“Greater Somalia is a Racist Ideology”

[The alchemist]

Somalis lived on that land for thousands of years.

Highland Semites invaded and forcefully took that land with the help of European colonial powers. You see, the Abyssinian highlanders were European imperialist facilitators that wanted all the land and literally said, take the lands and give us the coastal access, or take it and don't give us, but let the Muslims not retain it. You want evidence?

Read my post from the beginning of last year:

All types of Ethiopians are enemies of Somalis

A lot of Somalis today are confused we are hating oromo people but supporting Amharas the thing is all types of Ethiopians are the same they all have the same interests let me give you an example during the 1900 when the country was ran by Amharas they wanted all Ethiopians united after Amhara...

www.somalispot.com

No Somali wants anything more than what is already ours. What is "Ethiopia" is essentially a highland Habash Abbisinyan expansionary ideology that pushed itself into a foreign nation that it had nothing to do with, in an imperialist fashion and utter contempt for the people that ruled that geographic area prior to their forceful, colonial-aided, and facilitating incursion. It is they that should recede into their historic territory and let the ethnic groups they took lands from within the last 200 years. Besides, in the Somali region of Ethiopia, demographically, some 98% of the population is Somali... This is not some ethnically diverse place.

These anti-Somali xenophobes have tried to erase Somalis from their historic presence and domination in the region by basically attributing what was essentially Somali-driven, led, and created processes into vague "Ethiopian Muslim" concepts, before there ever was a national Ethiopia at all. They falsely spread propaganda that Adal was a civil war and that the imam was an Ethiopian Muslim who was rebelling internally. If a person knows a fraction of history with some intelligence, they know this is pure Ethiopianists propaganda and ideology.

To give a tangible historical background, Somali-specific rock art has existed in the Dir Dhabba region between 2800 and 1500 years ago. I know this because Somalis expanded with a specific petroglyph horizon that exists throughout the entire Somaliland and the area east of it, and it is also in the Somali region of Ethiopia and relates ONLY to Somali presence in the region, shortly after their arrival into the northern Somali region.

Here are the distributions known in the early 2000s:

Here is a site in Sanaag:

These are from the Ethiopian region of what they call Haraghe, which I call the broader Dir Dhabba:

First in Goda-Ajewa

Here in Laga Oda, somewhere around 25 km southwest of Dir Dhabba:

I have footage from Sanaag, but you get the point.

Here are some places in the Somali region where there are proven rock art of the Somali specific culture space, entailing the presence, use, and territorial claim of the land.

First, an earlier people that came much earlier (these relate to Somalis from an ancestral perspective, being of the same Nubian origin; namely the Highland Eastern Cushites), then Somalis in the newest phases with a separate art, emphasizing the camel, after highlanders Cushites are shown to have expanded south, highlighted with their earlier rock art, eventually going further into Ethiopia. That is, when we entered the region, it was basically empty of people since the other Cushites had already moved into the modern Ethiopian interior west and southwest of where Somalis moved into.

That is just a deeper historical background.

I've already shown evidence our our pre-Islamic precence in the region, but here is our thread of during the early times of Islam where camel herders, ethnographically exclusively tied to Somali presence in the region, was shown to slaughter camels in the Harar/Harlaa regions in the earliest archeological layers before any structure had been built -- beofre these places were even cities.

For deeper information, check @Shimbiris thread. I made a post there highlighting through evidence that Somali presence in that broader region, that we can see camel depictions have the earliest archeological phases before cities were built, with Muslim Somali camel herders slaughtering halal dated between the 7th and 10th centuries. This debunks the notion that Somalis, especially interior pastoralists, became Muslims half a millennium later. They were the earliest Muslims in the region, and they established a presence in these cities before the infrastructure.

Futuh al-Habasha: Somalis As Bedouins

Recently I've been reading a book about the Bedouin of Arabia: A very lovely book that gives you a nice glimpse into Bedouin Arab culture. In it I noticed that many settled Arabs had the historical habit of referring to pastoral nomadic Arabs (the Badu/Bedouin) as "The Arabs". Mothers would...

www.somalispot.com

With the fact that we've already proven that these Somali camel herders lived all across the northern Somali region and as well as the same region of the Somali region of Ethiopia, we see a strong continuity. Reflecting that presence, there was an economic horizon that was pre-Islamic to the Islamic period. That essential also has a longstanding continuity spreading from the coastal northern Somali region to the internal Somali region of modern Ethiopia. Everything is basically consistent with the evidence.

 

[The alchemist]

Imagine the vile entitlement you have when you take someone else's lands, then call them racists for basically saying, that is our land, we live in it, and you have no precedence here. The individual who made that thread is essentially saying, we're racist for not saying our lands that we historically lived in, exclusively, that was forcefully taken and has always been distinct from the rest, is not equally an Amhara or Tigray or any other ethnic group that lived outside that land, when his own parents would call that entire region "Somali country." That very thread is the same mentality of invading other people's land and framing that as self-justified. If you don't like your things stolen and claimed by every other thief that has no relation to you or stake in your property, well, you're racist, right? That is a wicked comment, that goes well into the consistent activities of Ethiopianists, sheep in wolves' clothing, acting magnanimously, then being the biggest haters and saying our existence and rightful claims are racist because it thwarts and challenges their forced artificial domination.

Now, I say this, that is Somali lands, but I have no immediate revolutionary ideas. My people are from the Somaliland region. It's up to the people who live in the Somali region to choose what they want. Whether they want to remain with Ethiopia or not is entirely up to them. But I have a suspicion that once things change within that land, Somalis will assert that their self-control is more important because at the end of the day, the state does not retain the preservation of their children when things become rough -- Somalis always had to do things for themselves.

