Background check about the Nomads

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baby's neck. The amulet is at once a receipt of service and a talisman (hirsi)

against evil spirits. If the -aadoqaate is not paid, it is believed harm might come to the baby.

According to the legend of Sheikh Y usuf al- Kownin and Mohamed Hanif, this tradition was instituted as a compensation for the death of the latter, as has been mentioned above, entombed inside a mountain by vinue of the former's prayers. However, this tradition is much older than Islam itself. Already, the ancient Egyptians knew such talismans as serna. What this tells us is that at it widest limits, traditions among the Somalis link up with those in the whole region and are due to common cultural origins that go back thousands of years, something that is not surprising as the languages of the region belong for the most pan to one super-family of languages known today mostly as the Mroasiatic family of languages.

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to do with Arabic and its use for both religious and official purposes-until

the nineteenth century, the learning of Arabic and the religious books were

the core of education just as learning Latin, Greek, and the scriptures were

for a long time the core of European education. The average Somali, a pastoralist,

had little incentive to write; if a Somali wanted to have a letter

composed, he or she would turn to one of the learned men of religion who

knew how to read and write. These men of religion were the custodians of

the cult but also of the occult, and writing was both part of the cult and the

occult. Reading and writing in Arabic was the key to their profession and to

their status in the society; therefore, they saw no urgent need to vulgarize

their science in the language of the common people just as the church in

Europe for centuries saw no need to vulgarize its religious works in the local

tongues.

The lack of a strong centralized state, and it might be said that writing

and accounting systems, being the backbone of a taxation system, are essential

to a centralized state, contributed to the lack of a common writing code for

Somali. For comparison, we may note that the largely agriculturist Amhara,

neighbors of the Somalis, developed a writing system and a feudal system of

governance as well as land ownership; but Somalis did not develop any powerful

systems where hierarchy and class were of importance. They were, despite

the existence of numerous sultanates and city-states, "a race of fierce

and turbulent republicans,"until the arrivalof the colonialEuropean state.I

The story of the codifiers of Somali (i.e., those who attempted to invent

a script for Somali) is long and includes both Somalis and non-Somalis.

Among the Somalis were Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Makahil, Muse H.I. Galal,

Sheikh Abdirahman Sheikh Nur, Yusuf Keenadiid Osman, Shire Jama Ahmed,

and Sheikh Ahmed Kadare. Among the non-Somalis were notably such

persons as J. K. King (1887) and B. W. Andrzejewski.These variousscripts

fell into three types according to the characters they used: Arabic, Latin, and

unique. Sheikh Abdirahman Sheikh Nur and YusufKeenadiid Osman's systems

were unique endeavors of their own making. However, the unique

scripts did not make much headway, and by the 1950s, the promoters of a

script for Somali were in two camps: Arabic and Latin.

These two script camps began ideological battles in which linguistic and

nonlinguistic arguments were exchanged.2 For example, those who were favoring

the Arabic script took pleasure in pointing out that their characters

had the advantage of being largely known to the public through the teaching

of Arabic as a liturgical language as well as of being of Muslim origin-in

fact, they predate Islam. The confrontation between the two groups, in the

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AN EGALITARIANISM CUSTOM OF GOVERNANCE

SOMALIS have, perhaps too often, been described by Western writers, as an

egalitarian people of nomads, or as an acephalous nation of bards, in other

words as anarchists who value personal freedom and oral skills such as poetry.

Indeed, to some visitors, Somali society might seem to have traversed the

ages without much change in lifestyles or customs-nomads draped in flowing

robes and tending sheep evoke a bucolic image right out of the Bible in

most Western minds. Another recurring image of Somalis is that they are

divided into independent clans headed by traditional patriarchs-again biblical

imagery for Westerners. For sure, there are a lot of nomads in flowing

robes tending sheep and camels; but not all Somalis tend herds of livestock,

neither are stock-raising and other economic activities mutually exclusive.

For example, the transport entrepreneur who owns his or her bus or the

restaurant owner or even the airport official who stamps your passport might

have been a former livestock owner or herder and may still keep a few sheep

or camels in the country to supplement his or her income.

Somali values of egalitarianism are embedded in both Islam and in Somali

pastoral culture, which is itself grounded in pastoral Cushitic culture. Somalis

tend to think that humans are equal before Allah, the creator, and will be

rewarded or punished for their deeds. The ruler is not thought of as superior

to the average individual and Somalis have never known the rule of divine

kings or divine priests nor have they had slavery or institutionalized inequity

of humans from birth. Somalis have never known a culture in which feudal

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subserviency and strong political and religious hierarchies were the norm.

