JOURNAL OF SOMALI STUDIES Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014 Pp 35-61 The Externally Defined Somali National Identity Ali Mumin Ahad La Trobe University, Australia aliahad@bigpond.com …………………………………………………………………………. Introduction The Somali political system is largely the product of the Italian colonial administration. There are few, if any, traces of the British system of government left in either the Somali system of governance or the country’s political practice. From the very beginning, the Italian colonial vision of Somalia entailed dividing the society into two separate parts: nomadic pastoralists freely roving within and beyond the country’s boundaries and sedentary agriculturalists who could eventually provide a servile labor-force for the colonial enterprise. This dubious categorization of Somali society was instituted by representatives of the eighteenth-century Omani Sultanate of Zanzibar in the Benadir region. The sultans of Zanzibar brought Somalia into the sphere of Indian Ocean slavery, which ultimately led to the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of indigenous Somalis and other Africans. The explicit separation of Somalis into free pastoralists and subservient agriculturalists was utilized by the Italian colonial administration that replaced the representatives of Zanzibar. More importantly, colonial anthropologists who adopted this categorization of Somali society interpreted it along racial lines. This point is paramount in understanding the later “racialization” of Somali 35  The Externally Defined Somali… identity. In Southern Somalia, the colonial system produced a cultural attitude of contempt and discrimination for the autochthonous population whose genetic constitution does not contain strong Asiatic elements. During the colonial era, and even in post-independence Somalia, existing cultural and physical differences were used to justify prejudices. These biases were reinforced by invented traditions that were extremely detrimental to the southern population. The colonial representation of Somali society, which has been utilized by many non-Somali scholars, reproduced racial and social discrimination within Somali society and culture. This cultural manipulation became instrumental in defrauding people of political rights. In his 1955 work, Peoples of the Horn, Ioan. M. Lewis first articulates a conceptual and anthropological framework of the Somali nation-state and national identity (Lewis, 1994). Based on fieldwork conducted in a small nomadic community in the Northern Somaliland British Protectorate and earlier work by Italian colonial anthropologists Colucci, Cerulli and Puccioni, Lewis uses the social structure he observed in this community to explain the entire Somali society before he even visited central and southern Somalia. In later works, Lewis defines the Somali agnatic and segmentary social structures as a pastoral democracy, a government structure where the clan system serves as its foundation. This idea of a clan-based Somali society captivated everyone until the eruption of the recent civil war in late 1990 that ensnared the whole nation in a web of antagonistic tribal relations that magnified the problems of clan conflict. As I noted earlier, Lewis’ work refers primarily to the northern portion of Somalia included in the British Protectorate. In southern Somalia, almost all of the indigenous agriculturalist population was uncritically defined by Italian colonial scholars as liberti, or formerly enslaved freedmen. One of the key—and possibly most divisive—moments in Somali national identity formation was the Abyssinian War of 1935-36. Prompted by fascism, this conflict had Somali militias from different 36 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 clans fightingalongside the Italians. The recruitment of Somali militias occurred in circumstances that reinforced the social differentiation that had already been established by early Italian colonialism. Italian colonial authorities racially discriminated between farmers and pastoralists in Somalia. In fact, the farming communities were barred from enlisting in the colonial militias by Governor De Vecchi. This was an application of a 1924 decree, which predates the 1938 racial legislations against the Italian Israelites (Ahad, 1993). Methodology This study uses an observatory method of existing data available from various sources and in different languages, especially Italian and English. It attempts to interpret the data by developing the link with the existing traditions locally produced. In the following sections, the essay will first analyze the diverse literature from the perspective of the colonial misconceptions in identifying the people, followed by a discussion of the terms Rahanweyn, Sab, and Samaale and aspects of their differences but also their relationships. Then, an examination of the pre-Hemitic population of agriculturalists will be next. This section will develop the argument into the mechanism of association and assimilation between them and their pastoral counterparts, before the last segment concludes the discussion. Exploring the Colonial Misconceptions A new perspective in Somali Studies might contribute to a better understanding of how prejudices and contrived traditions led to forms of discrimination that are still in effect and yet defy common sense. The subtleties of colonial power have been accepted as a fact, and, in addition, politics in postcolonial Somalia have been built on the colonialist perception of Somali society, which represents a false image that is not yet been fully challenged. Connivance with a clan system benefits from a constructed colonial historiography. The time has come when Somali scholars must refuse to passively accept what has been done for purely colonial reasons and call for a critical 37  The Externally Defined Somali… analysis of both the colonial historiography and its political conceptualizations. Both the concept of pastoral democracy and the Italian colonial hypothesis of “former slaves” in relation to the indigenous agriculturalist population in southern Somalia should be seen as merely corresponding to the colonial views of the British administration in the north and of the Italian administration in the south. The British protected