The Somali coast in Greek and Roman writers: Herodotus, Eratosthenes, Pliny, Ptolemy and the name Barbaria

In short

Before Arab and Chinese writers, the Somali coast was described by Greek and Roman geographers. None of them is known to have been there; they worked from sailors' and merchants' reports. Their works give names of capes, ports and peoples from the Bab el-Mandeb to Cape Guardafui and south along the Indian Ocean. The fullest account, the merchants' guide called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, has its own page: the Somali ports in the Periplus. This page covers the others, in date order.

Herodotus and the "long-lived Ethiopians", about 430 BC

Herodotus tells how the Persian king Cambyses, after conquering Egypt, sent spies to "the 'Long-lived' Ethiopians, who dwell in that part of Libya which is by the Southern Sea". Their king, "the tallest and the most beautiful of all men", sent back a bow and the message that Cambyses should attack only when the Persians could draw a bow that size. Most of his people lived to 120 years, "and their food was boiled flesh and their drink was milk". Cambyses marched against them, but his army ran out of food before it had gone a fifth of the way and turned back (Herodotus, Histories 3.17–25, Macaulay translation, Project Gutenberg ebook 2707). Elsewhere Herodotus places Ethiopia at the far south-west edge of the inhabited world, producing gold, elephants, ebony "and men who are of all men the tallest, the most beautiful and the most long-lived" (3.114, same source).

Who says what. Herodotus gives no place names that can be fixed on a map. The 1912 commentary of W. W. How and J. Wells calls the long-lived Ethiopians "a mythical people", whose description is "partly based on Homer… partly on travellers' tales", exaggerated because "they live at the end of the world" (How and Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, vol. 1, 1912, note on 3.17–26). The same note records the older view of the historian Heeren, who found "a foundation of fact" for the story in Cosmas' 6th-century account of the frankincense trade, and How and Wells' reply that "the evidence of Cosmas is too late and doubtful".

Eratosthenes, 3rd century BC, quoted by Strabo

Eratosthenes, librarian at Alexandria, described the coast beyond the strait. Strabo quotes him: after the islands of the strait, "the next voyage, following the sinuosities of the bays, along the myrrh-bearing country in the direction of south and east as far as the cinnamon-bearing country, is about five thousand stadia; and to the present time, it is said, no one has arrived beyond that country; and though there are not many cities on the coast, there are many in the interior that are beautifully settled" (Strabo, Geography 16.4.4, Loeb translation, 1932, on LacusCurtius).

The "cinnamon" of these Greek writers came to them through these ports; whether any of it grew there is a separate question, discussed on Frankincense and myrrh.

Artemidorus, about 100 BC, quoted by Strabo

Artemidorus of Ephesus gives the most detailed list before the Periplus. Strabo, writing about 20 AD, follows him. Past the strait at Deirê comes "the country that bears frankincense", then river-lands that produce myrrh and frankincense, then the "cinnamon-bearing country", the mountain Elephas "which juts out into the sea", the harbour of Psygmus, a watering-place of the "Cynocephali" (baboons), and "the last promontory of this coast, Notu-ceras", the Horn of the South. "After rounding this promontory approximately towards the south, we no longer, he says, have any record of harbours or places." Along the coast stood "pillars and altars of Pytholaüs and Lichas and Pythangelus and Leon and Charimortus". The country "abounds in elephants" and has leopards and the rhinoceros (Strabo 16.4.14–16, same source).

The mountain Elephas, a name that also appears in the Periplus and in Ptolemy, "seems to be the modern Ras el Fil, or Filuk", a headland 800 feet high about 40 miles west of Cape Guardafui (Schoff, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, 1912, notes p. 85). See the Somali ports in the Periplus.

Pliny the Elder, about 77 AD

Pliny's Natural History follows the African shore of the Red Sea past Adulis: "Beyond these is the Gulf of Abalites, the island of Diodorus, and other desert islands; also, on the mainland, a succession of deserts, and then the town of Gaza, and the promontory and port of Mossylum, to the latter of which cinnamon is brought for exportation: it was thus far that Sesostris led his army." He adds that King Juba of Mauretania held that at Mossylum "the Atlantic Sea begins", meaning that he thought the African coast turned west there (Pliny, Natural History 6.34, Bostock and Riley translation, vol. 2, 1855, p. 96).

