Numerous Ancient ruined towns of Awdal Region (Dir Land) Ancient Dir Clan Artifacts of Amuud

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   Land of the Ancient Dir clan.
   
   
   1. Jarahoroto, (Dilla District), Awdal Region
   
   Jarahorato (also: Dzharakhorato, Jaaraahorato, Jaarrahorrato)[1] is a village in the northwestern Awdal region of Somalia. It is named after a legendary King and Queen who ruled this land before the Somali conquest of this region. The King was known as Jara and his wife was known as Horato.
   
   
   2. Borama District, Awdal Region
   
   In 1950, the British Somaliland protectorate government commissioned an archaeological survey in twelve desert towns in present-day Somaliland, near the border with Ethiopia. According to the expedition team, the sites yielded the most salient evidence of late medieval period affluence. They contained ruins of what were evidently once large cities belonging to the Adal Sultanate. Three of the towns in particular, Abara, Gargesa and Amud, featured between 200 and 300 stone houses. The walls of certain sites still reportedly stood 18 meters high. Excavations in the area yielded 26 silver coins, unlike the copper pieces that were more common in polities below the Horn region. The earliest of these recovered coins had been minted by Sultan Barquq (1382–99), also of the Egyptian Burji dynasty, and the latest were again Sultan Qaitbay issues. All of the pieces had been struck in either Cairo or Damascus. A few gold coins were also discovered during the expedition, making the area the only place in the wider region to yield such pieces. Besides coinage, high quality porcelain was recovered from the Adal sites. The fine celadon ware was found either lying on the surface, or buried at a depth of seven and a half inches, or ensconced within dense middens four to five feet high. Among the artefacts were grey granular sherds with a crackled blue-green or sea-green glaze, and white crystalline fragments with an uncrackled green-white glaze. Some Ming dynasty ware was also discovered, including many early Ming blue-and-white bowl sherds. They were adorned with tendril scrolls on a bluish ground and ornamented with black spotting, while other bowls had floral patterns outlined by grey or black-blue designs. Additionally, a few Ming red-and-white sherds were found, as well as white porcelain fragments with bluish highlights. The Adal sites appeared to reach an Indian Ocean terminus at the Sa'ad ad-Din Islands, named for Sultan Sa'ad ad-Din II of the Ifat Sultanate.
   
   Zbigniew A. Konczacki, Janina M. Konczacki (ed.) (1977). An Economic History of Tropical Africa: The Pre-colonial Period. Psychology Press. pp. 233–234. ISBN 0714629197. Retrieved 2 November 2014.
   
   
   
   3. Amud, (Borama District), Awdal Region
   
   The old section of Amud spans 25 acres (100,000 m2) and contains hundreds of ancient ruins of multi-roomed courtyard houses, stone walls, complex mosques, and other archaeological remains, including intricate colored glass bracelets and Chinese ceramics.
   
   The Archaeology of Islam in Sub Saharan Africa, p. 72/73
   
   According to Sonia Mary Cole, the town features 250 to 300 houses and an ancient temple. The temple was constructed of carefully dressed stone, and was later transformed into a mosque. It also features pottery lamps. Altogether, the building techniques, among other factors, point to a close association with Aksumite archaeological sites from the 2nd to 5th centuries CE.
   
   Cole, Sonia Mary (1964). The Prehistory of East Africa. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 275.
   
   
   
   4. Abasa, Awdal Region
   
   Abasa is situated 44 km to the north of Borama, on the road from Zeila. A large town, it features numerous ruined structures stretching over a wide area. The buildings were built in a rectangular style, and the now ruined Abasa Mosque has large columns of two different types: cylindrical and cruciform. 14th to 16th century Islamic pottery and Chinese sherds have also been found here, which are believed to be relics from the Adal Sultanate's commercial activities.
   
   Chittick, Neville (1975). An Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Horn: The British-Somali Expedition. pp. 117–133.
   
   
   

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   By Mark Hay
   
   When British explorers at the end of the 19th century first made their way across the vast deserts of what is today Somaliland, they were surprised to find a landscape strewn with numerous and puzzling stone tumuli, graveyards, and crumbling towns. The largest of these, long known to locals but first explored by A.T. Curle while surveying the countryside in 1935, was called Amud. There, just outside the modern town of Borama, Curle found hundreds of stone houses, mosques, and courtyards, full of glass and Chinese porcelain dating back nearly 500 years. Even older trinkets have been found along the coast dating back at least 2000 years to the time of the Berberi traders mentioned by Greek and Egyptian merchants—some believe the Berberi traders were active even in the times of Pharaonic Egypt.
   
