Is fish forbidden in somali culture?

[aden1812]

I heard people starve to death in Somalia before eating fish,

 

[HoodHawiye]

I heard people starve to death in Somalia before eating fish,

are you yemeni

 

[CalmOne20####]

Lol no we eat fish.

 

[Dima&Damo]

Only somalis in the interior hate fish but us who are the sea people love sea food it's our delicacy


My Tuulo we eat plenty of sea food here

 

[The alchemist]

Not true.

There was some fish taboo in Cushitic culture because archeologists spotted that hunter-gatherers ate fish abundantly and when Cushites used the same are, no fish was found (referring to a study from Ethiopia), but that was an oversimplified view of the matter from a holistic point of view. There are abundant fish vertebrae found in inhabited points in ancient Djibouti and in medieval settlements in medieval Somaliland. I have eaten fish in Berbera, no taboo about it. It was the best fish I ever had btw.

Ancient Cushitic herders adapted to the environment with a diverse set of measures, sometimes they even mixed hunting with herding, some, like in the 3k-year-old settlement in Djibouti, fished at times of the season, and the next herded animals doing transhumance probably. Other times when certain land was arable, they did various forms of agriculture too. So complex adaptability and flexibility. Sections of Somalis since ancient times also settled and did trade in urban-like sedentary way and had a synergic and very complex relationship with the non-fully-settled peoples, and I believe there was complex economic trade formation going into Ethiopia that is unique to the region which we know little about. Therefore referencing and extrapolating extensive literature from other places to explain or box our ancient behavior in a simplistic fashion is actually a big disservice as it forms an inaccurate picture.

This image of rigid nomadism (almost by default an oxymoron) forms a false picture of our past, and I especially include how our pastoralist nomad ancestors acted within that nomadic subsistence too, even taking modern nomadism today as a picture of how things were in the past is false to a great extent (it is some type of that collective behavior, not the defining. Well, defining today, but not necessarily in the past). Similar to how people think of how all paleolithic peoples lived like today's Khoisan. The issue is, even within archeology, it is hard to interpret and define the way in which our ancestors lived because they don't tap into the framework of boxes that are used to explain strictly sedentary societies which have been the disposition of research since the study of such. That type of outdated systematization of research is thus more likely to rely on orientalist work, which believe it or not defines the far majority of our historical research, to give the wide explanatory space some filling or just do some lazy and biased, many times, condescending and patronizing (synonyms but use both for important nuances) interpretation to explain how our ancestors behaved when giving color to descriptive excavation and survey research and how it connects to the peopling, the relationship between powers and historical perspectives.

 

[aden1812]

Not ancient society, I heard if you give a person in badiyo a fish, they will take it as an insult, because it’s so taboo.

 

[Awad]

Only somalis in the interior hate fish but us who are the sea people love sea food it's our delicacy


My Tuulo we eat plenty of sea food here

View attachment 247590

love that mountain
sucks how flat most of Somalia is

 

[Dima&Damo]

love that mountain
sucks how flat most of Somalia is

It's Eyl district nugaal much of puntland is hilly and mountainess

 

[Rocktheboat]

Nope. They serve fresh fish in restaurants in Xamar

 

[DubatDiaries]

I think this attitude was common among the nomads. When I went to visit my family in Somali Galbeed- they are recent settled nomads. I told my aunt that I eat chicken, she said with such disgust " ma hilib kale baa waydhe? shimbir aad cuni....aqas" She also gagged when I told her about eating eggs. I don't know how they are so picky, they barely made it out of a famine.

 

[Hamzza]

Not true.

There was some fish taboo in Cushitic culture because archeologists spotted that hunter-gatherers ate fish abundantly and when Cushites used the same are, no fish was found (referring to a study from Ethiopia), but that was an oversimplified view of the matter from a holistic point of view. There are abundant fish vertebrae found in inhabited points in ancient Djibouti and in medieval settlements in medieval Somaliland. I have eaten fish in Berbera, no taboo about it. It was the best fish I ever had btw.

