The Bimaal also engage in pastoral-ism, settled farming and were also successful merchants and traders in the 19th century. The Bimaal have proved in the past to be a bellicose clan, not only against their neighbours, but also against Italian colonial encroachment. The Italians undermined the Biimaal Sultanate, and changed the traditional structures in the South Central by re titling the elders "capo qabiil" and incorporating them into their administrative system. The Bimaal violently resisted the imposition of colonialism fought against the Italian colonialists in a twenty-year war known as the Bimaal revolt in which many of their warriors assassinated several Italian governors.