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Somalia Religious Orders and the Cult of the Saints
Religious orders have played a significant role in Somali
Islam. The rise of these orders (turuq; sing.,
tariqa, "way" or "path") was connected with the
development of Sufism, a mystical current in Islam that began
during the ninth and tenth centuries and reached its height
during the twelfth and thirteenth. In Somalia Sufi orders
appeared in towns during the fifteenth century and rapidly became
a revitalizing force. Followers of Sufism seek a closer personal
relationship to God through special spiritual disciplines. Escape
from self is facilitated by poverty, seclusion, and other forms
of self-denial. Members of Sufi orders are commonly called
dervishes (from the Persian plural, daraawish; sing.,
darwish, one who gave up worldly concerns to dedicate
himself to the service of God and community). Leaders of branches
or congregations of these orders are given the Arabic title
shaykh, a term usually reserved for these learned in Islam
and rarely applied to ordinary wadaddo.
Dervishes wandered from place to place, teaching and begging.
They are best known for their ceremonies, called
dhikr
(see Glossary), in which states of visionary ecstasy are induced
by group- chanting of religious texts and by rhythmic gestures,
dancing, and deep breathing. The object is to free oneself from
the body and to be lifted into the presence of God. Dervishes
have been important as founders of agricultural religious
communities called jamaat (sing., jamaa). A few of
these were home to celibate men only, but usually the
jamaat were inhabited by families. Most Somalis were
nominal members of Sufi orders but few underwent the rigors of
devotion to the religious life, even for a short time.
Three Sufi orders were prominent in Somalia. In order of
their introduction into the country, they were the Qadiriyah, the
Ahmadiyah-Idrisiyah, and the Salihiyah. The Rifaiyah, an offshoot
of the Qadiriyah, was represented mainly among Arabs resident in
Mogadishu.
The Qadiriyah, the oldest order in Islam, was founded in
Baghdad by Abd al Qadir al Jilani in 1166 and introduced into
Harer (Ethiopia) in the fifteenth century. During the eighteenth
century, it was spread among the Oromo and Somalis of Ethiopia,
often under the leadership of Somali shaykhs. Its earliest known
advocate in northern Somalia was Shaykh Abd ar Rahman az Zeilawi,
who died in 1883. At that time, Qadiriyah adherents were
merchants in the ports and elsewhere. In a separate development,
the Qadiriyah order also spread into the southern Somali port
cities of Baraawe and Mogadishu at an uncertain date. In 1819
Shaykh Ibrahim Hassan Jebro acquired land on the Jubba River and
established a religious center in the form of a farming
community, the first Somali jamaa.
Outstanding figures of the Qadiriyah in Somalia included
Shaykh Awes Mahammad Baraawi (d. 1909), who spread the teaching
of the order in the southern interior. He wrote much devotional
poetry in Arabic and attempted to translate traditional hymns
from Arabic into Somali, working out his own phonetic system.
Another was Shaykh Abdirrahman Abdullah of Mogadishu, who
stressed deep mysticism. Because of his reputation for sanctity,
his tomb at Mogadishu became a pilgrimage center for the
Shabeelle area and his writings continued to be circulated by his
followers in the early 1990s.
The Ahmadiyah-Idrisiyah order was founded by Ahmad ibn Idris
al Fasi (1760-1837) of Mecca. It was brought to Somalia by Shaykh
Ali Maye Durogba of Merca, a distinguished poet who joined the
order during a pilgrimage to Mecca. His visions and the miracles
attributed to him gained him a reputation for sanctity, and his
tomb became a popular objective among pilgrims. The AhmadiyahIdrisiyah , the smallest of the three orders, has few ritual
requirements beyond some simple prayers and hymns. During its
ceremonies, however, participants often go into trances.
A conflict over the leadership of the Ahmadiyah-Idrisiyah
among its Arab founders led to the establishment of the Salihiyah
in 1887 by Muhammad ibn Salih. The order spread first among the
Somalis of the Ogaden area of Ethiopia, who entered Somalia about
1880. The Salihiyah's most active proselytizer was Shaykh
Mahammad Guled ar Rashidi, who became a regional leader. He
settled among the Shidle people (Bantu-speakers occupying the
middle reaches of the Shabeelle River), where he obtained land
and established a jamaa. Later he founded another
jamaa among the Ajuran (a section of the Hawiye clanfamily ) and then returned to establish still another community
among the Shidle before his death in 1918. Perhaps the best known
Somali Salihiyah figure was Mahammad Abdille Hasan, leader of a
lengthy resistance to the British until 1920
(see
Mahammad Abdille Hasau's Dervish Resistance to Colonial Occupation, ch. 1).
Generally, the Salihiyah and the Ahmadiyah-Idrisiyah leaders
were more interested in the establishment of jamaat along
the Shabeelle and Jubba rivers and the fertile land between them
than in teaching because few were learned in Islam. Their early
efforts to establish farming communities resulted in cooperative
cultivation and harvesting and some effective agricultural
methods. In Somalia's riverine region, for example, only
jamaat members thought of stripping the brush from areas
around their fields to reduce the breeding places of tsetse
flies.
Local leaders of brotherhoods customarily asked lineage heads
in the areas where they wished to settle for permission to build
their mosques and communities. A piece of land was usually freely
given; often it was an area between two clans or one in which
nomads had access to a river. The presence of a jamaa not
only provided a buffer zone between two hostile groups, but also
caused the giver to acquire a blessing since the land was
considered given to God. Tenure was a matter of charity only,
however, and sometimes became precarious in case of
disagreements. No statistics were available in 1990 on the number
of such settlements, but in the 1950s there were more than ninety
in the south, with a total of about 35,000 members. Most were in
the Bakool, Gedo, and Bay regions or along the middle and lower
Shabeelle River. There were few jamaat in other regions
because the climate and soil did not encourage agricultural
settlements.
Membership in a brotherhood is theoretically a voluntary
matter unrelated to kinship. However, lineages are often
affiliated with a specific brotherhood and a man usually joins
his father's order. Initiation is followed by a ceremony during
which the order's dhikr is celebrated. Novices swear to
accept the branch head as their spiritual guide.
Each order has its own hierarchy that is supposedly a
substitute for the kin group from which the members have
separated themselves. Veneration is given to previous heads of
the order, known as the Chain of Blessing, rather than to
ancestors. This practice is especially followed in the south,
where place of residence tends to have more significance than
lineage.
Leaders of orders and their branches and of specific
congregations are said to have baraka, a state of blessedness
implying an inner spiritual power that is inherent in the
religious office and may cling to the tomb of a revered leader,
who, upon death, is considered a saint. However, some saints are
venerated because of their religious reputations whether or not
they were associated with an order or one of its communities.
Sainthood also has been ascribed to others because of their
status as founders of clans or large lineages. Northern pastoral
nomads are likely to honor lineage founders as saints; sedentary
Somalis revere saints for their piety and baraka.
Because of the saint's spiritual presence at his tomb,
pilgrims journey there to seek aid (such as a cure for illness or
infertility). Members of the saint's order also visit the tomb,
particularly on the anniversaries of his birth and death.
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