The flat, dry bush between the Ethiopian border, the Tana and the Juba, with wells at Wajir, El Wak and Mandera and the Lag Dera and Lag Badana water-courses.
Its herders in 1200 were Eastern Cushitic speakers, most likely Somali and their close kin (the Sam speakers of the linguists, from whom the Somali and Rendille languages descend); the Oromo (Borana, Orma) who held much of this country in later centuries arrived in the sixteenth century: later. The clan names of 1200 are not known.
Who holds it
- Name
- Not named
- Title
- Clan elders
- Since
- Not pinned
- Confidence
- low
What it holds
- The Wajir and Mandera plains
- The country north of the Tana round Garissa
- The plains west of the lower Juba round Afmadow
How things stand that morning
Self-governing herders.
Customs
Clan elders and customary law (inferred).
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Linguistic inference; no written source or dated excavation.
On the map: A very large outline over thin country; bounded west by the Turkana basin record and south by the Tana.
Sources and studies
- C. Ehret, An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400 (1998) and History and the Testimony of Language (2011), on the language families of East Africa
- I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali (4th ed. 2002), chapter 1
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.