The founding ethnicity of Mogadishu and its subsequent sultanate has been a topic of serious intrigue in Somali Studies. I.M Lewis believed that the city was founded and ruled by a council of Arab and Persian families. However, the reference I.M Lewis received traces back to one 19th century text called the Kitab Al-Zunuj, which has been discredited by modern scholars as unreliable and unhistorical. More importantly, it contradicts oral,  ancient written sources and archeological evidence on the pre-existing civilizations and communities that flourished on the Somali coast, and to which were the forefathers of Mogadishu and other coastal cities. Thus, the Persian and Arab founding "myths" are regarded as an outdated false colonialist reflection on Africans ability to create their own sophisticated states. It has now been widely accepted that there were already existing communities on the Somali coast with local African leadership, to whom the Arab and Persian families had to ask for permission to settle in their cities. It also seems the local Africans managed to retain their political and numerical superiority on the coast while the Muslim immigrants would go through an assimilation process by adopting the local language and culture.