Somali History,
Somali Governance, and
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The Somali Civic Web A Virtual "Shir" in Cyberspace |
Genealogy of the Somali People
and its impact upon
Somali History, Somali Governance, and Somali Culture
The genealogy of the Somali People is an important foundation in understanding
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Somali History, |
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Somali Governance, and |
| Somali Culture. |
as well as the natural desire of Somalis to better understand their own personal ancestry.
The Somali language was not a written language until about 1984. Therefore most of the Somali history and culture, including the genealogy of the Somali People has been passed down from generation to generation orally. An important goal of the Somali Civic Organization will certainly consist of documenting as much of this history, genealogy, and culture in written form as quickly as possible, before it is lost forever, and making this documentation available to the Somali People through the Somali Virtual Library.
The Role of Genealogy in Understanding Somali History
There are currently several quite different views concerning the history of the Somali People. Some claim that this history extends back several thousands of years. Others claim that the Somali Ethnic Group was founded about 800 years ago by a small number of Arabic settlers on the coast of Somalia who married primarily Oramo ("Galla") women. A comprehensive study of the Somali genealogy offers the opportunity to provide more definitive answers to many of these open questions. (The late Gen. Mohammed Farah Hassan ('Aidid') discusses some of these competing theories in Chapter 2, "Origin of the Somali People (50,000 -- 30,000 B.C.), and in Chapter 3, "The Ancestors of the Somalis", in his book, "Somalia: From the Dawn of Civilization to The Modern Times. Appendix 4: "The Somali Ethnic Group and Clan System" in "Reunification of the Somali People", by Jack L. Davies gives another summary.)
First, the genealogical charts seem to go back about 25 - 30 generations to about one dozen "founding fathers", which is within the time frame of 625 - 900 years, if we assume an average from one generation to the next of about 25 - 30 years. If the Somali Civic Organization defines a project of collecting and consolidating all available genealogical information and it does imply a maximum lineage of about 30 generations, this would provide powerful support for the latter hypothesis above.
The detailed genealogical research by John A. Hunt during the British Colonial Administration of Somaliland provides a good starting point for such analysis. For this reason, his book "A General Survey of the Somaliland Protectorate 1944 - 1950" is being included in the Somali Civic Library and in particular his Table 21 lists about 1,500 key individuals from the alleged founding fathers down to the level of dia-paying groups as of 1951. This data from John A. Hunt is summarized in graphical form in Appendix 4 to "Reunification of the Somali People" in 1995 -- and included additional data concerning the Hawiye group of clans. The Somali Civic Organization may wish to complement this foundation with similar genealogical documentation for the Somali clans living in Southern Somalia, who were not included in Hunt's study of Somaliland.
Second, modern molecular genetics is now giving us the tools for comparing the genetic information for two individuals and to calculate approximately how many generations ago they had a common mother along the purely female lineage as well as a common father along the purely male lineage. (Analyzing the mitochondrial DNA for the female lineage and the Y chromosome for the male lineage.) Unfortunately, the Somali genealogy is only complete for the purely male lineage, with only occasional general inferences that a specific male ancestor married a woman from a particular clan within the Somali ethnic group or a particular other ethnic group or clan.
Such analysis could show whether most people who consider themselves to be Somalis today do have Arabic men as their forefathers 25-30 generations ago or rather other sources. One such alternative explanation could be the identification of common African male ancestry going back many hundreds of generations. Likewise, such analysis could show whether a significant number of Somali women have Oromo women as ancestors. This research and analysis has not yet been done and therefore we can only speculate as to what the results may be whenever it is actually performed.
Combined, a formal scientific study of Somali genealogy may ultimately show that there is not one correct and several incorrect versions of the history of the Somali ethnic group. Rather, it may show that most of these seemingly-different versions are at least partially correct. Also, we must expect to find exceptions in the general pattern of this data. This is due to the fact that Somali clans have occasionally "adopted" non-Somalis as "members", particularly when a foreigner married a Somali man or woman. Since the children of these "adopted" Somalis use the chain of male Somali ancestors of the adopting Somali in their name, their descendants have Somali names which indicate a pure Somali lineage rather than a foreign lineage.
