Caynaashe

2 Habr Yonis Dervish arms smugglers by the names Haji Hirsi and Bulhan Ali of Maydh indicted by British ally Warsangali Sultan Mohamed Ali Shire for orchestrating the Dervish siege on Las Qoray. The British offered refuge to the Warsangali, delivering a ship to their coast over to Aden saving the remaining tribesmen. Over 300 were killed in the siege [1916]

Three years before this letter was penned, Sharmarke Ali Saleh took control of Zeila and became its governor [1841]. Sharmarke chartered two dhows fitted with two cannon and fifty Somali matchlockmen to take the town. Pointing his cannon at the walls, he demanded that the incumbent Arab governor, Sayyid Muhammad al-Barr, surrender Zeila to him. When al-Barr refused, Sharmarke fired at the walls. Terrified by the explosions, the governor’s troops broke, allowing Sharmarke to enter in triumph and take al-Barr and the Sharif of Mocha's detachment of troops prisoner without bloodshed. The contemporary traveller Charles Johnston, on his 1842–1843 mission to Shewa in Abyssinia, recorded the takeover, observing that Sharmarke had taken possession of the town and hoisted his own independent flag upon its walls.

In the 19th century, the majority of Somali traders who frequented Aden belonged to the wider Isaaq clan. As the excerpt shows, this wider clan was recorded under the historical designation ‘Gulbedh’ (galbeed/western), comprising the Habr Awal, Habr Je’lo, and Garhajis (Habr Yunis & Eidagale). “It is chiefly members of the western [Isaaq] tribes that visit Aden, where they bring from Ankor [Unkor/Conqor], Karam [Karin], Antarad [El Darad/Ceel Daraad], and Berbera, sheep, cattle, gums, myrrh, ivory, feathers, etc. ; and take away corn, dates, iron, lead, beads, cotton goods, etc.” The Somali population in Aden, most of whom were Isaaq, consisted of traders, brokers, dockworkers, and policemen. They were also the first to land their stock and goods directly on the beaches of Ma’alla, founding their own settlement that later grew into a town, prompting the government in Aden to officially recognise it and build a pier in 1855.

The economic Reliance of the Somali regime of Siad Barre on Berbera and Isaaq Merchant Networks [1970s–1980s] Over 75% of Somalia’s officially recorded foreign currency income in the 1970s and 1980s was generated by livestock exports routed through the port of Berbera, highlighting the country's profound structural reliance on northern Isaaq mercantile systems. According to researchers and analysts Alex de Waal and Vali Jamal, this private trade effectively created a highly developed capitalist enclave operating entirely inside a state-socialist regime. This domestic system operated alongside a massive global remittance network; in the 1980, Somali migrant workers in the Gulf, the majority of whom belonged to the Isaaq tribes, transmitted an estimated $338 million USD back to the region. This informal financial influx was fifteen times larger than the entire annual wage bill for the country's formal public and private sectors combined. In response, The military regime utilized state power to break the hold of their major competitor, the Berbera merchant class, but ultimately failed. This strategy of seizure was an act of “economic madness” that directly attacked the most productive sectors of the economy, ensuring that the state's total dependence on foreign aid and military coercion became entirely unsustainable and triggered its final collapse. #somali #somaliland #siadbarre #somalia