Talk:Adal (historical region)

Adal Sultanate & Harla

I want to make somethings clear on the statement that "Harla were just traders" argument that was added recently. During the Adal Sultanate in the fifteenth century the Somalis were incorporated into Adal Sultanate as it began expanding [1]] and the Sultan would use Somalis in his army especially the corrupt Sultan known as Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad during Adal's civil war, he did this because he could not attack other Harla states such as the one run by Garad Abun Adashe using Harla troops. Hence the Adal sultan used Somali militias this was not regular policy of all of Adal itself as the state within Adal sultanate was run by numerous emirs like Abun. BTW the Harla were nomads themselves but by the fifteenth century they became sedentary, it would be unfair to highlight one century of Adal region as a representation of the population. Hassan is discussing a minor period of Adal Sultanate, the struggle of Imam Ahmed with the Adal sultan. If you want to add this minor event which I think belongs in the Adal Sultanate page, these points need to be made clear, otherwise it would seem like Adal Sultan was attacking Harla traders. I've also read some texts on these Adal related wiki articles that Garad Abun overthrew the sultan this is not what happened the Adal system was run by main head the "Sultan" with mini state rulers called governors which were emirs or garads, once emirs reach Imam status they had more authority over the sultan, the imams usually had prominence when Abyssinians attacked Adal state and the sultans were unable to defeat them see Salih. This is the root of Imam/Sultan conflicts as the Sultan (Abu bakr) in this case was jealous of the Imam's popularity within the state. Magherbin (talk) 11:19, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

@Magherbin, Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad wasn't the only Adal leader who used Somali troops. There was also Nur ibn Mujahid, Mansur ibn Muhammad, Mahfuz,[2] (page 80) Sim Garad 'Umar Din,[3] page 209, Sabr ad-Din III [4] and even Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi himself, they all used Somalis in their army. It seems like they were consistently used throughout Adal's history, hence we shouldn't omit their role, they obviously had a major presence in this region. محرر البوق (talk) 15:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

None of those references even mention Harla as a group by name those are outdated, it even states Mahfuz was an Afar. There's a shift in academia. Downplaying Harla as some traders is inaccurate. For example Enrico Cerulli states Adal was a Harari state but didnt comment about Harla considerably, he assumed they were from the Harari region but thats about it. Its only after further studies that we establish Harla were central to Adal mainly by Amelie Chekroun, the academia now considers Harla as a distinct group. The last powerful Adal military consisted of Harla when this military of Muhammad ibn Nasir was defeated by Sarsa Dengel the Adal state lost its military, Sarsa Dengel chronicles explains this mentioning Harla by name [5]. What the chronicles revealed is the Adal military consisted of Harla, this event marked the end of Harar's military power "After a hard-fought battle on the river Webi he was defeated and executed together with the flower of the Hararian nobility, and Harar as a military power was extinguished for ever" see p.37 [6] Adal's Harar state prior to the Oromo invasion had a powerful military that occupied Abyssinia. Merid Wolde Aregay explains this, he also states many of these Harari warriors were scattered after the war and were not able to return to Harar. It was only after the Oromo invasion and collapse of Adal that Harla or Harari became mainly traders, this wasnt the case prior. I would also like to point out some Harla were nomadic, Amelie talks about this although we dont have much information on this yet, see p.198 [7]. The Aussa chronicles mentions an attack on Zeila led by a group of Harla see p.203 [8]. Magherbin (talk) 20:03, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

@Magherbin OK, I won’t mention Harla as traders or Somalis being dominant in the military. But Somalis and Afars were definitely apart of the inhabitants of Adal. Somalis lived in and around the port of Zeila (also had a significant Arab minority) and at one point in time Adal was majority Afar, I think we talked about this before but various academics state that during the era of Amda Seyon Adal was majority Afar, so I see the importance of adding these two groups. As for the claim that Harla were nomads, maybe at one point in time that would have been true, however they clearly adopted agriculture early on. Meanwhile Afars and Somalis are still a largely nomadic nomadic people up until this day. IMO that source doesn’t provide anything decisive, probably due to the lack of academic research on the Harla. محرر البوق (talk) 20:16, 11 June 2023 (UTC)