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Introduction

Mo’alin Nur Mahamed Siyad, also known as Aabow Mo’alin Nur throughout his communities, struggled through life without parental supervision to gain an education while maintaining the respect of his tribe and his own independence. He went from farming in the countryside to focusing on religious studies in the city and designing over three-dozen mosques and countless housing and public projects without the use of any architectural equipment, even a ruler. Aabow was more focused on the teachings of Islam, especially Sufi perspective, and on his community than he was in the construction profession, since such a career was not common among religious leaders.

Tribalism is highly emphasized in Somalia and citizens are identified by the clan of their fathers in which they are born. Conforming to tradition is encouraged in Somali society and the approval or disapproval of the tribe determines your position in life. There are countless clans and sub–clans within tribes; new branches are determined by the increase in size within the tribe. Each clan shares many characteristics including language, faith, and aspiration. Aabow was born into a farming family; based on the structure of Somali society, his life was to inherit a career in farming. He transcended and even challenged the social hierarchy when he turned to religious studies in Sufism, during a time when his tribe had no religious leaders. His tribe was educated based on general Sunni teaching, but ended up belonging to Sunni Sufi school of thought after the 1950’s in large part due to Aabow’s education. The shift from a secular to a religious affiliation began in Aabow’s time and resulted from many religious figures within his tribe. The first generation religious scholars of the ‘Abdi Rahman tribe included Haji Muhammad, Sheikh Muhammad Hassan, and Aabow himself—all of whom gained their knowledge from Sh. Hilowle. Their teachings live on in and outside of the tribe. Sufi ideology played a major role in Aabow’s life and the buildings he constructed, including the Biyomalow Mosque, which embodies Sufi characteristics.

Part I: Life and Education in Qeyr Dhere

In 1921, Aabow was born to ‘Osoba Hele (?–1928) and Muhammad Siyad (?–1935) in the farming village of Meysare (now renamed by Aabow as Qeyr Dhere), located 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Mogadishu, Somalia. He was the younger of the only two boys from their almost twenty–one year marriage who survived into adulthood. Besides his older brother, Haji Abdi, Aabow had a half-sister, ‘Owralo, from Siyad’s later wife, who lived to become a grandmother before her death in 1990. Haji Abdi, on the other hand, lived until 102, before his death in 2009.

Aabow’s birth, 14 years after Haji Abdi, was seen as a blessing from God through baraka. Baraka can sometimes be described as a miracle granted to one whose prayers are seen as holy. For fourteen years, Aabow’s mother lost each of her newborn children. For the five years prior to Aabow’s birth, she had not even been able to conceive at an age when it was typical for women to bear children every year or so. His grandmother, ‘Eray, believed in the power of prayer, and asked God for the birth of a devoted and knowledgeable Muslim child—a year later, Nur, as Aabow was known as a child, was born.

Aabow’s family made their living from shepherding as their ancestors had done. Life in the countryside was difficult, but because of their strong faith and dignity, people were satisfied with their lifestyle and income. Qeyr Dhere is a village in a hilly terrain entirely covered in grass. At that time, no infrastructure such as public schools and hospitals existed and people had limited aspirations. The only education received by most children was from the dughsi, a religious school where the primary education offered is the memorization of the Holy Qur’an. A boy was sent away to advance in his religious education only if there were enough men in the family and his help was not needed in the household. Aabow came from an unusually small family and should have taken up the family shepherding business. With these factors in consideration, it is clear that Aabow was beginning to walk down an unbeaten path.

Aabow spent the first seven years of his life with his mother, helping her with the house. She was a homemaker just like many other women in Somalia. For those seven years, they developed a deep relationship and Aabow felt closer to her than he did to his father. At the age of seven, Aabow’s life was irrevocably altered when he watched his mother die from smallpox. Smallpox is a highly contagious viral disease characterized by fever and weakness and skin eruption with pustules that form scabs that slough off leaving scars. When his mother ‘Osoba was infected, she was quarantined in a hut with others who had the same disease. No one was allowed to interact with them as the disease is highly contagious. Even their meals were carried to and from the hut using special sticks. Everyone in the village knew the only cure for this disease was death. Before Aabow’s mother contracted it, over 350 people from their village had died from it, including his second oldest brother, Gacal. It was extremely hard for Aabow to watch his mother suffer because he felt his life had no meaning without her. Despite the likelihood of contracting the disease, he showed no fear of death and carried her dishes with his bare hands. He would secretly come to her to see if she needed anything but she would tell him to leave her. Even when the disease reached its final stages he tried to attend to his mother, but she would send him away.

