Arraweelo

Arraweelo is the most famous human figure of Somali oral tradition: a queen of the remote pre-Islamic past who, in the tales, seized power over the clans, set women above men, and had the men of her realm castrated so that none could challenge her. One wise old man escaped the knife by hiding, and in the version collected by Ahmed Artan Hanghe he is sheltered by the queen's eunuchs until he fathers a child with Arraweelo's daughter; the grandson born of that union grows up to kill the old queen. Her name survives in everyday Somali speech as a teasing or disapproving label for an assertive, domineering woman, and the legend is still debated as a charter myth about the dangers and the possibilities of female rule. Living popular tradition points out a stone cairn in the Sanaag region of northern Somalia, near Ceerigaabo, as her grave, where passing men are said to cast stones at the heap while women lay flowers or green boughs on it. The queen's continuing resonance is visible in modern Somali writing, for example the anthology Daughters of Arraweelo: Stories of Somali Women (2021), which takes its title from her.

Domains

• sovereignty

Powers

• to rule the clans as an absolute queen and bend men to her decrees

Sources

• Ahmed Artan Hanghe, Folktales from Somalia / Sheekoxariirooyin Soomaaliyeed (Mogadishu: Somali Academy of Sciences and Arts; Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1988)
• Mohamed Haji Mukhtar, Historical Dictionary of Somalia, new ed. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003), s.v. 'Araweelo', pp. 161-162
• Suzanne Lilius, 'New Collection of Somali Folktales' (review of G. L. Kapchits, comp., Faaliyihii la bilkeyday / A Soothsayer Tested: Somali Folktales, Moscow 2006), Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies (Macalester College)