Daily life and social customs
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The varied cultural life of the Somali includes both traditional activities and, especially in the towns, many modern interests. Cultural activities consist primarily of poetry, folk dancing, the performance of plays, and singing. These traditional activities still retain their importance, especially in rural areas, and are practiced not only at family and religious celebrations but also at state ceremonies. On such occasions traditional local costume is generally worn. Especially in the towns, traditional culture is rapidly being superseded by imported modern influences, such as television, cinema, and bars and restaurants. Urban Somalian cooking has been strongly influenced by Italian cuisine, and young townspeople are much influenced by Western fashion in the way they dress. Football (soccer) is a popular sport.
The arts
There are many famous Somali artists, poets, musicians, actors, and dancers, some of whom live in exile. Nuruddin Farah, whose novels are written in English, has achieved international fame. (For Farah’s thoughts about his country at the turn of the new millennium, see Sidebar: Somalia at the Turn of the 21st Century.) Cultural institutions in Mogadishu are the National Museum, the Historical Museum, and the National Theatre.
Media and publishing
Press, radio, and television are all controlled and censored by the state. Since 1991 several daily newspapers have been published in Mogadishu, and one is printed in Puntland. Radio Mogadishu is the main station, which is government-controlled, and there are several local stations in the city as well. Books in general are hard to obtain, and the printing quality of the few books available in Somali is very poor.
Jörg H.A. Janzen The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaHistory
Exploration
Early activity on the coasts
From their connection with the Ethiopian hinterland, their proximity to Arabia, and their export of precious gums, ostrich feathers, ghee (clarified butter), and other animal products as well as slaves from farther inland, the northern and eastern Somali coasts have for centuries been open to the outside world. This area probably formed part of Punt, “the land of aromatics and incense,” mentioned in ancient Egyptian writings. Between the 7th and the 10th century, immigrant Muslim Arabs and Persians developed a series of trading posts along the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean coasts. Many of the early Arab geographers mentioned these trading posts and the sultanates that grew out of them, but they rarely described the interior of the country in detail.
Intensive exploration really began only after the occupation of Aden by the British in 1839 and the ensuing scramble for Somali possessions by Britain, France, and Italy (see below The imperial partition). In 1854, while Richard Burton was exploring the country to the northwest in the course of his famous journey from Berbera to Hārer, his colleague John Hanning Speke was making his way along the Makhir coast in the northeast. This region had previously been visited by Charles Guillain, captain of the brig Ducouedid, between 1846 and 1848. Guillain also sailed down the Indian Ocean coast and went ashore at Mogadishu, Marca, and Baraawe, penetrating some distance inland and collecting valuable geographic and ethnographic information. In 1865 the German explorer Karl Klaus von der Decken sailed up the Jubba River as far as Baardheere in the small steamship Welf, which foundered in rapids above the town. Decken was killed by Somalis, but much valuable information collected by his expedition survived.
Penetration of the interior
In 1883 a party of Englishmen (F.L. and W.D. James, G.P.V. Aylmer, and E. Lort-Phillips) penetrated from Berbera as far as the Shabeelle River, and between 1886 and 1892 H.G.C. and E.J.E. Swayne surveyed the country between the coast and the Shabeelle and also reached farther east toward the Nugaaleed valley. During 1894–95 A. Donaldson-Smith explored the headwaters of the Shabeelle in Ethiopia, reached Lake Rudolf, and eventually descended the Tana River to the Kenyan coast. In 1891 the Italian Luigi Robecchi-Bricchetti trekked from Mogadishu to Hobyo and then crossed the Ogaden region to Berbera. About the same time, further explorations were made by another Italian, Capt. Vittorio Bottego. In the 20th century several extensive surveys were made, especially in the British protectorate, by J.A. Hunt between 1944 and 1950, and much of the country was mapped by aerial survey.
Before partition
Peoples of the coasts and hinterland
Until recent times the history of the Horn of Africa was dominated by two great themes: the southward expansion of the Somali from the Gulf of Aden littoral and the development by Arab and Persian Muslim settlers of a ring of coastal trading towns dating from at least the 10th century ce. By this time, Islam was firmly established in the northern ports of Seylac (Zeila) and Berbera and at Marca, Baraawe, and Mogadishu on the Indian Ocean coast in the south. These centres were engaged in a lively trade, with connections as far as China. Initially the trend of expansion was from these coastal centres inland, especially in the north.
