AHC: Somali as Lingua Franca

Somalia has been the home of several successful sultanates, empires, and city-states throughout history, almost all of which focused immensely on trade, both within the Horn of Africa and around the world. Somali trade routes went as far as Venice, Malacca, and Beijing. However, despite traveling the world, the Somali language has had little impact on other languages - a quick search has turned up no results of pre-modern Somali loanwords into other languages.

The challenge is to create a timeline where Somali becomes a valued trade language, learned outside of the Horn of Africa - a unified and trade-focused empire, colonization outside of Somalia, or anything else that could encourage the use of Somali.
 
Perhaps you can have the Somalis establish better relations with Ethiopia during the Zemene Mesafint instead of attempting to conquer Ethiopia which leads to Somali becoming the lingua franca in central-southern Ethiopia.
 
Somali is enforced as the language of trade for the Maldives (Ibn Battuta states when he was there a Somali ruled it), colonization of the Swahili States, Seychelles and Northern Madagascar.

Lingua Franca of the Western Indian Ocean
 
Somali could become lingua down the east coast of Africa. But in the time period of the sultanate i.e. 800-1500 ad Arabic and Persian were the prestige language of the muslims courts surrounding the Indian Ocean. And the merchant class would almost always follow it.

What you need is for a united somali sultanate controlling all of what is greater Somali. And then using that as a base to become hegemon over trade in the ocean just like Portugal did in otl. And finally create a written Somali. Otl Somali didn't have a native script until the late 19th-early 20th century and without it ledgering and tax collecting becomes hard.
 
Four PODs that could work

1. Amda Seyon being defeated at the Battle of Das. This keeps the highlands divided and the Sultanate of Ifat stays strong and uses its wealth to promptly unify the lowlands against the divided highlands to ensure another Amda Seyon figure does not rise again.

2. The Majeerteen Sultanate forms earlier in the Northeast during the time of Adal, Ajuran and Warsangali. They merge with the Warsangali and as Adal falls they move in and absorb the falling kingdom. This repeats as well for any Southern kingdoms.

3. The Ajuran look to the South and take Jubbaland and push into Kenya. Those fertile lands and control of a chunk of the Swahili coast spur a feedback loop of pushing even further South into the Great Lakes which would be attractive for Africa's only hydraulic empire.

4. Ahmed Gurey's Conquest of Abyssinia succeeds. Ahmed Gurey managed to bring together the entire North for his invasion if he succeeds in taking the Highlands and staving off the Oromo migrations then either he or his successor will unify the remaining Somalis.
 
Not necessarily. Post-Islam, Persian, Hausa, Swahili, and Malay all managed to become regional trade languages in the Islamic world, with Arabic confined to the liturgical sphere.

However, Arabic contributed to each of those mentioned languages. Arabic’s predominance is the reason languages such as Somali did not have major effects on others around it. In fact, languages like Somali and Persian, were influenced by Arabic in a single way, that is, the same contributions do not apply for Malay influencing Arabic.
 
However, Arabic contributed to each of those mentioned languages. Arabic’s predominance is the reason languages such as Somali did not have major effects on others around it. In fact, languages like Somali and Persian, were influenced by Arabic in a single way, that is, the same contributions do not apply for Malay influencing Arabic.

This is true. Perhaps Somali could become more widespread if it borrowed more heavily from Arabic? Arabic loanwords comprise only 20% of Somali lexicon, which is low relative to Persian and Swahili, the other two Indian ocean languages that it would be competing with.
 
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