Hawiye

Somali clan family

The Hawiye (, بنو هوية, ) is the largest Somali clan family. Members of this clan traditionally inhabit central and southern Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, Ethiopia (Somali, Harar, Oromia and Afar regions) and Kenya (North Eastern Province, Eastern Province). They are also the majority in the capital city, Mogadishu.

Like the great majority of Somali clans, the Hawiye trace their ancestry to Aqil ibn Abi Talib (c. 580 – 670 or 683), a cousin of the prophet Muhammad (c. 570 – 632 – c. no) and an older brother of Ali ibn Abi Talib (c. 600 – 661 – c. no) and Ja'far ibn Abi Talib (c. 590 – 629 – c. no). They trace their lineage to Aqil through Samaale (the source of the name 'Somali'), the purported forefather of the northern pastoralist clans such as the Hawiye, the Dir, and –matrilineally through the Dir– the Isaq and the Darod. Hawiye Somalis also share a long affinity with Cushitic speaking peoples of the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, forming the ancient proto Somali Kingdom of Kush, Land of Punt and Macrobia.

The Hawiye are believed to be the largest Somali clan and compromise the majority in Somalia as well as the majority in the NFD region of Kenya according to respective censuses. The origin and traditional homeland of the Hawiye is believed to be in the Somali Region of Ethiopia, where he was preceded by the arrival of his Samaale ancestors in the areas between Djibouti and Somaliland, before descending southeast and along the Shabelle Valley. In Somalia, Hawiye subclans can be found inhabiting the areas of fertile lands in the Shabelle River of Beledweyne in the Hiran region and stretching from the coast immediately south of Mogadishu to the north of the ancient port town of Hobyo in the desert central Mudug region. The Hawiye are the majority in the Hirshabelle state of Somalia, with the Abgaal clan being present while in Galmudug Hawiye are the majority as well with certain Hawiye clans such as Habar Gidir, Abgaal, Duduble and Murusade being present. The Hawiye also have a second majority presence in the South West State region. They can also be found in Jubbaland. The Fiqishini subclan of the Habar Gidir inhabit the Sool region of Somaliland. The Hawiye also live in their traditional birthplace Ethiopia, holding a sizeable population in the Somali Region of Ethiopia as well as cities like Babile and Imi in the Oromia regions. In the southern parts of the Somali Region, Hawiye are majority in 2 of the 9 zones, namely the Liben zone and the Shabelle. The Hawiye are also present in the other zones such as the Dollo, Jarar, Sitti and the Jigjiga zone. A small number can also be found in the Afar region. In Kenya, the Hawiye can also be found in the North Eastern Province (Kenya) region of Kenya where the Degoodi sub clan is 3rd majority out of Somali clans in Kenya and the majority in the Wajir region, followed by another Hawiye sub clan, the Ajuran and then the Murule who are the majority of the Mandera region as shown in the Kenyan census. Major Hawiye cities include the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu, Beledweyne, Jowhar and Mandera.

The Hawiye has produced various sultanates, some of which ruled large parts of the Horn of Africa. Some of these include:

