Birds began it all - journal notes on Islam in Ethiopia
I looked across the room. It was much easier to concentrate on youth. They were all so positively post-famine. Anybody my age in Ethiopia looked either a saint or a cynic, and had seen far, far too much to remain beautiful. It began with the secret famines of the 70’s which inexorably led to the fall of the old Emperor Haile Selassie, to the first jubilant years of land reform and free schooling, followed by enforced collectivisation and the new villages, the bloody and caotic border war of Ogaden, then the government’s Red Terror and the civil war it unleashed and the second great –but this time internationalised- famine of the 80’s. It was the freedom fighters from Tigre province that ultimately brought down the economically and morally bankrupt Communist Derg regime. It’s leader Colonel Mengistu fled to the only man who would take him – Mugabe of Zimbabwe – but left just a critical 24 hours before he could cash the 36 million dollar cheque that Israel had just handed over after their ‘rescue’ of Ethiopia’s Falasha Jews. In the background, alternatively raging, then smouldering, is the thirty year long war in Eritrea, which despite the grant of full independence burst alive again as a border war just three years ago.
Apart from the odd wrecked tank, or half-truck with a tree growing through the windscreen, the wars and tribulations of Ethiopia now seem a whole generation away. Like some rare breed of bird which has had its nest disturbed by building work, the travellers are now returning back to this hospitable land.
It was a bird that began it all. King Solomon was on his throne reviewing his human army, the battalions of Jinn and the winds that were also under his command. He also had the power to understand the language of animals and smiled as he over heard the ant heralds warn their brethren to “Enter you dwellings lest Solomon and his armies crush you.” Then he turned to review his squadrons of the birds. He noticed that the bird of the crest and striped wings was missing and demanded, “How is it that I see not the hoopoe? I will give him hard punishment or I will slay him unless he bring me a plain excuse!” But the hoopoe was not long in coming and had good reason for his delay. He had found a great southern kingdom (which united all of the Yemen with Abyssinia) ruled by a woman, Queen Sheba, and “she has been given an abundance of all things and hers is a mighty throne.” Solomon sent the hoopoe back to this land with an invitation for Queen Sheba to visit his court. In the meanwhile he commanded his most powerful Jinn to briefly stop work on the Great Temple at Jerusalem and construct a crystal palace for her entertainment. The visit was a success, and though Solomon set her up with all sorts of tests (conjuring up her throne from her homeland, tricking her with a solid crystal swimming bath) and refusing to accept any of the bountful treasures she brought from her homeland) the Queen also had her agenda. She sipped from his glass and so made certain that Solomon became besotted. That night after the banquet they knew each other as ‘Adam and Eve did”. When the Queen returned to her own land of Abyssinia she gave birth to Solomon’s son, Menelik I.
Thus was established the true line of Ethiopia’s rulers, the Solomonic dynasty. The late Emperor Hallie Selassie was the last of this millenial dynasty to hold the throne. There is now something cruelly fateful in the way that he was saluted as a Christ-like figure during his life by Afro-Americans dreaming of returning to an African Eden. Now his body lies in its rightful mausoleum though for many years it lay buried under concrete in the basement of the palace where he had been strangled on the orders of Colonel Mengistu. Rastafarians take their name from the Emperors youthful identity as Ras (literally Duke) Tafari. For Hallie Selassie was never a crown prince he started his career as just one amongst a whole generation of royal cousins who were appointed a ‘Duke”, a governor, of one of the provinces of Ethiopia. He rose to power through his abilities, appointed Regent by the nobles after they deposed the mad young Lysu, the co-ruler and then heir to old Emperor Menelik II’s daughter before achieving the throne. Politically astute and a mild, moderate, modernising and merciful sovereign during his prime, his principal failure was that of longevity. If he had died or retired to a monastery in the 60’s he would now be saluted throughout the world (and not just by the Rastafarians) as a saintly genius.
