Africa in Jerusalem – The Ethiopian Church
There can be few monasteries as strange as Deir es-Sultan, home of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the Old City of Jerusalem. To come across it without warning is an unusual experience. One walks up a flight of steps behind the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, through a gateway in an old stone wall, and suddenly a tiny African village is revealed: a group of low mud huts huddled together from which comes the clatter of cooking pots. From the middle of a courtyard rises a small and elegant dome. Two priests sit idly chatting on a stone bench. It takes a little time to realize that this is the roof of the Holy Sepulchre itself and that the dome is giving light to the chapel of Saint Helena below, one of the most ancient parts of the complex which make up the most sacred of Christian sites in Jerusalem.
Around the sides of the courtyard are old and shattered walls and in their interstices grow some of those brave and courageous plants which find lodging in the most inhospitable terrain. The Ethiopian church in Jerusalem itself resembles a plant which in Jerusalem has found poor soil but has continued to grow in defiance of the laws of probability and to survive the hardest of winters and the hottest of summers.
Leading off the courtyard is a small chapel where the monks worship. The chapel is dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel. It is not an impressive structure. A small oblong building, it is capable of seating about 70, with room for a further 40-50 to stand packed together at the times of the great festivals. Below it is another small chapel which also belongs to the Ethiopians, dedicated to “the four living creatures,” in reference to Ezekiel where the prophet beholds four living creatures, one of which has four faces and all of them four wings. The very naming of the chapels is an indication of the deep affinity that the Ethiopian Church feels for the Bible and for Jerusalem.
Another indication of this is given by pictures round the walls of the chapel of St. Michael. They are only about 100 years old, but are in that very distinctive and, to an outsider, exotic style which is peculiarly Ethiopian. The faces of those illustrated are all shown frontally and the eyes in particular stare out with a strange innocence. Their pupils are painted black and are large and lustrous. The largest picture in the chapel shows King Solomon receiving the Queen of Sheba. Around him stand dignitaries while the queen arrives with a large and heavily loaded camel in her train. Among those close to Solomon are two incongruous figures clad in the black costume of Hassidic Jews, a costume which though still to be seen in Jerusalem today, originated in the Europe of the 17th century and would have caused some surprise at the court of Solomon. Who are the Ethiopian Christians who live in this strange environment? Why have they chosen to build on the roof rather than find space in the Holy Sepulchre itself like most of the other ancient Christian churches? The Greeks, the Armenians, the Catholics have secured large portions of the holy site and the Ethiopian Church is only a little less ancient than these. The answer lies in the fact that the Ethiopian Church, though ancient, has always been politically weak, receiving help from Ethiopia itself only at certain periods and in limited measure. Its representatives in Jerusalem were not able to establish a claim to part of the church proper and had to make do with the roof.
According to tradition, the Ethiopians were converted to Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries by monks, some of whom came from Egypt and some from Syria. These first missionaries found the way prepared for them by the fact that there had been ancient contacts between the Holy Land and Ethiopia. The existence of the ancient Jewish community of Ethiopia is another indication of these contacts. So too is the fact that in the Ethiopian Church there are many features which are peculiarly close to the traditions of Judaism and which are not found elsewhere in Christianity. For example, the Ethiopian Church still practices the circumcision of males after eight days; Saturday in the Ethiopian tradition is a second holy day little less important than Sunday; and in the churches of the Ethiopians the Ark of the Lord features largely. Again the tradition of dancing which is important to Ethiopian ritual and liturgy seems to owe its inspiration at least in part to the dance of David before the Ark.
Most famous of these ancient traditions is of course the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. Though in the Book of Kings itself, Sheba is not specifically equated with the queen of Ethiopia, no Ethiopian Christian doubts that she came from his country. “And when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bear spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon she communed with him of all that was in her heart.” (I Kings 10:13).
The picture that is seen in the Chapel of St. Michael is only one of many tens of thousands of illustrations of the famous visit to be found in Ethiopian churches and homes everywhere. Tradition in the Ethiopian Church has it that Sheba returned home pregnant and that her son Menelik I, the legendary first emperor of Ethiopia, was her son by Solomon. It is said that Menelik travelled to Jerusalem as a young man to learn more of the wisdom of Solomon and take it back to his own country.
It was perhaps because they found a knowledge of Jerusalem and Jews already existed in Ethiopia that when the Christian missionaries came to the highlands of Ethiopia they were able to speak to the people more easily. In any event, however it may have been, the Christian faith rapidly spread in Ethiopia and according to St. Jerome, by the end of the fourth century Ethiopians were already making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. In the year 636 ce the Caliph Omar, who had entered Jerusalem as a conqueror, issued a firman which set out the rights of Christians in Jerusalem, among them the rights of the Ethiopian Church.
However, little is known of any contacts between the Ethiopian Church and the Holy Land from this early period until the Middle Ages. The Ethiopians themselves believe that a community survived in Jerusalem and that it was supported by funds donated by pilgrims and by occasional gifts from Ethiopian emperors.
There is also little reason to doubt that even at this early stage those contacts were difficult to maintain. The survival of the Ethiopian Church in its home in Africa itself was not easy. On all sides it was surrounded by hostile forces. While the pagans of the interior of Africa certainly had no use for Christianity, a more tangible threat came from the conversion of the peoples of the Sudan and the Horn of Africa to Islam. The fortunes of the Church and of the state of Ethiopia were closely linked and when successive monarchs assumed the throne and fought against their enemies with vigour all was well, but when, as happened on several occasions, the Moslems gained the upper hand, the future of the Church looked bleak. These fluctuations affected the Ethiopians in Jerusalem and continue to affect them up to the present day. They depend upon contacts with Ethiopia and when those contacts are interrupted their economic and political position declines.
However, the very fact that the Church had to struggle to survive both in Ethiopia and in the Holy Land gave it strength, the strength of faith. Also in its favour was the fact that it was not highly centralized. The Ethiopian Church in Ethiopia itself was led by an abuna, or bishop, sent from Egypt to be its leader. This was an ancient tradition dating right back to the very establishment of the church. The abuna, however, had but limited power. Very often he did not know the language of the country to which he was sent and his relations with the local clergy were poor, especially if he tried to enforce discipline on them. For their part, the Christians of Ethiopia centered their tradition on the ancient monasteries and the holy places they established high up in the mountains. These monasteries were the homes of tradition, of culture and of scholarship. In them lived the saints and holy men who played so large a part in Ethiopian religious life. They practiced austerities in the tradition of the Egyptian Church and its monks, and the places where they lived became centres of pilgrimage. They seem to have somewhat resembled the gurus of India today in that they could attract people regardless of where they lived and indifferent to ecclesiastical hierarchy, simply by the way in which they impressed the faithful.
The fact that the church depended upon the individual sanctity of holy men for much of its strength gave it resilience. It is very likely that in Jerusalem too, the experience of struggle and persecution in Ethiopia itself was put to good use by abbots and monks determined to survive despite the circumstances.
Jerusalem bulked large in the eyes of the Ethiopians. In Ethiopia itself, surrounded as it was on all sides by enemies, they could find no community of values with most of their non-Christian neighbours and seldom sought contact with them; the sole exception was the relations with the Coptic Church of Egypt and even these soured after 1700. It was natural, therefore, that in 1937, when Emperor Haile Selassie, one of whose formal titles was “Lion of Judah,” fled from the invading Italians, he made his way first to Jerusalem where he remained until restored to his throne by the British in 1941. Jerusalem was one of the few windows on the world which the Ethiopians enjoyed throughout the centuries.
The Ethiopian Christians resident in Jerusalem often appear in written accounts by mediaeval pilgrims. Writers such as the Dominican Friar Burcardus de Monte Sion in 1283 refer to the piety of the Ethiopians and to their customs. In 1347, Father Nicolo da Pogibonsy, a Franciscan friar from France, who visited the Holy Land that year describes the Ethiopians praying in a chapel called “St. Mary in Golgotha” in the Holy Sepulchre. It is at this time too that the Ethiopian Church in Jerusalem makes a brief appearance on the wider stage. In the year 1438, an Ethiopian delegation attended the Council of Florence which was designed to recreate the unity of Christianity primarily by getting the Greek Orthodox and Catholic Churches together. The Ethiopians were represented by the abbot of the Church from Jerusalem. His embassy attracted considerable curiosity although there appeared to have been no practical results as a result of his participation.