Probably by the 10th century the country from the Gulf of Aden coast inland had been occupied first by Somali nomads and then, to their south and west, by various groups of pastoral Oromo who apparently had expanded from their traditional homelands in southwestern Ethiopia. To the south of these Cushitic-speaking Somali and Oromo—the “Berberi” of classical times and of the Arab geographers—the fertile lands between the Shabeelle and Jubba rivers were occupied, partly at least, by sedentary Bantu tribes of the Nyika confederacy, whose ancient capital was Shungwaya. Remnants of the Zanj, as these people were known to the Arab geographers, still survive in this region, but their strongest contemporary representatives are found among the coastal Bantu, of whom the Pokomo live along the Tana River in northern Kenya. Another smaller allied population consisted of the ancestors of the scattered bands of hunters of northern Kenya and southern Somalia known as the Wa-Ribi, or the Wa-Boni, a people whose appearance and mode of existence recall those of the San of other areas of Africa.
The great Somali migrations
With this distribution of peoples in the 10th century, the stage was set for the great movements of expansion of the Somali toward the south and of the Oromo to the south and west. The first known major impetus to Somali migration was that of Sheikh Ismāʿīl Jabartī, ancestor of the Daarood Somali, who apparently traveled from Arabia to settle in the northeastern corner of the Somali peninsula in the 11th century. This was followed, perhaps two centuries later, by the settlement of Sheikh Isaq, founder of the Isaaq Somali. As the Daarood and Isaaq clans grew in numbers and territory in the northeast, they began to vie with their Oromo neighbours, thus creating a general thrust toward the southwest. By the 16th century the movements that followed seem to have established much of the present distribution of Somali clans in northern Somalia. Other Somali pressed farther south, and some, according to the Arab geographer Ibn Saʿīd, had already reached the region of Marca by as early as the 13th century.
In the meantime, farther to the west a ring of militant Muslim sultanates had grown up around the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, and the two sides were engaged in a protracted struggle for supremacy. Somali clansmen regularly formed part of the Muslim armies: the name Somali first occurs in an Ethiopian song of victory early in the 15th century. In the 16th century the Muslim state of Adal, whose port was Seylac, assumed the lead in the holy wars against the Christian Amhara. The turning point in the struggle between Christians and Muslims was reached with the Ethiopian victory in 1542, with Portuguese support, over the remarkable Muslim leader Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ghāzī (known to the Ethiopians as Aḥmad GrāŃ). With his Somali armies, Aḥmad had harried Ethiopia almost to the point of collapse. This victory, which saved Ethiopia, also closed the door to Somali expansion westward and increased the pressure of the Somali and Oromo thrust southward. With this stimulus the main mass of the Oromo swept into Ethiopia from the south and southwest and streamed in conquering hordes as far north as the ancient city of Hārer.
This massive invasion left something of a political vacuum in the south of the Horn, which new Somali settlers were quick to fill. By the 17th century the influx of new migrants, competing and jostling with each other, had become considerable. The old Ajuran Somali sultanate, linked with the port of Mogadishu, was overthrown, and Mogadishu itself was invaded and split into two rival quarters. Some of the earlier Somali groups found refuge in northern Kenya. The continuing Somali thrust south—largely at the expense of Oromo and Zanj predecessors—was ultimately effectively halted at the Tana River only by the establishment of administrative posts in about 1912.
