The Man They Called 'The Mad Mullah': Father of Somali nationalism | Al Jazeera World Documentary

[NidarNidar]

 

[Riftvalley]

 

[Shimbiris]

That adeer at the start speaks in such a perfect Khaleeji lahjad. Brings me home listening to him. Been reading a book on the war with him:

Decent book but by the middle it stops reading like a biography and more like a somewhat boring war journal on various engagements with the Sayyid. But I'd still recommend it for any Somali interested in Somali history.

One thing that really took me aback was the sheer number of fighters the Sayyid could marshal—over 40,000 fighting men at one point, according to the book. And it’s not just him. If you read separately about other Early Modern Somali polities like the Geledi, you'll find similar numbers being mobilized. Keep in mind that this was a time when much of northern Somali territory and Somaliweyn had already become significantly more arid compared to 500, 1,000, or 2,000 years earlier. Medieval agricultural and pastoral systems had largely broken down—yet these saaxiibs were still able to field more men than Late Medieval British and French forces.

For perspective, at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the English fielded around 6,000 to 8,000 men, and the French brought 14,000 to 25,000. The Sayyid’s forces frequently outnumbered both combined.

Pastoralists are no joke, wallahi. Their culture of raiding, inter-clan warfare, and a highly mobile lifestyle—where people could shift roles fluidly—meant almost every adult male was a ready warrior when needed. The sheer numbers pastoral societies could mobilize always blows me away. The Mongols and Arabs were producing insane numbers during the Middle Ages too.

It wasn’t just about horse-riding or better martial skill, I'd say pastoral groups dominated the pre-modern world also because of their sheer fighting numbers. To sedentary farming groups and civilizations, facing them must have felt like facing a swarm of locusts, wallahi.

 

[Emir of Zayla]

That adeer at the start speaks in such a perfect Khaleeji lahjad. Brings me home listening to him. Been reading a book on the war with him:

Decent book but by the middle it stops reading like a biography and more like a somewhat boring war journal on various engagements with the Sayyid. But I'd still recommend it for any Somali interested in Somali history.

One thing that really took me aback was the sheer number of fighters the Sayyid could marshal—over 40,000 fighting men at one point, according to the book. And it’s not just him. If you read separately about other Early Modern Somali polities like the Geledi, you'll find similar numbers being mobilized. Keep in mind that this was a time when much of northern Somali territory and Somaliweyn had already become significantly more arid compared to 500, 1,000, or 2,000 years earlier. Medieval agricultural and pastoral systems had largely broken down—yet these saaxiibs were still able to field more men than Late Medieval British and French forces.

For perspective, at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the English fielded around 6,000 to 8,000 men, and the French brought 14,000 to 25,000. The Sayyid’s forces frequently outnumbered both combined.

Pastoralists are no joke, wallahi. Their culture of raiding, inter-clan warfare, and a highly mobile lifestyle—where people could shift roles fluidly—meant almost every adult male was a ready warrior when needed. The sheer numbers pastoral societies could mobilize always blows me away. The Mongols and Arabs were producing insane numbers during the Middle Ages too.

It wasn’t just about horse-riding or better martial skill, I'd say pastoral groups dominated the pre-modern world also because of their sheer fighting numbers. To sedentary farming groups and civilizations, facing them must have felt like facing a swarm of locusts, wallahi.

The Sayyid’s capability to muster 70,000 trained riflemen and 10,000 cavalry at a time when the Somali population wasn’t as great as it is today was impressive, especially if you factor in leveraging clan networks to obtain these men and the logistical needs of training and manufacturing their own gunpowder and bullets.

 

[NidarNidar]

That adeer at the start speaks in such a perfect Khaleeji lahjad. Brings me home listening to him. Been reading a book on the war with him:

Decent book but by the middle it stops reading like a biography and more like a somewhat boring war journal on various engagements with the Sayyid. But I'd still recommend it for any Somali interested in Somali history.

One thing that really took me aback was the sheer number of fighters the Sayyid could marshal—over 40,000 fighting men at one point, according to the book. And it’s not just him. If you read separately about other Early Modern Somali polities like the Geledi, you'll find similar numbers being mobilized. Keep in mind that this was a time when much of northern Somali territory and Somaliweyn had already become significantly more arid compared to 500, 1,000, or 2,000 years earlier. Medieval agricultural and pastoral systems had largely broken down—yet these saaxiibs were still able to field more men than Late Medieval British and French forces.

For perspective, at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the English fielded around 6,000 to 8,000 men, and the French brought 14,000 to 25,000. The Sayyid’s forces frequently outnumbered both combined.

