Banaadir Coast

The Banaadir Coast faces the Indian Ocean along southern Somalia. Its ports, including Mogadishu, Merca and Barawa, linked inland communities to maritime networks reaching other East African and overseas ports. Coastal towns became centres of commerce and Islamic scholarship.

The traveller Ibn Battuta visited Mogadishu shortly before the period described here, around 1331. He described a prosperous town whose cloth was exported to Egypt and elsewhere. Such weaving and maritime exchange connected the coast to the wider Indian Ocean, while its ports also drew on resources and traders from their hinterland.