Historically, Ethiopia has neglected the Somali region as a "frontier," receiving less funding. They systematically favored Oromo land grabs over Somali during the Communist days. They have changed the name of the region and erased the dominant Somali factor. This goes in line with how Ethiopia has tried to steal and eradicate Somalis from their historical region that had nothing to do with it on a historiographical level. Why? Because every ethnic group that was dominated and subjugated by the Habash now proudly wears the Ethiopianist flag. And the things that one has to distinguish, when that imperialist state tries to centralize, and "officialize" it is to form processes that give itself land control over Somali territory. Plenty of scholarship has gone into it. A lot of people think the failed 77' was merely because of Somali ambitious expansion - in truth, much of the conflict was how the Derg favored other ethnicies like Oromos and wanted control, so did EPRDF:

"However, the attempts of successive regimes to arrange property relations according to law complicated in the contest of historical tensions between the Ethiopian government and Somali nationalists in the frontier. In recent political history, such tensions erupted violently around Jigjiga in the Ethiopian Somali war in 1977/78. The war came with profound consequences for the multi-ethnic settlement as it displaced a considerable parts of the city’s ethnic Somali population and brought their land and houses under government control (Emmenegger, 2013). Of those displaced, only few returned in the wake of war due to the Derg regime’s oppressive attitude towards ethnic Somalis in Jigjiga and beyond throughout the 1980s."

Simply put, to Abbininyan imperialist ambition that we call Ethiopia, always retained a singular perspective around the Somali region and thus yuo see consistent attitude of expansion and control, lies and propaganda and violence simply because Somalis are different and represent a distinct historical formation that retained by extant Somali today, challenging the Ethiopian hegemon by default of identity an culture and lifeways. Somalis remind them too much of the Islamic civilization that they had fought, and as such, we don't conform to these people's ways. This is a big problem, as you see an Omotic urbanite in the south is very similar to Habash and that influence only began recently in history. They have their distinct ethnic conception but their national integration makes them very much Ethiopian. And as our historical assertions directly contradict their lies about Ethiopian historical expansionist ideology, they fabricate and lie and further undermine us in every way.

I have seen Cushitic groups from Southern Ethiopia call themselves "Habesha." This individual was Kambaata - an ethnic group closely related to Hadiya. He identified with the identity of the people that expanded into his home country, brutally. To me, that represents total defeat. They want us to become that. There was a comment made by an individual showing how Oromo children today are rapidly losing their language while learning Amharic through institutions.

Just watched a 5h long interview with former sr Sudani secret agent about Horn of Africa and Ethiopia

The guy was a senior intel agent that was handling many TPLF, EPRP, and many others. What striked me how the TPLF was the most disciplined and organized group compared to Amhara, Oromos, Afar and Somalis. He dissed Oromos the most, he called Oromos weak, disorganized and not good fighters, but...

www.somalispot.com

Also, read my comment on that thread.

That is why you end up with guys like Aba (the clown from YouTube) who claims to be an Oromo prince and then walks around with a Haile Selassie t-shirt, and also is a murtad who is an Ethiopianist who has at times shown suppressed contempt to Somalis, unwarranted. Similarly, I have a friend who has a dad who is Oromo. He became Pentay but comes from a Muslim family. That guy never identified with any other ethnicities other than Christian Habash. So what the @Thegoodshepherd said about them, lowkey just wanting power but have no issues disolving and taking on the identities of their oppressors, that is very on point. Oromos have historically shown that they are willing to become part of the imperial project if they get a position. That is why these Habash kings of Abyssinia were part Oromo. Those Oromos, of course, did not work for the Oromo cause and frankly just betrayed their own people. So getting power among the Abyssinian elites did not mean favor for the Oromo people. Those Oromos who became part of Abyssinia became Habash. There is a book that goes into this:

"The forces of the Zämänä Mäsafent included political marriages, alliances that transcended provinces, Habäsha cultural practices, military force, local legitimacy, and conversions to state religions, which became the key tools of Menilek’s rise to power. In these practices, especially in his home province of Shäwa, the Oromo were key in Menilek’s rise to power in Shäwa and later Ethiopia. After his coronation and victory at Adwa, he worked to create institutions that checked local power and would survive him. This process shifted local sources of power to national ones, and except for the Oromo provinces of Wällo, Wälläga, and Jimma, power was consolidated among those in Menilek’s inner circle. This transfer did not end Oromo power in Ethiopia, but rather replaced local Oromo legitimacy with national actors, which, due to Oromo representation in Menilek’s power structure, meant replacing a figure with local legitimacy such as the Oromo general Ras Gobäna with national figures like the War minister (and later Prime Minister) Häbtä Giyorgis or Däjazmach Balch’a.2"

To make it all the more apparent how these Abbisninyan Ethiopian people saw themselves and us, and how they never for one second thought of us as them, is to look into their laws of who could become a ruler in the Ethiopian state:

"The traditional law codes of Ethiopia state that “[t]he King you appoint must be one of your brethren. It is not proper for you to appoint over yourself an alien and an infidel." The chapter traces the journey of Wällo from alien infidels to Habäsha brethren."

That is why the Oromo elites in the expanding Ethiopian state expressed themselves same as the Semites to get legitimacy, and heavily mixed with them. They exclusively worked for the Habasha state's interest against the traditional clans that lived in the Oromo region. Why is this important to emphasize? Because you will meet many Habash Ethiopianists who mention this flawed argument that Oromos had power because several high-profile Abyssinian dignitaries had part Oromo ethnic background, like Menelik or Selassie. What they don't get is that, those Oromos entierly relinquished their ethnic background for a Habashi one and purely worked for Abbisinyan interests. So they betrayed their people for personal prestige at the cost of the people they supposedly were tied to. And this is significant to emphasize because the Abyssinians were extremely brutal to non-Abyssinians. I would even go as far as saying that the Abyssinians were genocidal against many groups south of them, and the Oromos were part of that. I remember reading a Western expeditioner who mentioned being told the Habash massacred and amassed piles of bodies of whole villages, told by the people who recounted recent trauma, and also empty farmlands as he moved in, indicating killings and slave capture. There is a strong case to say Abyssinians did ethnic cleansing in the 19th century.

