Federal Republic of Somalia

Federal Republic of Somalia Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya جمهورية الصومال الفيدرالية
Flag Coat of arms
Light green territory disputed with Somaliland
Capital and largest city	Mogadishu
Official languages	Somali Arabic
Demonym(s)	Somali
Government	Federal parliamentary constitutional republic
• President	Hassan Sheikh Mohamud
• Prime Minister	Hamza Abdi Barre
Area
• Total	637,657 km²
Population
• 2023 estimate	18,143,378

The Federal Republic of Somalia, also known as Somalia, is a country in East Africa located in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Kenya to the southwest, Ethiopia to the west and Djibouti to the northwest as well as having an eastern coast on the Indian Ocean.

History

Precolonialization

The earliest evidence of human habitation in the Somali Peninsula consists of Acheulean stone blades and flint tools discovered near Hargeisa and in the Golis Mountains in the present day Somaliland region, dated between 40,000 and 12,000 BCE.  During the Pleistocene, East Africa experienced periods which changed the region's hydrology and created lush environments which supported the early human population. Which allowed for the transition from hunting and gathering to pastoralism several millennia earlier than in Europe.

The change in the region's hydrology created lush environments and inconsistency in rainfall which created a shift toward nomadic and semi-nomadic animal husbandry within Somalia. This Neolithic pastoral revolution is most visibly documented at the Laas Geel cave near Hargeisa, covered in paintings of African aurochs with lyre-shaped horns adorned with ceremonial mats surrounded by humans in white robes. Somalia contains the highest concentration of rock art in East Africa with major sites like Dhagah Kureh, Dhagah Nabi Galay, Dhambalin, and Karinhegane. Alongside rock art, funerary megaliths, ruined cities, and massive stone walls such as Wargaade Wall show a civilisation long before the arrival of Islam or European contact.

Land of Punt

By 2000 BCE, Somalia was integrated into the earliest documented long-distance trade networks and also was a major part of the ancient Land of Punt referred to by ancient Egypt as the Land of the Gods. It spanned present-day Somalia, specifically Somaliland and Puntland regions, Djibouti, and Eritrea. It supplied ancient Egypt with frankincense, myrrh, gold, ebony, ivory, and exotic animals. Queen Hatshepsut commissioned a mission which involved Puntite King Parahu and Queen Ati which resembles a form of tributary commerce as it was a powerful state extracting luxury goods from a periphery to enrich the ruling stratum.

By 1000 BCE and through classical antiquity, a line of wealthy urban city-states emerged across the Somali coast. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea documents these states in detail: Opone (present Xaafun), was a massive emporium for spices and aromatics, Malao (present Berbera), was deeply involved in the frankincense and myrrh trade, Mundus (present Xiis), was central to the cinnamon and gum arabic trade, Sarapion (present Mogadishu) and Mosylon (present Bosaso) were commercial polities that connected and integrated with merchants from Phoenicia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Greece, Parthian Persia, Saba, Nabataea, and the Roman Empire.

Fra Mauro map depicting the Horn of Africa but focusing on the historical Sultanate of Mogadishu, created by the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro around 1450.

Somali merchants used beden, a Somali seafaring ship who used these and their understanding of monsoon wind patterns to navigate and bypass the foreign empires to preserve their monopoly on the global incense trade and by 300 BCE Somalis were among the most active and skilled navigators in the Indian Ocean. A mercantile elite grew from these maritime expeditions with archeological surveys in northern Somalia showing seventy ruined towns from this period, with hundreds of ancient inscriptions indicating a localized culture of literacy among the merchant elite.

Sultanate of Mogadishu

The arrival of Islam in Somalia shortly after the hijra in 622 CE, made Somalia the earliest non-Arab country to become muslim. Islamic governance fused with the traditional Somali mercantile clan structures and created a chain of centralized sultanates that projected military and economic power across East Africa. Within this the Sultanate of Mogadishu emerged in the 10th century, the city of Mogadishu turned into a major commercial hub. The Fakhr ad-Din dynasty, established by Abu Bakr bin Fakhr ad-Din, ruled until the 16th century and constructed the famed 13th-century Fakhr ad-Din mosque, the seventh oldest mosque in Africa. The 12th-century Syrian historian Yaqut al-Hamawi noted that the city was inhabited by "dark-skinned Berbers," the direct ancestors of modern Somalis.