   Somaliland is a country rich with the mostly-undocumented history of wealthy, productive civilizations. Over the last thousand years, the country has played host to the Muslim sultanates of Ifat and Adal, Bantu hunters, and nomadic waves of Somalis and Oromo, each leaving their successive traces on the land. But the de facto independent state’s archaeological heritage has been left almost entirely unstudied, unmapped, and unpreserved.
   
   It is also being wantonly destroyed. Though the current government’s Department of Tourism and Antiquities is devoted to preservation, the nation is hemorrhaging its heritage at a rapid rate. Compounding the problem, only a few experts in the world care about documenting and studying the disappearing traces.
   
   By the time I visited Amud, it was nothing more than a pile of rubble in the desert. In 1982, as a conflict between the Somali National Movement guerillas and the armed forces of Somali dictator Siad Barre intensified, the countryside around Borama, the regional capital of Awdal, was ravaged. The displaced people, fleeing the conflict, drove up the hill from Borama to Amud, reversed their trucks into the priceless archaeological heritage, and knocked it apart for bricks and building materials. Although this looting escalated after the country collapsed in 1993, its roots go far back. A sheikh in the village of **** told me that during the colonial era he used to see administrators tearing up ancient stone graves to build now-vanished roads to Djibouti.
   
   By 2010, the Somaliland Department of Tourism and Antiquities’ former director Sada Mire had catalogued 139 historical preservation sites in the country and established a network of local guards to monitor them. But these 70 untrained guards each have up to 10 miles to patrol. Mire also attempted to pass a law blocking the sale of artifacts abroad—the measure failed. Meanwhile, she and Xavier Gutherz, an archaeologist active in Somaliland for the past decade, began to recognize a system of looting, grave robbing, and black market antiquing growing increasingly widespread and entrenched in the country. Mire and Gutherz believe that looters have established ties with dealers from Djibouti to the Arabian Peninsula and are sending a steady stream of antiquities out of the country onto the black market.
   
   A grave robber I spoke to confirmed this. Jaama Ismaaciil has been looting graves for antiquities, emeralds and gemstones since 1988. Now he’s part of an organized network. He shows me a small pyramid he dug up recently outside of Hargeisa. It looks like a colonial-era paperweight. There are dents in it from him and his associates pounding on it with hammers, hoping to find gold or gemstones inside.
   
   There are groups like this in every region of Somaliland, but people like Ismaaciil are just the hired muscle. The financial backers of the operation provide coordinates, a daily wage, digging materials, and a commission on whatever they find. Ismaaciil does not know where the antiquities go, or what the relics mean. He just knows this is one of the best and only ways he can make a living, which is why likely why he has no qualms openly and publicly labeling himself a looter.
   
   In the Borama region, these looters target graves surrounding ancient hilltop cities. The stone mound burials often hold nothing but bones; but dirt graves, inlaid with stone crosses are often a good target. Ismaaciil says he has found golden figurines of horses and ostriches all throughout the countryside, along with large deposits of gemstones. In Hargeisa street markets, vendors sell rubies, sapphires, emeralds, silver, and gold to Pakistani and Sri Lankan traders. While the street vendors likely aren’t mining these gemstones themselves (the mines in the Borama region they supposedly came from are now overrun by hyenas), it’s likely that they and the other gemstone dealers are acting as middlemen for the antiquities trade.
   
   In other parts of the country, the looters have been equally successful. Abdillahi Jaama Ali, an advisor to the Department of Tourism and Antiquities, just barely managed to photograph numerous artifacts unearthed around Las Qoray in the far east before the looters shipped them off. One former grave robber based to the north in Zeila told me how, while searching for gold, he often used to find coral and bone sculptures. Thinking them worthless relics of past, he would smash them with stones.

   
   

   2. 
      
      

      By Mark Hay
      
      When British explorers at the end of the 19th century first made their way across the vast deserts of what is today Somaliland, they were surprised to find a landscape strewn with numerous and puzzling stone tumuli, graveyards, and crumbling towns. The largest of these, long known to locals but first explored by A.T. Curle while surveying the countryside in 1935, was called Amud. There, just outside the modern town of Borama, Curle found hundreds of stone houses, mosques, and courtyards, full of glass and Chinese porcelain dating back nearly 500 years. Even older trinkets have been found along the coast dating back at least 2000 years to the time of the Berberi traders mentioned by Greek and Egyptian merchants—some believe the Berberi traders were active even in the times of Pharaonic Egypt.
      
