Mogadishu > Muqdisho Banaadir Somalia

The southern city of Mogadishu will become Somalia's most important city in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Mogadishu, Merca, and Baraawe are major Somali coastal towns in medieval times.

Their origins are unknown, but by the fourteenth century travelers are mentioning the three towns more and more as important centers of urban ease and learning.

Mogadishu, the largest and most prosperous, dates back at least to the ninth century, when Persian and Arabian immigrants intermingle with Somali elements to produce a distinctive hybrid culture.

The meaning of Mogadishu's name is uncertain.

Some render it as a Somali version of the Arabic "maqad shah," or "imperial seat of the shah," thus hinting at a Persian role in the city's founding.

Others consider it a Somali mispronunciation of the Swahili "mwyu wa" (last northern city), raising the possibility of its being the northernmost of the chain of Swahili city-states on the East African coast.

Whatever its origin, Mogadishu is at the zenith of its prosperity when the well-known Arab traveler Ibn Batuta appears on the Somali coast in 1331.

Ibn Batuta describes "Maqdashu" as "an exceedingly large city" with merchants who export to Egypt and elsewhere the excellent cloth made in the city.

Mogadishu and other coastal commercial towns, through commerce, proselytization, and political clout, influence the Banaadir hinterlands (the rural areas outlying Mogadishu) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Evidence of this influence is the increasing Islamization of the interior by sufis (Muslim mystics) who emigrate upcountry, where they settle among the nomads, marry local women, and bring Islam to temper the random violence of the inhabitants.

It had taken Vasco da Gama's fleet only twenty-three days to cross the Indian Ocean on the outgoing journey, sailing with the summer monsoon wind; now, on the return trip, sailing against the wind, it has taken one hundred and thirty-two days.

Gama sees land again only on January 2, 1499, passing before the coastal Somali city of Mogadishu, at this time under the influence of the Ajuran Empire in the Horn of Africa.

The fleet does not make a stop, but passing before Mogadishu, the anonymous diarist of the expedition notes that it is a large city with houses of four or five stories high and big palaces in its center and many mosques with cylindrical minarets.

The locus of intercommunication shifts upland to the well-watered region between the Shabeelle and Jubba rivers by the end of the sixteenth century.

Evidence of the shift of initiative from the coast to the interior may be found in the rise between 1550 and 1650 of the Ajuran (also seen as Ajuuraan) state, which prospers on the lower reaches of the interriverine region under the clan of the Gareen.

The considerable power of the Ajuran state will not be diminished until the Portuguese penetration of the East African coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Among Somali towns and cities, only Mogadishu successfully resists the repeated depredations of the Portuguese.

The last Portuguese foothold on the East African coast is dislodged in 1728 from the great Mombasa castle of Fort Jesus.

From this point until the European "scramble" for African colonies in the 1880s, the Omanis will exercise a shadowy authority over the Banaadir coast.

Omani rule over the Somalis consists for the most part of a token annual tribute payment and the presence of a resident qadi (Muslim judge) and a handful of askaris (territorial police).

Whereas the Banaadir coast is steadily drawn into the orbit of Zanzibari rulers, ...

The Bu Sa'idi family reaches the peak of its influence under Sa'id, who places the East African Arab and Swahili colonies from Mogadishu (Muqdisho) to ...

Italy, recently unified, is inexperienced at imperial power plays.

It was therefore content to stake out a territory whenever it can do so without confronting another colonial power.

In southern Somalia, better known as the Banaadir coast, Italy is the main colonizer, but the extension of Italian influence is painstakingly slow owing to parliamentary lack of enthusiasm for overseas territory.

Italy acquires its first possession in southern Somalia in 1888 when the Sultan of Hobyo, Keenadiid, agrees to Italian "protection."

In the same year, Vincenzo Filonardi, Italy's architect of imperialism in southern Somalia, demands a similar arrangement from the Majeerteen Sultanate of Ismaan Mahamuud.

In 1889 both sultans, suspicious of each other, consent  to place their lands under Italian protection.

Italy now notifies the signatory powers of the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884-85 of its southeastern Somali protectorate.

Later, Italy seizesthe Banaadir coast proper, which has long been under the tenuous authority of the Zanzibaris, to form the colony of Italian Somaliland.

Chisimayu Region, which passes to the British as a result of their protectorate over the Zanzibaris, will be ceded to Italy in 1925 to complete Italian tenure over southern Somalia.

The catalyst for imperial tenure over Somali territory is Egypt under its ambitious ruler, Khedive Ismail.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this Ottoman vassal seeks to carve out for Egypt a swath of territory in the Horn of Africa.

However, the Sudanese anti-Egyptian Mahdist revolt that broke out in 1884 had shattered the khedive's plan for imperial aggrandizement.

The Egyptians needed British help to evacuate their troops marooned in Sudan and on the Somali coast.