Muhammed was armed with the fortitude that came from his own direct experience of the divine. Though even he could at times be driven to fury by the petty savageness of the attacks. One neighbour in particular, whose wife used to bury thorns along the sandy paths that she knew the Prophet would walk along in bare feet, won himself the only known personal denoucement in the Qu’ran. Other equally malicious attacks rained down upon his followers. Muhammed, who could do nothing to eleviate the suffering of his small embattled community of believers, was appalled at the privations that they were forced to endure. At last he advised some of his followers to leave sacred Mecca and take refuge elsewhere. The refuge he chose for them was Abyssinia. This in itself speaks volumes about the politics of the time. Nowhere in Arabia, not the Yemen, not the Syrian frontier, was thought to be safely out of the reach of the Quraysh, while it is interesting to reflect that Muhammmed was obviously familiar enough with the external powers beyond Arabia to choose the most likely secure refuge. In the words of a much repeated tradition he said to them, “ If you were to go to Abyssinia, it would be better for you until such time as God shall relieve you from your distress, for the king there will not tolerate injustice and it is a friendly country.” It is a proud testimony to Ethiopian hospitality but he is not alone in this high opinion. Homer in the Iliad speaks of the ‘blameless Ethiopians” while Diodurus has it that even the gods were ‘awed by their piety”. They also get good press from the Psalms (not normally very forward in the praise of any nation neighbouring Judea) which in verse 68, line 31 sings that ‘Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.”
The first group of Muslims, 12 men and 5 women (including the Prophet’s daughter Rakiya and her husband Uthman) rode west out of Mecca to the shore from where they took passage on a boat heading south down the Red Sea and through the coral reefs and hundred rock shores of the murderous coastline of the Dahlak archipelago to reach the safe harbour of the Ethiopian port of Adulis. This was no blind shot into the dark of another continent. No Livingstone-like heroic adventure into an unknown world. Adulis (just 30km south from the modern port of Massawa) was a sophisticated entrepot that had been trading with Egypt for two thousands years. It also lay astride the main trade route to India and the crossing to Yemen as well as operating as The Port of Africa and harbour of the Empire of Axsum. A babble of tongues was spoken here by traders aquiring such primary poducts as ivory, gold, incence and tortoise shell ( the plastic of the ancient world due to the multiplicity of objects that can be carved from it) though the bottom had by this period now dropped out of the once thriving trade in shipping out live elephants (the tanks of the ancient world). In exchange bolts of worked clothe and wrought metals were imported. Deals were easy to calculate as the Axsum coinage neatly dove-tailed with the Roman weights in gold, silver and bronze. In terms of being a trading centre and a cosmopolitan meeting pot of cultures Axsum rather out Mecca-ed Mecca. Of spoken languages, there were too many to count (even now in our humdrum multi-cultural age, Ethiopia embraces 80 languages) whilst amongst the written languages of the ancient world the Empire of Axsum was effectively trilingual (Sabean, Ge’ez and Greek). It was also a determinedly Christian land that for the last century had effectively dominated the political life of southern Arabia through its governors, viceroys, military expeditions and garrisons. Of more immediate importance to the story of Muhammed was the resident colony of Ethiopian Christian traders and artisans long established at Mecca. Tradition recalls that Muhammed’s revered old grandfather, Abdul Muttalib, had been closely involved with this community and the Ethiopian trade. Another tradition recalls that Muammed’s nurse was Ethiopian. Although this would would at first seem to contradict the many tales that link him with his bedouin foster-mother it may in fact co-exit and refer to another part of his childhood, perhaps that time when the young orphan lodged with his grandfather.
