[13][14] Naturalization, known as citizenship by grant, can be acquired persons who have resided in the territory for a sufficient period of time to confirm they understand the customs and traditions of the society.
[26] The coastal people engaged in trade with merchants seeking frankincense and myrrh from Abyssinia, Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia, Persia, and Rome.
Mogadishu arose as a center of commerce in the south brokering trade with Swahili merchants who brought goods from China, India, and Southwest Asia.
Intermarriage created an Islamic Arab-Somali elite, who established strong, but independent city-states, that dominated both commerce and politics along the coast.
[31] Zeila and the other city states, attempted to extend their authority over nomadic peoples in the interior to create a defensive buffer between their strongholds and Abyssinian invaders.
[32][28] By the late thirteenth the Hawiye clan had expanded from the Shebelle Valley toward the coast, subjugating the area between Itala and Merca.
[28] Around 1560, the Silcis Sultanate of the Hawiye clan moved into the Lower Shabelle Valley and established tributary requirements from the Geledi and Wacdaan subclans.
[28] In the seventeenth century the Rahanweyn clan migrated south displacing the Ajuran confederation in the Jubba and Shebelle river basins.
[28] The remnants of the Ajuran confederation, as well as their Madanle allies, and the Muzaffarids who had been ousted from Mogadishu in 1624, moved into the northeastern parts of Kenya.
[42] In the early part of the eighteenth century the Geledi and Wacdaan, who lived on opposite sides of the Shabelle River, joined forces to oust the Silcis Sultanate.
[38][43] This action gave rise to the founding of the Geledi Sultanate around 1750, which along with their Wacdaan allies, became the dominant political entity in southern Somalia through the nineteenth century.
[46] In 1839, the British established a trading fort in Aden, and signed treaties with the Isaaq clan rulers to access food supplies.
[47] In 1846, Charles Guillain [fr], a French naval officer, led an expedition to visit the southern coast of Somalia.
[28][49] In 1850, Britain signed an agreement with the Majeerteen Sultanate to protect British ships in their waters in exchange for an annual subsidy.
France signed treaties with the Sultan of Afar in 1862 and with the Issa elders in 1874, allowing the French to occupy Obock and Tadjoura.
[50] In 1865, Karl Klaus von der Decken, a German explorer, navigated the River Jubba, but was halted by the rapids above Bardera.
[53][54] Between 1889 and 1901, they made agreements to acquire the territory of the Sultan of Majeerteen and in 1893, secured treaties to control trade in the port cities of Barawa, Merca, Mogadishu and Uarscheich.
[68] A code drafted in 1907, specified that Italian subjects in Somaliland were to follow local customary law with regard to their religious and tribal affiliation.
Those children born outside of marriage, who were legitimated, or legally recognized and registered in official colonial birth records, were also automatically granted Italian nationality with full citizenship.
[77] Three years later, Regent Governor in Eritrea Camillo De Camillis issued an instruction to attribute automatic metropolitan nationality to any bi-racial (Italian: meticci) child regardless of an acknowledgement of paternity.
[79] A 1933 statute formalized the practice of allowing illegitimate mixed-race children to choose metropolitan status upon reaching their majority.
Further, anti-miscegenation legislation passed in 1937 prohibited concubinage and another promulgated the following year banned formal marriages between metropolitan and native subjects.
[86][87][88] In 1942, Ethiopian sovereignty was restored, but the Military Administration continued to manage affairs in the Ogaden region and part of French Somaliland.
The following year, the United Nations established the Trust Territory of Somaliland under Italian administration, which was to take effect in January 1950.
[93] Illegitimate children and foundlings who were discovered in the territory could derive nationality through their mother or upon request from the person who had custody of the child.
[98] Marriage did not affect the status of a subject of the realm,[99] but under common law, single women, including divorcées, were not allowed to be parents thus their children could not derive nationality maternally and were stateless unless legitimated by their father.
[105][106] When Britain extended this status over a territory, it took responsibility for both internal and external administration, including defense and foreign relations.
[119] In an effort to move toward a united independence, a conference was held in 1953 to discuss the potential for acquiring Ogaden and the Haud Reserve permanently for the Somalis.
[95] To overcome the lack of a unification agreement, a presidential decree was prepared to rectify the situation, but it failed to gain legislative approval.
[139][140] Between 1990 and 1992 the Somali state collapsed because of waves of violence, accelerated by a dramatic rise in the availability of weapons; the inability of clan elders to enforce customary law; and an enormous famine which spread across southern Somalia.