The Role of Somali Genealogy upon Somali Governance
Genealogy played a significant role in Somali governance prior to and during the Colonial Period. One of the weaknesses of the "democracy" from 1960 - 1969 was that the Italian-style constitution and the resulting structure of government did not adequately integrate the traditional democratic governance by clan leaders along clan lines. During the socialist/communist dictatorship, Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre used clan politics to play one clan against another clan to further his own personal interests. After the collapse of the dictatorship in 1991, Somalia has not been without governance, as often claimed in the West, but rather the traditional system of clan governance, that was still in place in the background came to the foreground providing different levels of governance in different areas. In Somaliland, where the clan systems was best preserved, this system of governance was effective in immediately implementing peace and reconciliation, immediately after the overthrow of the dictatorship, and in democratically creating the new Government of Somaliland. In Southern Somalia, it was less effective for a complex variety of reasons.
Today, the Somali people are faced with the choice of creating a new form of governance either with or without their traditional system based upon the clan structure. Some Somalis want a return to their traditional form of governance and other Somalis want to permanently and completely eliminate their traditional form of governance. The ultimate pragmatic choice will probably be some compromise in the middle. As one potential compromise, a bi-camel legislature for Somaliland and Southern Somalia, either separately or reunified, might have:
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one chamber comprised of representatives from geographical districts, as typical for most democracies of farmers, and |
| one chamber comprised of representatives from clans as identifiable groups of moving people, as is typical for most democracies of nomads. |
(See the concept of Davies whereby "clans are identifiable groups of moving people" which can potentially democratically elect representatives in a representative democratic form of government in Section 6.2 in Chapter 6 of "Reunification of the Somali People")
One of the obvious current weaknesses of the traditional clan-based system of governance has been the difficulties for many of the clans to democratically select leaders with genuine mandates to represent them in a representative democratic form of government. There may be three factors causing this problem:
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A smaller fraction of all Somalis are living as moving nomads today. |
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A larger fraction of all Somalis are scattered as individual families living in metropolitan areas making it difficult for them to participate in a traditional "shir" of their clan or group of clans. |
| As the total population has multiplied in size since 1960, the dia-paying groups may not have all been sub-divided appropriately in order to maintain reasonable sizes for that level of governance in the traditional system. |
Modern technology offers solutions to these technical obstacles -- if the Somali people want to retain their traditions in a modern effective form. The technical solution lies in conducting a census of the population that not only records the geographical district in which citizens happen to live or be passing through as nomads, but also the clan affiliation based upon lineage of each individual. A voter ID card, could then positively identify for each individual citizen both
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the geographical village, city, district, or region in which the individual is qualified to vote in an election as well as |
| the subclan, clan, or group of clans in which the individual is qualified to vote in electing representatives for that clan or group of clans. |
Dr. A.K. Sharma has presented useful suggestions in this direction in his paper, "Conducting a Reliable Census in Somalia".
Then, the federal, regional, and local governments can technically not only conduct elections based upon their geographical boundaries, but also provide technical assistance to the clans of identifiable moving people for collecting their "write-in" votes from clan members scattered around who can not reasonably participate in a local "shir" for electing their representatives.
In this context, we see that both
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an accurate national census and |
| an accurate voter registration program |
ultimately will depend upon reliable genealogical information about individual Somali citizens. Just as citizens should not be allowed to vote twice in national elections (from claimed residence in two different election districts) they should not be allowed to vote twice (from claimed membership in different clans). Otherwise there is a risk of fraud distorting the will of the people.
Many countries now have one ID card that uniquely identifies each citizen for a variety of such purposes. In the USA, it is the Social Security Card (which is often used for other purposes than its original intended purpose). In other countries, it is often a national ID card.
The Relationship Between Somali Genealogy and Somali Culture
Since information on genealogy, history, and culture have been passed down orally through the same channels, it is difficult to separate them in practice. If we make an effort to systematically collect information about Somali genealogy, we will need to interview the many Somali "wise men" and "elders" who are the carriers of such information in oral form. These same "wise men" are also the carriers of historical information and cultural information, also in oral form. To preserve the accuracy of such oral historical information, it is often passed on in the form of poetry, i.e. culture, as a means of minimizing the distortion or loss of information from one generation to the next.
The chaos among the Somalis since the collapse of the dictatorship in 1991 has led to major movements of Somalis, whereby many of these "wise men" have become exiles abroad or otherwise separated from their descendants and others dependent upon their repository of oral information. Therefore, the Somalis are currently threatened by a major loss of valuable cultural and historical information as a result of this chaos. This creates a great urgency for the long-term interests of the Somali people to interview as many of these "wise men" as possible, as carriers of valuable information, in order to at least record this valuable information now -- either in written form or at least on audio tapes for later processing.
