Berbera
Berbera is the capital of the Sahil region of Somaliland and is the main sea port of the country, located approximately 160 km from the national capital, Hargeisa. Berbera is a coastal city and was the former capital of the British Somaliland protectorate before Hargeisa. It also served as a major port of the Ifat, Adal and Isaaq sultanates from the 13th to 19th centuries.
In antiquity, Berbera was part of a chain of commercial port cities along the Somali seaboard. During the early modern period, Berbera was the most important place of trade in the Somali Peninsula. It later served as the capital of the British Somaliland protectorate from 1884 to 1941, when it was replaced by Hargeisa. In 1960, the British Somaliland protectorate gained independence as the State of Somaliland and, five days later, united with the Trust Territory of Somalia to form the Somali Republic. Located strategically on the oil route, the city has a deep seaport, which serves as the region's main commercial harbour.
Etymology
The name Berbera comes from the Somali phrase beri-beri, meaning "occasionally". Before it became a major port city, Berbera was a seasonal settlement, only inhabited during cooler months. Residents still head for milder weather in the summer, a vacation tradition called xagaa-bax, which is also common in other coastal cities.According to the Royal Asiatic Society, the name could be derived from the Arabic word barbarah, meaning "talking much, shouting".
History
Antiquity
Berbera was part of the classical Somali city-states that engaged in a lucrative trade network connecting Somali merchants with Phoenicia, Ptolemic Egypt, Ancient 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.Berbera preserves the ancient name of the coast along the southern shore of the Gulf of Aden. It is believed to be the ancient port of Malao described as 800 stadia beyond the city of the Avalites, described in the eighth chapter of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which was written by a Greek merchant in the first century AD. In the Periplus it is described as:
In the 6th-century Sassanid text, the Letter of Tansar, the third part of the world is designated the “Land of the Blacks” which stretches from Barbaria to India. Barbaria in this context alludes to the city of Berbera. The Persian Firdawsi in his epic, the Shahnama, refers to 'Barbaristan', which according to J. Darmester corresponds with modern-day Somalia, now in Somaliland.
In the epic poem, soldiers from Barbaristan march upon the orders of their king, coordinating with Himavarin. Their forces capture renowned Persian warriors such as Giv, Gidarz, and Tus. Ka'us, the epic's protagonist, responds by rallying his forces, leading them towards Barbaristan. The encounter is fierce, with Barbaristan's forces ultimately becoming overwhelmed. The elders of Barbaristan, recognizing their defeat, seek peace and offer tribute to Ka'us, who accepts and imposes new laws.
Later, the combined forces of Barbaristan and Himavarin, consisting of over two hundred elephants and a two-mile-long battle line, clash with the Persians. Rustam captures and subdues key figures, including the king of Himavarin, significantly weakening the coalition. Guraza, a key Sassanid figure, captures the monarch of Barbaristan and forty chiefs.
Middle Ages
, a Chinese Tang dynasty scholar, described in his written work of AD 863 the slave trade, ivory trade, and ambergris trade of Bobali, which is thought to be Berbera. The great city was also later mentioned by the Islamic traveller Ibn Sa'id as well as Ibn Battuta in the thirteenth century.In Abu'l-Fida's A Sketch of the Countries, the present-day Gulf of Aden was called the Gulf of Berbera, which shows how important Berbera was in both regional and international trade during the medieval period.
The Book of Curiosities uniquely depicts the Indian Ocean as an enclosed narrow sea, per Ptolemaic tradition, drawn in two halves; eastern and western later joined elliptically. In the surviving copy, the halves are misplaced, linking China to Arabia and Africa to India. The Somali section, rich in original detail, names Berbera’s coast, and several mountains are marked, including the Cape of Guardafui at the tip of the Horn of Africa. Maydh, Heis, and other capes are also visualized.
Legendary Arab explorer Ahmad ibn Mājid wrote of Berbera and a few other notable landmarks and ports of the northern Somali coast and referred to what is now the Gulf of Aden as the Gulf of Berbera. He also included Zeila and its archipelago, Siyara, Heis, Alula, Ruguda, Maydh, El-Sheikh and El-Darad.
