Aqal

The aqal (Somali: aqal Soomaali) is the traditional portable house of Somali pastoral nomads in the Horn of Africa. It is a low dome of bent saplings covered with woven mats, designed to be taken apart, loaded onto camels and rebuilt at a new grazing site. Roof and walls are one continuous woven skin.

Roles

Men traditionally chose the site for a new camp; women built the aqal and wove its mats.

Frame

The frame has named parts:

• udub: central poles that hold the structure upright, erected first;
• kabaal: two posts that frame the doorway;
• heego: bundles of saplings set in a circle in the ground and bent over to the udub to form the dome;
• siid: short branches tied across the udub, kabaal and heego to brace the whole frame.

Covering

Mats are woven from acacia branches, palm fronds and grass and bound with rope and fibre. The decorated, colourful side faces inward, and the plain side forms the outside. The mat nearest the ground can be removed in hot weather to let air through. Once finished, the aqal is tied down so that strong winds cannot blow it away. Its curved, low profile also reduces wind resistance. Woven grass mats of this kind are recognised as endangered cultural knowledge among Somali pastoralists.

Layout

Inside, the sleeping area is placed near the back wall and the living area near the door.

Related forms

The Afar of Djibouti and Ethiopia build a similar round hut, the danas, of bent acacia branches covered with palm-leaf or grass mats. Both belong to a wider family of portable mat-covered dome dwellings in the Horn of Africa.