The Ajuran Sultanate, which was led by the Ajuran sub clan of the Hawiye. Specifically the Ajuran are said to be part of the Jambelle Hawiye but became displaced from modern Hawiye territories in the late 17th to early 18th centuries due to historical conflict particularly in South Central Somalia. Lee Cassanelli in his 1982 book "The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600 1900" often refers to the Ajuran as former leaders of a Hawiye clan dynasty. They belonged to the Somali Muslim sultanate that ruled over large parts of the Horn of Africa in the Middle Ages. Trading routes dating from the ancient and early medieval periods of Somali maritime enterprise were strengthened or re established, and foreign trade and commerce in the coastal provinces flourished with ships sailing to and coming from many kingdoms and empires in East Asia, South Asia, Europe, the Near East, North Africa and East Africa. The Ajuran Empire's sphere of influence in the Horn of Africa was one of the largest in the region. The empire covered much of southern Somalia and eastern Ethiopia, with its domain extending from Hobyo in the north, to Qelafo in the west, to Kismayo in the south. The Hiraab Imaamate, also known as the Yacquubi Dynasty, which was governed by the Hiraab sub clan of the Hawiye. It was founded by Imam Omar who successfully rebelled and defeated the Ajuran and established an independent kingdom. By 1700, the Hiraab and other clans occupied a large territory stretching the interior from the Shabelle valley to the arid lands of Mudug and to the coastal areas of Mogadishu towards Hobyo. After the immediate fall of the Ajuuraan, the Hiraab established an independent rule for at least two centuries. It was called Regno di Magadozo or the Kingdom of Magadoxo in official medieval bulletins, and at their peak, they would go on to dominate what became Greater Benadir. These sultanates both ruled over present day Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. Minor Hawiye sultanates throughout these periods include the southern reigns of the Lama Jidle (Afgoi) Sultanate of the Silcis and the El Amir (Merca) dynasty of the Wadalaan. In the north, minor sultanates of the Sultanate of Bale and the Imamate of Aussa (preceded by Hubat and Harar principalities), were led by members of the Ajuran and the Karanle, respectively. Under these major and minor sultanates, Somalia flourished and various key port cities and towns were created. Explorer John Kirk arrived in southern Somalia in 1873 during a period of great economic prosperity with the region being dominated by the Imamate and the Geledi Sultanate. Kirk met Imam Mahmood who reigned over Mogadishu. Trade between the Hiraab of Mogadishu and the Geledi Sultanate led by Ahmed Yusuf was flourishing. Kirk noted a variety of other things. Roughly 20 large dhows were docked in both Mogadishu and Merka respectively filled with grain produced from the farms of the Geledi in the interior with much of the trade being destined for Zanzibar.

The Hawiye have historically played an important role in Somalia. The majority of Somalia's founding fathers hailed from the Hawiye. At Independence in 1960, the first President, Prime Minister, Parliamentary Speaker and the Father of the Somali Military were all Hawiye. Aden Adde the first President and Speaker was Udeejeen. The first Prime Minister Abdullahi Issa was Habar Gidir. The father of the Somali Military Daud Abdulle Hirsi was Abgaal. As was the initiator of the October revolution coup d'état in 1969, Brigadier General Salaad Gabeyre Kediye. The military leader to overthrow and exile the successor of the coup President Siad Barre of the Supreme Revolutionary Council in 1991 before fighting and defeating subsequent US occupying forces (1993 1995) was General Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a Habar Gidir. Since then the Hawiye have produced five more Presidents and four more Prime Ministers. The Hawiye elite played a leading role during the Somali Rebellion in opposing the post civilian era dictatorship of President Siad Barre under the auspices of SODAF, the SSDF and the Somali National Movement (SNM) before converging to form their own branch the infamous United Somali Congress (USC). The long standing clan conflicts that had engulfed other clans in the rest of the country under the ex dictatorship continued unabated into the late 90s with its eventual victors setting up autonomous regional states (Somaliland and Puntland) while Mogadishu underwent a new Civil War starting in late 1991 with the city divided between warring Hawiye factions of Aidid and Abgaal President Ali Mahdi. Despite 2 interim governments built from Djibouti and supplanted in the capital with its elected Hawiye Presidencies in Ali Mahdi Muhammad in 1991 and Abdiqasim Salad Hassan (Habargidir) a decade later, 14 national peace conferences throughout their tenures and a 3 year UN/US humanitarian & peacekeeping intervention (1992 1995), the Mogadishu Civil War remained a stalemate until 2006 which saw the rise of the popular Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a predominately Hawiye based Islamic Fundamentalist Organisation that ended the rule of factional warlords and their chiefdoms, with the ICU promoting religious reform while conquering large parts of the country. But even with its moderate leadership and revolutionary appeal, the International Community, encouraged by the US global War on Terror campaign, endorsed a historically damaging Ethiopian Occupation to overthrow the ICU and prop the weak internationally recognised interim federal government (TFG) of President Abdullahi Yusuf, a Darod Majerteen, which was built in Kenya in 2004 and based there before moving into the city of Baidoa. With the TFG reliant on neighbours Ethiopia and Kenya, adopting their principles of federalism and in particular imitating the state structure of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, the moderate ICU leadership moved to Djibouti and Eritrea in exile, eventually returning to power under a new name, the Alliance for the Re liberation of Somalia (ARS) and successfully ending the Ethiopian occupation. A coalition of sorts in later successive governments have since been formed, with new challenges posed by radical offshoots Al Shabaab, an Alqaeda affiliate takfeer group notorious for bomb attacks that hasn't spared the old, the women or the children though claiming to solely fight the Government and its partners from the African Union peacekeeping forces. The Hawiye figure prominently in many important fields of Somali society such as the Business & Media sector. For example, Abdirahman Yabarow, the editor in chief of VOA Somali is kin. Yusuf Garaad Omar who was the Chairman of BBC Somali for over a decade and helped pioneer its rise during his tenure, is also a member. As are the heads of major national corporations Jubba Airways and Hormuud Telecom. Currently the Hawiye play a leading role in the regional states of Galmudug, Hirshabelle and Benadir (Mogadishu), but also in Somalia and among the Somali people as a whole.

