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Arabic Sources on Somalia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Extract
In recent years scholars of different nationalities (including Somalis) have devoted much time and effort to acquiring information about the Somali past using different means and through the available sources on the region. However, the Arabic written sources of information on Somalia have long been neglected and remain so. The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the need for a more comprehensive reading of Arabic sources, and to show that Arabic sources have much to contribute to knowledge about Somalia. I will try to trace these sources and list them in a chronological manner, starting with the early Arab sources, especially from the period which followed the emergence of Islam on the Arabian peninsula when Islam made its way into the Horn of Africa.
Secondly, I will look at sources from medieval Islam in Somalia, when Islam spread from the coastal centers on the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean into the hinterlands of the Horn, the period which marked the struggle between Islam and Christianity. Thirdly, I will look at the period after the collapse of Muslim power in the late sixteenth century, almost two centuries when the Muslims of the Horn (the Somalis) were surrounded by Ethio-Portuguese alliances both to the north and in the Indian Ocean to the south. This period marked a time when the condition of the Somali Muslims became similar to that formerly endured by the Ethiopians, who had been surrounded by Muslims on all sides.
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 1987
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