Mogadishu

Who holds it

Title

Governed by its leading men (al-mutaqaddimun) without a king (Yaqut)

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

medium

Lord in 1200

Self-governing under the elders of its lineages: Yaqut (about 1220-1228) says the townsmen have no king and their affairs are regulated by their leading men according to their customs.

How things stand that morning

Self-governing; the khutba would name the Abbasid caliph (al-Nasir) as everywhere among Sunni Muslims, but nothing is recorded.

Charter

None known: the town's customs (istilahat) are its law, as Yaqut puts it.

Council

The leading men (mutaqaddimun), the heads of its lineages, decide its affairs; a Muslim judge (qadi) is likely but not recorded for 1200. Later tradition remembers the town as a federation of clans of Arab, Persian and Somali descent (the later Benadiri or Reer Hamar).

Communities

Sunni Muslim townsmen of mixed Somali, Arab and Persian descent; Arab immigrant groups from Yemen (the Banu Majid after 1159); visiting merchants from Aden, the Hadramawt, the Gulf and India; Somali herders who come in to trade.

Fairs and markets

The monsoon season: ships arrive with the north-east wind (about November to February) and leave with the south-west (about April to September). Visiting merchants lodge with a host who stands surety and deals for them (Yaqut).

Militia

Not recorded; the lineages and their Somali allies.

Walls and castle

No wall or citadel recorded for 1200.

Trade and crafts

Exports: ivory, ambergris, ebony, sandalwood (Yaqut), hides, aromatics and slaves; gold from the south if the Kilwa Chronicle's story of Mogadishu's Sofala trade applies to these years (not pinned). Imports: cloth, Yemeni and Gulf glazed pottery (Aden sgraffiato in the earliest levels), glass, beads. Local weaving is famous by 1331 (Ibn Battuta) but not attested for 1200.

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1238 and 1268-1269 (later)The Friday mosque of Hamarweyne (1238), the Arba'a Rukun and Fakhr al-Din mosques (1268-1269) are built.Depends on: Continued prosperity Stopped by: Nothing in 1200

Places of note

• Shangani mosque: Its first building phase dates to about 1200 (Sinclair 1986): perhaps under construction or newly built on 1 January 1200
• Jama'a (Friday) mosque of Hamarweyne: Mihrab inscription of 1238: later

Where the sources disagree

• Popular accounts make Hamarweyne the oldest quarter; Chittick and Jama think Shangani the older, and Jama puts the ruined Hamar Jajab earlier still.

Evidence: Yaqut (about 1220-1228) and Ibn al-Mujawir (about 1230) after the date; Ibn Samura's mention before it; rescue excavation at the Shangani mosque; inscriptions from about 1200.

Primary sources for Mogadishu

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 Kilwa Chronicle (Arabic version about 1520 to 1530; Portuguese summary printed by João de Barros in 1552). The only narrative for the Swahili coast before the Portuguese, in two versions that agree on the dynasty and disagree on much else: the arrival of Ali ibn al-Hasan from Shiraz, his purchase of the island, and the line of his descendants, with reign lengths that put Sulayman ibn al-Hasan, Dawud ibn Sulayman, Talut and Husayn ibn Sulayman in the decades around 1200 (Bosworth's conversion gives Husayn about 1191 to 1215), the winning of Sofala's gold trade, and later the Mahdali dynasty of Abu'l-Mawahib. Read online
• The coins of Kilwa and the early Swahili inscriptions (coins struck from about the eleventh century; dated inscriptions from 1107). The only contemporary writing from the coast around 1200.
• 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
• 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
• 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 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
• 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.