Abalites is the Avalites of the Periplus, the bay of Zeila. Mossylum is the Periplus' Mosylon, whose site is discussed on the Somali ports in the Periplus. Avalites is identified with Zeila; see Early Zeila.

Ptolemy, about 150 AD

Claudius Ptolemy's Geography gives each place a longitude and latitude. Book 4, chapter 7, "Aethiopia below Egypt", lists the Somali coast in order (Stevenson's translation, 1932, pp. 107–108):

• "After the strait in the Red sea": Dire, then "in Avalites bay" the Avalites market place, Malao market place, Mondu market place, "Mosylum promontory and market place", Cobe market place, the Elephas mountains, Acanna market place, and "Aromata promontory and market place", Cape Guardafui.
• "In the Barbaricus bay": Pano village, Opone market place, the Zingis promontory, the Phalangis mountains, Apocopa, the "Austri Cornu" (Horn of the South), the Little and the Great Beach, Essina, "Sarapionis station and emporium", Tonice market place, and the river and town of Rhapta.
• On the peoples: the Avalitae live "near a bay of this name, and the Mosyli above the promontory with a market place of this name. The entire maritime coast to the Rhaptum promontory is called Azania; the interior region is called Barbaria, in which there are many elephants."

Ptolemy places Opone at 4° 15′ north and the Aromata promontory at 6° north, and Avalites at 8° 25′ north (same pages). See Opone and Ras Hafun.

Cosmas Indicopleustes, about 550 AD

The Alexandrian merchant Cosmas wrote that the sons of Ham received the lands "from Gadeira in the west to the ocean of Ethiopia, called Barbaria, beyond the Arabian Gulf", and that "Zingium… is situated beyond the country called Barbaria which produces frankincense" (McCrindle, The Christian Topography of Cosmas, 1897, Book II). His account of the frankincense trade of Barbaria is on Frankincense and myrrh.

The name Barbaria, Berber and Bilad al-Barbar

The northern Somali coast was known for some 1,500 years by a name built on barbar:

• Greek, 1st century. The Periplus calls the African shore south of Berenice, in southern Egypt, "the country of the Berbers" (§2), and the ports past the strait, from Avalites to Cape Guardafui, the "far-side" Berber market-towns (§7) (Schoff 1912).
• Greek, 2nd century. Ptolemy calls the gulf south of Guardafui the "Barbaricus bay" and the interior "Barbaria" (above).
• Greek, 6th century. Cosmas: "the country called Barbaria which produces frankincense" (above).
• Arabic, 10th century. Al-Mas'udi calls the Gulf of Aden al-Khalij al-Barbari, "the Berber gulf" (Fauvelle-Aymar et al., Espaces musulmans de la Corne de l'Afrique au Moyen Âge, 2011, ch. 2, §56).
• Arabic, 13th century. Yaqut places Mogadishu "in the land of the Berbers" and adds: "These Berbers are not the same as those who live in the west" (Guillain, Documents sur l'histoire… de l'Afrique orientale, part 1, 1856, pp. 234–235, translated here). See Early Mogadishu.
• Arabic, 1331. Ibn Battuta calls Zeila "the capital of the Berberah" and their land "a desert, which extends two months' march, beginning at Zayla' and ending at Maqdashaw" (quoted in Fauvelle-Aymar et al. 2011, §93). Fauvelle-Aymar and his colleagues note that the Berbera of the Arab writers "are generally identified with the Somali" (§94).
• Chinese, 9th and 13th centuries. Po-pa-li and Pi-p'a-lo, read by the translators as Berbera. See Chinese records of the Somali coast.
• Today. The port of Berbera keeps the name.

On the word itself. Schoff wrote in 1912 that the name "seems to be foreign to the people", suggested it is "probably related to the Arabic bar, a desert", and noted the same name across Africa: the Somali port of Berbera, the Nile town of Berber, and the Berbers of North Africa (Schoff 1912, notes, p. 56). The Greek barbaros meant anyone who did not speak Greek. Yaqut himself notes that the Arabic word was used for two different peoples, in the Horn and in North Africa.

Related pages

• Before 1300: the ancient Somali lands
• The Land of Punt and the Somali coast
• Books about the Somalis before 1500