met by a Somali historian. Many Somali friends have advised and helped me in my attempts to understand their culture and politics down the years. In the preparation of this new edition which, with the limited time allotted to me, has indeed been a ‘crash programme’, I would like particularly to thank Dr Omar Duhod, Dr Ahmad Yusuf Farah, Mr ‘Osman Ahmad Hassan, Mr ‘Abdirashid Sed, Mr ‘Abdisalan ‘Isse Salwe, Jan Haakonsen and Dr Patrick Gilkes. I have not forgotten the early encouragement and enduring support I received from Muse Galal, Muhammad Abshir Muse, Professor Said Samatar, and the remarkable self-trained Somali historian Sheikh Jama’ Omar ‘Ise. My thoughts also turn to departed friends like Anthony Mariano, B. W. Andrzejewski, and Bernhard Helander with whom I have longed to debate the arguments of my new final chapter. My wife has loyally read my final chapter and helped to lick it into shape. Working with this recent historical material, readily available from a superabundance of sources, I now more fully understand how E. H. Carr’s view of history is shaped by his predicament as a modern historian facing a surfeit of information and the problem of selection.**
Having had three previous publishers, this book has had a somewhat nomadic history. In welcoming it to what I hope may be its final home, my tyrannical new publisher, James Currey, has been amazingly enthusiastic and helpful. I am especially pleased that we can now again include illustrations, both those published and acknowledged in the original 1965 edition and new material. In selecting and supplying additional pictures to document recent events I am grateful to Ismail Ahmed, Michael Brophy, ‘Abdullahi Dool, Felicity Thomas and the brilliant photographer of the Somali world, Hamish Wilson.
Finally, I should warn the reader that I have limited chapter notes to a minimum, seeking only to document or dilate upon a few important points and to call attention to some of the more fruitful and interesting sources. If I have left some sources out this does not necessarily reflect my opinion of them! These end notes are nevertheless fairly extensive, and I have therefore felt that a separate bibliography would not be justified. I have transcribed Somali names generally in their usual anglicized format rather than in the orthography of the Somali script. Somalis will have no difficulty in making the necessary vowel length and other adjustments, and non-Somalis will be able to recognize and pronounce proper names in the format adopted here more easily than would have been the case if I had followed the Somali script strictly.
Ioan Lewis
London, 2002
Notes
* For further information on the circumstances of my field research, see I. M. Lewis, ‘An anthropologist at large in the ‘Cinderella of Empire’ in Blood and Bone, the Call of Kinship in Somali Society, New Jersey, 1994, pp. 1–18; and ‘Afterword’ in A Pastoral Democracy, new edition, Oxford, 1999, pp. i–xxvi.
** See E. H. Garr, What is History? London, 1964.
Bbuggan waxa aan u hibaynayaa dadka Sooomaaliyeed, kuwa taariikhdooda sameeya iyo kuwa qoraba, aniga oo galladcelin uga dhigayaa sidii wacnayd ee ay iigu soo dhaweeyeen dalkooda. Waxa kale oo aan ugu deeqayaa gabadhayda ‘Foanna’, loona yaqaan Dalmara oo ku dhalatay Soomaaliya, haatanna, ku jirta raadraaca taariikhda Afrika.
Somali ethnic and clan-family distribution 2002
Somali states and regions 2002
Partition of Mogadishu among warlords 2001 (based on map drawn by Mohamed Rashid and John Drysdale)
The Land and the Peoples
1 Family of nomads approaching a dry river bed in the early morning (Somaliland). In the dry seasons the nomads must move frequently from place to place in search of pasture and water.
2 A young herdsman with cattle watering on the Shebelle River in the south of Somalia.
3 A field of ripe sorghum in the arable zone between Hargeisa and Borama in the north-west of Somalia. This is the main grain-growing area of the north.
4 A Southern Somali tribal chief with two of his wives and a tribal policeman (Illalo). The round mud and wattle house is the typical house-style of the agricultural regions between the Shebelle and Juba Rivers in the south.
5 On the Dawa Parma River which marks the north-western boundary between Kenya and Ethiopia in the extreme north of the Somali-occupied North Eastern Region of Kenya water is abundantly available. Elsewhere in this semi-desert region water is an extremely scarce commodity.
6 Stock Inspector inoculating camels against Rinderpest.
7 A manually operated ferry carrying people and livestock across the Juba River.
8 Cattle watering in southern Somalia. At deep wells such as these, the water is raised in skin buckets attached to long drawing ropes.
Before Partition
9 A finely carved door-frame in Zanzibar style in Mogadishu.
10 A view of Mogadishu as it appeared to the French explorer Charles Guillain in 1847 (from a print in the album illustrating Guillain’s voyages). Mogadishu’s oldest mosque bears an inscription dated A.D. 1238, while the city’s earliest funeral inscription goes back to the eighth century.
11 Camel-operated press used for extracting sesame oil at Mogadishu in 1847 (from the album of Guillain).
12 A view of the town of Geledi (Afgoi) on the Shebelle River as it appeared at the time of Guillain’s visit in 1847 (from Guillain’s album). The Geledi Sultan was the most powerful Somali chief on the Benadir coast
