Merca (, ) is the capital city of the Lower Shebelle province of Somalia, a historic port city in the region. It is located approximately to the southwest of the nation's capital Mogadishu. Merca is the traditional home territory of the Bimaal clan and was the center of the Bimal revolt.
History
Antiquity
The city of
Essina is believed to have been the predecessor state of Merca. It used to be an ancient
Proto-Somali Marketplace city-state.
[Ptolemy's Topography of Eastern Equatorial Africa, by Henry Schlichter Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography © 1891 - p. 443] It is mentioned in the
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek travel document dating from the first century AD, as one of a series of commercial ports on the Somali littoral. According to the
Periplus, maritime trade already connected peoples in the Merca area with other communities along the Somali Sea coast.
Medieval Period
According to the 12th-century author Al-Idrisi the
Hawiye occupied the coastal areas between
Ras Hafun and Merca, as well as the lower basin of the lower
Shebelle River river. Al-Idrisi's mention of the
Hawiye is the first documentary reference to a specific Somali group in the Horn. Later Arab writers also make references to the
Hawiye clan in connection with both Merca and the lower Shabelle valley. Ibn Sa'id (1214–74), for instance, considered Merca to be the capital of the Hawiye, who lived in fifty villages on the bank of a river which he called
the Nile of Mogadishu, a clear reference to the Shabelle river.
Yaqut al-Hamawi, another thirteen-century Arab geographer also mentions Merca, which he says belonged to the
Black Berbers considered ancestors of modern
Somalis.
During the Middle Ages, the area was one of several prominent administrative centers of the Ajuran Sultanate. The polity formed one of the largest kingdoms in the Horn region. Various exist in the region, which local tradition holds were built in the 15th century when the Sultanate's naa'ibs governed the district.[The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 3 - Page 138]
Following the decline of Ajuran Sultanate. In the vicinity of Merca, a mysterious group known as the El Amir made its appearance between 1650 and 1700. According to an account collected by Guillain in 1847, a leader known as Amir, believed to originate from the Abgaal, formed a following or "tribe" which invaded the territory of Merca and expelled the Ajuran clan. The El Amir ruled for thirty-four years until the Biimaal expelled them and definitively occupied Merca.
Early Modern
One of the most powerful sultanates to have emerged from Southern Somalia called the
Geledi Sultanate centered in
Afgooye in the late 17th century. The Sultanate of Geledi tried to attack and destroy the Bimaal clan many times to try and capture the coastal city of Merca. But the Bimal of Merca managed to defeat the Geledi Sultanate 2 times. In 1843 Yusuf Mahamud, the Sultan of Geledi, vowed to destroy the Bimaal once and for all and mobilizes the Geledi army. In 1848 the sultan of the Geledi, Yusuf Mahamud was killed at Adaddey Suleyman, a village near Merca, in a battle between the Bimaal and Geledi Sultanates. His son Sultan Ahmed Yusuf tried to seek revenge but was also killed in 1878 at Agaaran, near Marka by the Bimal. This caused a steady decline in the Geledi Sultanate.
Bimal Revolt
The
Bimal revolt,
Bimal resistance, or
Banadir resistance was a
guerrilla war against the Italian Somaliland in southern
Somalia. It was fought from the years 1896 to 1926 and largely concentrated in the
Lower Shebelle,
Banadir Region, and
Middle Shebelle. The war was centered around Merka and Danane.
It is compared to the war of the Mad Mullah in northern Somalia.
For more about Bimal or Merca revolt see:
Modern
In the 1930s a group of
Italian Somalis established residency in Merca. The Port of Merca was the oldest port in
Italian Somalia and was nicknamed the "port of bananas" due to its status as a key exporter of bananas from Somalia to
Europe.
In the city of Merca there was a huge economic development in the 1930s, due mainly to the growing commerce of the port of Merca connected by small railway to the farm area of
Genale Dorya.
Following the full outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991, Merca came under the control of Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiya, a Islamist group who soon after started governing the city. Al-Itihaad controlled the city until US troops landed in Somalia during December 1992. In this period the organization relinquished of the port control to the US military peacefully.
Merca was abandoned by government forces and captured by Al-Shabaab in February 2016.
On 27 July 2022, an Al-Shabaab suicide bomber killed mayor Abdullahi Ali Ahmed Waafow and twenty other people while Waafow was giving a speech.
Demographics
According to the UNDP in 2005, Merca had a population of around 250,000 inhabitants.
it is primarily inhabited by Biimaal Clan with there being a recognizable amount of other Somali tribes.
[ Landinfo Somalia: Lower Shabelle. Landinfo Somalia: Lower Shabelle]
Transportation
Merca has a
jetty-class
seaport, the Port of Merca.
The nearest airport to the city is the K50 Airport in the Lower Shebelle province.
Otherwise, most people take the Aden Adde Airport in Mogadishu and then take an hour and 30 minute bus ride to Merca
Notable people
-
Asha Jama, social activist, and former TV reporter and journalist.
-
Sheikh Abibakar Gafle, described as one of the best-known resistance leaders in Southern Somalia and from Merca.
-
Ali Maow Maalin, the last person known to have been naturally infected by Variola minor smallpox
-
Abdullahi Ali Ahmed Waafow, former mayor of Merca and Member of Parliament
See also
Sources
External links