Whatever the references the small party were able to travel-with, they were well received as members of the great merchantile city of Mecca. They travelled inland, up from the familiar hot and dry climate of the coast (modern Eritrea) and up, up into the comparatively well watered high mountain plateaux of Ethiopia. It would have taken at least a week, perhaps two, to climb up through the mountain passes, journeying past the great conical mountains capped with monastery churches and hermits caves, before they reached the capital of Axsum in 616 AD. The sent back favourable reports and the next year another group of refugees left Mecca to join them, led by a cousin of the Prophet. This Muslim community in exile grew further to eventually number some 83 families. The Quraysh of Mecca rather than celebrate their departure grew irritated by this development. They despatched a delegation to the ruler of Axsum. The Arab traditions recall the ruler as Ashama ibn Abjar, perhaps Armah of the Axsum king lists who also gloried under the throne name of Emperor Ella Sahem. The traditional tale is that the Quraysh delegation planned to slander the new faith in the eyes of a Christian king, and so expedite their expulsion. There may have been an additional trade agenda to speed them of their way. For it may be that Muhammed and the embattled and increasingly impoverished Muslims hoped to recover their losses by taking over the Axum trade.
The delegation of the Quraysh petitioned for an audience with the Emperor. Axum was vast but it had little in common with our assumptions of a city of the classical period. It was a stone encampment of a city, a vast but disparate capital, composed of dozens of magnificent walled palaces each associated with an even more magnificent tomb complex. These vast royal and noble tombs, composed of massive monolithic blocks of granite would each eclipse stone henge though the equisite un-mortared masonry can only be compared to the achievements of the Inca’s. In between these great complexes, fixed like so many stars in the sky, there were bare meadows which in season filled up with the emphemeral tents and hut cities of the tribes drawn to the city by the great markets and festivals. The hundred great stellae of Axum - though much depleted by age ( and the theft of Mussolini) – still dominate the modern town. How much more must these stone columns, which include the worlds largest single quarried stone, have dominated the past. On the edge of Aksum you can visit the so-called ‘palace of Sheba’. This seventh century complex is a warren of courts, chambers, offices and halls though all this gives way to the raised central building where three flights of stairs command the approaches from three different courtyards. In just such a building must the delegation of the Quraysh have brought forth their tribute of presents to the Negus, the Emperor of Abyssinia, and have been given permission to speak. They accused the Muslims of wrecking the unity of their city, of blaspheming against the ancestral gods but most tellingly of denying the divinity of Christ. The Negus surrounded by his court of monk-bishops and clerics was clearly appalled that he should be harbouring these dangerous schimatics in his land and commanded the Muslims to explain themselves. Ja’afar, son of the Prophet’s uncle and protector, Abu Thalib, stepped forward and answered, “ We were folk immersed in ignorance, worshipping idols, eating carrion, given to lewdness, severing the ties of kinship, bad neighbours, the strong among us preying on the weak; thus were we till God sent to us a messenger of our own, whose lineage, honesty, trustworthiness and chastity we knew. He called us to God that we should acknowledge his Unity and worship him and turn away from the stones and idols that we and our fathers used to worship beside Him…And when persecuted and oppressed, we came forth to thy land, and chose thee above all others, and sought thy protection, and hoped we should not be troubled in thy land, O King!.
The Negus thought awhile and then asked for an example of Muhammed’s message. Ja’afar chose well when he chanted Sura XIX with its beautiful revelation of the immaculate conception, “ Then we sent unto her Our Spirit and it assumed for her the likeness of a perfect man. She said: Lo! I seek refuge in the Benefecient One from thee, if thou art God-fearing. He said: I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a faultless son. She said: How can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me, neither have I been unchaste? He said, So it will be. Thy Lord saith: it is easy for Me. And it will be that We may make him a revelation for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained. And she conceivedhim, and she withdrew with him to a far place. And the pangs of childbirth drove her unto the trunk of the palm-tree. She said: Oh, would that I had died ere this and had become of naught, forgotten! Then one ciredunto her from below her, saying: Grieve not! Thy Lord have placed a stream beneath thee, and shake the trunk of the palm-tree toward thee, thous wilt cause ripe dates to fall upon thee. So eat and drink and be consoled. And if thous meetest any mortal, say: Lo! I have vowed a fast unot the Benefecient, and may not speak this day to any mortal. Then she brought him to her own folk, carrying him. They said: O Mary! Thou hast come with an amazing thing.” It is said that when Ja’far had finnished that the Negus and his entire court were in tears. They were the first Christian court to hear how the Qu’ran so greatly honours the Virgin, which indeed it does in considerably greater detail than any of the Gospels. The Negus turned to the delegation of the Qur’aysh, “If you were to offer me a mountain of gold, I would not give up these people who have taken refuge with me.”