their subjects while the Italians sought to dominate theirs. While British scholars appreciated the social organization of the Somali population, the Italian colonial authorities and scholars misrepresented the social organization as being based on race. The British did not discriminate between Somalis in their northern protectorate as the Italians did in the south. The extension of Lewis’ concept of pastoral democracy to all of Somalia substantiates a particular view of Somali identity. Another emergent view is that the Italian colonial attitude towards agriculturalists in southern Somalia as liberti, produces an erroneous understanding of southern Somali society. Non-Somali scholars contributed to the perpetuation of an identity that excludes a large part of the society; after all, not all of Somali society is made up of nomadic pastoralists, nor has the vast majority of the agriculturalist population in the South been subjected to slavery. Slavery, an abhorrent activity, was exclusively related to the period when the Sultans of Zanzibar controlled the coastal cities of Benadir. The Italian commercial enterprises that replaced the sultans in the Benadir ports continued to disregard the agriculturalists and occasionally supported slavery. Eventually, the Italian colonial authorities sought to politically exploit slavery. At first, they exposed the issue in order to prove their antagonism to it. Later, they used the stigma of slavery to get menial labor and to dispossess the agriculturalist population of the fertile lands in the South. The populations that inhabited lands along the important Juba and Shabelle rivers for centuries, before any migration from the northern shores of the Peninsula occurred, were robbed by the 38 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 colonial policy of inland expansion. These agriculturalist populations on the banks of the Juba and Shabelle absorbed nomadic pastoralists through a system of forced adoption in agriculturalist communities. Some colonial and postcolonial scholars ignore this fact and ambiguously infer a mixing of these populations with elements deriving from slavery (Lewis, 1965; Laitin & Samatar, 1987). However, what such scholars fail to say is that the eventual number of persons brought to Somalia’s Benadir as slaves is quantitatively less significant compared to the number of autochthonous agriculturalists. In the nineteenth century, well-established agriculturalist institutions with autonomous, stable organizations existed in the agricultural area between the two rivers of Juba and Shabelle in southern Somalia. Things would change drastically with the advent of colonialism, particularly with its agricultural economic transformation that superseded the sustainable subsistence system that allowed the agriculturalist population to be autonomous. The definition of Somali society as segmented units is limited to northern Somali pastoralists. Lewis delineates his concept of Somali society in the following way: the Somali people comprise a vast system of segmented groups. It is convenient to call these groups nation, tribal-family, confederacy, sub-confederacy, and tribe (Lewis, 1965). A segmentary society is made up of several structurally similar groups that are capable of combining or dividing at various levels according to the circumstances (Cassanelli, 1982). The conceptualization of the nation as segmented groups of nomadic pastoralists acts as a powerful instrument that gains a more precise political role when building a socio-political system of and for the pastoralists. Lewis himself definitively associates the physiognomy of the society with the clan system from which the concept of a Somali pastoral democracy is made up. Therefore, with time, the misrepresentation made through the external description of the nation and its people has begun to assume a stable configuration in the Somali political psyche that has led to the development of nationalist ideas. The social complexity and the cultural and ethnic 39  The Externally Defined Somali… diversity of the different groups within the population give way to the idea of a simple homogeneous national identity constituted in accordance with the concept of agnatic segmentary society and are well described by Lewis’s idea of a pastoral democracy. In postcolonial Somalia, the colonial categories and concepts have been utilized to describe the Somalis and their political environment. Categories such as noble and non-noble were colonially imposed. They were used to stratify society to conform to the political objectives of the Italian colonial authority at that time, particularly the Fascist labor conscription policy that targeted the agriculturalist population of the colony (Segal, 2001). The colonial authorities intended for such categories to correspond to a stratification of the local society prior to colonization. However, this was not the case. Pre-colonial Somali society was organized in such a way that every group had a stable location and territory that corresponded with its main economic activity; this allowed for considerable autonomy from any similar unit. Somalis have never known a culture in which feudal subservience and strong political and religious hierarchies were standard (Abdullahi, 2001). Thus, racial distinctions are actually a product of the colonial experience because slavery and the slave trade (which was not significant for Somalis) are new to Somali culture (Drysdale, 2000). The use of these racial categories tends to simplify the anthropologically complex features of modern Somali society and fails to consider absorption and intermarriage between the different populations that, in successive periods, lived in southern Somalia. The anthropological features are traced by Lewis (1965:5) as follows: In their facial features particularly, the Somali also exhibit evidence of their long standing relations with Arabia; and, in the south, amongst the Digil and Rahanwein tribes, physical traces of their past contact with Galla and Bantu peoples in this region. Revisiting the Terms Rahanweyn, Sab, and Samaale The classificatory partitioning of activity in Somali culture that makes agriculture into a servile activity and pastoralism into a noble one 40 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 