Somali Poet Abshir Bacadle dies in Mogadishu

Poet Abshir Ba'adle died in Mogadishu on Sunday. He was Somalia's first and best known Islamist poet. He came to prominence in the 1980s during a time of ideological struggle between the government and tradtional Sufi orders on one side, and proponents if Islamic revival (dubbed Ikhwan for their resemblance of Islamic brotherhood) on the other. His poems satirized traditional Sufi orders and it helped him that he started off as a Sufi himself. In some of his famous poems he voiced two characters, an old Sufi sheikh and young opponents. These were memorable and humorous poems, but then the whole country collapsed and those ideological arguments became irrelevant. After the civil war his image was slightly tainted when some accused him of tribalism because of some of his later poems in which he discusses the conflict between some of the tribes. Life was hard for him having stayed in Mogadishu for the most difficult years of the war. In his later poems though he advocated for peace and focused on social issue such as a famous poem about Qat and its harmful effects on the individual and society. He also did a lot of humanitarian work helping finance schools and mosques in Mogadishu. His poems were in standard Somali verse, solid in construction but also made Shirib. Somalia has lost a great son and so has the Somali language. He will be missed.