Somali
What is the basis of traditional Somali society?
What are the traditional lifeways among the Somali?
What happened in Somalia in 1991?
Where is the largest Somali community in the United States located?
Somali, people historically of the Horn of Africa occupying all of Somalia, a strip of Djibouti, the southern Ethiopian region of Ogaden, and part of northwestern Kenya. Except for the arid coastal area in the north, the region that Somalis traditionally inhabit consists of plains, coarse grass, and streams. They speak a language of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) family.
Traditional culture in historic Somaliland
In the 14th century many Somalis, converted to Islam by Arabs from across the Red Sea, began their expansion southward from the arid steppes to their present borders, which overflow what was traditionally known as Somaliland (not to be confused with the Republic of Somaliland, a region comprising the former British Somaliland that declared independence from Somalia in 1991). Although three great divisions of Somalis exist, roughly corresponding to the northern, central, and southern parts of the region, the Somalis demonstrate considerable cultural unity.
The basis of traditional Somali society is the rēr, or large, local kinship group or clan, consisting of a number of families claiming common descent from a male ancestor. A Somali individual has obligations both to the rēr and to the loosely defined social unit of which the rēr is a part. Government of the rēr is markedly patriarchal, although the chief is chosen by a group of elders who counsel him.
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These relatively small groups are organized into larger kin-based structures, which are themselves organized into several levels of larger groupings. At the top of this nested system of kinship groups are several clan families, including the nomadic Daarood, Hawiye, Dir, and Isaaq and the agropastoralist Digil and Mirifle. The Rahanweyn are sometimes included with the Digil and Mirifle and at other times are seen as synonymous with those groups.
A slight majority of Somalis in Somalia are nomadic pastoralists. The intense competition for scarce resources in the region has encouraged individualism and historically led to regular blood feuds or wars with neighboring groups. The vast majority of Somali individuals belong to the Shāfiʿī rite of Sunni Islam, and various Sufi orders are popular. Religious practices among the Somalis also include the veneration of ancestral saints.
A second category of Somalis are the townspeople and agriculturists living in urban centers, especially along the coast of the Horn of Africa, where intense and prolonged intimacy with the Islamic tradition has rendered the culture highly organized and religiously orthodox and where geographic position has turned the townspeople into commercial middlemen between the Arab world and the nomadic peoples of the interior.
Civil war and diaspora
Decades of civil war following the uprising against Somali Pres. Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 have led to large numbers of Somalis either being internally displaced or fleeing the country. By the end of 2024 an estimated 3.1 million people were displaced within Somalia. About 2 million Somalis live outside of Somalia, largely in the neighboring countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Yemen. In Kenya many Somalis live in the Dadaab Refugee Complex, which was established in 1991 and subsequently grew to comprise three camps and an integrated settlement. Because of government policy Somali refugees are unable to gain citizenship or otherwise integrate into Kenyan society.
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A sizable minority of Somali émigrés migrated to the United States, the largest group of them settling in Minnesota. More than 78 percent of the approximately 80,000 Somalis who lived in Minnesota in the early 2020s lived in and around Minneapolis and St. Paul. According to 2024 estimates more than 90 percent of Somalis in both Minnesota and in the United States as a whole are citizens, with the slight majority being native-born. Those who were not citizens in the early 2020s were generally permanent residents, green card holders, or those who had received Temporary Protected Status (TPS). In late 2025 Pres. Donald Trump announced that he would end TPS for Somalis in Minnesota, raising concerns about the legality of the president removing the status only for the residents of a particular state.