From circa 1300 to 1700 CE, Mogadishu minted its own currency which were standardized bronze fals and rarer billion dirhams bearing Arabic inscriptions invoking titles such as "al-Malik al-Muzaffar" (the Victorious King). The earliest coin in East Africa is a Mogadishan billon dirham from 1322–23 CE, struck under Sultan Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad. Through these coins, archeologists identified at least 26 successive sultans, and have been spread widely as coins have been recovered in Tanzania, the UAE, and Iraq. When the Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta visited in 1331, he documented a metropolis ruled by a Somali Sultan, Abu Bakr ibn Shaikh Omar, with a highly structured royal court featuring viziers, legal experts, military commanders, and royal eunuchs, the structure of a tributary state.

Ajuuraan Sultanate

The Ajuuraan Sultanate emerged in the 13th century, governed by the House of Garen, a dynasty originating in the Ogaden region. The Ajuuraan state is unique in that it’s Africa's only hydraulic empire, The Garen ruling class monopolized the water resources of the Shebelle and Jubba rivers through engineering limestone wells, cisterns, dykes, and irrigation canals irrigating the arid land into fertile agricultural lands though by centralizing control over water, the state forced nomadic pastoralists and sedentary farmers into a relationship of dependency enabling a system of taxation. The administration was highly centralized, with the Garen rulers styled as Imams overseeing Emirs (military commanders), Na'ibs (governors), Wazirs (tax collectors), and Qadis (judges). The empire extended from Mareeg, Galguduud in the north to Kismayo, Jubbaland in the south.

The Ajuuraan had one of the most advanced militaries in Africa at the time, when the Portuguese Empire reached the Indian Ocean in the 16th century, it systematically sacked the southeastern city-states of Kilwa, Mombasa, and Malindi in their ambitions to colonize but the Ajuuraan waged an strong resistance such as the Battle of Barawa, Portuguese forces burned the city but failed to permanently occupy the area, and after they avoided attacking Mogadishu entirely. But to expel the Portuguese completely, the Ajuuraan allied with the Ottoman Empire in joint expeditions that permanently expelled the Portuguese from Somalia but temporarily in Pate, Mombasa, and Kilwa (i.e Kenya).

Despite this, the Ajuuraan Sultanate collapsed from internal contradictions at the end of the 17th century. The absolute power concentrated in the hands of the later Garen rulers devolved into tyranny as they enforced punitive taxation and oppressive control over water access which sparked multiple clan rebellions. Ajuuraan fractured into successor kingdoms, most notably the Geledi Sultanate and the Hiraab Imamate.

Adal Sultanate

The Adal Sultanate was born out of the Walashma dynasty who consolidated power through the Ifat Sultanate founded the Adal Sultanate after 1415 when the Abyssinian Emperor Yeshaq I destroyed Ifat and killed Sultan Sa'ad ad-Din II at Zeila. The Adal Sultanate was locked in a centuries-long military struggle with the Christian Abyssinian Empire, the nature of the conflict was between rival ruling classes over territory and tribute that escalated dramatically in the 16th century with religion used as an justification.

Adal was split ideologically in the late 15th century, as the moderate Walashma nobility was willing to make concessions with Ethiopia, while the radical emirs demanded a holy war, specifically the Emir of Zeila. The assassination of the militant governor Mahfuz who was just as radical as the Emir by Abyssinian forces in 1517 triggered the Adalite Civil War in which the radical faction won. The radical faction’s victory created the foundation for Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (Ahmed Gurey) to unite Somali and Afar nomadic tribes under the banner of jihad and launched the invasion against the Ethiopian Empire as retaliation for all the raids and mosque-burnings.

This war known as Futuh al-Habashi became a proxy-war between the Ottoman and Portuguese empires, an early form of inter-imperialist rivalry. After Ahmed Gurey’s army destroyed the Ethiopian army at Shimbra Kure in 1529, the Ethiopian Emperor appealed to the Portuguese Empire who sent 400 musketeers under Cristóvão da Gama in 1541 and in response Imam Ahmad Gurey imported 900 Ottoman musketeer through Zeila. Ahmed Gurey’s army kidnapped and killed Cristóvão da Gama after the Ethio-Portuguese defeat in the Battle of Wofla in 1542. But an error on the Adal’s hands allowed the surviving Ethio-Portuguese forces to regroup and Imam Ahmed Gurey was killed at the Battle of Wayna Daga in 1543, the loss of the leader and a massive Oromo migration weakened the Adal Sultanate permanently.

Hiraab Imamate

The weakening of the Adal Sultanate and the collapse of the Ajuuraan Sultanate created a decentralized political landscape in which Xeer, an somali customary law operated as a polycentric legal system governing mediation, resource allocation, and the payment of diya (blood money), Xeer functioned as an superstructure adapted to a pastoralist mode of production in which the clan, rather than a centralized state, organized social reproduction in periods of decentralisation or collapse.

