Meyle wrote:
I think you misunderstood my statement as well. When reconstructing for instance Ancient Egyptian or even proto Afro-Asiatic he tends to approach the problem from his standpoint and many of his interpretations are marked by this Semitic bias. He's not alone in this, many linguists tend to approach the problem the same way, maybe because Semitic is the most studied of all the languages in that language group. Nonetheless he's a respected linguist (I never said he wasn't).
Some of his colleagues have an interesting hypothesis regarding Cushitic. They believe that Cushitic is a federation of languages, a so called Sprachbund and that the languages that falls under this category are similar because of language contact and geographic proximity. I support this theory and I believe that the Somali language doesn't share origin with Oromo, Afar, Saho etc. I think they have influenced each other over time. Just look at Afar/Saho. Those languages were more like Beja a thousand years ago but today they are not even close.
I've often wondered that as well. For one thing, phonologically, Somali has way more guttural/pharyngeal sounds than any other Cushitic language. There's just a lot more throat action.
Meyle wrote:
Ge'ez script and south Arabian scripts like the Sabaean script are quite similar. The Arabs during the 6th century understood the Habeshas when they spoke Ge'ez, for instance during the first Muslim migration to Abyssinia. The two parties were speaking in their respective languages and they understood each other perfectly. Just like when the Assyrians seiged Jerusalem during Sennacherib. The native population spoke Hebrew while the occupying forces spoke Akkadian but they understood each other as well despite speaking two different languages.
The first Muslims were indeed welcomed into Abyssinia. However, they first landed on the shores of northern Somalia before reaching there. We know this for a fact for two reasons.
First, the oldest masjid in the Horn is the Qiblatayn mosque in Zeila, Awdal. It was built in the seventh century I.e. just outside the Prophet's lifetime (saw). This is around 600 years before the Fakr ad-Din and Arba'a Rucun mosques in Xamar were constructed. Second, Al-Yaqubi wrote in the 9th century that there were Muslims already living on the northern Somali coast.
The ancient ties between Abyssinia and the Sabaean and Himyarite kingdoms are likewise well-established. More recent research has shown that those links also extended to other areas in the Horn, including northern Somalia.
For example, there are stone pillars in parts of northern Somalia with Sabaean inscriptions on them. These petroglyphs are similar to engravings found in the Arabian peninsula. They are also distinct from the undeciphered ancient Somali writing script.
Northern Somalia stone pillars with Sabaean writing:
Saudi Arabia stone pillars with Old South Arabian writing:
source 
We are the crown jewel of course.
Ethiopians have a similar tale of the Queen 
