Somali

The Somali are a predominantly Muslim, ethnically and linguistically unified people of the Horn of Africa, one of the most linguistically homogeneous large ethnic groups in Africa, organized traditionally through an extensively documented segmentary clan-lineage system (including the major Darod, Hawiye, Isaaq, Dir and other clan families) that structures political alliance, land and water rights, and customary law (xeer). Somali pastoralist culture is closely tied to camel husbandry and an oral poetic tradition of major social and political importance. Decades of civil conflict since 1991 have produced one of the world's largest and most dispersed Somali diaspora communities, concentrated in East Africa, the Gulf states, Europe and North America.