Bosaso

Bosaso stands on a shore that has traded with Arabia for millennia. The hills behind it produce frankincense and myrrh, the goods that gave this coast its ancient fame, and classical guides to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade describe ports along the Horn shipping incense and aromatics. The town was long known as Bandar Qasim, the name its airport still carries, and it was one of several harbours on the Majeerteen coast.

In the nineteenth century the Majeerteen Sultanate controlled this stretch of the Gulf of Aden from ports along the Majeerteen coast, signing a protectorate treaty with Italy in 1889 while keeping considerable autonomy. Italian forces conquered the sultanate in the mid-1920s, and the area became part of Italian Somaliland and then, from 1960, of the Somali Republic. Bosaso remained a small port under both.

Its growth came after the Somali state collapsed in 1991. While the south fell into war, the north-east stayed comparatively calm, and Bosaso's harbour took on trade that could no longer pass through Mogadishu. Elders and politicians of the Harti clans founded the Puntland State of Somalia at Garowe in 1998, and the port became its commercial engine and main customs revenue. People displaced by war and drought in the south arrived in large numbers and settled on the outskirts, and the city expanded far beyond its old core. It has also become a departure point for migrants attempting the sea crossing to Yemen.

The city is Somali and Sunni Muslim, and the Harti clans of the Darod family, the Majeerteen above all, predominate; clan membership shapes business partnerships, dispute settlement and politics as much as any formal institution. Elders mediate between families, and mosques and Qur'anic schools anchor the week.

Trade defines the outlook. Bosaso looks north across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula rather than south to Mogadishu, and its merchant families have long-standing ties to Dubai, Jeddah and the Gulf ports. Arabic is used in religion and in business, and imported goods, dress and tastes arrive with the ships. Many households have relatives working abroad, and the money they send supports a large part of the city.

Beneath the commerce the culture is pastoral. Most families have roots among the herders of the interior, the camel is a measure of wealth and a favoured subject of verse, and Somali oral poetry, including the buraanbur composed and sung by women, is prized here as elsewhere. Hospitality is close to obligatory. Dress is conservative, Ramadan is strictly kept, and the two Eids are the great celebrations. The population is also mixed by displacement: families from the southern rivers, including Somali Bantu communities, have made their own neighbourhoods on the city's edge.

Estimates of the population vary widely and no recent census settles them: an earlier United Nations urban planning study put it at about 250,000, while the figure usually given now is around 700,000 as of 2020, which would make Bosaso the third largest city in Somalia after Mogadishu and Hargeisa. The day begins before dawn with the fishing boats and the first prayers, the market and the port work through the morning, activity stops in the worst of the heat, and the streets fill again in the evening.

The economy is the port: livestock exported to the Arabian Peninsula, especially before the Hajj; fish landed along the shore; frankincense and myrrh brought down from the mountains for export; and a steady inflow of food, fuel, building materials and consumer goods that are trucked on to Garowe, Galkayo and beyond. Haulage, customs work, telecoms, money transfer and construction employ much of the rest of the city, and mobile money handles nearly every transaction.

Life is hard at the edges. Settlements of people displaced by drought and southern conflict ring the city, water is scarce and often bought by the jerrycan, electricity is expensive and privately generated, and public services are thin. Armed groups in the mountains inland and the security operations against them weigh on the city, and many young people try to leave, either inland to Garowe or across the sea.

The Gulf of Aden gives Bosaso its distinguishing dish: fish, landed in the morning and grilled whole over charcoal or fried, served with rice or with flatbread and a green chilli and coriander relish. Tuna, kingfish and reef fish are the common catch, and lobster is landed for export more than for local tables.

The rest of the diet is northern Somali. Breakfast is canjeero, also called laxoox, the soft fermented flatbread, eaten with ghee and sugar or with liver and onions and washed down with shaah, tea boiled with cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. Lunch is the main meal: bariis iskukaris, rice spiced with cumin, cardamom and cloves with goat or camel, or baasto, pasta with a heavy meat sauce, often with a banana alongside. Muqmad, also called oodkac, is meat cut small, dried and kept in ghee, the old pastoralist preserve and still made in kitchens here.

Camel milk, fresh or soured, is drunk through the day, and dates arrive in quantity through the port from across the Gulf, eaten daily and above all to break the Ramadan fast. Sambuusa, fried pastries filled with spiced meat, are the evening snack, and xalwo, the dense confection of sugar, ghee and spices, is served at weddings and on Eid. No alcohol is sold.