After her death, life changed for Aabow, but he did not know what purpose he had in life anymore. He knew his mother wanted him to have a lively and a good lifestyle, which meant a life heavily influenced by religion, however, after her death, this lost all meaning for him. He started to help his father with everything, including farming, until the age of 13, when his uncle, Muhammad Hele, from his mother’s side, requested he be sent to a dughsi. He had been at school for a year when his father came to see him because of a premonition. His father told him he was about to leave their land to find a lost camel in another tribe’s territory—and he feared he would not return. To Aabow, this was the most important talk he had ever had with his father. His father made him promise to continue his education because of the many people, including his own family that would benefit from his education. “Recognition for you is recognition for your people,” his father said, “and using your education is a benefit and good deed to you and to those who encouraged you, fed you, and helped you acquire it.” This is the same message his mother was trying to convey when she expressed concerns for his survival. These last wills given by his parents gave Aabow a greater purpose to live for. That was the last time he talked to his father, and only days later, his father’s death was announced. This conversation continued to live in Aabow’s life.

Since the only people who knew about this promise were Aabow and his father, it became hard for Aabow to explain his desires to stay in school after his father’s passing. No one cared about Aabow more than his older brother, Haji Abdi, but even he was pushing Aabow into farming on the family land in Qeyr Dhere where he was needed. Pressure from his family and tribe greatly weakened Aabow’s resolve to fulfill his promise and eventually he succumbed to their influence. As he grew up under his brother’s guidance, his mentality toward life was no different than that of any other normal boy who lived in the countryside. His goal was to memorize the Qur’an and be physically active and available so that he could support his brother when needed. “Honestly,” he later said, “these were not my goals; they were more of an expectation of me just like they were expected of other children.”

Aabow continued to go to the dughsi of Mo’alin Mahamud Aadan Qaybshe in the daytime and helped his brother in the evening. As a student, he memorized the Qur’an by writing it out verse by verse on a piece of wood, called a loh. Depending on the ability of the child, it takes four to seven years for most to memorize the entire Qur’an. When he finished the Qur’an, he once again became a fulltime farmer working with his brother and within a few years and soon forgot most of the Qur’an due to neglect in keeping up in practice. At a yearly community gathering, his mother’s brother, Muhammad Hele, saw him serving a group of people who were reciting the Qur’an. He castigated Aabow loudly by name for even being near educated adults. He was told he could not serve or be near them, unless he was as educated as they were. In Somalia, youngsters under the age of 30 are only given respect if they are knowledgeable about their religion and have memorized the Qur’an. For Aabow, the incident was very embarrassing, but to his uncle who knew Aabow had lapsed in remembering the Qur’an, it was meant to be an encouragement to Aabow. Not only was Aabow disrespected in front of his immediate, but in front of his entire clan. He saw it as such a humiliation that he felt he could not face his family again.

PART II: Life and Education in Balad Wayne and ‘Adley

He ran away from that meeting until he reached a cliff by the Indian Ocean. He thought of committing suicide by jumping into the water. For a minute, he thought of all the reasons he should not live. Then he thought of all reasons he should live and none came to mind; life seemed worthless without the respect of his people. Next he thought of people who would be saddened by his death and his parents came to mind. He thought of the death of his mother and what took place between them and then he thought of the promise he had made to his father to become educated. He felt ashamed to die without having fulfilled the promise to his father and realized now why his mother cared so much about him when she was dying. He believed that if he did not live to educate himself as his father had wanted, his family would have to live with the shame of his suicide and he would have to face consequences in the afterlife. As a Somali saying suggests, a son is a reflection of his father, and a representative of his tribe on a larger scale.

