In the medieval
Arab world the Muslim inhabited domains in the Horn of Africa were often referred to as Zeila to differentiate them from the
Christian territories designated
Habasha.[7][8][9][10] According to
Ibn Battuta, a journey through the whole of Zeila and the
Mogadishu region would take eight weeks to complete.[11]
Fourteenth century Arab historian
Ibn Fadlallah al-Umari recounted on the usage of the term and its origin being the city of
Zeila, a vital port in the region.[12]
this is the region which is called in Egypt and Syria the land of Zaila. This however is only one of their coastal towns and one of their islands, whose name has been extended to the whole
Ethiopian scholar
Taddesse Tamrat noted that according to the Arab historian
Al-Maqrizi, Jabarta was considered part of the region of Zeila.[13][14]
History
The term Zeila in the thirteenth century was often interchangeable with the
Ifat Sultanate which ruled over the entire region and later in the fourteenth century onwards used to denote its successor state the
Adal Sultanate as well as
Adal region.[15][16][17] Throughout this period the
attribution"al-Zaylai" frequently signified an individual from this region however it was not made consistently clear whether it referred to the denizens of city specifically or the Muslims further inland.[18]
In the fourteenth century
Egyptian historian
al-Maqrizi mentions the inhabitants of Zeila country were fond of the narcotic
khat leaf grown in the region.[19] One of the earliest accounts of
coffee in text is by the sixteenth century Islamic scholar
Ibn Hajar al-Haytami who writes about its development from a tree in the Zeila region.[20]
The seventeenth century saw the decline of Adal, described as being divided into smaller separate states due to the “long and bloody” wars waged on Abyssinia.[24] According to American geographer
Samuel Augustus Mitchell, the neighbouring port of
Berbera in the
Somali country and its respective provinces were flourishing in trade stretching through depths of Ethiopia from the
Emirate of Harar whose leader rules over the
Somalis.[25] However during this period, British government official James Henson noted that Berbera was ruled by the local merchant Sharmake Ali Saleh[26]
Inhabitants
According to
John Fage and
I.M. Lewis, the main inhabitants of Zeila were ancestral to the
Somali tribes who historically resided in the region.[27][28]Ibn Fadlallah Al Umari’s account of
Ifat states that the people of Zeila spoke a distinct language possibly of Semitic origin. He refers to this language as (Zayla’i) in his account.[29] According to British explorer
Richard Burton, al-Maqrizi mentions the "Kingdom of Zayla" using the
Harari moniker.[30]
With the spread of Islam into Africa in the seventh century, the
Somali language, especially certain northern dialects were influenced immensely by Arabic[31] as well as the
Harari language with traditional titles such as Garad, Malaq, and Aw adopted by various Somali clans.[32][33] The Zeila region itself positioned at the crossroads of two continents has often been included under the sphere of the
South Semitic languages.[34][35]
In the nineteenth-century the inhabitants of Zeila narrated to one British commissioner that the ruined town of Amud (in the Zeila region) was built by the ancient
Harla people. The British commissioner attested to the similarities between the ruins of Amud and that of the walled city of
Harar.[36]
^Rayne, Henry (October 1938).
"QUEEN ARAWEILO". Blackwood's Magazine. 238: 568–578. Archived from the original on 27 June 2001. Retrieved 20 June 2017.{{
cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (
link)