CHAP, xvir THE SOMALI 357 



{V) The Somali 



I had little personal intercourse with the Galla, but I often saw 

 more than was pleasant of their close allies, the Somali. This tribe 

 also is of Asiatic origin. It claims descent from a certain Sherif 

 Ishak (Isaac) bin Ahmed who crossed from the south of Arabia about 

 500 years ago, and died at Mait, near Burnt Island, where his tomb 

 is still shown. ^ Some writers accept this tradition literally ; but 

 others, such as Miles,- regard Sherif Ishak as the leader of the 

 last of a long series of migrations. Paulitschke quotes the Arabian 

 historian, Ibn Said, to the effect that in the thirteenth century the 

 Hawija were settled in fifty villages on the east coast around Merka. 

 This was earlier than the time of Sherif Ishak, and the settlement was 

 apparently even then of considerable age. 



It has also been stated by no less an authority than Burton that the 

 Somali race has absorbed a good deal of African blood, and are half- 

 caste. The head, he says, " belongs equally to Africa and Arabia." ^ 

 There is, however, no trace of Negro influence in the language,'* and 

 very little in the physical structure of the race. Burton does not, how- 

 ever, appear to have based his sketch on typical Somali ; and parts of 

 it read like a caricature, though showing, as usual, his remarkably keen 

 insight into character. He describes them ^ as having " all the levity 

 and instability of the Negro character ; light-minded as the Abyssinians, 

 — described by Gobat as constant in nothing but inconstancy, — soft, 

 merry, and affectionate souls, they pass without any apparent transition 

 into a state of fury, when they are capable of terrible atrocities." In 

 this, perhaps, Burton was less unjust than he sometimes was. The 

 behaviour of some of the Somah during the expedition to the Tana 

 would have justified his severest judgments. Most of the men we had 

 were passionate, lazy, and impudent, and some of them, despite the 

 high reputation of the Somali for courage, proved to be contemptible 

 cowards. Our experience was not exceptional, for all the officers of 

 the British East Africa Company who had had men of this tribe in 

 their caravans, disliked them exceedingly. Major Williams told me 

 that the timidity of one of his Somali gun-bearers excited the ridicule 

 of the Zanzibar!, who are usually themselves accused of cowardice. 

 Our trouble with the men was possibly due to the fact that they were 

 all Aden Somali, who may have been corrupted by contact with 

 civilisation, for travellers in Somaliland who have employed the natives 

 are often enthusiastic in their praise. During the Tana Expedition 

 we certainly saw Somali under unfavourable circumstances ; they were 



^ F. M. Hunter, Grammar of the Somali Language {\^Zo), p. xiv. 

 - S. B. Miles, " On the Neighbourhood of Bunder Marayah," Journ. Roy. Geog. Sac. 

 vol. xlii. (1872), p. 68. 



^ R. F. Burton, First Footsteps in East Africa (1856), p. 107. 



* See, e.g., A. W. Schleicher, Die Somali-Sprache, th. i. (Berlin 1892), pp. vii.-xiii. 



^ Burton, op. cit. p. 109. 



