March 28, 2011
February 23, 2011
How does Cuba do it?
How does Cuba do it?
by Cheryl LaBash
Cuba has the lowest [infant] mortality rate in the Americas, in spite of the economic blockade imposed against it by the U.S. for more than five decades,” announced Granma newspaper on Jan. 3.
a Revolution waiting to happen
Deep inside every one of us is a Revolution waiting to happen
Remarks delivered at the Islamic Center of York in Toronto, Canada, on Feb. 12, 2011
by Cynthia McKinney
Cynthia McKinney speaks passionately at the Black Dot in Oakland during her Triumph Tour in August 2009 upon her return from breaking the siege in Gaza. – Photo: Kamau Amen Ra
One of our most famous Civil Rights Movement songs in the United States is by Gil Scott Heron. He sings, “You will not be able to stay home, Brother; You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out; Because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day; the Revolution will put you in the driver’s seat; the Revolution will not be televised; will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised. The Revolution will be no rerun, Brothers; the revolution will be live.”
Internet politics
Internet politics: an interview with hip hop journalist and internet guru Davey D
by Minister of Information JR
This is the notice placed on websites that have been seized by the U.S. government.
You are listening to another edition of POCC Block Report Radio with the Minister of Information JR. Today our guest is legendary hip hop journalist and broadcaster Davey D.
We are going to be talking about the Internet and all of this new stuff going on – WikiLeaks, net neutrality and what is happening to this democratic library that we called the internet that was formed by the U.S. government. Davey, how are you?
Set-Up for the Sell-Out
The Set-Up for the Sell-Out
Written by [col. writ. 2/9/11] (c) '11 Mumia Abu-Jamal
These are one of those times that I hope I'm wrong - but I don't think I am.
The continuing crisis in Egypt seems to be reaching a point ripe for massive military and police repression -- not only to clear Tahrir Square in central Cairo, but to punish a people who have had the impertinence to call for the removal of their brutal, venal rulers.
I've had that feeling since the U.S., Egypt's main (money bags) backer, sent split signals in statements both public and private, that suggests that they actually like the status quo (which preserved 'stability'), but perhaps with a little cosmetic surgery.
Buju found guilty
Buju found guilty - Entertainers react to verdict
By Sadeke Brooks,
His music filled the air, shock surfaced on faces and his name was a constant topic on everybody's lips yesterday, as news came that reggae artiste Buju Banton had been found guilty of three cocaine related charges.
The artiste, real name Mark Myrie, received the verdict from the 12-member jury yesterday in the Sam M Gibbons building in Tampa, which houses the United States Middle District Court, Florida Division.
A Movie And A Movement
MOOZ-lum: A Movie And A Movement
There are films that we’ll see this weekend just for sheer entertainment value, but Qasim Basir’s “MOOZ-lum,” is more than a film it’s a movement. On the surface it’s a dramatic well-written film about Tariq, a young man struggling with defining religion for himself. He is Muslim and the lessons he’s learned at the hands of his religious teachers, including his father, bring him nothing but pain.
November 29, 2010
Black is Back!
In Brazil: Black is Back!
Italo Ramos
“In an American sense, the Brazilian black population is now larger than the white one.”
Early last October, the work of the last Brazilian census had not yet been finished, but we already knew that our adult black population had grown two percentage points, from 5% to 7%, over the last ten years. (In Brazil, black people are officially considered a category apart from the racially mixed population.) For those who know Brazil and know that the country has the largest black population in the world, after only Nigeria, these numbers may seem surprisingly small. And these people may also ask how could this have happened? The new persons who were born in this so short period of time - 10 years - are not adult enough to be included by the census collector. So, where did those two percentage points came from?
Before answering, let’s explore another fundamental question: 7% is a small, insignificant number?
How I Got Over
The Roots Show Hip-Hop the Way
Now that some time has passed, and the thrill of The Roots releasing a new album has subsided, it’s time to kick back and discuss exactly what Jimmy Fallon’s house band accomplished with their latest release, “How I Got Over.”
