trading network around Bosaso, along with other subclans. Majeerteen Sultanates Before the famous Majeerteen Sultanate there was the Sultanate of Amaanle (Abdirahman Awe) which was overthrown and overtaken by Osman Mahamuud who became the subsequent King and Sultan. The Majeerteen Sultanate was founded in the early-16th century. It rose to prominence in the 19th century, under the reign of the resourceful King (Boqor) Osman Mahamuud. His Sultanate controlled Bari Karkaar, Nugaaal and also central Somalia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The polity maintained a robust trading network, entered into treaties with foreign powers, and exerted strong centralized authority on the domestic front. Osman Mahamuud's Sultanate was nearly destroyed in the late-1800s by a power struggle between himself and his ambitious cousin, Yusuf Ali Kenadid who founded the Sultanate of Hobyo in 1878. Initially he wanted to seize control of the neighbouring Majeerteen Sultanate, ruled by his cousin Boqor Osman Mahamud. However, Yusuf Ali Kenadid was unsuccessful in his endeavour, and was eventually forced into exile in Yemen. A decade later, in the 1870s, Yusuf Ali Kenadid returned from the Arabian Peninsula with a band of Hadhrami musketeers and a group of devoted lieutenants. With their assistance, he managed to overpower the local Hawiye clans and establish the Kingdom of Hobyo in 1878. As with the Majeerteen Sultanate, the Sultanate of Hobyo exerted a strong centralized authority during its existence, and possessed all of the organs and trappings of an integrated modern state: a functioning bureaucracy, a hereditary nobility, titled aristocrats, a state flag, as well as a professional army. Both sultanates also maintained written records of their activities, which still exist. In the late 19th century, all extant northern Somali monarchs entered into treaties with one of the colonial powers, Abyssinia, Britain or Italy, except for the Dhulbahante. Likewise, in late 1889, Boqor Osman entered into a treaty with the Italians, making his realm an Italian protectorate. His rival Sultan Kenadid had signed a similar agreement vis-a-vis his own Sultanate the year before. Both rulers had signed the protectorate treaties to advance their own expansionist objectives, with Boqor Osman looking to use Italy's support in his ongoing power struggle with Kenadid over the Majeerteen Sultanate. Boqor Osman and Sultan Kenadid also hoped to exploit the conflicting interests among the European imperial powers that were then looking to control the Somali peninsula, so as to avoid direct occupation of