Even the nation-state is a new concept to the Somalis and other peoples in

the Horn, the prior political history of the Horn being about loose empires,

sultanates, and city-states. The nation-state is also a relatively recent concept,

in comparison to the multiethnic empire-state. The prior history of Somalis

is more about independent pastoral clans, sultanates, and city-states whose

leaders were never absolute potentates and where there were no estates or

classes of people such as nobility or commoners, but only professional classes

such as religious men, blacksmiths, pastoralists, merchants, and so forth.

Consensual rather than coercive governance is more appealing to Somalis,

and Somalis expect their leaders to be persons capable of persuasion by having

the oral skills required for "disputation, litigation, negotiation, agreement,

and consensus."! Somali egalitarianism is therefore about basic rights; it does

not mean equality of capital or riches, for there have always been poor and

rich Somalis, whether the riches were camels or another form of wealth.

Indeed, as far as capital accumulation and entrepreneurship are concerned,

Somalis have always been traders, merchants, and entrepreneurs. Somali entrepreneurs

and merchants are even important in the economies of East Mrican

countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and to a lesser extent

in several other Mrican countries. Somali refugees who have recently immigrated

to South Mrica typically started street vending enterprises to support

themselves as a first step toward larger enterprises. Somalis immigrating

to Western countries such as the United States have opened restaurants and

markets. Entrepreneurial dynamism and adaptation are therefore elements of

Somali culture.

But is that enough to depict Somalis as rugged individualists who shun

authority and control of any kind-in other words, as anarchists? Or are

Somalis people who developed democratic norms respectful of human dignity

and rights when other peoples were under feudal lords? Unfortunately, too

many analysts and writers tended to see "anarchy" in Somali culture and then

went on to attribute the present total collapse of the central authority as the

product of the anarchistic and individualistic nature of Somalis of pastoral

culture. For instance, I. M. Lewis, the best known anthropologist on Somalis,

who described Somali society as a "pastoral democracy," wrote: "The first

thing to understand about the Somalis is that they are not as other men.

Richard Burton, the famous Arabist and explorer who trekked across their

lands in the 1850s, called the Islamic Somali nomads a 'fierce and turbulent

race of republicans.' More pungently, a Ugandan sergeant with the British

forces fighting the Mad Mullah went on record as telling his officer: 'Somalis,

Bwana, they no good: each man his own sultan.' "2

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The two above statements within this quote appear in many texts about

Somalis and are used as anecdotes illustrating the chaotic and anarchistic

cosmos of Somalis. They have become stereotypes that serve to illustrate and

perpetuate a generalization that has little sociological significance. The difference

between such exotic anecdotes and the tall tales of early travelers and

geographers is one of time.

First, Burton's depictions in the above quote of Somalis as a "race of

republicans" rather than as subjects of a king was a correct observation-

Somalis never had a monarch or any rigid central government prior to the

nineteenth century. But Somali republicanism is not the equivalent of anarchism-

to the Somalis, anarchy is as much abhorrent as absolute totalitarianism.

Somalis, as Muslims, concede authority to their representative

authorities as the Koran (4:60) tells them: "0 ye who believe! Obey ALLAH,

and obey His Messenger and those who are in authority among you." Additionally,

Somali oral literature itself teaches in adages and proverbs the

importance of leadership. One example of such proverbs gives the following

wisdom: "No one can live in a country or city without a ruler or government"

(Balad aan boqor lahayn laguma galo).

As for the Ugandan colonial sergeant quoted above, it is essential to put

his words in the context of his own culture. The sergeant was from the

Buganda kingdom of what is now Uganda, a society in which the Kabaka,

the king, held life and death authority over his subjects, and where the death

of a king called for the sacrifice of a large number of commoners. Even the

chiefs of the Buganda would have looked like tyrants to the Somalis that the

sergeant met, for Somali clan chiefs, unlike the traditional chiefs in other

places, were and are mere ceremonial heads of committees. Decisions are

made by a committee (guddi) or by selected representatives (guurti), the

pastoral parliament. No doubt then that the Ugandan sergeant was greatly

astonished at the egalitarianism of Somalis who had fealty neither for kings

nor for men of religion, although they had a healthy respect for just authority

and pious men of religion.

The Somali clan is itself a product of the pastoral democracy of Somalis.