In the 16th century matters took a turn for the worse. The Ethiopian Kingdom was under attack from Ahmad Gran, the ruler of Harar, a Moslem principality east of Ethiopia, and was almost destroyed. Churches were burned, Christians persecuted and forcibly converted, and the emperor compelled to flee. In these circumstances no one had much time to think about Jerusalem, and the community languished. Through poverty they lost their foothold in the main building of the Holy Sepulchre and were finally forced on to the roof, where they remain to this day.
But even there the Ethiopians were not safe. The more powerful churches which enjoyed active support from the rulers of their faith slowly began to encroach upon the Ethiopian properties. Many such properties which had been noted as belonging to the Ethiopians in earlier times are now no longer in their possession.
The Ethiopians somehow managed to hold out, though there are many references to their poverty and the fact that they depended on charity from the Armenians and others for their survival. Writing in the 19th century, an Anglican missionary, William Jarret, notes that some Ethiopian monks joined the Greek Orthodox Church simply to get food.
One group which was particularly antagonistic to the Ethiopians was, surprisingly, the Coptic Church of Egypt. Though the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches were closely allied in terms of theology and organization, the Copts resented the fact that the Ethiopians had broken away from them in the 18th century. When the fortunes of the Ethiopians were at a very low ebb in the early 19th century, the Copts began to harass them.
The ownership of the rooftop monastery of Deir es-Sultan was challenged by the Copts who claimed that it belonged to them. In the year 1838 when plague struck Jerusalem and all the Ethiopian monks died, the Copts took over the monastery and, according to the Ethiopians, burned the library containing the documents which validated the Ethiopian claim to Deir es-Sultan.
With their library burnt and their monks dead the Ethiopians might well have been expected to disappear from Jerusalem. They were saved by a curious combination of circumstances. Of course the emperor and Church in Ethiopia wanted to maintain links with Jerusalem and a foothold in the Holy Land but they might not have been able to do so had it not been for the fact that their aspirations were supported by the British. The Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Bishop Gobat, had served as a missionary in Ethiopia and had an ambition to convert the Ethiopian Church to Anglicanism, an idea which seems somewhat surprising today. As a mass of correspondence between the British consul and the Foreign Office in London attests, he extended support to the Ethiopians and fought for their rights.
The bitter fight between the Ethiopian Church and the Coptic Church has continued to the present day. When, with British support, the Ethiopians were able to recover the Deir es-Sultan monastery, the keys to the place were left in the hands of the Copts. Confusion and dispute over who owned what went on without interruption. As late as the 1960s, the Jordanian government attempted to intervene in the dispute after there had been a serious fracas over the use of part of the building. Today there is an as yet unresolved case before the Israeli High Court.
The Ethiopians have, of course, no doubt as to their rights and have produced a series of documents on the subject, the latest of which was presented to the Israeli delegation to the Israeli-Egyptian Normalization Talks at the Ethiopian Church in Jerusalem in September, 1986.
In the latter half of the 19th century, the position of the Church in the Holy Land began to improve. This was largely because in Ethiopia itself a series of strong monarchs had come to power who began to unite the various provinces under one centralized administration. The Emperor Yohanes came to the throne and began to assert himself to improve Ethiopia’s position on a wider stage. He was fortunate that in Jerusalem at that time the leader of the community was one of the few Ethiopian individuals known to history by more than his name. He was Abbawalda Sama’et Walda Yohanes, a man of energy and vigour. In the year 1888, the community bought a plot of land outside the walls of Jerusalem with treasure which Emperor Yohanes had captured from the Turks; some said he had captured three boxes of treasure, some seven, but however much it was, it was enough to buy the land and begin construction of a new monastery and church. This complex is called Debre Gannet which means the “Monastery of Paradise” in Amharic. It is situated off Prophets’ Street in Jerusalem and gave its name to Ethiopia Street on which it stands.
Once the decision to build a new church was taken, the whole position of the Ethiopians began to change for the better. The community grew larger until some 40-50 monks and a smaller number of nuns were in residence by 1900, a number which it has maintained up until today. Many of the nuns were widows of priests (for priests in the Ethiopian church are not celibate) or members of aristocratic families who came to Jerusalem in pious retirement to houses which they built and lived in, and, on their death, donated to the community. The Israel Broadcasting Authority building in Jerusalem is housed in a building belonging to the Ethiopian Church for which rent is paid.
The “new” church – Debre Gannet – is an impressive building built on a circular pattern used in most of the principal churches of Ethiopia. It is entered through a large door and stands in a quiet and secluded courtyard. Once inside, the worshipper is aware of its very considerable height. There is no nave as in most western churches but rather a great circular corridor which surrounds the central Ark and which is made attractive to the worshipper as well as to the seeker after aesthetic pleasure, by the presence of a variety of pictures dating back some hundred years or so, most showing saints of the church.
Debre Gannet now shares with Deir es-Sultan the role of providing a home for the monastic community of Ethiopians in the Holy Land. During the last hundred years they have also acquired properties in Bethany, Jericho and on the river Jordan.
The fortunes of the Church would thus appear to have improved, but there are still difficulties. Many of these have been caused over the last 50 years by political turmoil in Ethiopia itself. In 1936, when the Italians conquered Ethiopia, some of the monks recognized the Italian rule in their country while others refused. The struggle between the two parties resolved in favour of the Ethiopian nationalists in 1941 when the Italians were defeated. The monks who had supported the Italians were driven out of the Jerusalem monastery and reduced to utter penury from which they were only relieved by a grudging pension paid by the British mandatory authorities.
The overthrow of the Emperor Haile Selassie by the communists in 1973 was another cause for turmoil. Some monks who were loyal to the imperial regime were no longer able to remain in the monastery while the community itself was augmented by a number of individuals, not all of them monks, who had left Ethiopia for political reasons. Today the community of monks and nuns has been augmented by a sizable group of lay people. There was a variety of internal conflicts which arose as a direct result of antagonism between those who had felt at home only with the government of the Emperor and with the traditional social order and those who were prepared to compromise with change. In this the community in Jerusalem only reflected the wider concerns of the Church in Ethiopia itself. The recent defeat of the communist regime in Ethiopia and the establishment of an Ethiopian embassy in Israel have, however, improved matters so far as the community in Jerusalem is concerned.
For more than 1500 years, the Church of Ethiopia has survived in Jerusalem. Its survival has not, in the last resort, been dependent on politics, but on the faith of individual monks and it is to the lives of these monks that we should look for the vindication of the Church’s presence in Jerusalem.
The Ethiopian monks of today, whether in Jerusalem or in Ethiopia itself, are supported by revenues from church lands and properties and gifts of the faithful. The monks are far from rich. They are attracted to Jerusalem not by a hope for material gain or comfort, but by faith.
It has been a feature of the Ethiopian Church in Jerusalem that its members, who are Amharic-speaking, seldom became fluent in the tongues of the country in which they live. Even today many monks speak neither Arabic nor Hebrew, nor indeed any other language, and are entirely dependent for their contact with the outside world on those of the community who do. Most of them are men of simple piety brought to Jerusalem by the belief that it is the most holy of Holy Places. The life they lead is highly structured. Meals are eaten in common and their whole life revolves around prayer services and great feasts. The monks take part in services held twice a day between four and six a.m. and between four and five p.m. On the days immediately preceding Easter as well as the Feast of Our Lady, in August, the morning service lasts from two to six a.m. On other saints’ days, the qudase, or Mass, is celebrated.
The services involve long periods of standing and it is for this reason that a feature of the church is the long sticks with carved chin rests which the monks use for support. Similar sticks, incidentally, are used by shepherds in Ethiopia as they watch their flocks.
On the occasion of the important feasts, dancing and making music with traditional instruments play a very large part. By far the most important are the series of celebrations surrounding Easter. In 1502, a German pilgrim Bernhard von Breidenbach, wrote “with zeal do the people gather for the celebration of Mass. Especially on the Feasts, and then both men and women begin to rejoice and to dance, to clap their hands and to form circles, here six or seven, there nine or ten, and sometimes they keep singing like that all the night, particularly on the night of the Resurrection of our Lord, where they do not stop singing till dawn and sometimes they do this so fervently that they become completely exhausted.”
Perhaps the most memorable of the Easter activities is Palm Sunday. For this celebration of the entry of Christ to Jerusalem, not only monks but all the lay members of the 300 or so Ethiopian community in Jerusalem gather in the courtyard of Deir es-Sultan. All over Jerusalem other Christians are also celebrating Palm Sunday but none do so in a more heartfelt way than the Ethiopians, who act out the events of Easter week in a style all their own.