was strongly reinforced in the Somalis’ perception by the actions of colonial authorities in southern Somalia who introduced a system of forced labor on banana plantations. The Italian colonialists were exclusively interested in areas with irrigation potential (Helander, 1986). As Abdullahi (2001:157) argues, “In the earlier years of the twentieth century, Italian colonialists got concessions on the best arable land and started huge plantations, under the active encouragement of the fascist regime”. By imposing forced labor on the agriculturalist populations along Juba and Shabelle rivers, the Italian colonial authority strengthened the impression that agriculture and farming are servile activities. Consequently, as Julia Maxted (2000:162) remarks, “Agricultural activity has traditionally been avoided by members of the Samaale [which is a later adjustment of the previous name Soomaal that was paired with Sab] in that it was associated with African-ness and peasanthood, and inferior to nomadic pastoralism.” Colonialism influenced the creation and reinforcement of separateness between Somalis because of their location and activities. When that separation was closely—but elusively—connected with a discourse of difference and status, what emerged in Somali cultural behavior could be considered discrimination. However, it is important to examine the genesis of the term Sab and compare its meanings in a socio-political context. The intention of this essay is to find what is apparently lacking at this moment in Somali studies, to determine the relationship between the two meanings of the term Sab, and to present an alternative hypothesis about the Sab identity in a complex Somali national identity. From the historical documents created by European travelers and colonial scholars, we know that the first use of the term Sab was in northern Somalia where it was used to label occupational castes of craftsmen such as smiths or shoemakers or hunters, distinguishing them from those engaged in animal herding, which was the most prevalent activity of the pastoral nomads in northern Somalia. As Cerulli (1957) points out, the Isaq and Darod Somali give to the 41  The Externally Defined Somali… people of low caste living in their territory the name Sab. So, in traditional Somali politics, certain caste groups have been considered socially inferior. This contradicts Islamic tenets, as Islamic law does not recognize a caste system; rather, it proclaims the fraternity of believers and is, therefore, opposed to the general principle of castes (Laitin, 1977). The creation of castes in Somalia and the resulting discrimination are not related to Islam (Cerulli, 1959), despite Somali clergymen’s silence over the issue (Eno & Eno, 2010). In the northern part of the Somali peninsula, the caste system seems to be connected to the desire to distinguish groups of Arab descent from the local population who succumbed to the political dominance of the former. The first were owners of wealth or animals (siwualmal), while the latter (sab) had skills as hunters or craftsmen. Derived from the Arabic term siwualmawuasci (owner of herd), the term siwualmal means both “owner of a herd” as well as “he who eats and drinks only the meat and milk of his animals.” Robecchi-Brichetti (1889) suggests that the term Somali could be derived from siwualmal. A Somali tradition suggests that Sab is the name of an Arab expelled from his country for a reason connected to the zakat (charity) payment. He established himself on the shores of Tajura and became an ally of a local chief (Lewis, 1994). In other words, the original Sab (used with a capital S by Lewis to differentiate it from the caste with small s) was one of the numerous Arab immigrants who intermingled with local women and became a founder of multiple Somali tribes. The legend says that Sab broke his alliance with the Galla chief after he became powerful, earned the name of Gobron, established his own hereditary lineage, and went to southern Somalia. This tradition identifies the Gobron group in Geledi as descendants of Sab. This tradition clearly contradicts Cerulli’s hypothesis on the origin of the term Sab as well as the historical evidence. As Cerulli suggests, Sab may indeed be an ethnic name. As Arnold Hodson says, Sab is one of the main sections of the Galla Borana people that inhabit the area between the Somali borders 42 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 up to Ganana and Dawa Valley to Lake Stefania on one side and Sidamo and Arussi on the other (Hodson, 1919). Further, Lewis (1994) indicates Cerulli’s suggestion that Sab has some connection with the Sabo moiety of the Galla Borana who contributed extensively to the current Sab population. For Cerulli, it is most probable that the Sab of the Galla Borana population gave their name to the Dighil (in Somali Digil) people when the latter drove them from Bur Hakaba in the seventeenth century but remained their neighbors. Even the Rahanweyn (also called Reewing in Somali Maay language) absorbed a significant part of the area’s preexisting Galla Borana population. This possibility is bolstered by linguistic similarities between the dialects of the Dighil and Galla populations (Cerulli, 1926). The term Sab is used by the northern Somalis in relation to groups traditionally defined as low caste. It is particularly relevant that those who are defined as sab in northern Somalia are not devoted to nomadic pastoralism, but to less prestigious activities such as crafts and hunting. For Cerulli (1959), it seems equivocal that the term Sab indicates the low-caste groups in the northern part of Somalia; rather, he explains that it refers to the ancestors of a section of Galla Borana and Somalis in the south. If ambiguity exists on this matter, it is because of the different social organizations involved. In the case of the northern nomadic society, the agnatic system, which is the predominant organization in Arabia, produces a segmentary lineage system that is consistent with nomadic life. The southern social system, although still recognizable as a patriarchal social organization founded on genealogy, was open to external contributions through the collective adoption system, which was derived from the practices of the African agriculturalist culture and permitted the coexistence of different populations. It is an historical fact that in southern Somalia agriculture was traditionally the mainstay of the economy until the spread of nomadic pastoralism. Agriculturalists surrounded the early, still Asiatic, immigrant colonies in the coastal cities. 