Why didn't Somali have a strong literary tradition!

[Khaem]

Medieval scholars in somalia wrote with Arabic as they believed Somali wasn't a language to be written.
We have this manuscript written by a Somali in Arabic from the 1600s.

Detail of the waqf (endowment note) statement of Muḥammad ibn Muʾmin al-Laylkasī in his commentary on al-Harīrī’s al-Risālah al-Sīnīyah. (Private collection of Abdi Mohamud Suleiman

Migration
On the eve of the Somali Civil War, tensions ran high in my ancestral home of Galdogob as different factions fought for control of the buffer city and the larger region. The then head of the Muḥammad Muʾmin clan (my clan family) left the country first for Kenya, then to the Emirates, all the while carrying a set of ancestral manuscripts in tow. There, his knowledge of Islam earned him the patronage of a local notable; he told the notable of his ordeal and, for the first time in history, the familial manuscripts were photographed and cataloged, kept in a private collection.

Eventually the notable passed away and his patronage ended. The most important manuscript was poorly kept, and entire folios fell into disarray as it was neglected. In the early 2000s, my uncle, the noted linguist and oral historian Abdi Mohamud Suleiman, was living in the Emirates and made every attempt to preserve the manuscript. What we have of the manuscript today is due to these efforts and diligence to preserve this heritage.

Preservation
I first became aware of this manuscript in 2011 at a family meeting discussing which family should now take hold of what remained of it. I completely forgot about it for nearly a decade. In October 2020, my uncle, Abdi Mohamud Suleiman, reached out and asked if I would be willing to help and analyze and assess the contents of the manuscript, and naturally I jumped at the opportunity. In January 2021, I began my fellowship at HMML, and my training in database management and manuscript analysis aided me greatly in making sense of this ancient document. In February 2021, I began experimenting with AI image enhancement software and the manuscript began to reveal its secrets in earnest.

The Manuscript
Our research shows that what we have of the manuscript is a rich, language-based commentary on parts of the Maqāmāt (Assemblies) of al-Ḥarīrī. The manuscript also contains his literary feat al-Risālah al-Sīnīyah (The Treatise of Letter Sīn), a text in which every word has the Arabic letter sīn in it.

https://hmml.org/stories/migration-digitization-preservation-of-a-somali-manuscript/

However manuscripts in the Somali language is hard to come by. Why didn't we change from our oral ways of poetry and history and put it in paper? Writing was known to us for thousands of years yet we didn't use it for our own language in a widespread way. Instead using Arabic, the lingua franca of the Islamic world and the region at the time.

A Somalia with a strong literary tradition would've saved us a lot of hassle when it comes to debating Somali history with Shisheeye trying to create lies.

But it's not totally a lost cause, as seen above somalis wrote at least in Arabic. The only thing we need to do is collect and digitise these manuscripts. Lineages and History was recorded by Somali scholars, Wadaads, and their books stored in family archives somewhere in their home. We need a government or a - Somali - organisation to collect these. Would be a great thing for Somali history. Also writing down the knowledge of elders and poets into books would help alot as well.

 

[mohammdov]

Every time a city flourished, an army would come and destroy everything, including the writings. Therefore, not many manuscripts remained.

 

[Khaem]

Every time a city flourished, an army would come and destroy everything, including the writings. Therefore, not many manuscripts remained.

 

[Three Moons]

The mistake you guys make in these debates is placing your heritage solely in the Somali bracket. Even do all evidence points to an Islamic Horn dominated by what would be considered today the Somali people, the individuals living in that era saw themselves as something greater than just an ethnicity.

Ask yourself why Egyptians or Arabs in general can feel incredible pride in the achievements of Salah ad-Din who was a Kurd, but these foreigners want to gaslit us into not taking pride in the various dynasties of our homeland just because they didn’t explicitly call themselves by an early modern term like ‘Somali’, despite linguistic, cultural, genetic and archaeological evidence tying them to us before any other group? Stop entertaining these trolls, you don’t need their permission or validation. The rich history is yours already.

And Mohammdov makes a good point. If the National Library and Museums from just 30 years ago didn’t survive a war, the materials from centuries ago would have been in an even greater precarious situation unless protected by private collectors. However, I have pointed out to you before that no serious cataloguing of old Somali manuscripts in private libraries has ever been done, which is a serious undertaking. Remember that before the 1930s, no one was even aware of Timbuktu’s manuscripts until a Frenchman started collecting them en mass.

 

[Khaem]

The mistake you guys make in these debates is placing your heritage solely in the Somali bracket. Even do all evidence points to an Islamic Horn dominated by what would be considered today the Somali people, the individuals living in that era saw themselves as something greater than just an ethnicity.

