The Other Darud Tribes Not
Included Under That Appellation Are The Girhi, Berteri, Marayhan, And
Bahabr Ali.
The Hawiyah are doubtless of ancient and pagan origin; they
call all Somal except themselves Hashiyah, and thus claim to be equivalent
to the rest of the nation.
Some attempt, as usual, to establish a holy
origin, deriving themselves like the Shaykhash from the Caliph Abubekr:
the antiquity, and consequently the Pagan origin of the Hawiyah are proved
by its present widely scattered state; it is a powerful tribe in the
Mijjarthayn country, and yet is found in the hills of Harar.
The Somal, therefore, by their own traditions, as well as their strongly
marked physical peculiarities, their customs, and their geographical
position, may be determined to be a half-caste tribe, an offshoot of the
great Galla race, approximated, like the originally Negro-Egyptian, to the
Caucasian type by a steady influx of pure Asiatic blood.
In personal appearance the race is not unprepossessing. The crinal hair is
hard and wiry, growing, like that of a half-caste West Indian, in stiff
ringlets which sprout in tufts from the scalp, and, attaining a moderate
length, which they rarely surpass, bang down. A few elders, savans, and
the wealthy, who can afford the luxury of a turban, shave the head. More
generally, each filament is duly picked out with the comb or a wooden
scratcher like a knitting-needle, and the mass made to resemble a child's
"pudding," an old bob-wig, a mop, a counsellor's peruke, or an old-
fashioned coachman's wig,--there are a hundred ways of dressing the head.
The Bedouins, true specimens of the "greasy African race," wear locks
dripping with rancid butter, and accuse their citizen brethren of being
more like birds than men.
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