Mohamed Haji Mukhtar (Maxamed Xaaji Mukhtaar)

Who is he?

Mohamed Haji Mukhtar is a Somali historian born on 13 June 1947 in Hudur, now the capital of Bakool region (Wikipedia, Mohamed Haji Mukhtar). His father, Malak Mukhtar Malak Hassan, was a senior chief of the Digil and Mirifle clans (same source). He is a naturalised US citizen (same source). See Bakool.

He is known as an advocate for the Maay language and for all the languages spoken in Somalia (same source).

Education

He went to school in Korkoor and Mogadishu, then earned his BA, MA and PhD at al-Azhar University in Cairo, in history and civilisation (Wikipedia). His PhD thesis was on Italian Somaliland from trusteeship to independence, 1950 to 1960 (same source).

Career

He began in 1974 as a researcher at the Somali Academy of Culture, surveying historic sites in Marka, Barawa and nearby, and in 1976 researched the history of the Gosha people in the Juba valley (Wikipedia). From 1975 to 1983 he taught history at the Somali National University's College of Education at Lafoole, where he was the first to offer courses on the history of Somalia (same source).

He was twice a Fulbright-Hays scholar, at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of South Carolina, in 1983 to 1985 (same source). From 1986 to 1990 he taught at the National University of Malaysia (same source). Since 1991 he has taught African and Middle Eastern history at Savannah State University in Georgia (same source).

In short

A Hudur-born historian who taught the first courses on Somali history in Mogadishu and now teaches in Georgia.