Somaliland, officially the Republic of Somaliland, is a de facto sovereign state in the Horn of Africa, still considered internationally to be part of Somalia. Somaliland lies in the Horn of Africa, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden. It is bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the east. Its claimed territory has an area of 176,120 square kilometres (68,000 sq mi), with approximately 5.7 million residents as of 2021. The capital and largest city is Hargeisa. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to British Somaliland, which, as the briefly independent State of Somaliland, united in 1960 with the Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somaliland) to form the Somali Republic. Somaliland was first inhabited around 10,000 years ago during the Neolithic age. The ancient shepherds raised cows and other livestock and it has the most vibrant rock art paintings in Africa. Throughout the Middle Ages, Arab immigrants arrived in Somaliland, including the Muslim sheikhs Ishaaq bin Ahmed, who founded the Isaaq clan, and Abdirahman bin Isma'il al-Jabarti who founded the Darod clan, who both travelled from Arabia to Somaliland and married into the local Dir clan, which have been described as legendary stories. Also during the Middle Ages, Somali empires dominated the regional trade, including the Sultanate of Ifat and the Adal Sultanate. (Source: Wikipedia.org, CC BY-SA)