43  The Externally Defined Somali… Like the newly founded coastal cities, the rural agrarian society was politically organized as an open society which accepted new elements and citizens. From the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, nomadic pastoralist groups became a part of the agricultural societies surrounding the coastal centers of Benadir and eventually settled alongside the Shabelle River. This form of mixed society was clearly inconceivable for the clan-based mentality of the northern nomadic populations who regarded it as less noble because it would lead to the creation of the agriculturalists. To define this mixture of diverse individuals, they utilized the term Sab, which was previously used among themselves to describe members of the low caste. Another term in use in northern Somalia to indicate hunters and gatherers is rahan. The term rahan was first recorded at the time of the arrival of Europeans in the northern part of the country by Cruttenden (1849) of the British Army. Rahan and Sab are both used by northerners to describe low-caste people, and it is logical to conclude that they coined the term rahan-weyn to indicate the confederacy of diverse people in southern Somalia. Therefore, the term rahan, which indicates a population of hunters armed with bow and arrow in northern Somalia, seems to be used in the south to indicate not a similar group of hunters but the ethnically composite population of the whole of Somalia. The southern populations, which include hunters and agriculturalists as well as animal herders and pastoralists, constitute an anomaly for northerners. To return to the story of the tradition that makes Sab an Arab that has been expelled from his country or an immigrant who settled on the northern coast of Somalia and became an animal herder; let us see how tradition explains the story of people in southern Somalia. The progeny of Arab immigrants may have grown in number and decided to move southward in search of better grazing for their herds. When they arrived in the south (where it is possible today to find those who claim to be descendants of an ancestor of Arab origin who, in the distant past, went there with his sons), they encountered an 44 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 indigenous population who was mostly devoted to agriculture and hunting. The newcomers, who were fewer in number than the original inhabitants, were first accepted as neighbors. A process of inclusion in the agricultural social context then took place. Is it this scenario of contact among communities from diverse ethnic backgrounds that contributed to the creation of what would become the social structure of southern Somalia? This is highly probable, since there is a more integrated society in the south, one that could be defined as agro-pastoralist, as distinguished from the more nomadic pastoralist societies of the north that developed the lineage system. More to the point, the newcomer’s traditions and positions within the indigenous host group confirm both the process of inclusion into the agricultural social organization and the subsequent accession to a political role within it. In many cases, the northern nomads’ claim of Arab descent and the importance of religion and the religious heritage in the agricultural social context endow the whole group with a powerful instrument with which to facilitate consensual access to leadership in this new situation (Egal, 1968). This mechanism of social integration and political mobility within a preexisting socio-political framework is more common than it appears to most present-day anthropologists and historians. Cerulli’s Sab hypothesis, which should not be completely dismissed, requires a supplementary postulation supported by local tradition, which has not been considered previously by scholars. It is basically linked to the concept of autochthony. As Cerulli has suggested, the name Sab could be connected with the Galla Borana who contributed considerably to the present Sab population in Southern Somalia. If there was contiguity between the northern nomadic pastoralists and the Galla population that occupied the country before them, this connection could be an explanation for the transmission of the term Sab from Galla to the newly constituted confederation of Rahanweyn. But the Rahanweyn confederacy includes both agriculturalist Bantu and hunters who previously 45  The Externally Defined Somali… inhabited the country that the Galla population had left during the sixteenth century (Cerulli, 1957). There are records of Sab-Rahanweyn people who were descendants of the many autonomous pre-Cushitic groups that occupied the country and the area between the Juba and Shabelle Rivers prior to the arrival of the Galla and the northern nomadic pastoralists (Helander, 1986). Cerulli’s hypothesis that the term Sab is derived from the Galla tribe name Sabo may be compared with the hypothesis of Ugo Ferrandi, an Italian colonial resident at Lugh, a locality mostly inhabited by Rahanweyn people. Ferrandi derives the term Sab from an African language but does not indicate which language. It appears to be from an area in the vicinity of, and having some relationship with, southern Somalia. If this is correct, it could be in the same territory that was referred to as Benadir during the Italian colonial period or, at least, in its immediate vicinity. Ferrandi, referring to those groups that only he and Cerulli recognize as being autochthonous, writes that Sab, in that unstated African language, means “indigenous.” Etymologically, the term Sab has two possible derivations in the Somali language, both of which are related to cultivation and agriculture. The first is sabuul, or corn- cob; the second is sabo, which literally means courtyard or sedentary. It is logical to think that Sab derives from the Somali term sabo which means courtyard or resident. The meaning of Sab as resident population, the opposite of nomadic, derives from the