The Somali Conquest of the Horn of Africa

One of the most sustained and in its effects far-reaching movements of population in the recent history of North Eastern Africa is the expansion of the Hamitic Somali from the shores of the Gulf of Aden to the plains of Northern Kenya over the last ten centuries. Although written historical evidence is available for only a few periods, oral tradition is so abundant, and from a variety of sources both inside and outside Somaliland, so much in agreement, that it is possible to reconstruct much of this Somali migration, at least in broad outline, with what I believe is a fairly high degree of probability.

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I. M. Lewis: Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar and Saho. (Ethnographic Survey of Africa. North Eastern Africa, Part I.) ix, 200 pp., map. London: International African Institute, 1955. 21s.

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0041977x00107189 ◽

1956 ◽

Vol 18 (2) ◽

pp. 398-399

Author(s):

G.W.B. Huntingford

Keyword(s):

Eastern Africa ◽

Horn Of Africa ◽

North Eastern

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The Amazons of Dahomey

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.274 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Agbenyega Adedze

Keyword(s):

Oral Tradition ◽

West African ◽

Oral Traditions ◽

Historical Evidence ◽

The West ◽

West African Coast ◽

African Coast ◽

History Of ◽

French Colonial ◽

Female Fighters

The Amazons in general come from Greek legend and myth without any palpable historical evidence. However, there is no doubt about the historical female fighters of the erstwhile Kingdom of Dahomey (Danhome or Danxome) in West Africa, which survived until their defeat by the French colonial forces in 1893. The history of the historical Amazons of the Kingdom of Dahomey stems from vast amounts of oral tradition collected and analyzed over the years, as well as written accounts by Europeans who happened to have visited the kingdom or lived on the West African coast since Dahomey’s foundation in the 17th century to its demise in the late 19th century. These sources have been reviewed and debated by several scholars (including Amélie Degbelo, Stanley B. Alpern, Melville J. Herskovits, Hélène d’Almeida-Topor, Boniface Obichere, Edna G. Bay, Robin Law, Susan Preston Blier, Auguste Le Herisse, etc.), who may or may not agree on the narrative of the founding of the kingdom or the genesis of female fighters in the Dahomean army. Nonetheless, all scholars agree that the female forces traditionally called Ahosi/Mino did exist and fought valiantly in many of Dahomey’s battles against their neighbors (Oyo, Ouemenou, Ouidah, etc.) and France. The history of the Ahosi/Mino is intricately linked to the origins and political and social development of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Ahosi/Mino are still celebrated in the oral traditions of the Fon.

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North Eastern Africa. Part I. Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar, and Saho

International Affairs ◽

10.2307/2607908 ◽

1956 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 115-116

Author(s):

Gerald Reece

Keyword(s):

Eastern Africa ◽

Horn Of Africa ◽

North Eastern

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Special issue on cognitive approaches to the history of English: introduction

English Language and Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s1360674317000077 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 193-202 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

ALEXANDER BERGS ◽

THOMAS HOFFMANN

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Historical Period ◽

Historical Evidence ◽

The Past ◽

Linguistic Evidence ◽

Degree Of Certainty ◽

Third Person ◽

History Of ◽

State Of Affairs ◽

High Degree

What do we know about the past? For at least some languages, we have textual (or archaeological) evidence from various periods – beyond that, there is only reconstruction. But even when we have some textual evidence, what does it tell us? The answer to this question crucially depends on the way we approach the question: we can treat texts as decontextualized, linguistic evidence, as Neogrammarian or Structuralist studies have done (see McMahon 1994: 17–32). Such an approach already allows us to discover important generalizations about the linguistic state of affairs of a particular language or historical period. Using decontextualized historical evidence, for example, we can already ascertain with a high degree of certainty that in Old English voiced and voiceless fricatives were allophones, rather than phonemes, that there was nodo-periphrasis in Middle English, and that in Early Modern English there was some variability between third-person singular present tense {-s} and {-th} – just as we know that present-day Japanese and Korean use postpositions, rather than prepositions.