Ask yourself why Egyptians or Arabs in general can feel incredible pride in the achievements of Salah ad-Din who was a Kurd, but these foreigners want to gaslit us into not taking pride in the various dynasties of our homeland just because they didn’t explicitly call themselves by an early modern term like ‘Somali’, despite linguistic, cultural, genetic and archaeological evidence tying them to us before any other group? Stop entertaining these trolls, you don’t need their permission or validation. The rich history is yours already.

And Mohammdov makes a good point. If the National Library and Museums from just 30 years ago didn’t survive a war, the materials from centuries ago would have been in an even greater precarious situation unless protected by private collectors. However, I have pointed out to you before that no serious cataloguing of old Somali manuscripts in private libraries has ever been done, which is a serious undertaking. Remember that before the 1930s, no one was even aware of Timbuktu’s manuscripts until a Frenchman started collecting them en mass.

So what do you think? Feel pride do not just being Somali but all muslims in the horn? There's alot of ethno nationalism in the region in the last few decades however back then people did view each other as brothers in Islam beyond ethnic lines within the Horn. Adal was a bunch of different muslim Horner ethnicities chief along them the Somali.

 

[Three Moons]

So what do you think? Feel pride do not just being Somali but all muslims in the horn? There's alot of ethno nationalism in the region in the last few decades however back then people did view each other as brothers in Islam beyond ethnic lines within the Horn. Adal was a bunch of different muslim Horner ethnicities chief along them the Somali.

What matters is that the Sultanate of Mogadishu’s influence, Adal’s vision or the Dervish endgame don’t contradict Pan-Somalism, just like the Sultanate of Rum, the Seljuks or the Ottomans don’t contradict Turkey’s vision for its future.

 

[Basra]

Medieval scholars in somalia wrote with Arabic as they believed Somali wasn't a language to be written.
We have this manuscript written by a Somali in Arabic from the 1600s. View attachment 302981

https://hmml.org/stories/migration-digitization-preservation-of-a-somali-manuscript/

However manuscripts in the Somali language is hard to come by. Why didn't we change from our oral ways of poetry and history and put it in paper? Writing was known to us for thousands of years yet we didn't use it for our own language in a widespread way. Instead using Arabic, the lingua franca of the Islamic world and the region at the time.

A Somalia with a strong literary tradition would've saved us a lot of hassle when it comes to debating Somali history with Shisheeye trying to create lies.
View attachment 302982


But it's not totally a lost cause, as seen above somalis wrote at least in Arabic. The only thing we need to do is collect and digitise these manuscripts. Lineages and History was recorded by Somali scholars, Wadaads, and their books stored in family archives somewhere in their home. We need a government or a - Somali - organisation to collect these. Would be a great thing for Somali history. Also writing down the knowledge of elders and poets into books would help alot as well.

Anaaa Arabiiya!

 

[mohammdov]

As I said, when cities were attacked, they would escape with some books. This, for example, is a book written in 1408 in Zaila’ but found in Yemen

 

[Nin123]

Medieval scholars in somalia wrote with Arabic as they believed Somali wasn't a language to be written.
We have this manuscript written by a Somali in Arabic from the 1600s. View attachment 302981

https://hmml.org/stories/migration-digitization-preservation-of-a-somali-manuscript/

However manuscripts in the Somali language is hard to come by. Why didn't we change from our oral ways of poetry and history and put it in paper? Writing was known to us for thousands of years yet we didn't use it for our own language in a widespread way. Instead using Arabic, the lingua franca of the Islamic world and the region at the time.

A Somalia with a strong literary tradition would've saved us a lot of hassle when it comes to debating Somali history with Shisheeye trying to create lies.
View attachment 302982


But it's not totally a lost cause, as seen above somalis wrote at least in Arabic. The only thing we need to do is collect and digitise these manuscripts. Lineages and History was recorded by Somali scholars, Wadaads, and their books stored in family archives somewhere in their home. We need a government or a - Somali - organisation to collect these. Would be a great thing for Somali history. Also writing down the knowledge of elders and poets into books would help alot as well.

Oral tradition is superior to written one always. The written one can be changed all the times.

 

[Khaem]

Oral tradition is superior to written one always. The written one can be changed all the times.

You think oral histories were not changed? The whole Arab daddy thing of Darood is an innovation. Clan lineage stories would change with politics back in the day. The most obvious one being the claiming of several Arabian figures close to the prophet as a part of Somali clan lineages after the adoption of Islam.

Orla history dies with the last men who can tell them.
Written histories stick forever if stored properly. Like on stone tablets in ancient history and manuscripts in past 2 millennias.

