Before 1500: Adal, Ajuran and the coast
The wagar: a sacred olive-wood object, fertility rites and the sky-god Waaq
The wagar is a carved stick of African olive wood kept by Somali women to gain and protect fertility and to guard newborn children from evil spirits. In a 2015 study, the first published on the object, archaeologist Sada Mire suggests it comes from a pre-Islamic belief in sacred trees, and may be linked to Waaq, the sky-god of the Cushitic peoples of the Horn, and to the pre-Islamic sacred site at Aw-Barkhadle near Hargeisa.
In short
The wagar is a sacred wooden object kept by women in northern Somali society. It is carved from the African olive tree and used in rites for fertility and to protect young children. The archaeologist Sada Mire published the first study of it in 2015. She suggests it is a survival of a pre-Islamic belief in sacred trees, and she links it to the old sky-god Waaq and to the sacred landscape at Aw-Barkhadle near Hargeisa (Mire 2015, "Wagar, Fertility and Phallic Stelae: Cushitic Sky-God Belief and the Site of Saint Aw-Barkhadle, Somaliland", African Archaeological Review 32: 93–109). Unless noted, everything below comes from that article. Mire writes from fieldwork in Somaliland between 2007 and 2013, from interviews, and from her own family, which kept a wagar.
The tree
- The wagar tree is the African olive (Olea europaea subsp. africana), which grows wild on mountain slopes and in woodland, often near water.
- Where Mire found it: at high points of the plateau, in the Daalo and Jilib Rihin mountains of Sanaag, in the Dhameer Gowrac range near Laaso, and at Garbo Diir in Togdheer. The forests do not seem to have been planted.
- Rock art and graves nearby. Rock art sites such as Jilib Rihin and Haadh lie in the same ranges, and dolmens and cairns dot the peaks. Mire takes this as a hint that these mountains may once have been places of ritual.
- A blessed tree. The whole tree is held to be blessed and sacred (geed amran). Every part, from root to leaf, is used against illness and harm. Mire writes that it is not clear whether the tree has medical effects beyond its sacred standing.
The object
- Size and shape. Most wagars are about 35–45 cm long. One end is narrow, about 2 cm wide, and the other end is the widest, 4–6 cm. The handle is oval. The top is flat or has two bumps, sometimes repeated at the other end.
- Makers. Specialist male carvers make them, from a single piece of wood. Some are richly decorated.
- Colour. The wood is yellow-brown when new and darkens with age. Mire's family wagar, passed down from her grandmother's grandmother, is black and thought to be at least a hundred years old.
- What it may depict. Mire writes that the wagar is thought to stand for a sacred figure, and that the bumps may recall the belly of a pregnant woman. Male informants told her it may represent a pre-Islamic female deity. No female informant mentioned such a figure. Mire also raises the possibility that the wagar was once a phallic object, and that its shape may have become less figurative in Islamic times.
- Other wooden objects. Mire lists headrests (barkin), spoons (fandhaal), combs (saqaf or shanlo), stools (gember or gambadh) and the Qur'an school writing boards (looh), and says the wagar is, as far as she knows, the only carved wooden object that people in northern Somalia unreservedly treat as sacred.
The rites
- Gub (the burning). For a woman who cannot conceive, the tip of the wagar is heated in oil and pressed on spots on the abdomen and hips, three times, leaving permanent scars. The rite is seen as healing (dabiib) or medicine (dhaymo). Afterwards the wagar is kept in a private box (kolay).
- Protection at night. Elderly women keep a wagar under the bed against evil spirits.
- The 40 days after birth. During the 40-day seclusion after a birth, a mother who must leave the house holds the wagar up in front of her as she walks. A wagar is placed under the baby's bed or pillow against umadaha hoose ("underground beings") and jinn.
- The protective bundle. Grass and palm leaves ('aws) from blessed bushes, herbs and resins, and sharp iron objects such as a dagger, a knife, a screw or a razor blade are tied to the wagar and laid under the newborn's head. Mire's informants say the shine of iron "confuses" evil spirits. Wagar leaves are placed around the house.
