HABASH, HABASHA, a name said to be of S. Arabian origin (See Habashat), applied in Arabic usage to the land and people of Ethiopia, and at the time to the adjoining areas in the Horn of Africa. Although it has remained a predominantl
Christian country, Ethiopia has an important Muslim population, and has moreover had relation with the world of Islam since the days of Prophet. These will be examined under the following headings:1. History,
2. the spread of Islam,
3. Habash in Muslim geographical writings,
4. Ethiopian languages spoken by Muslims.
5. A final section will deal with the Ahabish in ancient Arabia. References may also be made to Eritrea, DJABART (ON Ethiopian Muslims) and Habesh (on the Ottoman province of that name).
(ED.)
1. – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Through Muslim traditions mention friendly relations between Muhammad and the Negus, the principal expansion of Islam occurred at the time when the Axumite state was in a period of decline. The Persian had disrupted the sea and trade routes in the Red Sea, and the Muslim conquests soon enveloped the whole of Arabia and North Africa.
Ethiopia was thus severed, at least temporarily, from its spiritual source, the Patriarch ate of Alexandria. In fact, Islam had knocked on the very gates of the Christian kingdom: it had occupied the Dahlak islands (q. v.) The isolation of Abyssinia, which was to last for many centuries, had now begun. Trade and conquest were a thing of the past, and in the face of the great Islamic expansion there was nothing left to the people but to retire within their impregnable mountain fastnesses.
While the internal upheavals in the heart of Ethiopia were at their height (towards the close of the first millennium A. D.), Islamic encroachment along the fringes of the kingdom became bolder and more dangerous. The internal troubles were eventually checked, and ground lost, both territorially and in the propagation of Christianity, was regained, but the effects of the disturbances on the periphery could not be mitigated in the same manner. Here the losses along the coastal plains proved irremediable; the Islamization of the lowlands continued at an accelerated pace, and Muslim powers succeeded one another in establishing their sovereignty, with varying degrees of effectiveness, over the African Red Sea littoral. But Islam threatened not only the coastal areas from which the Abyssinian kingdom had been cut off; it spread its militant faith also among the nomadic groups who lived and moved between the sea and the eastern slopes of the escarpment until, finally, it began to encroach even up on eastern Shoa and the Sidama country. The period from the 4th / 10th to 6th / 12thcentury, the time of greatest internal weakness, saw the systematic penetration of Islam on a wide front: in the Dahlak archipelago, the Dankali and Somali coasts, among the Bedja (q. v.) in the north and the Sidama in the south, in the Ifat sultanate of eastern Shoa, at Harar (q. v.) in the east and near Lake Zway in the west, where Arabic inscriptions and Islamic tombs attest the radius of Muslim expansion.
The slave- trade proved to be a powerful agent in the Islamization of the coastal plains, for it maintained the link with the Arab world and established or supported such centres as Zeila (see ZAYLA) or Mogadishu (see MAKDISHU) with their Dankali and Somali hinterland. Moreover, the slave-raids undoubtedly accelerated the diffusion of Islam among the pagan peoples of East Africa, as conversion was the easiest way of escaping this recruitment. The organization of this lucrative trade was enormous: it set up bridgeheads deep in the interior of the country, and what had begun as a raiding expedition developed in to permanent control of entire areas and the establishment of a series of petty states and sultanates. Setting out from the Dankali and Somali regions and the coastal towns, the slave-traders enveloped the Harar area, Arussi, and the Lake District in the southwest.
It is impossible to say with any degree of certainty whether the origin of the Muslim state in eastern Shoa is due to slaving expeditions. Its beginnings are shrouded in impenetrable darkness, but it must have existed for a considerable period and have been under the rule of the Makhzumi sultans, probably since the late 3rd/9thcentury. The overthrow of this Shoan sultanate, in 1285, and its absorption within that of Ifat, the predominant Muslim state in Ethiopia, is described in a document published by Enrico Cerulli (RSE, 1941, 5-42). The sultanate of Ifat under the Walasma dynasty had become the focus of Islamic expansion in Ethiopia and of all those southern nuclei of resistance to Abyssinian and Christian encroachment who saw in the spread of Islam the lesser evil. Ifat was firmly established on the south-eastern fringes of the Shoa plateau and has impinged on many points and at several stages in the subsequent course of Ethiopian history.
