Bro you have so much information and i enjoy your threads especially on diets and Somali history ones.I used to think "Barbar" came from "Barbaros/Barbaroi" like what they called the Germanic tribes in Europe but it seems more likely they were extrapolating a Nubian ethnic term onto us similar to how they took the label "Arab" and used it for various regions of the peninsula:
Barbar's likely origins
What I find personally very interesting about the Greek and Roman descriptions of the Cushitic speaking coasts of NE Africa is how similar things look to the Early Modern Era and ostensibly also the Middle Ages; a collection of port-towns largely independent from each other, each ruled by its own "Chieftain" who were probably those days' equivalents of the Medieval and Early Modern Garaads, Suldaans, Ugaasiin and so on. Somalis and other Cushites were always fairly decentralized, I would argue.
What are the odds that we find manuscripts if we excevate these small collcetions of port towns. I've thought for a long time that there has to be some written tradition. Considering how I've read papers that use somali poetry as evidence that the gap ortature and written literature is blurry. I also read sade mure 2018 paper and zhe mentions a significant amount of Christian burials and at the end she makes an offhand comment about ge'ez manuscripts found. Both of these things the similarities of our poetry to poetry from written literatures and the existence of these port towns and possible ge'ez manuscripts on top of the sumado . Make me think there is a high possibility we had a written tradition and it'll most likely be found around these port towns or in the Christian cairns. Maybe we'll even find a somali Bible translated from ge'ez
Somalis literally always had a system of sponsorship and monitoring with ajanabis. If you came onto a coastal town from both Woqooyi to Koonfur you had to be given a local Somali "Abaan" which people like Burton and Speke describe and even Ibn Battuta basically describes. Your abaan keeps an eye on you, takes a certain cut of all your business transactions and is usually also tasked with making sure you do not go into the interior of the country without express permission from someone like a local Suldaan and even after that the Abaans were always very suspicious of ajanabis and watched them closely. Our ancestors were very suspicious of letting ajanabis onto their lands. I've seen accounts that show Indians who settled in places like Xamar basically would spend their entire lifetime in the magaalad inside its walls. Never venturing into even Afgooye.
This is probably a big reason why we weren't really enslaved historically. Not just a matter of being Muslims but also being very cautious with foreigners and not letting them wander the interior where they can kidnap rural women and kids.
- Source
Another very big hint is in muse galal book on astronomy and folklore. We have an incredibly complicated system of astronomy and astrology. In the book he talks about multiple metaphysical concepts like nuro,nabsi,and naqsi that somalis believed in. But what stood out to me the most is that he mentions we monitored the moon through 28 stations.which struck me as very simialr to the chinese 28 mansions which are about the movements of the moon. I tried to find parallels in other african culutres understanding but I couldn't find anything remotely similar. You also have to understand this was extremely widespread its referred in the sayyids poetry and apocryphal saying of arawelo. We also know that it's old because those state horn project guys had somebody check if the xiis cairns aligned with the calendarical system and they found that these 3rd century graves somehow aligned.
I mean wallahi that's very possible. I don't think she is trained in semetic languages. Plus we know from the temple inscriptions excavated in 2019 that there were people on the somali coast with knowledge of musnad in the 7th century b.c.e . So of course they would have based their script of musnad. We might actually be looking at the first inscription of proto somali. On top of the fact that we have loan words from old south arabian so somebody could easily mistake it as illegible sabean inscriptions. There also has to be connection with sumado somewhere since some of the symbols look similar.
Yeah to me the fact that you have modern south Arabians lanaguges which should clearly show descent from old south arabian but don't show how big the gaps are. One of my big hopes is that we discover a mini dunhuang of somali manuscripts. One thing that's obvious if your read the research done on somali cairns. Is that some of the grave goods found match those found in royal aksumite and meroe tombs. It obvious from this that these coastal somali ports were no joke and the idea that such wealthy somali merchants who also traveled to eygpt and the roman empire (somali dna found in serbia) to trade left behind no written material remnants seems impossible.There was a linguist who spoke of a 'Cushitic sub-stratum' in the Peninsula- I can't remember what his name was.
I remember seeing genetists saying that Mehri and other South Arabian are likely to be about 10% Cushitic DNA wise so this does seem to make sense.
Yeah I've read this paper. Sabaic lingustics seems like a mess to me. Every word is attributed in one direction with us borrowing from them. I found it very hard to belive since we know that going back at least to the periplus that somalis were arriving at their coast. So the borrowing could easily be in the other direction. Plus I'm very skeptical of any borrowing from southern ethiosmetic into somali. On top of the biggest mystery of all which is where the hell did the modern south arabian languges come from theri not decsended from old south arabian maybe a possibel cushitc semetic creole ?
I haven't seen this but presumably since it was a major port and most slaves were sold through somali Ports its definitely possible.What do they mean about trading slaves from opone? (Modern day hafun)
Yeah to me the fact that you have modern south Arabians lanaguges which should clearly show descent from old south arabian but don't show how big the gaps are. One of my big hopes is that we discover a mini dunhuang of somali manuscripts. One thing that's obvious if your read the research done on somali cairns. Is that some of the grave goods found match those found in royal aksumite and meroe tombs. It obvious from this that these coastal somali ports were no joke and the idea that such wealthy somali merchants who also traveled to eygpt and the roman empire (somali dna found in serbia) to trade left behind no written material remnants seems impossible.