genealogist, informed me that in A.H. 666 = A.D. 1266-7, the Sayyid Yusuf
el Baghdadi visited the port of Siyaro near Berberah, then occupied by an
infidel magician, who passed through mountains by the power of his
gramarye: the saint summoned to his aid Mohammed bin Tunis el Siddiki, of
Bayt el Fakih in Arabia, and by their united prayers a hill closed upon
the pagan. Deformed by fable, the foundation of the tale is fact: the
numerous descendants of the holy men still pay an annual fine, by way of
blood-money to the family of the infidel chief. The last and most
important Arab immigration took place about fifteen generations or 450
years ago, when the Sherif Ishak bin Ahmed [8] left his native country
Hazramaut, and, with forty-four saints, before mentioned, landed on
Makhar,--the windward coast extending from Karam Harbour to Cape
Guardafui. At the town of Met, near Burnt Island, where his tomb still
exists, he became the father of all the gentle blood and the only certain
descent in the Somali country: by Magaden, a free woman, he had Gerhajis,
Awal, and Arab; and by a slave or slaves, Jailah, Sambur, and Rambad.
Hence the great clans, Habr Gerhajis and Awal, who prefer the matronymic--
Habr signifying a mother,--since, according to their dictum, no man knows
who may be his sire. [9] These increased and multiplied by connection and
affiliation to such an extent that about 300 years ago they drove their
progenitors, the Galla, from Berberah, and gradually encroached upon them,
till they intrenched themselves in the Highlands of Harar.
The old and pagan genealogies still known to the Somal, are Dirr, Aydur,
Darud, and, according to some, Hawiyah. Dirr and Aydur, of whom nothing is
certainly known but the name [10], are the progenitors of the northern
Somal, the Eesa, Gudabirsi, Ishak, and Bursuk tribes. Darud Jabarti [11]
bin Ismail bin Akil (or Ukayl) is supposed by his descendants to have been
a noble Arab from El Hejaz, who, obliged to flee his country, was wrecked
on the north-east coast of Africa, where he married a daughter of the
Hawiyah tribe: rival races declare him to have been a Galla slave, who,
stealing the Prophet's slippers [12], was dismissed with the words, Inna-
_tarad_-na-hu (verily we have rejected him): hence his name Tarud
([Arabic]) or Darud, the Rejected. [13] The etymological part of the story
is, doubtless, fabulous; it expresses, however, the popular belief that
the founder of the eastward or windward tribes, now extending over the
seaboard from Bunder Jedid to Ras Hafun, and southward from the sea to the
Webbes [14], was a man of ignoble origin. The children of Darud are now
divided into two great bodies: "Harti" is the family name of the
Dulbahanta, Ogadayn, Warsangali and Mijjarthayn, who call themselves sons
of Harti bin Kombo bin Kabl Ullah bin Darud: the other Darud tribes not
included under that appellation are the Girhi, Berteri, Marayhan, and
Bahabr Ali. The Hawiyah are doubtless of ancient and pagan origin; they
call all Somal except themselves Hashiyah, and thus claim to be equivalent
to the rest of the nation. Some attempt, as usual, to establish a holy
origin, deriving themselves like the Shaykhash from the Caliph Abubekr:
the antiquity, and consequently the Pagan origin of the Hawiyah are proved
by its present widely scattered state; it is a powerful tribe in the
Mijjarthayn country, and yet is found in the hills of Harar.
The Somal, therefore, by their own traditions, as well as their strongly
marked physical peculiarities, their customs, and their geographical
position, may be determined to be a half-caste tribe, an offshoot of the
great Galla race, approximated, like the originally Negro-Egyptian, to the
Caucasian type by a steady influx of pure Asiatic blood.
In personal appearance the race is not unprepossessing. The crinal hair is
hard and wiry, growing, like that of a half-caste West Indian, in stiff
ringlets which sprout in tufts from the scalp, and, attaining a moderate