Barawa 1890; seen from the east.                                                                                    Barawa 1890; seen from the coast.

The sand dunes on the pictures make you understand that most of its old buildings are now buried underneath deposits up to 6 m deep. Notice the Friday mosque.

Taken from: An Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Southern Somali Coast by Neville Chittick

None of the buildings appear to be of any great antiquity, though it is known to be one of the earliest places of importance. The earlier mosques appear to be of the eighteenth century. The mosque of Abu Bakr Siddiq appears to be built on a much earlier structure, the top of a kidaka or recess, surrounded by a rope-pattern moulding, protruding a little above the top of the present floor. The earliest of the few sherds found along the beach was a fragment of sgraffiato of late type (thirteenth century).

About 1 km west of the town there was a sparse scatter of pottery; of the ten unglazed rim-sherds collected one is certainly, and another possibly, of Kwale ware. This is the Early Iron Age pottery of around the third century A.D. A small rim-sherd of yellow fabric looks as if it may be from an Islamic tin-glaze bowl. If this doubtful identification is correct, it would indicate continued occupation in the ninth/tenth century; there is certainly later occupation in this area, for among a scatter of sherds some distance to the north was found the base of a celadon bowl, probably of the fifteenth or sixteenth century.

Taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tunni Sultanate:

The Tunni (Somali clan), composed of five sub-clans (Da'farad, Dakhtira, Goygali, Hajuwa, and Waridi), were the latest to drive the Jiddu into the interior, where they established their own Sultanate called Tunni Sultanate. The Tunni made a treaty with the Jiddu so that Tunni settled on the west bank of the Shabelle and the Jiddu settled on the east bank. Both also agreed to resist foreign penetration, to allow only Seddah Saamood (the three foot-prints, which are the Tuni, the Jiddu, and the wild beasts). However, they did accept the first Muslim migrants, the Hatimi from Yemen and the Amawi from Syria, around the 10th century, for both religious and commercial reasons. Barawa founded by a Tunni saint called Aw-Al became the new capital for the Tunni Sultanate. The town prospered and became one of the major Islamic centers in the Horn, the Barawaani Ulama, attracting students from all over the region. Muslim scholars of that time, such as Ibn Sa'id (1250AD), wrote about Barawa as "an Islamic island on the Somali coast." Al-Idrisi (1150AD) also described the construction of the coral houses and noted that Barawa was full of both domestic and foreign commodities.

Taken from: The origins of Barawa by Al-Banadir.      https://banadirwiki.com/barawa/

The oldest part of the town is an area called Mpayi, it is located in the northern coast of Barawa and is built on a rocky spit of land. Most of the houses in Mpayi is made from coral rags and mortar, and are built adjoining each other, the walls are sometimes plastered white, the doors are hand crafted to commemorate the Swahili architecture they share with its Swahili coastal neighbours. Mpayi is famous for its maze of alleyways as seen in the old towns of Hamarweyne and Shingani. Contemporary to its narrow alleyways, Mpayi prides itself for its historical buildings, such as the oldest Mosque in Barawa, the Jami Mosque (also known as Miskiti ya Jima, or Friday Mosque) which faces the sea, the famous Chilani Lighthouse and the Wali’s (Sultans) house. Mpayi also has the main square or an open plan courtyard (also known as Ibanya Ya Mpayi) in front of the Friday Mosque.

The Jami (Friday) Mosque of Barawa; here the inscriptions mentioned under were to be found. The Mosque was many times rebuild.

Taken from: Somalia: Storia della Somalia. L'Islam in Somalia. Il Libro degli Zengi ; By Enrico Cerulli 1957

I (Cerulli) was unable to go to Brava to do research directly on the undoubted remains of medieval Arab antiquities existing there. But a Bravano pointed out to me the existence, in the al - Jami mosque of Brava, of an inscription dated from the 9th century of the AH (1398-1495 vulgar era); and of another inscription, I believe funerary, of which at my request he sent me a copy which is the following:

Hajj Shanid ibn Abu Bakr ibn Umar ibn Utman ibn Hasan ibn 'Ali ibn Abu Bakr; and he passed into that (?) tomb in the year 498 being the month of rabi al-ahir. The month of rabi al - ahir of 498 AH corresponds to the period: 21 December 1104 - 18 January 1105 AD. If the date was read exactly by my informant, this would be the earliest recorded inscription in Somalia so far; on the other hand, historically, the reading is unlikely because precisely from the 10th to the 13th century of the Common Era the major Arab colonies on the Somali coast were constituted, as we have seen elsewhere.