adjective sabool, or poor in comparison to the siwulmal, the rich owners of herds and nomadic pastoralists (Ahad, 2008). Sab is the “indigenous cultivator” population of pre-colonial southern Somalia. The Pre-Hamitic Agriculturalist Population between the Juba and Shabelle Rivers Desmond Clark asserts that in historically distant times, southern Somalia was inhabited by a population with a strong Negro “Black” element. These people were driven further south and partially absorbed by Hamitic immigrants from the north. This process of 46 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 pushing back and absorbing populations which preceded the Dighil pastoralists in southern Somalia happened around the fourteenth century. Before that time, the area of the Bur was occupied by people mentioned in Elai traditions as Loo Medo, most of who were probably a mixture of Negroes and Galla Wardai (Clark, 1953). The site changes of a population are not instantaneous and do not completely exhaust the vitality of the departing groups. It can take generations before a group disappears and is completely integrated into another. This is the case where populations are devoted to the same activity. More difficult is the fusion of different occupational groups such as pastoralists and agriculturalists. What happens in this case is that the preexisting group is integrated into the socioeconomic dimension of the newly arrived one or vice versa. That mixture sometimes creates a more integrated community or mixed society with its own customs and culture. As relates to the process of mixing populations, Lewis (1969:49-77) expresses his version as follows: The present Digil and Rahanwin populations are in large measure the outcome of a long, disjointed series of migrations and expansionary movements by Somali nomads from the north and north-west, their conflicts and agreements with earlier Galla and Bantu communities, and the blending of these elements in a variety of patterns of mutual accommodation. When the Dighil pastoralist groups arrived in the Bur lands where the traditions mention the pre-existence of Negroid and Galla populations, they, probably, did not totally absorb the previous occupants. Sometimes, previous groups resisted the absorption and maintained their individuality. Mohamed Haji Mukhtar, in his essay in The Invention of Somalia, refers to traditions that confirm the existence of pre-Islamic pagan dynasties that constituted a clear expression of well-framed social and political organizations. With Islam prevailing as a religious and cultural force, such dynasties adapted to the situation. Mukhtar (1995:13) writes: The oral tradition in the Doi belt of Somalia suggests the existence of powerful pagan dynasties in the region, like Ghedi Baabow, Dubka Baalow, 47  The Externally Defined Somali… Fyle Arow, Barambara and others. The headquarters of these dynasties were mainly located on the tops of mountains, like Bur Hakaba, Bur Haybe, Bur Gerwiine, Gelway, and others. Such dynasties found in Islam a means of protecting their political power. (Emphasis in original) Who were the ancient inhabitants of the Doi (in Somali script Doy or Dooy)? Were those populations incorporated within Rahanweyn genealogies and completely absorbed? Cerulli tends to support that view and sees the constitution of the Elay as an example of the melding of the two elements of a population that was made up of Negroid agriculturalist and hunting groups inhabiting the area of the Bur and Somali pastoralist groups that entered the same location around the seventeenth century (Cerulli, 1957). Desmond Clark (1953:49-51) refers to some cultural clues and traditions: Eile tradition says that at one time they themselves inhabited the whole of the country in the region of the three “burs,” Bur Hakaba, Bur Degis and Bur Eibe, but that they were driven out of the first two areas by the Elai and Hellada. These oral traditions are widely diffused within the Eile and Elay populations. They are also known among southern Somalis but are infrequently referred to by Somali scholars. The Eile and Elai traditions mention Gheddi Babow, king of the Eile, who ruled as a tyrant but was valiant in war. He used to entrench himself in the Bur Mountains. From that position, Gheddi Babow defended his realm using poisoned arrows. He was the only person who knew the secret of making the waabaayo (a poison made from an alkaloid extract obtained from a species of euphorbia.) Desmond Clark (1953:49-51) described the legend of Gheddi Babow in the following manner: Legend also credits Gedi Babo with having lived at Bur Eibe where the rock shelter known as the Gure Wabai (Guri Wabaio) which means “the cave of the arrows poison,” is pointed out as having been his home. It was here, so it is said, that the Eile brought him their arrows for poisoning as none was as expert as he in applying the poison to the tang. 48 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 There is considerable evidence supporting the presence of a Bantu population along the Juba River. From the oral histories collected by Cerulli and Clark, it is presumed that this group was connected with the Galla population. The Galla cohabited with the pre-Cushitic populations on the Shabelle River plateau. Beckingham and Huntingford suggest that though the early home of the Galla was Somaliland, they were not allowed to remain undisturbed there. The growing strength and consolidation of the Somali, the need to extend their grazing lands, and the spread of Islam (which was introduced into Somaliland in the latter half of the seventh century) gradually drove a large part of the Galla towards the southwest (Beckingham & Huntingford, 1954). As early as the twelfth century, pastoralist tribes of the interior had begun to wrest the land from its pre-Cushitic Bantu and Galla inhabitants (Hess, 1966). Desmond Clark (1953:49-51) suggests the idea of the connections between pre-Cushitic Negroid and Galla people, but he does not explore it further: It is possible, therefore, that this early Negroid element in the Horn is today represented, albeit much diluted, by the Bon (Waboni), Ribi, Eile and some of the Elai; the purest of these today being probably the Bon.