Any of the typical compliments an album could receive would sell “How I got Over” short. Yes, the beats are stellar and groove in all the right places, and it’s true that the lyrics are fresh, wise, and thoughtful. These descriptions can be used for any album released by The Roots, though, along with albums from other socially conscious hip-hop acts like Talib Kweli, Mos Def or Nas. “How I Got Over” is worthy of the aforementioned praise, but it also deserves more.
Before The Dawn
Buju Gets Personal On Before The Dawn
Before the Dawn is a short dose of positivity from the incarcerated deejay Buju Banton. The 10-track work is the ninth studio album from the 'Gargamel' released during his ongoing drug trial.
In an interview, Banton explained that the 10 tracks, which were released in Europe on October 1, were written before he found himself in his current situation with the law. He told Hip-Hop Weekly magazine: "All the songs on this album were written before I and I found I self in this current situation, yet they all speak profoundly to what I and I am going through right now ... You might can lock up the flesh but you can never lock up the spirit of Rasta."
'United States of Africa'
Luciano's Powerful 'United States of Africa'
It has been many years since I’ve been motivated or moved to review anything that Luciano has done. Life circumstances and disappointments made me step away from his works, until a couple months ago when I was fortunate to receive this most precious Jewel ever “United States of Africa”.
Although I received the CD in the mail a couple months ago; I really did not actually open it until October of this year and I was so floored by what I was hearing.
October 30, 2010
Continuing the Musical Tradition of Trench Town
I-Cient-Cy Mau and the Mau Mau Warriors Continuing the Musical Tradition of Trench Town
Reggae artist I-Cient-Cy Mau and his band, the Mau Mau Warriors are continuing the great tradition of reggae music from Trench Town. Trench Town, ever since Bob Marley’s rise to an international icon and the king of reggae music, has been synonymous with outstanding musical talent as the birthplace of reggae music.
Continue reading "Continuing the Musical Tradition of Trench Town" »
September 28, 2010
NBA’s Baron Davis Nominated For Emmy
NBA’s Baron Davis Nominated For Emmy For “Crips And Bloods” Documentary
Dear Emmy voters, Baron Davis regrets to inform you that he won’t be able to attend the awards ceremony for his documentary film on L.A. gang life.
By then, he’ll be busy with his other passion.
The Los Angeles Clippers point guard will already be at training camp when the Emmy awards for news and documentaries are handed out in New York City next Monday.
From afar, though, he’ll be rooting for the film “Crips and Bloods: Made in America,” which is up for best documentary. Davis served as executive producer, putting up the money and providing entree into a world that he escaped from — largely because of basketball — but hasn’t forgotten.
“This is very prestigious,” Davis said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’ve really been able to tackle a subject that’s kind of been picked on, but we’ve been able to tackle it and really shed some light on it from both sides of the spectrum. We want to let people formulate their own opinions about what’s going on in this country and in the impoverished communities.”
The 31-year-old Davis longs to be more than just a star athlete. He believes he can be an agent for social change, which is why he decided to form a production company, Verso Entertainment, and pushed to make the film about two of America’s most notorious gangs.
January 21, 2010
NYOIL -Vs- Carol M. Swain
NYOIL faces off with Carol M. Swain on BBC "World Have Your Say"
Today Live on the BBC's program "World Have Your Say" Hip Hop Artist/ Activist/ and the I.B.W. Ambassador to Hip Hop NYOIL faced off against conservative Carol M. Swain (http://www.carolmswain.net/biointro.html) in a discussion on Barack Obama's first year in Office.