- In the diaspora. Mire writes that Somali men have brought wagars from Somaliland to Sweden and the UK as gifts to wives who have given birth, especially to boys.
- A sacred weapon. The wagar is held at head height before the face, in the belief that God protects the bearer and brings good luck (saa'iido). Mire records that both women and men have used it to strike people.
Secrecy
Mire writes that the wagar is now used in "a highly secretive way", for two reasons she gives: the shame attached to infertility, and the opposition of Salafi teaching to practices it calls un-Islamic. She writes that Sufi sheikhs who would otherwise perform openly rites such as rainmaking now avoid any link with the object, and that its use seems limited to parts of northern Somalia. She also records that Muslim scholars (ulema) reject amulets with Qur'anic verses as impious.
Aw-Barkhadle, Bu'ur Ba'ayr and the saying
- The shrine. Aw-Barkhadle, about 30 minutes' drive from Hargeisa, holds the tomb of the saint Sharif Yusuf al-Kawnayn. By oral history he came about 850 years ago to a place then called Dogor. Mire calls the tomb "the most important pilgrimage centre in Somali territory". For the graves and ruins at the site, see Ancient burials, standing stones and towns.
- Bu'ur Ba'ayr. Local people say the saint converted the area by defeating in a duel Bu'ur Ba'ayr, leader of the old religion, at the hill that bears his name. Legend credits Bu'ur Ba'ayr with other "pagan" acts. Mire argues these acts were meant to grant sacred fertility.
- A wooden figure at the tomb. Women used to carry a carved human figure in a cloth sling (qayd), as one carries a baby, while praying for a child at the tomb. Mire was told the Qur'an has replaced the figure in recent years.
- The cross on the forehead. Until recently, Mire writes, pilgrims at the annual ziyara began at the Bu'ur Ba'ayr hill, mixed chalk from its rock with water from the sacred well, and painted a cross on their foreheads before walking around the saint's tomb, to ask for rain and fertility. She links this to gravestones at the site carved with the Ethiopian Orthodox cross.
- "Wagar iyo ka waasi'an." An old saying, "even more powerful than the wagar", is used by mothers to scold a child who comes home late. A local Sufi told Mire that the wagar "is a remnant of the ancient idols" worshipped by Bu'ur Ba'ayr's people at Aw-Barkhadle, and that the saying arose when the saint defeated him: the greater power being that of God.
Waaq and the wider Horn
- Waaq. Mire describes Waaq (also Waĝa, Waqa) as the sky-god of many Cushitic peoples of the Horn, including the Somali before Islam, and calls it the most likely pre-Islamic belief to which the Bu'ur Ba'ayr legend belongs.
- Not the same word. The linguist Christopher Ehret told Mire that wagar and Waaq come from two separate Proto-Eastern Cushitic roots: *wagar, "olive", and *waak', "rise up".
- Phallic grave stones. Phallic stelae stand on Muslim graves at Aw-Barkhadle. Mire compares them with the kallacha of the Oromo and Konso, the wooden waga grave figures of the Konso, and the stelae fields of Tuto Fela and Tututi in southern Ethiopia, and suggests they may belong to the same sky-god and fertility belief.
- The man in the tree. She cites an origin story told by Oromo, Afar, Saho and Somali: a girl finds a man from the sky sitting in a tree, and he comes down only when promised he may marry her; the people descend from them.
- Spirits in trees. The Oromo and Konso hold that ayaana, spirits of destiny, live in the sycamore and African olive. Mire notes that among Somalis ayaan are today personal spirits, also called rooxaan, now linked with Sufi practice, and asks whether Waaq was once thought to live in the wagar tree.
How the author frames it
Mire calls her conclusions suggestions. She writes that the wagar "seems to denote" a Cushitic belief in sacred trees, and that it "may be linked" with Waaq and with Aw-Barkhadle. She says the links between stones, rituals and the old religion at the site are explored in other work, and that more female fertility rites remain to be studied.
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