According to a Canadian researcher in Ottawa familiar with the Somali language, Midgo is the plural of the term Midgaan (5 Dec. 1991).

For information on the Midgaan, please see the attached copy of Response to Information Request No. SOM7293. The attachments included with this response, which include a discussion of the definition and characteristics of tribes and castes (naming the Midgaan among the latter), were sent with the response to your Regional Documentation Centre.

Also attached, please find a copy of Response to Information Request No. SOM5442 and its original attachment, also dealing with the requested subject.

For additional information on the Midgaan, please refer to the sections of the book Somalia: A Country Study included with Response to Information Request No. SOM9847, under the titles "Riverine and Coastal People of Non-Somali Origin" and "Specialized Occupational Groups." This source states that the Midgaan were known as "sab" (low) which in the late 1950s accounted for some 9,000 people "whose men acted as barbers, circumcisers, and hunters" (Nelson 1982, 93).

The same source states that occupational groups such as the Midgaan had lineages, although "these were not usually the foundation for dia-paying groups before Somalia's independence," adding that "families of occupational specialists were attached to Somali lineages, which acted as their patrons and claimed compensation on their behalf" (Ibid.). The source also indicates that "by the end of the colonial period, change had begun to take place in the political, legal, and social status of these [occupational] groups, a process that has continued" (Ibid.).

One source, under a section titled "Sundry Small Tribes & Sections", provides the following information in an entry for the Midgan (as written): "Musa Derieh and Madiban, hunters and leather workers, pre-Somali, with all tribes" (Hunt 1944, 32). The source gives no further details.

Further information on the requested subject could not be found among the sources currently available to the IRBDC.

Hunt, John A., ed. 1944. Genealogies of the Tribes of British Somaliland and the Mijertein. Burao: British Somaliland General Survey.

Nelson, Harold D., ed. 1982. Somalia: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: The American University.

Ottawa. 5 December 1991. Telephone Interview with Researcher.

IRBDC. 28 November 1990. Response to Information Request No. SOM7293 "Information sur la tribu Midgaan").

IRBDC. 15 May 1990. Response to Information Request No. SOM5442 ("Information on the Midgaan sub-clan").