By Prof Said S. Samatar
Editor’s note: Peaking into the rich WDN archives full of ten years of rare collection of historical pieces, news, commentary, opinion as well as cultural and poetry analysis and writing from across the globe, we come upon a jewel, a rarity, a genius piece of writings, honest and true and free of bias. Indeed, it could be called the past calling with glaring disappointment. As we celebrate our tenth anniversary, we reflect and share with our readers, esteemed and staunch a series of articles from the past. This article, discusses Sarbeeb, ““the art of oblique communication” that governed inter-clan interactions. As Dr. Samatar demonstrates, pastoral elders of yesteryear had, through bitter experience, learned to address one another—calmly, softly, respectfully—in veiled, soothing indirect speech. Dr. Samatar takes a look at the past in order to make a cogent point about our current national morass”.
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The Somalis have been described as a “nation of Poets” whose poetic heritage is intimately linked to the vicissitudes of the people’s daily life. In the great demoralization that followed the collapse of the Somali state, some Somalis turned for inspiration to what a former president has called “ and asset of inestimable value” – namely, their lyrical poetry that moves the Somalis in almost primeval ways, alternately inspiring them for good or inflaming them for evil.
From early times foreigners who studied Somali language and culture observed the centrality of oral poetry in Somali literary temper and tastes. For example, , in 1854 the romantic and highly eccentric British explorer, Sir Richard Burton, entered the Somali coast town of Zayla ‘ disguised as a Muslim holy man and traveling under the pseudonym of al_Hajj Abdullah. Burton who spoke flawless Arabic and knew Islamic theology well, resided in Zayla’ for some months impressed the inhabitants with his considerable Islamic learning and by some accounts induced them to appoint him the imam of the mosque of Zayla’, where he allegedly regularly led the faithful in Friday prayer.
Burton ‘s impressions of life in the Somali coast and the city of Harar , which he visited some months later, are recounted in his book entitled, with characteristic Victorian arrogance, the First Footsteps in East Africa . Among the phenomena that Burton reported with astonishment was the high level of interest in literature, oral poetry in particular, found among the Somalis. A revealing passage records his amazement:
“ The country teams with poets” …. Every man has his recognized position in literature as accurately defined as though he had been reviewed in a century of magazines – the fine ear of this people causing them to take great pleasure in harmonious sounds and poetic expressions, whereas a false quantity or prosaic phrase excites their violent indignation…. Every chief in the country must have a panegyric to be sung by his clan, and the great patronize light literature by keeping a poet.
The power and influence of oral poets in Somali society, rightly noted but wrongly explained by Burton over a century ago, stem from more significant social enterprises than mere singing of tribal “panegyrics.” An important factor in the power and popularity of Somali poets was the versatile use made of their poetic craft in society. For example, poetry as a principal medium of mass communication. To a large extent, therefore, the pastoral poet’s prestige and influence rest on his ability, through the use of verbal art, to manipulate communication – in short, to exercise a monopolistic hold on the flow of information and ideas.
Given its alliterative and metrical regularity, Somali pastoral verse is easy to memorize, far more than prose. The significance of this fact is easy to grasp; in oral culture where writing is confined to the clerical and commercial establishment in the cities, the only library or reference material people have is memory. Thus events that are truly memorable in their clan affairs are committed to a poetic form, first to underscore their importance, and second, so they will endure in memory through the generations. In this way poetic versification enables the pastoralists not only to transmit information across considerable distances but also to record it for posterity. Hence, Somali pastoral verse functions both as social communicator and as archival repository.
In doing so, it plays a role similar to that of the press and television in Western society. Somali poets, for example, like Western Journalists and newspapermen, have a great deal to say about politics – about the acquisition and use of political power. Because it is language and the vehicle of politics, the verse produced by Somali poets is an important source of Somali history, just as the printed and broadcast word performs this function in the west.
