Said Sheikh Samatar

Said Sheikh Samatar سعيد الشيخ سمتر
Born	Saciid Sheekh Samatar 1943 Ogaden, Ethiopia
Died	24 February 2015 Newark, United States
Occupation	scholar, writer
Ethnicity	Somali
Alma mater	Goshen College (1973) Northwestern University (1979)
Notable works	Oral poetry and Somali nationalism (1982) Somalia: Nation in Search of a State (1987)
Spouse	Lydia Samatar
Children	Sofia Samatar, Delmar Samatar

Said Sheikh Samatar (Somali: Saciid Sheekh Samatar, Arabic: سعيد الشيخ سمتر‎‎‎; 1943–24 February 2015) was a prominent Somali scholar and writer.

Said was born in 1943 in the Ogaden in Ethiopia to Faduma and Sheikh Samatar. He came from a large family consisting of fourteen people, including his father's second wife.

Samatar spent his early years in a nomadic environment, where he writes that "seasons of plenty" with "fragrant flowers blooming all over the fallowed fields, abundant milk and meat" alternated with the "perennial threat of starvation during droughts, marauding gangs of enemy clans bent on murder and mayhem, stripping you of your livestock, the ever-present danger of ravenous predators."

In 1958, Said's father, who had been working for the government as an Islamic magistrate since 1948, sent for him to begin schooling. Samatar subsequently moved to the town of Qalaafo, transitioning from nomadic life to urban life. A sixteen year old at the time, Samatar found himself surrounded by eight-year-old classmates. He says that while the experience in general was humiliating, he endured.

He completed his early education with a stint at a middle school in Nazareth, Ethiopia.

In 1970, Samatar began working at the National Teaching College in Somalia alongside several American librarians. There, an American friend suggested that he continue his education at a university in the United States.

Coming to the U.S. on a scholarship, Samatar commenced studies at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana. He attended early morning and night classes, while working during the day as a welder to support his wife, who at the time was pregnant with their two children. Samatar graduated from Goshen College in 1973 with a degree in history and literature. He followed that with a Master's degree in Northeast African history, and received a graduate certificate in African studies. In 1979, he obtained a doctorate in African history from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

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