According to 12th century author Al Idrisi, the Hawiye clan occupied the coastal areas between Ras Hafun and Merca, as well as the lower basin of the lower Shabelle river. Al Idrisi's mention of the Hawiye is the first documentary reference to a specific Somali group in the Horn of Africa. Later Arab writers also make references to the Hawiye clan in connection with both Merca and the lower Shabelle valley. Ibn Sa'id (1214–74), for instance, considered Merca to be the capital of the Hawiye, who lived in fifty villages on the bank of a river which he called "the nile of Mogadishu, a clear reference to the Shabelle river. One must mention the Hawīya and Garğēda who are also represented as clan families or clans among the Somali. Both groups seem to have been long established in the Sultanate of Bale: the early immigrants from Merca started from a Hawiya occupied region and oral traditions relate the Garğēda with the time of the "holy war" in the 1530s. Along with Rahanweyn, the Hawiye clan also came under the Ajuran Empire control in the 13th century that governed much of southern Somalia and eastern Ethiopia, with its domain extending from Hobyo in the north, to Qelafo in the west, to Kismayo in the south. Known to medieval writers as the Ajan Coast Harold Marcus credits the role of the Hawiye led commonwealth alliance in expanding and islamizing the communities of what is now southeast Ethiopia and southern Somalia during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Hawiye are also featured in the early history of the northern Ifat Sultanate during the reign of Emperors Zara Yaqob and Amda Seyon I. Sabr ad Din of Ifat who declared war on Amda Seyon, had summoned 15 notables for the battle, the 8th notable was the King of Harla and the 9th notable was the King of Hubat. According to best known travel and tourism handbook "Guide to Ethiopia" by author Phillip Briggs
and ecologist professor Marco Viganó, the Kundudo (Qundhura) mountain ranges which sits at the mouth of Gursum, Somali (woreda) and easiest to access via Babile was the locality of ancient Hubat, an early Hawiye settlement area pre dating and surrounding Harar particularly towards the South East and also historically inhabited by nomadic highland Hawiye clans who had turned to farming and cultivation during the rainfall season according to J. Spencer's "Islam in Ethiopia" where they later repelled and neighboured the Oromo Invasions. Many old towns and villages bearing Hawiye ancestral names can still be found in the modern Eastern Hararghe region today. With Adal Sultanate succeeding Ifat Sultanate, the Hawiye figured prominently as leaders and soldiers in what culminated to become the 16th century conquest of Ethiopia (Futuh Al Habasha). The most famous and widely read Public Historian of Ethiopia, former Minister of Education, Arts & Culture and Dean of the National Library under Haile Selassie, Takla Sadiq Mekuria, author of the "History of Ethiopia; Nubia, Aksum, Zagoe till the Time of the Reign of Aşe Yækunno Amlak", had state devoted the largest study a 950 page book in 1961 to the life and times of Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al Ghazi (known as Ahmed Gurey or Mohamed Gragne, the Atilla of Africa and the King of Zeila) as well as the history of the elite core family unit of the Malassay Army in his rough monograph on the Gragn Wars called "Ya Gragn Warara" (The Conquests of Gragn), in it he draws on the evidence from Arab Faqih Sihab Uddin and the chronicles of Sarsa Dengel. Through the mediation of Dagazmac Wargnah he interviewed Ahmed Ali Shami, the most senior authoritative scholar of Harar to have produced the concise manuscript history of Harar (in his Fatah Madinat Harar manuscript) for several European institutions and maintains several preserved Arabic manuscripts, which all provide the only extensive family tree and genealogical known tradition of 8 generations of the father and relatives of Gragne's lineage from the Karanle Hawiye branch with his mother stated to be of the ethnic Harla. This is also found in the Aussa chronicles and books authored by Manfred Kropp, Layla Sabaq and Berhanu Kamal and others. Gragne's wife was also the daughter of Emir Mahfuz, an important relative, ruler of Zeila and a Balaw, a Karanle subclan also listed as a group of tribes from Bale and a commonly Ethiopian mistranslation of the Coptic Christian synaxarium of Alexandria's "muslim badawī (bedouin/nomadic