A decade or so later, when the Prophet was securely established at Medina, he called his followers back to Arabia. The Negus provided two ships for their safe passage. The Prophet would subsequently marry two of these Muslim exiles in Abyssinia, Umm Habiba and Umm Salma. In both instances the Negus despatched a dowry to Medina as a wedding gift. For their part they revealed an invincible affection for Abyssinia, singing the praises of the Church of St Mary of Seyon at Axsum and continued to revere an icon of the Virgin. This icon, once shielded by the hand of the Prophet from the sun, was exempted from the general ban against idolatrous imagery. The Prophet is also said to have prayed for the soul of the Negus after his death in 630. Of much greater standing in his stern injunction on his followers to “ leave the Abyssinians in peace – as long as they do not take the offensive”. This injunction has echoed down the centuries and with one or two exceptions (like the fearsome Muslim left handed warrior Gragn and the Gordon-killing Mahdi of Khartoum fame) has helped preserve the Christian faith of the Negus to this day.
This is not the end of the curiously harmonious relationship between early Islam and Ethiopia. Bilal ibn Rabah, the freed slave of Abu Bekr, and first muezzin of the Islamic world was of Ethiopian origin and was hailed by the Prophet as ”the first fruit of Abyssinia”. The second fruit can still be found at the Ethiopian town of Negash, for some of the original Muslim refugees never made it back across the Red Sea and founded Africa’s oldest Muslim community. There is another even deeper and profound connection. In 1939 the linguist A. Jeffrey identified 200 words in the Qur’an that appear to be derived from Ge’ez. A contemporary Muslim scholar publishing the same assertion today would bring himself dangerously close to a charge of heresy, for it has become dangerous to analyse the Qu’ran in any manner that brings divine revelation down to the level of an ordinary literary text. However as both Ge’ez and the Qu’ran are sacred, angel dictated languages the link may safely be considered to belong to the sphere of the divine.
Sheba it seems was everywhere but nowhere. Munificent Queen of the South, she was the lover of Solomon for a night, known to the Arabs as Bilqis and to the Ethiopians as Makeda or the Queen of Saba. You pick up elements of her story whereever you travel in Ethiopia. At a rock basin filled with muddy water accessed by some ancient rock carved steps, from a hermit-like deacon revealing his beliefs in the shadow of a cave church, whilst peering at a mural on an island monastery or as you enter a vast monolithic underground tomb. The fact that none of these matched the dates of her royal lover, Solomon , King of Israel and Judah from 966 to 926 BC mattered not a bit.
This lack of a precise record in no way interferes with the passionate relationship of the Queen Sheba to Ethiopia. In fact it rather frees her up to spiritualise and make sacred the entire landscape. Sheba’s son by Solomon, Menelik I, is believed to have first brought the worship of the One God and the law of Moses to Ethiopia. It is Menelik I who stands as the grand patriarch of that long, long dynastic line of three thousand years of Ethiopian Emperors that only finally ended in a dark palace cellar in September 1975 when the old and revered Emperor Haillie Selassie was strangled on the orders of Colonel Mengistu. It is also Menelik I who is traditionally credited with spiriting the Ark of the Covenant out of Jerusalem. Menelik’s Ark may still rest in Aksum in the church of St Mary of Sion, guarded by a perpetually resident monk.