Look at this.

They directed the brutality against us as well. Read this:

By the way, to the people who think Somalis were less religious in the past, every old text contradicts that. I have shown many sources of that, and it is mentioned here as well. And it is interesting how this individual, who went there, claimed that many understood Arabic.

Another mention of the Abyssinian savagery:

For the Muslim Oromo:

They had extremely high tax as well:

 

[The alchemist]

So with everything stated. Are Somalis racist for rejecting the domination of these foreign people who do everything to undermine us? Talking about this so-called diversity in the Somali region of Ethiopia is only a mechanism for control. Demography is used to control regions by expansionary powers. Han Chinese in Xinjiang, Israel against Palestine, and of course, Ancient Egyptians against Lower Nubians. If the Somali region becomes 50% Oromo, it is impossible to reverse things. The identity of the Somalis and their objectives will change as well. That is not to say that Somalis should be hostile to any people who live in the Somali region. But they should be wary of any policies by the Ethiopian state that encourage movement to the Somali region for economic reasons or whatever. Mixed places like Jigjiga are actually ways for Ethiopia to control the Somalis.

"As the violent expansion continued beyond, Jigjiga turned into a site for state penetration pushed particularly through highland resettlement, land appropriation and infrastructure building as part of the Ethiopian state’s civilizing mission in the frontier (Barnes, 2000, Tibebe Eshete, 2014). In Jigjiga, the governmental regime thus increasingly shifted in the course of the Imperial regime from the previously military-fiscal towards a more bureaucratic arrangement (see Barnes, 2000, Barnes, 2006). The shift included increasing Ethiopian attempts to regulate land allocation and transaction, with however limited impact on the emerging multi-ethnic settlement (Tibebe Eshete, 2014: 85)."

 

[Midas]

Somalis lived on that land for thousands of years.

Highland Semites invaded and forcefully took that land with the help of European colonial powers. You see, the Abyssinian highlanders were European imperialist facilitators that wanted all the land and literally said, take the lands and give us the coastal access, or take it and don't give us, but let the Muslims not retain it. You want evidence?

Read my post from the beginning of last year:

All types of Ethiopians are enemies of Somalis

A lot of Somalis today are confused we are hating oromo people but supporting Amharas the thing is all types of Ethiopians are the same they all have the same interests let me give you an example during the 1900 when the country was ran by Amharas they wanted all Ethiopians united after Amhara...

www.somalispot.com

No Somali wants anything more than what is already ours. What is "Ethiopia" is essentially a highland Habash Abbisinyan expansionary ideology that pushed itself into a foreign nation that it had nothing to do with, in an imperialist fashion and utter contempt for the people that ruled that geographic area prior to their forceful, colonial-aided, and facilitating incursion. It is they that should recede into their historic territory and let the ethnic groups they took lands from within the last 200 years. Besides, in the Somali region of Ethiopia, demographically, some 98% of the population is Somali... This is not some ethnically diverse place.

These anti-Somali xenophobes have tried to erase Somalis from their historic presence and domination in the region by basically attributing what was essentially Somali-driven, led, and created processes into vague "Ethiopian Muslim" concepts, before there ever was a national Ethiopia at all. They falsely spread propaganda that Adal was a civil war and that the imam was an Ethiopian Muslim who was rebelling internally. If a person knows a fraction of history with some intelligence, they know this is pure Ethiopianists propaganda and ideology.

To give a tangible historical background, Somali-specific rock art has existed in the Dir Dhabba region between 2800 and 1500 years ago. I know this because Somalis expanded with a specific petroglyph horizon that exists throughout the entire Somaliland and the area east of it, and it is also in the Somali region of Ethiopia and relates ONLY to Somali presence in the region, shortly after their arrival into the northern Somali region.

Here are the distributions known in the early 2000s:
View attachment 359450

Here is a site in Sanaag:
View attachment 359451
View attachment 359452
View attachment 359453

These are from the Ethiopian region of what they call Haraghe, which I call the broader Dir Dhabba:

First in Goda-Ajewa

View attachment 359454

Here in Laga Oda, somewhere around 25 km southwest of Dir Dhabba:
View attachment 359460

I have footage from Sanaag, but you get the point.

Here are some places in the Somali region where there are proven rock art of the Somali specific culture space, entailing the presence, use, and territorial claim of the land.

View attachment 359461

First, an earlier people that came much earlier (these relate to Somalis from an ancestral perspective, being of the same Nubian origin; namely the Highland Eastern Cushites), then Somalis in the newest phases with a separate art, emphasizing the camel, after highlanders Cushites are shown to have expanded south, highlighted with their earlier rock art, eventually going further into Ethiopia. That is, when we entered the region, it was basically empty of people since the other Cushites had already moved into the modern Ethiopian interior west and southwest of where Somalis moved into.

That is just a deeper historical background.

I've already shown evidence our our pre-Islamic precence in the region, but here is our thread of during the early times of Islam where camel herders, ethnographically exclusively tied to Somali presence in the region, was shown to slaughter camels in the Harar/Harlaa regions in the earliest archeological layers before any structure had been built -- beofre these places were even cities.

For deeper information, check @Shimbiris thread. I made a post there highlighting through evidence that Somali presence in that broader region, that we can see camel depictions have the earliest archeological phases before cities were built, with Muslim Somali camel herders slaughtering halal dated between the 7th and 10th centuries. This debunks the notion that Somalis, especially interior pastoralists, became Muslims half a millennium later. They were the earliest Muslims in the region, and they established a presence in these cities before the infrastructure.

