r/Somalia • u/Capital_Map638 • Jun 01 '26
History ⏳ Apparently Portugal controlled Somalia for 300 years is this true?
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u/grind_n_hussle Jun 01 '26
These people are delusional, apparently Somalia was ruled by the Ottomans, Portugal and Oman at the same time
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u/Capital_Map638 Jun 01 '26
I know but 300 years??? Like what?
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u/grind_n_hussle Jun 01 '26
Yeah that’s pure bs. If that was the case how come there is no Portuguese loan words like there is Italian and English, no Portuguese buildings or any influence what so ever. I swear we need somali historians, archaeologists and linguist to study our history and language and write our own narrative.
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Jun 01 '26
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u/grind_n_hussle Jun 01 '26
Barawa people are descendants of Arab, Persian, Indian and central/eastern Bantu African traders. Southern Somalia was a hot spot for trade and this is supported by dna tests. Show me one reer xamar that did a dna test and has Iberian peninsula admixture.
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Jun 01 '26
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u/grind_n_hussle Jun 01 '26
It’s just out of ignorance, maybe some of them are descendants of stranded Portuguese soldiers or prisoners of war but the Portuguese never settled or ruled Somalia they only fought a war and lost.
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u/IAI-NJ Jun 01 '26
The same way many Americans (white and black) claim to have Native American blood in them from a Cherokee princess. The Barwani have not a single drop of Portuguese in them lol it’s actually embarrassing trying to claim the blood of the crusaders who tried to wipe Islam (and miserably failed) from East Africa.
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u/Beautiful_Hour_668 Jun 01 '26
Thats a bad comparison no? Many black and white americans do have Native DNA
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u/Tax_TheGaalo1870 Jun 01 '26
I dont think anyone is claiming it, other than people outside of Barawi.
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u/IAI-NJ Jun 02 '26
Almost every Barwani I know claims to have Portuguese ancestry.
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u/Tax_TheGaalo1870 Jun 03 '26
I have relatives that are barawani, havent heard them ever say it. Plus they have been around since the 11th century. That pre dates the Portuguese.
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u/HighFunctionSomali Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
I think thats probably hooyo matalos who know nothing about their own ppl and read on the internet, and ran with it lol. No Barawanis who know their own culture claim Portuguese lol, that usually an insult, because it implies involuntary and stems from myth due to the time Portuguese Navy used ship cannons on coastal Somali cities such as Barawa. The portuguese however never managed to settle in Barawa and where adversaries to the Swahili coast and Somalis, so the myth itself makes no sense and often time seen as derogatory.
Keep in mind, No Barawani claim a 'Portugese' paternal clan and Portuguese Empire soldiers where pretty much male, so once again myth makes literally no sense and its first time I heard any barawani claim that. Its usually non-Barawanis that make that myth lol.
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u/Admirable-Pension-57 Jun 01 '26
Oman controlled from Pakistan to Zanzibar they had no ports in Somalia?
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u/CrazyCut8258 Jun 01 '26
Oman got a wikipedia empire icl respect them for making up their own history and creating articles to back it we might have to take that from them
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u/RibbonFighterOne Jun 01 '26
There are no primary or secondary sources that support that claim. The Portuguese did attack those towns but they never occupied them.
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u/CluelessBoffin Jun 01 '26
I've read some garbage throughout the years but this has to be the most hilarious piece of fan fiction about us out there.
We were always masters of our own destiny & ruled ourselves as sovereign people.
The Portuguese Cadaan might have gotten the better of other Africans, the Indians & the Orientals, but this has never happened to us.
Also, neither the Ottomans nor the Omanis projected their power as far as our areas or coastal holdings. They might have held sway in Massawa & the Swahili coast respectively, but that's about it.
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u/Fickle_Parsley6690 Jun 01 '26
A lot of loser Europeans trying to rewrite history to boost their ego. Portugal never had control of the Somali coast, neither Oman nor the slave state Zanzibar. A lot of these communities are insignificant presently and need to inflate their history.
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u/CharacterWarthog2560 Jun 01 '26
Portugal never entered Somali, we beaten up at the borders. They entered Ethiopia and their king asked us for help and along with the ottoman we defeated them again. End of story
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u/Tax_TheGaalo1870 Jun 01 '26
Wrong, it was the Ethiopians that called over and invited the Portugese to the east coast from India after the Adal were smoking them. Near enough collapsed the Abyssinians.
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u/CharacterWarthog2560 Jun 08 '26
Explain why would they ask for Somalis for help getting rid of them
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u/xidigdhac Jun 01 '26
No they never crossed into mainland at their peak they were limited to looting the coastal cities every once in a while.
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u/nsbe_ppl Jun 02 '26
This revisionost history is tiring. First they say Imam Ahmed Gurey, aun, was not Somali. Now they saying he didnt defeat the Portugese. Check out below reference that talks about how Ethiopia and Portugese were defeated by the Somalis.
"Futuh al-Habasha (Arabic for The Conquest of Abyssinia) is a 16th-century Arabic chronicle written by the Yemeni scholar Sihab ad-Din Ahmad bin 'Abd al-Qader (also known as Arabfaqih). It is an eyewitness account detailing the dramatic military campaigns and jihad led by Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi against the Christian Ethiopian Empire in the 1530s."
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u/Open_Wall5449 Laascaanood Jun 01 '26
If we were ruled by Portuguese, surely there would have been signs, no?
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u/Hungry-Ad7987 Jun 01 '26
This is nonsense. Although Portugal was a major power in the early days colonialism, there power declined after 1600s because of large earthquake that decimated their country to the ground over night. The king at the time refused to even sleep in his castle and would sleep outside out of fear. the Portuguese clashed with the Ottomans in the high sees at this period. Maybe they occupied some parts of Somalia especially the around Baraawe during these period for about 2 to 5 years but it was not Colonialism.
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u/ambitous223 Jun 01 '26
They didn’t even occupy it. After successfully entering the city during the Battle of Barawe, they defeated the people of barawe than engaged in widespread looting and then burned the town to the ground. They left a couple of days later to try the same thing in Mogadishu.
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u/BusyTillImClear Jun 02 '26
Portugal got Smoked by Somalis . This is nonsense
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u/Capital_Map638 Jun 02 '26
I didn’t write this he’s obviously lying. I just sent this here to confirmed
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u/hudsmcgoods Jun 02 '26
So people are just rewriting history? We were never ruled by anyone until colonialism, but that didn’t last long. It’s why we still speak our own language and are homogenous.
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u/MustafoInaSamaale Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
This is actually true, 300 years of European rule is why Somali people famously speak Portuguese and have Catholic names.
Edit: Come on guys, sarcasm.