Ali Dhuh

Ali Duh Gorayo (Somali: Cali Dhuux Gorayo) (died 1962) was a popular poet from Somaliland, who hailed from the city of Buuhoodle, in the Togdheer region in Somaliland, but grew up in the Nugaal region in Somalia and Dollo region in Ethiopia. He mostly wrote about camel husbandry and the issues affiliated with the profession of camel riders.[1] He started a poem called Guba Chain in the 1920s.[2]He was also opposed to Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's Dervish struggle against the British in the early 1900s and wrote many poets to propagate his opposition.[3]

Over view

Ali Dhuh's most famous contribution to Somali poetry is the Guba poems, a series of poems he initiated after the Habar Yoonis conquest of the Ogaden, in which they uprooted the native Ogadens and took in to possession huge swathes of land and thousands of camels.

Historian Siegbert Uhlig commenting on the Guba poem writes the following-

From a historical point of view Ali dhuhs poem explicitly details the large gains in traditionally Ogaden territory and wells, and the looting of Ogaden camels by the Isaq. He details the scatterring of the Ogaden clan, their forced migration southwards seeking refuge in the feverish river valleys, and even turning to hunting and farming- measures that were again considered very shameful usually only undertaken by slaves and low-caste Somalis and utterly demeaning for the once great pastoral Ogaden clan. The Ogaden, Ali recounts, have been forced to accept refuge with the clans that defeated them, especially the Habr Yunis, and cannot take revenge. The Isaq are portrayed as particularly callous and shameful in the way they parade looted Ogaden camels in front of their previous owners. Even in translation it is a very evocative poem [4]

References
  1. Google books: The Camel in Somali Oral Traditions
  2. Gates, Henry Lewis; Akyeampong, Emmanuel Kwaku (2 February 2012). Dictionary of African Biography, Volume 6. ISBN 9780195382075. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
  3. Idaaja, Ahmed Farah. "Dhaqanka iyo Hiddaha Qeybtii 59aad: Cali Dhuux". VOA Somali. VOA. Retrieved 19 July 2017.
  4. Proceedings of the XVth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies Hamburg (2003), p. 215.


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