Futuh al-Habasha: Somalis As Bedouins

Recently I've been reading a book about the Bedouin of Arabia: A very lovely book that gives you a nice glimpse into Bedouin Arab culture. In it I noticed that many settled Arabs had the historical habit of referring to pastoral nomadic Arabs (the Badu/Bedouin) as "The Arabs". Mothers would...

www.somalispot.com

With the fact that we've already proven that these Somali camel herders lived all across the northern Somali region and as well as the same region of the Somali region of Ethiopia, we see a strong continuity. Reflecting that presence, there was an economic horizon that was pre-Islamic to the Islamic period. That essential also has a longstanding continuity spreading from the coastal northern Somali region to the internal Somali region of modern Ethiopia. Everything is basically consistent with the evidence.

I suspect there was also probably conflict between the preislamic somali camel herders and whatever habesha group existed in the pre Islamic period. Since shimbris once pointed out to me how these conflicts always seem to follow very ancient historical patterns.

I've talked about this in length before, as you know. It's 100% inconceivable that they had urbanism, global trade, some seafaring that at minimum took them to Arabia and then during the Islamic period were writing using Arabic and developing Ajami scripts, as we know, but somehow during the classical era they didn't write in some language? I wouldn't be shocked if they wrote using some OSA language.

But you know what's funny for me is something that same linguist I mentioned in that thread pointed out to me about how historical patterns generally remain for thousands of years to centuries. For example, how the Eastern Mediterranean and South-Central Asia have long been the two "polar points" of the MENA region. Rome Vs. Parthia; Byzatium Vs. The Sassanians; The Ummayads and their shifting of the Muslim world's gravity toward the Mediterranean then the Abbasids pulling it more toward South-Central Asia; The Ottomans and the Safavids.

Then to this day you have Turkey and Iran as still regional influencers and powers in the Middle-East with the Arabs (Khaleej) being relevant as well thanks to the foundation set by the Caliphates and oil wealth, then Israel as an insert.

I bring this up because the Horn is a good example of this continuing historical pattern. The Aksumites and Barbaria; Bilad al-Xabash and Bilad al-Barbar; Abyssinia and the Somalis; and now we have 4 modern Horn-African states where Somalis are the ruling elite of two 2 (Somalia/Somaliland and Djibouti) and Habeshas are the ruling elite of the other two (Ethiopia and Eritrea). To be fair, Oromos have gotten themselves into the elite of Ethiopia but you can almost see them as the Horn's equivalent to the Arabs, whose position was set up by their Early Modern expansions and it must be noted that the language and style they rule Ethiopia in is still plainly a Habesha one. These are truly the two polar groups of the Horn.

I suspect if this was the case then we probably never used ge'ez as a written language. Since it was the language of "highlanders" I also doubt we used sabaic in the way somalis in the islamic period used arabic. Since arabic usage is really just connected with us converting to islam and I doubt we adopted south arabian polytheism for anything like that to be the cas

 

[Basra]

Without American intervention, both the Brits and Italians wanted a greater Somali state, but the Americans feared communism would spread, mainly from Ethiopia so they planted the seeds of war by allowing the Ethiopians to take the SR eventually both countries became communist, but had territorial disputes, with it eventually igniting the Somali-Ethiopian war.

Sadly, it came at the wrong time, and we had a Carter in office, either way, America designed this war between us, but without the Ethiopian government pushing to own the SR, this war would of never happened.

 

[Shimbiris]

So with everything stated. Are Somalis racist for rejecting the domination of these foreign people who do everything to undermine us? Talking about this so-called diversity in the Somali region of Ethiopia is only a mechanism for control. Demography is used to control regions by expansionary powers. Han Chinese in Xinjiang, Israel against Palestine, and of course, Ancient Egyptians against Lower Nubians. If the Somali region becomes 50% Oromo, it is impossible to reverse things. The identity of the Somalis and their objectives will change as well. That is not to say that Somalis should be hostile to any people who live in the Somali region. But they should be wary of any policies by the Ethiopian state that encourage movement to the Somali region for economic reasons or whatever. Mixed places like Jigjiga are actually ways for Ethiopia to control the Somalis.

"As the violent expansion continued beyond, Jigjiga turned into a site for state penetration pushed particularly through highland resettlement, land appropriation and infrastructure building as part of the Ethiopian state’s civilizing mission in the frontier (Barnes, 2000, Tibebe Eshete, 2014). In Jigjiga, the governmental regime thus increasingly shifted in the course of the Imperial regime from the previously military-fiscal towards a more bureaucratic arrangement (see Barnes, 2000, Barnes, 2006). The shift included increasing Ethiopian attempts to regulate land allocation and transaction, with however limited impact on the emerging multi-ethnic settlement (Tibebe Eshete, 2014: 85)."

Wallahi, I feel a little jaded. As a much younger man I really was starry eyed about the idea of pan-Hornism and being a united regional bloc with Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan with perhaps even Yemen and Kenya to some extent. But the years have sobered me.

I still acknowledge the deeply shared cultural elements, customs, history and recent ancestry between these peoples and us, but I'm far less naïve now. And I must admit the most sobering thing I ever encountered that took me down this route is becoming acquainted with Ethiopian Xabashi imperialism and their general revisionist, racist, expansionist and—as you've pointed out— sometimes downright genocidal tendencies.

I still have some warmth toward some of their average poor shacab who live under their modern and depressing feudalism but I am largely disillusioned with and suspicious of their educated and well-off strata.

 

[gasara]

I will never forget what they did to our families and continue to do. They had no mercy when they slaughtered our families and stole our lands. And I also can’t forget the countries that aided them. I will pray to see Somali Galbeed free from them.