Berbera was an important and well-built settlement that served as a major harbor port for several successive Somali kingdoms in the Middle Ages, such as the early Adal Kingdom, Ifat Sultanate and Adal Sultanate.
Berbera, along with Zeila, were the two most important ports situated inside the Adal Sultanate, and they provided vital political and commercial links with the wider Islamic World:
Along with other ports and settlements in East Africa, explorers Ludovico di Varthema, Duarte Barbosa and Leo Africanus wrote brief accounts of the port town of Berbera in the early sixteenth century, mainly detailing her historic trading links with Aden and Khambat.
Duarte Barbosa's brief account of Berbera:
Further on, on the same coast, is a town of the Moors called Barbara; it has a port, at which many ships of Adeni and Cambay touch with their merchandise, and from there those of Cambay carry away much gold, and ivory, and other things, and those of Aden take many provisions, meat, honey, and wax, because, as they say, it is a very abundant country.
Not long after their departure from Zeila and Berbera, the Portuguese fleet under Lopo Soares de Albergaria and António de Saldanha sacked both port towns between 1516 and 1518.
According to Selman Reis, an ambitious Ottoman Red Sea admiral, Berbera was rich with pearls, and the amount of merchandise and trade consisting of "gold, musk and ivory" present at Berbera, on the Somali coast, was described by Selman as "limitless".
Precolonialism
One of the earliest precolonial accounts comes from Ibrahim Punkar, who wrote a memoir in 1801 and letter in 1809 to the Governor of Bombay John Duncan. Noting that Berbera had 5-6 towers with armed guards, he would go to describe the trade and general outlook of the city. Further noting the Somali inhabitants adhering to the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam significant trade came from Harar in the interior alongside Gondar and Shewa. Cloth, rice and tobacco came from Kutch in Gujarat and Muscat with Mocha, Jeddah and Al Mukalla being the source of dates and tin. Punkar stated that the Somalis of the area were skilled musketeers and possessed powerful cavalry and knowledge of archery, but were often internally divided except for when united against common enemies. All foreigners including Arabs and Indians who often frequented Berbera were prohibited from venturing further inland, lest they access the lucrative trade of Harar directly and bypass the Somalis.One certainty about Berbera over the following centuries was that it was the site of an annual fair, held between October and April, which Mordechai Abir describes as "among the most important commercial events of the east coast of Africa." The major Somali sub-clans of the Isaaq in Somaliland, caravans from Harar and the interior, and Banyan merchants from Porbandar, Mangalore and Mumbai gathered to trade. All of this was kept secret from European merchants. Lieutenant C. J. Cruttenden, who wrote a memoir describing this portion of the Somali coast dated 12 May 1848, provided an account of the Berbera fair and an account of the historic environs of the town: "an aqueduct of stone and chunam, some nine miles in length", which had once emptied into a presently dry reservoir adjacent to the ruins of a mosque. He explored part of its course from the reservoir past a number of tombs built of stones taken from the aqueduct to reach a spring, above which lay "the remains of a small fort or tower of chunam and stone... on the hill-side immediately over the spring." Cruttenden noted that in "style it was different to any houses now found on the Somali coast", and concluded with noting the presence in "the neighbourhood of the fort above mentioned abundance of broken glass and pottery... from which I infer that it was a place of considerable antiquity; but, though diligent search was made, no traces of inscriptions could be discovered."
Berbera was the most important port in the Somali Peninsula in the 18th and 19th centuries. For centuries, Berbera had extensive trade relations with several historic ports in Arabia and the Indian subcontinent. Additionally, the Somali and Ethiopian interiors were very dependent on Berbera for trade, where most of the goods for export arrived from. During the 1833 trading season, the port town swelled up to 70,000 people, and upwards of 6,000 camels laden with goods arrived from the interior within a single day. Berbera was the main marketplace in the entire Somali seaboard for various goods procured from the interior, such as livestock, coffee, frankincense, myrrh, acacia gum, saffron, feathers, wax, ghee, hide, gold and ivory. In the trading season of 1840, French explorer Charles-Xavier Rochet d'Héricourt visited Berbera and estimated the total exports of the season to be around thirteen times greater than that of Massawa.
