Cultivation
In the better watered reaches of the western part of the Northern Regions of the Somali Republic and in Harar Province of Ethiopia, where sorghum millet is grown over an extensive area, this pastoral regime has undergone a number of modifications. Here within the past two or three generations, following the example of the neighbouring Oromo farmers, Somali pastoralists have turned to plough cultivation, and stable agricultural villages have replaced the nomads’ temporary encampments. With a growing sense of attachment to territory, ties of neighbourhood are beginning to be acknowledged, which, although no formal change in the traditional political system has yet taken place, constitute a novel principle of grouping. This is evident in the organization on a basis of co-residence, as much as of kinship, of such local agricultural activities as harvesting and the excavation and maintenance of the ponds on which these cultivating settlements depend for their water supplies. With this development goes also a change in the bias of livestock husbandry: here cattle largely replace camels, and oxen are trained to the plough. The transition, however, is by no means absolute for many farmers are either transhumant, or, although themselves sedentary, maintain herds of camels which are sent out to graze in the charge of younger kinsmen. Farmers indeed frequently invest profits from the sale of sorghum in camels; and apart from these distinctions there is little difference in culture or social organization between the pastoral and cultivating sections of a clan.
The influence of agriculture in modifying the traditional pattern of life is taken a stage further amongst the Digil and Rahanweyn cultivators, of the south of the Republic. Here the tilling of the soil, in which a hand hoe is used, has a tradition going back several centuries, and the innovating influence of agriculture has been strengthened and reinforced by such additional factors as the great admixture of peoples and cultures which has taken place in this region. For, besides a small core of the descendants of people of original Digil stock, the Sab represent an amalgam of many different elements of which the most disparate are perhaps those deriving from Bantu and Oromo sources. And despite the fact that the great bulk of the Rahanweyn are today people of northern nomadic provenance, representatives of almost every northern Somali clan being found amongst them, many traits of the old mixed Digil and Rahanweyn culture have survived and are now those characteristic of this group as a whole. Thus it is the Digil-Rahanweyn dialect of Somali, and not that of the majority of more recent settlers, which is often spoken here; although many people speak both this and northern Somali. Similarly, and equally distinctive, however unimportant it may sound, while amongst the northern nomads tea is the universal dish appropriate to every social occasion and in the austere nomadic life synonymous with feasting, amongst the Digil and Rahanweyn the corresponding delicacy consists of green coffee beans cooked in ghee. As the coffee beans are eaten, and passed from guest to guest in wooden dishes, the scalding ghee in which they have been cooked is rubbed over the arms and hair and snuffed up the nostrils with a characteristic and inimitable gesture of satisfaction and pleasure.
More significant for the present purpose, however, is the fact that in contrast to northern nomadic society, there is greater social stratification amongst the Sab. In general three classes of land-holders are recognized: putative descendants of the original groups, long-standing accretions, and finally, recently adopted clients. Those of the first category in every Digil and Rahanweyn clan possess the most secure rights to arable land and play a dominant part in ritual. Those in the other categories, and especially in the last, traditionally enjoy less secure possession of land. Membership in any clan is acquired by a client undertaking to accept all the obligations, including that of solidarity in the blood feud, binding his protectors. Only so long as these duties are fulfilled can a client traditionally continue to cultivate the land which he has been allocated by his hosts. At the same time, as might be anticipated, the institution of chieftainship is more developed, and the traditional lineage structure of the north is not so marked. In some cases, indeed, loyalties based on common residence and common land-holding are more important politically than those defined by kinship. Thus many of the names of clans and sub-sections in this area refer directly to territory and denote what are essentially territorial aggregations. Etymologically, the name ‘Rahanweyn’ itself means simply ‘large crowd’. Finally, while often in the past Galla and Bantu serfs (now almost completely assimilated) provided some of the labour for cultivation and house construction, these and other activities for which collective enterprise is necessary are today entrusted to work-parties of young men recruited on a basis of residence rather than kinship.
Thus the division between the Sab and Samale, which is the widest cleavage in the Somali nation, depends not only on the different economic interests of the two groups but also upon their cultural divergencies. Traditionally these distinctions are entrenched by the nomad’s assumption of proud superiority and contempt for his southern countrymen, and the latter’s corresponding resentment and isolation. Yet despite this, the gulf between the two communities is not so wide as might at first appear, or as insuperable as each sometimes likes to suggest. As has been said, many of the Sab are in reality of northern pastoral origin; many again speak both dialects of Somali. Moreover there is much that draws the two groups together economically. Many of the southern cultivators not only have pastoral clients, but are also sometimes clients to pastoralists. Nomads moving across the territory of cultivators frequently exchange their milk in the dry seasons for the right to pasture their herds on the farmers’ fields. Similar transactions also regulate the use of water-holes by both parties. In addition the Sab trade much of their grain with the nomads: and many of those pastoralists whose grazing movements impinge on this fertile area have adopted, or are adopting, cultivation, despite their traditional scorn for agriculture, just as in the north-west, where it seems to be profitable, nomads are turning to the plough. Finally, the Swahili riverine communities are also similarly involved in this increasingly ramified network of ties of mutual advantage between pastoralist and farmer.
This sense of a commonality of interests, over and above the cultural and historical features which divide the two halves of the nation, is traditionally represented in the national genealogy in which ultimately every Somali group finds a place. Here Sab and Samale are represented as brothers of common descent from a line of ancestors which eventually links the Somali as a whole to Arabia and proclaims their single origin. The distinction between the cultivating life of the Sab clans, and the pastoral nomadism of the Samale, is fittingly explained by a number of picturesque legends and anecdotes in terms of the different characters attributed to their respective founding ancestors.
Religion and society
Despite the prevalence of war, feud, and fighting, particularly amongst the nomads, not all men are warriors. Those who devote their lives to religion and in some sense practise as men of God are known as wadads or sheikhs, and thus distinguished from the remainder and majority of men who, whatever secular calling they follow, fall into the category of warriors (waranleh, ‘spear-bearers’). This general division still retains validity despite the proliferation of occupations available today. Men of religion, or sheikhs – to use the Arabic title which is usually applied to the more learned among them – fulfil such important tasks as teaching the young the Quran and the elements of the faith, solemnizing marriage and ruling according to the Shariah in matrimonial disputes and inheritance, assessing damages for injury, and generally directing the religious life of the community in which they live. Essentially their rôle is to mediate between men; and, through the Prophet, between man and God – with the help of the many