I’m back

[Homerlilian2.0]

I came back to ask a few questions on Somali nomadic history and this forum seems like the right place to ask .

1. @Idilinaa I saw a comment you were claiming that Somali nomads didn’t hold just one occupation but rather bad dual . Like nomad /merchant or nomad/farming . Why isn’t it a thing now if that was the case

2. Also was agr/ pastrolism
Unique to raxanwyen people only

 

[kamek]

not here to answer your question, just wanted to say welcome back sxb.

 

[Homerlilian2.0]

not here to answer your question, just wanted to say welcome back sxb.

Appreciate it Saxib .
Too early to judge but I’m glad the tik tok social media hate and the Ana Arab post are not taking over this forum

 

[balanbalis]

I've seen discussions on Soomaali being a nomadic title, tumal, biyomal, harar, etc being titles for other jobs in Somali history. I'm going to do an essay on this topic one day checking its validity as an argument

 

[wonyluvr]

Omgg heyyyy

 

[Homerlilian2.0]

Omgg heyyyy

Glad to see you’re still around

 

[wonyluvr]

Glad to see you’re still around

View attachment 359824

I left for like a month but I’m back I realised how addicted I was I now consume sspot in moderation!!!

 

[Homerlilian2.0]

I came back to ask a few questions on Somali nomadic history and this forum seems like the right place to ask .

1. @Idilinaa I saw a comment you were claiming that Somali nomads didn’t hold just one occupation but rather bad dual . Like nomad /merchant or nomad/farming . Why isn’t it a thing now if that was the case

2. Also was agr/ pastrolism
Unique to raxanwyen people only

Nobody gonna answer my question

 

[kamek]

@Idilinaa answer his question

 

[Idilinaa]

I came back to ask a few questions on Somali nomadic history and this forum seems like the right place to ask .

1. @Idilinaa I saw a comment you were claiming that Somali nomads didn’t hold just one occupation but rather bad dual . Like nomad /merchant or nomad/farming . Why isn’t it a thing now if that was the case

2. Also was agr/ pastrolism
Unique to raxanwyen people only

Somalis were not really nomadic in the way people frame it. There was mobility but it was highly structured, organized and territorial. Here is something i said to @Shimbiris a while back.

I see what you mean, and I think the way the term 'nomad' is often used creates misleading distinctions. Some people use it neutrally, but in many cases, it carries connotations that don't accurately reflect how Somali society functioned. You see it in the way certain European scholars like those Spanish archaeologists apply the term dismissively, as if pastoralism was a primitive or disorganized way of life. It’s also used to create artificial divisions between urban, agrarian populations and herding societies, when in reality, the boundaries were always fluid.

What’s frustrating is how this framing ignores the economic complexity and sustainability of livestock herding. Livestock wasn’t just a subsistence activity it was an economic engine, facilitating trade, wealth accumulation, and social organization. But the way some narratives are shaped, pastoralism is treated as inherently inferior to crop farming, when in reality, it was just as if not more strategic in many regions.

Take the Warsangeli, for example. Their principal town was Las Qoray, but they also had a network of smaller coastal settlements like Durduri, Elayo, Geelwayto, Ras Gahm, and Waqdariya. This pattern wasn’t unique, most Somali clans maintained settlements or economic hubs in parallel with their pastoral activities. Some groups focused on trade, others on fishing, and others on small-scale agriculture, while still engaging in livestock herding. It was a diversified system, not a simplistic ‘wandering herder’ existence.

Seasonal movement wasn’t random either it followed defined patterns within organized territorial structures. Clans had agreements over pastures, water sources, and migration routes, just as coastal settlements had trade networks and fortifications.

