The Baardheere jamaaca, 1819 to 1843: a religious reform town on the Jubba

The first Somali jamaaca

A jamaaca is a religious farming settlement built around a sheikh and his students. The Library of Congress country study records that in 1819 "Shaykh Ibrahim Hassan Jebro acquired land on the Jubba River and established a religious center in the form of a farming community, the first Somali jamaa" (Library of Congress, Somalia: A Country Study, 1992). Other sources date the founding of the fortified town of Baardheere to 1819 to 1823 and spell the founder's name Jeberow or Yabarow (Reconquest of Jubaland, Wikipedia, citing Abdurahman, Eno and Kusow, and Loimeier, Muslim Societies in Africa, 2013; Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim, Wikipedia).

Its rules

The community introduced reforms in the name of Islamic law (Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim, Wikipedia):

• tobacco and popular dancing were banned;
• women were required to wear Islamic dress;
• the ivory trade was banned.

The French naval officer Charles Guillain, who visited the coast in the 1840s, called its leader "an enraged puritan, a great reformer" and wrote that most local people did not accept its rule (Guillain, Documents sur l'histoire, la géographie et le commerce de l'Afrique orientale, 1856, pp. 36–38, Internet Archive). See the Geledi sultanate, which summarises Guillain's account.

Growth, 1830s

In the mid-1830s the community won many followers among herding families who had moved into the upper Jubba valley from the Ogaden. It took control of farming settlements there, including Luuq, the main trading stop between Kismaayo and Harar. By the late 1830s it had almost 20,000 followers (Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim, Wikipedia). Its sheikhs also led campaigns against Oromo groups in the Jubba lands (Reconquest of Jubaland, Wikipedia).

War with Geledi, 1840 to 1843

By 1840 the community's fighters reached Baidoa and took Barawa, a port of the Geledi sultanate and an old centre of the Qadiriyya order. The Geledi resented the community's block on long-distance trade through Luuq and the disruption of farming in the Jubba and Shabelle valleys (Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim, Wikipedia, citing a JSTOR study). People of Barawa sent a delegation and a gift of 200 piastres to Sultan Yuusuf Maxamuud asking for help (Guillain, p. 38, via the Geledi sultanate page).

Sultan Yuusuf led a coalition of the clans between the rivers. Wikipedia gives its size as 40,000, mostly Digil fighters. In 1843 the coalition besieged Baardheere; accounts say the town was burned and not resettled until the 1860s (Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim, Wikipedia). Sources differ on the allies: some name the Tunni of Barawa with the Geledi, and say the Bimaal of Merca sided with Baardheere or stayed out (same article).

After Baardheere

In 1847 Sheikh Cali Majeerteen landed at Merca with about 150 armed followers, aiming to found an Islamic emirate, in alliance with the Bimaal. Wikipedia, citing a later study, links his ideas to those of the Baardheere community (Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim, Wikipedia). Later in the 1800s, the Sufi orders founded dozens of jamaaco along the Jubba and Shabelle; by the 1950s there were more than 90 (Library of Congress, 1992). See the Sufi orders in Somalia.

Read further

• Lee V. Cassanelli, The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600–1900 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), which covers the Baardheere community and the Geledi wars.
• Charles Guillain, Documents sur l'histoire, la géographie et le commerce de l'Afrique orientale (Paris, 1856).