The clan, in its essence, is a minimalist association in which members agree

to adopt a common social pact (heer) for dealing with community problems

and for helping each other; for example, when a family loses its animals to

a drought, the clan members pitch in with donated animals, or when rustlers

steal a family's animals, the clan members take action to seek restitution first

by negotiation. In urban areas, the clan, as an extended family, provides a

social net, and sums of money are collected for an indigent person (qaadhaan).

The concept of who might appeal for help is very flexible; for ex

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for example, if five Somalis from five different clans are in a foreign city and one

of them needs help, the others are morally bound to act as the kith and kin

of the fifth and come to his or her aid; however, if there are many Somalis,

then one is supposed to seek material help first from those nearest to him or

her in clan genealogy. This is a general schema and there are other venues

of appeal for charity such as alms at a mosque.

Against this background of Somali governance system and social solidarity,

based on the principles of guurti (commission, committee, or parliament)

and heer (common law), colonial rule, first imposed on Somalis in the nineteenth

century, ran against the ideal of consensual governance. To the colonial

power, the centralization of all powers under one governor was the

most efficient way of running the colony. Centralization was therefore essential

to the colonial regimes instiruted among Somalis. While both the British

and the Italian colonial regimes were centralized regimes, British rule in the

north was more benign and allowed some leeway for consultation with the

population. In the north, district and regional governors typically consulted

with the traditional leaders (akil) on important matters and with the qadi

on points oflaw. Not so with the Italians, like the ancient Romans of what

is now Italy, who were bent on imposing their laws through direct imposition

on the Somalis-the objective being nothing less than the latinization of the

Somali culture. Their system of governance was not only centralized to the

extreme but was dictatorial with input always coming from the top. Additionally,

the south experienced the period of Italian fascism in the 1930s

when everything of Somali origin was to be replaced with Italian norms,

which were thought to be superior. Colonialism, therefore, undermined the

role of traditional leadership and the republican mode of governance. Somali

modes of consensus building and democratization through consultations

were deemed outmoded and tribal, and a system of colonial appointees and

official ordinances from the top were the new norm of rule.

Despite the fact that the alien norm of top-to-bottom governance was

clearly a violation of Somali culture and ethos, after independence and the

formation of the Somali republic, the same political system of centralized

regime was kept, with the government appointing district governors. The

colonial educated elites continued to function and rule in the old colonial

type of administration (used largely by the Italians to govern the south as an

Italian colony) with all its centralization, rigidity, and one-way communication.

The government and its political appointees had all the power and

the local populations had almost none. There was a parliament during the

first nine civilian years, but the parliament did not initiate steps for the

devolution of decision-making powers to the regions and districts, in short

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to the people. No provisions were made for the government to consult with

the people in the regions. As can only be expected in such a situation, the

central government began administering the regions just as the colonial administration

did-by dictating to them through directives. It sent to every

region a new governor to replace the colonial governor and a new district

commissioner to replace the colonial one. The new governor and the new

district commissioner, most often unacquainted with the region or district

they were sent to rule, put themselves up in the residences of their colonial

predecessors and even retained, in most cases, the services of their European

predecessors' "boys" and maids.3

When Siad Barre came into power, he inherited the existing system of

governance that was extremely centralized; it suited his dictatorial temperament

and his only additions to the governance system were more governors

and government appointees for his loyal friends and more instruments of

repression. Siad Barre himself was a product of the fascist era and his knowledge

of repressive methods of governance was largely obtained during the

years of fascism.

The breakdown of law and order in Somalia cannot be attributed to the

existence of pastoral dans, Somali republican values, or to an inborn anarchist

trait of Somalis; on the contrary, today's turbulence is the result of the widespread

use of violence by the Barre regime and the destruction of Somali

humanitarian and republican values under the colonial regimes that had preceded

it. Under Barre's two decades of brutal governance, a whole new generation

of urban Somalis was born who had no benefit of the humanism,

egalitarianism, and republicanism of the culture of their forefathers. Their

personas took shape in an era in which experiential input came from Barre's

violent state security services, and from an array of new entertainment modes

such as the theaters showing films in which violence was supreme. As a result

many of the youngsters that man the "technicals," a type of battle wagon

bristling with machines, display bravado behavior and recklessness totally

inconsistent with Somali pastoral culture. They pose for the camera in that

now famous "Rambo" pose known around the world through the movie of

that name starring the American actor Sylvester Stallone. (Somali nomads

have no access to films at all but urban children do, and when that particular

film was in theaters in 1986 in Mogadishu, police officers had to be called

in to stop youngsters from breaking into already tightly packed theaters.)

The Somali culture has, however, the basic elements for renewal and reconciliation.

