The Somalis' connection with the Prophet Muhammad…

1396 CE to 1539 CE

The Somalis' connection with the Prophet Muhammad may be partly explained by the history of commercial and intellectual contact between the inhabitants of the Arabian and Somali coasts.

Early in the Prophet's ministry, a band of persecuted Muslims had fled, with the Prophet's encouragement, across the Red Sea into the Horn of Africa, where the Muslims were afforded protection by the Ethiopian negus, or king.

Thus, Islam may have been introduced into the Horn of Africa well before the faith took root in its Arabian native soil.

The large-scale conversion of the Somalis had to await the arrival in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries of Muslim patriarchs, in particular, the renowned Shaykh Daarood Jabarti and Shaykh Isahaaq, or Isaaq.

Daarood married Doombira Dir, the daughter of a local patriarch.

Their issue gave rise to the confederacy that forms the largest clan-family  in Somalia, the Daarood.

For his part, Shaykh Isaaq founds the numerous Isaaq clan-family in northern Somalia.

Along with the clan system of lineages, the Arabian shaykhs probably introduced into Somalia the patriarchal ethos and patrilineal genealogy typical of Semitic societies, and gradually replaced the indigenous Somali social organization, which, like that of many other African societies, may have been matrilineal.

Islam's penetration of the Somali coast, along with the immigration of Arabian elements, inspired a second great population movement reversing the flow of migration from northward to southward.

This massive movement, which will ultimately takw the Somalis to the banks of the Tana River and to the fertile plains of Harer in Ethiopia, had commenced in the thirteenth century and continues to the nineteenth century.

At this point, European interlopers appear on the East African scene, ending Somali migration onto the East African plateau.

Locations
Zeila (Zaila) Woqooyi Galbeed Somalia View →

Groups
Arab people View → Persian people View → Somalis View → Islam View → Ethiopia, Solomonid Dynasty of View → Adal Sultanate View → Ottoman Empire View → Adal, Sultanate of View → Christians, Assyrian (Assyrian Church of the East) View → Adal Sultanate View → Abyssinia (also called "Mecca and Medina"), Ottoman eyalet of View → Ethiopia, Solomonid Dynasty of View → Ethiopia, Solomonid Dynasty of View → Ethiopia, Solomonid Dynasty of View →

Topics
Interaction with Subsaharan Africa, Early European View → Abyssinian–Adal war View → Sub-Saharan Africa, Modern View →

Subjects
Faith View → Government View → Custom and Law View →

Regions

Subregions

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