The Sultanate of Mogadishu (Somali: Saldanadda Muqdisho, Arabic: سلطنة مقديشو), also known as Kingdom of Magadazo, was a medieval Muslim sultanate centered in southern Somalia. Established by Abubakr bin Fakhr ad-Din, who served as the first Sultan of the Mogadishu Sultanate and the Fakhr al-Din dynasty. The Fakhr al-Din dynasty ruled up until the late 16th century or start of 1600s until it got replaced by the Muzaffar dynasty. It rose as one of the preeminent powers in the Horn of Africa, and it maintained a vast trading network, dominated the regional gold trade, minted its very own currency, and left an extensive architectural legacy in present-day southern Somalia.
History
Origins and early history
For many years, Mogadishu functioned as the pre-eminent city in the بلد البربر (Bilad al Barbar - "Land of the Berbers"), as medieval Arabic-speakers named the Somali coast.
The founding ethnicity of Mogadishu and its subsequent sultanate has been a topic of intrigue in Somali studies. Ioan Lewis and Enrico Cerulli believed that the city was founded and ruled by a council of Arab and Persian families. However, the reference Lewis and Cerulli received traces back to one 19th-century text called the Kitab Al-Zunuj, which has been discredited by modern scholars as unreliable and unhistorical. More importantly, it contradicts oral, ancient written sources and archaeological evidence on the pre-existing civilizations and communities that flourished on the Somali coast, and to which were the forefathers of Mogadishu and other coastal cities. Thus, the Arab and Persian founding "myths" are regarded as an outdated false colonialist reflection on Africans ability to create their own sophisticated states.
It has now been widely accepted that there were already communities on the Somali coast with ethnic Somali leadership, to whom the Arab and Persian families had to ask for permission to settle in their cities. It also seems the local Somalis retained their political and numerical superiority on the coast while the Muslim immigrants would go through an assimilation process by adopting the local language and culture. This is corroborated by the 1st-century AD Greek document the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, detailing multiple prosperous port cities in ancient Somalia, as well as the identification of ancient Sarapion with the city that would later be known as Mogadishu. When Ibn Battuta visited the sultanate in the 14th century, he identified the Sultan as being of Barbara origin, an ancient term used to describe the ancestors of the Somali people. According to Ross E. Dunn, neither Mogadishu nor any other city on the coast could be considered alien enclaves of Arabs or Persians, but were in-fact Somali towns.
There is no doubt that foreign settlers intermarried with the local natives, which is clearly represented in the rich genealogical traditions of the local people. These early settlers were later followed by waves of successive immigrants, who later gave origin to many tribal groups in the town. The 12th-century Syrian historian Yaqut al-Hamawi (c. 1220) wrote about Mogadishu and called it the richest and most powerful city in the region, and described it as being located in the country of the Berbers, certainly a reference to the Somalis.
The founding of the sultanate is variously dated to the mid-13th century or 1330. In the Cambridge History of Africa (1975), Roland Oliver wrote that the founder of the ruling dynasty, Fakhr ad-Din, was of Arab descent. The name of the ruling dynasty that took over from the Qahtani, Fakhruddin, is also thought to be Arabic. However in his 1331 visit to the sultanate, Ibn Battuta wrote that the sultan was "Barbara" (a term for the native Somalis) who spoke "Maqdishi" (likely Somali) and Arabic. Writing in 1981, Joseph Cuoq said that Fakhr ad-Din's depiction as a poor man who seized the city through marriage indicated that he represents a Somali nomad.
Mogadishu in the accounts of Marco Polo
In the 13th century, the Sultanate of Mogadishu through its trade with medieval China had acquired enough of a reputation in Asia to attract the attention of Kublai Khan. Marco Polo, the renowned Venetian merchant, gave a highly detailed account of Mogadishu's society and the affair with Kublai Khan's envoys where they had imprisoned his envoys on the suspicion of spying.
It is an Island towards the south, about a thousand miles from Socotra. The people are all Saracens, adoring Mohammed. They have four shaykhs, i.e., four Elders, who are said to govern the whole Island. And you must know that it is a most noble and beautiful Island, and one of the greatest in the world, for it is about 4,000 miles in compass. The people live by trade and handicrafts. In this Island, and in another beyond it called Zanzibar, about which we shall tell you afterwards, there are more elephants than in any country in the world. The amount of traffic in elephants' teeth in these two Islands is something astonishing. In this Island, they eat no flesh but that of camels; and of these, they kill an incredible number daily. They say it is the best and wholesome of all flesh; and so they eat of it all the year round. They have in this Island many trees of red sanders, of excellent quality; in fact, all their forests consist of it.
