The history of the Somali people dates back many centuries. The first time the word Somali was mentioned in a history book was 3500 years ago, when the queen of Egypt Hatshepsut sent a fleet of 5 large ships and a crew of 250 men to Somalia which the Egyptians called The Land of Punt. Punt means ???the land of spices?? from the aromatic plants that grow there. The Egyptians wanted to trade and they brought jewels and glass beads that they exchanged for gold, elephant tusks, myrrh, ostrich feathers, spices and different beads. Some of these items, especially the aromatic ones, were used by the Egyptians in their religious festivals and celebrations. Between the 7th and 9th Cent. immigrant Muslim Arabs and Persians established trading posts along the Somali coast. In the 14th century Ibn Battuta, the great Berber traveller, visited Mogadishu and wrote about the people, their food and clothing and how they ruled themselves. In his book he mentioned that the people in the city were very fat and everybody ate as much as they could. The Mogadishans wore very nice white clothes and turbans and their sultan was very powerful. Somalia was an unknown country for European explorers until the Portuguese explorers reached the coastal cities of Somalia on their way to India. They called it Terra Incognita, which means the unknown land. These new discoveries encouraged many other European navigators to sail on the Somali coasts. British, Italian and French imperialism all played an active role in the region in the 19th century. In 1884 at the European powers' conference in Berlin, Somalia was divided into five parts to dilute the homogeneity imposed by its language, religion, and race. The colonial powers divided Somalia into British Somaliland in the north, Italian Somalia in the south, the French Somali coast in Djibouti, Ogaden in the west and NFD. In the early 20th century a Somali resistance against these colonial powers started, led by Sayed Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, who...