Anti Imperialism In Somalia

The contemporary Somali historian and students of history could find it hard to believe that Somalis lived, generation after generation, century after century, without authentic political organization or strong traditional government institutions uniting all Somali tribes into one political order. Even though that being the case, there still some level of collective tradition laws for coordination and to maintain inter and intra collective good and fair dispensation of justices. In essence, the only law of the land was the long kept traditional customs, virtues and values under “Xeer institution”. In the unlikely event of one committing crime, the injured party would ask the offending clan to administer “justice” by taking note from a similar incident in the past and thus a legal ruling would be executed judiciously.

In the past literatures little as it was focused, mainly when considering the anti-imperialist nationalist, one Sayyid Mohammad Abdulle Hassan and his Dervishes state of the 19th century the extent of coverage is negligible as compare to the event of his quarter century struggle. The few interested authors in the past end up orbiting around the freedom struggle particularly the Dervishes military expeditions against the British colonial administration in Northern Somalis land. In a rear cases, some go far including his poetry talent without necessarily giving attention to other comportment of his struggle including; his religious and organizational influence—Neo-Sufi Saalihiyya that shaped puritanical thinking of the Somalis up to the present day. The role of networking and shuttle diplomacy within the Somali tribes and the outside world, the similarity between Sayyid Mohammad and cases of other Sufi leaders who led similar resistance in the black