NordicSomali
VIP
Leaving behind historical texts is a form of wealth that our ancestors didn’t engage in.
How far do our historical records go?
How far do our historical records go?
Are nations with historical records “richer” than other nations?
- Thread starter NordicSomali
- Start date
Espaa_
Ku sali nabiga {scw}
Probably far back for like thousands of years but we need our own homegrown archeologists so that we can unearth the secrets of our ancestors. I saw somewhere on this website that we had a ton of architecture and history that were dismantled and destroyed by colonialists unfortunately
I was literally thinking about this recently, I think most somali history is oral and in poems.
NordicSomali
VIP
Someone should fund professional archeologists
NordicSomali
VIP
Is there an archive?
We should seoerate two things. Written literary production in Somalia likley goes back millenia at the very least 800 b.c
But the creation of historical records requires the backing of a centralized state. When a state collapses that historical writing disappears. That's why there's no writing or records from the aksumite period even though a faint memory still exists in oral traditions written down like the zebra negast.
But the creation of historical records requires the backing of a centralized state. When a state collapses that historical writing disappears. That's why there's no writing or records from the aksumite period even though a faint memory still exists in oral traditions written down like the zebra negast.
Naah richer countries tend Invest more into archaeology , history and etc .
If that’s was the case Yemen , Syria , Iraq all have historical texts yet they’re in worse situation than a lot of countries .
If that’s was the case Yemen , Syria , Iraq all have historical texts yet they’re in worse situation than a lot of countries .
We dont mean richer histories. But historical records. The historical records of a single western European country dwarfs Yemen Syria and Iraq combined.
Its why you can do research on the life of people living in a random town in 16th century western Europe but you wouldn't be able to anything similar in the middle east.
You'd be surprised. Some of the stuff even some random Somali families of a qadi lineage are holding onto would fit such a description. Some Arabs are that on steroids. Europeans just enjoyed the stability required to archive and maintain such records in comparison to all these countries that that have bigger fish to fry like colonialism and neocolonialism. Besides, this definitely has no causation towards country being "richer". That's a smooth-brain take. Not saying it's your take, though. More referencing the thread question.
What makes you think they didn't keep historical records ? We weren't always stupid nomads you know
That's the hundreds of cities, towns villages, hamlets and forts from the Middle ages
I get what you mean and while I think it definitely requires qualification. Since im talking more about historical records like state and local archives. I mean the british east India trading company and Spain maintains millions of documents from the early modern period about their colonial holdings. This was only possible because of the level of beaurcracy they maintained in these countries. They produced orders of magnitude more documents partially as a result of the state but also simply because they had larger pouplations. Keep in mind that France in the year 1800 had 10 times the pouplation of eygpt 3 vs 30 million.
This is a point I brought up a couple days ago. There is probably so many texts out there but the prestige of manuscript and the culture of secrecy means people have no idea that these texts exist. I wouldn't even be surprised if we had medieval somali ajami texts that survived .
Yes, they got pretty ahead in this respect during the Early Modern Period when they found their colonial holdings and began growing exponentially and finally surpassed the East population wise. Mercantilism then Capitalism also super charged the beauracracy.
Wallahi its so crazy when you look into the book production of Europe at this time. By the 1600s they had printed over 200 million books. And it was almost a billion by the 1700s
Ottomans fucked up big time not leaping on the printing press, no matter how much people try to rationalize the reasoning.
How can you even compete with that level of knowledge production honestly.
