Wadani;942069 wrote: Goormaad market-ka ku soo noqotay. Adeer cidhiidhiga naga daa aanu kaa kalluumaysanee. And while I have my GIF folder open:

Chimera;942099 wrote:

SomaliPhilosopher;942087 wrote: Blessed Check out https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:hfufGhpYKyAJ:journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/9i/8_jama.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiZcLfpThfJ3LELTrLKOKm9S2euQvnqNMaZv9h9qSShGvp6cRf41H527jvAqwQsoQWmKnANmbmr2YyfI4-2Qu2288hdIz0T2FZDmHWoTmJZpWMjGqTJDEVV7oz3AUJrFb9BkDk7&sig=AHIEtbRP9ebIvYhNoOiD9Yvqf7Mz6AloqA one of the authors safferz mentioned- jama Thanks SP, that's the second article I was trying to remember. Chimera, let's kill the argument, it's not a debate either of us seems willing to concede.

Blessed, I forgot to add that Hawa Jibril (AUN)'s daughter transcribed, translated and published her mother's poetry as a book called Saa Waxay Tiri (And Then She Said): The Poetry and Times of Hawa Jibril.

Chimera;942076 wrote: Weligey waan joogay, sxb, haye waan ka leexaana, shukaansiga sii wad. Lakiin, ogoow inaad A-level kaga soo dhigtiid waaye, Safferz ha ku ciyaarin. lool you guys! You can stay Chimera

*Blessed;942060 wrote: Indeed. I've personal interest in this topic, can you recommend any books / links addressing Somali women's poetry for me? Lidwien Kapteijns' Women's Voices in a Man's World is the only book out there on the topic, and there are several articles -- Amina Adan, "Women and Words: The Role of Women in Somali Oral Literature" (1996), and Zainab Mohamed Jama "Fighting To Be Heard: Somali Women's Poetry" (1991). Zainab Jama has another article published on the topic but I can't remember the title, and she did a master's thesis at SOAS in London on Somali women's poetry that I'm working on tracking down.

Chimera;942047 wrote: Umm...that's quite a stretch from what I originally said. I think you're confusing my reference to colonialist tactics with me trying to look for the latter's approval/recognition, when it was their methods I was emphasizing. The same methods post-independence Somali governments and scholars adopted and ran with. In this situation the motivation behind recovering old written literature is justified, as for more than 50 years this important body of work has been horrible neglected in favor of oral literature. If the roles were reversed, I would have been just as passionate about recovering and preserving our oral heritage. You began this discussion by contesting my classification of Somali society as predominantly oral (a historical fact), and I was asking you what motivation is for calling that into question and emphasizing Somali writing. I am just trying to understand why you de-emphasize the centrality of orality to Somali society, and place written texts on par with oral literature in terms of cultural production when we just don't have the documentary evidence to support that assertion. Recovering new texts will not displace orality's historic primacy either. Chimera;942047 wrote: Written literature is extremely important for subjects such as history, which is what I'm interested in. One of the reasons we have so much material evidence of a rich history in the form of old cities, castles. mosques and art, but little info on the Somali dynasties and States that constructed them is because of the utter neglect towards our homegrown written sources. Oral literature has helped little to shed light on these enigmatic historic episodes. That's where you're wrong -- oral history is intrinsic to the field of African history, and a central research method precisely because of the absence/limited number of textual sources. Archaeology, historical linguistics, and oral history are all tools in the Africanist historian's craft, and all of these methods developed because of the challenges of reconstructing history in a continent where orality is dominant. Chimera;942047 wrote: Wouldn't it be a fallacy if I now insinuated that your motivation behind highlighting Somali women writers and poets is to create your own versions of Jane Austin, and the Bronte Sisters, when in fact you are simply emphasizing the importance of studying the Somali experience from a broader perspective? What's your point?

SomaliPhilosopher;942028 wrote: Safferz abbo abwan miyaa? haye warka ken Indeed he is. I emailed the poem to hoyo to pass on to him when he gets home, and she already says she knows the poem and it's definitely not Sayyid Mohamed. She suspects it's either Ali Dhuux or Qaman Bulxan but she will confirm with abo.

I'll ask my dad tonight lol

I listen to this song every day to mentally prepare myself for class

What anyone on Faux News thinks is irrelevant.

Alexisonfire in the morning.

