Zeila (, ), also spelled Zaila or Zayla, is a historical port town in the western Awdal region of Somaliland.
In the Middle Ages, the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela identified Zeila with the Biblical location of Havilah.François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar, "Desperately Seeking the Jewish Kingdom of Ethiopia: Benjamin of Tudela and the Horn of Africa (Twelfth Century)", Speculum, 88.2 (2013): 383–404. Most modern scholars identify it with the site of Avalites mentioned in the 1st-century Greco-Roman travelogue the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and in Ptolemy, although this is disputed.G. W. B. Huntingford (ed.), The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, by an Unknown Author: With Some Extracts from Agatharkhides ‘On the Erythraean Sea’ (Ashgate, 1980), p. 90.Lionel Casson (ed.), The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 116–17. Avalites may be Assab or a village named Abalit near Obock. The town evolved into an early Islamic center with the arrival of Muslims shortly after the Hijrah. By the 9th century, Zeila was the capital of the early Adal Kingdom and Ifat Sultanate in the 13th century, it would attain its height of prosperity a few centuries later in the 16th century. The city subsequently was under Ottoman protection from the 16th to the 19th century, during which it was briefly seized by Sharmarke Ali Saleh in 1856. It later transitioned from Ottoman to British control.
Up until recently Zeila was surrounded by a large wall with five gates: Bab al-Sahil and Bab al-Jadd on the North. Bab Abdulqadir on the East: Bab al-Sahil on the west and Bab Ashurbura on the south.
Historically, Zeila was a cosmopolitan port city inhabited by various ethnic groups such as Somalis, Afars and Arabs. The town of Zeila and the wider Zeila District is currently inhabited by the Gadabuursi and Issa, both subclans of the Dir clan family.UN (1999) Somaliland: Update to SML26165.E of 14 February 1997 on the situation in Zeila, including who is controlling it, whether there is fighting in the area, and whether refugees are returning. "The Gadabuursi clan dominates Awdal region. As a result, regional politics in Awdal is almost synonymous with Gadabuursi internal clan affairs." p. 5..
The Issa clan regard Zeila as their traditional home, having historic ties to the town, serving as the site where their Ughaz is crowned. It was also viewed as the seat of the Gadabursi Ughazate, where the French and British signed treaties with them.Traité de protectorat sur les territoires du pays des Gada-boursisAgreement between Great Britain and the Gadabursi (Somalia), signed at Zaila, 11 December 1884
Geography Zeila is situated in the Awdal region in Somaliland. Located on the Gulf of Aden coast near the Djibouti border, the town sits on a sandy spit surrounded by the sea. It is known for its coral reef, mangroves and offshore islands, which include the Sa'ad ad-Din archipelago named after the Sultan Sa'ad ad-Din II of the Sultanate of Ifat. Landward, the terrain is unbroken desert for some fifty miles. Borama lies southeast of Zeila, Berbera lies east of Zeila, while the city of Harar in Ethiopia is to the west. The Zeila region named after this port city denoted the entire Muslim inhabited domains in medieval Horn of Africa.
Foundation
Zeila, along with Mogadishu and other Somali coastal cities, was founded upon an indigenous network involving hinterland trade, which happened even before significant Arab migrations or trade with the Somali coast. That goes back approximately four thousand years.
According to textual and archeological evidence, Zeila, was founded by Sh. Saylici was one of many small towns developed by the Somali pastoral and trading communities which flourished through the trade that gave birth to other coastal and hinterland towns such as Heis, Maydh, Abasa, Awbare, Awbube, Amud in the Borama area, Derbiga Cad Cad, Qoorgaab, Fardowsa, Maduna, Aw-Barkhadle in the Hargeisa region and Fardowsa, near Sheikh.Divine Fertility: The Continuity in Transformation of an Ideology of Sacred Kinship in Northeast Africa by Sada Mire Page 129
Ancient Zeila was divided into five residential districts; Khoor-Doobi, Hafat al-Furda, Asho Bara, Hafat al-Suda and Sarrey.
History
Avalites
Zeila is an ancient city and has been identified with the trade post referred to in classical antiquity as Avalites (), situated in the region of Barbara in Northeast Africa. During antiquity, it was one of many city-states that engaged in the lucrative trade between the Near East (Phoenicia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Greece, Parthian Persia, Saba, Nabataea, Roman Empire, etc.) and India. Merchants used the ancient Somali maritime vessel known as the beden to transport their cargo.Journal of African History pg.50 by John Donnelly Fage and Roland Anthony Oliver
In Camoens: His Life and Lusiads, Richard F. Burton links the Somali Habr Awal people with the ancient Avalitae mentioned by Ptolemy and in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. He notes that Camoens’ reference to the “Barbarica Region” corresponds to the Somali coast, and following Ibn Battuta and Varthema, He identifies this group with the Habr Awal, whom he noted as occupying the coastal region between Zeila and Siyara
Along with the neighboring Habash of Al-Habash to the west, the Barbaroi who inhabited the area were recorded in the 1st century CE Greek document the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as engaging in extensive commercial exchanges with Egypt and pre-Islamic Arabia. The travelogue mentions the Barbaroi trading frankincense, among various other commodities, through their port cities such as Avalites. Competent seamen, the Periplus' author also indicates that they sailed throughout the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden for trade. The document describes the Barbaroi's governance system as decentralized and essentially consisting of a collection of autonomous city-states.Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi, Culture and Customs of Somalia, (Greenwood Press, 2001), pp.13–14 It also suggests that "the Berbers who live in the place are very unruly,"Wilfred Harvey Schoff, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: travel and trade in the Indian Ocean, (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912) p.25 an apparent reference to their independent nature.