Somali clans and foreign traders
Thus, by the latter part of the 19th century, the coastal and hinterland traditions had merged, and the centre of pressure had swung from the coast to the interior. In the north the ancient ports of Berbera and Seylac, much reduced in prosperity and importance, were now controlled by Somali nomads, and the position of the old ports of Marca, Baraawe, and Mogadishu was very similar. These towns had all been penetrated by various Somali clans, and the dominant political influence became that exercised by the Geledi clan ruling the lower reaches of the Shabeelle. Commercial and political links that provided an opening for European infiltration had, however, also been forged between these two coasts and the outside world. Part of the northern Somali coast, including Seylac, was then nominally under Turkish suzerainty (the Turkish claim going back to the 16th century, when Turkish forces had aided Aḥmad Grāñ in his campaigns against Ethiopia). The southern coastal towns, on the other hand, acknowledged the overlordship of the sultan of Zanzibar, although the latter’s authority was slight in comparison with that exercised locally by the Geledi Somali.
The imperial partition
Competition between the European powers and Ethiopia
About the middle of the 19th century, the Somali peninsula became a theatre of competition between Great Britain, Italy, and France. On the African continent itself Egypt also was involved, and later Ethiopia, expanding and consolidating its realm under the guiding leadership of the emperors Tewodros II, Yohannes IV, and Menilek II. Britain’s interest in the northern Somali coast followed the establishment in 1839 of the British coaling station at Aden on the short route to India. The Aden garrison relied upon the importation of meat from the adjacent Somali coast. France sought its own coaling station and obtained Obock on the Afar coast in 1862, later thrusting eastward and developing the Somali port of Djibouti. Farther north, Italy opened a station in 1869 at Aseb, which, with later acquisitions, became the colony of Eritrea. Stimulated by these European maneuvers, Egypt revived Turkey’s ancient claims to the Red Sea coast. In 1870 the Egyptian flag was raised at Bullaxaar (Bulhar) and at Berbera.
Britain at first protested these Egyptian moves but by 1877 had come to regard the Egyptian occupation as a convenient bulwark against the encroachments of European rivals. With the disorganization caused by the revolt in the Sudan during this period, however, Egypt was obliged to curtail its colonial responsibilities, evacuating Hārer and its Somali possessions in 1885. In these circumstances the British government reluctantly decided to fill the gap left by Egypt. Between 1884 and 1886, accordingly, treaties of protection were drawn up with the main northern Somali clans guaranteeing them their “independence.” Somali territory was not fully ceded to Britain, but a British protectorate was proclaimed and vice-consuls appointed to maintain order and control trade at Seylac, Berbera, and Bullaxaar. The interior of the country was left undisturbed, only the coast being affected.
Meanwhile, France had been assiduously extending its colony from Obock, and a clash with Britain was only narrowly averted when an Anglo-French agreement on the boundaries of the two powers’ Somali possessions was signed in 1888. In the same period, the Italians were also actively extending their Eritrean colony and encroaching upon Ethiopian territory. Not to be outdone, Menilek took the opportunity of seizing the Muslim city of Hārer, left independent after the Egyptian withdrawal. In 1889 Ethiopia and Italy concluded the Treaty of Wichale, which in the Italian view established an Italian protectorate over Ethiopia. Arms and capital were poured into the country, and Menilek was able to apply these new resources to bring pressure to bear on the Somali clansmen around Hārer. In 1889 Italy also acquired two protectorates in the northeastern corner of Somalia, and by the end of the year the southern part of the Somali coast leased by the British East Africa Company from the sultan of Zanzibar was sublet to an Italian company.
Italy had thus acquired a Somali colony. From 1892 the lease was held directly from Zanzibar for an annual rent of 160,000 rupees, and, after the failure of two Italian companies by 1905, the Italian government assumed direct responsibility for its colony of Italian Somaliland. To the south of the Jubba River the British East Africa Company held Jubaland until 1895, when this became part of Britain’s East Africa protectorate. Britain and Italy had reached agreement in 1884 on the extent of their respective Somali territories, but the Battle of Adwa (1896), at which the infiltrating Italian armies were crushed by Ethiopian forces, radically changed the position. Ethiopia, then independent of Italy, was plainly master of the hinterland, and in 1896–97 Italy, France, and Britain all signed treaties with Emperor Menilek, curtailing their Somali possessions. Italy gave up the Somali Ogaden, and Britain excised much of the western Hawd from its protectorate. Although the land and the Somali clansmen (who were not consulted), so abandoned, were not recognized as belonging to Ethiopia, there was nothing then to stop their gradual acquisition by Ethiopia.