… The relationship of these groups to the more essentially Negroid peoples of the Webi Shebeli and Juba valleys – the Shaveli, Shidle, Makanne and Gosha – is obscure. The obscurity that Clark refers to concerns the relationship between the inhabitants of the region between the Shabelle River and the Doi (in Somali written as Doy or Dooy) prior to the Galla occupation. This obscurity is more apparent than real. It is accounted for by the fact that the middle-upper tract of the Shabelle River was— and still is—occupied by the Makanna and Shidle, neither of whom are Bantu-speaking populations, contrary to the assertions contained in the 1993 Country Study (Metz, 1993). The Makanna and Shidle populations are related to the other pre-Cushitic Negroid elements referred to by Clark. The confusion as to whether these populations speak Bantu originated with a research hypothesis suggested by A. H. J. Prins and recorded by Priscilla Reining (1967). The intent is surely 49  The Externally Defined Somali… not the exclusion of the possibility that the two populations, Bantu- speaking and pre-Cushitic Negroid, had been in contact in the Somali peninsula at some moment of their history. Both ethnic groups were agricultural, sedentary populations prior to the arrival of nomadic pastoralists in the area between the Juba and Shabelle rivers in the southern regions of Somalia, while the Boni hunters occupy the savannah hinterland of Lamu and the Bajun Islands (1965). Before the incursions of the Hamitic Galla and Somali, this region, according to Lewis, was occupied by a mixed pre-Hamitic population-the Zengi of medieval Arab geographers-who seem to have comprised two distinct populations. Sedentary agricultural tribes, settled in the inter-riverine area survive today in Shidle, Kabole, Reer ‘Ise, Makanne, and Shabelle peoples on the Shabelle River. As Lewis (1961:22) writes: To the same group belong the Eelaay of Baidoa in the hinterland, and the Tunni of Brava District. The other section of the pre-Hamitic population consisted of Bushmanlike hunters and gatherers, and along the rivers of fishermen, of whom contemporary representatives are the WaRibi, WaBooni of Jubaland and southern Somalia, and the Eyle of Bur Hacaba. The Shidle, the Shabelle, and the Makanna, who are the aboriginal populations of the middle and upper Shabelle River plain, did not speak Bantu language at any known historical time (Cerulli, 1926; Cassanelli, 1982; Menkhaus, 2003). They speak the Somali language and use a considerable number of Galla-Oromo idioms. The Shidle, the Shabelle, and the Makanna are a sedentary and surely autochthonous pre-Cushitic population, which implies, more importantly, that they are the Sab in the meaning of the term suggested by Ferrandi, which is that they are indigenous to the Horn of Africa. They maintained considerable cohesion and were powerful enough to remain politically autonomous from—and minimize predatory raids by— surrounding pastoralists (Menkhaus, 2010). The nomadic pastoralists learned the practice of agriculture from them (Puccioni, 1937). Northern pastoralists were attracted to the sedentary cultivating 50 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 population of the south between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries and even later (Cerulli, 1957). According to Cerulli, these pre-Cushitic agriculturalists along the Shabelle River are not considered low caste by the nomadic pastoralists (Cerulli, 1959). This differentiates them from the connected pre-Cushitic hunting groups such Eile, Bon, and Midgan, who are considered as low caste because of their activity. They are all indigenous pre-Somali populations and are evidently ethnically intermixed (Lewis, 1955). These groups are also those referred to as the Zenji population mentioned by Arab writers and geographers in medieval times and it seems that they consisted of two distinct groups: hunters and sedentary agriculturalists. Cerulli was aware of the autochthony of these agriculturalist populations. This is evident in Cerulli’s (1926:2-3) statements such as the following: I am increasingly convinced that the current explanation in relation to the undoubtedly Negro populations of the Shidle, the Shabelle etc., that is that they were the slaves of the Somalis and were liberated by their owners, is certainly to be rejected. I hold that there is no doubt that the primitive nucleus of the populations of the Shidle, the Shabelle etc. was made up of those left behind by the Negro Bantu when, under pressure from the Galla, they cleared out the people from the region of the Uebi.1 They were Islamized before the great migrations of northern pastoralist groups. They now speak the Cushitic language of the Galla and Somalis. Their political system is based on the federation of territorial villages. As Colucci maintains, the majority of the villages in Somalia arose among populations of non-Somali races, in the definition of the colonial anthropologists, who cultivated the land along the banks of the rivers. The practice was to classify these populations as either Negro or Southern Bantu (Colucci, 1924). Among Italian colonial scholars, Colucci (1924:61) was the first who treated the origins of that agriculturalist population as ambiguous even though he recognized and described their stable organization and economic system: 51  The Externally Defined Somali… The banks of the Webi Scebeli, however far up-river one goes, are populated by people usually referred to as freedmen although the origins of some are altogether obscure. Starting from the northern border of our Colony, we see, one after the other, the Macanne, the Rer Issa, the Cavole, the Scidle, all established in villages and dedicated to the cultivation of the fertile land watered by the river. This economic organization and political system of indigenous Sab agriculturalists, already in existence at the foundation of the coastal centers of Mogadishu and Brava, was founded upon a village structure of social relationships. From their inland villages along the Shabelle River and their agricultural areas, according to Cerulli (1926), the agriculturalist groups maintained economic and trade relationships with the economic centers on the Indian Ocean, particularly Mogadishu in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. In his 1926 address to the Accademia dei Lincei, Cerulli