The service begins at midnight in the Chapel of St. Michael in Deir es-Sultan, and lasts until eight a.m. Of this, six hours is a special commemorative service and the remaining two celebrate the Mass. It is not only monks who have stomach for so long a service. At the back of the church stand women, in traditional cotton dresses and shawls of white. The faces of the congregation are remarkable for their concentration. At about half-past eight at the end of the service, everybody leaves the chapel and comes out on the roof looking cheerful and not in the least tired. The archbishop and his fellow priests go into a large tent nearby where they prepare themselves for the solemn procession.
There they begin their prayers chanting “I rejoiced when they said unto thee Let us go unto the House of the Lord’. Our feet shall stand within thy gates; Jerusalem is builded as a city.” At the end of the service palm branches are brought to the archbishop who blesses them and distributes them to the congregation and to the monks. The whole crowd walks in procession round the courtyard. For outsiders, part of the interest in these celebrations is in the exoticism: the elaborate ecclesiastical garments of the priests and especially the archbishop and his senior colleagues; the decorated and tasseled umbrellas in velvet and gold which are held over the heads of notables, the music itself and the presence among the crowd of a few itinerant musicians playing on small stringed instruments and singing spontaneous hymns of praise to the crowd. For the monks the ceremony has a different meaning – it is the high point of the year, the ultimate celebration of their faith.
When they are not taking part in feasts or fasts (there are a great number of fasts in the Ethiopian rite), the monks and nuns make use of their time for their own spiritual practice. Private prayers are a very important part of the monastic life of the Ethiopian church. Their characteristic method is the repetition of certain sacred texts. The Psalms of David are particularly appreciated, as is the Gospel of St. John.
However, the Ethiopian monks must also contribute to the communal life of the monastery. They are bound by a rule which is perhaps less strict than that of some Western monks but still demands of them celibacy, the avoidance of sin, and obedience to the abbot. They are also expected to look after themselves insofar as they must garden, clean and paint their houses and share in the life of the community. However, they do not live in communal dwellings as do monks in the Catholic tradition. They are also given considerable latitude in their choice of activities. Some have taken up painting and woodcarving while others prefer to spend their time in study; one or two have withdrawn from the world and become solitary hermits. The most famous of these, who died in the early eighties, was a monk who did not speak for 30 years but who, if appealed to by an individual, would give his guidance in writing. This man, who acquired a reputation for sanctity, was buried as a saint.
As for the lay community of devout individuals and, on occasion, political exiles, it is more closely involved with society outside the monasteries than are the monks and nuns. Members of the Ethiopian community work as nursing sisters in hospitals and the young people study in the Anglican School, an international school in Jerusalem, or in regular Israeli schools.
In recent years, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem from Ethiopia has attracted more and more people. In 1993, some 450 pilgrims flew to Jerusalem at Easter. Looking after them provides a source of income for the local community. However, the community as a whole is still a poor one and has a constant struggle to preserve its identity. A small school maintained with care and affection provides instruction in Amharic and in the traditions of the Ethiopian community and Church in Ethiopia but it only functions at weekends.
The arrival of some 30,000 Jews from Ethiopia during the last few years has, to some extent, served to diminish the sense of isolation of the Ethiopian Christian community but it has not much affected its day-to-day life.
The monks of the Ethiopian Church live, as it were, on an island where their lives change very slowly – an island to which they have been drawn through faith and where they have found a degree of contentment. Asked why he had come to Jerusalem, one elderly monk at first seemed to fail to grasp the question. Then he burst out “because it is Jerusalem” – an answer he felt quite sufficient, as indeed it is.
What has Jerusalem to do with Islam?
To Pray In Jerusalem
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/197404/to.pray.in.jerusalem.htm
July/August 1974
Earlier this year King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, a devout Muslim, protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, and the leading proponent of Islamic unity, made a significant remark that was widely quoted in the world press. “My greatest wish before I die,” said the 70-year-old King, “is to pray in Jerusalem.”
Muslims everywhere immediately understood and sympathized with King Faisal’s wish, but to Westerners unfamiliar with the Middle East the King’s statement came as something of a surprise. Undoubtedly, many persons today know that Muslims consider Mecca and Medina, both in Saudi Arabia, as Holy Cities and that the Ka’bah, in Mecca’s Sacred Mosque, is the point toward which, five times each day, the world’s 600 million Muslims face in prayer. But Jerusalem? From both the Bible’s Old and New Testaments Westerners know Jerusalem’s deep associations with Judaism and Christianity. But what has Jerusalem to do with Islam?
The answer is: a great deal. Jerusalem is as holy a city to Muslims—and for many of the same reasons—as it is to Jews and Christians, and it also figures importantly in religious traditions particular to Islam. There are also for Muslims some 1,300 years of historical ties.
The historical ties are not completely unknown in the West. Even those with a limited exposure to Middle East history probably know that in the year 637—13 centuries ago—crusading Muslims from Arabia besieged Jerusalem, accepted the surrender of its Byzantine overlords and ruled there almost continually until the Christian Crusaders from Europe came in 1099. They probably recall too that less than a century later Saladin, the gallant Muslim leader famous for his encounters with Richard the Lion Hearted, recaptured Jerusalem from the Europeans and that the subsequent Arab dynasties and later the Ottoman Turks, who controlled the Holy City up to World War I, were Muslim.
What has escaped the casual reader, however, is that Islam’s religious ties with the Holy City are equally long and much deeper. How many Western pundits now puzzling over King Faisal’s statement realize that the large rock atop Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, where tradition says Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son, is also holy to Muslims because they believe it is the place from which Muhammad began his ascent to Heaven? Or that Arabs too believe they are descended from Abraham, prophet and father of the Jews, that they too revere him as a prophet and that he is mentioned in the Holy Koran as being a Muslim? And how many realize that John the Baptist and Jesus are also both accepted and revered by Muslims as prophets?
This lack of understanding, widespread and of long duration, is due in part to the historic hostility of Western nations toward Islam, a hostility probably originally engendered by Islam’s attempts in distant centuries to conquer Europe. As one result, Western religious history rarely mentions that Muslims, Christians and Jews share many nearly identical beliefs—such as the oneness of God, the need for total submission to His will and the clash of good and evil—and that in Islam, the last of the three great monotheistic religions, many of the individuals, events and places sacred to Jews and Christians are equally sacred to Muslims.
The Prophet Muhammad, to whom God revealed His truths, grew up in Mecca, then a center of pagan idolatry although both Judaism and Christianity, being Semitic religions, were known in Arabia. Muhammad was a ready instrument when God, in the year 610, spoke to him through the Archangel Gabriel—himself familiar to many Christians—and entrusted to Muhammad His final revelations, a confirmation of the Abrahamic line of revelations, the message of Islam.
This aspect of Muslim belief is crucial to any understanding of a Muslim presence in Jerusalem. For Muhammad, from the beginning, emphasized that he was only the last in a long line of prophets through whom God has spoken to mankind, and that he was only completing and fulfilling God’s often-revealed message. Thus he taught reverence for the prophets of the Old and New Testaments and respect for Jews and Christians as fellow monotheists and “People of the Book.” In the Holy Koran, which is God’s word as He revealed it to Muhammad, Biblical figures such as Adam, Noah, David and Solomon, and prophets such as Elijah, Moses, John the Baptist and Jesus, with his mother Mary, all have their place. To put it another way, their ties to Jerusalem are also Islam’s ties.
Above all, Muhammad stressed reverence toward Abraham, father of the Jews and Arabs.
According to Muslim belief, Arabs are descendants of Abraham through his son Ishmael, as Jews are descendants of Abraham through Isaac. Indeed, Abraham, according to the Koran, was a Muslim himself. When, on God’s command, Abraham took his son to a rocky summit and prepared unflinchingly to sacrifice him to the one God, it could be considered, as the first example of complete submission to God’s will—the essence of Muslim belief—a starting point of Islam. As Sura 16, verse 120 of the Koran says, “Abraham was indeed a model, devoutly obedient to God, true in faith, and he joined not gods with God.”
