Somaliland
Somaliland, officially the Republic of Somaliland, is a partially recognised state in the Horn of Africa. It is located on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the east. Its claimed territory has an area of, with approximately 6.2 million people as of 2024. The capital and largest city is Hargeisa.
Various Somali Muslim kingdoms were established in the area during the early Islamic period, including in the 14th to 15th centuries the Zeila-based Adal Sultanate. In the early modern period, successor states to the Adal Sultanate emerged, including the Isaaq Sultanate, which was established in the middle of the 18th century. In the late 19th century, the United Kingdom signed agreements with various clans in the area, establishing the Somaliland Protectorate, which was formally granted independence by the United Kingdom as the State of Somaliland on 26 June 1960. Five days later, the State of Somaliland voluntarily united with the Trust Territory of Somaliland to form the Somali Republic. The union of the two states proved problematic early on, and in response to the harsh policies enacted by Somalia's Barre regime against the main clan family in Somaliland, the Isaaq, shortly after the conclusion of the disastrous Ogaden War, a 10-year war of independence concluded with the declaration of Somaliland's independence in 1991. The Government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to British Somaliland.
Since 1991, the territory has been governed by democratically elected governments that seek international recognition as the government of the Republic of Somaliland. The central government maintains informal ties with some foreign governments, which have sent delegations to Hargeisa; Somaliland hosts representative offices from several countries, including Ethiopia and Taiwan.
On 26 December 2025, Israel became the first and only United Nations member state to formally recognise Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state. It is a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, an advocacy group whose members consist of indigenous peoples, minorities, and unrecognised or occupied territories. Following the Las Anod conflict that emerged in 2022, Somaliland lost control of a significant portion of its eastern territory to pro-unionist forces who established the SSC-Khatumo administration. Somalia has not recognised the independence of Somaliland and regards the area to be one of its federal member states.
Etymology
The area was named when Britain took control from the Egyptian administration in 1884, after signing successive treaties with the ruling Somali Sultans of the Isaaq, Issa, Gadabursi, and Warsangali clans. The British established a protectorate in the region referred to as British Somaliland. In 1960, when the protectorate became independent from Britain, it was called the State of Somaliland. Five days later, on 1 July 1960, Somaliland united with the Trust Territory of Somaliland under Italian Administration. The name "Republic of Somaliland" was adopted upon the declaration of independence following the Somali Civil War in 1991.At the grand conference in Burao in 1991, a variety of names were suggested, including Puntland, in reference to Somaliland's location in the ancient Land of Punt, which is now the name of the Puntland state in neighbouring Somalia, and Shankaroon, meaning "better than five" in Somali, in reference to the five regions of Greater Somalia.
History
Prehistory
The area of Somaliland was inhabited around 10,000 years ago during the Neolithic age. The ancient shepherds raised cows and other livestock and created vibrant rock art paintings. During the Stone Age, the Doian and Hargeisan cultures flourished here. The oldest evidence of burial customs in the Horn of Africa comes from cemeteries in Somaliland dating back to the 4th millennium BCE. The stone implements from the Jalelo site in the north were also characterised in 1909 as important artefacts demonstrating the archaeological universality during the Paleolithic between the East and the West.According to linguists, the first Afroasiatic-speaking populations arrived in the region during the ensuing Neolithic period from the family's proposed urheimat in the Nile Valley, or the Near East.
The Laas Geel complex on the outskirts of Hargeisa dates back around 5,000 years, and has rock art depicting both wild animals and decorated cows. Other cave paintings are found in the northern Dhambalin region, which feature one of the earliest known depictions of a hunter on horseback. The rock art is in the distinctive Ethiopian-Arabian style, dated to 1,000 to 3,000 BCE. Additionally, between the towns of Las Khorey and El Ayo in eastern Somaliland lies Karinhegane, the site of numerous cave paintings of real and mythical animals. Each painting has an inscription below it, which collectively has been estimated to be around 2,500 years old.