asserts that the agriculturalists on the Shabelle River constituted the autochthonous population of Somalia. Notwithstanding this and for reasons related to colonial expansion, their collocation was rendered ambiguous-and deliberately blurred-in the colonial historical accounts. This concept of the autochthony of the southern agriculturalists is also expressed by Lewis (1955:88) in the following terms: “Nomadic is characteristic of the Somali, sedentary cultivation of the Negroid autochthons.” Cerulli (1926:3) addresses the political autonomy of those populations as follows: I think that there is no doubt that the original nucleus of the populations of the Shidle, the Shabelle, etc. was made up of those left behind by the Negro Bantu when, under pressure from the Galla, they moved out of the region of the Uebi (Webi Shabelle). In my opinion there is much evidence that the so- called “liberti” had such an historical origin. Let us look at it. First of all, the distribution of these groups along the banks of the river in zones held to be unhealthy and impractical because of malaria, the tsetse fly, and the nature of the terrain itself in the periods after rain: an area that for that matter was of no economic interest to the pastoralists of the Galla and the Somalis except as a watering place for animals in certain periods of the year. Then there is the political constitution and the nature of the relations which still exist between the Somalis (the successors of the Galla) and the so-called 52 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 “liberti.” It is a general principle that the black soil, that is all of the area resulting from alluvial deposits, belongs to them: and until some time ago, the Shidle resisted, even with arms, any claims by the Somalis to the black soil area. The evidence of autochthony of origin in addition to a well- known degree of political autonomy and a well-established political system of the agriculturalist population in southern Somalia prior to and after the colonial impact are the main reasons to link this alternative Sab identity hypothesis to the agriculturalists before the arrival of any of the nomadic pastoralist groups in the southern part of Somalia. Among the primarily sedentary cultivating Sab, the basic social unit is the mixed village, which has a heterogeneous social and ethnic composition. This organization was already extended to include the newcomer nomadic pastoralist groups between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This happened because there was an open socio-political system of village organization in an agriculturalist society that, through a system of collective and individual adoptions, accepted and included new elements in its organization. In other words, the agriculturalist population, which had been established for a long time upon the river banks of Somalia, is the group to which the term Sab refers if one adopts the meaning of “indigenous population” attributed to it by Ferrandi. This population, known to early Arab geographers as the Zenji, was concentrated in the fertile land between the Juba and Shabelle Rivers. For Lewis (1965), the Zenji or pre-Somali indigenous people seem to have consisted of two principal elements. The major part was made up of Bantu people who were sedentary cultivators living in the fertile pockets between the Shabelle and Juba. As Cassanelli suggests, some of these farmers may have been descendants of Bantu-speaking peoples who settled in the river valleys of Somalia more than a millennium ago (Cassenelli, 1982). Another part consisted of the populations of agriculturalists along the Shabelle River that, according to Somali oral traditions, historically held the “black land” of the river banks. According to Abdullahi 53  The Externally Defined Somali… (2001:157) “Riverside agriculture had existed for centuries and was practiced by the riverine Bantu peoples of southern Somalia.” In the hypothesis adopted here, they are the Sab and are “descendants of pre-Somali inhabitants of the area who were able to resist absorption or enslavement by the Somalis” (Metz, 1993:79). That is, they were the aboriginal population in accordance with oral traditions and material artifacts. This hypothesis is supported by Somalist scholars who are deeply involved with the southern agriculturalist population of Somalia, including Eno and Eno (2007:13-14) who point out that: Among the distinguished communities living in Southern Somalia are two clusters of Bantu people who are predominantly sedentary farmers. One group consists of the residents along the Shabelle River and its environs; they are the indigenous native to their current settlement …. The second group … comprises those along the Juba River, also known as Gosha (forest) people.” The second group, Gosha, according to Eno and Eno (2007:18), has been “absorbed into other [pre]existing Bantu aborigine/Negroid communities who were scattered in small and large villages on both banks of the river.” The Mechanism of Association between Agriculturalist and Pastoralist Groups In their southern expansion, nomadic Somali pastoralists typically sought alliance with, and the protection of, local agriculturalist tribes (Gorman, 1981). According to Lewis (1994), nomads traditionally disparaged agriculturalists because they were sedentary, but this did not prevent northern nomads from settling amongst them as clients, probably under acute environmental pressures. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Sab agriculturalists welcomed groups of pastoralists within their socio-economic organization with whom they established a well-defined system of reciprocity and cooperation. 