Merca

Merca, or Marka, sits on the coast south of Mogadishu and was one of the Benadir trading towns that worked the Indian Ocean routes for centuries, with coral-stone houses, carved doors, mosques and the remains of a wall standing above the beach. The town is old: the geographer Ibn Sa'id described it in the thirteenth century, and local tradition dates the pillar tombs nearby to the fifteenth. Fishing boats work off the shore and the fabric is weathering.

History

Merca is thought to succeed Essina, a port listed in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the first century AD. In the 12th century al-Idrisi recorded the Hawiye along the coast as far as Merca, in the 13th Ibn Sa'id counted it among the three most important cities of the coast, and in the Middle Ages it was an administrative centre of the Ajuran Sultanate (Wikipedia, Merca).

What's there

• The coral-stone houses - the Benadir building tradition along the streets.
• The carved doors - the worked wooden doorways of the old town.
• The old mosques - the religious buildings of the old trading town.
• The beach - the shore the fishing boats work from.

When to go

December to March is the cooler dry season. The rains fall around April to June and October to November. Heat and humidity outside the cool months are heavy.

Good to know

Much of the historic fabric is in poor repair or ruined. There is no tourist infrastructure of any kind. Travel here requires arrangements made well in advance through local contacts.

Nearby

Mogadishu is north, and Barawa is south.

Key facts