Pastoralists are no joke, wallahi. Their culture of raiding, inter-clan warfare, and a highly mobile lifestyle—where people could shift roles fluidly—meant almost every adult male was a ready warrior when needed. The sheer numbers pastoral societies could mobilize always blows me away. The Mongols and Arabs were producing insane numbers during the Middle Ages too.

It wasn’t just about horse-riding or better martial skill, I'd say pastoral groups dominated the pre-modern world also because of their sheer fighting numbers. To sedentary farming groups and civilizations, facing them must have felt like facing a swarm of locusts, wallahi.

It's insane to think about the new tactics deployed; if not for the deployment of British fighters, Somali society would have been completely different. What do you reckon about the numbers fielded back in the 16th century? I'm in the middle of reading Warriors Life and Death Among the Somalis by Gerald Hanley.

 

[Shimbiris]

It's insane to think about the new tactics deployed; if not for the deployment of British fighters, Somali society would have been completely different. What do you reckon about the numbers fielded back in the 16th century? I'm in the middle of reading Warriors Life and Death Among the Somalis by Gerald Hanley.

I need to do more research into the medieval conflicts. To be honest, based on the numbers given in Futuh al-Habasha, it didn’t quite strike me as a large-scale conflict. When you really look at it, the vast majority of the qabiils involved were from Galbeed or, at most, spread between Woqooyi and Galbeed: Gurgura, Hawiye (Karanle), Habar Awal, Geri Kombe, Bartire, and others.

The only notable exception seems to be the Harti, who are explicitly described as being from Maydh, far to the east. They’re also the only Somali group for whom the author makes a point to highlight their distant origin, which implies that their involvement was exceptional. This really wasn’t some kind of pan-Somali mobilization but rather a conflict largely localized to the northwest.

Even the Harti contingent was relatively small:

The storyteller, may God have mercy upon him, says: On the left was the Somali
tribe of Hart], from the people of Mait: a people not given lo yielding. There were
three-hundred of them, famous among the infantry as stolid swordsmen.

The troop numbers overall aren’t that overwhelming—typically 1,000 to 2,000 infantry per qabiil, and anywhere from 100 to 1,000 mounted men. I’d have to sit down and tally everything precisely, but it doesn’t seem like the Somali/Muslim side amounted to much more than 10,000 men.

I feel like the Futuh al-Habasha tends to get a bit overblown—understandably so, since it's one of the few surviving firsthand accounts of the medieval period from “our side” of history. But when you look at the actual scale of the conflict, it likely wasn’t as massive as it's often portrayed. I wouldn’t be surprised if far larger, undocumented conflicts took place.

Medieval Somalis and Habeshas likely had the capacity to field even larger armies than what we see with the Sayyid or even Menelik II. This was a time when agricultural methods were more advanced in many Somali regions, and the land was less arid for both sides. You can see this reflected in how large and prosperous settlements like Saylac were described by medieval geographers—especially when compared to their diminished state in the Early Modern period.

 

[The alchemist]

That adeer at the start speaks in such a perfect Khaleeji lahjad. Brings me home listening to him. Been reading a book on the war with him:

Decent book but by the middle it stops reading like a biography and more like a somewhat boring war journal on various engagements with the Sayyid. But I'd still recommend it for any Somali interested in Somali history.

One thing that really took me aback was the sheer number of fighters the Sayyid could marshal—over 40,000 fighting men at one point, according to the book. And it’s not just him. If you read separately about other Early Modern Somali polities like the Geledi, you'll find similar numbers being mobilized. Keep in mind that this was a time when much of northern Somali territory and Somaliweyn had already become significantly more arid compared to 500, 1,000, or 2,000 years earlier. Medieval agricultural and pastoral systems had largely broken down—yet these saaxiibs were still able to field more men than Late Medieval British and French forces.

For perspective, at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the English fielded around 6,000 to 8,000 men, and the French brought 14,000 to 25,000. The Sayyid’s forces frequently outnumbered both combined.

Pastoralists are no joke, wallahi. Their culture of raiding, inter-clan warfare, and a highly mobile lifestyle—where people could shift roles fluidly—meant almost every adult male was a ready warrior when needed. The sheer numbers pastoral societies could mobilize always blows me away. The Mongols and Arabs were producing insane numbers during the Middle Ages too.

It wasn’t just about horse-riding or better martial skill, I'd say pastoral groups dominated the pre-modern world also because of their sheer fighting numbers. To sedentary farming groups and civilizations, facing them must have felt like facing a swarm of locusts, wallahi.

The logisitcal capabilites, the geographic capture and manueverability was way better than sedentary people that had to teach themselves these things.