They have also a quantity of ambergris, for whales are abundant in that sea, and they catch numbers of them; and so are Oil-heads, which are a huge kind of fish, which also produce ambergris like the whale. There are numbers of leopards, bears, and lions in the country, and other wild beasts in abundance. Many traders, and many ships go thither with cloths of gold and silk, and many other kinds of goods, and drive a profitable trade. You must know that this Island lies so far south that ships cannot go further south or visit other Islands in that direction, except this one, and that other of which we have to tell you, called Zanzibar. This is because the sea-current runs so strong towards the south that the ships which should attempt it never would get back again. Indeed, the ships of Malabar which visit this island of Mogadishu, and that other of Zanzibar, arrive thither with marvellous speed, for great as the distance is they accomplish it in 20 days, whilst the return voyage takes them more than 3 months. This is because of the strong current running south, which continues with such singular force and in the same direction at all seasons.
It is said that in those other Islands to the south, which the ships are unable to visit because this strong current prevents their return, is found the Griffin, which appears there at certain seasons. The description given of it is however entirely different from what our stories and pictures make it. For persons who had been there and had seen it told Messer Marco Polo that it was for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact that its wings covered an extent of 30 paces, and its quills were 12 paces long, and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air, and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him the bird gryphon swoops down on him and eats him at leisure. The people of those isles call it the Rukh, and it has no other name.
So I do not know if this is a real griffin, or if there be another manner of bird as great. But this I can tell you for certain, that they are not half lion and half bird as our stories do relate; but enormous as they be they are fashioned just like an eagle. The Great Khan sent to those parts to enquire about these curious matters, and the story was told by those who went thither. He also sent to procure the release of an envoy of his who had been despatched thither, and had been detained; so both those envoys had many wonderful things to tell the Great Kaan about those strange islands, and about the birds I have mentioned. They brought (as I heard) to the Great Khan a feather of the said Rukh, which was stated to measure 90 spans, whilst the quill part was two palms in circumference, a marvellous object! The Great Khan was delighted with it, and gave great presents to those who brought it. They also brought two boar's tusks, which weighed more than 14 lbs. a piece; and you may gather how big the boar must have been that had teeth like that! They related indeed that there were some of those boars as big as a great buffalo. There are also numbers of giraffes and wild asses; and in fact a marvellous number of wild beasts of strange aspect.
Madagascar and Mogadishu
A well known hypothesis for the origin of the name of Madagascar is that the name is a corrupted transliteration of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia and an important medieval port on the Indian Ocean. This would have resulted from 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo confusing the two locations in his memoirs, in which he mentions the land of Madagascar to the south of Socotra. This name would then have been popularized on Renaissance maps by European explorers. However, one of the first documents that might explain why Marco Polo called it Madagascar is in a 1609 book written by Jerome Megiser. In this work, Jerome Megiser describes an event in which the rulers of Mogadishu and Adal went to Madagascar with huge fleet of between twenty-five to twenty-six thousand men, in-order to invade the rich island of Taprobane or Sumatra, but a tempest threw them off course and they landed on the coasts of Madagascar, conquering it and signing a treaty with the inhabitants. They remained there for eight months and erected at different points of the island eight pillars on which they engraved "Magadoxo", a name which later, by corruption became Madagascar. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a Dutch traveler who copied Portuguese works and maps, confirmed this event by saying "Madagascar got its name from 'makdishu' (Mogadishu) whose "shayk" invaded it."
The legacy of this influence are the Antemoro people whose name derives from the word Temuru which has no grounds of being a Malagasy name. A trace of this name was discovered by Enrico Cerulli in the Ethiopian epic song of Emperor Yeshaq I which mentions the Temur in connexion with the Somali. Even more interesting, the Temur and Somali live as archaisms in the living speech of the Harari people. Thus, the Somali people have ultimately sired the Antemoro.
Furthermore recent genetic studies have revealed the Antemoro to possess the paternal Haplogroup T-M184 and could partially be descendants of the Somalis who settled in Madagascar in the 14th century and intermarried with the local population. In 2013, the Antemoro population was estimated at 500,000. Mogadishu was heavily present in Madagascar and was trading with the inhabitants. The Portuguese captain Manuel Barreto in 1654 requested six royal warships to stop ships coming from Mogadishu and Brava.
Mogadishan influence in Sofala
Sofala is located on the Sofala Bank in Sofala Province of Mozambique. It was founded by Somali merchants and seafarers. Sofala in Somali literally means "Go dig". This name was given because the area is rich with resources. One of the oldest harbors documented in Southern Africa, medieval Sofala was erected on the edge of a wide estuary formed by the Buzi River (called Rio de Sofala in older maps). Somali merchants from Mogadishu established a colony in Mozambique to extract gold from the mines in Sofala.