Benadir

Benadir (Somali: Banaadir; Arabic: بنادر

Banādir) is a coastal region of Somalia. It covers most of the Indian Ocean coast of the country, from the Gulf of Aden to the Juba River, including the capital, Mogadishu. The name comes from Persian bandar, which means port, a fact that reflects the region's importance to Persian and Arab trade during the European Middle Ages. Benadir is known for a special breed of goats.

The historical region gives its name to the current administrative region (gobolka) of Banaadir.

A Brief Note on Benadir People:

The people of Benadir communities live in the Somali coast, such as Mogadishu, Merka, Brava and Kismayo on the Benadir coast of the Indian Ocean."Benadir" (also spelled Banadir) are a people with their roots in ancient Arabia, Persia, and south and central Asia. The name Benadir is derived from a Persian word which means "harbor" or "port", reflecting their origins as sea-faring traders and fishermen who crossed the Indian Ocean to the easternmost part of Africa and established centers of commerce which linked that continent with Asia. The Benadir very much view themselves as native and even founder of Somalia. The Benadir port city of Hamar eventually became Mogadishu, Somalia's capital. Benadiri are peace-loving people.

A Brief History Of Mogadishu And Its Earliest Recorded Inhabitants

The most fully documented of the early coastal settlements in Somalia points out that Mogadishu, capital and chief port of the Somalia Republic, was an ancient centre of the Muslim presence on the south coast 250 miles north east of the mouth of the Juba River.

Some time around the 77th year of the Hejira (694 AD), the towns of Mogadishu, Merka, Brava and Kismayo sprang into existence through the enterprise of Abdul Malik bin Muriami. He placed one of his own followers as governor in each place and declared himself Sultan.

The towns of the Somali coast, such Mogadishu, Merka, Brava and Kismayo on the Benadir coast of the Indian Ocean share to a great extent the characteristics of Swahili culture further south: trading centres, welcoming Arab, Persian and other immigrants, evolving distinctive amalgams both of people groups and language, with tangible forms of settled government and the presence of Islam.

In 1331 AD (the year of Hijria 731), Ibn Battuta gave us the best description of Mogadishu city and its Muslim society on the Horn of Africa at that time. In fact, he describes a deeply Islamised court around the sheikhdom where justice was administered on the basis of Islamic law and precedent.

During his stay in Mogadishu, he was lodged in the comfortable student's hostel at the Qadi's school where he studied the Islamic legal system.

For the history of the Somali coast, evidence from various sources shows without doubt that the original inhabitants of Mogadishu city were the Hamari people, who are ethnically an amalgam of heterogeneous populations who settled in the area more than a thousand years ago. In support of this, those interested only need to look at the archaeological research into Sheikh Ahmed Sharif's Mosque in Shingani District, the great Mosque Jama in Hamar Weyne District and many other places.

By about the sixteenth century, other nomadic people groups settled in the surrounding area of Mogadishu during the Ajuran Sultanate, but subsequently large populations moved to Mogadishu from all over the country because of the increasing economic importance of the city as the largest port in Somalia and its trade with Arabia and the Orient.

By this time, the people known to the early Arab geographers as the autochthonous inhabitants of Mogadishu were leading a peaceful life with the other groups that had come from the various regions of the country.

Regarding the fundamental nationalist goals of Somali independence, the people of the Benadir, under the guidance of Somali National Union which was established at Mogadishu in 1944, led a hard struggle for the independence and national unification.

Prepared By Late Prof. Abukar Ali Abukar

See also