Antiquity and classical era
Ancient pyramidical structures, mausoleums, ruined cities, and stone walls, such as the Wargaade Wall, are evidence of civilisations thriving in the Somali peninsula. Ancient Somaliland had trading relationships with ancient Egypt and Mycenaean Greece dating back to at least the second millennium BCE, supporting the hypothesis that Somalia or adjacent regions were the location of the ancient Land of Punt. The Puntites traded myrrh, spices, gold, ebony, short-horned cattle, ivory, and frankincense with the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Indians, Chinese, and Romans through their commercial ports. An Egyptian expedition sent to Punt by the 18th dynasty Queen Hatshepsut is recorded on the temple reliefs at Deir el-Bahari, during the reign of the Puntite King Parahu and Queen Ati. In 2015, isotopic analysis of ancient baboon mummies from Punt that had been brought to Egypt as gifts indicated that the specimens likely originated from an area encompassing eastern Somalia and the Eritrea-Ethiopia corridor.The camel is believed to have been domesticated in the Horn region sometime between the 2nd and 3rd millennium BCE. From there, it spread to Egypt and the Maghreb. During the classical period, the northern Barbara city-states of Mosylon, Opone, Mundus, Isis, Malao, Avalites, Essina, Nikon, and Sarapion developed a lucrative trade network, connecting with merchants from Ptolemaic Egypt, Ancient Greece, Phoenicia, Parthian Persia, Saba, the Nabataean Kingdom, and the Roman Empire. They used the ancient Somali maritime vessel known as the beden to transport their cargo.
After the Roman conquest of the Nabataean Empire and the establishment of a Roman naval presence at Aden to curb piracy, Arab and Somali merchants cooperated with the Romans to bar Indian ships from trading in the free port cities of the Arabian peninsula to protect the interests of Somali and Arab merchants in the lucrative commerce between the Red and Mediterranean Seas. However, Indian merchants continued to trade in the port cities of the Somali peninsula, which was free from Roman interference.
For centuries, Indian merchants brought large quantities of cinnamon to Somalia and Arabia from Ceylon and the Spice Islands. The source of the spices is said to have been the best-kept secret of Arab and Somali merchants in their trade with the Roman and Greek world; the Romans and Greeks believed the source to have been the Somali peninsula. The collaboration between Somali and Arab traders inflated the price of Indian and Chinese cinnamon in North Africa, the Near East, and Europe, and made the spice trade profitable, especially for the Somali merchants through whose hands large quantities were shipped across sea and land routes.
In 2007, more rock art sites with Sabaean and Himyarite writings in and around Hargeisa were found, but some were bulldozed by developers.
Birth of Islam and the Middle Ages
The Isaaq people traditionally claim to have descended from Sheikh Ishaaq bin Ahmed, an Islamic scholar who purportedly traveled to Somaliland in the 12th or 13th century and married two women: one from the local Dir clan and the other from the neighbouring Harari people. He is said to have sired eight sons who are the common ancestors of the clans of the Isaaq clan-family. He remained in Maydh until his death.As the Isaaq clan-family grew in size and numbers during the 12th century, the clan-family migrated and spread from their core area in Mait and the wider Sanaag region in a southwestward expansion over a wide portion of present-day Somaliland by the 15th and 16th centuries. As the Isaaq expanded, the earlier Dir communities of Mait and the wider Sanaag region were driven westwards and to the south towards their present positions. In this general expansion, the Isaaq split up into their present component segments; however, one fraction of the Habar Yunis clan, the Muse 'Arre, remains behind in Mait as the custodians of the tomb of Sheikh Ishaaq. By the 1300s, the Isaaq clans united to defend their inhabited territories and resources during clan conflicts against migrating clans.
After the war, the Isaaq clans grew in numbers and territory in the northeast, causing them to began to vie with their Oromo neighbours, who were expanding northwards themselves after the Great Oromo Migrations, thus creating a general thrust toward the southwest. The Isaaq, along with the Darood subclans, pushed westwards into the plains of Jigjiga and further, beyond where they played an important role in the Adal Sultanate's campaigns against Christian Abyssinia. By the 16th to 17th century, the movements that followed seem to have established the Isaaqs on coastal Somaliland.
Various Somali Muslim kingdoms were established in the area in the early Islamic period. In the 14th century, the Zeila-based Adal Sultanate battled the forces of the Ethiopian emperor Amda Seyon I. The Ottoman Empire later occupied Berbera and environs in the 1500s. Muhammad Ali, Pasha of Egypt, subsequently established a foothold in the area between 1821 and 1841.
The Sanaag region is home to the ruined Islamic city of Maduna near El Afweyn, which is considered the most substantial and accessible ruin of its type in Somaliland. The main feature of the ruined city is a large rectangular mosque, its 3-metre-high walls still standing, which includes a mihrab and possibly several smaller arched niches. Swedish-Somali archaeologist Sada Mire dates the ruined city to the 15th–17th centuries.