The pastoralists walked around with a spear and dagger in their day-to day pastoral migrations. Animals could attack at night. Lions and big fauna often attacked the guris (that is why they built thorny rings called zarabas around the huts, even enclosing the livestock up settlement):

As in the description of the the picture, the scratch on the shield was made by a lion that had killed the previous owner.

Raids from rival Somali clans meant you had to be on the offensive and defensive expeditiously. The average Somali man was conflict-ready. The mental space alone is a big deal. And let us not sugar-coat this, Somalis had a warrior based culture with men recieving prestige from killing other men. It is innacurate to assume people were killing left and right but an olden practice was partly practiced that revered valian battle for survival.

The Gadabuursi had a illustrative battle-dance where they would re-enact an ideal battle performance in a cultural way:

One of the most striking dances in the Somali(Gadabursi) repertoire, called the “Boroma-Boromsi” dance. Surrounded by an ever-restless chanting chorus of spearmen, the two combatants — one attacking fiercely with cutlass, the other defending desperately with his small Somali shield — seem to be in grim and deadly earnest, and none would believe them to be at play.

The defender sinks to the ground and abjectly craves mercy, while the chorus, dancing more madly, chant “Boorama Boromsi Boromsa.” The conqueror pins his victim and prepares to give the final blow but, like an ancient gladiator, turns to the spectators to ask the beaten one’s fate.

The chanting and singing before battle was something Somalis used to do before a battle. It's common among cultures that has martial orientations. You can tell it was deeply rooted as our ancestors did it out of cultural reasons settling itself within an ethno-graphic antrhopological level but is in practical effect used essentially for morale boosting.

The average fragmented farmer who is conscripted against such masculine culture cannot be successful. The Westerners that came to our shores constantly talked about the unusual endurace of Somalis as well to the point where they almost framed it in a dehumanizing way instead of just praising our rescilence and acknowledging their lack of it.

In terms of the demography, if every pastoralist is 1:1 with a warrior, you can band together much effiecently. You had clan-based loyalty where people had stakes in fighting for a common cause since your interests probably align on a collective sense. I've read some of the old texts on Abadallah Hassan briefly, and he has big support by his home-region and clansmen. That gave him a stronghold, since a lot of Isaaqs rejected his Sufi order propositions and were suspiscious of him, yet he got a lot of support among the related clans of his region.

The population size of Somalis have been long-term stable with high ups and downs. So technically there were times in the past that Somalis had higher population size than later (not today though). Because of population rise and collapse. There is a reason why people living in more dryer conditions have only a couple of million in size when their history stretches thousands of years. The Bejas are only about three million poeple. When we factor in the Arab-confederate inermixing and assimilation that entailed Beja deculturation with Arab tribal intergration and mixture, resulting in less people, of at least, part Beja origin claiming Beja, we still see the population stay fairly low.

Kawahla is an example of Beja-Arab hybridization that became largely Arab identifying, although they know their Beja associations:

Still with that, it still would be low population relative to the historic precence of a peoples that existed for thousands of years. Basically, the carrying capacity of the enviroment made it stable over time with probably stark upswings and downturns in periods. Bejas were likely larger in size 1300 years ago than 300 years before present.

That is why a lot of Somalis retrace demography of Somalis in the wrong way. We were demographically robust throughout on average despite having times when collapses happened. If we had the same enviroment as central Ethiopia, we would be in the 70 million range, easily.

That means Axum likely could not have invaded Somali regions during 400 CE. Our numbers likely easily reflected or exeeded the medieval period given we went out of a greener period half a millenium earlier that increased our populaton by a lot.

Studies have showed how pastoralism was rather an ecological regulator during stress-periods rather than an intesive burdener:

"The climate deterioration after the most recent African humid period (AHP) is a notable past example of desertification. Evidence points to a human population expansion in northern Africa prior to this, associated with the introduction of pastoralism. Here we consider the role, if any, of this population on the subsequent ecological collapse. Using a climate-vegetation model, we estimate the natural length of the most recent AHP. The model indicates that the system was most susceptible to collapse between 7 and 6 ka; at least 500 years before the observed collapse. This suggests that the inclusion of increasing elements of pastoralism was an effective adaptation to the regional environmental changes. Pastoralism also appears to have slowed the deterioration caused by orbitally-driven climate change. This supports the view that modern pastoralism is not only sustainable, but beneficial for the management of the world's dryland environments."

According to the research accompanying this abstract, pastoralism delayed the drying of the African Human Period by 500 years.

It speaks to how when we were supposed to dissapear from the region, we economically used animals to live closer to the surival line, mix in agriculture and trade to cover the basis. This allowed to better economic and organizational capacity with immense scaling capacity when things became more favorable.