Ancient Cushitic herders adapted to the environment with a diverse set of measures, sometimes they even mixed hunting with herding, some, like in the 3k-year-old settlement in Djibouti, fished at times of the season, and the next herded animals doing transhumance probably. Other times when certain land was arable, they did various forms of agriculture too. So complex adaptability and flexibility. Sections of Somalis since ancient times also settled and did trade in urban-like sedentary way and had a synergic and very complex relationship with the non-fully-settled peoples, and I believe there was complex economic trade formation going into Ethiopia that is unique to the region which we know little about. Therefore referencing and extrapolating extensive literature from other places to explain or box our ancient behavior in a simplistic fashion is actually a big disservice as it forms an inaccurate picture.

This image of rigid nomadism (almost by default an oxymoron) forms a false picture of our past, and I especially include how our pastoralist nomad ancestors acted within that nomadic subsistence too, even taking modern nomadism today as a picture of how things were in the past is false to a great extent (it is some type of that collective behavior, not the defining. Well, defining today, but not necessarily in the past). Similar to how people think of how all paleolithic peoples lived like today's Khoisan. The issue is, even within archeology, it is hard to interpret and define the way in which our ancestors lived because they don't tap into the framework of boxes that are used to explain strictly sedentary societies which have been the disposition of research since the study of such. That type of outdated systematization of research is thus more likely to rely on orientalist work, which believe it or not defines the far majority of our historical research, to give the wide explanatory space some filling or just do some lazy and biased, many times, condescending and patronizing (synonyms but use both for important nuances) interpretation to explain how our ancestors behaved when giving color to descriptive excavation and survey research and how it connects to the peopling, the relationship between powers and historical perspectives.

Somalis now eat fish but 150 years ago 90% of Somalis including coastal ones, abhorred fish, you can't deny that. Even we have clans who were rusticated from society because they made their living from the sea.

 

[The alchemist]

Somalis now eat fish but 150 years ago 90% of Somalis including coastal ones, abhorred fish, you can't deny that. Even we have clans who were rusticated from society because they made their living from the sea.

I think you did not capture the whole point with my post. Respond with something that pushes the conversation, at least, or is inquisitive for new questions. It gets too redundant with low-hanging fruits of strawman and reductiveness that sets to constrain the breadth of historical and anthropological understanding. All for cheap conversation and conversational limitations just to feel like one has the capture of knowledge to boast about to ironically fall into what I set to speak against.

 

[Keo]

Imagine not eating fish these people are missing out

 

[Riya.]

I’ve never heard of this in my life. They were eating fish when I went to Somalia.

 

[Dima&Damo]

Somalis now eat fish but 150 years ago 90% of Somalis including coastal ones, abhorred fish, you can't deny that. Even we have clans who were rusticated from society because they made their living from the sea.

That's a lie

 

[Pizza man]

I don't know about fish but my parents say this all the time about chicken especially when i tell them i prefer it than normal meat.

 

[aden1812]

i remember the was a story during operation Iraqi freedom saying prisoners were offered shrimp one day in the 2000s and they rioted, and americans were super confused...maybe its the same thing, but i did have a friend tell me "those reer badioy somalis put all somalis to shame because they refuse to eat fish, even though we have the longest coastline in africa"

 

[The alchemist]

I don't know about fish but my parents say this all the time about chicken especially when i tell them i prefer it than normal meat.

Somalis had an aversion to all birds for some reason documented in late history. I don't know if this is an ancient consistent thing, but it was documented by Westerners in late history. The only ones that ate birds now and then were the Madhiban.

 

[aden1812]

Somalis had an aversion to all birds for some reason documented in late history. I don't know if this is an ancient consistent thing, but it was documented by Westerners in late history. The only ones that ate birds now and then were the Madhiban.

up until recently chickens were mainly used for "cock-fighting" so it kinda makes sense.

 

[Som]

Somalis now eat fish but 150 years ago 90% of Somalis including coastal ones, abhorred fish, you can't deny that. Even we have clans who were rusticated from society because they made their living from the sea.

Ibn battuta mentions Zeila as a stinky city because of the fish market. They did eat lots of fish there .Coastal and urban somalis ate fish all the time. The cushitic fish taboo is very ancient but that doesn't mean it stuck among all Somalis. If you live in the coast it's impossible not to eat fish , people from the interior though never had the opportunity to include fish in their diets (far from the sea, no big rivers except shabelle and Juba) and may still have some aversion to it