Benadir Coast

Archaeology of the Benadir zone has also been confined to the coastal area and to the large ports. The bulk of this research has concentrated on Ras Hafun and Mogadishu. Presence of South Asian, ‘Mesopotamian’, Roman, Early Sassanian, and Egyptian ceramics suggests that Ras Hafun was active in the Early Common Era trade. However, the main trading port on the Benadir Coast was the city of Mogadishu and the articulated settlements of Brawa, Merca, Warsheikh, and Kismayo. While most of the other ports on the Somali coast have declined, the Mogadishu port cluster is still active and formed the basis for ongoing trade between the hinterland and coast of southern Somalia from the seventeenth century to the present. Unlike the northern coast, there was no hinterland polity associated with the ports on the Benadir coast until the sixteenth century CE. Analysis of imported Persian, Indian, Egyptian, and Chinese trade wares in these ports suggests that Mogadishu, Brawa, and Merca arose between the ninth and tenth centuries within a similar context as the ports further south along the Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Mozambique coasts: The coastal settlements were articulated with hinterland agricultural and pastoral groups. The ports provided forums for exchange of hinterland and overseas products. The elites of Mogadishu and other ports were linked through kinship, blood-brotherhood, and marital alliances with hinterland pastoral and agricultural groups and depended on these for protection. It is not inconceivable that the trade boom and demand for African products c. CE 1500 led to the rise of the Islamic Ajurann Confederacy (CE 1500-1700) and state development among the Somali in the Benadir hinterland. This period is also known for major demographic movements in the Benadir hinterland, including the migration of the Oromo pastoralists and their wars with the Somali to the northeast and the Amhara to the north in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leading to their southerly migration over the next two centuries. Not only did these migrations precipitate political changes in the Horn of Africa but also central and eastern Africa.