Mogadishu and its elders

Who rules

Title

No king: the town's affairs are managed by its leading men (al-mutaqaddimun, 'those set in front'), the elders of its lineages

Since

Not pinned; the arrangement is described by Yaqut about 1220-1228 and is the nearest written evidence to 1200

Family

The town's lineages: in tradition Arab and Persian immigrant clans (later remembered as the founders of the Benadiri or Reer Hamar) living alongside Somali families; the Banu Majid from al-Mundhiriyya in Yemen settled there after 1159 (Ibn al-Mujawir)

Confidence

medium

Yaqut says the townsmen have no king and that their affairs are run by their leading men according to their own customs, and that a visiting merchant must lodge with one of them, who stands surety for him. The dynasty of Abu Bakr ibn Fakhr al-Din, which made Mogadishu a sultanate, is dated by Oliver (1975) to the second half of the thirteenth century: later.

Overlord

None. No outside power claims Mogadishu in 1200: the Ayyubid ruler of Yemen holds Aden across the sea but has no reach here.

What the realm holds

• The town on the coast: Shangani, the older quarter in Chittick's and Jama's view, with Hamarweyne beside it and the ruined Hamar Jajab, which Jama takes for the oldest core (the medieval town may have been larger than these quarters)
• Its gardens, wells and near pastures behind the dunes
• The anchorage, and the landing places along the coast towards Jazira (not pinned)

How it was acquired

Founding traditions put the town's origin in the tenth century or earlier: the Portuguese version of the Kilwa Chronicle (de Barros) says Arabs from al-Ahsa in eastern Arabia founded Mogadishu and later Barawa; the late Kitab al-Zunuj speaks of a council of Arab and Persian clans. Modern scholars stress that Somali communities lived on this coast before them and that the immigrants settled among them. Archaeology (Chittick, Jama, Sinclair) puts the town's foundation in the twelfth century: the earliest levels at the Shangani mosque are of the eleventh or twelfth century, mostly local pottery with Aden sgraffiato, and the mosque's first building phase is of about 1200.

Ibn al-Mujawir (about 1230) says the Banu Majid of al-Mundhiriyya fled Yemen in 1159 and settled in Mogadishu, with people from Abyan and elsewhere.

Allies and rivals

Partners: the merchants of Aden and the Hadramawt, the Gulf traders (the island of Kish dominates Gulf shipping in these years), Gujarati and other Indian merchants. Neighbours: the Somali herders of the hinterland (the Hawiya of al-Idrisi round Merca and the Shabelle), on whose goodwill the caravans and the town's water and pasture depend; Merca and Barawa down the coast. Rival: Kilwa, which according to the Kilwa Chronicle took the Sofala gold trade from Mogadishu (date not pinned).

The realm that morning

Self-governing under its elders on 1 January 1200, as far as the sources tell. North of the town's ground (beyond about 3 N) lie the Somali clans of the Horn sheet; inland are the Hawiya and the farmers of the Shabelle (provinces on this sheet).

Wealth

Sea trade on the north-east monsoon (ships arrive about November to February) and the south-west monsoon (return voyages about April to September): ivory, ambergris, ebony, sandalwood (Yaqut), hides, aromatics, slaves; imports of cloth, glazed pottery from the Gulf and Yemen, glass, beads, Chinese stoneware. The weaving for which Mogadishu was famous in Ibn Battuta's day (1331) is not documented for 1200. Gold: the Kilwa Chronicle says Mogadishu's merchants first held the trade of Sofala before Kilwa took it.

That change is dated by some to the late twelfth century and by others (reading the chronicle with the coin evidence) to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth: on the later dating Mogadishu's merchants still dominate the Sofala gold trade on 1 January 1200. Not pinned.

Military

No standing force recorded. The town's protection rests on its lineages and on its alliances with the herders of the hinterland. No wall is recorded for 1200.

Threats

• Loss of the Sofala gold trade to Kilwa (the Kilwa Chronicle's story; date not pinned)
• Disputes with the herders of the hinterland over water, pasture and the caravan roads
• Drought years on the Benadir

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.

In 1200

1. 1200 (no dated event)The north-east monsoon fleet from Aden, the Gulf and India is in port in January and February and sails home on the south-west monsoon from about April.Depends on: The monsoon Stopped by: War at sea or a failed season

Later, on the likely course

1. 1238 (later)The minaret of the Friday mosque is built (dated inscription).Depends on: The town's growth Stopped by: Nothing in 1200 bears on it
2. Second half of the thirteenth century (later)Abu Bakr ibn Fakhr al-Din founds the sultanate that rules Mogadishu in Ibn Battuta's day.Depends on: Later politics Stopped by: Not a 1200 event

Places of note

• Friday mosque of Hamarweyne (Jama'a): Its minaret carries the date 636 AH (1238): the building may be older, the dated work is later than 1200

Where the sources disagree

• Ibn Battuta (1331) finds a sultan; one modern reading (after Freeman-Grenville's study of the coins, the first issued by Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad about 1322) puts the change from a republic of patricians to a sultanate only in the early fourteenth century, later than Oliver's thirteenth-century date for Abu Bakr ibn Fakhr al-Din.
• Wikipedia's Mogadishu and Sultanate of Mogadishu articles give a tenth-century sultanate, ninth- or tenth-century coins and a 1180s capture of Sofala by Kilwa: none of this is supported for 1200 by the dated evidence; the coins of Mogadishu are dated by numismatists from about 1300, and the founding of the Fakhr al-Din dynasty is put in the thirteenth century. Yaqut's 'no king' is the nearest written statement to 1200.
• Some Italian accounts make Abu Bakr ibn Fakhr al-Din a ruler of the early thirteenth century; Oliver (1975) puts him in the second half: either way he does not rule on 1 January 1200.

Evidence: One written description close to the date (Yaqut, about 1220-1228), one mention of an immigrant group (Ibn al-Mujawir), later traditions, and dated inscriptions from 1238 onwards. No excavation has fixed the town's extent in 1200.

On the map: The town's ground in 1200 is not recorded; the modern city district is used as its near land.

Primary sources for this realm

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.