Islam in Somalia

Lewis, the polity was governed by local Somali dynasties, who also ruled over the similarly-established Sultanate of Mogadishu in the littoral Benadir region to the south.

[10] In 1332, the Zeila-based King of Adal was slain in a military campaign aimed at halting the Abyssinian Emperor Amda Seyon I's march toward the city to avenge the slaughtered Christians including a famous monk sent to wage peace and destroyed Churches by the Adalites.

[15] Some scholars argue that this conflict proved, through their use on both sides, the value of firearms like the matchlock musket, cannons and the arquebus over traditional weapons.

During the Age of the Ajuran, the sultanates and republics of Merca, Mogadishu, Barawa, Hobyo flourished and had a lucrative foreign commerce, with ships sailing to and coming from Arabia, India, Venetia,[18] Persia, Egypt, Portugal and as far away as China.

[21] In the 16th century, Duarte Barbosa noted that many ships from the Kingdom of Cambaya in modern-day India sailed to Mogadishu with cloth and spices, for which they in return received gold, wax and ivory.

Barbosa also highlighted the abundance of meat, wheat, barley, horses, and fruit on the coastal markets, which generated enormous wealth for the merchants.

From this perspective, early Islam was seen as a protest against abuse, corruption, and inequality; reformers therefore attempted to prove that Muslim scriptures contained all elements needed to deal with modernization.

Soon after, the government arrested several protesting religious leaders and accused them of counterrevolutionary propaganda and of conniving with reactionary elements in the Arabian Peninsula.

He declared that work and belief were compatible with Islam because the Qur'an condemned exploitation and money lending and urged compassion, unity, and cooperation among Muslims.

Religion, Siad Barre said, was an integral part of the Somali worldview, but it belonged in the private sphere, whereas scientific socialism dealt with material concerns such as poverty.

The rise of these orders (Tarika, "way" or "path") was connected with the development of Sufism, a mystical sect within Islam that began during the 9th and 10th centuries and reached its height during the 12th and 13th.

Members of Sufi orders are commonly called dervishes, from the Persian daraawish (singular darwish, "one who gave up worldly concerns to dedicate himself to the service of God and community").

Leaders of branches or congregations of these orders are given the Arabic title shaykh, a term usually reserved for those learned in Islam and rarely applied to ordinary wadaads (holy men).

They are best known for their ceremonies, called dhikr, in which states of visionary ecstasy are induced by group- chanting of religious texts and by rhythmic gestures, dancing, and deep breathing.

Local leaders of brotherhoods customarily asked lineage heads in the areas where they wished to settle for permission to build their mosques and communities.

The presence of a jama'ah not only provided a buffer zone between two hostile groups, but also caused the giver to acquire a blessing since the land was considered given to God.

The traditional learning of a wadaad includes a form of folk astronomy based on stellar movements and related to seasonal changes.

Despite their putative Jewish origins, the overwhelming majority of the Yibir, like the Somali population in general, adhere to Islam and know practically nothing of Judaism.

[citation needed] Among nomads, the exigencies of pastoral life gave greater weight to the warrior's role, and religious leaders were expected to remain aloof from political matters.

[citation needed] The Qadiriyah, the oldest Sufi order, was founded in Baghdad by Abdul Qadir al-Jilani in 1166 and introduced to the Somali Adal in the 15th century.

In 1819, Shaykh Ibrahim Hassan Jebro acquired land on the Jubba River and established a religious center in the form of a farming community, the first Somali jama'ah (congregation).

Outstanding figures of the Qadiriyah in Somalia included Shaykh Awes Mahammad Baraawi (d. 1909), who spread the teaching of the Sufi order in the southern interior.

Because of his reputation for sanctity, his tomb at Mogadishu became a pilgrimage center for the Shebelle valley and his writings continued to be circulated by his followers as late as the early 1990s.

Five years later, another neo-Salihiya figure expedited Urwaynism or Urwayniya through proselytizing, via the Darawiish wherein Diiriye Guure was sultan and wherein the Salihiyya preacher Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, would become emir of the Dervish movement in a lengthy resistance to the Abyssinian, Italian and British colonialists until 1920.

[30][31] Generally, the Salihiyah and the Idrisiyah leaders were more interested in the establishment of a jama'ah along the Shabeelle and Jubba rivers and the fertile land between them than in teaching because few were learned in Islam.

In Somalia's riverine region, for example, only jama'ah members thought of stripping the brush from areas around their fields to reduce the breeding places of tsetse flies.

In 1992, Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed marshalled forces to successfully expel an Islamist extremist group linked to the outfit, which had laid siege to Bosaso, a prominent port city and the commercial capital of the northeastern part of the country.

[36] The historian David Westerlund refers to both Shia and Wahhabi (Hanbali madhab) sects in Somalia as relatively recent developments.

[39] The Saudi invasion of Yemen in 2015 resulted in large amounts of Zaydi Shia Yemeni refugees seeking refuge in northern Somalia.

[40] Although there has never been a comprehensive census in Somalia that lists various Islamic denominations as an option, there have been some Somalis in the diaspora who have used the self-description of "just a Muslim" upon probes into their religious affiliation.