This Ark is inaccessible, even to the gaze of a crowned Emperor. It is kept safe within a triple veiled tent (as prescribed by Moses) and a series of seven sealed chests (as suggested by the Book of Revelations). There is however one eyewitness account from an Armenian monk. He described the original Ark in Ethiopia “as high as the knee of a man – and overlaid with gold upon its lid there are crosses of gold and five precious stones” in which are stored Moses’s two tablets bearing the ten commandments – as inscribed by the finger of God. But as the Orthodox Coptic Church of Ethiopia has at least 22,000 churches, each and every one of which contains a dedicatory Ark within its sanctuary, the possibility for confusion is large. Especially as in times of danger these Arks are spirited out of the churches.
I have followed some of the secretive tunnels that drop down from a hatch door hidden in the church floor and take you down long flights of stairs and along zig-zagging dark tunnels. Suddenly you reappear into the blinding light of a cliff face or amongst the bushes of a riverbank.
The miraculous is seldom far from the surface in Ethiopia. Last week I was talking to a man at the evening crush at the lobby bar of the Hilton hotel at Addis Adabba. His knotted tie, his Milanese suit, his Oxford accent all pinpointed him as a well connected Ethiopian naturally at home in an international environment. Yet the conviction with which he testified to the power of the ancient liturgical crosses cut through the frothy atmosphere at the bar. He had experienced it at first hand when the touch of a cross at Lalibela had cured him of years of excruciating backache.
When I finally stood face to face with the so-called palace of Sheba at Aksum it was hot, dry and exposed enough to deaden the mind. I also felt dehydrated by the previous evening which had been dominated by Tej, Ethiopian honey wine, backed up by some injudicious sampling of the local cloudy millet beer. Yet my spirit soared. The palace is overlooked by a mountain on one side and a field packed full of leaning standing-stones on the other. It is a confusing warren of courts, chambers, offices and halls. The centre of this labryinth is dominated by a raised central building where three different flights of stairs command the approaches from three different courtyards. In the legendary heyday of her wealth the Queen of Sheba’s palace stabled 520 white camels whilst 73 ships lay berthed in her harbour at Adulis awaiting her bidding. It was these ships which sailed north with a gift of 120 talents of red gold with which to gild Solomon’s temple at Jerusalem.
Aksum, now a dusty roadside town of 30,000, not that far from the disputed Eritrean border, has long since shed these days of legendary wealth. Traces remain however after the summer rainy season when the gold, silver and bronze coins of ancient Aksum are washed out of the soil. It is an illegal trade but many a young street kid keeps these relics stashed away in folded sheets of brown paper - origami with a purpose.
The empty walls amongst which I stood could never have witnessed the court of the Queen of Sheba, for they were built in the 6th century AD - some 1,500 years too late. They were however exactly the right period to have stood mute witnesses to the arrival of the Prophet Muhammad’s refugee daughter.
It was to the Christian Empire of Abyssinia that the Prophet Muhammed entrusted his own cherished daughter Rakiya and a handful of close confederates. The young Muslim community was being persecuted by the pagan aristocrats of Mecca. The Prophet advised some of the embattled faithful that “If you were to go to Abyssinia, it would be better for you until such time as God shall relieve you from your distress, for the King there will not tolerate injustice and it is a friendly country.” This proud testimony to Ethiopian hospitality has echoed down the centuries. The Prophet was not alone in his high opinion. Homer spoke of “the blameless Ethiopians”, Diodorus claimed that even the gods were “awed by their piety” while Herodotus wrote, “the Ethiopians are a mighty race who surpass in comeliness and stature all peoples and who are firm believers in God”. I wouldn’t change a word. Herodotus in particular seems to have caught both Ethiopia’s dusky nightclub allure and the exalted drum-driven dawn chants of the churches - perfectly.
