Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T03:28:08.778Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Historical Aspects of Genealogies in Northern Somali Social Structure1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

I. M. Lewis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Few anthropologists, I think, would question that the use of oral tradition as a historical source in tribal studies requires a knowledge of the part tradition plays in the society in which it occurs. Most would agree that oral tradition does not have a universal validity—it is not equally ‘true’ or equally ‘false’ in all tribal societies. Rather its historical content, where unequivocal historical evidence is lacking, has to be evaluated in the light of the contemporary social situations to which it is related. Since Malinowski, many anthropologists have tended to the view that traditions about the past express the reality of the present more than they record what actually happened in the past. Legends about the past, indeed, have often been described as ‘charters’ validating the present by attributing a respectable antiquity to its origins.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 1962 , pp. 35 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Apthorpe, R. J. ‘Problems of African History: the Nsenga of Northern Rhodesia’, Rhodes-Livingstone Institute Journal, XXVIII, 1960, 47–68.Google Scholar
Bohannan, L. ‘A Genealogical Charter’, Africa, XXII, 1952, 301–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cerulli, E.Somalia I. Scritti vari editi ed inediti, Rome, 1957.Google Scholar
Cunnison, I. G.History on the Luapula, Rhodes Livingstone Paper no. 21, Oxford, 1951.Google Scholar
Cunnison, I. G.The Luapula Peoples of Northern Rhodesia, Manchester, 1959.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. E.The Nuer, Oxford, 1940.Google Scholar
Fortes, M. ‘The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups’, American Anthropologist, LV, 1953, 17–41.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. M. ‘Sufism in Somaliland: A Study in Tribal Islam’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XVII, 1955, 581–602; XVIII, 1956, 146–60.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. M.Modern Political Movements in Somaliland, International African Institute memorandum, XXX, Oxford, 1958.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. M. ‘Contract and Clanship in Northern Somaliland’, Africa, XXIX, 1959 (a), 274–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, I. M. ‘The Galla in Northern Somaliland’, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, XV, 1959 (b), 21–38.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. M. ‘The Somali Conquest of the Horn of Africa’, Journal of African History, no. 2, 1960.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. M. ‘Force and Fission in Northern Somali Lineage Structure’, American Anthropologist, LXIII, 1961 (a), 94–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, I. M.A Pastoral Democracy. A Study of Pastoralism and Politics among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa, Oxford University Press, 1961 (b).Google Scholar
MacMichael, H. A.A History of the Arab Tribes of the Sudan, Cambridge, 1922.Google Scholar
Murdock, G. P.Africa, its peoples and their Culture History, New York, 1959.Google Scholar
Peters, E. ‘The Proliferation of Segments in the Lineage of the Bedouin in Cyrenaica’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1960, XC, 29–53.Google Scholar
Richards, A. I.East African Chiefs, Faber, London, 1960.Google Scholar
Shihab, ad-Din, Futuh al-Habasha, ed. and trs. Basset, R., Paris, 1897–1909.Google Scholar
van Velsen, J. ‘Notes on the History of the Lakeside Tonga of Nyasaland’, African Studies, 1959, 105–17.Google Scholar
White, C. M. N.An Outline of Luvale Social and Political Organisation, Rhodes Livingstone Paper no. 30, Manchester, 1960.Google Scholar