Somali

The Somalis are a Cushitic Horn people from the Red Sea to the Tana River; their language is East Cushitic, their clans tracing to the legendary ancestor Samaale. Greek and Arab geographers called their coast Barbaria, and trade with Arabia made them mostly Sunni. The name Somali first clearly appears in an Ethiopian hymn of the early 1400s on victory over Ifat.

In 1337 the northern clans served Ifat's Walashma sultans; the successor Adal Sultanate, centered on Harar, fought Ethiopia for two centuries. Its imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi conquered most of Ethiopia with muskets and Ottoman-backed troops in the sixteenth century, until Portuguese intervention turned the tide; the war ended in Adal's collapse and its capital's move to Aussa in 1577.

In the south arose the Ajuran Sultanate, which from the late 1300s monopolized Shebelle and Jubba waters, minted coinage and traded with China. Later-1600s revolts dissolved Ajuran rule into the Hiraab Imamate at Mogadishu and the upcountry Geledi Sultanate; northern ports fell to Somali sultanates.