October 07, 2009
Queen Latifah's Curves Bring Sexy Back; OneStopPlus.com Celebrates Real Sized Women
Queen Latifah's Curves Bring Sexy Back; OneStopPlus.com Celebrates Real Sized Women
NEW YORK, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- OneStopPlus.com, the leading online destination for curvy women looking for affordable fashion, asked their customers to vote for the sexiest plus-size woman in the world with their first ever Sexiest Plus Size Survey. http://www.onestopplus.com/sexiest. This exciting interactive survey asked shoppers to vote for one of 10 sexy plus-size women, reminding the world of just how sexy, "Real Women" are perceived today. Racking in 42% of the votes, famous actress and musician, Queen Latifah's bodacious bod is the one that stands out amongst the rest.
With this survey, OneStopPlus.com enabled millions of women to voice their opinion of who they deem the sexiest plus-size celebrity and that person that inspires their fashion, beauty and lifestyle the most. Posted on the site for multiple weeks and sent to customers through a dedicated email blast, this survey invited shoppers to vote from 10 of the most inspirational curvy actresses, singers and models including, in rank order starting with the winner: Queen Latifah, Whitney Thompson, Marilyn Monroe, Jennifer Hudson, Crystal Renn, Kirstie Alley, Jill Scott, Jennifer Coolidge, Kate Dilon and Mia Tyler.
Nancy Nadler LeWinter, Editorial Director for OneStopPlus.com, noted, "We are excited about this survey as it endorses the beauty of women of all sizes. There is no singular definition of beauty and now plus-size women, the majority of the population, have a voice in choosing the most beautiful curvy women in history. Now that the votes are in, we can say, 'All Hail The Queen!'"
OneStopPlus.com, the world's first and only online plus size fashion mall has long recognized the plus-size consumer. In business since 2007, OneStopPlus.com frequently adds new styles and brands, offering editorial like content, how-to-videos, a plus size blog and runway shows all in an effort to help the average woman embrace her curves.
Plus-size women now have the same fashion choices as their size 4 counterparts, with access to everything from the classics to the latest trends in fashion and accessories. Designers showcased on the site include: Woman Within, Roaman's, Jessica London, Avenue, European fashion brands Ellos and Taillissime, along with many others.
About OneStopPlus.com®
OneStopPlus.com® is a Redcats company located on Fashion Avenue on New York City. It is the world's first and only web-mall for plus-size women and big & tall men. The OneStopPlus.com® philosophy for plus-size women is reflected in every aspect of its website. The look and feel is upscale and the collections are not considered simply as clothing, but fashion. Plus-size women now have the same fashion choices as their size 8 counterparts, with access to everything from the classics to what's right on the mark in terms of the latest trends. Featured on this website include leading designs in American and European plus size fashion from Woman Within, Roaman's, Jessica London, Avenue, Taillissime and Ellos.
About Redcats USA
Redcats USA is a dynamic, multi-channel, web-driven home-shopping leader, with numerous well-known brands in its portfolio: AVENUE®, Woman Within®, Jessica London®, Roaman's®, KingSize®, BrylaneHome® and BrylaneHome® Kitchen sold on OneStopPlus.com®, The Sportsman's Guide® and The Golf Warehouse®. Redcats USA offers a wide range of value and quality driven merchandise categories, including men's and women's plus-size apparel, home and lifestyle products, and sporting goods/outdoor gear.
Source: OneStopPlus.com
CONTACT: Lindsay Hymson, +1-212-584-4279, lhymson@5wpr.com, or Jocelyn
Kahn, +1-212-584-4307, jkahn@5wpr.com, both of 5W Public Relations, for
OneStopPlus.com
February 26, 2009
Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman
Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman (1789 – 29 December 1815) was the most famous of at least two Khoikhoi women who were exhibited as sideshow attractions in 19th century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus—"Hottentot" as the then-current name for the Khoi people, now considered an offensive term, and "Venus" in reference to the Venus figurines.
Saartjie Baartman was born to a Khoisan family in the vicinity of the Gamtoos River in what is now the Eastern Cape of South Africa. She was orphaned in a commando raid. Saartjie, pronounced "Sahr-key", is the Afrikaans form of her name; it translates to English as "Little Sarah", where the use of the diminutive form commonly indicates familiarity or endearment rather than a literally short stature. Her original name is unknown.