 

[Zak12]

Ethiopia as a nation has become more or less a tool for the ethnicity that rules it to dominate neighbouring ethnicities. Tigray and Amhara historically steered the ship but recently Oromos have the wheel. They don't see themselves as one people, the same way the people of Dagestan don't. It's a loose regional identity that has a government attached to it. Regardless of who runs Ethiopia, Eritrea to them is just an annoying rebel region, Djibouti is an upjumped city state that's extorting them, and Somalia and Somalis in general are seen as deluded Ethiopians in denial that need to be conquered. The Abyssinian state with the Habesha identity is real and tied to the Semetic speaking historically Christian ethnicities. The Ethiopian identity is so loose and vague considering the lack of a shared language, culture or even history that it's just "we're not madows or Arabs, and we live in the horn" so Somalis to them should be part of it. Since Somalis developed with our own history, culture and identity, with our ethnogenesis arising from opposition to incursions from Abyssinians, it's basically impossible for Somalis to willingly accept the Ethiopian identity.

I don't think the Ethiopian state would care that much if it wasn't for the fact ethnic Somalis have the longest coastline in mainland Africa and occupy the largest chunk of territory in the horn. It's why Haile Selassie tried claim Somalis as historically part of Abyssinia.

 

[Arma]

These f*cking Habeshas. They are a stain on the Horn.

 

[The alchemist]

I suspect if this was the case then we probably never used ge'ez as a written language. Since it was the language of "highlanders" I also doubt we used sabaic in the way somalis in the islamic period used arabic. Since arabic usage is really just connected with us converting to islam and I doubt we adopted south arabian polytheism for anything like that to be the cas

I don't think so. These Habashi people existed further north than they do today. Their way of life cannot exist in our region unless they take up part-time animal herding. They have to assimilate to the Somali way of life, basically. My point is, they were very much removed from our region altogether. The only people that lived there prior to us were our cousins, the Highland Eastern Cushites that had already moved into deeper Ethiopia, becoming farmers by the time we came. Any conflict that would occur, that I have seen some evidence of, would be through the Somaliland region, maybe by sea or trekking the desert through the Afar-Saho desert plain. Shimbiris also mentioned that this is not an easy road for sedentary farmers. Geography separated us, for the most part. We had contact through sea access, and that was limited in scale.

I suspect if this was the case then we probably never used ge'ez as a written language. Since it was the language of "highlanders" I also doubt we used sabaic in the way somalis in the islamic period used arabic. Since arabic usage is really just connected with us converting to islam and I doubt we adopted south arabian polytheism for anything like that to be the cas

We never spoke Ge'ez. Those people did not even live anywhere close to us. We had contact with South Arabsians. There were some peculiarities there where we would use similar symbols that they would later form into epigraphic scripts, proto scripts in rock art. So there must have been extensive cultural contact, and influence bi-directionally. We had a big trade with them.

These are symbols from ancient Somali rock art.

Look at this from Najran, Saudi Arabia:

This sign "𐩥" is from the South Arabian Musnad script. It is W.

I have a distinct theory. Rock art as used by Ancient Nubians which we descend, from are ideological symbol. It means much more than the idea of people just going somewhere, bored, and scribbling things. It is in a way, a pre-proto script. That was the paintings people and the figures meant. Essentially. But these epigraphic signs in pictographs on rocks in Arabia are already early scripts. So what did Somalis do? Retrograde. Somalis fitted actually signs of script into their ideology, giving them more abstract symbolic meaning than their descriptive use of script. It tells us deeply how signs and meaning relate, and the earliest layers of how cultural ideologies turn into scripts. So those terms meant something, but maybe only in a symbolic way that had to do with Somali ideology at the time, removed from the Arabian Musnad script use.

The ancestors of Somalis have already done symbolic rock art since the Nubian days. There is much more to this that kind of would blow your minds if it were fully sound, which I think it is. But that is for another thread.

 

[The alchemist]

Wallahi, I feel a little jaded. As a much younger man I really was starry eyed about the idea of pan-Hornism and being a united regional bloc with Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan with perhaps even Yemen and Kenya to some extent. But the years have sobered me.

I still acknowledge the deeply shared cultural elements, customs, history and recent ancestry between these peoples and us, but I'm far less naïve now. And I must admit the most sobering thing I ever encountered that took me down this route is becoming acquainted with Ethiopian Xabashi imperialism and their general revisionist, racist, expansionist and—as you've pointed out— sometimes downright genocidal tendencies.

I still have some warmth toward some of their average poor shacab who live under their modern and depressing feudalism but I am largely disillusioned with and suspicious of their educated and well-off strata.

Ethiopians are a mixed bag in the of older age and usually positive for the younger. It is way more variable. I have Ethiopian friends, and we never talk about these things. But some of their parents have weird vibes, and I can tell they hold certain factors that I mentioned on their sleeves more than their children, despite having smiles on their faces (I mean the Habash and their adjacent people). You should not think every Ethiopian fully encapsulates what I explained, but just because you have Ethiopian friends and never encountered problems with them, does not mean we can sing Kumbaya when it relates to us as people, what Ethiopia has historically done, and what it still persists in doing in the extant. So we have to remove the personal from the larger issues. I treat an Ethiopian like any other person on first encounter.

Same way, you can probably go to Israel and find people who are nice, pleasant, and uphold high personal morality relatively in their way, but that does not change what Israel and Israelis do to Palestinians; as a structural collective, they are genocidal people. I've met many decent people from Ethiopia, so I take them as I meet them, but I am not oblivious to the broader picture and how what they hold dear as a collective deliberately undermines us. That is just a fact. Many people are just decent, and you can befriend them without factoring in any larger issues.

A lot of Ethiopians might define their nationalism from an ignorant point of view. They subscribe to a positive Habesha inclusivity, they reframe what Ethiopia means to be embracing rather than projecting, and they go hard on that, and so their ignorance defends Ethiopianism in many ways and views people speaking against it as haters because they know nothing about the history of which they spew.

