A Modern History of the Somali. I. M. Lewis

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СКАЧАТЬ is approximately 3, 250, 000;¹ and finally, in the North-Eastern Region of Kenya,² they number about 250,000. Outside this region, other Somali are settled as traders and merchants in many of the towns and ports of East Africa (e.g. in Nairobi); in Aden, in whose history they played an important role; and throughout Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Farther afield, the roving existence which life at sea affords has led to the establishment of small and fluctuating immigrant Somali communities in such diverse European ports as Marseilles, Naples, London, and Cardiff.

      In their dry savanna homeland, the Somali are essentially a nation of pastoral nomads, forced by the exigencies of their demanding climate and environment to move with their flocks of sheep and goats and herds of camels and cattle in an endless quest for water and pasturage. The northern coastal plains (Guban, from gub to burn) which extend from the lava-strewn deserts of the Republic of Jibuti along the Gulf of Aden shore to Cape Guardafui are especially arid. Here the annual rainfall rarely exceeds three inches and is concentrated in the comparatively cool months from October to January. In the hot months between June and September, the Guban fully lives up to its name; and except for the urban populations of such ports as Jibuti (pop. 180,000), capital of this territory, and Berbera (pop. 60,000) in the Somali Republic, at this season is generally deserted by the nomadic tribesmen for the cooler and greener hills which rise behind it. Despite its often torrid heat and low rainfall, however, the run-off from the mountains behind ensures that water is usually easily obtainable only a few feet below the Guban’s characteristically sandy soil. With these water resources, and the sometimes surprisingly generous pastures which spring up after the autumn rains, this region provides the winter quarters for the most northerly Somali clans.

      The Golis and Ogo mountains, with their magnificent and often dangerously precipitous escarpments, which rise behind the coast dominate the whole physical structure of the region. This range achieves a height of almost 8,006 feet at points to the east; and, in the west where it joins the Ethiopian Highlands, rises as high as 9,000 feet near the ancient Muslim city of Harar (pop. 60,000). To the south, the mountains descend into a great tilting plateau which has an average elevation of 3,000 feet in the centre, and embraces most of the Somali hinterland. On the hills and in the north of the plateau, which includes the important centre of Hargeisa (pop. 60,000), capital of the former British Somaliland Protectorate, the rainfall is sometimes as high as twenty inches, especially in the northwest where, between Hargeisa and Harar, sorghum is cultivated. Here water is generally abundant, and the perennial wells excavated often at great depth in the dry waddies provide the winter watering-places of many of the central clans of the north. To the south of Hargeisa, the northern plateau opens into that vast wilderness of thorn-bush and tall grasses known as the Haud. In northern Somali the name ‘Haud’ means simply ‘south’; and the region, which contains no permanent water, is of indeterminate extent. The northern and eastern tips lie within the Somali Republic, while the western and southern portions (the latter merging with the Ogaden plains) form part of Harar Province of Ethiopia.

      To the south of the Haud, the plateau inclines gradually from the west as it reaches out towards the south-eastern coast of the Indian Ocean. Here it is intersected by low-lying plains and valleys, lined with welcome vegetation, which are more widely spaced than in the precipitate north. The most important of these southerly valleys are those traversed by the Shebelle and Juba Rivers as they flow from their sources in the Ethiopian Highlands towards the coast. Both rivers contain water in all seasons and together make up the main river system of the whole Somali area north of the Tana.

