[5] For many years Mogadishu functioned as the pre-eminent city in the بلد البربر (Bilad al Barbar - "Land of the Berbers"), as medieval Arabic-speakers named the Somali coast.

[9][10][11] However, the reference I.M Lewis and Cerulli received traces back to one 19th century text called the Kitab Al-Zunuj, which has been discredited by modern scholars as unreliable and unhistorical.

[12][13][14][15] More importantly, it contradicts oral, ancient written sources and archaeological evidence on the pre-existing civilizations and communities that flourished on the Somali coast, and to which were the forefathers of Mogadishu and other coastal cities.

Thus, the Persian and Arab founding "myths" are regarded as an outdated false colonialist reflection on Africans ability to create their own sophisticated states.

According to Ross E. Dunn, neither Mogadishu nor any other city on the coast could be considered alien enclaves of Arabs or Persians, but were in-fact African towns.

The 12th-century Syrian historian Yaqut al-Hamawi (c. 1220) wrote about Mogadishu and called it the richest and most powerful city in the region, and described it as being located in the country of the Berbers, certainly a reference to the Somalis.

In the 13th century, the Sultanate of Mogadishu through its trade with medieval China had acquired enough of a reputation in Asia to attract the attention of Kublai Khan.

Indeed, the ships of Malabar which visit this island of Mogadishu, and that other of Zanzibar, arrive thither with marvellous speed, for great as the distance is they accomplish it in 20 days, whilst the return voyage takes them more than 3 months.

And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air, and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him the bird gryphon swoops down on him and eats him at leisure.

They brought (as I heard) to the Great Khan a feather of the said Rukh, which was stated to measure 90 spans, whilst the quill part was two palms in circumference, a marvellous object!

This would have resulted from 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo confusing the two locations in his memoirs, in which he mentions the land of Madageiscar to the south of Socotra.

[29] In this work, Jerome Megiser describes an event in which the kings of Mogadishu and Adal went to Madagascar with huge fleet of between twenty-five twenty to twenty-six thousand men, in-order to invade the rich island of Taprobane or Sumatra but a tempest threw them of course and they landed on the coasts of Madagascar conquering it and signing a treaty with the inhabitants.

[34] A trace of this name was discovered by Enrico Cerulli in the Ethiopian epic song of Emperor Yeshaq I which mentions the Temur in connexion with the Somali.

One day, a fisherman caught a large bite off Kilwa and was dragged by the fish around Cape Delgado, through the Mozambique Channe, all the way down to the Sofala banks.

[38] The Swahili strengthened its trading capacity by having, among other things, rivergoing dhows ply the Buzi and Save rivers to ferry the gold extracted in the hinterlands to the coast.

[39] In the early 13th century, Mogadishu along with other coastal and interior Somali cities in southern Somalia and eastern Abyssinia came under the Ajuran Sultanate control and experienced another Golden Age.

He described Mogadishu as "an exceedingly large city" with many rich merchants, which was famous for its high quality fabric that it exported to Egypt, among other places.

Along with gold, frankincense and fabrics, Zheng brought back the first ever African wildlife to China, which included hippos, giraffes and gazelles.

[53][54][55][56] In Mogadishu, the center of a thriving weaving industry known as toob benadir (specialized for the markets in Egypt and Syria),[57] together with Merca and Barawa also served as transit stops for Swahili merchants from Mombasa and Malindi and for the gold trade from Kilwa.

[59]Vasco Da Gama, who passed by Mogadishu in the 15th century, noted that it was a large city with houses of four or five storeys high and big palaces in its centre and many mosques with cylindrical minarets.

[60] In the 16th century, Duarte Barbosa, the famous Portuguese traveler wrote about Mogadishu (c 1517–1518):[61] It has a king over it, and is a place of great trade in merchandise.

In this town there is plenty of meat, wheat, barley, and horses, and much fruit: it is a very rich place.In 1542, the Portuguese commander João de Sepúvelda led a small fleet on an expedition to the Somali coast.

[62] According to the 16th-century explorer, Leo Africanus indicates that the native inhabitants of the Mogadishu polity were of the same origins as the denizens of the northern people of Zeila the capital of Adal Sultanate.

Their weaponry consisted of traditional Somali weapons such as swords, daggers, spears, battle axe, and bows, although they received assistance from its close ally the Ottoman Empire and with the import of firearms such as muskets and cannons.

Pieces have been found as far away as modern United Arab Emirates, where a coin bearing the name of a 12th-century Somali sultan Ali b. Yusuf of Mogadishu was excavated.