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Shabeelnaagood by Hassan Sheikh Mumin: Leopard Among the Women, a Somali play
Shabeelnaagood (Leopard Among the Women) is a Somali play by the poet and playwright Hassan Sheikh Mumin, written in the 1960s, about a man who deceives women in the city. It deals with the position of women, life in the growing towns, changing customs and the value of education. It was published in an English translation by B. W. Andrzejewski by Oxford University Press in 1974, and is taught in Somali schools.
Shabeelnaagood by Hassan Sheikh Mumin
- Author
- Hassan Sheikh Mumin
- Year
- 1965
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (Somali and English, 1974)
- Language
- Somali
- Sources
- 4 sources
The play
Shabeelnaagood ("Leopard among the women") is a play by Hassan Sheikh Mumin (1931 to 2008), a Somali poet, playwright, broadcaster and composer born in Zeila who grew up in Borama (Wikipedia). Wikipedia dates the play to 1965, the year he joined Radio Mogadishu as its resident poet, playwright and lecturer. Mumin wrote both the play's text and its music (Wikipedia).
Somali had no official written form until 1972, several years after the play was written; see The Somali language is written, 1972.
The story and its themes
The "leopard" of the title is a man who preys on women. The heroine, Shallaayo, complains that he has tricked her into a false marriage (Wikipedia). Through her story the play looks at the social position of women, life in the growing towns, changing traditional practices and the importance of education in the years around independence (Wikipedia). The writer Ubah Cristina Ali Farah has written an academic study of how the play treats the role of women in Somali society, with an Italian translation of an extract (Roma Tre University repository). See Women in Somali society.
The 1974 edition
Leopard Among the Women: Shabeelnaagood, a Somali Play was published by Oxford University Press in London and New York in 1974, with 230 pages. The translation and introduction are by B. W. Andrzejewski, the scholar of the Somali language at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (Internet Archive record; Wikipedia).
Its place in Somali literature
The play is regarded as one of the mainstays of Somali literature and is regularly taught in school curricula (Wikipedia). After the 1969 coup Mumin's poetry was banned and he moved to Djibouti, later settling in Borama. In 1997 he wrote and composed "Samo Ku Waar", which became the national anthem of Somaliland. He died in Oslo in 2008 and was buried in Borama; Djibouti later gave him its highest cultural award (Wikipedia).
Where to read it
- 1974 Oxford edition, lending copy: Internet Archive
- In a library: WorldCat
Related pages
Sources
- Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- Roma Tre University repository · arcadia.sba.uniroma3.it
- Internet Archive record · archive.org
- WorldCat · search.worldcat.org
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Where this matters
Same era
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