Merca (, ) is a historic port city in the southern Lower Shebelle province of Somalia. It is located approximately to the southwest of the nation's capital Mogadishu. Merca is the traditional home territory of the Major Bimal clan and was the center of the Bimal revolt. History Antiquity The city of Essina is believed to have been the predecessor state of Merca. It used to be an ancient Proto-Somali emporium city-state. It is mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek travel document dating from the first century AD, as one of a series of commercial ports on the Somali littoral. According to the Periplus, maritime trade already connected peoples in the Merca area with other communities along the Somali Sea coast. Medieval Period According to the 12th-century author Al-Idrisi the Hawiye occupied the coastal areas between Ras Hafun and Merca, as well as the lower basin of the lower Shabelle river. Al-Idrisi's mention of the Hawiye is the first documentary reference to a specific Somali group in the Horn. Later Arab writers also make references to the Hawiye clan in connection with both Merca and the lower Shabelle valley. Ibn Sa'id (1214–74), for instance, considered Merca to be the capital of the Hawiye, who lived in fifty villages on the bank of a river which he called the Nile of Mogadishu, a clear reference to the Shabelle river. Yaqut al-Hamawi, another thirteen-century Arab geographer also mentions Merca, which he says belonged to the Black Berbers considered ancestors of modern Somalis. During the Middle Ages, the area was one of several prominent administrative centers of the Ajuran Sultanate. The polity formed one of the largest kingdoms in the Horn region. Various pillar tombs exist in the region, which local tradition holds were built in the 15th century when the Sultanate's naa'ibs governed the district. According to Ibn Sa'id in the thirteenth century described nearby Merca as one of the three most important cities on the East African coast along with Mogadishu and Barawa all serving as the commercial and Islamic centers for the Indian Ocean. Following the decline of Ajuran Sultanate. In the vicinity of Merca, a mysterious group known as the El Amir made its appearance between 1650 and 1700. According to an account collected by Guillain in 1847, a leader known as Amir, believed to originate from the Abgaal, formed a following or "tribe" which