Of the outcaste races the most important are the Tomal, Yebir, and Midgán. They are not organised in tribes, but live in scattered families all over Somáliland. The Tomal are the blacksmiths, who fashion all kinds of arms, axes, and general ironwork. The Yebir are workers in leather, such as saddlery, scabbards, and so forth. The Midgáns are probably the most numerous of the outcaste people. They are armed with the mindi (a small dagger), bow, and poisoned arrows, carrying the latter in a large quiver. They keep wild and savage pariah dogs, which they train to hunting, their chief quarry being the oryx (Oryx beisa), the large bovine antelope with the rapier-like horns.
I have often been out oryx-hunting on foot in the Bulhár Plain with Midgáns and dogs. When a bull oryx is killed a disc from fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter is cut from the thick skin of his withers and sometimes from the rump: these are worth from one to four rupees at the coast, and are used by the Midgáns for making shields. The Midgáns are a hardy race, used to living away from karias, stealthy and perfect trackers, and they are sometimes, in intertribal warfare, engaged to act as messengers, scouts, and light skirmishers. There appears to be no physical difference between them and other Somális, except that the average stature of the Midgáns may be slightly shorter. I have on more than one occasion come upon a party of Midgáns pegging out the fresh skin of a lion which they had just killed; many of these animals are brought to bag every year with no other weapons than their tiny arrows. The lions are found asleep under the khansa bushes at midday, or are shot from an ambush at night over a living bait, or when returning to a “kill.”
In the interior of Northern Somáliland there are no permanent settlements except those founded and occupied by religious Mahomedans, called sheikhs, mullahs, or widads. These settlements occur, on an average, about seventy miles apart. The two largest which I have seen are Seyyid Mahomed’s Town in Ogádén, and Hargeisa in the Habr Awal country. There are about a dozen others of minor importance, all inhabited by mullahs, scattered over several degrees of latitude and longitude, and Hargeisa may be taken as the type of them all.
Somáli Camp Followers and a Horseman from the Bush.
From a Photograph by Prince Boris Czetwertynski.
Mullahs are enabled to settle down and form permanent villages, and cultivate, on account of the respect in which they are held by all tribes. A looting party must be driven to the last extremity of hunger before it will attack them, and generally in such a case only as many animals would be looted as are needed to provide food. The mullahs are drawn from various tribes, and being cosmopolitan, have very extended influence. They are a quiet, respectable class, generally on the side of order, and are civil to travellers.
Hargeisa, a compact village of a few hundred agal or permanent huts, is surrounded by a high mat fence, and a square mile or two of jowári (Holcus sorghum) cultivation belonging to different mullahs. Sheikh Mattar, the chief of Hargeisa, is a pleasant mannered man affecting Arab dress; he reads and writes Arabic, and is a steady supporter of British interests. Like many of the more important mullahs in Somáliland he has a very dark complexion, almost black, in fact, with well-formed, intelligent features. With the exception of these mullah settlements, a few graves dotted about the country, and some cairns and ancient remains of former races, there is nothing permanent to show the presence of human beings. The caravan tracks are mere paths made by the feet of camels and passing flocks, crossed by game tracks in every direction. For countless years long lines of baggage camels have gone aside from the straight course in order to wind round some stone or bush that a child could remove. The work is left to the next caravan, or to Allah, who is made responsible for everything, good or bad, in Somáliland. There is no social system, but patriarchal government by tribes, clans, and families; no cohesion, and no paramount authority; and the whole country has been from time immemorial in a chronic state of petty warfare and blood feuds.