The war of attrition between the central Christian highlands and the Muslim sultanates, entrenched all along the eastern and southern fringes of the Abyssinian plateau, is the principal feature of Ethiopian history during the period from the 8th/ 14thto the 10th/16thcentury. Proceeding from east to west we first encounter the sultanate of Adal (Muslim writers such as Makrizi refer to it as Zeila, but Adal and Zeila are largely synonymous and their histories closely connected) on the Dankali and Somali coast of Ifat; Its ruler was styled Amir or Imam (Negus in the Ethiopian Chronicles), and one of them who opposed the Ethiopian King Amda Sion’s march against Zaila, in 1322, was defeated and slain.
Harar became a Muslim city and a great centre of Islamic commerce and cultural propagation. Ifat held the south-eastern part of the Shoan plateau and the slopes of the Awash rift-valley; it was the most important of the sultanates. To the west Dawaro kingdom controlled large tracts of southern Ethiopia. It bordered upon the Bali sultanate, while the small principalities of Shakha and Arababni lay between Dawaro and the most westerly Muslim state, Hadya, which comprised the territory of the Sidama and Gurage.
Those were the Muslim sultanate ranged against the Emperor Amda Sion (1314-44). They covered a far greater than that controlled by the Christian Emperor, but the latter had the advantage of a geographically compact state, while the Islamic peoples were spread in a vast semicircle without proper communications or political cohesion. Amda Sion seized the initiative, attacked Ifat and Hadaya, and defeated both. He had status thus gained the entire plateau down to the Awash River. And though these Muslim principalities displayed great powers of recovery, for the time being Amda Sion had relieved the pressure of Islamic encroachment. Victory brought mass conversions to Christianity in its wake; many monasteries and churches were founded at that time, and the name of Amda Sion himself was registered among the saints in the senkessar (Synaxarium).
Amda Sion’s son and successor, Saifa Ar’ad (1344-72), is principally renowned for his reprisals against Egyptian merchants in Abyssinia to show his disapproval of the persecutions to which Christians in Egypt had been subjected, culminating in the imprisonment of the Coptic patriarch. Saifa Ar`ad`s son, Dawit I (1382-1411), brought about a temporary reconciliation with the Egyptian ruler, marked by an exchange of gifts. He also received an embassy from the Coptic Church in Egypt. But under his son Yeshak (1414-29) relations deteriorated once more, and the Ethiopian Emperor endeavoured to enlist the help of the “Franks” (possibly Aragon) in support of the Copts of Egypt (this episode has been investigated by Hasan Habashi in an unpublished ph. D. thesis, S.O.A.S., University of London, esp. Chapter III). Ethiopian Emperors from time to time threatened to divert the course of the Nile in an attempt to mitigate the lot of their co-religionists in Egypt by so dramatic a gesture.
Meanwhile, the Ethiopians realized that the tense but “peaceful co-existence” with the Muslim strongholds in their immediate neighbourhood, on the Red sea coast, could not last for ever. They therefore acted upon a suggestion, first advanced by Pedro de Covilham, to enlist the aid of Portuguese naval forces in the dislodgement of Muslims from the Red Sea littoral. The arrival of a Portuguese exploratory mission was, however, much delayed, and it did not, in fact, reach the country till 1520, by which time the general situation had undergone profound changes.
In the meantime the sultanate of Adal was convulsed by internal struggles. The recent defeat had done grave harm to the prestige of the Walasma dynasty, whose authority was now constantly challenged by the Amirs and military commanders. The sultan Abu Bakr had transferred the capital to Harar, possibly to extricate himself from the persistent pressure exerted by the generals who drew their principal support from the Dankali and Somali peoples. Chief among those forceful military commanders was Ahmad b. Ibrahim (nicknamed Gragn, ‘the left-Handed’) (see Ahmad Gragn) who soon became the effective master of the Muslim possessions in Ethiopia and assumed the title of Imam. We are fortunate in possessing a detailed eye-witness account of the Muslim conquests of the 10th/16thcentury, with the Imam Ahmad as the central figure, written by Shihab al Din (Futuh al Habasha, ed. R. Basset).