But believe me, many proud Habsh folks are defenders of a lot of the evil we have seen in history. Like pedestalizing Menelik.

This is the average Ethiopian who engages in Ethiopian matters:


Only one guy said he was an imperialist.

 

[livinlavish]

These xaarbashis and oromos are the number one enemy to us Somalis idec if they are Muslims look at the afars displacing Somalis in the sitti zone and they are like 90% Muslims but god forbid Somalis fight back we are called the aggressors and they pull the "Muslim card"
Asxaabtey wax ma nee sheega never trust an Ethiopian even if they are Muslim f*ck all them and insha'Allah their country balkanizes and we get our land back wallahi I have no sympathy for them what's the difference between a muslim oromo or afar expansionists and the Zionists in Israel they are both annexing and killing innocent civilians.
If I was president of Somalia rn first thing I'm doing is deporting every single cannibalist oromo fucking dogs don't show them no naxaariis

 

[Midas]

I don't think so. These Habashi people existed further north than they do today. Their way of life cannot exist in our region unless they take up part-time animal herding. They have to assimilate to the Somali way of life, basically. My point is, they were very much removed from our region altogether. The only people that lived there prior to us were our cousins, the Highland Eastern Cushites that had already moved into deeper Ethiopia, becoming farmers by the time we came. Any conflict that would occur, that I have seen some evidence of, would be through the Somaliland region, maybe by sea or trekking the desert through the Afar-Saho desert plain. Shimbiris also mentioned that this is not an easy road for sedentary farmers. Geography separated us, for the most part. We had contact through sea access, and that was limited in scale.



We never spoke Ge'ez. Those people did not even live anywhere close to us. We had contact with South Arabsians. There were some peculiarities there where we would use similar symbols that they would later form into epigraphic scripts, proto scripts in rock art. So there must have been extensive cultural contact, and influence bi-directionally. We had a big trade with them.

View attachment 359501

These are symbols from ancient Somali rock art.

Look at this from Najran, Saudi Arabia:
View attachment 359502

This sign "𐩥" is from the South Arabian Musnad script. It is W.

I have a distinct theory. Rock art as used by Ancient Nubians which we descend, from are ideological symbol. It means much more than the idea of people just going somewhere, bored, and scribbling things. It is in a way, a pre-proto script. That was the paintings people and the figures meant. Essentially. But these epigraphic signs in pictographs on rocks in Arabia are already early scripts. So what did Somalis do? Retrograde. Somalis fitted actually signs of script into their ideology, giving them more abstract symbolic meaning than their descriptive use of script. It tells us deeply how signs and meaning relate, and the earliest layers of how cultural ideologies turn into scripts. So those terms meant something, but maybe only in a symbolic way that had to do with Somali ideology at the time, removed from the Arabian Musnad script use.

The ancestors of Somalis have already done symbolic rock art since the Nubian days. There is much more to this that kind of would blow your minds if it were fully sound, which I think it is. But that is for another thread.

Our old beliefs system/ideaology seems to have left such tantalizing clues

1)The folk astrology/astronomy somalis had seems to me the most obvious remnant. One of the authors of a series of books on this topic in an interview said that the to learn the 28 stations of the moon. One has to pay for every station your taught and that he had a friend pay his fee for him to learn from the elder and that in the old days it used to cost multiple livestock for every station.

2)Then there's the fact that ziyaro and the whole clan shrine system has its roots in preislamic somali beliefs

3) in an interview with dhoodaan ( for those of you who dont know he was basically one of the greatest somali poets of the 20th century I'm talking like top 10 ) from before he died in 2013 . He mentioned how he didn't like being called an abwaan and that the original meaning of the word abwaan wasn't a poet. But that it meant "somebody people would look to for when they had difficult questions or problems and that he would answer them in a few words but with deep meaning and that the answer would often take the form of a proverb or a riddle"

It's intresting in his answer he stressed that this person had nothing to do with poetry (maanso) or with literature ( the orginal term being haal-abuur instead of suugan) it's been on my mind for a long time what role did "abwaan" play in the preislamic period.

 

[The alchemist]

Our old beliefs system/ideaology seems to have left such tantalizing clues

1)The folk astrology/astronomy somalis had seems to me the most obvious remnant. One of the authors of a series of books on this topic in an interview said that the to learn the 28 stations of the moon. One has to pay for every station your taught and that he had a friend pay his fee for him to learn from the elder and that in the old days it used to cost multiple livestock for every station.

2)Then there's the fact that ziyaro and the whole clan shrine system has its roots in preislamic somali beliefs

3) in an interview with dhoodaan ( for those of you who dont know he was basically one of the greatest somali poets of the 20th century I'm talking like top 10 ) from before he died in 2013 . He mentioned how he didn't like being called an abwaan and that the original meaning of the word abwaan wasn't a poet. But that it meant "somebody people would look to for when they had difficult questions or problems and that he would answer them in a few words but with deep meaning and that the answer would often take the form of a proverb or a riddle"

It's intresting in his answer he stressed that this person had nothing to do with poetry (maanso) or with literature ( the orginal term being haal-abuur instead of suugan) it's been on my mind for a long time what role did "abwaan" play in the preislamic period.

Oh, I forgot to post about that.

The archeoastronomical links between Somali customs, burial practices that stretch from Somalis right before Islam came, and something that goes back to the early Cushitic days in the Western Desert. This links to a custom some ~6000 years back.

You're talking about this book, right?

It relates to the ethnographic relations Somalis had on an anthropological level. But I encountered this source through another link -- namely, the burial practices and their archeoastronomical emphasis.