Baartman was a slave of Dutch farmers near Cape Town when Hendrick Cezar, the brother of her slave owner, suggested that she travel to England for exhibition, promising her that she would become wealthy. Lord Caledon, governor of the Cape, gave permission for the trip, but later regretted it after he fully learned its purpose. She left for London in 1810.
Saartjie, pronounced "Sahr-key", is the Afrikaans form of her name; it translates to English as "Little Sarah", where the use of the diminutive form commonly indicates familiarity or endearment rather than a literally short stature. Her original name is unknown. Baartman was a slave of Dutch farmers near Cape Town thrade to England for exhibition by the suggestion of Hendrick Cezar, the brother of her slave owner. Lord Caledon, governor of the Cape, gave permission for the trip, but later regretted it after he fully learned its purpose. She left for London in 1810.
Saartjie was exhibited around Britain, being forced to entertain people by gyrating her buttocks nude and showing to Europeans what were thought of as highly unusual bodily features. Due to her steatopygia, she had large buttocks; in addition, she had sinus pudoris, otherwise known as the tablier (the French word for "apron") or "curtain of shame", all names for the elongated labia of some Khoisan women. (Although "sinus pudoris" refers only to the labia of Khoisan women, all labia vary in size and shape to some degree.) To quote Stephen Jay Gould, "The labia minora, or inner lips, of the ordinary female genitalia are greatly enlarged in Khoi-San women, and may hang down three or four inches below the vagina when women stand, thus giving the impression of a separate and enveloping curtain of skin". Saartjie never allowed this trait to be exhibited while she was alive.
Her exhibition in London, scant years after the passing of the Slave Trade Act 1807, created a scandal. An abolitionist benevolent society called the African Association, the equivalent of a charity or pressure group, petitioned for her release. Baartman was questioned before a court in Dutch, in which she was fluent, and stated that she was not under restraint and understood perfectly that she was guaranteed half of the profits. The conditions under which she made these statements are suspect, because it directly contradicts accounts of her exhibitions made by Zachary Macaulay of the African Institution and other eyewitnesses.
Baartman later traveled to Napoleonic Paris where an animal trainer, Regu, exhibited her under more pressured conditions for fifteen months. French anatomist Georges Cuvier and French naturalists visited her and she was the subject of several scientific paintings at the Jardin du RoI.
She died on 29 December 1815 of an inflammatory ailment, possibly smallpox, while other sources suggest she contracted pneumonia. An autopsy was conducted, and published by French anatomist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville in 1816 and by Cuvier in the Memoires du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in 1817. Cuvier notes in his monograph that Baartman was an intelligent woman who had an excellent memory and spoke Dutch fluently. Her skeleton, preserved genitals and brain were placed on display in Paris' Musée de l'Homme until 1974, when they were removed from public view and stored out of sight; A molded casting was still shown for the following two years.
Last resting place of Saartjie Baartman. On a hill overlooking the town of Hankey in the Gamtoos River Valley
There were sporadic calls for the return of her remains beginning in the 1940s but the case became prominent only after U.S. biologist Stephen Jay Gould published an account, The Hottentot Venus, in the 1980s. When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994, he formally requested that France return the remains. After much legal wrangling and debates in the French National Assembly, France acceded to the request on 6 March 2002. Her remains were repatriated to her homeland, the Gamtoos Valley, on 6 May 2002 and she was finally laid to rest on 9 August 2002 on Vergaderingskop, a hill in the town of Hankey, over 200 years after her birth.
Baartman became an icon in South Africa as representative of many aspects of the nation's history. The Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children, a refuge for survivors of domestic violence, opened in Cape Town in 1999. South Africa's first offshore environmental protection vessel is named after Sarah Baartman.
