Barawa

Barawa Baraawe مدينة ﺑَﺮَﺍﻭَة
City
The Barawa seafront.
Nickname(s): Brava Ierè
Barawa Location in Somalia.
Coordinates: 1°06′48″N 44°01′49″E / 1.11333°N 44.03028°E / 1.11333; 44.03028Coordinates: 1°06′48″N 44°01′49″E / 1.11333°N 44.03028°E / 1.11333; 44.03028
Country	Somalia
Region	Lower Shebelle
District	Barawa
Government
Elevation	0 m (0 ft)
Population
• Total	32,800
Time zone	EAT (UTC+3)
Area code(s)	+25261

Barawa (Somali: Baraawe, Arabic: مدينة ﺑﺮﺍﻭة‎‎), also known as Brava, is a port town in the southwestern Lower Shebelle region of Somalia. Barawa is the capital of southwestern Somalia state

In the 16th century, Barawa, which was then part of the Ajuran Empire, was sacked by the Portuguese during the Battle of Barawa but quickly recovered from the attack. In 1840, soldiers of the Bardheere Jama'a took the city under siege while attempting to discover a more direct sea route, and inflicted much damage. The town's inhabitants pleaded with Sultan Yusuf Mahamud Ibrahim of the Geledi Sultanate for protection, with the Sultan's troops then invading Bardera and burned the city to the ground.

Eventually, in 1889, Barawa was ceded to the control of the Italians when the Sultan of Zanzibar was forced to agree to the annexation of all the Banadir ports to the Italian Company already established in the Horn of Africa. The city, however, like the rest of the Benadir coast, was not under Zanzibari control but under Gobroon and Bimal rule, therefore making the Italian-Zanzibar agreement null and void. The Italians faced stiff resistance from many parts of the Benadir coast, and its inland regions and the slave trade of the Somali merchants would remain unchallenged for years to come.

Sheikh Uways al-Barawi organized an Ikhwaan and led the Banadir revolt, which was duly crushed in 1908.

Italians developed "Brava" in the 1920s and 1930s: the first thing they did was to abolish slavery. Then they created the first sewage of the city and established a small hospital (the first in the whole area). In Brava there was a small school in the late 1930s, the first public elementary school in southern Banadir.