Umar

The sultans of medieval Mogadishu, the leading Muslim city-state on the Benadir coast of southern Somalia, belonged to its first known ruling house, the Fakhr al-Din dynasty, founded when Abu Bakr ibn Fakhr al-Din made himself sultan in the mid-thirteenth century; his brother Omar ad-Din is said to have settled in Harar.

When Ibn Battuta visited in 1331 the city was ruled by Sultan Abu Bakr ibn Shaikh Umar, who spoke the Maqdishi tongue and Arabic. Mogadishu dominated the regional gold trade, minted its own coinage and exported finely woven toob benadir cloth, while Ming treasure fleets called there under Zheng He.

The Portuguese raider Joao de Sepulveda bombarded the city in 1542 and extorted a peace treaty, but the sultanate kept its independence until the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, when the Fakhr al-Din line was replaced by the Muzaffarid dynasty.