descent)" for Muslims in Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and the Red Sea Gulf. See example Ethiopian chronicles of 10th century Muslim convert Saint George the Egyptian Balaw. Weakened by centuries of northern conflict, a fraction of the Hawiye of the post Adal Harar Emirate continued to remain powerful in the Somali interior and would later form a dynasty of jurists in early modern Zeila. Since sections of the Hawiyya were migrating southward before and during Gragn's jihad, it is not inconceivable that they brought certain theocratic notions with them. Indeed, the Ajuran maintained a wakil (governor) in the region around Qallafo. This area was not only the traditional Hawiyya homeland, but also stood midway geographically between the emirates of Harar and the Benaadir, an ideal link for the transmission of political and religious ideas. Enrico Cerulli, an Author on key Somali social development and early history, mentions the following passage on the birth and succession of the Ajuran Sultanate. The oral sources also provide us with recurrent themes that point to certain structural features of Ajuran rule. The descendants of the Ajuraan (among which are the Gareen imams) can therefore be understood to have inherited the spiritual (Islamic) and the secular (numerical) power provided by the alliance of the first three Hawiyya "brothers". Ajuran power reposed on the twin pillars of spiritual preeminence and Hawiyya kinship solidarity, a potent combination in the Somali cultural context. In historical terms, a theocratic ideology superimposed on an extensive network of Hawiyya affiliated clans helped uphold Ajuran dominance over a wide region. The Darandoolle, it should be noted, were part of the Gurqaate, a clan section collateral to the Jambelle Hawiyya from whom Ajuran (and Gareen) is said to have been descended. Intermarriage among the descedants of these uterine brothers on the one hand helped reinforce the solidarity of the Hawiyya. On the other hand, competition between collateral lines was very common in Somalia, particularly where the titular leadership of a larger clan confederation was at stake. Such a struggle for the dominant place within the Hawiyya dominated Ajuran confederation may also be reflected in the rise of the Silcis and El Amir in the later years of Ajuran rule. Both are said to have been descedants of Gurqaate Hawiyya, as were the Abgaal Darandoolle. Thus it can be argued that the dominant groups which appeared toward the end of the Ajuran era—the Darandoolle near Muqdisho, the Silcis near Afgooye, and the El Amir in Marka—represent the partition of the Ajuran imamate among collateral Hawiyya sections. Or perhaps one branch of the Hawiyya—namely the Gurqaate—forcibly replaced another (the Jambelle) as leaders of the clan. The Hiraab Imamate was the main successor state of the Ajuran Sultanate. The reason for their rebellion was the Ajuran rulers, in the end, became extremely prideful, neglected the sharia law, and imposed a heavy tax on their subjects which was the main reason for the rebellion. Other groups would follow in the rebellion which would eventually bring down Ajuran rule in the inter riverine region and Benadir coast. Lee Cassanelli in his book, The Shaping of Somali society, provides a historical picture of the Hiraab Imamate. He writes:

"According to local oral tradition, the Hiraab imamate was a powerful alliance of closely related groups who shared a common lineage under the Gorgaarte clan divisions. It successfully revolted against the Ajuran Empire and established an independent rule for at least two centuries from the seventeen hundreds and onwards. The alliance involved the army leaders and advisors of the Habar Gidir and Duduble, a Fiqhi/Qadi of Sheekhaal, and the Imam was reserved for the Mudulood branch who is believed to have been the first born. Once established, the Imamate ruled the territories from the Shabeelle valley, the Benaadir provinces, the Mareeg areas all the way to the arid lands of Mudug, whilst the ancient port of Hobyo emerged as the commercial border and Mogadishu being its capital for the newly established Hiraab Imamate in the late 17th century. Soon afterwards, the entire peninsula was snapped up by Colonial powers and it led to the birth of a Modern Somalia. However, the Hiraab hereditary leadership has remained intact up to this day and enjoys a dominant influence in national Somali affairs.