Abtirsi.com Forums

Hi James,

so far I've only been looking into the Somali genealogy, and I was quite surprised to see how the Oromo genealogy fits into the Somali one. Is this from a Somali perspective or an Oromo one? Could you give me some more information on the Oromo genealogy, maybe the sources you've used, etc.?

Both groups claim the connection, but in very indirect ways.

The first connection is with Dir. Tradition lists 4 sons of Dir: Maahe, Madaxweyne, Madoobe and Maaladuqu. However Dir usually also include a fourth group, the "Qalho Dir", who include the Afran Kallo, a group of Barentuma Oromo clans. Oromo likewise consider various Dir to be Oromo, such as the Akishu (Maxamuud Cali Madaxweyne Dir).

This is made more complicated as Oromo do not organize their confederations based on lineage, but rather on geographic proximity. 'Barentu' for instance means east-facing, and may not even refer to a historic person.

Now this could be chalked up to adoption or assimilation, but genetic studies have shown that many Somalis and Oromos share a paternal ancestry as well.

However I was happily surprised to learn that Oromos do actually keep precise records of their lineages, they just have no political significance so they are much less well known compared to Somali lineages. And I almost fell out of my chair when, while reading the Tuulama lineage, the name before Boorana is Saamaaloo. None of the other names I could see match up.

For a time I considered this interesting, if impossible to prove, until I found a copy of a Kenyan Ajuuraan abtiris that traced back many generations before Ajuuraan, all the way to a 'Shimaal'.

It all fell into place, the lineage had many names, with slightly different spellings, on the Tuulama Borana AND the Afran Kallo lineages, tied into Irir Samaale, and essentially tied up the entire Samaale lineage.

To prove it however I would need to test the Y chromosomes of Tuulama, Hawiye, Dir, Jaarso and Ajuuraan men, who if my hypothesis is correct, should all share a common ancestor who lived 40-50 generations ago.

Your discoveries are exciting. Yet I'm still a bit confused.

In your post http://www.abtirsi.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9#p12 you say that genetic evidence will give you an accuracy of 100-500 generations (the time between mutations). So you might prove a common link with Aqee bin Abu Talib but you can't pove he is the link.
I would think in the same way you could prove that there is a link between Oromo and Somali, but you wouldn't be able to narrow it down to 40-50 generations. And you wouldn't be able to prove whether it happened before or after Saamaalo.

I don't doubt that there is some link between the Oromo and Somali (after all, they speak related languages, live in the same region and even physically resemble each other!). But I would assume that this link is at least 100 generations in the past, if not more.

I still don't quite understand how the genealogical history links in with the linguistic history. You might have come across all those articles written by historical linguists that show how the Oromo and Somali languages both originated at least 3000 years ago in south-eastern Ethiopia, and how they then split and moved into different directions. Of course you can't prove that the people who spoke the language then are the ancestors of the people who speak the language now. But it would seem quite likely to me that (especially with the big groups like Somali and Oromo) that language and ethnic groups roughly correspond to each other.

So if the Oromo and Somali languages split at least 3000 years ago, how could the genealogies split only less than 1500 years ago?

Also. I would be really careful with a genealogy found among the Kenyan Ajuuraan. In Kenya, the system of sheegad was practiced very extensively, and the Ajuuraan, for example, were vassals of the Borana for probably around 300 years. I wouldn't be surprised if the oral traditions got mixed up a bit during that time, or if quite a number of Kenyan Ajuuraan are actually Borana who married into the clan.

I've also come across the theory that the Kenyan Ajuuraan are not actually Ajuuraan but part of the Garre-Rendille group that has inhabited Kenya for a very long time. According to this hypothesis, some of the "true" Ajuuraan came to Kenya and intermarried with these people. When it was politically convenient, the whole group then adopted the ancestry of their (minority) Ajuuraan elements and thus became the Kenyan "Ajuuraan". During this process, obviously, there would be quite a bit of manipulation of genealogies.

It was fascinating for me to come across a statement made by a Kenyan Ajuuraan some 50 years ago: "We used to be Borana, but now we are Somali"!



I would still be very interested in the sources you used for the Oromo genealogies. If they are published, maybe I can get access to them here. I do have to read more about Oromo history...

I'm very sceptical about anthropologists claiming that the Somali and Oromo languages differed so long ago. Languages can change very rapidly, especially in invasions. The English were conquered by the Normans who changed the English language drastically in about 400 years. Somalis were as influenced by Arabs as the English were by the Normans.

Also haplogroups are very distantly related but you can do more accurate tests that can show high statistical probability of common paternal ancestry to within only a few generations, and with precise accuracy to within 10. 40-50 would be no problem at all.

I'll write more later.

I totally agree with you, that languages can change rapidly during an invasion. The Borana invasion of Northern Kenya is a nice example, of how Somali groups switched to speaking Borana within a short period of time. I would also agree that the strong Arab influence might have changed Somali language quite rapidly.