If the effort is to be made to collect any component of this oral information, i.e. historical, genealogical, or cultural; it would certainly be more cost-effective to collect all of it from each source once, rather than to attempt to interview each source separately for each separate category of information.
In checking the validity of the sequence of male ancestors in any male genealogical line, it is important to compare this raw data with the historical and cultural information contained in the poems in which this data is stored. As one example, it may be possible to reconstruct at least some of the missing information about the mothers of individuals from these sources.
Also, as a result of the chaos since the beginning of the war of liberation in Somalia starting at the end of the war with Ethiopia over the Ogaden and continuing on after the collapse of the dictatorship to the present, there is not much reliable history as to what actually happened in this period of time. If data is to be collected on genealogy, older history, and culture for a census or issuance of ID cards or voter registration cards; this may be an important opportunity to identify the names of most individuals who died during this period, their genealogy, and the causes of their deaths.
Potential Scientific Interest in Somali Genealogy
It is theoretically possible to create a reasonably complete genealogy of all Somalis who have ever lived since their "founding fathers". If sufficient blood samples from nearly all living Somalis could be collected, this would enable scientists to identify the forefather where some specific mutations occurred. This would be useful data for modern genetic research in general. For this reason, it is conceivable that some large-scale projects could be financed by the international scientific community because of the benefits they would obtain from such information.
This could include at least some blood samples being taken from a variety of non-Somali lineages on the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula, which could be useful for the Somalis in answering some questions about their history. This could show the fraction of the Somali population today which has ancestries back to each of these other lineages.
Potential Genealogical Projects for the Somali Civic Organization
Design and Implement a Multi-Purpose Census of the Somali People
The outputs from a Multi-Purpose Census might include:
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a national identity card issued immediately; |
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a passport (or at least the foundations for later issuing a passport); |
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a voter registration card issued immediately; |
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genealogical data for both father and mothers as ancestors as well as siblings and children of the same or later generations; |
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date of birth, place of birth, level of education, and current profession; |
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current place of residence; |
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a blood sample, possibly with immediate identification of blood type for inclusion on any identity card issued (to facilitate quick blood transfusions in emergencies); and |
| survey of each individual for the names of relatives and acquaintances who died in the past 20 years, whereby the individual was a witness or has credible information, including genealogy (if known), place, date, and cause of death; |
This data can then be processed with computers to generate a database from which various reports and statistics can be generated automatically, such as:
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a reasonably-complete genealogical "family tree" for nearly all Somalis living today going back to the "founding fathers" of their Somali genealogy; |
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identification of potential fraudulent multiple registrations or registrations with false names; |
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reliable data for fairly allocating the number of democratically-elected representatives by geographical regions and/or clan groupings; |
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blood samples that can be used for scientific research concerning the genealogy and history of the Somali ethnic group as well as to identify different medical problems, such as diabetes, sickle-cell anemia, HIV, etc. for either statistical analysis and/or being able to contact the individual for counseling and medical treatment; and |
| a medical database where medical records can be stored for Somalis, perhaps optionally at the choice of each individual, so that when they go to different health service providers each provider will have immediate access to their medical records for faster treatment and to avoid unnecessary duplication of diagnostic procedures. |
There are a number of ethical issues involved with such data collection and the Somali Civic Organization should consider them in detail before making recommendations on how they should be handled in the best of interests of the Somali People and reflecting also the individual desires of individual Somalis.
The integration of all genealogical data into one consolidated genealogical database will require considerable attention in both the design and implementation. Different spellings are often used for the same name. Some names are so similar that they are often switched, i.e. Mohamed, Mohammed, Mohamud, etc. Memories sometimes fail and if one person in a chain omits one name in a chain or changes it, then all descendants of that person will also omit the same name or change it in the same way. As one example, one of the descendents of one man with the name of Mohammed may accidentally substitute the similar name of Mohamud, with the result that would create a pseudo additional brother of Mohammed with the name of Mohamud in this database. Many Somalis do not know their complete genealogy all of the way back to a "founding father" and it will be necessary to link or connect the chain that they do know to an already existent portion of the chain. The complementary data on the clan, subclan, etc. can be helpful in connecting such fragments of chains accurately.