Signboard at the grave, including the poem by Diana Ferrus
Poet M.K. Asante, Jr. wrote "Ghetto Booty: The Hottentot Remix" for Saartjie Baartman in his 2005 book Beautiful. And Ugly Too. The poem tells Baartman's story and warns the hip hop generation not to repeat racist cycles of black female exploitation.
Dame Edith Sitwell allusively referred to her in "Hornpipe", a poem in the satirical collection "Facade".
Diana Ferrus, a South African poet of Khoisan descent, wrote "A Poem for Sarah Baartman" while studying in Europe. It includes the desire "to wrench [her] away-/ away from the poking eyes... ."
Poet Elizabeth Alexander explores her story in a 1987 poem and 1990 book, both entitled The Venus Hottentot.
The science fiction author Paul Di Filippo used her story as the basis for the second novel of his Steampunk Trilogy.
Barbara Chase-Riboud wrote a fictional biography entitled Hottentot Venus.
Her life features in the 2007 Afrikaans romantic novel Frats by Chris Karsten.
Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks fictionalizes her story in Venus. Playwright Lydia R. Diamond's play "Voyeurs de Venus" also examines her story through the guise of 20th century author.
In 2006, a feminist artist and filmmaker adopted the name Venus Hottentot to direct an independent film with erotic content called Afrodite Superstar with the intention of reclaiming the strength and voice of Sarah Baartman as a sexually exploited woman of color.
Canadian performance artist Mara Verna created a web-based project and travelling exhibition cataloguing her story.
Novelist Joyce Carol Oates uses the image and the story of the Hottentot Venus in her 2006 novel Black Girl/White Girl.
In 2007, community activist Jessica Solomon founded the artist collective The Saartjie Project which explores the politics of the Black woman's body through song, dance and theatre pieces. The Saartjie Project's first stage presentation opened to sold out shows in Washington DC's DC Arts Center in August 2008 in Adams Morgan and later appeared as a featured part of the Can A Sista Rock a Mic? festival held in October 2008. The Saartjie Project members include poet Margaux Delotte-Bennett, dancer Binahkaye Joy and writer Khadijah Ali-Coleman.
Source: www.wikipedia.org
February 25, 2009
Burning Spear Wins Best Reggae Album Grammy
| Reggae music icon and international recording artist Winston 'Burning Spear' Rodney wins second career Best Reggae Album Grammy® for his all-new studio CD, JAH IS REAL For Immediate Release: New York, NY (February 10, 2009) - Burning Music Productions proudly announces that Reggae music icon Winston 'Burning Spear' Rodney (O.D.) has won his second career Best Reggae Album Grammy for his all-new 2008 studio CD release, Jah Is Real. The 51st Annual Grammy Awards were held Sunday, February 8th at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, and broadcast on CBS TV Network in US and to a worldwide audience. Burning Spear is a previous Grammy winner for his 1999 Calling Rastafari album and has received a record 11 nominations (most in the Reggae genre) for releases over his career to date (www.Grammy.com). Spear and his wife/ Burning Music Productions partner Sonia, who also attended along with son, Kevin, are greatly appreciative of the recognition by the Academy members for the honor. It was also significant for them as being the only fully independent release among the nominations this year. Congratulations for Spear's win came backstage from other music icons as former Beatles member, Sir Paul McCartney, bluesman BB King, and many more from the musical community. He was also interviewed by the worldwide press in attendance including Fox Network, BBC, CNN, People, and many more along the event's red carpet upon his arrival at the Grammys. Jah Is Realis an all-new studio album produced and performed by Rodney and released / distributed through his own independent Burning Music Productions. The CD also features guest musical performances on several of the album tracks by Parliament-Funkadelic legends bassist Bootsy Collins and keyboard maestro Bernie Worrell. Jah Is Real and Burning Spear's extensive catalog of releases are available at the Burning Spear Store, on his official website, www.BurningSpear.net, and all leading retail music stores. Photo caption: 1. Burning Spear (left) and son Kevin (right) accept the Best Reggae Album Grammy at 51st Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. (photo courtesy of AP) KEEP THE SPEAR BURNING ! For more information on the latest Burning Spear news, Burning Sound radio (on Live365.com), joining the Burning Spear Street Team and more - Visit www.BurningSpear.net |
January 26, 2009
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of Muslim (and earlier non-Muslim) people of Berber and Arab descent from North Africa, some of whom came to inhabit the Iberian Peninsula. The North Africans termed it Al Andalus, comprising most of what is now Spain and Portugal. Moors are not distinct or self-defined people, but the appellation was applied by medieval and early modern Europeans primarily to Berbers, but also Arabs, and Muslim Iberians.[1] As early as 1911, mainstream scholars recognized that "The term Moors has no real ethnological value."