Ifat & Adal Sultanates
Islam was introduced to the area early on from the Arabian Peninsula, shortly after the Hijrah. Zeila's two-mihrab Masjid al-Qiblatayn dates to the 7th century, and is the oldest mosque in the city. In the late 9th century, Al-Yaqubi wrote that Muslims were living along the northern Somali seaboard. He also mentioned that the Adal kingdom had its capital in the city, suggesting that the Adal Sultanate with Zeila as its headquarters dates back to at least the 9th or 10th centuries. According to I.M. Lewis, the polity was governed by local dynasties consisting of Somalized Arabs or Arabized Somalis, who also ruled over the similarly established Sultanate of Mogadishu in the Benadir region to the south. Adal's history from this founding period would be characterized by a succession of battles with neighbouring Abyssinia.
By the years (1214–17), Ibn Said referred to both Zeila and Berbera. Zeila, as he tells us, was a wealthy city of considerable size and its inhabitants were completely Muslim. Ibn Said's description gives the impression that Berbera was of much more localized importance, mainly serving the immediate Somali hinterland while Zeila was clearly serving more extensive areas. But there is no doubt that Zeila was also predominantly Somali, and Al-Dimashqi, another thirteen-century Arab writer, gives the city name its Somali name Awdal (Adal), still known among the local Somali. By the fourteen century, the significance of this Somali port for the Ethiopian interior increased so much so that all the Muslim communities established along the trade routes into central and south-eastern Ethiopia were commonly known in Egypt and Syria by the collective term of "the country of Zeila."
Historian Al-Umari in his study in the 1340s about the history of Awdal, the medieval state in western and northern parts of historical Somalia and some related areas, Al-Umari of Cairo states that in the land of Zayla’ (Awdal) “they cultivate two times annually by seasonal rains … The rainfall for the winter is called ‘Bil’ and rainfall for the ‘summer’ is called ‘Karam’ in the language of the people of Zayla’ [Awdali Somalis].”
The author’s description about seasons generally corresponds to the local seasons in historical Awdal where Karan or Karam is an important rainy season at the beginning of the year. The second half of the year is called ‘Bilo Dirir’ (Bil = month; Bilo = months). It appears that the historian was referring, in one way or another, to these still used terms, Karan and Bil. This indicates that the ancient Somali and/or Harari solar calendar citizens of Zeila were using was very similar to the one they use today.Said M-Shidad Hussein, The Somali Calendar: An Ancient, Accurate Timekeeping System Somali calendar
In the following century, the Moroccan historian and traveller Ibn Battuta describes the city being inhabited by Somalis, followers of the Shafi‘i school, who kept large numbers of camels, sheep and goats. His description thus indicates both the ingenious nature of the city, as indicated by the composition of its population, and, by implication through the presence of the livestock, the existence of the nomads in its vicinity. He also describes Zeila as a big metropolis city and many great markets filled with many wealthy merchants. Zeila has also been known to be home to a number of Hanafis, but no research has been conducted as to how large the Hanafi population was in premodern Zeila.Jamāl al-Dīn Abī Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Yūsuf al-Zaylaʿī al-Ḥanafī (2018) Naṣb al-Rāya li-Aḥādīth al-Hidāya. 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm).
Through extensive trade with Abyssinia and Arabia, Adal attained its height of prosperity during the 14th century.I. M. Lewis, A pastoral democracy: a study of pastoralism and politics among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa, (LIT Verlag Münster: 1999), p.17 It sold incense, myrrh, slaves, gold, silver and camels, among many other commodities. Zeila had by then started to grow into a huge multicultural metropolis, with Somalis (Predominantly), Afar, Harari, and even Arabs and Persian inhabitants. The city was also instrumental in bringing Islam to the Oromo and other Ethiopian ethnic groups.Rayne, Henry A. Sun, sand and somals : leaves from the note-book of a district commissioner in British Somaliland. London : Witherby. (1921). https://archive.org/stream/sunsandsomalslea00raynuoft/sunsandsomalslea00raynuoft_djvu.txt