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African conversion from a world religion: religious diversification by the Waso Boorana in Kenya

Africa ◽

10.2307/1161131 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 65 (4) ◽

pp. 525-544 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Mario I. Aguilar

Keyword(s):

Religious Practices ◽

Traditional Practices ◽

World Religion ◽

Northern Kenya ◽

Local Principle ◽

North Eastern ◽

History Of ◽

The 1950S ◽

Second Period

AbstractThe Boorana of the Waso area of north-eastern Kenya settled there in the 1930s. Upon the settling of colonial administrative boundaries in 1934 they became isolated from the rest of the Boorana in northern Kenya and Ethiopia. Thereafter a process of ‘somalisation’ took place through which they replaced their Oromo ritual moments with Islamic practices. By the 1950s most of the Waso Boorana had converted to Islam, and since then have been considered Muslims by the rest of Kenya. Nevertheless recent research has shown that there has been a revival of traditional religious practices among them. The article divides the history of the Waso Boorana into two periods: (1) from their settlement in the Waso area to the events leading to Kenya's independence (1932–62) and (2) from Kenya's independence to the 1990s (1963–92). It is in this second period in their history that the Waso Boorana began a process of religious diversification. Traditional religious practices revived in their settlements and distrust emerged of Islam. The article argues that there has been a reconversion to traditional practices, based on a local principle, the Waso Boorana division of herds.

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Sources de Constantin VII Porphyrogénète concernant le passé le plus ancien des Serbes et des Croates

BYZANTINA SYMMEIKTA ◽

10.12681/byzsym.963 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 20 ◽

pp. 11

Author(s):

Tibor ŽIVKOVIĆ

Keyword(s):

Oral Tradition ◽

Balkan Peninsula ◽

Literary Genre ◽

Font Size ◽

Administrative Personnel ◽

Imperial Palace ◽

High Commissioner ◽

Historical Text ◽

History Of ◽

High Degree

THE SOURCES OF CONSTANTINE PORPHYROGENITUS CONCERNING THE EARLIEST HISTORY OF THE SERBS AND CROATSThere are eight chapters (29-36) in De Administrando Imperio by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus that contain known historical information on the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula. Commonly accepted knowledge in historiography tells us that Constantine Porphyrogenitus must have used references on the Serbs, the Croats, and other Slavs from the archives of the Imperial Palace and the verbal accounts of Byzantine administrative personnel who were stationed in Dalmatia. However, our analysis of the earliest historical text on the Serbs and the Croats described in chapters 30, 31 and 32 of the DAI has established that oral tradition could not have been the source of the information on the Serbs or the Croats but rather that Constantine utilized a written source with its approximately dated to around 878.The peculiar style of the source focuses on baptism (Conversio Croatorum et Serborum) and the close ties of the Serbs and the Croats with Rome. This style or literary genre – De conversione – did not exist in Byzantium but was well known during early medieval times in the West. The analysis of the aforementioned chapters of the DAI established a high degree of correlation with parts of the text known in historiography under the title – De conversione Bagoariorum et Carantanorum. The connection between De conversione Bagoariorum et Carantanorum and chapters 30, 31, and 32 of the DAI is easily recognised in the conception of the work, and in the annexed parts by the author. It is our conclusion that we can now take a different path in analysing data on the earliest history of the Serbs and the Croats; it is evident that Constantine Porphyrogenitus used the information collected by an anonymous author who had been employed, very likely, as a high commissioner of the Roman Church.

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Competing Muslim legacies along city/countryside dichotomies: another political history of Harar Town and its Oromo rural neighbours in Eastern Ethiopia

The Journal of Modern African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0022278x13000803 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 52 (1) ◽

pp. 1-23 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Thomas Osmond

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Political History ◽

Eastern Africa ◽

Cultural Hegemony ◽

Horn Of Africa ◽

Eastern Ethiopia ◽

History Of ◽

The City ◽

The Town ◽

Historical Centre

ABSTRACTBetween the Middle East and Eastern Africa, the city of Harar is often considered as the main historical centre of Islam in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Until recently, the cultural hegemony of the Muslim elites inhabiting Harar was commonly opposed to the almost pagan behaviours of the Oromo – or ‘Galla’ – farmers and cattle herders living in the wide rural vicinity of the town. The 1995 Constitution provided the different ‘ethnolinguistic nationalities’ of the new Ethiopian federation with the same institutional recognition. However, the institutionalisation of the two Harari and Oromo ‘nationalities’ seems to foster the historical duality between the city-dwellers and their close neighbours. This article proposes another political history of Harar and its ambivalent Oromo partners through the local dynamics of the Muslim city/countryside models. It reveals the both competing and complementary orders that have probably bound together the populations of Harar and its rural hinterland for more than five hundred years.