In the Spanish language, the term for Moors is moro; in Portuguese the word is mouro. There seems to have been some confusion about the relationship of the word moro/mouro to the word moreno (which means brown), both from Greek maúros, i.e. black. However, the two words have different etymological roots. Though most were probably of swarthy complexion, the Moors were not "negro".
The Al Andalus Moors of the late Medieval era inhabited the Iberian Peninsula after the Moorish conquests of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates, and the final Umayyad conquest of Hispania. These conquests stretched south to modern-day Mauritania, the western Sahara, and West African countries as far south as the Senegal River. Earlier, the Classical Romans interacted (and later conquered) Mauretania, a state which covered northern portions of modern Morocco and much of western and central Algeria during the classical period. The people of the region were noted in Classical literature as the Mauri.
The term Mauri, or variations thereof, was later used by European traders and explorers of the 16th to 18th centuries to designate ethnic Berber and Arab groups speaking the Hassaniya Arabic dialect. Today such groups inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, western Sahara, Morocco, Niger and Mali. Mauri was the genesis of the name of the modern Islamic Republic of Mauritania, first applied by the French during their colonial rule. In the Philippines, some residents use a variation of the term to designate some Muslim populations.
Speakers of European languages have historically designated a number of ethnic groups "Moors". In modern Iberia, the term continues to be associated with those of Moroccan ethnicity living in Europe. Some consider it pejorative. Moor is sometimes used in a wider context to describe any person from North Africa. The Spanish use the term and think of it as neutral in local sayings such as "no hay moros en la costa" (literally, "There are no Moors on the coast", meaning "the coast is clear").
Etymology
In Latin, the word maurus (plural mauri) means coming from Mauretania, a Roman province on the north western fringe of Africa. In the Medieval Romance languages (such as Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian), the root appeared in such forms as mouro, moro, moir, and mor. Derivatives are found in today's versions of the languages. Through nominalization, the root has always referred to various things conveniently identified by their dark color[citation needed], for example, blackberries. Moreno, from the Latin root, can mean "tanned" in Spain and Portugal. In Cuba and other Spanish-speaking countries, as in Portuguese speaking Brazil, it can mean "black person" or a "mulatto" . Also in Spanish, morapio is a humorous name for "wine", specially that which has not been "baptized" or mixed with water, i.e., pure unadulterated wine.
In Spanish usage, moro ("Moor") came to have an even broader usage, applied to moros of Mindanao in the Philippines, and the moriscos of Granada. Moro is also used to describe all things dark, as in "Moor", "moreno", etc.. It has been the bases of such European surnames as Moore, Mauro, Moura, and so on. The Milanese Duke Ludovico Il Moro was so-called because of his dark complexion.
History
Overview
Eastern Hemisphere in AD 476, showing the Moorish kingdoms after the fall of Rome.