Gragn had first made sure of the strength of his position in Adal and had then welded the Danakil and Somalis into a formidable striking force, inspired by the old ideal of the djihad and lust of conquest and plunder. He initially concentrated on limited objectives, raids and incursions into the plains and foothills, before venturing upon the distant and difficult highlands. But in 1529, three years after the departure of the abortive Portuguese Mission, he struck and inflicted a major defeat on Lebna Dengel, the Ethiopian Emperor. He was, however, unable to drive home this advantage, as his armies disintegrated, drunk with victory and booty. It was only two years later that he was finally ready to begin the great conquest and invasion which inundated nearly the entire territory of traditional Abyssinia, burning churches and monasteries and forcibly converting large numbers of Christians. Dawaro and Showa province were liberated and conquered in 1531, and Amhara and Lasta followed two years later. At the same time Bali and Hadya as well as the Gurage and Sidama regions (were liberated), and fell
into (Negus) Gragn (The great leader) hands.
The accession to the throne of the Emperor Claudius (1540-1559) thus occurred at a most critical moment in the history of Ethiopia – yet within less than two years the situation had radically changed, thanks mainly to the help given by the Portuguese. The 400 men under Christopher da Gama had disembarked at Massawa in 1541 and, aided by the Governor of Maritime Province, who had held out at Debaroa, set out on their epic march into the interior.
When the Portuguese contingent met the Imam Ahmed, they were successful in two encounters, but could not press their victory home. Meanwhile, Gran asked for and obtained reinforcement from the Turkish commander Ozdemir (q.v.) with which he prevailed over the Portuguese and their leaders, who was put to death. But the remaining 200 Europeans had not been demoralized; they managed to join forces with the remnants of Claudius’ armies and near Lake Tana, fought what was probably at least until recent days-the most decisive battle in the history of Ethiopia. They smote the Muslim troops and slew Gran himself (1543).
Though there still followed some skirmishes, with the death of Gran the serious Muslim threat to Ethiopia had been effectively removed. Assisted by the soldiers of a Christian country from Europe, the Ethiopians had finally saved their ancient Christian kingdom and heritage. But the salvation had come at a very late hour: Ethiopia lay prostrate and existed; many of its Churches and monasteries existed no longer; its clergy was weakened, and its people were either Islamized-however superficially or terrorized and in urgent need of moral and material succour.
Adal, though greatly enfeebled, continued with harassing operations against the Ethiopians. A nephew of Ahmed Gran moved against the plateau, but he was beaten by Claudius, who subsequently advanced on Adal and wrought much devastation. Harar was now the main Muslim stronghold in Ethiopia and it was from there that another attack was launched which, in 1559, led to the death of the Emperor Claudius.
But despite such isolated successes the Muslims no longer constituted a serious danger to the Abyssinian Empire. By the middle of the 10th/16thcentury the prospect of an Islamized Ethiopia had become very remote. The next serious encounter with Islam did not occur until the last decades of the 19thcentury, when the reign of the Emperor John (1868-89) was characterized by constant wars against the Muslim powers encroaching upon his dominion.
Egypt, under the Khedive Isma’il (q.v.), had conceived plans for the conquest of Abyssinia. In these designs she was encouraged by the quick success of the British Expedition in 1868 and by the hope of Ethiopian disunity. In 1875 Egypt directed a tree pronged attack against the Christian Empire; earlier already her agent, the Swiss adventurer Werner Munzinger, had placed himself in charge of the Keren area and also assumed the governorship of Massawa. He now led the assault from Tajura, but was overwhelmed and killed by Dankali forces. The second prong set out from Zeila under the command of Ra’uf Pasha and succeeded in occupying Harar. The Egyptians stayed there until they were dislodged, ten years later, by the Emperor Menelik. The third and largest column proceeded from Massawa, crossed Eritrea, and during their descent in to the Mareb Valley, near Gundet, were attacked by Jonn’s Tigrean army and virtually annihilated.
The shock of this disaster was immense, and the Egyptians at once prepared another expedition, this time of nearly 20, 000 men under the command of the Khedive’s son. The Emperor now organized a veritable crusade, and the whole country down to Menelik’s Shoan hills reverberated with excitement and the call to deal a final blow to the Muslim foe.
When the two armies met in 1876 near Gura, the Egyptian debacle was so colossal that it quenched their thirst for Imperial aggrandizement in Ethiopia.
ቅድም ኣብ እንዳ ሳልሕ ከኬያ ተኣኪብና ትዝርብ ውዒልና ተሰማሚዕና። ብዘይ ዝኾነ ይኹና ናይ ቀቢላነት፡ ኣውራጃነት መንፈስ ንኤርትራን ንኤርትራውያን ክንዓይ ንመሓሓል ተባሂልና ከኬያ ዝሓረዳ ደርሆ ተመሲሒና።