2 Among many important recent papers, three which are especially pertinent here are De Vere Allen, James, ‘Swahili culture and the nature of east coast settlement’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, XIV, 2 (1981), 306–334CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘The “Shirazi” problem in east African coastal history’, Paideuma, XXVIII (1982), 9–27Google Scholar, and ‘Settlements on the East African coast: origins, development and spread’, draft chapter for inclusion in David, Brokensha and Merrick, Posnansky (eds.), The Indigenous African Town.Google Scholar I am grateful to my colleague, Merrick Posnansky, for permission to cite this paper before publication.

3 Pouwels, Randall Lee, ‘Islam and Islamic leadership in the coastal communities of East Africa, 1700 to 1920’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 1979.Google Scholar

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5 See, for example, Cooper, , ‘Africa and the world economy’, The African Studies Review, XXIV, 2/3 (1981), 13–15.Google Scholar

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7 Cassanelli, Lee V., The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600–1900 (Philadelphia, 1982), ch. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Documentos sobre os Portugueses em Moçambique e na Africa Central, I (Lisboa, 1962), 71, 537–9Google Scholar; v (Lisboa, 1966), 381.

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13 Ibid., report of Captain Smee, Thomas, 6 April 1811, fl. 93.Google Scholar The identity of this Soomaali chief cannot be determined, as a result of both Smee's corrupt rendering of his patronymic and the conflicting genealogies extant in Guillain, Charles,Documents sur l'histoire, la géographie et le commerce de l'Afrique Orientate, II (Paris, 1856–1858), 525Google Scholar; Robecchi-Bricchetti, Luigi, Somalia e Benadir (Milano, 1899), 389–390Google Scholar; and Caniglia, Giuseppe, Genti di Somalia (München, 1921), 58–65.Google Scholar

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21 Ibid., II, 526, III, 142. According to Islao Mahadala there was a major drought in the nineteenth century that necessitated the importation of food from Zanzibar: interviewed in Shingaani, 15 November 1980. My research in Muqdisho has been carried out in collaboration with the Soomaali Academy of Arts and Science, whose officers provided invaluable support and who assigned me an energetic team of local counterparts without whose assistance all field work would have been impossible. To Maxamed Cabdi Allamagan, Axmed Yuusuf Faarax, and Ciismaan Yuusuf Maxamed I am thus indebted for carrying out and transcribing all of these interviews, as well as for translating some of them. At UCLA I am no less indebted to Saeed Muktag Samatar for translating the bulk of this material. My research began while teaching at the Somali National University, College of Education, Lafoole, with assistance from a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship and has continued to be supported by the Research Committee of the Academic Senate of UCLA.

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57 Interview with Islao Mahadala; Alpers, , ‘Futa Benaadir’, 79–84.Google Scholar

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75 Sorrentino, , Ricordi, 13–14, 64–65, 84, 170–171, 388Google Scholar; for parallel practice at Luuq, see Ferrandi, , Lugh, 341–5.Google Scholar The Chief Kaadi of Muqdisho was at this time drawn from the reer Faaqi of Xamarweyn: Cerrina-Ferroni, , Benadir, 28.Google Scholar

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90 See, for example, Prins, A. H. J., The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (London, 1967), 115Google Scholar; Allen, J. W. T. (ed.), The Customs of the Swahili People (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1981), 192–3.Google Scholar

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92 See Revoil, , ‘Voyage’, 62.Google Scholar

93 Interview with Islao Mahadala; Prins, , Swahili-Speaking Peoples, 115Google Scholar; El-Zein, Abdul Hamid, The Sacred Meadows (Evanston, 1974)Google Scholar; Wijeyewardene, G. E. T., ‘Some aspects of village solidarity in Ki-Swahili speaking communities of Kenya and Tanganyika’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1961Google Scholar; Pouwels, , ‘Islam and Islamic leadership’, 593–598.Google Scholar

94 See, for example, Nimtz, August H. Jr, Islam and Politics in East Africa (Minneapolis, 1980), 98.Google Scholar