Its elements of heer (contract, common law) and guurti (assembly,

parliament) are the foundations for universal democracy and with little

modification they have been shown to be the means to renewal and transformation into a modern democratic society.

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Today, while some areas of the

former Somalia are still reeling from a continuing civil war, consensual democracy

through Somali values is already at work in some areas. In the

Republic of Somaliland, for example, comprising the northern regions of the

old Somalia, the restoration of peace and governance has largely been

achieved by rekindling and institutionalizing the guurti system. The same

process has also produced good results and the retUrn of law and order in

the region that now calls itself the Puntland State of Somalia and whose

capital is at Garowe.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND DIVISION OF THE SECULAR AND

THE SPIRITUAL

The basic unit of the Somali society is the reer, the nuclear family (the

parents and the children). The same word can also be used to refer to a

community or a clan (qoloor qabiil). Somali clans have developed social and

penal codes to solve problems between individuals as well as between clans.

This is known as heer (written in Somali as xeer). Heer is a set oflaws, seldom

written, that members of a clan or neighboring clans decide to respect. Heer

also means precedence; thus if someone says to someone else waa inoo xeer,

it means "you have set a new precedent and you will be subject to it in turn."

Rural communes have therefore always avoided setting bad precedents and

have respected the existing heer. Infractions to the heer are to be brought

before a selected assembly (guurti) or a committee of heerbeegti(law experts)

who will hand down a verdict. The guurti is therefore a kind of tribunal for

judging infractions as well as a parliament that makes political decisions.

Somali traditional law (heer) always coexisted with the sharia (Islamic law),

since the two met each other over a millennium ago. The two legal syste~s

became complementary in many respects. For example, while homicide and

rape were usually treated under the heer law, family affairs such as divorce

were treated under the sharia. Traditional law has also coexisted and still

coexists with statUtory or state laws introduced by the colonial regimes.

The division of spheres between heer and sharia followed closely the division

of secular and religious domains (i.e., state and church) in Somali life.

The secular world was that of politics and governance, while the religious

domain was concerned with spiritUal matters. The secular world belonged to

the waranle (the spearman), while the religious domain belonged to the wadaad

(the priest). This separation of church and state had, therefore, happened

long before the arrival of Islam among Somalis and has continued to

exist despite attempts to erase this division by foreign-inspired wadaads. Of

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FESTIVALSAND COMMEMORATIVE DAYS

Excessive public exuberance and displays are not part of Somali custom;

this is due pardy to the ascetic nature of Somali pastoralist culture and pardy

to the Islamic teachings of sobriety and piety. Public revelry is therefore

unknown and the Somali night is one of silence, as one European expatriate

opined. However, Somalis are not without joyous celebrations and commemorative

days. These can be divided into ancient pre-Islamic, Islamic, and staterelated

celebrations.

Only one pre-Islamic celebration of importance exists-the dabshid (the

lighting of the fire), which marks the beginning of the Somali solar calendar.

The calculation of the start of the solar year is made by weather and stellar

experts and has a practical value for stock-breeders and farmers.2oDuring the

dabshid a small bonfire is lit in the evening and everyone is supposed to try

to jump over it. Burning sticks from the bonfire are also thrown into the

sky. The dabshid also has been referred to as neyruus, a Persian word for the

Persian new year (nairuz), due to the use of fire in dabshid, which early

Muslims probably took as a fire worship as was the case among pre-Islamic

Persians. There is no other evidence of a relationship betWeen the dabshid

and the Persian nairuz. The solar calendar, whose reckoning was aided by

lunar and stellar observations, has been known among Cushitic groups such

as Somalis and the Oromo for millennia. Somalis also take notice of the

Arabic lunar calendar year, which is in use among Muslims, but they do not

celebrate its start.

Properly Muslim celebrations include the birth of Mohamed the prophet,

mawliid, and the 'iid-al-jitar, marking the end of the annual fasting period.

The prophet's birthday occasions the reading of hymns and a feast in Somali

homes. Publicly, except for extra colored lights in urban centers, there are

no celebrations or festivities on this occasion. The most publicly celebrated

of Muslim holidays is the <iid-al-fitar, which comes at the end of Ramadan,

the holy month of fasting. For that day, families who can afford to buy a

sheep or goat and prepare a large feast. People dress in their best and children

receive gifts from parents and relatives. Small children in bright new clothes

can be seen crossing the streets bound for a relative's home where they would

be received with a gift, food, and cookies. Streets, given beforehand an extra

cleaning, shine with colored lights.

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Well that was a background check about the nomads

and the title of the book is called Culture and Customs of Somalia