@Idilinaa maybe better positioned to answer that but Somalis are indeed the original inhabitants. Hararghe was a core Somali region before the Oromo migrations
Somalia's Historical Geographical Advantages over Sub-Saharan Africa: (Summary) Part 1
- Thread starter Idilinaa
- Start date
We were both the original inhabitants and the majority.
I go through it in a different thread:
I have seen many times people claiming Harar to be the fourth holiest city in Islam. Why is this the case?
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/gallery/2017/6/25/the-walled-city-of-harar-in-eastern-ethiopia-14
www.somalispot.com
It's a common phenomenon the people who founded the town were originally somali. After living in the town for a couple centuries with large scale immigration from other groups like the muslim habesha and later oromos. What happned was the identity shift from a clan based one to one based on the town. This shifted likely was already happening but was accelerated over the last couple of centuries
Speaking of this. @Idilinaa . Do you you think its possible that darod ismail jabrt. Is actually just the name of the spefic clan who was named after the region called jabart (that marqizi mentioned) . But over the centuries they expanded and assimilated people into this clan we today call darod. With darod just being the name of the founder of a small chiefdom in the region several hundred years before the islamic period and it was then named after him.
Darood didn't call their clan Jabarti, as far i'm aware.
And yes Ismail Al-Jabarti was a real saint from Somalia that carried the nisba of the region he came from , it is pretty much recorded in the Yemeni records.
Jabarti was a nationality/regional name that Somalis in general carried irregardless of clan, it was still being used by some more isolated ones until the early 1800s, but was beginning to be fully replaced with 'Al-Somal' from the 1700s and from then on the name began to be associated with Swahili slaves we exported and ethiopians like trigrayans we converted, which i believe contributed to it's abandonement prolly in our attempt to dissociate.
It's pretty clear there was an early gradually political and cultural expansion from Zayla that began in the 800s and the jabart was a refrence to the guban plains(burning country) between Zayla and Berbera, its how Somali clans were incorporated into the Aqili lineage structure.
Zayla was such a prominent Muslim town that it produced a Hadith narrators in mid 800s
Somali Hadith Narrator in the 9th Century
Ibrahim ibn Abdullah ibn Muhammad Al Zayla’i Al Askari. Since his Sheikh died in 856 A.D. (245 A.H.) I’m Assuming he would have to have been born by 830. He, Al Daraqutni, and Al Tabari (RA) studied under the same Sheikh.
www.somalispot.com
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Wow, amazing find. This really puts Zayla's founding or Islamization of the city in the 8th century AD at the absolute latest. Yet wikipedia claims Shewa and the Makhzumi dynasty are the oldest Islamic polity in the Horn.
Wait I'm confused.
So there is a guy named ismail jabarti. But the full name (supposedldy) of darod is darod ismail jabarti. So how did this ismail jabarti guy become connected with darod( who seems to be a preislamic ancestral figure)
And what do you mean aqili structure?
His son Abdirahman bin Ismail Al-Jabarti who returned from Arabia is held as their progenitor.
Somalis were claiming descent from Aqeel ibn Abi Talib throughout the medieval period, so the pre existing clans that were already tied to eachother were incorporated into that descent, that's what it seems to me.
You see this explicitly with individuals with the Nisba Al-Zayla'i and Al-Jabarti mentioned in the Rasulid records, that it gradually became a general thing.
What about the preislamic element? All of the somali clan ancestors myths. Have them descending from a tree becuase they see the daughter of a local clan chief. This is a clear refrence to a wider cushitic man in the sky myths. That even non muslim cushitic groups have.
I don't believe he converted Somalis, it really seem most northern and western Somalis were Muslim by the 800s.
What that story speaks to is the common marriage alliance through which the founding of a family house happens and the veneration of Saints who are held up as pious role models to follow.
I wouldn't trust wikipedia too much, i've seen people construct recent ancient fiction history for Harar , which wasn't founded until 15th century by an Awdal Sultan Abu Bakr that was relocating his administrative base.
A seperate state in Zayla and Harar uplands connected to it existed most probably contemporariusly with them. If we also go by archeology.
We could probably find more refrences if we dig more into the Arabic records. Other ones i've seen mentions Zayla as a Muslim inhabited city by Al-Masudi in 915 and as an Islamic state by Al-Maqdasi in 985.
It seems like that if several of these somali chronicles cobborated with arabic historians we can reconstruct a pretty clear outline of the basically of post islamic somali history. But I honestly wonder about the preislamic period.
These early towns like zeila have orgins dating at least back to the 1st century b.c. what was going on for these 700-800 years. Some of these guys were Christian for sure. But it seems like these early towns didn't lead to any state formation.
Most pre-islamic early towns operated like city states that was governed by a council and not a monarch. So they were more closer to a republic.
I am not too certain they were Christian, i had someone point out to me recently that the cross symbols they carve on monuments and graves aren't actually christian crosses but some ancient cruciform called ''Summadi Awliyo''(Brand of the Saints) because they also appear on cave arts and ancient Mosques.
Anyways we will probably find out more as time goes on to complete the picture.
I thought the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea made it clear our pre-Islamic city states were ruled by chiefs or kings in a decentralized manner
That's how it operates it's a council of elders, who elect/nominate a titular leadership. They are not collectively ruled by a single monarch , so they are independent from eachother and decentralized
They probably operated similar to other indepedent city states in the ancient world described here:
This is how some of the earliest Somali coastal towns like especially Mogadishu 1100s, and Zayla in the early 800s are described in Arabic sources and later Barawa by the portuguese in the 1500s as having no King and ruled by a council of clan elders or sheikhs as they sometimes call them.
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Some excerpts related to this that i shared in another thread:
Ismail Al-Jabarti is actually mentioned in rasulid manuscripts from that period. There was plenty of other individuals with Al-Jabarti and Al-Zaylai before him that claim that descent.
It was literally what Somali scholars became known for.
You don't even have to look at him being described as black ajami in the Suluk, ''Al-Jabarti'' makes it obvious he is from northern Somalia because Jabarta was the region of Zayla.
So it's not even something specific to the Awfat/Awdal Sultans, almost every Somali was claiming it at that time.
If you look at the Rasulid corpus the early ones carrying Al-Zaylai and Al-Jabarti nisba didn't claim Aqili. But then it starts around 1300s and it was formed out of elite group of Somali scholars.
So Somalis were already Muslims before the Aqili lineage descent was incorporated into their clan structure. Like i said to you before in another thread i don't think it reflects Islamization, more than it reflects the founding of newer clans and Somali saint cult.
and about this
More i shared on the cross symbols from a seperate post
Yeah i that is what i was talking about , they turn out to have zero christian associations. Because Somalis don't regard it as anything related to christianity and the same exact markings don't just appear on graves but also ancient
3k old cave art.
on ancient mihrab from a mosque in Las Qoray
Jewish signs were not really found btw. I used to think it was entirely plausible Christianity reach Somalia but now i am not so sure anymore.
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