3000-500 B.C
Why didn’t Somalia develop as an early center of civilization like the civilization along the Indus, Euphrates and the Nile valleys?
Northern Somalia’s geographic and climate were a major impediment. Somalia is the only semi-arid country in equatorial Africa because the mountains of Abyssinia act as a rain shadow, trapping moister in Ethiopia and South Sudan. Another reasons that Ethiopia has screwed us since time immemorial. Southern Somalia on the other hand is blessed with two rivers and has the type of topography that made agricultural and by extension civilization possible. Why did complex societies develop along the Nile, Sumer, the Indus and Yellow River, but not the Shabelle and Jubba. I know that South Somalia is probably affect by Tsetse fly and Malaria but southern India and Southeast Asia are effected by the similar condition yet they developed Agricultural, kingdoms and empires by 500 B.C but Somalia did not fallow the same trajectory.
500 B.C – 500 A.D
Northern Somalia was first region to interact with the outside world. 5 cities are mention in the Pericles of the Erythraean Sea: Avalites, Malao, Mundus, Mosyllum, and Opone. These Ports cities traded in spices, frankincense and slaves. We have no records from this time and what legacy they left is either buried or has long turn to dust, so we enter speculative history. What were these cities like were they locations where nomads come to trade in the rainy season were they towns or even walled city-states like in ancient Greece. More importantly what happen to them why did they decline: we know that around 200 A.D Rome reduced their import of Frankincense and societies from Oman to northern Arabia collapse because once you have one church by extension one God, you don’t need to burn as much incense. These ancient cities become deserted and completely forgotten but this process would repeat itself many times in Somali history.
500-1000 A.D
Nothing seems to be happening in Somalia, it could be seen as a dark age. Something must have happen: climate change, social collapse or invasions that irreversible ended one era and brought about the beginning of another.
1000-1500 A.D
The Islamic era the beginning of Somalia history as we know it. It led to a proliferation of cities: in northern Somalia there were Zeila, Harar, Abasa, Amoud Maduna. In southern Somalia there was Moqadhiso, Barawa, Merka, Gondershe,Nimmo. Many of these cities contain Citadels, mosques, aqueducts, lights houses and tombs. These trapping of civilization would have required a large agriculture base and some sort of social hierarchy but we will never know much because Somalis didn’t write their own history we wouldn’t have know about the details of conquest of Abyssinia without the information contain within the Futah Al-habasha. I would kill for a chronicle of the walashma dynasty or the Ajuuran but alas it wasn’t meant to be.
1500-1900 A.D
Time of upheaval, mass migration and social confusion, much of the accomplishment of the previous generation were destroyed. Cities were abandoned, aqueducts and lighthouse fell to disrepair and fields were allowed to fallow effectively everything was allowed to decline. If we look at one example Mogadishu, this city was once the jewel of Somalia but it dynasty was overthrown. The population of the city declined to 5 thousand from a historic high of 50 thousand and become divided into feuding factions: Shangani and Xamarweyn after suffering from plague and civil strife. It would remain in this deplorable state until the Omanis sold their holding in Somalia to the Italians who remade Mogadishu into the capital of Italian Somaliland.
The Technology of making Paper was transferred to the Muslim world at the battle of the Talas River. Chinese engineers brought the technology to the Abbasid court and from there it quickly spread to the rest of the Muslim world. Without this technology the golden age of Abbasid dynasty wouldn’t have occurred. There would have be no libraries, bookstores and most important no House of Wisdom. This technology however did not disseminate the same way in Somalia. In Somalia only wadaad were literate and they alone wrote in Arabic for religious purposes so today we have religious documents but no secular document about ruler and their government have survived. Also Ibn Khaldun says in his book Muqaddimah that civilizations in pre-modern time follow a cycle, a dynasty would emerge on the periphery and due to it stronger social cohesion subdue a decadent social order eg another dynasty. As time goes they become decadent and rote from within thus they are ripe for conquer by the next group and so the cycle repeat again and again. So why didn’t the Somalis fallow this trajectory. The Cissa, Gadabirsi and Garri Kombi didn’t build the abandon cities of northern Somalia I believe the Harla build them just like they build most of the countless abandon cities and palaces in the Harar plateau. Yet these clans inherited little from this advance civilization when Richard Burton was making his celebrated adventure to Harar the Somali Garri Kombo were just begin to settle down and become farmers almost 300 years after the fall of the Harla civilization. The same thing happened to the Hiraab and other migrating northern Somali when they inherited the Ajuuraan and Mogadishu dynasties’ lands. They didn’t assimilate and build on the civilization they inherited. They didn’t become more organized, sedentary or hierarchal instead they remain nomads. Why is it only in Somalia that we see civilizational collapse not once but twice?