Hafun

A peninsula on the eastern coast of Somalia with the best archaeological evidence yet available from the East African coast south of the Red Sea for early trade contact with the Mediterranean world at the beginning of the Christian era. No permanent settlement is attested, but burials contain imported pottery, some of it Hellenistic. The earliest written accounts of the East African coast occur in the "Periplus Maris Erythraei" - apparently written by a Greek merchant living in Egypt in the second half of the 1st century AD - and in Ptolemy's Guide to Geography the East African section of which in its extant form probably represents a compilation of geographic knowledge available at Byzantium in about 400. The Periplus describes in some detail the shore of what was to become northern Somalia. Ships sailed from there to western India to bring back cotton cloth grain oil sugar and ghee while others moved down the Red Sea to the East African coast bringing cloaks tunics copper and tin. Aromatic gums spices tortoiseshell ivory and slaves were traded in return.

Peninsula on the eastern coast of Somalia, some 150 km to the south of Cape Guardafui. It provides the best archaeological evidence yet available from the East African coast south of the Red Sea for early trade contact with the Mediterranean world at the beginning of the Christian era, as described in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. No permanent settlement is attested, but burials contain imported pottery, some of it apparently Hellenistic. The Periplus records that spices, gums and ivory were the principal exports.