Last updated 27/06/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
In the first part of this study we followed the development of the Ṣūfī ṭarīqa organization in Somaliland after the introduction of Islam and examined the functions exercised by Ṣūfī communities in the social structure. We interpreted the closer social and genealogical assimilation of jamā‘as among the nomadic tribes in terms of lack of arable land available for the foundation of independent settlements. It was argued that the genealogical idiom in which social relations are normally described, especially amongst the nomads, is extended to the jamā‘as by virtue of their identification with the Arabian genealogies of their sheiks. The incorporation of such Ṣūfi genealogies was held to explain how the Somali lineage system is in its furthest extension extrapolated to the Qurayshitic lineage of the Prophet.
page 145 note 1 For a tentative account see Lewis, 1955, 45–8.
page 145 note 2 See Huntingford, 1955, 19.
page 146 note 1 For an excellent account of the religion of the Galla of Ethiopia see Huntingford, 1955 74–87.
page 146 note 2 cf. Koran, Sura II, 30.
page 147 note 1 In fact in 1955 the British Somaliland Protectorate Advisory Council unanimously agreed that legislation should be introduced to make the practice of saar rites illegal. War Somali Sidihi, No. 60, 23 04 1955.Google Scholar
page 147 note 2 Among the Cushitic Agao of Gondar in northern Ethiopia, the refractions of the Sky God (Zār) which possess people are called zār, are associated especially but not exclusively with women, are inherited in the family, and have genealogies corresponding to their territorial distribution (Leiris, 1934 (1), 134, 126).
page 147 note 3 The Afar (Danakil) of southern Eritrea and of Ethiopia have a similar ceremony in which the possessed dancer is called jenile (jinn ?). See Licata, 1885, 267; Thesiger, 1935, 8.
page 148 note 1 See Lewis, 1955, 62.
page 149 note 1 It would be misleading to overemphasize the significance of this distinction, since, except in the earliest centuries of Islam there has always been a wide divergence between the theory and practice of the 
in all Muslim countries.
page 149 note 2 This is reflected, perhaps fortuitously, in the extent to which the qāḍī's competence in the administration of the 
has been recognized by the Governments of British and Italian Somaliland. In Somalia qāḍī's have a limited jurisdiction in criminal proceedings, while in British Somaliland criminal cases are expressly excluded from their jurisdiction. See Lewis, 1955, 124; Anderson, 1954, 43 ff. For the Arabs, cf. Montagne, 1947, 96.
page 150 note 1 According to Cucinotta, 1921 (1), 34, the important sources of 
in Somalia are: al-Nawawī's Minhāj aḍ-Ṭālibīn; the works of Ismā‘īl Muqrī (Brockelmann, GAL, n, 190; Suppt., II, 254), and of Abū Isḥāaq 
(Löfgren, O. (ed.), Arabische Texte zur … Aden, Uppsala, 1950, 20Google Scholar, 55, 94 ff.). Subsidiary sources are: Ibn al-Qāsim 
Fatḥ 
Abū Yaḥyā Zakarīyā' al-Anṡijari's Fatḥ al-Wahhāb (Brockelmann, GAL, I, 395–6), and Muāammad 
al-Iqnā' fi ḥall al Fatḥ (Brockelmann, GAL, Suppt, I, 441 ff.). See also Maino's, M. interesting article, ‘La valutazione del danno alla persona nella dottrina giurdica musulmana’, Meridiano Somalo, 11, 1951.Google Scholar
page 151 note 1 For a readily accessible compilation of ḥadīths used by Ṣūfīs as a basis for their ascetic and theosophical interpretation of theology see Arberry, 1950, 24–30.
page 152 note 1 cf. the fate of the pre-Islamic Gods and spirits in Arabia, Koran, Sura xxxvu. For general indications of the universality of such syncretisms in Islam, see Gibb, 1947, 23 if.; Milliot, 1949, 643.
page 153 note 1 Ferrandi, 1903, 298 ff.
page 153 note 2 Cerulli, RAL, ser. 6, IV, 1931, 67, has suggested that Saint Au Barkhadle (‘Au Bakhardi’), whose tomb at the site named after the sheik is a favourite place of pilgrimage of the Habr Awal tribe, may be identified with Yūsuf Barkatla, ancestor of ‘Umar Walashma’, founder of the Ifāt dynasty. For the position of the tomb see Drake-Brockman, 1912, 217 ff.
page 153 note 3 The Yibir ancestor bears, in point of name and circumstance, some superficial resemblance to the Shi‘ite ‘hidden’ Imām Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanaflya.
page 154 note 1 See Massignon, Enc. Is., IV, 668.
page 154 note 2 Among the Christian and Muslim Agao of Gondar this syncretism leads to the coexistence of Zār Abba Yusef (Christian) and Zār Sheik Muḥammad (Muslim); Leiris, 1934 (1), 126–9.
page 156 note 1 No works on the Beja are included here. For a full bibliography of the Somali, Afar (Danakil), and Saho see Lewis, 1955, 177–94.
