Although the settled conditions and more hierarchical political organization of the southern cultivating Somali might seem to afford more purchase to the theocratic ordinances of Islam, it would be very mistaken to imagine that Islam rests lightly upon the pastoralists. … The true position is rather that each community has adopted Islam in slightly different ways corresponding to differences in traditional social organization. Thus, for example, while in the north many lineage ancestors have been accommodated in Islam as saints, in the south where lineage organization is less strong and important, these are replaced by a multitude of purely local figures who have no significance as founders of kinship groups.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 76