The idea that Somalis were purely 'nomadic' in the sense of being unstructured or constantly moving without stability is just inaccurate. What we actually had was a highly adaptable, multi-layered economic system that shifted based on season, need, and opportunity

So I personally prefer the term pastoralist or agro-pastoralist, because it better reflects the multi-functional economy people lived under. Even today, a huge part of the Somali economy is based on livestock, which is increasingly raised in a more structured, range-based way, similar to ranching in places like the U.S. or Greece.

Dual occupations were always common just region-dependent

Farming wasn’t exclusive to the Raxanweyn. Yes, they are more associated with agriculture, especially in fertile zones like Bay, Bakool, and Lower Shabelle but it’s not limited to them.

Darood-Kombe groups like Geri, Bartiree, and Abaskuul also practiced agriculture in areas like the Harar uplands and later on Harti/Darood groups in Waamo-Gedo. Meanwhile, parts of Isaaq, Dir, and Hawiye lived in more mixed terrain, so some were farmers and others were herders or traders. Same with riverine groups, some fished, others farmed, and many did both.

It was a question of geography and opportunity, not fixed identity. The economy was flexible and multi-sectoral, not confined to a single mode of livelihood.

Even within one family or lineage, you'd find one person trading, another farming, another doing livestock. So the whole “dual occupation” thing isn’t a contradiction it’s how Somali economic life actually worked.

What about today?

That same economic diversity still exists, just adapted to modern realities.

Pastoralism is now mostly ranch based and commercialized: Livestock is still huge:
Livestock is sold for export (especially to the Gulf), and people work in collection, transport, or processing.

Farming has expanded to many parts of Jubbaland, Southwest State, Galmudug, (some parts of Puntland even albeit small scale), Somaliand and Somali Region of Ethiopia.

Urban trade, construction, and services are booming, Mogadishu, Hargeisa, Garowe, Kismayo, Bosaso all have active business sectors.

Even fishing and maritime trade are growing again, something that’s been a historical constant.

Most Somalis today live interconnected economic lives: a pastoralist might have a brother who owns a shop in a town or city or a cousin in agriculture or logistics. So we still see multi-sector participation, even if it’s modernized.

 

[The alchemist]

Welcome.



Somalis were agro-pastoralist-traders.

 

[Xareen]

Welcome. Tell Apollo we miss him.

 

[Midas]

Somalis had small settlements/towns where these pastoralists met to trade. But it seems outside the zeila/berbera in the north and mogadishu/barawe/merca in the south. None of them seemed to have been large enough to develop an urban class. Likely because Somalis relied on well water and most places didn't have enough water to sustain any huge concentrated pouplation

 

[Midas]

Somalis had small settlements/towns where these pastoralists met to trade. But it seems outside the zeila/berbera in the north and mogadishu/barawe/merca in the south. None of them seemed to have been large enough to develop an urban class. Likely because Somalis relied on well water and most places didn't have enough water to sustain any huge concentrated pouplation

I also suspect none of the Somali sultanates used somali as an offcial written language. Since if they did we would have seen some level of standardization for the Somali ajami script and there would have been a couple literary works that survived or even a memory of that. My best guess on why this never haponed is that none of our cities where ever truly massive and the fact they were also coastal cities with a decently large pouplation of foreigners probably meant there was no incentive.

 

[Idilinaa]

I also suspect none of the Somali sultanates used somali as an offcial written language. Since if they did we would have seen some level of standardization for the Somali ajami script and there would have been a couple literary works that survived or even a memory of that. My best guess on why this never haponed is that none of our cities where ever truly massive and the fact they were also coastal cities with a decently large pouplation of foreigners probably meant there was no incentive.

Actually, there’s solid evidence that contradicts your assumption.

Take Harar, for example many of the Ajami texts there were actually religious instructional texts written in one of the local languages using Arabic script. These weren't formal state documents, but rather tools for converting and educating new Muslims who didn’t understand Arabic like the Adare community. The modern Harari(Adare) community often mistakenly sees these as examples of formal writing systems, when in fact they were grassroots religious texts.