It was at this point of his life, that Aabow became committed to accomplishing all the goals he had set for himself. To regain his people’s respect, he would have to seek further education and in order to do so, he had to become independent, which meant he could not stay and seek education near Qeyr Dhere since he would be needed on the farm. After he would achieve these goals, he was destined to meet a man outside of his tribe who would teach him to reach even further. Aabow would later find out that seeking knowledge is, in the minds of many people, as much a matter of who one studies under as it is what one studies and he experienced pressure from his tribe when he sought guidance from an outside scholar.

To renew his education, Aabow planned to rememorize the Qur’an and study its interpretation. Other educational options were not emphasized or even possible in his area. Later Aabow began to appreciate education to encompass knowledge of all things that surrounded him both of a religious and secular nature.

Since he believed the most important first step to being educated was the memorization of the Qur’an, he decided to start again with the dughsi. He packed without a word to anyone and went by foot to a 500-kilometer (310 miles) trip to Hamar, better known as Mogadishu. He promised himself that he would not return to his family until he was educated. When he reached Mogadishu, he was told by many students and teachers he should go to the smaller cities around Mogadishu if he wanted to learn the Qur’an; the capital was only for people who could study and work, and even for them, the city was a source of great distraction from their education. Desiring to focus solely on his education, Aabow settled in Balad Wayne, 540 km (335 miles) northwest of Mogadishu, with his uncle, Haji Ahmed ‘Adow, who was in the Somali army at the time.

There, in Balad Wayne, he started attending dughsi fulltime and only occasionally spent time in his uncle’s house. While in Balad Wayne food and shelter were commodities difficult to come across for Aabow. In the evening, he worked for families in exchange for food whenever possible, but was often unemployed and hungry for days. Although it was discouraged, he would sneak into the mosque or the dughsi at night to sleep. Without food, it became difficult to concentrate on his education. After going two weeks without food he left Balad Wayne for ‘Adley where he was told about a teacher who provided shelter for his students and where food was more available than in Balad Wayne. Upon his arrival in ‘Adley, he registered with Mo’alin Hasan Madowbe’s dughsi. Because he was tired of going from house to house begging for food, he started to carve prayer beads from trees and sold them for money to buy food and clothes. Thus he supported himself while he lived in his teacher’s hut during the four years it took him to rememorize the Qur’an.

The entire time he lived in Balad Wayne and ‘Adley, he would hide from his older brother and uncle during their annual trips to the city to buy supplies and sell their wares. He never came out to meet with them face to face since he did not want to go back to farming in Qeyr Dhere. After he completed the Qur’an, he met his uncle who had once again come looking for him and apologized for leaving without informing the family, but explained that he needed to achieve his educational goals in order to continue living. However, as a concession to his uncle and since he had rememorized the Qur’an, he would not mind going back to the village if only temporarily. He added, “This time, I will be a fool if I leave the Qur’an behind,” and to his death, he knew the Qur’an by heart and always carried the holy Qur’an wherever he went.

Part III: Life and Education in Mogadishu

His uncle was impressed by Aabow’s ambition and decided to take him to Mogadishu instead of Qeyr Dhere so he could advance his religious education. He studied with a religious scholar named Sh. Hilowle for about three years. Several years into his studies, Sh. Hilowle named Aabow the sheikh of Dodicia, Italian for “twelve”—now better known as Sigale, or Hodan, a town where Aabow taught the Qur’an to the village children. To this day, this dughsi still exists but has been enlarged to become a mowla’, a religious school rather like a dughsi for older students. Aabow designed the additions and the building was named as ‘Mowla’a Mo’alin Nur’ in the very early 1950’s. A Mowla’ provides social services instead of just teaching children; it offers housing, food, and teaching for older individuals, especially those who have low income.

In addition to teaching and studying the Qur’an, Aabow supported himself with other work. He did everything from delivering water to working at a Italian tire company and eventually went to work for Aspimo, a Somali pharmaceutical company. From the Qur’an and its commentaries, Aabow learned Arabic and he learned to read and write Italian from his time at the tire company.

