Tasked by the Somali Government to choose the best possible script for the Somali language, the commission was chaired by noted scholar Haji Muuse Galaal and had Shire Jama Ahmed as Deputy Chair.
Against all possible scripts before it, the Commission Report concluded Shire Jama's script of all the dozen possible options before it was the most "advantageous" choice for the Somali language.
This Commission's findings were never implemented as we know because the Clerics attacked it as "un-Islamic" with the slogan "Laatiin waa Laa-Diin" [Latin Is Anti-Islamic]
As part of the preparation for independence, the Italian administrators of the UN Trust Territory of Somaliland saw the need for the introduction of a "working" or "official" language of Somalia before independence.
Italian and Arabic were introduced as the dual official languages that Somalia should have at the moment of independence.This was immediately supported by some of the Somali political parties operating in the Trusteeship.
Shire Jama Ahmed, already forming a name for himself as an academic literary icon from such a young age, contested the right to DISSENT and had his DISSENT published by the Italian colonial news paper Correiere. He argued only the Somali Language should and could be the "official" language of Somalia.
1965 Somali Language Instructor for US Peace Corps, New York
The US Peace Corps picked Shire Jama Ahmed to be a Somali language instructor for their Peace Corps volunteers in the United States preparing to go base themselves in Somalia.
To this effect, all travel arranged for Shire Jama by the US State Department, he flew to Syracuse University in New York to help prepare the first cohort of US Peace Corps volunteers for Somalia where he taught the Somali language and also developed an elementary Somali language drill book.
This drill book would later form the basis of his much to be celebrated later "Naxwaha Af-Soomaaliga" or the "Grammar of the Somali Language" published during his tenure as the first head of the "Somali Academy of Arts and Culture," later just the "Somali Academy of Culture."
In 1965, after much wrangling having failed to implement the recommendations of the 1961 Somali Language Commission, the Somali Government invited the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to send a mission to Somalia to explore the best possible scripts for the Somali language.
The following year in 1966, UNESCO sent a highly trained team of linguists led by B.W. Andrzejewski, a noted scholar on the Somali language who went by the Somalized nickname "Goosh."
The mission produced a report recommending the adoption of Shire Jama Ahmed's script as the best possible option were Somalia to settle on the Latin system as a basis for national orthography.
In May of 1965, Shire Jama Ahmed authored the book of the above title published by The National Printers Ltd of Mogadishu.
The title meaning "Prose, Idioms, and Short Fables" described the 3 sections of the book in which Shire displayed and explored some of the most important cultural expressions of the Somali people told in their own Somali language using modern print.
The success of this book with the young, literate developing Somali middle class yearning for Somali language literature told in modern form would shortly inspire him to launch the first Somali language magazine to go into print; Iftiinka Aqoonta.
1966: 1st Edition of Iftiinka Aqoonta Is Published
In December of 1966, Shire Jama Ahmed began publishing, writing, researching, and editing the 1st Somali Language Magazine "Iftiinka Aqoonta" or 'Light of Knowledge' [initially 'Light of Education'] with an emphasis on review of classical Somali literary texts.
The monthly magazine was immediately hailed as a delightfully engaging Somali historical literature critique and discovery. Shire used poetry, sayings, folk lore, oral and written history, and even visual art to teach, introduce, clarify, expand, and entertain
Every new edition turned Mogadishu and other urban Somali centers into a giant literary book club buzzing with intellectual stimulation. The coffee and tea houses loved it and became Shire's biggest sponsors and advertisers.
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1967; Istituto Italiano per l'Africa pays tribute to Shire Jama Ahmed
Six years after the 1st Somali Language Commission of 1961, with the Somali government still unable to authorize an "official" Somali orthography,the Italian Institute for Africa publishes an article in June of 1967 written by Michele Pirone title "The Somali Language and It's Problems" (La Lingua Somala E I Suoi Problemi).
Noted is the trajectory of the Somali orthography issue up to that point, the lack of conclusion to the choice question, and the prominent contributors working on a solution.
In particular, Shire Jama Ahmed is singularly identified in that year of 1967 as really a tireless engine behind the push for a "Latin system" of his own creation in which he was engaged extensively lobbying through a public acceptance campaign. His books, teaching, and publishing of Iftiinka Aqoonta are identified contemporaneously as perhaps something that even originally overcame the clerics and disarmed "Laatiin wa Laa'diin" even before need for the authority of the 1969 Revolution widely credited for overcoming this impediment among a number of other structural obstacles of the 60's.
This contemporaneous account is manifestly significant for the personal legacy of Shire Jama Ahmed and the extent of his achievement and contribution to the Somali-speaking world indeed.
Gabayo, Maahmaah iyo Sheekooyin Yaryar
