Jama Omar Issa

In the early 1960s, Aw Jama moved to Mogadishu to teach and continue to collect the poems of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, known in the West as the "Mad Mullah".

Jama has spent some twenty years collecting and transcribing orally transmitted poetry before publishing it in Diiwaanka Sayid Maxamed, edited by Madbacadda Qaranka, Xamar, 1974.

Before the Somali script was formally adopted, Aw Jama published in Arabic: Tarikh al-Sumal fi al-'Usur al-Wusta waal-Haditha (The modern and Middle Ages of Somali history) and Zu’ama al- Harakah al-Siyasiyya fi al-Sumal (The leaders of political movements in Somalia), both in 1965.

In 1966, he published in Arabic Tarikh al-Liwa Da'ud (The life of General Daud Abdulla Hirsi) a book on the biography of the first Commander-in-Chief of the Somali army.

As a member of the Academy of Culture, Aw Jama researched the history of the towns of the Banadir coast.