This ties into what I shared earlier about West African Islamic cultures, Ajami emerged as a practical response to limited Arabic literacy. It was part of what’s called “oligoliterature” where literacy exists among a small segment of society (usually religious elites), but written material is created for broader community use.

but yeah my guess it's because Somalis were bilingual and literate in Arabic in greater parts


From that study you had shown me on West African manuscripts , it's says that the Ajami formed out of oligoliterate culture and they did not have significant Arab language texts.

Which essentially means that only handful/small group of elites ''oligo'' could read and write arabic and there was lack of Arabic language knowledge.


They also didn't study tasfir a lot either

In Somalia, Arabic was a liturgical and scholarly language, widely known by the educated. So, there was less pressure to standardize a Somali Ajami script. Instead, Somalis developed informal, functional literacy systems like “Laqba” to teach both Somali and Arabic in religious schools.

The absence of a centralized Ajami standard doesn’t mean there wasn’t writing or literacy; it just means literacy wasn’t monopolized by the elite or tied to state bureaucracy. In fact, the opposite, it suggests literacy was widespread and decentralized.

They don't have an Arabic language, quranic tasfir, grammar/syntax and jurisprudence (fiqh) oriented learning system the way Somalis did as well.

,

Somalis had small settlements/towns where these pastoralists met to trade. But it seems outside the zeila/berbera in the north and mogadishu/barawe/merca in the south. None of them seemed to have been large enough to develop an urban class. Likely because Somalis relied on well water and most places didn't have enough water to sustain any huge concentrated pouplation

You're applying modern urbanization standards retroactively, which doesn’t reflect how settlements historically functioned , not just in Somalia, but globally.

First, not every town needs to be “urban” in scale or have a defined elite class to be significant. Many of Somalia’s historic settlements Bosaso (Bandar Qasim), Las Qoray, Hafun, Luuq, Kismayo played critical roles as regional trade hubs, seasonal markets, and administrative centers, even if they weren’t massive in size.

Bosaso (Bandar Qasim) and Las Qoray each had estimated populations of 2,000–3,000 at their peaks during the mid 1800s, both were commercial hubs. . That’s notable in the pre-industrial context. The rest of the Somali coast was dotted with smaller port/coastal villages and towns that served important trade and seasonal functions, and inland you had agricultural settlements and key trade stations.

You also overlook that it's these network of coastal villages and inland agricultural centers that supported these hubs: Even between major cities like Mogadishu, Barawa, and Merca, there were secondary settlements and trade outposts like Gezeira, Nimow, Aw Make, Danane, Gendershe, and Gelib-Merca. These weren’t just passive fishing villages either, they played supporting roles in regional trade, storage, and food production.

They weren’t large, but they were economically vital and often deeply interconnected through trade, seasonal migrations, and communal labor. This mirrors how many societies functioned across the pre-modern world not everything was concentrated in mega-cities.


Berbera, Zeila, Harar, Luuq, and Mogadishu, Barawa, and Merca were all longstanding commercial hubs, and most continued functioning beyond the 16th-century disruptions caused by war(collapse), european piracy, and external interference(Oromo invasions). Many towns declined or were depopulated, but others rebounded or were re-established.

For example, Hafun was nearly abandoned in the 16th century after a devastating Portuguese raid:

''This sea port had indeed , at the time, all the advantages of commerce over that of Aden, till the arrival of the portuguese fleet, in the year 1517, which utterly destroyed it: since which time Aden had gained the advantage"

And you can see how new towns emerged and grew even in the 1800s. Kismayo, for instance, didn’t even exist in 1869 by 1873, it had a population of 8,600. That growth came from Somali initiative and expansion inland toward the coast, building infrastructure and establishing markets. That’s faster growth than many so-called “major cities” in the region at the time. It shows that Somali settlement patterns evolved with trade demand

I can't stress this enough when i say "The coast was set up as a commercial outlet for the interior" . Let me show you a direct example of this:

From the same text i shared earlier in another thread about Hawiye farmers in the inlands, It also mentions Kismaayo the southern coastal city which did not exist until 1869 when Somali clans in Upper Jubba valley opened it up for trade and later they invited Majerteen/Harti traders to help develop the trade:

''Neverthelesss Kismayu is the natural outlet of the vast basin of the Juba, which reaches the sea about 12 miles to the north-east. In 1869 this town did not yet exist, but in that year some Somali emigrants from the Upper Jubba Valley, and especially from the neighbourhood of Bardera or Bal Tir, the chief market of the interior, established themselves at this favourable point of the coast, and opened direct commercial relations with Zanzibar.

Later some members of Mijuirtin tribe, the most energetic traders on the whole seaboard also settled in the same place, the population of which had already risen to eight thousand six hundred in the year 1873."

Some pictures of Kismaayo during the late 1800- early 1900s

Not a single coastal town or settlement was an enclave by non-Somalis, they only arrived later in small numbers after Somalis built these cities up and made them into viable commercial hubs and opened it up for trade and Somalis settled into them in much greater numbers.

As for water access, many Somali towns developed around wells, rivers, lakes , and seasonal streams. The idea that a lack of large rivers inherently stunted growth ignores the innovative irrigation, cistern, and rainwater harvesting systems used to support these communities.

If a dense urban class didn’t emerge everywhere, it wasn’t due to lack of capacity,it was due to the subsistence logic of the pastoral-agro economy, which didn’t require dense settlements to be effective

Your assumption that every Somali urban center needed to be large or urbanized by default is flawed. That’s never how development works, even today, you’ll find rural villages, small towns, and bustling cities coexisting in any developed country.

Urbanization is a process. Places grow, shrink, and transform based on trade routes, ecology, migration, and conflict. Somalia followed that same pattern. The idea that Somalis couldn't have a complex urban class or urban function simply because they relied on wells is a huge oversimplification and ignores how Somali trade systems were organized around seasonal movement, port activity, and merchant- agro-pastoralist exchanges.

 

[Homerlilian2.0]

@Idilinaa saxiib since you’re a walking encyclopaedia do you have anything on istunkaa and dhabshiid also Somali new years .

i tried doing looking into it and each text I read differs from one another .

 

[Midas]

Actually, there’s solid evidence that contradicts your assumption.

Take Harar, for example many of the Ajami texts there were actually religious instructional texts written in one of the local languages using Arabic script. These weren't formal state documents, but rather tools for converting and educating new Muslims who didn’t understand Arabic like the Adare community. The modern Harari(Adare) community often mistakenly sees these as examples of formal writing systems, when in fact they were grassroots religious texts.

This ties into what I shared earlier about West African Islamic cultures, Ajami emerged as a practical response to limited Arabic literacy. It was part of what’s called “oligoliterature” where literacy exists among a small segment of society (usually religious elites), but written material is created for broader community use.




In Somalia, Arabic was a liturgical and scholarly language, widely known by the educated. So, there was less pressure to standardize a Somali Ajami script. Instead, Somalis developed informal, functional literacy systems like “Laqba” to teach both Somali and Arabic in religious schools.

The absence of a centralized Ajami standard doesn’t mean there wasn’t writing or literacy; it just means literacy wasn’t monopolized by the elite or tied to state bureaucracy. In fact, the opposite, it suggests literacy was widespread and decentralized.








You're applying modern urbanization standards retroactively, which doesn’t reflect how settlements historically functioned , not just in Somalia, but globally.

First, not every town needs to be “urban” in scale or have a defined elite class to be significant. Many of Somalia’s historic settlements Bosaso (Bandar Qasim), Las Qoray, Hafun, Luuq, Kismayo played critical roles as regional trade hubs, seasonal markets, and administrative centers, even if they weren’t massive in size.

