History behind qori smaris

[Garaad diinle]

She also told me the "One Thousand and One Nights" story in Somali and Sinbad. I was shocked to find out these stories weren't Somali when I read the books.

Same kkk. I was told a number o stories one of whom is called a-shater hassan and i've always thought that it was a somali story turns out it's an egyption story.

I have never heard of the first one with guards. It is very similar to the second story. It has been alive for hundreds of years and has an extremely large jewel on its head and back. The only way to kill it is to take the jewel on its head. I remember she said it was a large Abeeso but a very similar story.

Interesting. I presume it's a traditional reer xamar story. I've noticed how people from the coast especially reer xamar from mogadishu seems to have preserved some archaic somali tradition of old. I've watched a video where someone from xamar weyne was asked to name the days of the week and he used the old somali names such as koobin, laamin and lamatok or carte, case and lamme or alwan, takaar and tumbud. In another video they've noted how the unique songs and gabay used among the reer xamar seems to be very old somali style that is also used in some parts of galbeed.

 

[Shimbiris]

I have never heard of the first one with guards. It is very similar to the second story. It has been alive for hundreds of years and has an extremely large jewel on its head and back. The only way to kill it is to take the jewel on its head. I remember she said it was a large Abeeso but a very similar story. She also told me the "One Thousand and One Nights" story in Somali and Sinbad. I was shocked to find out these stories weren't Somali when I read the books.

The hundreds of years lifespan reminds me of Arwe from Xabashis' mythology:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arwe

The veneration of Arwe, which was widespread, predates Christianity in Ethiopia,[1] which became a state religion under Ezana of Axum in the early 4th century.[2] Arwe ("wild beast" in Geʽez[3]) is a snake-king who rules for four hundred years[4] over the land that is to become Ethiopia. He is a giant serpent ("No, Arwe is not beyond the hill, for the hill you see is Arwe"[5]) to whom humans must sacrifice their virgin daughters and cattle to calm his endless hunger. He reigns with terror until he is defeated by a man who becomes the next ruler of the land, and his daughter becomes the Queen of Sheba, and then the mother of Menelik I.[6]

Some aspects of our somali tradition predates somalinimo and goes back in time to our cushitic identity and heritage, for example araawelo is a story we share with sidama borana etc. Qori ismaris is yet another tradition or a folklore we share with other horn of africans. The qori ismaris is associated with the beta israel of ethiopia and they have often times said to be able to turn into a hyena themselfs.




The qori ismaris is also a story that is been weaved and retold to instil moral values to the young generation which is why there are many versions of the story found everywhere.

Your modesty around just being a hobbiest is unwarranted, saaxiib. You know your stuff. Never seen anyone else ever point that other Horners have similar myths to the Carraweelo story:

https://www.ethiopianfolktales.com/en/snnpr/287-queen-fura

Narrated by Abebe Kebede

Queen Fura was a famous queen in Sidamo who taught all the women how to behave, and they still follow her to this day. She was very wise. First she told them not to completely submit to men. Then, secondly, she told them not to be completely obedient. Then she told them to be shy and keep men guessing. She also told them never to show their private parts to men in public. So they should cover their bodies from the knee to the waist. She also told them that a woman should take good care of herself because men are attracted by beauty.

Unfortunately, Queen Fura was very bad to men. She gave them all sorts of impossible commands.

She would say, “Go to the river and bring me back water in a sieve.”

Or she would tell them to make big tubs out of very thin grass. Or she would pull out one of her long hairs and tell them to divide it into six. So she really gave them a hard time.

But most of all what she did was, she hated bald men and short men. So she ordered all short men and all bald men to be killed. Hundreds and hundred were killed except for one short man and one bald man. The short man wore shoes with big heels, so he survived (he invented high heels) and the other man wore a wig (he invented wigs).

Now the short man and the bald man didn’t know what to do about the queen. They thought maybe they should kill her. But that had two big problems. The first one was, you never in the tradition kill a woman. The second was, she was a queen after all. Therefore they didn’t know what to do.

So they thought and made a plan. They decided to catch a giraffe. So they chased all the giraffes in the area to a marshy swamp and they managed to catch one when it got bogged down in the marsh.

They called the queen and said, “You’re a great queen. You shouldn’t ride a normal animal. You should ride the tall, elegant giraffe.”

Because the giraffe was in the bog and had sunk down, the queen could easily mount her. Then they strapped the queen on to the giraffe’s back, chased the giraffe out of the marsh and the giraffe ran and ran and ran. The queen began falling to bits. Her head fell off somewhere. Her arm fell off somewhere. Her intestines fell out somewhere and her leg fell off somewhere.

That’s why today in Sidamo you have towns with the name head, leg, body, intestines, hand. Oun, head,
Godubore, intestines, Leka, leg, Anga, hand.

I suspect that maybe all these Horner groups are remembering "Gudit" in a mythological way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudit

She was a real figure as we have Arab sources mentioning a woman ruling over Abyssinia.