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Oral Tradition and the History of Segmentary Societies

History in Africa ◽

10.2307/3171708 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

pp. 1-10 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

A.E. Afigbo

Keyword(s):

Oral Tradition ◽

Colonial Period ◽

Historical Evidence ◽

Black Africa ◽

History Of ◽

Reliability Methods ◽

And Mathematics ◽

A Minor

The field of the methodology of oral tradition has become increasingly specialized and technical. This much is clear from even a casual acquaintance with publications in this area. The fact is that ever since the publication in 1961 of Jan Vansina's epoch-making book, Oral Tradition, the study of the methodology of oral tradition has become a minor academic industry among historians, psychohistorians and anthropologists. Different aspects of the problems posed by the use of this family of historical evidence--dating and chronology, reliability, methods of collection and preservation, techniques of analysis (synchronic, diachronic, and multi-disciplinary)--continue to be probed in monographs, learned journals, and higher degree theses.This wide-ranging and laudable concern for the methodology of oral tradition has not only helped to underlie the centrality of oral tradition as a source for the history of Africa, especially of Black Africa, in the precolonial period or even in the colonial period; it has also made all would-be exploiters of this source alert to many of the problems associated with its use. Yet it must be conceded that all this feverish, if determined, activity has not established, and there is little likelihood that it will ever establish, a science of oral tradition as exact and universal in its application as the methods of physics and mathematics. Each user of oral tradition, like each user of documentary or other sources of history, still has, and always will have, to decide for himself, and in the light of criteria and parameters acceptable to him, what use to make of each corpus of tradition and of each event or strand in the corpus.

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The Origins of the Galla and somali

The Journal of African History ◽

10.1017/s0021853700006058 ◽

1966 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 27-46 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Herbert S. Lewis

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Tenth Century ◽

Previous Literature ◽

Traditional View ◽

Southern Ethiopia ◽

Gulf Of Aden ◽

Horn Of Africa ◽

Northern Kenya ◽

South West ◽

The Subject

This study presents a reconstruction of the origins and major movements of the Galla and Somali of Northeast Africa which departs from most of the previous literature on the subject. The traditional view has been that the Galla occupied most of the Horn of Africa until the Somali, beginning about the tenth century, swept south and south-west from the shores of the Gulf of Aden driving the Galla before them. The pressure of the Somali has also been considered the major impetus to the Galla invasions of Ethiopia in the sixteenth century. It is the thesis of this paper that both the Galla and the Somali originated in southern Ethiopia, that the Somali expanded to the east and north much earlier than the Galla, and that the Galla lived only in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya until their migrations began about 1530.

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Landscape development and settlement history of the Vecht area (722–1122)

Netherlands Journal of Geosciences – Geologie en Mijnbouw ◽

10.1017/njg.2015.26 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 94 (4) ◽

pp. 375-385 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

A.L.P. Buitelaar ◽

Guus J. Borger

Keyword(s):

River Rhine ◽

Historical Evidence ◽

Social Fabric ◽

The North ◽

The Social ◽

History Of ◽

Area North ◽

Opening Up ◽

Broad Outline ◽

Lower Rhine

AbstractBased on historical evidence a description in broad outline is provided of landscape and settlement development in the Vecht area north of Utrecht for the period 722–1122 AD. Although the fluvial activity of the Vecht channel was reduced from about 2300 BP onwards, the river retained its economic importance as a shipping route in Early Medieval times according to the appearance of mintage and the spread of tollhouses. In the 8th century the Vecht still was seen as a river and as a branch of the Rhine. At that time the Vecht river discharged into a stretch of water that was named Almeer and was characterised as stagnant. The Almeer is regarded as the successor of Lake Flevo, mentioned by classical authors. Since this body of water is indicated asstagnum, it is unlikely that the water level in the southern part of the Almeer was affected by the Vlie tidal inlet in the north at that time. At the end of the 10th century the Almeer already had substantial dimensions. The building of dikes on the southern forelands of the Zuiderzee and the IJ-Lake started at least about 1200 AD. At the beginning of the timeline, settlement was limited to the natural levees of the river Vecht and its distributaries. The reclamation of the vast peatlands on both sides of the river started around the middle of the 11th century. The opening up of new areas for agriculture and settlement was accompanied by a transformation of the social fabric. In association with the pattern of land division historical information is used to indicate some of the changes that occurred in the Vecht area during that period. The drive to further intensify land use resulted in 1122 AD in the decision to build a dike on the northern bank of the Lower Rhine, since the Vecht is a blind arm of the river Rhine.

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