), despite trading for over thousand years with "cosmopolitan" traders that also set shop and roughly did the same many centuries earlier.
"I will take a long-term approach to state ecology and state resistance so as to eschew the presentist bias that is all too frequent in political analyses, particularly in Africa, and that prevents us from understanding some of the deep undercurrent that explain contemporary phenomena."
Here above, there is an abstract that described exactly what I said.
By the way, on the text itself, it mentions that these ancestral Somalis used rafts to export goods to Muza and Okelis, today modern southern Arabia. These rafts were probably just smaller sailing boats and not actual rafts. Or maybe they were more elaborate rafts. I don't know.
They also defined our existence as "peripheries of the Roman empire," as if we were not a center of our own, with Romans just being one of several of the people we traded with. The reason this is important to emphasize is that these people assume an economy could form through being a consequence of Roman expanse, an unfounded claim. This is another nonsense trying to define our expression of perceived refined economic generation as a mere residue of the Mediterranean. Even when it comes to Berenike, Romans did have some involvement there, but the ones that did the trading, that did majorly inhabit the city were Blemmyes. Romans and other foreigners were minor in comparison. These people fail to capture the value that this entire region encompassed an economic region before there ever was a thing called Rome. People had seen all types of luxury before civilization ever hit the entire European continent. These people need to come in more humble and show some basic respect when they involve themselves in other people's history. We had seen whatever this value judgment called civilization long before the Europeans. It's embarrassing to even say this but it is important to set things to scale, be acquainted with historical reality.
So here we have the archeological record of what is descriptive pointing out the obvious, and yet you have these Spanish guy who knows this information (as he is one of the chief guys of these projects) still peddling the racist nonsense he had put forth in the screenshot. Tell me that is not racism. And notice how often they mention the most nasty Orientalist works and quotes.
I notice they start to do slight pivots lately. They are trying to give themselves the plausible deniability route by minorly mentioning things that might allude to Somalis being the main guys, but that is one sentence in a heap of crap (so they contradict themselves in the focus of the main text, so you know it is placed there to protect themselves as they see they have built a false narrative). And they do this (in extreme reluctance) because they are starting to realize their bullshit, while also doing nonsense peddling. And remember, this is after many years of crap and distortions. If these people had worked with the Nubiologists (really professional guys), they would have been humbled quickly and been set straight where their material work (which is very good as I have said), could be used to better overall refinement and built upon the known history of Somalis instead of wrestling with the truth by attributing other aspects.
So this is why I don't think it is a coincidence they showed the poorest looking pastoralist as a representative of the Somali. It is all deliberate, projected from their image that we have historically been nomadic savages. Plain and simple. They did not get influenced by Burton, they agree and express it in their own ways. This is just another living legacy of the new form of Orientalism. I wonder if there is agenda behind this because how they mix competency with disrespect and stupidity is almost coordinative. It's like when someone tries to do harm on purpose out of spite. But it does not need to be that because racism produces such outcomes.
These people have never explicitly given Somalis any placements in the role of the Somali historical economy. But they have done so for others:
Here he was claiming the societies were diverse without any evidence when every information so far point to fairly homogenous peoples:
"The world that is emerging is one of interactions with the wider world and cosmopolitan communities (Insoll 1997; Hirsch and Fauvelle-Aymar 2011; Insoll et al. 2014; Mire 2015), but also of complex and diverse indigenous societies of which little or nothing was known before"
Notice the notion of how cosmopolitan is used. That is used when urbanism is involved on Somali soil in every context, and here strictly means a foreign establishment of long-term systems.
Here it explicitly says these trading hubs were foreign outposts:
"Places like the coastal site of Bender Abbas are witness to the presence of diasporic communities living in their own settlements along the Somali coast but interacting in different ways with indigenous groups. Coastal sites, however, where not just foreign outposts: the documentation of indigenous materials and religious practices in the port of Bulahar offers a glimpse at the role of local groups in the creation of trading centers."
By the way, these were their earliest writings, so here they lay out what they really think while the newer narratives keep it as vague as possible but keep it explicit with the nomad narrative. Here they clearly state the locals as a secondary element at best. Not only that his fake hypothesis basically lays it out that there were stateless people at the "frontier" or even in the state. This describes a conditions where Somalis are a stateless people by definition, so who establishes the state? Clearly it must be different people, expressed in their text. What these people call "the state" is like "nomad" an unserious terms they manipulate to their advantage. It's like when European define every petty medieval local ruler as king, while they call more powerful rulers in later Nubia as "chiefs."
As they had no evidence for this garbage, they later they kept these notions indirectly alluding to "cosmopolitanism," urbanist and nomad dichotomy, going so far as attributing clear regional formations to wacky claims of Oromos long before the Oromo expansion, disassociate Somalis (or not even considering the possibility) that Ifat-Adal are Somali but thinking of it as an Ethiopian (a false concept at this time) extending into the Somali region while pushing Somalis into desert periphery (while now realizing they can't keep up their bullshit, so they have to be more creative about it), and more racist notions that go deep into their imaginations and reveals how they view Somalis as primitive, and a lot of consequential errant racist stupidity.
"Finally, a comparative study of ruined “towns” is showing the internal diversity of the sedentary settlements of Somaliland. Overall, the picture that emerges is one of complex articulations between nomads, town-dwellers, diasporic communities and cosmopolitan merchants."
These are their final conclusions in the older source. The notions of diasporic communities have not been shown any evidence. Remember, cosmopolitan merchants are the ones setting shops, and it does not include Somalis. I told you earlier that "merchant" is never used for Somalis.
There is a vile racial hierarchy imposed on their reading of our history. They can't help themselves, projecting some kind of racial supremacy. It's so baked into their ways and clearly we are very low on that totem pole, so all they percieve as higher, needs to be delegated differently to foreign colony as it pertains to the medieval history, while the empty and foolish term such as nomad (scholarship never use this word for pastoralism unless it is a unique one that is far different from what we historically practiced) consistently used for Somali.
You guys need to understand only nomad has been explicitly associated with Somali. I have yet to read any urban being Somali ever in their writing. Clearly there are "cosmopolitan" (this word comes up nearly every time urbanism is mentioned) and diasporic communities that fit that bracket more. They came, kickstarted the economy and taught Islam to the savage nomads who somehow kept themselves savage (despite nomads showing signs of Islamic slaughtering practice in Harlaa before urbanism appeared there in the 8th century (if I recall correctly) or so), despite trading for over thousand years with "cosmopolitan" traders that also set shop and roughly did the same many centuries earlier.
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