Later, as God continued to reveal the message of Islam to Muhammad, the ties to Jerusalem became more direct. One night God, through the Archangel Gabriel, summoned Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem on a Nocturnal Journey (Isra’). According to Muslim belief, Muhammad was carried aloft on the back of a winged mare named al-Buraq to Mount Moriah and the Holy Rock. From its summit he ascended (Mi’raj) through the stages of Heaven, meeting and praying with the previous prophets including Abraham, Moses and Jesus. In the Seventh Heaven Muhammad appeared before the throne of God, Who spoke to him. The Prophet then returned to the Holy Rock and, mounting al-Buraq, was back in Mecca by dawn.
As the embarkation point for this journey to God, Jerusalem thus became even more established as a Holy City. As Sura 17, verse 1 of the Koran says, “Glory be to Him, who carried His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque (Mecca) to the Farthest Mosque (Jerusalem), the precincts of which We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs …” Indeed, for a short time early in their history Muslims prayed toward Jerusalem, and it is called in Arabic Ula al-Qihlatain, ”First of the two Qiblas,” —”directions”—the second being Mecca. It is also called al-Quds ash-Sharif, ”the Holy and Noble City,” or simply, al-Quds, ”the Holy.” In addition to the Koranic blessing, there is a Hadith, or saying attributed to the Prophet, that Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem are equally deserving of pilgrimage.
For all those reasons, it was inevitable that the Muslims would want to implement their spiritual rights to Jerusalem. In 637 they did. By that time, the empires of Persia and Byzantium, successor to Rome, were deadlocked after years of exhausting struggle to control what is now the Middle East. And although Muhammad had died, the faith of his followers was such that they had routed the Byzantine forces from every major city between the Tigris and the Mediterranean except Jerusalem. Now, in 637, they approached the city, pitched their tents on the Mount of Olives and prepared to take it.
Inside the walls of Jerusalem, then called by its Roman name, Aelia Capitolina, the Byzantines, nearly defenseless, debated whether to surrender or fight—as they had 20 years before when the Persians were at the gates, resulting in ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter. Those arguing for surrender pointed out that when Damascus fell to the Muslim armies two years before, there had been no slaughter. Furthermore the terms of surrender had been extremely lenient, with Christians being allowed to continue praying in their churches upon the payment of a poll tax which guaranteed for them as well as Muslim citizens, the “Security of Islam.”
As news of this had leaked into besieged Jerusalem, the Greek Patriarch, Sophronius, sent word out that he would surrender the city without a struggle, but only to the Caliph Omar personally. Omar, then in Damascus, agreed and in one of the great scenes of Muslim history entered Jerusalem alone, except for a servant. Because his clothes were torn and dusty from the ride from Damascus, and because his manner to his servant was so courteous, the Byzantines, arrayed in pompous splendor to meet him, assumed the servant was Omar and greeted him effusively—to the quiet amusement of the Caliph. Thus did Islam come to Jerusalem.
Omar’s behavior on that occasion was symbolic of his later approach to the Christians and to Jerusalem. Once his identity was clarified, Omar asked Sophronius to show him the city’s holy places, and Sophronius led him first to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As it was prayer time the Patriarch invited the Caliph to pray there with him. Omar declined, saying that to do so might later encourage his followers to convert the church into a mosque. Instead he prayed outside a little to the south, a place commemorated today by a 10th-century mosque called the Mosque of Omar and built in a small garden across the courtyard from the entrance of the Holy Sepulchre. (Aramco World, March-April, 1965).
As the Caliph Omar was especially eager to see the site of the Prophet’s ascendance to Heaven, the Patriarch led him to an ancient, crumbling platform on the eastern edge of the city. Seeing that it was piled with the debris of the Persian destruction and more recent accumulations of municipal refuge, Omar personally began the task of clearing the rocky summit so that the site could be reconsecrated. This area today is in the center of a 34-acre compound in the southeast corner of the Old City called al-Haram ash-Sharif, ”the Noble Sanctuary.” The whole area in Omar’s time was known as al-Aqsa, ”the Furthermost,” a reference to Muhammad’s ultimate journey. The Caliph ordered that a simple wooden mosque be built on the southwestern corner of the platform near the great wall where, tradition held, the Prophet had tethered his mare al-Buraq.
Traveling with the Muslim army was a man named Bilal, who had been the Prophet’s own muezzin, or prayer caller. On the first Friday after the discovery of the sacred rock, Omar went to the enclosure to worship and there Bilal himself, for the first time since Muhammad’s death six years previously, called the faithful to prayer. Al-Quds, Holy Jerusalem, was in Muslim hands.
Omar’s covenant with the Byzantines of Jerusalem followed the pattern of Damascus. With the payment of the poll tax and the acceptance of the “Security of Islam,” Christians were given self-government under their ecclesiastical leaders and Christian pilgrimages from the West were permitted. This is part of the text of Omar’s treaty:
“In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is the covenant which Omar Ibn al-Khattab, the servant of Allah, the Commander of the Faithful, grants to the people of Aelia, the Holy House. He grants them security of their lives, their possessions, their churches and crosses . . . they shall have freedom of religion and none shall be molested unless they rise up in a body. . . They shall pay a tax instead of military service . . . and those who leave the city shall be safeguarded until they reach their destination. . .”
As John Gray, an English historian, puts it, Omar’s decree was “less of a treaty imposed by a conqueror than a guarantee by a victorious faith confident in its inherent strength and conscious of its responsibilities.”
In the years that followed, Omar’s successors set to work on what is possibly Islam’s most beautiful shrine: the Dome of the Rock, so called because it encloses the rock from which Muhammad ascended. Built during the reign of the Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, it was finished in 691, and is one of Islam’s oldest existing monuments. Despite extensive modifications and repairs throughout the centuries it is today essentially the same: a magnificent structure with a great golden dome that, until the present government began to build high-rise apartment houses on surrounding hilltops, dominated the city’s skyline.
Close by the Dome of the Rock is the also famous Aqsa Mosque. Built near the site of Omar’s wooden mosque in 715, al-Aqsa has a special place in Muslim affections, because by unspoken tradition it is more a house of prayer than a monument. Five thousand worshipers can pray inside. Remarkably, these two edifices, the main symbols of the Muslim presence in Jerusalem, have survived all the difficult centuries that followed.
The pattern of religious tolerance established in Jerusalem by Omar and maintained by the Umayyad caliphs became uncertain under their Abbasid successors, deteriorated further under the Fatimids and vanished in 1099, when the Crusaders captured the Holy City (Aramco World, May-June, 1970). Not only did the European conquerors massacre all but a handful of Jerusalem’s Muslim defenders, but also burned the small Jewish community in its synagogue and slaughtered great numbers of Arab and Orthodox Christians. The Crusaders also converted the Muslim shrines to churches. A gold cross was raised on top of the Dome of the Rock, which the Crusaders then named the Templum Domini. Another was placed on the dome of al-Aqsa Mosque, which was named the Templum Solomonis and became the headquarters of the militant religious order, the Knights Templar.
But if defeated, the Muslims were not conquered. In 1187 under the great Saladin, they decisively defeated the Crusaders at Hattin near Galilee and, on October 2, the anniversary of the Prophet’s Nocturnal Journey, rode back into Jerusalem. Then, fulfilling the vow of his predecessor Nur ad-Din, who had dedicated a magnificent cedarwood minbar, or pulpit, made in Aleppo to the capture of the city, Saladin installed the pulpit in al-Aqsa Mosque. Though isolated coastal outposts remained in Christian control up to 1291, al-Quds, the Holy, was again part of the Muslim empire.
Under Saladin, whose chivalry was a legend even among his enemies, the tolerance of Omar was restored. His merciful occupation of the city was in glaring contrast to the policies of the Crusader conquest. He spared all lives, offered the “Security of Islam” to those who sought it and, although removing the crosses and altars from the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa, left all other Christian shrines intact.
During the Ayyubid dynasty, which came next, it became traditional that at times the various sultans would clean al-Aqsa with their own hands before dispensing alms. The sultans of the Mameluke dynasty, which came to power in the 13th century, assumed the title “Servants and Guardians” of the holy places in Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. They were notable not only for the substantial restorations and redecorations they carried out in both of Jerusalem’s two major shrines, but also for the steps they took to provide for their future. The Mamelukes purchased substantial properties in Jerusalem, especially in the Magharibah quarter just west of the Noble Sanctuary, and through the establishment ofwaqfs, or perpetual sacred trusts (Aramco World, Nov.-Dec, 1973), dedicated their income to finance the upkeep of the holy places and establish, maintain and operate Muslim schools, religious institutes, pilgrim hospices and kitchens for the poor. Those institutions, plus the homes and neighborhood mosques of the devout who settled close to the two great mosques, made up an intimate, if humble, part of the Muslim presence for five centuries.
