Somalia

Somalia wraps around the Horn of Africa, its shore running from the Gulf of Aden round Cape Guardafui and far down the Indian Ocean. Much of the interior is dry plateau and thorn scrub, grazed by herds that follow the rains. Only the Jubba and the Shabelle, both rising in the Ethiopian highlands, flow all year, and the Shabelle often dies in swamps short of the sea. Two wet seasons, the gu and the deyr, decide how the herds fare.

Arab, Persian and Indian merchants traded on this coast for centuries, and Islam arrived early. Mogadishu, Merca and Barawa became stone-built ports exporting cloth, ivory and incense; Ibn Battuta described Mogadishu’s lavish hospitality in 1331. From the late 1880s Italy took the southern and eastern coasts, later running them as a United Nations trust territory. The Somali Republic became independent in July 1960, and Siad Barre’s military government held power from 1969 to 1991.

Somalis are almost all Sunni Muslims, and clan lineage decides whom a person can call on in hard times. A well-made gabay, a long poem, could settle a feud or start one, and poems were memorised for generations before Somali received a Latin script in 1972. Lunch is often pasta, a legacy of Italian rule, eaten with a banana. Camels, goats and sheep go by sea to Arabia from Bosaso and Kismayo, the river valleys grow bananas and sesame, and frankincense is tapped in the north-east.