Queen Arawelo
Queen Arawelo (Carraweelo) was a legendary proto-Somali queen who established a matriarchal society in the Sanaag region around the 1st century CE. After her husband and children died in clan violence, she was cast out as a widow. Instead of accepting her fate, she gathered other outcast women in the myrrh forests of the northern mountains and formed a warrior sisterhood. Arawelo trained her army to restore peace, believing women must take power to end the cycle of male violence. She instituted a system where women held political and economic control. Some accounts describe her punitive justic