page_title: Somaliland
section_title: Birth of Islam and the Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: Somaliland / History / Birth of Islam and the Middle Ages
caption_attribution_description: Yagbea Sion Battling the sultan of Ada.
context_page_description: Somaliland, officially the Republic of Somaliland, is a self-declared state, internationally considered to be part of Somalia. The government of the de facto state of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the former British Somaliland protectorate, which, in the form of the briefly independent State of Somaliland, united as scheduled on 1 July 1960 with the Trust Territory of Somaliland to form the Somali Republic.
  Somaliland lies in northwestern Somalia, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden. It is bordered by the remainder of Somalia to the east, Djibouti to the northwest, and Ethiopia to the south and west. Its claimed territory has an area of 176,120 square kilometres, with approximately 4 million residents. The capital and the largest city is Hargeisa, with a population of around 1,500,000 residents.
  In 1988, the Siad Barre government began a crackdown against the Hargeisa-based Somali National Movement and other militant groups, which were among the events that led to the Somali Civil War. The conflict left the country's economic and military infrastructure severely damaged.
context_section_description: Various Somali Muslim kingdoms were established around this period in the area. In the 14th century, the Zeila-based Adal Sultanate battled the forces of the Ethiopian emperor Amda Seyon I. The Ottoman Empire later occupied Berbera and environs in the 1500s. Muhammad Ali, Pasha of Egypt, subsequently established a foothold in the area between 1821 and 1841.
caption: The Sultan of Adal (right) and his troops battling King Yagbea-Sion and his men. From Le livre des Merveilles, 15th century.
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