Today this presence, if weakened, is still obvious, particularly in al-Haram ash-Sharif, ”the Noble Sanctuary.” On or near this site, to be sure, there occurred some of the great events of Biblical history. It was here that tradition says King Solomon built the Temple. It was here, Christians believe, that the boy Jesus was found by Mary and Joseph preaching to the elders and that he later chased the money changers from the Temple. But it should be remembered that it is a central site for Muslims too, being the holy spot from which Muhammad ascended to Heaven to pray with former prophets and appear before the throne of God.
Within the Dome of the Rock, in a small cave beneath the rocky summit of Mount Moriah are Muslim shrines to Abraham and Elijah. Here, tradition says, is the site of the Last Judgment. Beneath it is the Well of Souls, where spirits await the Day of Judgment in prayer and apprehension. And scattered about the Sanctuary are other shrines which, with quiet eloquence, remind Western visitors of how many more of their own traditions are shared by Muslims: the Dome of Moses, the Dome of Solomon, the Dome of Gabriel—all built by Muslim caliphs through the centuries. In the far corner is a small dome to mark the spot where, Muslim tradition says, Mary and the infant Jesus rested before starting down to Egypt. Across the valley on the Mount of Olives, a small mosque commemorates the site ofhis ascension to Heaven. Around the edge of the platform are a series of graceful arches, the mawazeen, from which, according to tradition, the balance scales will be hung on the Day of Judgment. Toward the south is the silver dome of al-Aqsa, “the Furthermost,” the blessed mosque, now being patiently restored after it was severely damaged by arson in 1969, in which every devout Muslim hopes to pray.
And in the center, towering above all, is the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s holy shrine built on a rocky mountain top above which Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad worshiped together and where, before he dies, an aging King hopes some day to pray.
William Tracy is Assistant Editor of Aramco World.
This article appeared on pages 24-31 of the July/August 1974 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.
“Utruku Al-Habasha wa tarakukum”
A leap of faith
Early Muslims looked beseechingly to Ethiopia and sought refuge in its territory from their persecutors, the polytheist Arabians. But the Christian kingdom, besieged for 15 centuries by Islamic states that formed a formidable ring around it, refused to succumb to the new religion. Gamal Nkrumah explores the often contentious connection between Ethiopia and Islam
Since time immemorial Ethiopia has retained her supercilious air. Throughout the centuries, the rugged Nile Basin country, bound to Islam from the religion’s inception, has attracted scant attention compared to Egypt. Ethiopia’s seclusion, however, did nothing to dispel its mystique. Ethiopia’s ambiguous identity fascinated those outsiders who cared to take a closer look. Black, but not black enough. Christian, but only partially so. At once both primitive and civilised.
Numerous Arab and Muslim chroniclers have lavished praise on the only land beyond Arabia’s borders that Prophet Mohamed turned to in his hour of need — the only country that responded positively to his call for assistance. Perhaps the most important Arab treatise celebrating the special role Ethiopia played in early Islam was Jalal Al-Din Al-Suyuti’s seminal work Raf’ Sha’n Al- Hubshan (The Raising of the Status of the Ethiopians), written in the late 15th century. It was an earnest plea to reaffirm the equality of the races in Islam.
Ahmed Bin Ali Al-Maqrizi, who in 1435-36 wrote Kitab Al-Ilmam bi Akhbar man bi-Al- Habasha min Muluk Al-Islam (The Book of True Knowledge of the History of the Muslim Kings of Abyssinia), focussed on the mediaeval Muslim sultanates in the Horn of Africa, including those within the country today known as Ethiopia.
Jamal Al-Din Abu Farraj Ibn Al-Jawzi’s The Lightening of the Darkness: On the Merits of the Blacks and the Ethiopians, written in the late 12th century AD, was another mediaeval treatise emphasising the non-racist principles of Islam. Others were far less charitable, suspiciously eyeing Ethiopia as an enemy of Islam. Indeed, Ethiopia has long been mistaken for a Christian country.
“Although the medieval legend of the Kingdom of Prester John, Europe’s Christian ally beyond Islam, had been applied to various regions of Asia and Africa, Ethiopia as an exotic, remote mountain and Christian kingdom was an admirable candidate,” explained Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation.
Interestingly enough, because Ethiopia is widely seen as an isolated bastion of the monotheistic religions in Africa — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — the ancient religious, linguistic, cultural and commercial ties that bind the country to ancient Arabia, Egypt and Nubia have often been overlooked.
“Furthermore, Ethiopia could very plausibly be linked to Ancient Egypt. It should, however, be made clear that the name Abyssinia was used precisely to avoid Ethiopia, with its indelible associations with blackness,” Bernal notes. Indeed, many scholars believe that some of the pre- Christian religious practices in Ethiopia were influenced by those of Ancient Egypt.
Geographical proximity and linguistic affinity ensured that Ethiopia’s history and culture were intertwined with that of Arabia since ancient times. Ethiopia emerged as a country of special symbolic significance at the dawn of Islam. “For Muslims, Ethiopia is synonymous with freedom from persecution and emancipation from fear,” wrote a former president of the Washington, DC- based Federation of Ethiopian Muslims in North America.
Furthermore, the rich heritage of Islam can be found among the Ethiopian people who speak the Semitic and Cushitic Afro-Asiatic languages, which includes Arabic. Among the Cushitic speaking peoples of Ethiopia who embrace Islam are the Afar of the desolate Danakil depression, the Somali, the Oromo — the most populous ethnic group in Ethiopia today, and the Sidamo. The Semitic speaking people of Harar are also Muslim.
The centuries-long legacy of Muslim arts is apparent all around the country, but especially in historical cities such as Harar. The people of Harar are culturally distinct from other Ethiopians — both Muslim and Christian. They speak Adari, a Semitic language closely related to Arabic and Amharic, and have been staunch Muslims for the past 500 years. Adari, derived from the Arabic word hadar, meaning urbanite or urbane, emerged as the language of scholarship and trade in a huge swathe of eastern Ethiopia. Today it is largely confined to Harar and the Ahmar (Red) mountain range surrounding the city.
ETHIOPIA IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF ISLAM:
Islam has deep roots in the land now known as Ethiopia, and which in the past was better known as Abyssinia. Baraka Umm Ayman, Prophet Mohamed’s nurse who raised him after the death of his mother, was Ethiopian. She remained his lifelong friend and loyal confidante.
Pre-Islamic cultural and commercial links between Abyssinia and Arabia go back a long way as attested in the Holy Qur’an. The Qur’an’s Sura of the Elephant recalls the pre- Islamic Ethiopian General Abraha’s attempt to capture Mecca and demolish the Ka’aba that was diverted by mysterious birds that filled the sky and pelted the Ethiopian army with stones. Those among the mighty elephant-mounted Ethiopian force not crushed to death quickly dispersed. Mecca and the Ka’aba were miraculously saved.
Pagan Arabians, clansmen of the Prophet’s own Qureish tribe, vehemently opposed the new religion revealed to their kinsman. They viciously and systematically persecuted his followers.
Among the oppressed was an Ethiopian slave, Bilal Al-Habashi, or Bilal the Abyssinian, who believed in the Prophet’s message. He was tortured by his master Omaya Ibn Khalaf for his beliefs. The Ethiopian had a beautiful and resonate voice and he became the first muezzin, or caller to prayer, in the history of Islam.
When the Prophet Mohamed instructed a small band of his early followers to flee Mecca and cross the Red Sea in 615 AD, he knew that they would find safe haven in the neighbouring Ethiopian Christian kingdom.
First 10 then 40 others crossed the Red Sea for the court of the goodly king known in Arab tradition as Ashama Ibn Abjar, or Al-Nagashi Ashama. The party included such notables as the third Caliph Othman Ibn Affan and his wife Ruqayya Bint Rasulillah, the prophet’s daughter. Among those given asylum in Ethiopia were two future wives of Prophet Mohamed — Ramla Bint Abi Sufyan, better known as Umm Habiba, and Sawda Bint Zama’a. Some Ethiopian Muslim traditions claim that the Ethiopian king bestowed a golden dowry on Umm Habiba when she became betrothed to the Prophet Mohamed. Islamic chroniclers maintain that the Prophet Mohamed corresponded with the Ethiopian monarch and that when the king died, the Prophet performed the Salat Al-Gha’eb, or prayer in absentia — the first such prayer recorded in Islamic history.