NGONGE;941775 wrote: Having said all of that and, for those who read his subsequent books, did his style improve with time? Do his later characters come out bursting of the page or is it all hurried and quick as in his first novel? I think From a Crooked Rib is well known not only because it's his first book, but because it's one of the earliest African novels (itself a relatively new genre in 1970) to tackle gender issues. His earlier novels are also much more Somali, but I think my favourites are the novels from the "Blood in the Sun" trilogy. Gheelle.T;941808 wrote: I think he mentioned that he wrote the novel Crooked Rib in about a month and half. Here is the interview (5 parts) at the in SF. lol I uploaded that

SomaliPhilosopher;941674 wrote: http://likembe.net/Sounds/Jacayl%20Iima%20Roona%20-%20Iftin.mp3 The original of that ^^^song I believe kooxda Iftin- Jacayl Iima Roona I think this Sulfa version is older, but I am not sure who the song originates with.

Wadani;941691 wrote: The answer to ur question in a nutshell I believe is the deepseated mistrust which took root among the clans post civil war. There can be restition of trust until there is wholesale restitution of rights, first and foremost among these being the right of all victim groups to a sincere apology and acceptance of guilt by those responsible. Somalis will remain insular and continue to seek refuge and solace in their clans until a legitimate national reconciliation takes place. If that happens waa la bogson doonaa dawladna waa loo bislaaan. It sounds simplistic but I think its our only hope. I completely agree. The civil war meant the destruction of both the state *and* the philosophical faith Somalis had in being a subject and citizen, which in turn led to Somalis turning to the most base political unit they could trust for their collective welfare and security, the clan. It will take a lot of work, but I am not a pessimist who believes it is impossible for Somalis to imagine new political possibilities and think outside of the clan framework.

I could be mistaken, but didn't someone close to him start a rebellion against him? I believe the full brothers/half brother thing is a metaphor for clan.

SomaliPhilosopher;941679 wrote: Safferz, similar to how this "clan" structure we have today is more or less an imported system, the idea of a national identity is imported as well I had such thoughtful response to this but then my browser crashed and I lost it So an abridged version lol: I don't completely agree with that. Everything I've seen or read from the precolonial period suggests a recognition and understanding of some sort of shared Somali (and Muslim) identity -- for instance in Sayyid Mohamed's case, it was one that could be invoked and harnessed in opposition to foreign power. We had a kinship system (qabiil) that operated as a form of social organization, at times used in conflicts with other groups over resources but other times used to mediate and forge political and social alliances between tribes (marriage was one important institution of exchange and alliance building between tribes, since Somalis traditionally practiced something anthropologists call exogamy - marriage outside of your kinship group - for this reason). We did not have a nation-state until 1960, but we certainly had a nation. The question is when and how did qabiil transform into the primary form of political identification we see today, to the extent that shared Somali identity is almost impossible for us to imagine politically in the ways they did so easily just decades ago.

SomaliPhilosopher;941672 wrote: What do we do Safferz? No adding clans as a surname you say? Well do we have the energy as a people to lead a campaign to create a national identity? Does this new system of federalism cater to the status quo or can such movement be created under such a system? We reside in different times Safferz. An Africa with visonless leaders. Do we have the energy for the alternative, the endorsement and continuation of the very ideology that destroyed us?

Wadani;941673 wrote: Though Mahmouds work on the politicising of Tribes and native identities by the British for British aims is a valuable contribution to works on colonialism, I do have concerns about its generalizability. Yes, no doubt Britain engaged the various Somali clans as independent political bodies, signing treaties with all 4 coastal northern clans seperately in 1884. But I don't believe it would be accurate to extrapolate from this that Britain had a hand in solidifying, making static and giving political agency to Somali clans that were hithero fluid kinship/social systems as u have described them above. Before any white man had ever dreamt of stepping foot in the horn the Somalis were already organized in independent socio-economic and political groupings segmented along clan lines, with a legitimate boqor, ugaas, suldaan, or garaad at the helm of each. In our case, the British just took advantage of age-old divisions, feuds, and bad-blood between the various clans, but had little to do with creating such conditions in the first place. That's precisely the point of indirect rule -- rule through already existing indigenous political structures, which had the effect of entrenching and intensifying tribe for political power and rule. Where there was no recognizable political hierarchy, they created one and appointed "warrant chiefs." The traditional Somali political structure - the segmentary lineage system - is a more horizontal form of social organization than many African societies, so I would not be surprised at all to find that some of the clans that currently have a boqor/ugaas/suldaan/garaad did not have one prior to the 19th century. I know the British certainly appointed native courts and judges (qadi) in British Somaliland, but I haven't done much digging in the archives on this topic yet. That said, I am not saying colonialism is the origin of qabyalad or the reason for our current issues, but it is certainly an important part and it is a legacy of rule that our leaders inherited and intensified in the postcolony. I just think it's important to place everything in its historical context.

