SOMALI ETHNOLOGY 
23 
It is certain that Somaliland has at different times been 
occupied by highly-organised races, whose habits of life have 
been quite different from those of the present nomadic tribes. 
Widely distributed over the country are traces of permanent 
settlements, many probably of great antiquity. Many of these 
ruins are traced to Mussulman occupations by the Arabs from 
Yemen, some hundreds of years back, but older remains are 
assigned by tradition to a people who were “ before the GMlas.” 
There are no writings, and many of the remains are scarcely 
recognisable as of human origin. Sometimes blocks of dressed 
stone are found lying in a rectangular pattern on the ground, 
overgrown and half -buried by grass and jungle; a series of 
parallel revetment walls on a hill overlooking a pass is occasionally 
to be met with ; and frequently one may observe the scanty 
evidences of an ancient tank to catch rain-water. It is possible 
to travel for weeks in Somaliland without coming on these 
remains ; they are met with by chance, and it seldom occurs to 
the natives to think of pointing them out to travellers. 
Near the mullah village of Guldu Hamed, at Upper Sheikh, 
are the remains of a very large ruined town, and close by there 
is a graveyard containing some five thousand graves. I believe 
these remains are not very ancient, but are traceable to early 
Mussulman settlements from Yemen. West of Hargeisa is an 
old fort of considerable size, crowning the detached hill called 
Yoghol. In the Gadabursi country there is the ancient ruined 
town of Aub6ba, and at the head of the G&wa Pass, on a hill to 
the west, about four hundred feet above it, are some massive 
ancient ruins, which must once have been a fort, commanding 
the pass. They are called Samawe, from the name of a sheikh 
whose tomb crowns the ruins. The hill-top is surrounded by 
parallel retaining walls built of dressed stone, rising in steps 
from the bottom. In some places the walls are six or eight feet 
high, and there are remains of extensive ancient buildings filling 
the enclosure. Surmounting the whole in the centre is the ruin 
of a building of cut stone, which appeared to be the sheikh’s 
tomb. 
The position of the Samawe ruins would favour a supposi- 
tion that some power holding Harar, and having its northern 
boundary along the hills which wall in the southern side of the 
Harrawa valley, had built the fort to command the Gdwa Pass, 
which is one of the great routes from the Gadabursi country to 
the Marar Prairie. On the other hand, the fort may have been 
