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Sheekh (Sheikh) and the Fardowsa ruins
Sheekh (Sheikh) is a highland town at about 1,430 m in the Golis mountains, on the Berbera–Burco road, 71 km from Berbera. Beside it lie the Fardowsa ruins, one of the largest medieval towns found in the Horn, which traded with Arabia, India and China from about the 1300s to the early 1500s. The modern town grew from a religious community founded in the 1800s.
Where it is
Sheekh lies at about 1,430 m on a plateau in the Golis mountains, about 71 km from Berbera on the coast and about 60 km from Burco inland (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland). The paved Berbera–Burco road climbs from hot, dry Berbera, passes the village of Laaleys at about 46 km, and reaches the Sheikh pass at about 1,490 m through a series of hairpin bends (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland).
Before 1991 Sheekh district was one of the districts of Togdheer. Somaliland moved it to the new Saaxil region in 2002, and its 2019 regions and districts law confirmed Sheekh as a district capital (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland; Somaliland regions and districts law 2019).
The Fardowsa ruins
Next to Sheekh are the ruins of Fardowsa, one of the largest medieval settlements found in the Horn of Africa (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland). Excavations show it was lived in from at least the late 1300s and flourished in the 1400s, in the time of the Adal Sultanate, on the caravan route between Berbera and the interior (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland; Journal of African Archaeology, Fardowsa study).
The ruins have multi-room stone buildings with walls more than 1.2 m high. Finds include an Arab coin, glass bangles and pieces of Chinese porcelain. Compared with other inland sites of the time, Fardowsa has an unusually large amount of imported pottery and glass, which suggests it traded directly with the Indian Ocean world rather than only seeing goods pass through (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland; Journal of African Archaeology).
The town declined in the early 1500s, a time of falling trade with Asia, Portuguese warfare in the Red Sea and the wars between Adal and Ethiopia. Archaeologists found no clear sign that it was destroyed by force (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland).
A German explorer described the ruins in 1882: they stretched about 1,000 m north along a mountain slope, with the outlines of houses, courtyards, streets and two large squares, built of stone and clay. He estimated 6,000 to 8,000 past inhabitants and wrote that local people had several times found gold coins there and sold them to merchants at Berbera (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland).
For the full archaeology, see Fardowsa, a medieval trading town.
The pass and the religious settlement
After Fardowsa declined, the Sheikh pass stayed an important caravan road to Berbera. The Isse Musse protected caravans through the pass for payment, and their Musa Jibril branch levied tolls on the pass and the coast roads (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland).
The modern town grew from a religious community (tariqa) led by Sayyid Adan Ahmad, a scholar of the Habar Awal who had studied for ten years in the Hejaz. I. M. Lewis dated its founding to about 1885. The historian Sayid-Ahmed Dhegey, a descendant of one of the founders, dates it to 1850–1855, and the German traveller Josef Menges met Sayyid Adan there in 1882 (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland).
Sheikh Secondary School
Just outside the town is a secondary school founded in 1958, later run by SOS Children's Villages as the SOS Hermann Gmeiner Sheikh Secondary School. It was looted and destroyed by government troops in 1989 and reopened in 2003 (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland). A few months after it reopened, the British couple who had restored it were killed at the school (The Telegraph, 2003); Wikipedia attributes the killing to members of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland). Former students include Somaliland presidents Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal and Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo. The Pharo Foundation took over the school in 2019; it had about 260 students in 2022 (Pharo Foundation).
People and climate
Most people are from the Mohamed Isse branch of the Isse Musse, Habar Awal Isaaq, with a smaller Habar Yonis presence (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland). Sheekh has a semi-arid climate cooled by its height, averaging 19.1°C, from 14.4°C in January to 22.5°C in June, with about 466 mm of rain a year, most of it in the Gu rains of April and May (Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland; Climate-Data.org).
Sources
Sources
- Wikipedia: Sheikh, Somaliland · en.wikipedia.org
- Somaliland regions and districts law 2019 · somalilandlaw.com
- Journal of African Archaeology, Fardowsa study · doi.org
- The Telegraph, 2003 · telegraph.co.uk
- Pharo Foundation · pharofoundation.org
- Climate-Data.org · web.archive.org
- Wikidata Q256295 · wikidata.org
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