According to a trade journal published in 1856, Berbera was described as “the freest port in the world, and the most important trading place on the whole Arabian Gulf.”:
“The only seaports of importance on this coast are Feyla and Berbera; the former is an Arabian colony, dependent of Mocha, but Berbera is independent of any foreign power. It is, without having the name, the freest port in the world, and the most important trading place on the whole Arabian Gulf. From the beginning of November to the end of April, a large fair assembles in Berbera, and caravans of 6,000 camels at a time come from the interior loaded with coffee,, gum, ivory, hides, skins, grain, cattle, and sour milk, the substitute of fermented drinks in these regions; also much cattle is brought there for the Aden market.”
Historically, the port of Berbera was controlled indigenously between the mercantile Reer Ahmed Nur and Reer Yunis Nuh sub-clans of the Sa'ad Musa, Habr Awal. These two sub-clans effectively administered the trade of the town, especially in the dealings of all transactions and brokerage between various parties to issuing protection agreements towards the foreign Arab and Indian traders. In the year 1845, the two sub-clans had a dissension over the control of the trade of Berbera, which lead to a wider altercation where each side sought outside support. With the backing of Haji Sharmarke Ali Saleh, the Reer Ahmed Nuh drove out their kinsmen and declared themselves the sole commercial masters of Berbera. The defeated Reer Yunis Nuh moved westwards and established the port of Bulhar which later, for a brief period, became a trading rival to nearby Berbera. Sharmarke Ali Saleh's actions were a political ruse to control Berbera for himself, which he achieved for several years.
Berbera commanded most of the trade traffic with the Somali and Ethiopian interiors. The two main caravan trade routes from Berbera extended to Harar and Shewa in the west, and to the Shebelle basin in the south. Moreover, the inland caravan trade routes were also concurrently used as pilgrim routes during the trading season by Somali Hajj pilgrims who resided in the deep interior.
File:Admiralty Chart No 675 Port Burburra, Published 1828.png|thumb|300 px|An Admiralty Chart of Berbera drawn by Lieutenant John Septimus Roe
In addition, Mocha, Aden, Jeddah and several other ports in Arabia had constant contact with Berbera in regard to general trade and commerce. In the early years of the nineteenth century, the local Somalis of Berbera had a navigation act where they excluded Arab vessels and brought the goods and produce of the interior in their own ships to the Arabian ports:
Berbera held an annual fair during the cool rain-free months between October and April. This long drawn out market handled immense quantities of coffee, gum Arabic, myrrh and other commodities. These goods in the early nineteenth century were almost exclusively handled by Somalis who, Salt says, had "a kind of navigation act by which they exclude the Arab vessels from their ports and bring the produce of their country either to Aden or Mocha in their own dows."
In much of the 19th century, the trade between Berbera and Aden was so important to the later that when disturbances effected the Berbera trading season, Aden too suffered as a result. According to Captain Haines, who was then the colonial administrator of Aden, 80% of Aden's revenue in 1848 was derived from duties charged on imported goods from Berbera. Additionally, most of the coffee imported by Mocha arrived via Somali merchants from Berbera, who procured the coffee beans from the environs of Harar. Although the coffee beans were grown in Harar, the coffee was named Berbera Coffee in the international market, and the beans were considered superior to the locally grown varieties in Yemen.
The British explorer Richard Burton made two visits to this port, and his second visit was marred by an attack on his camp by a group of local Somali warriors, and although Burton was able to escape to Aden, one of his companions was killed. Burton, recognizing the importance of the port city wrote:
By 1869, a sub-clan of the Reer Ahmed Nur were operating a fort in the port town and it was manned by several hired guards armed with muskets and fiercely loyal to them. A British officer visiting the city from Aden noted the guards would not betray the Reer Ahmed Nur save death.