People or land · The Somali clans · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Ogaden herders

The great dry plateau south of the Harar highlands and the northern Somali ranges, drained by the seasonal Fafan and Jerer towards the Shabelle, with the waterless Haud along its northern edge: camel, sheep and goat country of wells and rain-pools, grazed in the wet seasons and crossed by the routes from the Harar plateau to the Shabelle and the Benadir.

Its name comes from the Ogaden clan of the Darod, whose dominance here is much later (the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries in the traditions). On 1 January 1200 the people of this plateau are Cushitic herders, very probably Somali-speaking, whose clans cannot be named: Hawiye tradition puts its first homeland here, and Harla tradition claims the interior of the Ogaden before the Somali and Oromo movements. The Oromo, whose homeland lies far to the south-west in Bale and Borana (eth sheet), have not yet come north.

Who holds it

Title
Lineage elders of the herders
Since
Not applicable
Confidence
low

How things stand that morning

No war recorded. North-west the Harla towns of the Harar plateau; west the Muslim lands of Bale (eth sheet); south the Shabelle valley and the Benadir (eaf sheet); east the Hawiye and the Darod.

Customs

Pastoral transhumance between wells and rain-pools; lineage councils and customary law.

Assemblies

Not recorded.

Overlord claims

None in 1200.

Where the sources disagree

  • A province of ignorance: the herders are certain, their names and clans for 1200 are not.

Evidence: No written source of the period; later tradition and the distribution of peoples only.

On the map: Very approximate; the line with Bale in the west is the eth sheet's to settle.

Primary sources for Somali clans

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • The History of the Observant Traveller: the pages on Zeila, Berbera, Mogadishu and Dahlak, Ibn al-Mujawir (Yusuf ibn Yaqub ibn al-Mujawir) (about 1221 to 1230). The closest description of the Horn's ports to 1200, written about twenty-five years later by a trader and official who worked the Aden trade: Zeila and its traffic in slaves, ivory and the goods of the Ethiopian interior; the Barbar (Somali) coast with Berbera and Mogadishu, and the sea route from Aden to Mogadishu and on to Kilwa with its sailing seasons; the Dahlak islands with their own sultan and his dues; Socotra; and the customs and prices of Aden under the Ayyubids of Yemen. Read online
  • Dictionary of Countries: the entries on Africa, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Mosul and Aleppo). Entries written within a generation of 1200 from earlier books and from informants: Maqdishu (Mogadishu), described as a town of the Barbar (Somali) on the edge of the Zanj country with no single ruler but elders for each group, the earliest notice of the town; Manbasa (Mombasa), Lanjuya (Zanzibar) and the Zanj coast; Zayla, Barbara and the Dahlak islands; Dunqula (Dongola) and the Nubians; the Beja; Kanem, Zaghawa, Ghana, Kawkaw and the Sudan, mostly from al-Bakri and al-Idrisi; and the towns of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. Read online
  • Records of Foreign Peoples: the entries on the African coast and Egypt, Zhao Rugua (1225, at Quanzhou). A Song customs inspector's handbook, written from merchants' reports, that reaches the African coast within a generation of 1200: Bipaluo (Berbera) with its ostriches and giraffes, Zhongli (the Somali coast), Cengba (Zanzibar and the Zanj coast) with its ivory and ambergris and its trade with the Arabs, Kunlun Cengqi (perhaps Madagascar or Pemba), and Wusili (Egypt) with Alexandria's lighthouse. Read online
  • The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. Read online
  • The Pleasure of One who Longs to Cross the Horizons (the Book of Roger), al-Idrisi (Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi) (completed in 1154 at Palermo, for Roger II of Sicily). The fullest geography of Africa a generation before 1200: the Maghreb and Ifriqiya town by town with distances and products; the Sahara routes through Sijilmasa, Awdaghust, Ghadames and Zawila; the Sudan with Ghana, Takrur, Sila, Barisa, Kawkaw (Gao) and Kugha, and Kanem with its towns Manan and Njimi; Nubia and Dongola, the Beja and the Red Sea ports; Zeila and Berbera; and the Zanj coast with Malindi, Mombasa, Qanbalu and Sofala with its gold, the earliest systematic notice of the Swahili towns. Read online
  • The Travels of Ibn Battuta: Egypt, the Horn, the Swahili coast and Mali, Ibn Battuta (dictated to Ibn Juzayy) (1355, at Fez). A century and a half late, but the first eyewitness of places that in 1200 are known only from hearsay: Zeila and its stench, Mogadishu with its sultan, qadi and merchant hosts, Mombasa, and Kilwa under the Mahdali sultan Abu'l-Muzaffar al-Hasan, raiding the Zanj of the mainland; and the Sahara road from Sijilmasa through Taghaza and Walata to the court of Mali under Mansa Sulayman, then Timbuktu, Gao and Takedda among the veiled Berbers. Read online
  • The East African Coast: Select Documents, Various (edited and translated by G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville) (the collection published 1962; second edition 1975). The standard English collection for the coast, and the one place to read together everything written about the Swahili towns near 1200: al-Masudi and Buzurg ibn Shahriyar (tenth century), al-Idrisi (1154), Yaqut (1220s), Ibn al-Mujawir (1220s), Ibn Said, the Chinese notices of Duan Chengshi and Zhao Rugua (1225), Ibn Battuta's visit of 1331, the Kilwa Chronicle in both versions, and the Portuguese.

Sources and studies

  1. I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali (4th ed., 2002), chapter 1, and Peoples of the Horn of Africa (1955); from the researcher's knowledge, not re-read for this record
  2. Wikipedia: Hawiye
  3. Wikipedia: Harla people

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.