Bosaso (Bandar Qasim) and Las Qoray each had estimated populations of 2,000–3,000 at their peaks during the mid 1800s, both were commercial hubs. . That’s notable in the pre-industrial context. The rest of the Somali coast was dotted with smaller port/coastal villages and towns that served important trade and seasonal functions, and inland you had agricultural settlements and key trade stations.

You also overlook that it's these network of coastal villages and inland agricultural centers that supported these hubs: Even between major cities like Mogadishu, Barawa, and Merca, there were secondary settlements and trade outposts like Gezeira, Nimow, Aw Make, Danane, Gendershe, and Gelib-Merca. These weren’t just passive fishing villages either, they played supporting roles in regional trade, storage, and food production.

They weren’t large, but they were economically vital and often deeply interconnected through trade, seasonal migrations, and communal labor. This mirrors how many societies functioned across the pre-modern world not everything was concentrated in mega-cities.


Berbera, Zeila, Harar, Luuq, and Mogadishu, Barawa, and Merca were all longstanding commercial hubs, and most continued functioning beyond the 16th-century disruptions caused by war(collapse), european piracy, and external interference(Oromo invasions). Many towns declined or were depopulated, but others rebounded or were re-established.

For example, Hafun was nearly abandoned in the 16th century after a devastating Portuguese raid:

''This sea port had indeed , at the time, all the advantages of commerce over that of Aden, till the arrival of the portuguese fleet, in the year 1517, which utterly destroyed it: since which time Aden had gained the advantage"

View attachment 359978



And you can see how new towns emerged and grew even in the 1800s. Kismayo, for instance, didn’t even exist in 1869 by 1873, it had a population of 8,600. That growth came from Somali initiative and expansion inland toward the coast, building infrastructure and establishing markets. That’s faster growth than many so-called “major cities” in the region at the time. It shows that Somali settlement patterns evolved with trade demand





As for water access, many Somali towns developed around wells, rivers, lakes , and seasonal streams. The idea that a lack of large rivers inherently stunted growth ignores the innovative irrigation, cistern, and rainwater harvesting systems used to support these communities.

If a dense urban class didn’t emerge everywhere, it wasn’t due to lack of capacity,it was due to the subsistence logic of the pastoral-agro economy, which didn’t require dense settlements to be effective

Your assumption that every Somali urban center needed to be large or urbanized by default is flawed. That’s never how development works, even today, you’ll find rural villages, small towns, and bustling cities coexisting in any developed country.

Urbanization is a process. Places grow, shrink, and transform based on trade routes, ecology, migration, and conflict. Somalia followed that same pattern. The idea that Somalis couldn't have a complex urban class or urban function simply because they relied on wells is a huge oversimplification and ignores how Somali trade systems were organized around seasonal movement, port activity, and merchant- agro-pastoralist exchanges.

Maybe my phrasing wasn't the best but I'm spefically talking about the development of a distinct somali language literary tradition and how for the development of something like that you need a class of literate people who are not ulema to produce and consume that literature.

This didn't exist anywhere in subsharan africa. Neither in west africa or the horn or the swahili coast. It generally also requires large centralized states to develop this. If you look at the premodern non arabic literary islamic lanaguges malay,urdu,chagtai,persian,ottoman turkish,javanese. These lanaguges (all backed by centralized states) all had well developed literary tradition with famous texts circulating in manuscripts.

The fact that were not really aware of any somali lanaguge texts like this in contrast to the wide circulation of famous relegious texts in somalia with old manuscripts. Is to me evidence that while somalis wrote stuff down in somali ajami there wasn't any established literary tradition of writing in somali ajami with famous well know somali ajami texts which everybody would have heard of even if they didn't have a copy of it. This was starting to change in the late 19th century with the emergence of larger towns. But it was disturbed by colonalism.

