On a cool afternoon in Hargeisa, I met with a prominent sheikh. As we shared a pot of tea while sitting cross-legged together on a large rug in his office, I mentioned I had come to see him for a book I was hoping to write about law in Somalia and Somaliland. He nodded, raised a corner of his lips into half a smile, and began by discussing his grandfather. The sheikh called his grandfather “the most prominent sheikh in [colonial] Somaliland … famous and very rich.” He had sired more than seventy sons and daughters from many wives, I was told.