developed its stocks of poems, usually sung, and the two
separate repertoires have never contradicted each other
nor have they opposed each other's vigorous growth and·
developmen~. It may therefore be suggested that within
the Somali socio-religious context, the Arabic/Somali
dichotomy in Sufi poetry represents symbiosis rather than
conflic·t.
While the Sufi poetry in Arabic written by Somalis
is well-documented and easily accessible,l the Sufi poetry
10.in Somali has been very much neglected. The present thesis.
aims at remedying this situation by contributing to the
documentation on the subject and by showing the relationship
between this branch of Somali literature and its secular
counterpart, a relationship which is of particular importance
to the study of Somali culture in general.
For the writing of this thesis, I have used three
main source.s. Firstly, I have utilized some of the oral
poems which were recorded on tapes in Somalia ~n 1968-
and are now copied and deposited at the Tape Library of the
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, (Catalogue N~. SOM/XII/2-4). Secondly, I have
used an unpublished collection of religious poems by Sheekh
Caaqib Cabdilaahi,2 a well known Sufi poet, who first
recorded his poems in an alphabet which he had seen in a
dream. Due to its highly esoteric nature Sheekh Caaqib's
script did not spread, but it became a useful means torecord his own poetry and the many other works of Somali
oral literature which he has collected. He used the texts