Even before the Italians began to take steps to assert control over their new possessions, another well-armed power was threatening Somali society from the west. Ethiopian King Menilek, having consolidated his power in the Shewa highlands, began to seek out livestock and manpower in the lowlands to the southeast. When Egyptian forces abandoned the Islamic city of Harar in 1885, Menilek moved in. In January 1887, he personally led an army against the forces of the Harari emir Abdullahi and defeated them on the plains outside the walled town. Thus even before Menilek was crowned emperor of Ethiopia (in 1889), Harar had become a symbol of Ethiopian expansion into the Somali Peninsula.
Using Harar as a base, expeditions of armed Ethiopian warriors on horseback set out to exact tribute from the Oromo and Somali populations to the south. By the mid-1890s, these raids were reaching the Shabeelle basin and beyond. In 1896, Ethiopian forces reached the outskirts of Luuq on the upper Jubba River.
Earlier such military forays had been disruptive to trade; in an age of colonial expansion, they assumed even more menacing proportions.
As far away as the Benaadir Coast, Somalis were aware of the Ethiopian threat. In a report which followed the assassination in 1897 of an Italian official in Marka, one of the reasons given for Somali discontent was “a general uneasiness caused by rumors of an Amharic invasion.”
Such rumors proved well founded; in the spring of 1905, an Ethiopian force estimated at several thousand well-armed horsemen pushed down the Shabeelle Valley to the environs of Balcad, about a day’s march from Muqdisho.
A Somali poet in the Afgooye area recorded the episode in the following verses.
When I was still a young man Into the world I loved, the Amhara came. They came from Jigjiga and the confines of Awdal Crossing the Ogaadeen, they killed many from the Karanle They used guns against the people of Imaan Cumar They killed many from the Jidle and Jajeele. [Then] they arrived at Jiiciyow and at the banks of the Webi.
When they reached Jibbirrow they were attacked; The Muslims confronted them and fighting began; In the country near Yaaqle The Mobilayn stood firm and fought with them, The magic of the Gobroon defeated them. [But] when the Amhara left the infidels appeared, Coming from every corner of the world. . .
The poem indicates that the threat of Ethiopian expansion was felt even by those living in the Benaadir hinterland, and that some Somali clans actually engaged in combat with the invading forces. It also suggests that the Ethiopians were initially perceived to be a greater danger than the Italians, who at that time were still confined to their enclaves along the coast. It soon became clear, however, that the Italians had imperial designs on the country as well, and that their presence was far more permanent than that of the Ethiopian raiders. It appeared that any resistance struggle the Somalis would have to wage would be on two fronts.
Cassanelli, Lee V (1982), "The Shaping of Somali Society, Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600-1900"
Does anyone have anymore information about this event?
..datz why u dont see many mobleens these dayz man many number of them died in dat war