Part IV: Meeting With Mo'alin Biyomalow

In 1952, after losing the position with the tire company and before gaining a position with Aspimo, Aabow met his spiritual leader, or ‘Aabow’, Mo’alin Biyomalow. Within months, Aabow gained a position at Aspimo as a bookkeeper; out of respect for M. Biyomalow’s wishes, he stayed at Aspimo despite feeling inadequate in his bookkeeping and Italian language skills. M. Biyomalow would not sanction Aabow’s desire to leave the company—perhaps he saw it as a secure job since the colonial government operated the company. He wanted Aabow to stay with the job and even made him promise that he would never quit. Once again, he had an influential figure in his life who would pray for him just as his mother had done so many years earlier. Whenever Aabow was being tested by his company on his knowledge of Italian or related bookkeeping skills, he passed all of them, attributing his success to M. Biyomalow’s prayers. Aabow worked for Aspimo from 1952 until the Somali Civil War of 1991.

In comparison with Aabow, M. Biyomalow was a middle-class man and made his living from farming and teaching Sufi Islam. He taught a dughsi in Bon Dhere southeast of Hawl Wadaag but spent most of his time in Hawl Wadaag since he managed a large piece of property there. M. Biyomalow and Mo’alin Nur were similar in many ways, sharing the same quality of life, belonging to the same Islamic sect, and both serving their community with the same approach in their mowla’s. However, Aabow did not choose M. Biyomalow because of their similarities but rather because of his great knowledge, reputation among Sufis, and his age. Even though, at age 33, Aabow was considered a man by his peers, greater levels of respect are afforded to those more advanced in years. The mentor/student relationship between Aabow and M. Biyomalow lasted for a short time, but his influence continued to live on, guiding Aabow until his death in Octobe 28, 2009, over half a century. Besides holding an annual memorial service, Aabow designed a mosque for his sheik and named as Mo’alin Biyomalow Moqsue. However, as he would later discover, a desire to honor his teacher is often not enough to actually build a mosque.

Aabow’s tribe did not approve of his choice in seeking knowledge from Biyomalow who belonged to another distant tribe, unrelated to their own, but Aabow did not let their reaction change his opinion. Before M. Biyomalow’s death in 1954, Aabow dedicated his life to serving him, cleaning his house and even delivering water to him. M. Biyomalow redirected Aabow’s focus and taught him how to deal with issues, conflicts, and life as a whole. While under M. Biyomalow’s tutelage, Aabow experienced strong objections from his tribe as a result of his seeking knowledge from a member of another tribe. His teacher instructed him not let this type of behavior influence him nor let their negativity force him to distance himself from his family. As part of the tribal ethos, individuals must never intentionally separate themselves from their clan; conflict must be resolved quickly. Even still, for ten years, Aabow was not welcomed at his clan’s gatherings and it was not until they saw Aabow’s sincerity to his faith and his teacher that they welcomed him back.

Even though, in the beginning of his studies, Aabow’s was seen as someone who was determined to regain his tribe’s respect, it is clear from his life that the pursuit of education was his primary motivation. His choice in M. Biyomalow over someone from his own tribe is an important example of this fact. He also redefined what the word “tribe” meant during his stay in Balad Wayne, ‘Adley and in Mogadishu where he can be seen as an unusually individualistic person, making choices for himself without focusing on tribal concerns. Decisions were no longer collectively made with other members of his family and tribe, rather Aabow viewed the relationship with his tribe was simply a familial one.

As part of his education, Aabow strove to become a “Jack-of-all-trades,” by having knowledge in many fields, dealing with every aspect of life. One of the main reasons he left his family in Qeyr Dhere was that he never wanted to depend on others for help. He felt his aspirations would never be fulfilled until he learned to be self-reliant. As a result of this desire, Aabow became involved in, among other things, construction projects not to gain any particular skills, but to fulfill his desire for complete autonomy. To Aabow, education was an endless journey; he always desired more and encouraged all of his students to never stop seeking education. To him, education was a key to life.