Somalia , [ a ] officially the Federal Republic of Somalia , [ b ] is the easternmost country in continental Africa. The country is located in the Horn of Africa and is bordered by Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti [ 14 ] to the northwest, Kenya to the southwest, the Gulf of Aden to the north, and the Indian Ocean to the east.
Somalia has the longest coastline on Africa's mainland. Somalia has historic and religious ties to the Arab world. In antiquity, Somalia was an important commercial center. In the late 19th century, Somali sultanates were colonized by the Italian and British Empires, [ 24 ] [ 25 ] [ 26 ] who merged all of these tribal territories into two colonies : Italian Somaliland and British Somaliland.
A new provisional constitution was passed in August , [ 44 ] [ 45 ] reforming Somalia as a federation. Samaale , the oldest common ancestor of several Somali clans , is generally regarded as the source of the ethnonym Somali. One other theory is that the name is held to be derived from the words soo and maal , which together mean "go" and "milk".
Alternatively, the ethnonym Somali is believed to have been derived from the Automoli Asmach , a group of warriors from ancient Egypt described by Herodotus. A Tang Chinese document from the 9th century CE referred to the northern Somalia coast — which was then part of a broader region in Northeast Africa known as Barbaria , in reference to the area's Barbars Cushitic inhabitants [ 63 ] — as Po-pa-li.
The first clear written reference of the sobriquet Somali dates back to the early 15th century CE during the reign of Ethiopian Emperor Yeshaq I who had one of his court officials compose a hymn celebrating a military victory over the Sultanate of Ifat. Somalis overwhelmingly prefer the demonym Somali over the incorrect Somalian since the former is an endonym, while the latter is an exonym with double suffixes. Somalia was likely one of the first lands to be settled by early humans due to its location.
