THE HISTORY OF SOMALI DIR CLAN: TAARIKHDA BEESHA DIREED DIR
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Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Numerous Ancient ruined towns of Awdal Region (Dir Land) Ancient Dir Clan Artifacts of Amuud
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.
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.
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.
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.
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