The Hiraab Imamate, emerged out of this political environment in the late 17th century by Imam Omar in an Hawiye and Hiraab clan alliance, operated as a decentralized confederation in which roles were codified by lineage: the title of Imam was reserved for the Mudulood branch, military command for the Habar Gidir and Duduble, and judicial functions for the Sheekhaal. The Imamate controlled the agricultural centers of Eldher and Harardhere and the ports of Mogadishu and Hobyo, the latter becoming a major commercial hub where international merchants traded textiles and precious metals for Somali livestock, hides, and aromatic woods.

Geledi Sultanate

The Geledi Sultanate emerged long the lower Shabelle River, centered at Afgooye. Founded by Ibrahim Adeer after overthrowing the Silcis which were former Ajuuraan vassals, the Geledi state was governed by a ruling elite whose political and spiritual legitimacy derived from their status as Qadiriyya Sufi saints believed to possess baraka (blessings). The sultanate reached its zenith under Sultan Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim and his son Sultan Ahmed Yusuf Mahamud. The Geledi economy was based on irrigated agriculture grain, sesame, and cotton supported by the labor of Bantu client farmers though it also consisted of weaving, shoemaking, and pottery.

The Geledi militarily could field a cavalry-based army of up to 50,000 troops, an example is when Sultan Yusuf annihilated the militant Salafi Bardera movement in 1843 and forged alliances with the Swahili Sultanate of Witu and at its peak the Geledi extracted annual tribute from Said bin Sultan, the Omani ruler of Zanzibar. However, similarly to other sultanates it’s demise was internal infighting as constant warfare against the rival Bimaal clan drained the state; both Sultan Yusuf and Sultan Ahmed were killed in battles against the Bimaal, starting the gradual decline.

Majeerteen Sultanate

In present Puntland, the Majeerteen Sultanate emerged with its capital at Caluula under Boqor Osman Mahamuud. The sultanate was a centralized state: a functioning bureaucracy, a hereditary nobility, a professional army, and a national flag. Boqor Osman exploited the maritime geography of Cape Guardafui by entering into informal treaties with Britain to protect shipwrecked British crews in exchange for annual subsidies. A five-year civil war between Boqor Osman and his cousin Yusuf Ali Kenadid nearly destroyed the state as Kenadid who was exiled to Yemen after his previous attempt returned with a private army of Yemeni-Hadhrami musketeers and carved out the independent Sultanate of Hobyo from the declining Hiraab Imamate.

Colonialization

Sultan Olol Dinle (center), ruler of the Sultanate of Ajuuran, alongside his Somali delegation in Rome, Italy during Adolf Hitler’s state visit to Fascist Italy in 1938.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century the region of Somalia was partitioned between the imperialist powers of Italy, the UK and France (the latter's colony of French Somaliland would later become Djibouti). This colonization spurred on a national liberation movement led by Muḥammad ibn 'Abdallāh Hassan which lasted from 1899 to 1920. The struggle against the imperialists forced the British to retreat to the coast in 1910 and in the wake of the First World War the rebels were given a reprieve, however, this would only last until 1919 with the Somalis being defeated in 1920.

The colonists seized the best of the land and a large portion of the livestock as well as taxing the native population whilst leaving them in poverty. The exploitation of the population intensified when the fascists came to power in Italy but in both British and Italian Somaliland the living standards were low and industry was non-existent.

In the Second World War Somalia was a battleground with the Italians seizing British Somaliland in August 1940 before the British drove the Italians out of Somalia in early 1941. During the war years a number of manufacturing industries sprung up allowing the establishment of a small local bourgeoisie and intelligentsia which in turn led to increased agitation for independence. In November 21, 1949 the UN placed Italian Somaliland under international trusteeship but the Italians were still allowed to administrate and oppress the population.

Independence

On June 26,1961 British Somaliland gained independence and on July 1 Italian Somaliland joined it to form the Somali Republic.

Socialist era (1969–1991)

See main article: Somali Democratic Republic

Somali Civil War

The Somali National Movement fought against the socialist government of Siad Barre and overthrew him in 1991. Secessionists led by the SNM then split northwest Somalia from the rest of the country and formed the Republic of Somaliland.

The United Nations, led primarily by the United States, launched an invasion of Somalia in 1992 and again in 1993 under the guise of providing relief and humanitarian aid, when it was really killing thousands of Somalis. They sent troops to secure areas with oil fields owned by four Statesian corporations, those being Conoco, Amoco, Chevron, and Phillips 66.

Modern era

In 2006, Somalia reunified under one government after over a decade of Somali Civil War. George W. Bush soon overthrew the government of Somalia with support from Ethiopia under Meles Zenawi.