One of the main guys from the Spanish team (Jorge de Torrez Rodriguez), wrote a study "The Guiding Sky (2022)," when the emphasis on seasonal movement, alingment of atronomical seasonal shifts with positioning on cairn/tumuli cemetery settings, indicating a strong fixation by Somalis on what they saw in the sky and being exellent readers of the star systems.

This goes back all the way back to the roots of the Cushites, in Nabta Playa:

Nabta Playa: The world's first astronomical site was built in Africa

This 7,000-year-old stone circle tracked the summer solstice and the arrival of the annual monsoon season. It's also the oldest known astronomical site on Earth.

www.astronomy.com

It was a widespread Cushitic practice that evolved in several trajectories. The Sidama people used to have a thing similar to the Oromo Waqafenna, only they would try to read signs in goat intestines, then they would try to read the sky for signs and insight to predict future trends.

It is stated that the Southern Cushites also had what could look like astronomically driven evidence for their burial formations in modern northwest Kenya.

That is an interesting point you made about the Abwan. I don't even consider Gabay as poetry, as it is a distinct tradition. Really poetry is only the reductive Western term for something that can approximate for foreign reference. Poetry can be pretentious, while gabay had real-life significance and describes the Somali experience in a very ethnographic way. It's good for anthropological research. Furthermore, Gabay might not be poetry but it definitely can satisfy extremely high poetic value. It's much more nuanced and entirely distinct from the Western literary style.

On the matter of the "Siyaara shrine," there are a few things I want to relay. Cemeteries were used by Cushitic pastoralists as a place of ritual and pragmatic gathering for agnatic relations, a place of dealing with challenges, and disputes, but also maintained continuity and identity cohesion. Viewing it from a rational framing, these collective tendencies not only affirmed spatial connection for the tribe, legitimizing territorial claims for people who were less sedentary material, it further served as an organizational tribal regulatory convention where the practice of resolving issues and maintaining long-standing traditions. It was also a way to reaffirm spatial connections to tribal relations, where abtiris meets, "that is my ancestor's grave."

Upon Islamic introduction, these practices turned into an "Islamic" form, exchanging tribal leaders with these clan eponymous "saints." Much later, you had the Sufis coming in (we're talking as late as the 19th century), superimposing their innovative ideology with the pre-existing Somali traditions of the tomb rituals. It got a new face, but in reality, all that was tied to the original cultural milieu of pre-Islamic society that syncretized later with Islamic beliefs. Those people were not non-Muslims, and Aw-Barkhadle was not the man who introduced Islam. He was an important religious figure, nonetheless, who was the direct ancestor of the lineage of the people that would expand the Somali political power with the Sultans of Ifat, the Walashma dynasty. He was, nevertheless, an important religious figure who diffused Islamic teachings to an already Muslim society.

I wrote about this matter in a response to an individual who peddled this strange characterization of older Somali Islamic beliefs and ideology, pissing me off by suggesting age old forced secularization, forcing women to remove Islamic wear in the guise of betterment through state apparatus. The topic goes into the Sufi matter, however, it has a different objective, as the topic warranted:

The Niqab needs to be banned

We came to the UK in the 80s. No Somali in the 80s wore any hijab or niqab or any of this arab rags. We integrated and lived peacefully. We were never extreme. Now you walk in London and its like you are in Kabul.

www.somalispot.com

 

[The alchemist]

This thread should be put in the Culture & History section so it does not get bodied by the thousand silly TikTok videos someone sees every second.

 

[Midas]

Oh, I forgot to post about that.

The archeoastronomical links between Somali customs, burial practices that stretch from Somalis right before Islam came, and something that goes back to the early Cushitic days in the Western Desert. This links to a custom some ~6000 years back.

You're talking about this book, right?

View attachment 359539

It relates to the ethnographic relations Somalis had on an anthropological level. But I encountered this source through another link -- namely, the burial practices and their archeoastronomical emphasis.

One of the main guys from the Spanish team (Jorge de Torrez Rodriguez), wrote a study "The Guiding Sky (2022)," when the emphasis on seasonal movement, alingment of atronomical seasonal shifts with positioning on cairn/tumuli cemetery settings, indicating a strong fixation by Somalis on what they saw in the sky and being exellent readers of the star systems.

This goes back all the way back to the roots of the Cushites, in Nabta Playa:

Nabta Playa: The world's first astronomical site was built in Africa

This 7,000-year-old stone circle tracked the summer solstice and the arrival of the annual monsoon season. It's also the oldest known astronomical site on Earth.

www.astronomy.com

It was a widespread Cushitic practice that evolved in several trajectories. The Sidama people used to have a thing similar to the Oromo Waqafenna, only they would try to read signs in goat intestines, then they would try to read the sky for signs and insight to predict future trends.

It is stated that the Southern Cushites also had what could look like astronomically driven evidence for their burial formations in modern northwest Kenya.

That is an interesting point you made about the Abwan. I don't even consider Gabay as poetry, as it is a distinct tradition. Really poetry is only the reductive Western term for something that can approximate for foreign reference. Poetry can be pretentious, while gabay had real-life significance and describes the Somali experience in a very ethnographic way. It's good for anthropological research. Furthermore, Gabay might not be poetry but it definitely can satisfy extremely high poetic value. It's much more nuanced and entirely distinct from the Western literary style.

On the matter of the "Siyaara shrine," there are a few things I want to relay. Cemeteries were used by Cushitic pastoralists as a place of ritual and pragmatic gathering for agnatic relations, a place of dealing with challenges, and disputes, but also maintained continuity and identity cohesion. Viewing it from a rational framing, these collective tendencies not only affirmed spatial connection for the tribe, legitimizing territorial claims for people who were less sedentary material, it further served as an organizational tribal regulatory convention where the practice of resolving issues and maintaining long-standing traditions. It was also a way to reaffirm spatial connections to tribal relations, where abtiris meets, "that is my ancestor's grave."

