Adal
13th - 14th Century 		1884-1918







Somaliland's Procolonial History



In the 16th century, ZEILA (Saylac) on the Gulf of Aden was a trading center offering goods such as coffee, ostrich feathers, Ethiopian slaves etc.; it became the center of the Muslim Sultanate of ADAL, which was the nemesis of the christian Amharic kingdom of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). In the later 16th century, Abyssinia, aided by the Portuguese, expanded at the expense of Adal, which by 1660 had disintegrated. The port of Zeila meanwhile had been commercially overtaken by BERBERA.
In 1854 Richard Burton travelled into the hinterland of the Somali coast, observing the independence of Harar. In 1855, at Berbera, his party was attacked. The British authorities in Aden sent a punitive expedition to Berbera, a blockade against the port implemented; in 1856 a trade treaty with Berbera was signed, the blockade lifted.
In 1866, the Ottoman Empire transferred her ports on the western shore of the Red Sea - Suakin and Massawa to the Khedive of Egupt. In 1870 the Egyptian flag was hoisted at Bulhar and Berbera; Egyptian authority was recognized all along the southwestern coast of the Red Sea, down to Cape Gardafui on the Indian Ocean. In 1884, with the MAHDI REBELLION ongoing in the Egyptian Sudan, the Egyptian troops were withdrawn from the Somaliland region.



HISTORIC MAPS Map of Africa 1808, from R. Brookes, General Gazetteer, 1808, from Perry Castaneda Library Collection at UTexas, shows what was to become British Somaliland as Adal
Map of Northeastern Africa, 1829, from Carte Generale de l'Afrique, 1829 by Eustache Herisson, from Perry Castaneda Library Collection at UTexas, shows what was to become British Somaliland as Royaume d'Adel





EXTERNAL
FILES 		Articles from Infoplease : Somalia
Links on Somali history, from mogadiscio.com (click : historical notes), from Somalinet
Library of Congress, Country Studies : Somalia
DOCUMENTS Historical travelogues to Somaliland, from Somaliland Archive
Historical travelogues on Zeila (Seylac), from Djiboutian Sightings
Dialog on Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim (Gran) of Adal, from World History Archives (early 16th century)
Map Gulf of Aden 1857, from Perry Castaneda Library, UTexas, from Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen
REFERENCE Ioan Myrddin Lewis, The Modern History of Somaliland, from Nation to State, London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1965



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2001, last revised on November 7th 2004

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