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

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СКАЧАТЬ seasons they are forced to concentrate nearer the wells and make do with what grazing can be found in their proximity. Only the herds of milch camels with their attendants to some extent escape from this seasonal curtailment of movement, and even they must also be placed in areas where they can conveniently satisfy their less frequent but more substantial watering needs. Rights of access to water depend primarily upon its abundance and the ease with which it can be utilized. Only where water is not freely available, and where the expenditure of much labour and effort is required before it can be used, are exclusive rights asserted and maintained, if necessary, by force. And while in the general nomadic flux there is no rigid localization of pastoral groups and no appreciable development of ties to locality, the ‘home-wells’ regularly frequented in the dry seasons, and the trading settlements which spring up all over Somaliland wherever people congregate even temporarily round water, provide some check to a more random pattern of pastoral mobility.

      Subject to the vagaries of the seasons and the very variable distribution of rain and grazing, there is some tendency for the clans, which are the largest effective political units with populations ranging from 10,000 to over 100,000 persons, to be vaguely associated with particular areas of pasturage. Clans are traditionally led by Sultans (in Somali: Suldan, Boqar, Garad, Ugas, etc.). This title, which evokes something of the pomp and splendour of Islamic states, ill accords with the actual position of Somali clan leaders, who are normally little more than convenient figureheads and lack any firmly institutionalized power. Indeed for the majority of northern Somali clans, the position of Sultan, though often hereditary, is hardly more than an honorific title dignifying a man whose effective power is often no greater, and sometimes less, than that of other clan elders. It is in fact the elders – and this in its broadest connotation includes all adult men – who control clan affairs. With a few special exceptions, a hierarchical pattern of authority is foreign to pastoral Somali society which in its customary processes of decision-making is democratic almost to the point of anarchy. It must at once be added, however, that this markedly unstratified traditional political system does recognize a subordinate category of people known as sab who fulfil such specialized and to the nomad degrading tasks as hunting, leather- and metal-working, and haircutting. The sab who practise these occupations form a minute fraction of the total population and, traditionally, were separated from other Somali by restrictions on marriage and commensality. Today the enfranchisement of these Midgans, Tumals, and Yibirs, is far advanced and most of their traditional disabilities are disappearing.⁸

      With the absence of institutionalized hierarchical authority, Somali pastoral groups are not held together by attachment to chiefs. This principle of government which is so important in so many other parts of Africa is here replaced by binding ties of patrilineal kinship. Somali political allegiances are determined by descent in the male line; and, whatever their precise historical content, it is their lineage genealogies which direct the lines of political alliance and division. Although Somalis sometimes compare the functions of their genealogies to a person’s address in Europe, to understand their true significance it has to be realized that far more is at stake here than mere pride of pedigree. These genealogies define the basic political and legal status of the individual in Somali society at large and assign him a specific place in the social system.

      While descent in the male line (tol) is thus the traditional basis of Somali social organization, it does not act alone but in conjunction with a form of political contract (her). It is this second, and scarcely less vital principle which is used to evoke and give precise definition to the diffuse ties of descent. As recorded in the genealogies which children learn by heart, descent presents the individual with a wide range of kinsmen amongst whom he selects friends and foes according to the context of his interests. Thus, sometimes he acts in the capacity of a member of his clan-family, sometimes as a member of a constituent clan, and sometimes as a member of one of the large number of lineages into which his clan is divided internally. But, within this series of diffuse attachments, his most binding and most frequently mobilized loyalty is to his ‘diya-paying group’. This unit, with a fighting strength of from a few hundred to a few thousand men, consists of close kinsmen united by a specific contractual alliance whose terms stipulate that they should pay and receive blood-compensation (Arabic, diya) in concert. An injury done by or to any member of the group implicates all those who are a party to its treaty. Thus if a man of one group is killed by a man of another, the first group will collectively claim the damages due from the second. At the same time, within any group a high degree of co-operation and mutual collaboration traditionally prevails.

      To grasp the significance of this political and legal entity – whose members do not necessarily camp or move together in the pastures – but which is nevertheless the most clearly defined political unit in pastoral society, it must be appreciated that the nomadic Somali are a warlike people, driven by the poverty of their resources to intense competition for access to water and grazing.⁹ Even under modern administration self-help still retains much force as the most effective sanction for redressing wrongs and adjusting political and legal issues between groups. Hence, with the difficulty under present conditions of adequately policing much of the country, the security of the individual pastoralist’s person and property depends ultimately upon his membership of a diya-paying group. At the same time, the existence of this well-defined social group does not preclude the formation of wider kinship alliances as occasion demands. Thus, within a clan, diya-paying group opposes diya-paying group; but when the clan is attacked by an external enemy, its various sections unite in common cause to protect their interests. Beyond the clan, the widest kinship ties are those which unite kindred clans as members of the same clan-family. In the traditional social system, however, the six clan-families into which the Somali nation is divided (the Dir, Isaq, Hawiye and Darod; and the Digil and Rahanweyn) are generally too large, too widely scattered, and too unwieldy to act as effective corporate political units. But in the modern situation of party political competition, such extended kinship links acquired new vitality and significance.

       Cultivation

      In the better watered reaches of the western part of the Northern Regions of the Somali Republic and in Harar Province of Ethiopia, where sorghum millet is grown over an extensive area, this pastoral regime has undergone a number of modifications. Here within the past two or three generations, following the example of the neighbouring Oromo farmers, Somali pastoralists have turned to plough cultivation, and stable agricultural villages have replaced the nomads’ temporary encampments. With a growing sense of attachment to territory, ties of neighbourhood are beginning to be acknowledged, which, although no formal change in the traditional political system has yet taken place, constitute a novel principle of grouping. This is evident in the organization on a basis of co-residence, as much as of kinship, of such local agricultural activities as harvesting and the excavation and maintenance of the ponds on which these cultivating settlements depend for their water supplies. With this development goes also a change in the bias of livestock husbandry: here cattle largely replace camels, and oxen are trained to the plough. The transition, however, is by no means absolute for many farmers are either transhumant, or, although themselves sedentary, maintain herds of camels which are sent out to graze in the charge of younger kinsmen. Farmers indeed frequently invest profits from the sale of sorghum in camels; and apart from these distinctions there is little difference in culture or social organization between the pastoral and cultivating sections of a clan.

      The influence of agriculture in modifying the traditional pattern of life is taken a stage further amongst the Digil and Rahanweyn cultivators, of the south of the Republic. Here the tilling of the soil, in which a hand hoe is used, has a tradition going back several centuries, and the innovating influence of agriculture has been strengthened and reinforced by such additional factors as the great admixture of peoples and cultures which has taken place in this region. For, besides a small core of the descendants of people of original Digil stock, the Sab represent an amalgam of many different elements of which the most disparate are perhaps those deriving from Bantu and Oromo sources. And despite the fact that the great bulk of the Rahanweyn are today people of northern nomadic provenance, representatives of almost every northern Somali clan being found amongst them, many traits of the СКАЧАТЬ