 

[Midas]

This didn't exist anywhere in subsharan africa. Neither in west africa or the horn or the swahili coast

I really want to stress this fact. There doesn't seem to have been any real writing in swahili or other west african languages at all before the 19th century even though swahili culture was centered around it's coastal towns and the sahelian states also had a hierarchical urban elite. Hausa and fulani ajami also seems to have come into being as written language only with the sokoto caliphate and even then it seems to have been just used for writing relegious poetry.

 

[Idilinaa]

Maybe my phrasing wasn't the best but I'm spefically talking about the development of a distinct somali language literary tradition and how for the development of something like that you need a class of literate people who are not ulema to produce and consume that literature.

This didn't exist anywhere in subsharan africa. Neither in west africa or the horn or the swahili coast. It generally also requires large centralized states to develop this. If you look at the premodern non arabic literary islamic lanaguges malay,urdu,chagtai,persian,ottoman turkish,javanese. These lanaguges (all backed by centralized states) all had well developed literary tradition with famous texts circulating in manuscripts.

The fact that were not really aware of any somali lanaguge texts like this in contrast to the wide circulation of famous relegious texts in somalia with old manuscripts. Is to me evidence that while somalis wrote stuff down in somali ajami there wasn't any established literary tradition of writing in somali ajami with famous well know somali ajami texts which everybody would have heard of even if they didn't have a copy of it. This was starting to change in the late 19th century with the emergence of larger towns. But it was disturbed by colonalism.

All those places often had the same thing in common. The were oligo-literate societies.

Who are not ulema you say , but not comprehend that they were small s elite who could read or write, catered/gatekeeped to a wider illiterate society who were less than fluent in Arabic and had less religious scholarly sophistication that wrote them.

Both were restricted to a small educated elite , especially Ottoman Turkish which persian and arabic accounted for 88% of the vocabulary, was unintelligable to the ordinary Turk and was essentially used by the administrative elite that would also create poetry with it.

The average Turk was not literate in Arabic.

Laqbo would make the average Somali bilingual and literate in Arabic from a young age, so it wasn't restricted to a small educated elite.

I am explaining how it was with Somalia. Obviously there weren't Quranic/arabic teachers going from village to village, settlement to settlement and camp to camp teaching in other societies. They would stay in 1 place place seasonally with the pastoralists which might be months and many weeks.

In those quranic schools you learn both Arabic and the Quran and you learned to read and write.

Which gave them decent level of familiarity with Arabic and the arab script from an early age.

Which facilitated in many Somalis just growing up to be bilingual. Imagine how this would be like if they moved on to taking their education to a higher level, they would continue in the Arabic language that they are taught in and become more proficient at it.

Do you catch my drift?

Somali Ajami writing existed and circulated, especially in Sufi circles and Islamic scholarship.

While we may not have a “canon” of Ajami Somali texts equivalent to Shahnameh or Gulistan, the function of Somali literacy was different: it wasn’t court poetry or state propaganda it was practical, devotional, and widespread.

You find Somali Ajami texts in Sufi lodges, prayer books, genealogies, and fatwa letters, particularly from groups like the Qadiriyya and Ahmadiyya.

Somali Ajami was part of a living oral-textual tradition. The fact that Somali oral poets could produce complex metrical verse on the fly is itself a form of advanced literary culture. Ajami supplemented this think of it like Somali "marginalia" to a robust oral tradition. Literacy wasn't elite gatekeeping, it was functional.

Also, Historical disruptions matters. Had Somalia experienced the institutional continuity of, say, Persia or the Ottoman Empire, it might have developed a formal Somali literary canon earlier and some of the examples & copies of it might have survived an the test of time as well. I mean we have historical references to Somalis producing complex maps, but we have no examples of it available. Does that mean we never did?

The re-imergence of it during the revival period where religious activity and institutions was also being revived in the 1800s should tell you a lot. That they were going back to something rather that something beginning in the 19th century and the colonial derailment of it should show you what could happen to it during the 16th century upheavals that could have set things back.