1 THE HISTORY OF THE SOMALI PENINSULA: FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC PERIOD Abdurahman M. Abdullahi (Baadiyow) 1 History is the study of past events using the s ources of what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved. It is also a subjective process of recreating past occurrences and is a matter of perspective. It gives people a sense of identity, prevents them from repeating previous mistakes, and makes them aware of their roots, as well as those of different cultures, peoples, and countries. History can be studied at different levels, such as national, regional, and global, but all these levels exhibit that humankind is not isolated from each other in the past and present, and are interdependent. Historians, specifically Western historians, divided historical studies into four periods. The first period was called Prehistory, which begins at the first the appearance of human beings on earth and continues until the development of writing systems. The prehistoric era is also subdivided and named according to tool-making technologies, such as Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Archeology is the subject matter and the only source for the study of this period. The second period is called Ancient History (3600 BC-500 AD) which begins with the first records in writing and ends after the fall of several big empires, including the Western Roman Empire, the Han Dynasty in China, and the Gupta Empire in India. The third period is called Medieval History (500-1500 AD), which begins with the fall of the aforementioned empires and ends with the invention of the printing press, the discovery of America, and the Ottoman Empire's conquest of Constantinople. The fourth period is called Modern History (1500-present) which begins from the end of the medieval period up until today. Each period is sub-divided into phases with specific common characteristics although each phase generally lacks clearly demarcated lines and tends to overlap one another. Evidently, the Western historical narrative has been portrayed as the universal history, which rightly conforms to the theory of power relations and the production of history. 1 Abdurahman M. Abdullahi (Baadiyow) holds PhD in the Modern Islamic History from the Islamic Institute, McGill University. He authored two Books: The Islamic Movement in Somalia: A Study of Islah Movement (1950- 2000) (2015, Adonis & Abbey Publishers), and The Recovering of The Somali State: The Role of Islam, Islamism and Transitional Justice (2016, Adonis & Abbey Publishers). He also, published a number of papers. He is the Chairman of Board of Trustees, Mogadishu University, Somalia.