The first refugees, just 12 men and 5 women, rode west out of Mecca to Jeddah and then took ship across the Red Sea to the Ethiopian port of Adulis. From there they rode into the mountains to seek refuge at the imperial capital of Aksum. The next year a second party of refugees joined them and then another until there was a village of 83 Muslim families settled at Aksum. Here they were tracked down by their Meccan pagan persecutors who sent a delegation to the Emperor to slander the Muslim refugees.
Standing amongst the ruined walls I could imagine the delegation from Mecca arriving. They would have offered a tribute of presents to the Negus, the Emperor of Abyssinia, before they sought permission to speak. Such occasions were dominated by the overpowering splendour of the Aksumite rulers. Through the eyewitness account of a Byzantine ambassador we see the Negus approaching the foreign delegation on a wheeled platform, bound round with golden leaves, and drawn by four elephants. “He wore a gold and linen head-dress, with fluttering golden streamers. His collar, armlets, and many bracelets and rings were of gold. The king’s kilt was of gold on linen; his chest was covered with straps embroidered with pearls. He held a gilded shield and lances, while around him musicians played flutes and his nobles formed an armed guard.”
The pagan embassy from Mecca accused the Muslims of wrecking the unity of their city, of blaspheming against the ancestral gods – and most tellingly of all - denying the divinity of Christ. The Negus, surrounded by his court of monk-bishops and clerics, was clearly appalled that he should be harbouring these dangerous schismatics in his land. He commanded the Muslims to explain themselves.
Ja’afar, first cousin the Prophet, stepped forward and answered, “We were folk immersed in ignorance, worshipping idols, eating carrion, given to lewdness, severing the ties of kinship, bad neighbours, the strong among us preying on the weak; thus were we till God sent to us a messenger of our own, whose lineage, honesty, trustworthiness and chastity we knew. He called us to God that we should acknowledge his Unity and worship him and turn away from the stones and idols that we and our fathers used to worship beside Him…And when persecuted and oppressed, we came forth to thy land, and chose thee above all others, and sought thy protection, and hoped we should not be troubled in thy land, O King!”.
The Negus thought awhile and then asked for an example from the Qu’ran. Ja’far chose well. He chanted Sura XIX with its beautiful revelation of the immaculate conception of Jesus: “Then we sent unto her Our Spirit and it assumed for her the likeness of a perfect man. She said: Lo! I seek refuge in the Benefecient One from thee, if thou art God-fearing. He said: I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a faultless son. She said: How can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me, neither have I been unchaste? He said, So it will be. Thy Lord saith: it is easy for Me. And it will be that We may make him a revelation for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained. And she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a far place.”
It is said that when Ja’far came to the end of the sura that the Negus and his entire court were in tears. It was the first Christian court to hear how the Qu’ran so greatly honours the Virgin, which indeed it does in considerably greater detail than any of the Gospels. The Negus turned to the delegation from Mecca, “If you were to offer me a mountain of gold, I would not give up these people who have taken refuge with me.”
Homer was right. For his part the Prophet would also honour “the blameless Ethiopians”. He gave what he considered most precious when he prayed for God to have mercy on the soul of the Negus when that monarch died in 630. He also instructed his followers to “leave the Abyssinians in peace,” an injunction which goes a long way to explaining how the Christian faith of Abyssinia has been preserved today.
That extraordinary complex of shrines, churches, chapels and hermitages, hewn from the living rock at Lalibela, were designed as an African mirror to Jerusalem. They are one of the eight wonders of our world. That they remain an active place of pilgrimmage and prayer, of devotion and liturgy rather than an empty monumental space for tourists is a second marvel. The mutual regard, the effective tolerance between the equal sized communities of Muslims and Christians in Ethiopia, seems to lead straight back to first beginnings. When hospitality was freely offered to refugees – and which would be answered by a father’s thankful prayer.
“Apart from the odd wrecked tank, or half-truck with a tree growing through the windscreen, the wars and tribulations of Ethiopia now seem a whole generation away. Like some rare breed of bird which has had its nest disturbed by building work, the travellers are now returning back to this hospitable land.”