Interestingly enough, there is no explicit reference in the records of the Ethiopian Church corroborating the first hijra, or exodus, of early Muslims to Ethiopia. It is not entirely clear exactly where the early Muslims settled, but it is often assumed that they stayed in the vicinity of the ancient Ethiopian capital Axum. Neither the Ethiopian Church records nor king lists mention a king called Ashama, even though some Ethiopian sources traditionally name a Negus Adriaz as the righteous king in question.
Muslim tradition has it that the Ethiopian king converted to Islam and adopted the name of Ahmed, much to the consternation of his subjects, the court and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
Prophet Mohamed, as a token of his gratitude to the deceased king, urged his followers to especially revere the Ethiopians and treat them kindly. “Utruku Al-Habasha wa tarakukum,” Prophet Mohamed is said to have admonished his followers — “Leave the Abyssinians alone, so long as they do not take the offensive.”
The question arises as to why Ethiopia? The Prophet could have chosen a safe haven for his followers in any of Arabia’s other neighbours: modern-day Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Iraq or Iran. Instead he chose Ethiopia, largely, it is said, because of the righteous reputation of Ethiopia’s king, the Negus or Al-Najashi. “Go to Ethiopia, there is a king there that is just,” Prophet Mohamed told his followers. His counsel proved to be wise.
Iran, then known as Persia, was a pagan country and the far-flung provinces of the Byzantine Empire — Egypt and Syria — were teetering on the verge of rebellion. The Copts of Egypt asked the Prophet to intervene on their behalf and overthrow Byzantine rule.
Ethiopia, in sharp contrast, was a free and pietistic land ruled by a magnanimous monarch.
Ethiopia was also a black African kingdom. Europeans conceived it as such. For the Arabs, however, Ethiopia was a multi-racial land and hence they named it Al-Habasha, the Land of the Mixed Race People. Abyssinia, a term derived from the Arabic Al-Habasha, was a curious geographic construct. It was neither full- fledgedly black African nor was it thoroughly Arabised. It stood apart and always at the crossroads. It was an ancient Christian kingdom that had ruled huge swathes of the Arabian Peninsula. As such it had strong cultural and economic links with the people of Arabia, and especially those of Al-Hejaz (the region which includes Islam’s holiest cities Mecca and Medina) and Yemen.
Islam’s hold on Ethiopia was never absolute. Still, Ethiopia has the third largest Muslim population in Africa after Nigeria and Egypt. The country has between 30-40 million Muslims, although estimates vary considerably. Still there is a sizable Muslim community in Ethiopia, more numerous than the entire population of countries like Iraq, Algeria or Morocco. It is also a community that has long cherished its special bond with the Muslims of Egypt and Arabia.
In spite of the peaceful and idyllic characterisation of the country by the early Muslim exiles, Ethiopia at the time of the first hijra was a kingdom on the verge of dissolution. Its kings frequently had to go to war to reassert their authority in the outlying provinces, regain lost territory and meet the challenge posed by provincial rulers.
Ethiopia had just lost Yemen, which fell into Persian hands. This loss forced the Ethiopian armies to retreat to their mountain strongholds in northern Ethiopia.
With the spread of Islam, the old Christian kingdom of Axum in northern Ethiopia began a long process of decline. Not only were Axum’s fortunes reduced, but the kingdom’s territory diminished because tributary states and outlying regions seceded.
The Muslim world, following Prophet Mohamed’s injunction, largely left Christian Abyssinia to its own devices.
The first hijra to Ethiopia is considered by some scholars as Islam’s first true overseas adventure. A number of Muslim Ethiopian scholars claim that many words in Ge’ez are found in the Holy Qur’an. Both Ge’ez — the classical Semitic tongue of Ethiopia — and Arabic do share a strong and ancient linguistic affinity.
Today, in the remote northern Ethiopian hamlet of Nagash in eastern Tigray, a unique but unassuming mosque is said to stand on the exact location that was first settled by the early Muslim exiles to Ethiopia. Other parts of the country, however, contain important Muslim sanctuaries and holy shrines. In the town of Shek Husen in the old province of Bale, Muslim pilgrims from all over the Horn of Africa come in search of religious knowledge and blessings. The eastern Ethiopian federal city-state of Harar is another town considered sacred to Ethiopian Muslims.
ETHIOPIA AND THE MEDIAEVAL ARABIAN WORLD:
The ancient Christian kingdom of Abyssinia kept itself aloof from the Muslim world that engulfed it. The early eighth century, however, saw the mushrooming of Muslim communities which sprang up in different parts of present-day Ethiopia. These communities were not necessarily linked through politics or trade with Christian Abyssinia. Islam spread especially quickly among the nomadic peoples who inhabited the arid and far-flung corners of the country.
Arabian nomads lived similarly to the peoples of the Horn of Africa such as the Afar and the Somali peoples of the lowlands to the east and south of the Ethiopian highlands where the Christian kingdom flourished. Among the Oromo, another nomadic people whose language is related to those of the Afar and Somali people, Islam spread gradually. The Oromo shared the highlands with Christian Abyssinia, but the Oromo were predominant in the western, southern and eastern parts of the highlands, while the Christians were traditionally concentrated in the northeastern highlands.
The spread of Islam, as such, had no direct correlation with Axum’s demise. But all of Ethiopia’s neighbours — save Nubia for a few centuries — embraced the new religion.
Muslim traders monopolised the spice trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Even though Ethiopia was located at the crossroads of the spice trade, it isolated itself and was largely excluded from the lucrative trade. The Christian Ethiopian Zagwe dynasty (mid-12th to mid-14th centuries AD) and the successive Solomonic dynasty (mid-14th century to 1974) virtually cut off the country from its neighbours. Egypt, however, maintained its connections with Christian Ethiopia and thus somewhat moderated the country’s insularity.
Generally though, Christian Ethiopia in mediaeval times was a landlocked and largely self- engrossed kingdom. The Muslim sultanates of Ethiopia, however, were heavily involved in the spice trade. By the mid-16th century, there were 15 different Muslim sultanates in what is today Ethiopia. These Muslim states prospered tremendously because of their trading in coffee and spices. The most powerful and influential of these sultanates were Iffat (an Oromo sultanate in Shoa) and Adal (Afar). Other important kingdoms included Kefa, which was founded by the Sidamo people around 1400, and Jimma in southwestern Ethiopia. These latter two sultanates are reputed to be the original homeland of coffee.
The Arabic-speaking ports of Berbera, Massawa and Zeila on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden were springboards from which the new religion spread into remoter parts of the region. The spread of Islam among the peoples of the Horn of Africa took place over several centuries. Islam was quickly adopted by the Somalis, the Afar, the Sidamo and many Oromo — ethnic groups that are to this day predominantly Muslim. Ifat and Zeila became important Muslim sultanates, as did the Jimma and the Sidamo peoples, who had important commercial ties to Arabia and the Muslim countries bordering the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Tradition maintains that the mediaeval maltreatment of Copts in Egypt was reciprocated in Ethiopia by the persecution of the country’s Muslims. The Mamluke Sultan Jaqmaq’s (1438- 1453) correspondence with Emperor Zar’a Ya’qub showed how important the treatment of Muslim Abyssinians was to the rulers of Muslim states in the Middle East and North Africa, especially Egypt. Likewise, the treatment of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority by the Muslim rulers of the country was taken very seriously by the Ethiopians.
A letter written in 1290 by Ethiopia’s Emperor Yibga Zion (1285-1294) to the Mamluke Sultan Mansur Al-Qalawun of Egypt (1279-1290) was typical of the mediaeval correspondence between Egyptian and Ethiopian rulers. “I shall protect the Muslims throughout my kingdom and His Highness will do the same with the Christians of Egypt; so let us unite in mutual understanding and common action, and let us go on corresponding.”
The further strengthening of cultural ties between Egypt and Ethiopia during this period had a direct impact on the Muslim community in Ethiopia. During the reign of Emperor Dawit David (1380-1412), the translations made by Coptic monks from Arabic to Ge’ez made many Arabic texts readily available to the Ethiopians.
However, the co-existence of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and traditional African religions has not historically been an easy one. Sectarian tensions continued down the centuries, often erupting into deadly conflicts and devastating wars which marred the legacy of early Muslims in Ethiopia.
