Osman Mahamuud

Osman Mahamuud عثمان محمود
King of the Majeerteen Sultanate
Reign	mid-1800s-early 1900s
Full name	Cismaan Maxamuud
Titles	Boqor
Religious beliefs	Islam

Osman Mahamuud (Somali: Cismaan Maxamuud, Arabic: عثمان محمود‎) was a Somali ruler. He was the most prominent King of the Majeerteen Sultanate, leading the polity during its Golden Age in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries.

Majeerteen Sultanate

Main article: Majeerteen Sultanate

The Majeerteen Sultanate was established in the mid-18th century by Somalis from the Majeerteen Darod clan. It rose to prominence the following century, under the reign of the resourceful Boqor (King) Osman Mahamuud.^[1]

Somali-British agreement

Due to consistent ship crashes along the northeastern Cape Guardafui headland, Boqor Osman's kingdom entered into an informal agreement with Britain, wherein the British agreed to pay the King annual subsidies to protect shipwrecked British crews and guard wrecks against plunder. The agreement, however, remained unratified, as the British feared that doing so would "give other powers a precedent for making agreements with the Somalis, who seemed ready to enter into relations with all comers."^[2]

Sultanate of Hobyo

Main article: Sultanate of Hobyo

Osman Mahamuud's Sultanate was nearly destroyed in the mid-1800s by a power struggle between himself and his ambitious cousin, Yusuf Ali Kenadid. After almost five years of battle, the young upstart was finally forced into exile in Yemen. A decade later, in the 1870s, Kenadid returned from the Arabian Peninsula with a band of Hadhrami musketeers and a group of devoted lieutenants. With their assistance, he managed to overpower the local Hawiye clans and establish the separate Sultanate of Hobyo in 1878.^[1][3]

Somali-Italian treaties

In late 1889, Boqor Osman entered into a treaty with the Italians, making his realm an Italian protectorate. His rival Sultan Kenadid had signed a similar agreement vis-a-vis his own Sultanate the year before. Both rulers had signed the protectorate treaties to advance their own expansionist objectives, with Boqor Osman looking to use Italy's support in his ongoing power struggle with Kenadid over the Majeerteen Sultanate. Boqor Osman and Sultan Kenadid also hoped to exploit the conflicting interests among the European imperial powers that were then looking to control the Somali peninsula, so as to avoid direct occupation of their territories by force.^[4]

With the gradual extension into northern Somalia of Italian colonial rule, both Kingdoms were eventually annexed to Italian Somaliland in the early 20th century.^[4]

See also

• Sultanate of Hobyo
• Yusuf Ali Kenadid

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Helen Chapin Metz, Somalia: a country study, (The Division: 1993), p.10.
2. ^ David D. Laitin, Politics, Language, and Thought: The Somali Experience, (University Of Chicago Press: 1977), p.71
3. ^ Lee V. Cassanelli, The shaping of Somali society: reconstructing the history of a pastoral people, 1600-1900, (University of Pennsylvania Press: 1982), p.75.
4. ^ ^{a b} The Majeerteen Sultanates

References

• Sheik-ʻAbdi, ʻAbdi ʻAbdulqadir (1993). Divine madness: Moḥammed ʻAbdulle Ḥassan (1856-1920). Zed Books. ISBN 0862324440. http://books.google.ca/books?id=EOhyAAAAMAAJ. 
• The Majeerteen Sultanates

External links

• The Majeerteen Sultanates