It is the duty, for example, of the Somali pastoral poet to compose verse on all important clan events and to express and formalize in poetry the dominant issues of the age – in short, to record and immortalize the history of his people. And since the poet’s talents are employed not only to give expression to a private emotion but also to address vital community concerns, his verse reflects the feelings, thoughts, and actions of his times.
Before descending into the anatomy of sarbeeb, or the art of oblique communication, I will summarize briefly the physical and structural properties of Somali pastoral verse to suggest its flavor. First, the verse springs for the most part from a nomadic pastoral base. Even though the majority of Somalis are semi- sedentarized and semi-urbanized today, the culture is still informed by pastoralism of a kind reminiscent of that of the pre-Islamic Jahiliya Arabs (from the Age Ignorance). Indeed, in the its environment of pastoral feud and vendetta, love of horses and camel rustling, contemporary Somali society may be characterized as a modern Jahiliya . This is not to imply any racial consanguinity between Arabs and Somalis, the later being eastern Cushites related by language, blood and tradition to the Oromo of Ethiopia.
Second, the poetry of the pastoral Somalis is didactic, with a message to convey. A pastoral poem is intoned, chanted or recited, with poet presenting his work before an eager live audience, often in the circle of a campfire at night after the animals have been secured in a corral. A distinguished poet has a retinue of admirers and memorizers ( hafideyaal ) who commit his “noble lines” to memory and transmit and disseminate them throughout the peninsula. Sometimes poetic competitions, a kind of literary warfare, are held during the rainy season when the clans assemble to enjoy light literature, each poet(s) artistic dueling with those others, their verbal boots overseen by a hoary panel of elder literary connoisseurs called heerbeegti . In the scheme of Somali pastoral poetry, therefore, the doctrine of art for art’s sake does not belong. But to say that every poem contains a specific message which a hearer seeks to find is not to say that such a message can be abstracted with ease. While the meaning is direct in some in some poems, in others it is hidden or, the Somalis put it, “closed” ( qafilan ) and require considerable intelligence on the part of the hearer to decipher.
The poet Ali Dhuuh , for example of the Dhulbahante clan family, uses a straight forward declarative style in his poem “On account of fourteen points,” pleading with the Ogaden to restore his stolen camels:
On account of fourteen points return the camels tome:
From the Gobaysane season (a plentiful year) when I was a mere lad
Until today when I am old, wearing silvery hair
There never occurred between you and us a matter for vendetta;
Know this – and so return the camels to me.
The man of many years brings forth wise advice;
Youths and fools understand not the so obvious point- pray, return the camels to me.
Listen, you did not find the camels astray;
A predator thief brought them to you
And such rapine works all of us into death – pray, return the camels.
In this fashion, he goes on to declare fourteen points, arguing persuasively why the looted camels should be returned. By contrast, another poet – say Huseen Dhiqle – might shroud his verse in arcane language and “sings of the rapacious caprice of ‘Lion Justice’ when in truth he was not thinking of lions at all but of his people’s plight under a tyrant chief”
The third principal characteristic of Somali pastoral verse is alliteration ( higaad ) – in particular, head alliteration wherein the beginning of the line contains a consonant that corresponds to a similarly sounded consonant at the end of it. For an illustration of this, Sayyid Mohammed’s poem “ Muuq-maasuq ,” or “ Flim-flammer ,” will do:
Musuq-maasuq Soomaali waa meheradeediiye
Hadba midab horlay kuula iman maalin iyo layle
Malahmalahda iyo baanaha mowdku ka adeegay.
Dissembling is the Somalis’ inveterate habit,
They come to you every day and night
With new color,
Oh! Death to duplicity and bluster.
Read more: The Art of Oblique Communication in Somali Culture
Prof Said S. Samatar
Rutgers University
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Dr. Samatar is a Professor of African American and African Studies, Department of History, Rutgers University and Editor of the Horn of Africa Journal. Prof Samatar is also a regular contributor of WardheerNews.
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