 

[Garaad diinle]

Your modesty around just being a hobbiest is unwarranted, saaxiib. You know your stuff. Never seen anyone else ever point that other Horners have similar myths to the Carraweelo story:

You can say i know a little of everything so i can't call myself specialist. On the sidama stuff i can attest personally that the story of queen furra is similar to the somali story of araweelo. For example there is similarity between some parts of queen furra and the stories i heard when i was little such as when we say don't let the men into the kitchen for if they were to see the froth of the milk initially and the see it again when it's ready they will accuse you of drinking it selfishly same goes for meat. This part is also found in the queen furrra story almost a carbon copy.

I suspect that maybe all these Horner groups are remembering "Gudit" in a mythological way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudit
She was a real figure as we have Arab sources mentioning a woman ruling over Abyssinia.

Queen gudit is attested historically in coptic records as yudet and some arabic sources speak of her era when the nagashi was asking the christian king of sudan to help him against a warrior queen. She lived in the tenth century and was followed by eight kings.

 

[NidarNidar]

Not that I'm aware of but im also not the most cultured when it comes to our mythologies, tales and folklore.

however many cultures do have dragons, drakes, Leviathans, Wyverns etc type creatures I'm sure we might also have stories about them aswell.

I remember a story my granny used to tell me as a child, here is the short version.

In a small village tucked into the mountains, lived a woman whose child was the next sacrifice to a flying creature that could lift an ox without an issue, the woman decided that she would make the largest Laxoox disguised as her child, it took her several days, once it was ready, the creature came down, ready for its meal, it took the strongest men in the village to lift the Laxoox and throw it into the creature's mouth, it tried to swallow the Laxoox whole, but ended up choking itself.

The creature was intelligent and could talk, my granny didn't really describe how it looked, I always assumed it to be griffin or dragon, or maybe a pterodactyl, I loved growing up listening to stories, like the 2 girls that where abandoned by their father once he got a new wife in the woods.

 

[Hamzza]

Interesting. I presume it's a traditional reer xamar story. I've noticed how people from the coast especially reer xamar from mogadishu seems to have preserved some archaic somali tradition of old. I've watched a video where someone from xamar weyne was asked to name the days of the week and he used the old somali names such as koobin, laamin and lamatok or carte, case and lamme or alwan, takaar and tumbud. In another video they've noted how the unique songs and gabay used among the reer xamar seems to be very old somali style that is also used in some parts of galbeed.

The tradition of the snake-jewel' (mas ğôhar) is still alive among the Migiurtini. It is a snake - it is said that, after three hundred years of life and after eating three other snakes, it becomes a jewel snake. It is so called because it has a shiny jewel on its head which it uses to hunt during the night. It is very large and can fly. When attacking, it flies at its prey three times. If it has not killed her prey during these three flights, it falls dead herself. Whoever meets this snake should throw the shield at his head to cover the deceptive light of the jewel; and, having killed the serpent, it must be gutted and the jewel recovered.

This tradition is easily comparable to other very ancient ones in the various regions of the Indian Ocean and which then passed into the various kinds of literature of those peoples.

Source: (http://hdl.handle.net/2307/937) p 157

 

[Garaad diinle]

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Source: (http://hdl.handle.net/2307/937) p 157

Hmm, i gather cerulli here means that the snake story might be related to the naga of india? Could be but i won't trust the guy that much he is the same guy who translated harka ku jiif to sleeping on dung. In reality it means sleeping in the shade of a tree and it usually means in somali tradition an elder both in the north and in the south.

Though i must say there are snake cults in the ancient middle east, there have been found some snake symbols in the arabian gulf such as uae so there might be some truth to it. Other similarities between people on the indian ocean that i can think of is the trail of fire. Georges revoil recorded on his travels to bari a peculiar tradition of a trail by fire. There are in some ways similar trail by fires recorded in yemen and india.

 

[Shimbiris]

Hmm, i gather cerulli here means that the snake story might be related to the naga of india? Could be but i won't trust the guy that much he is the same guy who translated harka ku jiif to sleeping on dung. In reality it means sleeping in the shade of a tree and it usually means in somali tradition and elder both in the north and in the south.

Though i must say there are snake cults in the ancient middle east there have been found some snake symbols in the arabian gulf such as uae so there might be some truth to it. Other similarities between people on the indian ocean that i can think of is the trail of fire. Georges revoil recorded on his travels to bari a peculiar tradition of a trail by fire. There are in some ways similar trail by fires recorded in yemen and india.

I found some interesting stuff about snake cults among Cushites and Semites in my artisanal taboo thread:

https://www.somalispot.com/threads/arabs-also-practiced-artisanal-taboo.133226/page-2#post-3319826

Arabians in particular apparently cited that fish were "snakes" as a reason not to eat them when they would display a similar fish taboo to Cushites. I think I recall reading that some Horners like Somalis said something similar. Calling fish "sea snakes" and thus not wanting to eat them. Some folks seem to theorize this goes back to a Pre-Islamic snake cult amongst these Afrasian peoples.