AHMED THE LEFT-HANDED AND THE RISE OF HARAR:
The legacy of the 1528-1560 Muslim-Christian wars that ripped Ethiopia apart was a mistrust between Christians and Muslims that never completely abated. Successive regimes have tried to gloss over the deep-rooted differences and have tried to foster a sense of national unity but the outcome of the wars continued to breed hostility.
At the heart of the jihad was the Muslim city of Harar, perched high in the Ahmar Mountains of eastern Ethiopia and long-regarded as the beacon of Islam and the holiest Islamic city in the country.
Harar became a Muslim power under Sultan Abu Bakr Mohamed in 1520. Its rise to prominence, however, was bloody and battle-ridden. Abu Bakr Mohamed was quickly toppled and killed by the religious zealot and military strongman Ahmed ibn Ibrahim, better known as Ahmed Gragn or Ahmed the Left-Handed.
The latter soon emerged as the scourge of Christian Ethiopia.
Ahmed Gragn’s ultimate aim was to unite the Muslims of the Horn of Africa by establishing an Islamic state in the region. To accomplish this aim, he launched a holy war or jihad against Christian Ethiopia. Gragn at first appeared to be invincible. His armies overran Shoa in 1529, Amhara in 1531 and finally Tigray in 1535. The ancient Christian kingdom of Ethiopia appeared to be mortally wounded. Only a miracle or divine intervention could save Christianity in the country. According to Ethiopian Church records, nine out of every 10 Ethiopian Christians were forced to convert to Islam as a direct result of Ahmed Gragn’s campaigns. His goal was the complete Islamisation of the country.
Relations between the Christians of northeastern Ethiopia and the thriving Islamic sultanates of eastern, central and southwestern Ethiopia were traditionally characterised by a tense co-existence. With Ahmed Gragn’s campaigns, open hostilities and conflict became the norm. At stake was the destiny of Ethiopia and the entire Horn of Africa, as well as the cultural orientation of an ancient multi-linguistic and multi-religious land.
Ironically, it was the timely intervention of Portugal — a Roman Catholic European power — that saved Orthodox Christian Ethiopia. Lebna Dengel, the reigning Christian emperor at the time, sent urgent dispatches to the Portuguese requesting their aid. In 1540, some 400 Portuguese troops arrived to train and arm the Christian Ethiopian army. For the first time in Ethiopian history, guns were used on the battlefield. The tables were turned and the Muslim forces fled. The introduction of firearms determined the course of battle and the future of the country. The Muslim armies, however, were still able to exile Dengel to the impregnable Monastery of Debra Damo in Tigray where he later died in 1543. His son Galawdewos ascended the Solomonian throne and died in 1559 during his siege of Harar, after which his head was paraded around the city on a stake.
The arrival of the Portuguese represented a reversal of fortunes for the Muslims of the Horn of Africa. They never fully recovered from their defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian Christians and their Portuguese allies. Despite the attempts of Gragn’s widow, Bati Del Wambara, to carry on his jihad, the Muslim Sultanate of Adal was finally destroyed by Christian Ethiopia in 1577. For centuries, Muslims were forced to play second fiddle to Christians.
Muslim traders and scholars from Harar, however, continued to have a tremendous influence on the Islamisation of other parts of Ethiopia and different ethnic groups of the country.
In 1647 Emir Ali Ibn Dawoud ruled Harar with an iron fist, and in a determined effort to Islamise the non-Muslim Oromo tribes surrounding the city, he embarked on a series of jihads. Today the bulk of Ethiopia’s Muslims are Oromo, but many of the country’s Muslims regard Harar as their spiritual centre and the guardian of Islamic culture and scholarship in the Horn of Africa.
Harar had its own currency and established diplomatic relations with a number of Muslim states in the region, but its autonomy was abruptly ended when Khedive Ismail of Egypt dispatched forces that occupied the city, and executed its emir. The Egyptian occupation of Harar was short-lived. In 1885 Emir Abdullah of Harar led a resistance movement that ended the Egyptian occupation.
Egyptian interest in the Nile Basin countries intensified after Mohamed Ali Pasha, the founder of modern Egypt, set his sights on the Sudan. In 1820-1821 Mohamed Ali’s armies conquered the entire Sudan and proceeded to expand into central Africa and the Red Sea Basin, thereby encroaching on territory under the control of the Christian Abyssinian kingdom. The Pasha’s expansion included clashes with Muslim sultanates in the Horn of Africa.
Mohamed Ali’s successors advanced even further into the African continent. The Pasha’s house greedily embraced the worst aspects of Western colonialism. The entire Nile Basin, with the notable exception of the Christian Abyssinian kingdom, was now in Egyptian hands. Certain kingdoms in the African Great Lakes region, like Buganda, also remained outside the Egyptian domain. The Egyptians soon adopted the European approach of condescendingly looking down on African cultural traditions and arrogating a civilising mission for themselves.
Khedieve Ismail’s designs on an African empire were checked by Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV in the events leading up to the Battle of Gura. Britain and other European powers were determined to check Egypt’s southward expansion. They wanted to make sure that Khedieve Ismail’s grandiose designs to create an pan-Nilotic empire were crushed. The Europeans saw Ethiopia as a key ally in a plot to dash Ismail’s plans.
The Egyptians were headquartered in the Red Sea port of Massawa, today the chief port of Eritrea. The stage was set for a showdown.
Khedieve Ismail deployed American mercenaries at the head of his 15,000-strong army. The Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV mustered some 60,000 crudely-armed warriors. After a series of battles, an estimated 8,500 Egyptian troops perished and beat a hasty retreat to Massawa. While Ismail retained control of Massawa and the Red Sea coastal strip, he pledged never to re-enter the Ethiopian highlands.
The Ethiopian victory at Gura in 1876 was the forerunner to the even more impressive and far- reaching Ethiopian defeat of the Italians at Adwa in March 1896. The Battle of Adwa was the first major victory of an African army over a European power. Egypt’s overwhelming loss paved the way for British occupation of Egypt in 1882.
The great powers of Europe, and especially Britain, took a keen interest in the Horn of Africa and the Nile Basin. Ethiopia too was fast changing and the Christian Solomonian rulers of the highlands were expanding their domain into lands towards the south and east — predominantly Muslim territories. In 1887, Harar lost its independence as an ancient Muslim sultanate when Menelik, the Prince of Shoa who would later become the founder of modern Ethiopia, defeated Emir Abdullah at the Battle of Chelenko. Menelik appointed Ras Makonen, the father of the future Emperor Haile Selassie, as ruler of the city. A new administration was set up which incorporated members of the deposed emir’s family.
As Harar was the birthplace of Ras Tafari, who was later to assume the imperial title Haile Selassie, the city developed a special symbolic importance. The respectful treatment of the city’s predominantly Muslim population by the new Christian rulers became a focus of Arab scrutiny and a catalyst for Muslim-Christian relations in Ethiopia.
ABYSSINIAN APARTHEID:
The first Ethiopians to embrace Islam did so during Prophet Mohamed’s own lifetime. Their descendants were historically known as the Jabarti or the Muslims of the Ethiopian highlands. The Jabartis lived relatively peaceably among their Christian and Jewish compatriots until an Ethiopian imperial decree was issued in 1668 which ordained that Jabartis (Muslims) and Felashas (Jews) would have to reside in separate quarters from the Christians. This effectively created a state of religious segregation.
The decree was no doubt inspired by the Portuguese, who began to meddle in the affairs of the country around that time. Portuguese mercenaries settled in the regions adjacent to Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, during the reign of Emperor Susneyos (1607-1632). Gradually gaining influence over the Ethiopian throne, the Portuguese in 1622 announced the official conversion of Emperor Susneyos to Roman Catholicism, much to the chagrin of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Solomonian aristocracy. Susneyos went on to persecute his Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish subjects. Thousands were butchered in massacres that were inspired by the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions.
Susneyos surrounded himself with a protective ring of Portuguese mercenaries who soon came to dominate his court. His people, however, rebelled and in 1632 Susneyos was forced to abdicate and his son Crown Prince Fasilidos became Emperor.
This tragic episode in Ethiopian history had far-reaching repercussions. First, it galvanised the people of the Ethiopian heartlands around the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the ruling elites officially adopted Orthodox Christianity as the state religion. Europeans were viewed suspiciously and the country deliberately shunned outside influences. Roman Catholics, Muslims and Jews were precluded from ascending the imperial throne which became the exclusive prerogative of Orthodox Christians.
The Solomonic tradition continued well into modern times.
