The 'nomad kings': great cairns of the Somali and Afar lowlands, about 650–1000 AD

In short

Very little is known of the Somali and Afar lowlands between the end of the Roman trade and the Muslim towns of the 1100s. This page follows a 2025 excavation report that fills part of that gap, based on work by the Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit-CSIC) of Spain and the Djiboutian research centre IRAH-CERD (González-Ruibal, de Torres Rodríguez et al., "Rise of the Nomad Kings: Pastoral Polities in the Horn of Africa (A.D. 650–1000)", Journal of Field Archaeology 50.8, 2025, pp. 737–766, open access). The digs were in southern Djibouti, near the borders of Somaliland and Ethiopia. The team also mapped cairn cemeteries in western Somaliland from satellite images (p. 738).

The setting

The authors note that the region between the Bab el-Mandeb and central Somaliland was known to Greek, Roman and then Islamic writers as Barbaria, and its people as Barbar. Citing the historian G. W. Bowersock, they suggest the name is "probably not related to 'Barbarian' but to a local ethnonym *Barbar" (p. 738). See Greek and Roman writers on the Somali coast.

They write that the lowlands "remained strictly nomadic" until the first stone-built settlements of the 12th century, and that before their work, "for the period between the late 2nd millennium B.C. and the arrival of Islam during the 12th–13th centuries A.D., our archaeological knowledge was basically non-existent" for this area (p. 738).

What was dug

The team surveyed five clusters of cemeteries in the Dikhil and Ali Sabieh regions, with 154 cairns in all, and dug ten cairns at Unda Kontali, Abou Youssouf and Daas Biyo (pp. 739–740). They describe four forms: simple cairns, and cairns on raised, low or flat platforms. Simple cairns are commonly about 12 metres across; the largest, on a platform at Guistir, reaches 57 metres, and the main cairn at Daas Biyo 45 metres (p. 739). Some combine black basalt with red rhyolite and white sandstone carried from far away; the authors note that red and white are important colours in Afar tradition (p. 739). Most cairns had been looted, some with bulldozers (p. 739).

Dates

All seven burials with radiocarbon dates were built between about 650 and 1000 AD. Four more cairns in Djibouti and Somaliland (at Guistir, Yirowe and Jidhali) are dated to the same span by imported pottery, and a cairn in Somaliland by an earlier radiocarbon date. The authors conclude that "no large cairns existed before the 7th century A.D. or after the 11th century A.D.", and that building was most intense in the 7th and 8th centuries (p. 754). Their report also illustrates a small cairn at Bulhar in Somaliland, dated to the 10th century (p. 759, fig. 24).

What was found

The cairns held few goods, partly because of looting (pp. 740, 753). Among the finds the authors list (pp. 741–742, 754–758, table 4):

• From the region: three-legged and footed pots and grinding stones from the Harar area and the Ethiopian highlands. The authors suggest the pots were used to burn incense.
• From further away: turquoise-glazed "Sasanian-Islamic" pottery from the Persian Gulf, dated 7th–10th centuries; Roman honeycomb-patterned glass and a black glass perfume bottle; glass from Egypt or Syria of the 8th–9th centuries; pottery from Yemen; and cowrie and olive shells, which they trace to the Maldives.

They note that the same Persian Gulf pottery has been found at Yirowe and Jidhali in Somaliland and at Gezira in southern Somalia (pp. 757–758).

How the authors read the evidence

• Rank, not just wealth. They estimate that the main cairn at Daas Biyo needed "a minimum of 500 people working for four days". Comparing tomb sizes across three periods, they give a mean diameter of 17.65 metres for 120 cairns of 650–1000 AD, against 5.97 metres for 87 cairns of the 1st–3rd centuries at Heis and 6.82 metres for 142 Muslim ring graves after 1200, with far greater inequality in the middle period (pp. 755–756, 762, table 3). See Heis (Xiis).
• Kings and queens without a capital. They argue for "a process of hierarchization but not centralization": rival leaders, "probably clan heads", each with their own cemetery at a watering place or route junction. They note that "such leaders were not necessarily only men", citing queens of oral memory such as Gudit and Araweelo and the Somali title boqoraad (p. 761). They use "king" for a paramount leader, noting that the Somali boqor is usually translated so (p. 738).
• Why then. They list five factors: nomads' place in Indian Ocean trade from the 1st century; their control of incense, myrrh and salt; their close ties with Aksum, shown by a contingent "from Barbaria" in Aksum's expedition to Himyar in 525; the fall of Aksum and Himyar in the 7th century; and the rise of the Harla in the Harar highlands (pp. 761–763). See Aksum and the Adulis inscription and The Harla.
• Trade moves east. With Adulis abandoned by about 650 AD, they argue that "long-distance trade was simply displaced from the north to the east of the Horn", to Zeila, and that "the Islamization of Zeila coincides chronologically with the end of cairn-building in the region" (pp. 757–759). See Early Zeila.
• Before the sultanates. They conclude that the Muslim states of the 12th century onward "did not develop in a vacuum: they were the evolution and culmination of previous political formations, including nomad polities" (p. 763).

Related pages

• Ancient burials, standing stones and towns
• From cairns to cemeteries: medieval Muslim graves
• Before 1300: the ancient Somali lands