Shire Jama Ahmed

Teachers and administrators at Jamal Abdinasir Secondary School, a fixture in Mogadishu for more than six decades up until the late 1980s, helped secure for Shire and several dozen other highly motivated students trips to Egypt for further studies in advanced Arabic. Shire eventually earned a degree from Al-Azhar.

After the Somali national script was introduced, the government undertook a massive literacy campaign in villages and rural settlements across the country from 1974 to 1975. This effort was termed in the Somali language Ol Olaha Waxbarashada Reer Miyiga or Somali Countryside Literacy Campaign. The national campaign was carried out by young people, mostly elementary school teachers as well as high school students. This was a relatively easy undertaking as there was now an alphabet to learn.

The military government, which came to power in October 1969 under the aegis of General Mohamed Siad Barre, took up the agenda. Within a year, the new administration elected to use Shire's refined Latin script as the official writing method for transcribing the Somali language. By 1972, Barre's government began printing more books in Af Soomaali using the new script for primary and high schools alike.

After having successfully completed his studies in Egypt, Shire again found himself among a group of students selected for scholarships to study abroad, albeit this time in the Soviet Union. He subsequently graduated from a Russian university in 1967, though his first intention was apparently to attend McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Two successive governments, from 1960–1967 and 1967–1969, could not settle the debate over what script to use: Arabic, a script which most Somalis had used for centuries and which is featured in the Qur'an, or Latin, a script that only really came to the attention of the Somali people during the late 18th century upon contact with the British and Italian European administrations.

In the late 1960s, Shire and a few other Somali linguists presented before the Somali Language Committee, an organization in charge of settling Somalia's outstanding language issue, and eventually deciding between several prospective orthographies. These scripts ranged from Arabic to some resembling Ge'ez, an ancient Ethio-Semitic writing system. Among those proposed was the Osmanya script, an orthography invented in the early twentieth century by the Majeerteen poet and ruler, Osman Yusuf Kenadid, which had enjoyed a strong following. Shire's competing orthography, for its part, was derived from Latin characters, and it omitted a few letters (p, v and z) to accommodate the unique sounds of the Somali language. Shire also introduced combination letters (kh, dh and sh), which were in many ways exclusive to the language.

From 1951 to 1954, Shire matriculated at a college run by former graduates of the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. His studies focused on Arabic and Islamic Law. Later, in 1955, he was part of a group of students who received scholarships to study at Egyptian institutions of higher learning.

In 1940, at about the age of five (the usual age when children first start Qur'anic studies), Shire began learning the Qur'an at his nearby dugsi or madrasah. He continued his religious studies up until 1945. It is widely reported that he attained Kabir or student head. One attains the Kabir designation when one succeeds at memorizing scripture at an above average pace. Here, Shire quickly attained complete knowledge of the Qur'an, which consists of 30 chapters of roughly equal number of verses or volume.

Shire Jama Ahmed (Somali: Shire Jaamac Axmed, Arabic: شيري جامع أحمد; 1936-1999) was a Somali linguist and a scholar. He is notable for his contribution to the creation of the modern Latin script for transcribing the Somali language.

In addition, he was one of the main organizers and administrators of the Somali Youth League (SYL), a nationalist and youth-oriented political movement that existed in the 1930s through to the late 1960s. Between 1967 and 1969, he also took up the post of Chief Presidential Protocol in the Sharmarke government.