THE RECENT HISTORY OF THE SOLOMONIAN DYNASTY:
After the death of Menelik II in 1913, Lij Iyasu ascended Ethiopia’s Solomonian throne. Lij Iyasu, the grandson and designated heir of Menelik II, was viewed suspiciously by the imperial court and the Christian Orthodox aristocracy. He was regarded as overly friendly towards Muslims. Indeed, even though officially an Orthodox Christian, many of his courtiers suspected his secret conversion to Islam. Several of Lij Iyasu’s wives were Muslim and while his admirers saw these marriages as important political alliances that cemented ties with the far-flung and newly conquered Muslim regions of the empire, his critics felt that the country was in danger of becoming a Muslim dominated state. The Orthodox clergy and nobility conspired to remove Iyasu.
In 1916, Iyasu was ousted and he fled to the inhospitable and predominantly Muslim lowland region inhabited by the warlike Afar. Princess Zewditu, Menelik II’s daughter, was hastily crowned Empress of Ethiopia. Iyasu was captured by imperial forces five years later and was incarcerated in Fiche, northern Shoa. It was not the first time that an Ethiopian monarch suspected of being sympathetic to Muslims was politically sidelined. It simply reinforced a long- standing tradition.
Strangely enough, it is held that certain members of the Solomonian royal family were Ashraf – that is they claimed descent from the Prophet Mohamed. A relatively recent example was the Empress Menen, consort of Emperor Haile Selassie, who claimed she was descended from the Prophet Mohamed through her mother Sehin, daughter of Negus Mikael (alias Mohamed Ali) of the old province of Wollo.
Lalibela was built with the help of Angels not Aliens
A recent documentary on the History Channel suggesting that the churches of Lalibela were built with the help of aliens! And supposedly the aliens are going to reclaim the Ark of the Covenant from Axum when they return to earth?!?
Josephus, ancient Jewish historian on the Queen of Sheba
The Works of Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews
Book VIII – CHAPTER 6
William Whiston, Translator [1737]
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/index.htm
” … There was then a woman queen of Egypt and Ethiopia; she was inquisitive into philosophy, and one that on other accounts also was to be admired. When this queen heard of the virtue and prudence of Solomon, she had a great mind to see him; and the reports that went every day abroad induced her to come to him, she being desirous to be satisfied by her own experience, and not by a bare hearing; (for reports thus heard are likely enough to comply with a false opinion, while they wholly depend on the credit of the relators;) so she resolved to come to him, and that especially in order to have a trial of his wisdom, while she proposed questions of very great difficulty, and entreated that he would solve their hidden meaning.
Accordingly she came to Jerusalem with great splendor and rich furniture; for she brought with her camels laden with gold, with several sorts of sweet spices, and with precious stones. Now, upon the king’s kind reception of her, he both showed a great desire to please her, and easily comprehending in his mind the meaning of the curious questions she propounded to him, he resolved them sooner than any body could have expected. So she was amazed at the wisdom of Solomon, and discovered that it was more excellent upon trial than what she had heard by report beforehand; and especially she was surprised at the fineness and largeness of his royal palace, and not less so at the good order of the apartments, for she observed that the king had therein shown great wisdom; but she was beyond measure astonished at the house which was called the Forest of Lebanon, as also at the magnificence of his daily table, and the circumstances of its preparation and ministration, with the apparel of his servants that waited, and the skillful and decent management of their attendance: nor was she less affected with those daily sacrifices which were offered to God, and the careful management which the priests and Levites used about them.
When she saw this done every day, she was in the greatest admiration imaginable, insomuch that she was not able to contain the surprise she was in, but openly confessed how wonderfully she was affected; for she proceeded to discourse with the king, and thereby owned that she was overcome with admiration at the things before related; and said, “All things indeed, O king, that came to our knowledge by report, came with uncertainty as to our belief of them; but as to those good things that to thee appertain, both such as thou thyself possessest, I mean wisdom and prudence, and the happiness thou hast from thy kingdom, certainly the same that came to us was no falsity; it was not only a true report, but it related thy happiness after a much lower manner than I now see it to be before my eyes. For as for the report, it only attempted to persuade our hearing, but did not so make known the dignity of the things themselves as does the sight of them, and being present among them. I indeed, who did not believe what was reported, by reason of the multitude and grandeur of the things I inquired about, do see them to be much more numerous than they were reported to be. Accordingly I esteem the Hebrew people, as well as thy servants and friends, to be happy, who enjoy thy presence and hear thy wisdom every day continually. One would therefore bless God, who hath so loved this country, and those that inhabit therein, as to make thee king over them.”
Now when the queen had thus demonstrated in words how deeply the king had affected her, her disposition was known by certain presents, for she gave him twenty talents of gold, and an immense quantity of spices and precious stones. (They say also that we possess the root of that balsam which our country still bears by this woman’s gift.) Solomon also repaid her with many good things, and principally by bestowing upon her what she chose of her own inclination, for there was nothing that she desired which he denied her; and as he was very generous and liberal in his own temper, so did he show the greatness of his soul in bestowing on her what she herself desired of him. So when this queen of Ethiopia had obtained what we have already given an account of, and had again communicated to the king what she brought with her, she returned to her own kingdom. …”
Ethiopia: Ancient Settlement Discovered in the Highlands
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201105250863.html
25 May 2011
An ancient settlement has been discovered in the Ethiopian highlands with the help of a special instrument used in geophysical surveys. The find will help tell the story of ancient indigenous cultures in the Horn of Africa and their exchange with nearby civilizations.
In early May, geophysicist Jorg Fassbinder from the Geophysics Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich and his colleague Margaret Schlosser of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) took to a joint campaign.
Together, they surveyed the ground of a suspected settlement in the north-western Ethiopian highland region of Tigray, home to the town of Yeha believed to be a major centre of the Diamat Kingdom established around 700 BCE.
The team used a magnetometer to detect local anomalies in the geomagnetic field which could be indications of hidden objects beneath the subsurface including structural walls, graves, hearths and refuse pits. Such technology has been used only rarely in countries near the equator, however, as the magnetic field lines here run parallel to the Earth’s surface making it difficult to identify buried archaeological structures. Magnetometers are particularly useful, however, as non-evasive, non-destructive tools.
“The new evaluation method developed by Fassbinder’s research team was successful,” said the on-sight excavation director Pawel Wolf. “With the first test excavations, stone walls, burial sites and local waste items like animal bones and pottery shards were found dating back to different eras. Among them were also ceramic shards with characteristics from the Ethio-Sabaean Period dating back to the first millennium BCE.”
2008 discovery
In 2008, Ethiopian archaeologists made the astonishing discovery of a perfectly preserved sacrificial altar in neighbouring Meqaber Ga’ewa, a previously unknown location near the city of Wuqro. The altar bore a remarkable royal inscription in Old South Arabian bearing the name Yeha, located about 80 km from the find.
According to Kebede Amare, head of the Tigray Cultural Department, this is the southernmost find believed to belong to the Diamat Kingdom. Located in present day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, the civilization had sophisticated irrigation plans, made use of plows, grew millet and made iron tools and weapons.
Of particular importance to researchers, is whether the kingdom was comprised of indigenous peoples or a mix of indigenous peoples with the ancient Sabaeans who came to dominate the Red Sea.
Since very little archaeological research has been done on the Diamat Kingdom, the discovery of the royal inscription takes on special importance. According to Norbert Nebes of the University of Jena, the royal inscription is the first such recorded evidence of the ancient town of Yeha.
Since 2008, DAI archaeologists have excavated not only a temple dedicated to the Sabaean moon god Almaqah in Meqaber Ga’ewa, they’ve discovered additional sites of a previously unknown settlement from this important historical period. In Ziban Adi, one of the most promising sites uncovered, they excavated the foundation walls of another sanctuary atop a 3-meter high hill of ruins in 2010.
Countless pottery chards found in the surrounding grain fields suggest an intensive settlement was located around the ancient religious building. For the archaeologists, who are concerned not only with the cultural influence of the South Arabian Kingdom of Saba in the Horn of Africa, but in the study of indigenous African cultures, the settlement’s discovery raises high hopes that the remains of a town from this period will eventually be discovered. Thus far, only a few archaeological sites are known.
This research is part of the German-Ethiopian scientific cooperation between the DAI’s Orient Department, the Tigray Cultural Agency and the University of Jena. The geophysical measurements are based on cooperation between the DAI and the LMU München.