Design and Implement a Census of Somali Wise Men
This project would be similar to the Multi-Purpose Census above, except that it would focus upon a relatively small number of Somali "wise men" who are acknowledged among the Somalis as being repositories of vast amounts of oral history, poems, genealogical information, etc. The concept could consist of:
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research and advertising to identify as many such individuals as possible as well as their current address; |
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assign a nearby volunteer Member of the Somali Civic Organization to contact and interview them with a standard format and procedure; |
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organizing other volunteer Members of the Somali Civic Organization to process the raw data from such interviews; and |
| consolidate and integrate the resulting information into a database and set of web pages. |
Whenever feasible, each interview should include:
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one or more photos of the individual "wise man"; |
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audio tapes of the interview; |
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the genealogy of the "wise man" himself; |
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as much genealogical information that can be obtained, particularly about the forefathers of the "wise man", but also including information about parallel lineages if he knows them; |
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the genealogical information should also include any information that he may have concerning the daughters, wives and mothers of men; |
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any tales, stories, myths, poems, plays, etc. that have been passed on to him over several generations; |
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any other historical information about his clan or other clans; |
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any other cultural information and traditions that he may be able to recite; and |
| it may be useful to ask each "wise man" to repeat one or two of the poems at different points in the interview, for later comparing the accuracy of the two recitals as a general measure of the reliability for the information |
Each "wise man" should also be asked about any written reference materials he may have or have used. This data should be recorded. Particularly if the written materials appear to be unique, an effort should be made to obtain photocopies.
In processing this raw data, the recitals of information should be transcribed from the audio tapes into written form as computer text files. The major myths, poems, songs, etc. should appear in the interviews of many different "wise men". They should be carefully compared with each other to identify errors and inaccuracies that may have occurred either in the memory of a "wise man" in the chain or in the transmittal from one "wise man" to another. When each of two variants of the same myths, poems, songs, etc. occur several times, and the genealogies of all "wise men" are known, it may be possible to identify the number of generations back when the error occurred. Such data on the frequencies of such errors could be useful in projecting backwards to estimate the accuracy of such tales over any given number of generations.
At the end of the processing and analysis, a consensus view should emerge concerning each item as to which appears to be the most-reliable version or possibly to identify a small number of alternative versions as being the most reliable versions.
Creation of a Central Somali Genealogical Database
The design for this Database should be completed first, before a substantial effort is invested in collecting data for it. Otherwise, the collected data may not be in an appropriate format or include all of the data that is desired. In particular, a list of standard spellings for the most common Somali given names should be compiled first. Since there are at least two different ways for spelling most names, both ways should be recorded in two separate listings. One of these two listings should be chosen for use with the database and names from the other listing should be automatically converted to this standard listing. A procedure would need to be defined for processing new names that are not on a standardized listing, such as to include a procedure for adding that name to the listing for future occurrences.
In addition to the data in fixed formats, such as given names, there may be a need for an optional pointer or link to one or more non-formatted text files, giving extra information about the individual when it is available.
Access to this database could be made available over the Internet. Then, during data-collection in the field, such as a census or voter registration, the data of an individual could be entered as a query to determine what relevant information is already stored in the database. When there are inconsistencies between what the individual is reporting in the field and what is in the database, such inconsistencies may be resolvable in the field so that any new data entered will be consistent with the data already stored.
There will be many cases of misspelled names or confusions between similar names or incomplete information being provided by an individual. In some cases, such errors and inconsistencies can be resolved automatically by the computer. In other cases, an expert may need to manually study the various conflicting data and make a decision on how to resolve the problem.
Some Somali citizens may consider this genealogical data to be sensitive personal information about them and their immediate relatives. Therefore, the issue of confidentiality and access to such a database should be studied carefully and it may be appropriate to conduct sample interviews with randomly-selected Somalis to see how they would feel about giving their genealogical information to a private or governmental organization and what safeguards they would like to see installed to protect this information.
The Next Steps
Members of the Somali Civic Web can discuss the issues and potential projects outlined above in the Discussion Group for this Topic Area.
Members should attempt to reach a consensus upon the Goals that they want to achieve and the Projects they would like to implement, again in the Discussion Group for this Topic Area.
[See the on this Article.]
Topic Areas: Goals / / Genealogy / / / Culture
Resources: / / / /
© Somali Civic Organization (in formation) 2001
Author: Jack L. Davies, Version P-1, 15 September 2002