Somali Maritime Enterprise: Ancient Seafarers of the Erythraean Sea

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EmperorAhmedGran
October 02, 2009

In ancient times the Kingdom of Punt, which is believed by several Egyptologists to have been situated in the area of modern-day Somalia, had a steady trade link with the Ancient Egyptians and exported the precious natural resources such as myrrh, frankincense and gum. This trade network continued all the way into the classical era. The city states of Mossylon, Opone, Malao, Mundus and Tabae in Somalia engaged in a lucrative trade network connecting Somali merchants with Phoenicia, Ptolemic Egypt, Greece, Parthian Persia, Saba, Nabataea and the Roman Empire. Somali sailors used the ancient Somali maritime vessel known as the beden to transport their cargo.

After the Roman conquest of the Nabataean Empire and the Roman naval presence at Aden to curb piracy, Arab and Somali merchants barred Indian merchants from trading in the free port cities of the Arabian peninsula[2] because of the nearby Roman presence. However, they continued to trade in the port cities of the Somali peninsula, which was free from any Roman threat or spies. The reason for barring Indian ships from entering the wealthy Arabian port cities was to protect and hide the exploitative trade practices of the Somali and Arab merchants in the extremely lucrative ancient Red Sea-Mediterranean Sea commerce. The Indian merchants for centuries brought large quantities of cinnamon from Ceylon and the Far East to Somalia and Arabia. This is said to have been the best kept secret of the Arab and Somali merchants in their trade with the Roman and Greek world. The Romans and Greeks believed the source of cinnamon to have been the Somali peninsula but in reality, the highly valued product was brought to Somalia by way of Indian ships. Through Somali and Arab traders, Indian/Chinese cinnamon was also exported for far higher prices to North Africa, the Near East and Europe, which made the cinnamon trade a very profitable revenue maker, especially for the Somali merchants through whose hands the large quantities were shipped across the ancient sea and land routes.

Somali Sailors were aware of the region's monsoons and used them to link themselves with the Port cities of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Another navigational technique was denning the islands of the Indian Ocean to navigate through the ancient trade routes.[3]

During the Age of the Ajuuraans, the sultanates and republics of Merca, Mogadishu, Barawa, Hobyo and their respective ports flourished and had a lucrative foreign commerce with ships sailing to Arabia, India, Venetia,[4] Persia, Egypt, Portugal and as far away as China.

In the 1500s, Duarte Barbosa noted that many ships from the Kingdom of Cambaya in India sailed to Mogadishu with cloths and spices, for which they in return received gold, wax and ivory. Mogadishu, the center of a thriving weaving industry known as toob benadir (specialized for the markets in Egypt and Syria[5]), together with Merca and Barawa also served as transit stops for Swahili merchants from Mombasa and Malindi and for the gold trade from Kilwa.[6] Trade with the Hormuz went both ways, and Jewish merchants brought their Indian textile and fruit to the Somali coast in exchange for grain and wood.[7] Trading relations were established with Malacca in the 15th century,[8] with cloth, ambergris and porcelain being the main commodities of the trade.[9] Giraffes, zebras and incense were exported to the Ming Empire of China, which established Somali merchants as leaders in the commerce between the Asia and Africa[10] and influenced the Chinese language with the Somali language in the process. Hindu merchants from Surat and Southeast African merchants from Pate, seeking to bypass both the Portuguese blockade and Omani meddling, used the Somali ports of Merca and Barawa (which were out of the two powers' jurisdiction) to conduct their trade in safety and without interference.[11]

During the same period, Somali merchants sailed to Cairo, Damascus, Aden, Hyderabad and the islands of the Indian Ocean, establishing Somali communities there, which produced significant individuals such as the important scholar Uthman bin Ali Zayla'i in Egypt, Abd al-Aziz of Mogadishu in the Maldives, and the explorer Sa'id of Mogadishu, the latter of whom traveled across the Muslim world and visited China and India in the 14th century.

In the early modern period, successor states of the Adal and Ajuuraan empires began to flourish in Somalia who continued the seaborne trade established by previous Somali empires. The rise of the 19th century Gobroon Dynasty in particular saw a rebirth in Somali maritime enterprise. During this period, the Somali agricultural output to Arabian markets was so great that the coast of Somalia came to be known as the grain coast of Yemen and Oman.[13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_m...

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