Gurey,
I am relying in part on the notion that the Bantu expansion never reached Somalia. The Book of the Zanj states explicitly that the Kasur tribes were aboriginal.
This was written in 2014 by Ali Mumin Ahad, who teaches at La Trobe University over with you there in Australia. His e-mail address is there:
https://www.academia.edu/9529053/The_Ex ... l_Identity
"Before the incursions of the Hamitic Galla and Somali, this region, according to Lewis, was occupied by a mixed pre-Hamitic population-the Zengi of medieval Arab geographers-who seem to have comprised two distinct populations. Sedentary agricultural tribes, settled in the inter-riverine area survive today in Shidle, Kabole, Reer ‘Ise, Makanne, and Shabelle peoples on the Shabelle River. As Lewis (1961:22) writes:
To the same group belong the Eelaay of Baidoa in the hinterland, and the Tunni of Brava District. The other section of the pre-Hamitic population consisted of Bushmanlike hunters and gatherers, and along the rivers of fishermen, of whom contemporary representatives are the WaRibi, WaBooni of Jubaland and southern Somalia, and the Eyle of Bur Hacaba.
The Shidle, the Shabelle, and the Makanna, who are the aboriginal populations of the middle and upper Shabelle River plain, did not speak Bantu language at any known historical time (Cerulli, 1926; Cassanelli, 1982; Menkhaus, 2003). They speak the Somali language and use a considerable number of Galla-Oromo idioms. The Shidle, the Shabelle, and the Makanna are a sedentary and surely autochthonous pre-Cushitic population, which implies, more importantly, that they are the Sab in the meaning of the term suggested by Ferrandi, which is that they are indigenous to the Horn of Africa. They maintained considerable cohesion and were powerful enough to remain politically autonomous from—and minimize predatory raids by—surrounding pastoralists (Menkhaus, 2010)."