I'm here, I just didn't think to open this thread lol

The discussion on qabiil reminded me of Mahmood Mamdani's work on the concept of tribe, and how kinship became fixed and politicized during the colonial era as tribe under British indirect rule, their mode of colonial administration (though he deals primarily with British colonialism, indirect rule was practiced by other European powers as well in many colonies). His most recent book Define and Rule (a collection of lectures he delivered a few years ago) is probably the best single volume I've read on the topic. Somalis have the tendency to believe that our clan system is something that has existed in its current form throughout our history, rather than critically interrogating how qabiil itself - at one point a fluid system of kinship/social relations - was transformed under the colonial state and exploited by the post-independence governments to create the concept of qabiil as we know it now. So if you're interested in a historical account of tribe and how it became coupled with political power under the colonial state and inherited by the post-colonial African states, it's definitely worth taking a look at Mamdani's work (Citizen and Subject is his classic). I also linked to a recent talk he gave about his book at CUNY, moderated by Ali Jimale Ahmed: "Define and Rule focuses on the turn in late nineteenth-century colonial statecraft when Britain abandoned the attempt to eradicate difference between conqueror and conquered and introduced a new idea of governance, as the definition and management of difference. Mahmood Mamdani explores how lines were drawn between settler and native as distinct political identities, and between natives according to tribe. Out of that colonial experience issued a modern language of pluralism and difference. A mid-nineteenth-century crisis of empire attracted the attention of British intellectuals and led to a reconception of the colonial mission, and to reforms in India, British Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. The new politics, inspired by Sir Henry Maine, established that natives were bound by geography and custom, rather than history and law, and made this the basis of administrative practice. Maine’s theories were later translated into “native administration” in the African colonies. Mamdani takes the case of Sudan to demonstrate how colonial law established tribal identity as the basis for determining access to land and political power, and follows this law’s legacy to contemporary Darfur. He considers the intellectual and political dimensions of African movements toward decolonization by focusing on two key figures: the Nigerian historian Yusuf Bala Usman, who argued for an alternative to colonial historiography, and Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who realized that colonialism’s political logic was legal and administrative, not military, and could be dismantled through nonviolent reforms." " frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

Xaaji Xunjuf;941532 wrote: Blessed in Rwanda on their ID it said Hutu or Tutsi:D How well did that work out?

Apophis;941476 wrote: What's embarrassing is denying the basic societal organisational of a major East African lineage because of a pretty standard and normal (in world historical sense) war between these people of kin. Qabil is a way of life for us Somalis and hate it as much as you like, it cannot be eradicated for it means the eradication and negations of our entire history. The time when qabiil was merely a kinship system of social relations ended a long time ago. It has become hardened and politicized in ways that have been devastating and destructive for all of us. And you folks think institutionalizing it is the solution?

Chimera;941511 wrote: The reason I reserve judgement is because the scope and depth of historic Somali literature has barely been touched upon. Remember that we had various important centers of learning that were considered the cream of the crop in Africa, the likes of Mogadishu and Zeila come to mind, and Harar to a certain extent. We know that other hubs like Timbuktu enjoyed a similar reputation, and through extensive research of private libraries hundreds of thousands of manuscripts were recovered. A similar excercise in Somalia would potentially yield great results, and only after studying those manuscripts and their impact on society of each era can we compare one with the other. I'm not disagreeing with you on the importance of recovering texts, but I find the motivation problematic. It's a recovery project predicated on apologia for being oral, for not having what Westerners would recognize as literary greats, canonical texts and a rich body of literature. We already have all those things in our oral tradition. Even with Timbuktu and its manuscripts, the fact remains that orality is the cultural context for Songhai speaking ethnic groups, and that's the case for Somalis as well. Wadani;941513 wrote: lol, just messin wit u. So name some of the buraanbur poets. Hawa Jibril, Halimo Godane, and Raha Ayanle, to name a few from the nationalist era. It's unfortunate that no one remembers the poems composed by women, but their poems are important too.

Wadani;941501 wrote: What happened to Qawdhan Ducaale, Cabdi Gahayr, Cilmi boodhari, Yowle and Nuur dhagacun? I'm telling ur mom on u, loool. lmao I put "etc" for that reason, I was just listing the first widely recognizable names that came to mind. My canon looks a lot different, and includes buranbur poets as well