54 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 As Tom Farer observes, the story of Somali pastoralist expansion is not only a tale of conflict; there were also some elements of cooperation and integration (Farer, 1979). The relationship between pastoralist and agriculturalist groups in the area of the Shabelle River was clearly demonstrated by Cerulli, who provides considerable evidence of assimilation, resource sharing, and peaceful trade between groups of pastoral immigrants and the agricultural population (Cassanelli, 1982). The instrument or mechanism of association between Sab (agriculturalists) and Somal (pastoralists) is the adoption system of African populations by which pastoralist groups are inserted and incorporated into their organization. According to Lewis (1994:140): This institutionalized adoption of clients, which attaches strangers not to individual patrons but to groups and is extremely rare among the northern nomads but very common among the southern cultivators, is crucial to any understanding of the differences in structure between the two Somali groups. The most important structure produced in these early contacts between the two groups was the hybrid society of agro-pastoralists (Cerulli, 1926). However, the nature of this association has been misrepresented by colonial scholars. The term client (arifa) is a corruption of the Somali word halifa, which is derived from the Arab word halafa that means to swear. For the political purpose of creating colonial jargon, the term “client” is preferred to “adopt” to underline a position of inferiority, and the term halifa was substituted by arifa (Guadagni, 1981). The adoption system in use within African agricultural populations favored the integration of diverse groups into the agriculturalists’ social organization. This system, first used by agriculturalists established on the banks of the Shabelle, progressively spread to a wider area. Assumedly, the system later became familiar to agro-pastoralists inhabiting territories far from the river like the Rahanweyn, who made it into a durable social system. Indeed, according to Bernhard Helander, Rahanweyn clans have a very high proportion of 55  The Externally Defined Somali… immigrant members who, despite their origins in other clans, are fully or almost fully integrated into their host clans (Helander, 1996). There is an Elay tradition (referred to by Colucci) related to the institution of adoption (halif) which asserts that the most important agro-pastoralist society in southern Somalia today—the Reewing—was formed by the aggregation of a nucleus of autochthonous and sedentary agriculturalist population with other mostly pastoralist groups. It was within this system of social and economic integration that a process of power acquisition developed later in the sixteenth century. The traditional arrangement of adoption within the agriculturalist society required the newcomer desiring to settle on the land of the cultivating group to seek admission into the group as a client and to undertake all the responsibilities and duties with his hosts (Eno, 2008:73-74, 80; Lewis, 1994). Cerulli registers the relationship between the two groups of population, and how they settle conflicts concerning cultivated land and herd watering places along the river. The Italian scholar states that ownership of the fertile “black land” remained with the agriculturalist groups (Cerulli, 1964). These historical facts, which confirm the existence of large agriculturalist populations in the Shabelle and Juba Valleys prior to and following colonial impact, contradict the picture of a prevalently pastoralist society, which “dominated both the academic texts, and the nationalist aspirations of successive postcolonial politicians (Maxted, 2000:159).” These bilateral agreements produced mutual collaborations between agriculturalist and pastoralist groups in the Shabelle area. It is worth saying that these arrangements developed a system of partnership within which an agriculturalist group became the ally of one particular pastoralist group. This typical aggregation in the Shabelle area can be seen as the basis for the development of a multicultural society, which was the norm until the time of colonial intervention. Lee Cassanelli, with extraordinary and remarkable critical insight, notes that Cerulli’s work provides considerable evidence of assimilation, resource sharing, and peaceful trade between pastoral immigrants, hunters, 56 Ali Mumin Ahad /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, Pp 35-61 and agricultural occupants of the land in southern Somali riverine areas. Yet, Cassanelli (1982:32) highlights that these aspects of his (Cerulli’s) work received little attention in later historical writing on Somalia, which continues to focus on the origins of the Somali and the chronology of their pastoral expansion. Conclusion This essay has attempted to discuss about the misconception of early colonial writers, particularly in the south, whose works concentrated on mixing identities and misinterpreting realities about certain communities. By using an analysis of the available literature, the essay tasked itself to hypothesize the root of some of the ethnic and/in identity terms the early writers have used in order to provide a different contextualization as well as understanding of what was misinterpreted and, as a result of that, misrepresented into a different identity. The discussion focused specifically on the possible root and meaning of the terms Rahanweyn, Sab, and Samaale, which are used as ethnonyms for the different categories of people the name refers to. It also describes the possible relationship and assimilation of these groups with the indigenous Bantu people described by some scholars as residues of earlier settlers in the area. In significance, the essay draws attention on the need to further study and clarify what constitutes the distinct Somali groups by considering the available traditions and other archival material, particularly the available literature in the Italian archives, so that Somalia scholarship benefits from that substantial knowledge which has often been ignored in Somali Studies. Notes: 1. All translations from the Italian are the author’s. 57  The Externally Defined Somali… References Abdullahi, M. D. (2001). Culture and Customs of Somalia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Ahad, A. M. (1993). “I peccati storici del colonialism in Somalia.” Democrazia & Diritto. Ahad, A. M. (2008). “Il dualismo Sab/Somali e la definizione dell’identità nazionale somala.” Africa, 3:429-468. Beckingham, C. F. & Huntingford, G.W.B., (Eds.) (1954). Some Records of Ethiopia with Extracts from Bahrey’s History of the Galla. Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Hakluyt Society. Bricchetti, R. (1889). Somalia e Benadir. 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