Negative Consequences of Oral History on Somali History

[Medulla]

Has Somali's dependency on Oral History in the past damaged the legtimacy of historical accounts today? A lot of arguments today stem from a lack of written accounts prior to the kacaan era. Due to this a lot of people claim whatever was said during that time was nothing but revisionism , we have the same arguments on notable historical figures constantly cause of this

Our obsession with qabiil has lead to people lying about events with confidence since their are no written accounts for most of these events and if there are they dismiss them as false. Anyone know why there was such a emphasis on Oral history to begin with? Did we really just hate the idea of writing or was it due to not having a script of our own at the time?

Whenever we look at Somali History today nearly all the"non-bias" sources are written by non-somalis which is quite sad honestly and with the way fake news is rife today I doubt that will change anytime soon. I can't even name a single Somali news network that doesn't have obvious biases yes you can argue non bias media doesn't truly exist , but when it comes to Somali's it's painfully obvious that their is a agenda with many of these newspapers and channels.

 

[Kanini]

We've pretty much Chinese whispered our history down the years creating a lot of inaccuracies along the way. It definitely would have been better if we had writing abilities back then to avoid what we're dealing with now.

 

[Medulla]

We've pretty much Chinese whispered our history down the years creating a lot of inaccuracies along the way. It definitely would have been better if we had writing abilities back then to avoid what we're dealing with now.

It has effected every part of somali culture I would say it's amazing how destructive it's been , but I just want the truth not some rehashed version by a jaded qabiliist. Everything from Clan History to historical figures is contested over since nothing was ever written down.

People still argue about what clans fall under what branch it's insane that it's come to this at all. You would think being muslim would encourage them to write things down , but I have a feeling many people didn't even "read" the quran they just by force rote memorized it.

I don't even know if we can fix this issue today aswell the whole thing is a mess, we are next in line to beat India in the fake news Olympics. Give it 20 years and we will be arguing what clan was Aden Abdulle Osman from or something
Historical negationism is a disease .