Shirazi

For much of the 13th century the most important coastal town was Mogadishu, a mercantile city on the Somalian coast to which new migrants came from the Persian Gulf and southern Arabia. Of these, the most important were called Shirazi, who, in the…

…descendants of slaves call themselves Shirazi. There are also small enclaves of Comorians and Somalis. Arab settlements were also established early, and intermarriage with the local people took place. Arab arrivals in the 18th and 19th centuries were from Oman and constituted an elite. The Omani immigrants in the early…

…African population calls itself “Shirazi,” in echo of the ancient Persian principality of Shīrāz, from which the earliest Persians came.)