      The Shebelle or ‘Leopard’ River extends for some 1,250 miles but does not enter the sea; after crossing the southern part of the Ogaden it flows eastwards as far as Balad, twenty miles from the Indian Ocean coast, where it veers to the south to cover a further 170 miles before disappearing in a series of marshes and sand-flats close to Jelib on the Juba. Only with exceptionally heavy rains does the river join the Juba and thus succeed in reaching the sea. To the south of the Shebelle, the Juba River descends much more directly from the Ethiopian Highlands to the sea which it enters as a strong stream some 250 yards wide near the port of Kismayu (pop. 60,000). It is navigable by shallow draft vessels from its mouth to the rapids a few miles beyond Bardera, in which the German explorer von der Decken’s steamship Welf perished in 1865. In contrast to the wide belts of scrub-bush and grassy plains, interspersed with lonely tall acacias, which cover so much of the country, these two rivers are lined in places by narrow lanes of attractive high forest. Here elephant and hippopotamus replace the multitude of antelope species and smaller game which are so abundant elsewhere.

      In comparison with the north, the southern part of the Somali Republic between the Shebelle and Juba Rivers is relatively well-watered: and, indeed by local standards, so fecund as to constitute the richest arable zone in the whole of Somaliland. Here the principal crops are sorghum, Indian corn, sesame, beans, squashes and manioc; as well as fruits, and sugar-cane, which, however, are mainly cultivated in the plantations owned by large corporations. The chief export crop is the banana produced by a number of Italian and Somali companies on a quota system controlled by the Somali government. Outside this fertile southern zone between the rivers there are no comparable arable resources, although the north-west of the country now supplies a valuable sorghum harvest and grain production is expanding as well as date cultivation.

      Despite this general division in physical features and productivity, both northern and southern Somaliland are subject to a similar cycle of seasons associated with the rotation of the N.E. and S.W. monsoons. Apart from a variety of minor local wet periods, the main rains fall twice yearly – between March and June, and between September and December – throughout the region. The dry seasons are similarly distributed: but while the hottest time of the year on the northern coast falls in the summer, the south is by contrast pleasantly cool at this period. In the volcanic wastes of the Jibuti Republic, this fairly regular cycle of seasons loses most of its coherence, and the weather is generally less predictable except in its torridity. Mogadishu (pop. 350,000), capital of the Somali Republic, and the other ports of the southern Indian Ocean coast have a climate which though often humid is pleasant in the cool season.

       The People

      Ethnically and culturally the Somali belong to the Hamitic ethnic group. Their closest kinsmen are the surrounding Hamitic (or as they are often called ‘Cushitic’) peoples of the Ethiopian lowlands, and Eritrea – the traditionally bellicose ‘Afar (or Danakil),³ the Oromo (Galla), Saho, and Beja. Their immediate neighbours to the north are the pastoral ‘Afar with whom they share Jibuti and who extend into Eritrea and Ethiopia. To the west, in Ethiopia, the Somali are bounded by the cultivating and pastoral Oromo; and in the south by the Boran Galla of Kenya.

      Although there is much variation amongst them, the physical features which immediately strike the eye and seem most generally characteristic of the Somali people as a whole, are their tall stature, thin bone structure and decidedly long and narrow heads. Skin colour shows a wide range from a coppery brown to a dusky black. In their facial features particularly, the Somali also exhibit evidence of their long-standing relations with Arabia; and, in the south, amongst the Digil and Rahanweyn tribes, physical traces of their past contact with Oromo and Bantu peoples in this region. Traditionally, however, Somali set most store by their Arabian connexions and delight in vaunting those traditions which proclaim their descent from noble Arabian lineages and from the family of the Prophet. These claims, dismissed by Somali nationalists today as fanciful, are nevertheless part and parcel of the traditional and profound Somali attachment to Islam. They commemorate the many centuries of contacts between the Somali and Arabian coasts which have brought Islam and many other elements of Muslim Arab culture.

      Thus, the Somali language⁴ contains a considerable number of Arabic loan-words, and Arabic itself is sufficiently widely known to be regarded almost as a second language. Nevertheless, although unwritten until 1972,⁵ Somali retained its distinctiveness as a separate and extremely vigorous tongue possessing an unusually rich oral literature. Within Somali, the widest dialect difference is between the speech of the northern pastoralists and of the Digil and Rahanweyn cultivators. СКАЧАТЬ