SOMALILAND

historically, the area now comprising Somalia and Djibouti. The region probably formed part of the Land of Punt known to the ancient Egyptians. Between the 7th and the 12th century AD, Muslim traders from Arabia and Iran settled on the coast, founding the cities of Seylac and Berbera on the Gulf of Aden, and Marka, Baraawe, and Mogadishu along the Indian Ocean. They exported gums and resins, ostrich feathers, and slaves, waged war against the Christian Ethiopians of the interior, and organized themselves into sultanates (Adal, centred at Seylac, and Ajuran, centred at Mogadishu). The nomadic Somalis, who occupied the northern part of the country between the 10th and the 15th century, adopted Islam and served in the armies of the sultanates. Gradually the sultanates themselves came under Somali control, and the Somalis expanded southward toward Kenya. When the European nations began to partition Africa among themselves in the late 19th century, France already possessed (from 1862) a station at Obock near the mouth of the Red Sea, other areas of the north coast were occupied by Egypt, and southern Somaliland recognized the overlordship of the sultan of Zanzibar. By the end of the 1880s France had expanded its holdings to the area of present Djibouti, Britain had established a protectorate over the north coast opposite its base at Aden, and Italy controlled the remainder of the country. In the north the Muslim leader Sayyid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan began a war against the British in 1899 and maintained his hold over the interior until his death in 1920. The Italians acquired Jubaland in the extreme south after World War I, and in 1936 they united their Somali possessions with Ethiopia to form Italian East Africa. The British won control of the Italian zone during World War II. In 1960 British and Italian Somaliland were united to form the independent Republic of Somalia. French Somaliland (renamed the French Territory of the Afars and Issas in 1967) became independent as the Republic of Djibouti in 1977. In 1991 British Somaliland announced that is was becoming an independent state, the Republic of Somaliland; the northeastern portion of Somalia, known as Puntland, announced its secession in 1998. Though not internationally recognized, Somaliland experienced relative stability, a sharp contrast to the civil war that engulfed Somalia. Attempts to unify the region were unsuccessful, but talks continued into the 21st century.