Nomads, towns and the state under Ifat and Adal: what archaeology suggests

In short

This page follows an article by Jorge de Torres Rodríguez of the Incipit-CSIC institute in Spain (de Torres Rodríguez, "Built on diversity: Statehood in Medieval Somaliland (12th–16th centuries AD)", Anejos de Nailos 6, 2020, pp. 159–188, open access). He asks how the sultanates of Ifat and Adal held together peoples with "very different beliefs, lifestyles, languages and ethnicities" for more than three centuries (p. 159). For the political history, see The sultanate of Shewa and the founding of Ifat and Imam Ahmad and Adal, 1527–1543.

The sites

By 2020 the team had mapped 27 medieval sites in Somaliland, partly dug seven, and recorded more than 500 burial mounds (p. 165). De Torres groups them in four settings (pp. 165–167):

• The coast. Of the three ports named by Arab and Portuguese sailors, Zeila, Berbera and Maydh, he writes that only Zeila was a city. The usual trading place was a seasonal fair with few buildings, such as Farhad, Bandar Abbas or Siyaara, used by nomads in the trading season from October to April. See The trade fairs of the Berbera coast.
• Around Sheekh. Fardowsa and its neighbouring villages stood at the first resting place for caravans after the coastal plain, with the caravan station of Qalcadda nearby. See Fardowsa.
• Around Borama. Eighteen sites were known, eight of them studied, from towns such as Amud and Abasa to hamlets such as Aroqolab. They had few imports and, he writes, "a clear agricultural vocation". Derbi Cad was a hilltop stronghold, and Dameraqad a religious centre. See Abasa.
• Nomad sites. Cairns along the wadis, mosques outlined on the ground, and the funerary sanctuary of Iskudar.

What the towns had in common

De Torres describes the towns as alike everywhere (pp. 172–176):

• Layout. Houses were scattered with no street plan. Only Derbi Cad and Qalcadda were walled, which he explains by their distance from the Christian frontier.
• Houses. They were square or rectangular, usually 20–40 square metres, with two or three rooms, built of flat stones set in mud.
• Mosques. These were the main buildings, with square mihrabs, sometimes walled courtyards, and no minarets or minbars, unlike the 16th-century mosques of Zeila. See Medieval mosques of Somaliland.
• Graves. Most were slab-lined cists, but cemeteries varied more than houses did.
• Pottery. Local handmade pots were highly standard, with no local fine wares.

He notes that pottery published from Harar and Shewa looks closer to highland Ethiopian traditions, and suggests there were "different regional traditions" within the sultanates (p. 179).

The nomads

De Torres describes the yearly cycle of herders in Somaliland, citing I. M. Lewis: south to the Haud after the Gu rains of April, back north in the hot Hagaa season and the Dayr rains, and to home wells for the dry Jiilaal (pp. 180–181). He writes that cairns became especially widespread in the late first and early second millennia AD, and that open-air mosques were later added beside them (p. 181).

• Iskudar was a sanctuary in use from about the mid-12th to the late 14th century. He describes its feasts among the cairns as having a "clear non-Islamic background", which he takes as a sign that older beliefs lasted "well into the 14th century" among nomads (pp. 167, 182, 185).
• Dameraqad, recorded by Curle as a village, has 12–15 buildings, at least three of them mosques, and large graves ringed with stones. After it was abandoned, nomads built a carefully made open-air mosque in front of it, its floor laid with pink quartz. De Torres contrasts this with Iskudar: nomads "who were pagans two centuries ago" kept visiting a Muslim site (pp. 185–187).

He notes that medieval texts mention Somali groups in the sultanate and that The Conquest of Abyssinia sometimes calls them unruly. He cites it for both Somali clans defying Imam Ahmad, mostly outside Adal's borders, and others, such as the Girri, seeking his protection (p. 182). See Futuh al-Habasha.

Three "spheres of interest"

De Torres proposes that the sultanates were held together less by a shared material culture than by three areas where groups met and cooperated (pp. 183–188):

• Trade. Nomads controlled the routes and the coastal fairs, and he argues trade "would have been impossible without their participation". He points to Qalcadda, a walled enclosure of 55 by 90 metres with round corner bastions and a courtyard building like Middle Eastern caravan stations, as "explicit evidence" of state control. He also notes there are no recorded incidents over trade in the texts.
• Religion. He cites oral traditions of missionaries such as Sheikh Isaaq, said to have come to Zeila in 1153 and settled at Maydh, and Aw Barkhadle. He also notes sites named after holy men, such as Aw Barkhadle, Aw Bare and Aw Boba. See Aw Bare and Aw Boba.
• War. He writes that nomads were "fully and systematically incorporated" into Adal's armies in the 16th century, while some Somali groups outside Adal resisted Imam Ahmad's rule and taxes, or sided with the sultan's party, which favoured peace with Ethiopia.

The end of the towns

He argues that in the 16th century war and religion merged into jihad, the Portuguese disrupted trade, and Imam Ahmad sought tighter control of land and resources. After defeats by Ethiopia and the Oromo, he writes, only religion remained, "and for this unifying force a state was not strictly necessary anymore". He adds that it "would be derogative to consider it a collapse": the new order was, in his words, "as stable and efficient as the previous one, but less diverse and based on the nomadic culture" (p. 188).

Related pages

• Ruined towns of the Somali interior
• From cairns to cemeteries: medieval Muslim graves
• Kabab and the medieval towns of the Gebiley region
• Dakar, the lost capital of Adal, 1415–1520
• The seven Muslim kingdoms of the Horn: tribute, trade and money