page_title: Somali architecture
section_title: Stone cities
hierarchical_section_title: Somali architecture / Medieval / Stone cities
caption_attribution_description: Marka, Somalia
context_page_description: Somali architecture is the engineering and designing of multiple different construction types such as stone cities, castles, citadels, fortresses, mosques, temples, aqueducts, lighthouses, towers and tombs during the ancient, medieval and early modern periods in Somalia and other regions inhabited by Somalis, as well as the fusion of Somalo-Islamic architecture with Western designs in contemporary times.
context_section_description: The lucrative commercial networks of successive medieval Somali kingdoms and city-states such as the Adal Sultanate, Sultanate of Mogadishu, Ajuran Sultanate, and the Sultanate of the Geledi saw the establishment of several dozen stone cities in the interior of Somalia as well as the coastal regions. Ibn Battuta visiting Mogadishu in the early 14th century called it a town endless in size and Vasco Da Gama who passed by Mogadishu in the 15th century noted that it was a large city with houses of four or five storeys high and big palaces in its centre
  Somali merchants were an integral part of a long distance caravan trade network connecting major Somali cities, such as Mogadishu, Merca, Zeila, Berbera, Bulhar and Barawa, with other business centers in the Horn of Africa. The numerous ruined and abandoned towns throughout the interior of Somalia can be explained as the remains of a once booming inland trade dating back to the medieval period.
  Goan Bogame, situated in the Las Anod District, contains the ruins of a large ancient city with around two hundred buildings. The structures were built in an architectural style similar to that of the edifices in Mogadishu's old Hamar Weine and Shangani districts.
caption: Whitewashed coral stone city of Merca.
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