If the story of assyrians empire was oral we would know nothing about it. When the Greek army reached it centuries after it's brutal collapse the people there didn't know who created the large structures. They had a story of giants creating them. They had completely lost knowledge of their ancestors who built the first empire in history and ruled the middle east.

The reason we re-learned it was because of the stone tablets left behind.

Orla history is too fragile.

 

[Hotchick12]

You idiot we have Somali books first written in Arabic all our scriptures after Islam were written in Arabic and we have walls written in sabean in the caves around northern Somalis, only the the elite and coastal communities were literate but we still had Sheiks going to the countryside with wooden boards to be dugsi for nomadic kids in the hinterlands. We weren’t just orally

 

[Khaem]

You idiot we have Somali books first written in Arabic all our scriptures after Islam were written in Arabic and we have walls written in sabean in the caves around northern Somalis, only the the elite and coastal communities were literate but we still had Sheiks going to the countryside with wooden boards to be dugsi for nomadic kids in the hinterlands. We weren’t just orally

My nigga didn't you read the post. I explicitly showed a manuscript in Arabic written by a Somali from the 1600s.

I was talking about why we didn't do literature in Af-Somali.

 

[Nin123]

You think oral histories were not changed? The whole Arab daddy thing of Darood is an innovation. Clan lineage stories would change with politics back in the day. The most obvious one being the claiming of several Arabian figures close to the prophet as a part of Somali clan lineages after the adoption of Islam.

Orla history dies with the last men who can tell them.
Written histories stick forever if stored properly. Like on stone tablets in ancient history and manuscripts in past 2 millennias.

If the story of assyrians empire was oral we would know nothing about it. When the Greek army reached it centuries after it's brutal collapse the people there didn't know who created the large structures. They had a story of giants creating them. They had completely lost knowledge of their ancestors who built the first empire in history and ruled the middle east.

The reason we re-learned it was because of the stone tablets left behind.

Orla history is too fragile.

Warya all Somali history is almost 99% oral
So you suggesting our elders are bunch of liars.

 

[Khaem]

Warya all Somali history is almost 99% oral
So you suggesting our elders are bunch of liars.

I talked about how fragile oral history is. Don't lie about oral history compared to written when it's obvious that one is better at preserving stories.

I didn't say elders were liars. I literally stated that we should write down the knowledge of elders and poets into books in my OP to better preserve their knowledge.

I said that oral history is sometimes changed as its passed generation to generation.
If you think certain clans actually come from Arabs you are daft.

Do not interpret these innovations literally. I already explained in a different post why some qabil claimed Arabian lineages close to the prophet.

 

[Yami]

There's a handful of manuscripts and books written on middle age soomaaliweyn but are nowhere to be found on our internet space because they're written in Arabic.

Not to mention that what are now Somali people defonitly had a concept of written language before the introduction of Islam. Words such as "qor" and "ahkri" are native terms. Why would a nation with no written tradition besides arabic have terms for it? It would make zero sense.

More research needs to be done in Somalia and Hararghe. Lots of shit to unearth

 

[Khaem]

There's a handful of manuscripts and books written on middle age soomaaliweyn but are nowhere to be found on our internet space because they're written in Arabic.

Not to mention that what are now Somali people defonitly had a concept of written language before the introduction of Islam. Words such as "qor" and "ahkri" are native terms. Why would a nation with no written tradition besides arabic have terms for it? It would make zero sense.

More research needs to be done in Somalia and Hararghe. Lots of shit to unearth

Our main issue is collecting them. Soo many manuscripts just rotting away in homes across somalia.

This is a elderly ex-dervish soldier with his son. Holding a book containing family lineage. If that was collected and copied imagine what we could learn about that region?

 

[Yami]

Our main issue is collecting them. Soo many manuscripts just rotting away in homes across somalia.

This is a elderly ex-dervish soldier with his son. Holding a book containing family lineage. If that was collected and copied imagine what we could learn about that region? View attachment 303046

My awoowe's family had his lineage written down too. I'd love to post it whenever I'm back in Africa but don't want to self doxx lmao

 

[Internet Nomad]

Damn i wish i was born in the past so i could lie to British colonials about somali history.

 

[Khaem]

Damn i wish i was born in the past so i could lie to British colonials about somali history.

View attachment 303048

Don't worry they did that themselves. Look at I. M Lewis' book.

 

[HabarSteven12]

The overwhelming majority of Somalis are nomads. Nomads are illiterate. They don't know how to read or write. Nomadic societies are generally oral based and don't have a literate tradition. The majority of Somalis only learned how to read and write very recently. In 1972, only 5% of the population was literate until Said Barres mass literacy campaign, which was a remarkable success.