Somali people

The Somalis, Cushitic nation of the Horn, people the largest single-ethnicity landmass in Africa, the Somali Peninsula, speaking one Cushitic mother tongue and holding one Sunni faith. Scholars trace part of their ethnogenesis to the ancient Land of Punt, source of the myrrh Pharaohs craved, and Greeks, Romans and the geographer al-Idrisi all knew the coast as Barbaria. Clan families, Darod, Hawiye, Isaaq, Dir and Rahanweyn, order grazing, wells, marriage and war through xeer customary law, administered by elders under the acacia. Camel nomads, frankincense traders and Indian Ocean sailors, Somalis carried Islam inland and poetry everywhere: the gabay verse duel is parliament, newspaper and court in one. Colonial partition into five states, civil war and diaspora tested the nation; Mogadishu markets, Hargeisa presses and Minneapolis malls keep one language negotiating. Punt's myrrh still scents Somali weddings. Al-Idrisi's Barbara maps still hang in Mogadishu libraries. Greek and Roman sailors once anchored where container ships anchor now.