There is little doubt that Arabian penetration along the northern and eastern Somali coasts is of great antiquity. It probably antedates the Islamic period; and certainly shortly after the hegira Muslim Arabs and Persians were developing a string of coastal settlements in Somaliland. From their condition today, from traditional sources, and from such documentary evidence as is available, it is clear that in these towns Arab and Persian merchants and prosyletizers settled usually as local aristocracies, bringing the faith, marrying local women, and eventually merging with the local inhabitants to form a mixed Somali-Arab culture and society. This new culture representing varying degrees of mixing and blending at different periods, and by no means uniform throughout the coastal ports, is the Somali counterpart to the more extensive Swahili society of the East African coast to the south.
Typical of these centres of Arab influence in northern Somaliland are the ancient ports of Zeila and Berbera. Zeila first appears in the record of the Arab geographers at the end of the ninth century when it is mentioned by Al-Ya‘qubi, and later writers describe it in increasing detail. Berbera, which conserves the name given in classical times to the northern coast as a whole, is probably of similar antiquity, but its history is much more obscure: it is first mentioned by the Arab geographers in the thirteenth century. Thereafter, beyond the fact that during the period of Portuguese domination in the Red Sea the town was sacked in 1518 by Saldanha, little is known of its history until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Similar obscurity surrounds most of the history of the ancient port of Mait, on the eastern coast in Erigavo District, and one of the principal centres of early Somali expansion.
Thus at present, of the northern ports as a whole, most is known of Zeila. This town was politically the most important of the Arab settlements in the north and owed its economic prosperity, at times considerable, to its geographical position as one of the chief ports of the Abyssinian hinterland in the trade with Arabia and the Orient. Through Zeila local Somali produce, consisting chiefly of hides and skins, precious gums, ghee, and ostrich feathers, and slaves and ivory from the Abyssinian highlands, were exported: and cloth, dates, iron, weapons, and chinaware and pottery imported. Politically, Zeila was originally the centre of the Muslim emirate of Adal, part of the state of Ifat, which lay in the plateau region of eastern Shoa. From the time at which the port enters Islamic history, it had apparently a mixed Arab, Somali, and Danakil (‘Afar) population. In the course of time, no one knows exactly when, these three separate elements to some extent fused to form a distinctive Zeila culture and Zeila dialect which was a blend of Arabic, Somali, and ‘Afar. No doubt other minor ethnic elements were also represented; Persians and Indians seem to have settled in the port at an early period, but the main elements in the Zeila culture were Arab, Somali, and ‘Afar.
While these northern coastal centres were developing, Arab settlers were opening, or consolidating, a similar series of ports in the south. Of these the most important were Mogadishu, the present capital of the Republic, Brava, and Merca – all commercial towns largely dependent for their prosperity upon the entrepôt trade between Abyssinia, Arabia, and the markets of the East. The evidence of the Arab geographers and local inscriptions and documents indicate that by the first half of the tenth century Arab and Persian colonizers had established themselves at Mogadishu in considerable numbers, some years prior to the foundation of Kilwa on the East African Coast. Similar sources suggest that Merca and Brava are of comparable antiquity. Thus, in both the north and south, by the tenth century a ring of coastal emporia had been created, largely as a result of Arab enterprise, and through these ports Islam and Arab trade had gained a foothold which, consolidated and strengthened in succeeding centuries, was to become the foundation for Muslim expansion in North East Africa.
The first wave of Somali expansion
About the tenth century while these developments were proceeding on the coast, some areas of southern Somaliland were still occupied by the Zanj, while the land in the centre and north was occupied first by various Oromo tribes and then by the Somali. From Somali oral tradition and other local evidence it seems that Galla communities occupied part of northern Somaliland prior to the Somali, and that about the tenth century, the Dir Somali, universally regarded as the oldest Somali stock, were already in possession of much of the northern coastal strip and exerting pressure on the Oromo to their south.
But the first major impetus to Somali migration which tradition records is the arrival from Arabia of Sheikh Isma ‘il Jabarti about the tenth or eleventh century and the expansion of his descendants, the Darod clans, from their early seat in the north-east corner of Somaliland. This cannot be dated with certainty, but the period suggested here accords well with the sequence of subsequent events. It was followed perhaps some two centuries later by the arrival from Arabia of Sheikh Isaq, founder of the Isaq Somali, who settled to the west of the Darod at Mait where his domed tomb stands today, and who like his predecessor Darod, married with the local Dir Somali. While present evidence, or to be more precise, its lack, suggests that much of the very detailed tradition which surrounds these two patriarchs is legend, it appears likely that it should be interpreted as reflecting the growth and expansion of the Darod and Isaq clans about this time. For while Darod and Isaq themselves may be legendary figures, there is no doubt about the authenticity of the movements of their descendants.
On this interpretation, by the twelfth century the Dir and Darod, and later the Isaq, were pressing upon their Oromo neighbours and the great series of movements which finally disestablished the latter may be said to have begun. Folk tradition today offers little information as to the causes of this movement. It would not be unreasonable to conjecture, however, that mounting population pressure, augmented by continued Arab immigration, and perhaps exacerbated by a series of severe droughts, prompted a general Somali movement in search of new pastures. And this was no doubt furthered by the messianic and militant fervour of early Islam.
If the motives which inspired this great movement of population are still a matter of conjecture, its general direction is fortunately well-established. The traditions of migration indicate that in their gradual and by no means co-ordinated movement towards the south the Somali followed two main routes: they descended from the north down the valley of the Shebelle and its tributaries, or along the line of coastal wells on the Indian Ocean littoral. These vital water-lines were traversed by group after group as the Somali as a whole moved forward.
As the Darod and Isaq grew in numbers and territory, the Dir vacated the north-eastern region of Somaliland, striking off westwards and to the south. In the west, the powerful ‘Ise and Gadabursi clans pushed gradually, and not without many set-backs, into what is today Harar Province of Ethiopia and the Jibuti Republic, leaving the graves of their ancestors several hundred miles behind them in the Erigavo District. To anticipate for a moment; it seems that by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries these movements by the Dir, Darod, and Isaq, had proceeded to the point where the two last groups of clans had taken over much of northern Somaliland and the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Thus, probably by the close of the seventeenth century, the clans of northern Somaliland had assumed approximately their present distribution, although the gradual drift of population from the north still continued.
In step with these Somali movements in the north, the Oromo were increasingly thrust westwards and southwards and ultimately into Ethiopia, where, however, their main invasion did not take place until the sixteenth century.2 As the Galla withdrew, not without fierce resistance, the Bantu Zanj were in turn driven farther south. At the same time, the Somali were maintaining