Of this mixed patrimony, although the Somali pony remains the prestige beast par excellence, it is their camels which Somali most esteem. These are carefully bred for milk and for carriage. Milch camels provide milk for the pastoralist on which alone he often depends for his diet; burden camels, which are not normally ridden except by the sick, transport his collapsible hut or tent and all his worldly possessions from place to place. Camel-hide is used to make sandals to protect his feet on the long treks across the country. But these uses do not in themselves account for the way in which the pastoralists value their camels or, despite the longstanding and wide use of money as a currency, explain why it is primarily in the size and quality of his camels that a man’s substance is most tellingly measured. This striking bias in Somali culture is best expressed briefly by saying that in their social as well as economic transactions the pastoralists operate on a camel standard. Thus the exchange of substantial gifts of livestock and other wealth which cements a marriage between a man and a woman and their respective kin is ideally, and often still in practice, conducted in the medium of camels.7 It is also in camels that the value of a man’s life and the subordinate position of women are expressed in material terms. Generally the blood-compensation due when a man is killed is rated at one hundred camels, while a woman’s life is valued at half that figure. Lesser injuries too are similarly compounded in a standard tariff of damages expressed in different amounts of camels. Although in these traditional terms sheep and goats are regarded as a sort of small change, they evoke none of the interest and attention which men bestow on their camels and indeed are considered primarily as the concern of women.
This difference in attitudes is consistent with the fact that the milch camels and sheep and goats usually form two separate herding units. A man’s wife, or wives, and children move with the flocks which provide them with milk and the few burden camels necessary for the transport of their tents and effects. With their much greater powers of endurance and resistance to drought, a man’s milch camels are herded by his unmarried brothers, sons and nephews, moving widely and rapidly about the country far from the sheep and goats which, in the dry seasons especially, have to cling closely to sources of water. Particularly in the dry seasons, when long and frequent treks back and forth between the pastures and wells are required, camel-herding is an arduous and exacting occupation and one well calculated to foster in the young camel boys all those traits of independence and resourcefulness which are so strongly delineated in the Somali character.
With this dual system of herding the nomads move about their country with their livestock in search of pasture and water, ordering their movements to conform as closely as possible to the distribution of these two necessities of life. Pasturage is regarded as a gift of God to man in general, or rather to Somalis, and is not considered to belong to specific groups. Generally, people and stock are most widely deployed after the rains when the grazing is fresh and green; while in the dry seasons they are forced to concentrate nearer the wells and make do with what grazing can be found in their proximity. Only the herds of milch camels with their attendants to some extent escape from this seasonal curtailment of movement, and even they must also be placed in areas where they can conveniently satisfy their less frequent but more substantial watering needs. Rights of access to water depend primarily upon its abundance and the ease with which it can be utilized. Only where water is not freely available, and where the expenditure of much labour and effort is required before it can be used, are exclusive rights asserted and maintained, if necessary, by force. And while in the general nomadic flux there is no rigid localization of pastoral groups and no appreciable development of ties to locality, the ‘home-wells’ regularly frequented in the dry seasons, and the trading settlements which spring up all over Somaliland wherever people congregate even temporarily round water, provide some check to a more random pattern of pastoral mobility.
Subject to the vagaries of the seasons and the very variable distribution of rain and grazing, there is some tendency for the clans, which are the largest effective political units with populations ranging from 10,000 to over 100,000 persons, to be vaguely associated with particular areas of pasturage. Clans are traditionally led by Sultans (in Somali: Suldan, Boqar, Garad, Ugas, etc.). This title, which evokes something of the pomp and splendour of Islamic states, ill accords with the actual position of Somali clan leaders, who are normally little more than convenient figureheads and lack any firmly institutionalized power. Indeed for the majority of northern Somali clans, the position of Sultan, though often hereditary, is hardly more than an honorific title dignifying a man whose effective power is often no greater, and sometimes less, than that of other clan elders. It is in fact the elders – and this in its broadest connotation includes all adult men – who control clan affairs. With a few special exceptions, a hierarchical pattern of authority is foreign to pastoral Somali society which in its customary processes of decision-making is democratic almost to the point of anarchy. It must at once be added, however, that this markedly unstratified traditional political system does recognize a subordinate category of people known as sab who fulfil such specialized and to the nomad degrading tasks as hunting, leather- and metal-working, and haircutting. The sab who practise these occupations form a minute fraction of the total population and, traditionally, were separated from other Somali by restrictions on marriage and commensality. Today the enfranchisement of these Midgans, Tumals, and Yibirs, is far advanced and most of their traditional disabilities are disappearing.8
With the absence of institutionalized hierarchical authority, Somali pastoral groups are not held together by attachment to chiefs. This principle of government which is so important in so many other parts of Africa is here replaced by binding ties of patrilineal kinship. Somali political allegiances are determined by descent in the male line; and, whatever their precise historical content, it is their lineage genealogies which direct the lines of political alliance and division. Although Somalis sometimes compare the functions of their genealogies to a person’s address in Europe, to understand their true significance it has to be realized that far more is at stake here than mere pride of pedigree. These genealogies define the basic political and legal status of the individual in Somali society at large and assign him a specific place in the social system.
While descent in the male line (tol) is thus the traditional basis of Somali social organization, it does not act alone but in conjunction with a form of political contract (her). It is this second, and scarcely less vital principle which is used to evoke and give precise definition to the diffuse ties of descent. As recorded in the genealogies which children learn by heart, descent presents the individual with a wide range of kinsmen amongst whom he selects friends and foes according to the context of his interests. Thus, sometimes he acts in the capacity of a member of his clan-family, sometimes as a member of a constituent clan, and sometimes as a member of one of the large number of lineages into which his clan is divided internally. But, within this series of diffuse attachments, his most binding and most frequently mobilized loyalty is to his ‘diya-paying group’. This unit, with a fighting strength of from a few hundred to a few thousand men, consists of close kinsmen united by a specific contractual alliance whose terms stipulate that they should pay and receive blood-compensation (Arabic, diya) in concert. An injury done by or to any member of the group implicates all those who are a party to its treaty. Thus if a man of one group is killed by a man of another, the first group will collectively claim the damages due from the second. At the same time, within any group a high degree of co-operation and mutual collaboration traditionally prevails.
To grasp the significance of this political and legal entity – whose members do not necessarily camp or move together in the pastures – but which is nevertheless the most clearly defined political unit in pastoral society, it must be appreciated that the nomadic Somali are a warlike people, driven by the poverty of their resources to intense competition for access to water and grazing.9 Even under modern administration self-help still retains much force as the most effective sanction for redressing wrongs and adjusting political and legal issues between groups. Hence, with the difficulty under present