      Somaliland is a country rich with the mostly-undocumented history of wealthy, productive civilizations. Over the last thousand years, the country has played host to the Muslim sultanates of Ifat and Adal, Bantu hunters, and nomadic waves of Somalis and Oromo, each leaving their successive traces on the land. But the de facto independent state’s archaeological heritage has been left almost entirely unstudied, unmapped, and unpreserved.
      
      It is also being wantonly destroyed. Though the current government’s Department of Tourism and Antiquities is devoted to preservation, the nation is hemorrhaging its heritage at a rapid rate. Compounding the problem, only a few experts in the world care about documenting and studying the disappearing traces.
      
      By the time I visited Amud, it was nothing more than a pile of rubble in the desert. In 1982, as a conflict between the Somali National Movement guerillas and the armed forces of Somali dictator Siad Barre intensified, the countryside around Borama, the regional capital of Awdal, was ravaged. The displaced people, fleeing the conflict, drove up the hill from Borama to Amud, reversed their trucks into the priceless archaeological heritage, and knocked it apart for bricks and building materials. Although this looting escalated after the country collapsed in 1993, its roots go far back. A sheikh in the village of **** told me that during the colonial era he used to see administrators tearing up ancient stone graves to build now-vanished roads to Djibouti.
      
      By 2010, the Somaliland Department of Tourism and Antiquities’ former director Sada Mire had catalogued 139 historical preservation sites in the country and established a network of local guards to monitor them. But these 70 untrained guards each have up to 10 miles to patrol. Mire also attempted to pass a law blocking the sale of artifacts abroad—the measure failed. Meanwhile, she and Xavier Gutherz, an archaeologist active in Somaliland for the past decade, began to recognize a system of looting, grave robbing, and black market antiquing growing increasingly widespread and entrenched in the country. Mire and Gutherz believe that looters have established ties with dealers from Djibouti to the Arabian Peninsula and are sending a steady stream of antiquities out of the country onto the black market.
      
      A grave robber I spoke to confirmed this. Jaama Ismaaciil has been looting graves for antiquities, emeralds and gemstones since 1988. Now he’s part of an organized network. He shows me a small pyramid he dug up recently outside of Hargeisa. It looks like a colonial-era paperweight. There are dents in it from him and his associates pounding on it with hammers, hoping to find gold or gemstones inside.
      
      There are groups like this in every region of Somaliland, but people like Ismaaciil are just the hired muscle. The financial backers of the operation provide coordinates, a daily wage, digging materials, and a commission on whatever they find. Ismaaciil does not know where the antiquities go, or what the relics mean. He just knows this is one of the best and only ways he can make a living, which is why likely why he has no qualms openly and publicly labeling himself a looter.
      
      In the Borama region, these looters target graves surrounding ancient hilltop cities. The stone mound burials often hold nothing but bones; but dirt graves, inlaid with stone crosses are often a good target. Ismaaciil says he has found golden figurines of horses and ostriches all throughout the countryside, along with large deposits of gemstones. In Hargeisa street markets, vendors sell rubies, sapphires, emeralds, silver, and gold to Pakistani and Sri Lankan traders. While the street vendors likely aren’t mining these gemstones themselves (the mines in the Borama region they supposedly came from are now overrun by hyenas), it’s likely that they and the other gemstone dealers are acting as middlemen for the antiquities trade.
      
      In other parts of the country, the looters have been equally successful. Abdillahi Jaama Ali, an advisor to the Department of Tourism and Antiquities, just barely managed to photograph numerous artifacts unearthed around Las Qoray in the far east before the looters shipped them off. One former grave robber based to the north in Zeila told me how, while searching for gold, he often used to find coral and bone sculptures. Thinking them worthless relics of past, he would smash them with stones.
      
      https://www.somalispot.com/threads/numerous-ancient-ruined-towns-of-awdal-region-dir-land.19779/

      
      
       https://www.somalispot.com/threads/jarahoroto-ancient-town-in-awdal-named-after-king-and-queen-of-the-harla-people.26410/page-4