Nevertheless, I don't think we can attribute the major differences in language between Oromo and Somali to Arab influence. If the classification of the Eastern Cushitic languages is at all correct, the split is not between Oromo and Somali alone, but between Oromo and Omo-Tana. Omo-Tana includes the Rendille, the Boni, the El-Molo and the Dhassanach. All of these groups have had little if any Arab influence, yet their languages are closer to Somali than to Oromo. So I would assume that the major language shift that divides Oromo and Somali today was not due to Arab influence.

I would also say that of all the Somali dialects it is Standard (Northern) Somali that is most influenced by Arabic, whereas among all the Southern languages - Maay, Jiddo, Tonni, Garre, Dabarre - there is a lot less Arabic influence. Somalis would generally say these languages are closer to Oromo (because they don't have the harsh sounds of Standard Somali, for example), but linguists would say, they are closer to Rendille, Boni, etc., but still clearly within the Omo-Tana group of Eastern Cushitic.

If it is true that the El-Molo and Dhassanach along the Lake Turkana are linguistically closer to the Somalis than the Oromo, the split between these two language groups must have happened a long time ago to allow for all this (pre-Arabic) differentiation.

Most Oromo dialects have been heavily influenced as well, but by Amharic and Omotic languages rather than Arabic. The root language of both Somali and Oromo is what linguistic anthropologists refer to as "Proto East Cushitic". The influence of Omotic on Oromo is why Omotic languages are often times included in Cushitic but most linguists today dispute their relatedness due to other factors, and consider the Omotic languages to be their own family.

Omotic's original classification as Cushitic was, argued by Harold C. Fleming (1974) and M. Lionel Bender (1975), based on bad science, and proposed that the language be reclassified as it's own branch of Afroasiatic, while more recent work by Rolf Theil (2006) places Omotic outside of even Afroasiatic as an isolate language.

At the same time as Omotic has been steadily reclassified further from Cushitic, work has at the same time been showing that South Cushitic is actually a branch of Lowland East Cushitic. From wiki:
"Hetzron (1980:70ff) and Ehret (1995) have suggested that the Rift languages (South Cushitic) are a part of Lowland East Cushitic. Kießling & Mous (2003) have suggested more specifically that they be linked to a Southern Lowland branch, together with Oromo, Somali, and Yaaku-Dullay".

Jilo wrote:Your discoveries are exciting. Yet I'm still a bit confused.

In your post http://www.abtirsi.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9#p12 you say that genetic evidence will give you an accuracy of 100-500 generations (the time between mutations). So you might prove a common link with Aqee bin Abu Talib but you can't pove he is the link.
I would think in the same way you could prove that there is a link between Oromo and Somali, but you wouldn't be able to narrow it down to 40-50 generations. And you wouldn't be able to prove whether it happened before or after Saamaalo.

I don't doubt that there is some link between the Oromo and Somali (after all, they speak related languages, live in the same region and even physically resemble each other!). But I would assume that this link is at least 100 generations in the past, if not more.

I still don't quite understand how the genealogical history links in with the linguistic history. You might have come across all those articles written by historical linguists that show how the Oromo and Somali languages both
originated at least 3000 years ago in south-eastern Ethiopia, and how they then split and moved into different directions. Of course you can't prove that the people who spoke the language then are the ancestors of the people

who speak the language now. But it would seem quite likely to me that (especially with the big groups like Somali

and Oromo) that language and ethnic groups roughly correspond to each other.

So if the Oromo and Somali languages split at least 3000 years ago, how could the genealogies split only less than 1500 years ago?

Also. I would be really careful with a genealogy found among the Kenyan Ajuuraan. In Kenya, the system of sheegad was practiced very extensively, and the Ajuuraan, for example, were vassals of the Borana for probably around 300 years. I wouldn't be surprised if the oral traditions got mixed up a bit during that time, or if quite a number of Kenyan Ajuuraan are actually Borana who married into the clan.

I've also come across the theory that the Kenyan Ajuuraan are not actually Ajuuraan but part of the Garre-Rendille group that has inhabited Kenya for a very long time. According to this hypothesis, some of the "true" Ajuuraan came to Kenya and intermarried with these people. When it was politically convenient, the whole group then adopted the ancestry of their (minority) Ajuuraan elements and thus became the Kenyan "Ajuuraan". During this process, obviously, there would be quite a bit of manipulation of genealogies.

It was fascinating for me to come across a statement made by a Kenyan Ajuuraan some 50 years ago: "We used to be Borana, but now we are Somali"!



I would still be very interested in the sources you used for the Oromo genealogies. If they are published, maybe I can get access to them here. I do have to read more about Oromo history...

[u]which is which[/
it is worth noting to clarify if the assimilation of various borana clans into Ajuuran had happened during the Ajuuran kingdom or after the collapse of the kingdom. However, i am of opinion that assimilation of many former borana groups into Ajuran happened during the time of the kingdom this is because the said clans are all grouped within walamaggo lineage and are brothers to Garen royal family as ajuran are two broad groups of waqle and walamagge.Also both waqle and garen dont speak oromo language and they culturally despise the other oromo speaking group,till recently marriage to these sections were not possible despite their abtirsi going down to the walagge same as Garen. it is possible to have been adopted by the Royal family.