 

[Garaad diinle]

I found some interesting stuff about snake cults among Cushites and Semites in my artisanal taboo thread:

https://www.somalispot.com/threads/arabs-also-practiced-artisanal-taboo.133226/page-2#post-3319826

Arabians in particular apparently cited that fish were "snakes" as a reason not to eat them when they would display a similar fish taboo to Cushites. I think I recall reading that some Horners like Somalis said something similar. Calling fish "sea snakes" and thus not wanting to eat them. Some folks seem to theorize this goes back to a Pre-Islamic snake cult amongst these Afrasian peoples.

Wait hold on a second arab also have a fish taboo? It's an ancient taboo among the cushitic speakers found all the way up in old sudan. Unless there was some sort of influence on our part we might be venturing deep in history here all the way to our afro-asiatic roots. Now that i think about it i recall reading about the tinin or dragon in arabic sources.

It's said that every century or millennium a snake changes and evolves from crawling to swimming to flying and finally it turns into a great flying serpent. I've always thought that this story might've been transmitted by Turkic tribes from china but it might be native story. Let's not forget about the leviathan the great sea serpent. Snake cult might've been a part of the speakers of proto-afro-asiatic language interwind with the fish taboo.

On another note i do remember something about arabs not fancying the crafts and artisanal work in the sira. For example the yahud in madina were responsible for manufacturing weapons if i recall correctly. Hey i even remember that the ancient greeks regarded metal work as akin to magic.

 

[Hamzza]

Hmm, i gather cerulli here means that the snake story might be related to the naga of india? Could be but i won't trust the guy that much he is the same guy who translated harka ku jiif to sleeping on dung. In reality it means sleeping in the shade of a tree and it usually means in somali tradition an elder both in the north and in the south.

Though i must say there are snake cults in the ancient middle east, there have been found some snake symbols in the arabian gulf such as uae so there might be some truth to it. Other similarities between people on the indian ocean that i can think of is the trail of fire. Georges revoil recorded on his travels to bari a peculiar tradition of a trail by fire. There are in some ways similar trail by fires recorded in yemen and india.

What was the story of "Har ka jiif" about? Could you elaborate more? Wallahi I too would've thought it was sleeping on dung, It sounds more like that than sleeping in the shade. I noticed that Enrico Cerulli may be driven by agenda sometimes but he is an encyclopedia when it comes to Somali studies and records كل صغيرة وكبيرة.

 

[Garaad diinle]

What was the story of "Har ka jiif" about? Could you elaborate more? Wallahi I too would've thought it was sleeping on dung, It sounds more like that than sleeping in the shade. I noticed that Enrico Cerulli may be driven by agenda sometimes but he is an encyclopedia when it comes to Somali studies and records كل صغيرة وكبيرة.

Har ku jiif as opposed to xaar ku jiif indicates an elder much like barbaar and foodley indicate the young ones.

In southern somalia particular among the rahanweyn and these who live with them it's considered the final stage of their age-set while in northern somalia it indicates retirement from office and one is considered consultant elder due to their knowledge. Among the rendille elders are considered these who shave their head and sit under the shade.

I can't think of examples but i recall this one among the ciisah. In xeer ciise they're called jiifa.

 

[Hamzza]

Har ku jiif as opposed to xaar ku jiif indicates an elder much like barbaar and foodley indicate the young ones. In southern somalia particular among the rahanweyn and these who live with them it's considered the final stage of their age-set while in northern somalia it indicates retirement from office and one is considered consultant elder due to their knowledge. Among the rendille elders are considered these who shave their head and sit under the shade.

I can't think of examples but i recall this one among the ciisah. In xeer ciise they're called jiifa.

Xaar ku jiif kulahaa kkkk

 

[NidarNidar]

Wait hold on a second arab also have a fish taboo? It's an ancient taboo among the cushitic speakers found all the way up in old sudan. Unless there was some sort of influence on our part we might be venturing deep in history here all the way to our afro-asiatic roots. Now that i think about it i recall reading about the tinin or dragon in arabic sources.

It's said that every century or millennium a snake changes and evolves from crawling to swimming to flying and finally it turns into a great flying serpent. I've always thought that this story might've been transmitted by Turkic tribes from china but it might be native story. Let's not forget about the leviathan the great sea serpent. Snake cult might've been a part of the speakers of proto-afro-asiatic language interwind with the fish taboo.

On another note i do remember something about arabs not fancying the crafts and artisanal work in the sira. For example the yahud in madina were responsible for manufacturing weapons if i recall correctly. Hey i even remember that the ancient greeks regarded metal work as akin to magic.

The oldest story seems to have left Africa and ventured back sometime within the last 10,000 years, it's roughly 75-65,000 ago, the rain snake, the storm god etc.. rain for early hunter-gathers was a great omen and brought abundance.

This video breaks it down pretty well.

The myth travelled with the first groups that left Africa and evolved, originally the rain serpent/snake or SEA myths of the dragon is more serpentile noble etc.. compared to the evil dragon of the Indo Europeans myths.