Upon Islamic introduction, these practices turned into an "Islamic" form, exchanging tribal leaders with these clan eponymous "saints." Much later, you had the Sufis coming in (we're talking as late as the 19th century), superimposing their innovative ideology with the pre-existing Somali traditions of the tomb rituals. It got a new face, but in reality, all that was tied to the original cultural milieu of pre-Islamic society that syncretized later with Islamic beliefs. Those people were not non-Muslims, and Aw-Barkhadle was not the man who introduced Islam. He was an important religious figure, nonetheless, who was the direct ancestor of the lineage of the people that would expand the Somali political power with the Sultans of Ifat, the Walashma dynasty. He was, nevertheless, an important religious figure who diffused Islamic teachings to an already Muslim society.

I wrote about this matter in a response to an individual who peddled this strange characterization of older Somali Islamic beliefs and ideology, pissing me off by suggesting age old forced secularization, forcing women to remove Islamic wear in the guise of betterment through state apparatus. The topic goes into the Sufi matter, however, it has a different objective, as the topic warranted:

The Niqab needs to be banned

We came to the UK in the 80s. No Somali in the 80s wore any hijab or niqab or any of this arab rags. We integrated and lived peacefully. We were never extreme. Now you walk in London and its like you are in Kabul.

www.somalispot.com

I'm very familiar with muse galaxy's book he is basically the guy who defined this field. But the one I'm talking about is much more recent. He's the same guy who found the mansucript i posted on here his book is called aya-reeb .

 

[Midas]

Also to your point about somali poetry. Somali poetry of which gabay although the most sophisticated and intellectual is only one genre among dozens . Is actually one of the few actual poetic traditions in Africa. This is why describing somali poetry as oral poetry while true is somewhat misleading. When people think of poetry they think of an individual poet composing lines and reflecting on them and that these lines also have meter and rhyme and that other people memorize and read/recite. There is no indigenous tradition of poetry that meet this requirement in subsharan africa at all with the exception of somali poetry.

How Somali poetry developed is one of the greatest mysteries of Somali culture. It is the only tradition of poetry with meter that was orally composed but is not improvised and people memorize it like a regular written poem. I'm not joking when I say somali poetry can definitely be ranked among the great poetic traditions of the world like greek or arabic or Chinese. It's also entirely indigenous

 

[The alchemist]

Also to your point about somali poetry. Somali poetry of which gabay although the most sophisticated and intellectual is only one genre among dozens . Is actually one of the few actual poetic traditions in Africa. This is why describing somali poetry as oral poetry while true is somewhat misleading. When people think of poetry they think of an individual poet composing lines and reflecting on them and that these lines also have meter and rhyme and that other people memorize and read/recite. There is no indigenous tradition of poetry that meet this requirement in subsharan africa at all with the exception of somali poetry.

How Somali poetry developed is one of the greatest mysteries of Somali culture. It is the only tradition of poetry with meter that was orally composed but is not improvised and people memorize it like a regular written poem. I'm not joking when I say somali poetry can definitely be ranked among the great poetic traditions of the world like greek or arabic or Chinese. It's also entirely indigenous

I remember reading an cadaan woman's work who mentioned Gabay, Jiifto, Geeraar, Buraambur, Heello, and she mentioned Hees, used for general songs, though it had political themes.

I think these styles developed from people wanting to preserve cultural items, develop and maintain the use of the language, since Gabay usually retains a much more in-depth layered linguistics of Somali language than how it is colloquially spoken (especially during greater modern urbanism), but also the the item use, keeping identity and Somali views on life and matters. It's an artistic way to imbue wisdom and practical knowledge, also keeping a cultural form. It's a way to diffuse information about attitudes and archetypes of Somali and maintain cohesion, at the same time providing diversity of thinking, and giving dynamics. As such, these systems of oral expression helped design an ethnic framework on a socio-cultural level. People living in disparate areas were aware of people on the other side, and they converged in understanding.

You get an agreement from me that Somali oratory styles are great. It's just that it doesn't get attention at all compared to Persian poetry.

 

[Midas]

I remember reading an cadaan woman's work who mentioned Gabay, Jiifto, Geeraar, Buraambur, Heello, and she mentioned Hees, used for general songs, though it had political themes.

I think these styles developed from people wanting to preserve cultural items, develop and maintain the use of the language, since Gabay usually retains a much more in-depth layered linguistics of Somali language than how it is colloquially spoken (especially during greater modern urbanism), but also the the item use, keeping identity and Somali views on life and matters. It's an artistic way to imbue wisdom and practical knowledge, also keeping a cultural form. It's a way to diffuse information about attitudes and archetypes of Somali and maintain cohesion, at the same time providing diversity of thinking, and giving dynamics. As such, these systems of oral expression helped design an ethnic framework on a socio-cultural level. People living in disparate areas were aware of people on the other side, and they converged in understanding.

You get an agreement from me that Somali oratory styles are great. It's just that it doesn't get attention at all compared to Persian poetry.

Yeah somali poetry's one weakness is that it never developed into a written tradition so we don't have like a thousand years of somali poetry to draw on compared to these other traditions.

Persian has honestly probably been the language that's declined the most in the last hundred years. Before the 20th century basically outside of africa and Malaysia/Indonesia. If you were a culutred Muslim elite you knew persian. Persian not arabic was the main lanaguge for literature in the muslim empires of the last 500 years.

There was a whole persinate world it was called the balkans to bengal complex. Anybody who lived between the balkans and Bangladesh used Persian as their main literary language.

The red is the Arabic speaking world and the blue is the persianate one.

 

[Midas]

Although this could change with the discovery of even a single medieval somali language manuscript of poetry.

I mean beowulf is basically only known from a single manuscript. And all of norse mythology is basically knowm from the pross Edda which survives in 7 manuscripts. Imagine what we could learn from a single medieval somali language manuscript?