Said Sheikh Samatar

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Said Sheikh Samatar ( 1943 - February 24, 2015 ) was a Somali historian . He taught as a professor of African history at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey . He is the author of numerous publications on Somalia and East Africa and has commented on these topics in various well-known media.

Said Samatar was probably born in the Ogaden as a child of Somali nomads . In 1958, at the age of 16, he moved to the city of Kalafo , where he began his schooling at the request of his father. This included the study of the Koran and Islamic philosophy as well as jurisprudence . Said Samatar then continued his training at a Christian mission school and at a Bible academy in Nazret . In 1970 he began to work in Somalia at the National Teaching College, where he came into contact with American colleagues. They suggested he go to the United States to study.

In 1971 Said Samatar was able to enter the country with his wife and in the following year his daughter, the writer Sofia Samatar , was born. In 1973 he graduated from Goshen College in Indiana . He then went to Northwestern University . For his dissertation, he returned to Somalia in 1977/78 for field research, where he was almost arrested several times because he was critical of the Siad Barre dictatorship . In 1979 he received his PhD in African History from Northwestern University.

From 1979 to 1981 Said Samatar taught at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Virginia , and since then at Rutgers University. Since 1987 he has been the editor of the journal The Horn of Africa .

His

Fonts

  • Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mahammad Abdille Hasan. Cambridge University Press 1982, ISBN 0521238331 .
  • Somalia: Nation in Search of a State (m. David Laitin), Westview Press 1987, ISBN 0865315558 .
  • Somalia: A Nation in Turmoil. Minority Rights Group 1991, ISBN 0946690804 .
  • In the Shadow of Conquest: Islam in Colonial Northeast Africa. Red Sea Press 1992, ISBN 0932415709 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Dan Rivers: Longtime Rutgers-Newark professor, leading Somali scholar Samatar dies at 71.nj.com, February 25, 2015, accessed February 28, 2015 .
  2. Ahmed I. Samatar: Interview with Professor Said Sheikh Samatar at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, Washington, DC In: Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies. Vol. 6, Article 5 (2008), p. 5, accessed on December 9, 2018.