Although the Moors came to be associated with Muslims, the name Moor pre-dates Islam. It derives from the small Numidian Kingdom of Maure of the 3rd century BC in what is now northern central and western part of Algeria and a part of northern Morocco.[5] The name came to be applied to people of the entire region. "They were called Maurisi by the Greeks," wrote Strabo, "and Mauri by the Romans."[6] During that age, the Maure or Moors were trading partners of Carthage, the independent city state founded by Phoenicians. During the second Punic war between Carthage and Rome, two Moorish Numidian kings took different sides, Syphax with Carthage, Masinissa with the Romans, decisively so at Zama. Thereafter, the Moors entered into treaties with Rome. Under King Jugurtha collateral violence against merchants brought war. Juba, a later king, was a friend of Rome. Eventually, the region was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the provinces of Mauretania Caesariensis and Mauretania Tingitana; the area around Carthage already being the province of Africa. Roman rule was beneficial and effective enough so that these provinces became fully integrated into the empire.
During the Christian era, two prominent Berber churchmen were Tertullian and St. Augustine. After the fall of Rome, the Germanic kingdom of the Vandals ruled much of the area; a century later they were displaced by Byzantine incursions.
Neither Vandal nor Byzantine exercised an effective rule, the interior being under Moorish Berber control. For over 50 years, the Berbers resisted Arab armies from the east. Especially memorable was that led by Kahina the Berber prophetess of the Awras, during 690-701. Yet by the 92nd lunar year after the Hijra, the Arab Muslims had prevailed across North Africa.
The Moors of Iberia
Progress of the Reconquista (790-1300).
In 711 AD, the now Islamic Moors conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania. Under their leader, a general named Tariq ibn-Ziyad, they brought most of Iberia under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They moved northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Frank, Charles Martel, at the Battle of Poitiers in AD 732.
The Moorish state fell into civil conflict in the 750s. The Moors ruled in North Africa and in the Iberian peninsula for several decades, except for areas in the northwest (such as Asturias, where they were defeated at the battle of Covadonga) and the largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. Though the number of original "Moors" remained small, many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam. According to Ronald Segal[9], some 5.6 million of Iberia's 7 million inhabitants were Muslim by AD 1200, virtually all of them native inhabitants. The persecution and forced conversion to Catholicism of the Muslim population during the time of the Christian Reconquista in the second part of the 15th century caused a mass exodus. This is considered the main reason why the number of Muslims had shrunk to a relatively small fraction of the total population by 1500.
In a process of decline, the Al Andalus had broken up into a number of Islamic-ruled fiefdoms, or taifas, which were partly consolidated under the Caliphate of Cordoba.
The Asturias, a small northwestern Christian Iberian kingdom, initiated the Reconquista (the "reconquest") soon after the Islamic conquest in the 8th century. Christian states based in the north and west slowly extended their power over the rest of Iberia. The Navarre, Galicia, León, Portugal, Aragón, Catalonia or Marca Hispanica, and Castile began a process of expansion and internal consolidation during the next several centuries under the flag of Reconquista.
Reconstruction of costumes of Moorish nobility from a German book published in 1880
In 1212, a coalition of Christian kings under the leadership of Alfonso VIII of Castile drove the Muslims from Central Iberia. The Portuguese side of the Reconquista ended in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve (Arabic الغرب — Al-Gharb) under Afonso III, the first Portuguese monarch to claim the title King of Portugal and the Algarve.
However, the Moorish Kingdom of Granada continued for three more centuries in the southern Iberia. This kingdom is known in modern times for magnificent architectural works such as the Alhambra palace. On January 2, 1492, the leader of the last Muslim stronghold in Granada surrendered to armies of a recently united Christian Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the Catholic Monarchs). The remaining Muslims and Jews were forced to leave Spain, or convert to Roman Catholic Christianity or be killed for not doing so. In 1480, Isabella and Ferdinand instituted the Inquisition in Spain, as one of many changes to the role of the church instituted by the monarchs. The Inquisition was aimed mostly at Jews and Muslims who had overtly converted to Christianity but were thought to be practicing their faiths secretly - called respectively marranos and moriscos. The Inquisition also attacked heretics who rejected Roman Catholic orthodoxy, including alumbras who practiced a personal mysticism or spiritualism. They represented a signficant portion of the peasants in some territories, such as Aragon, Valencia or Andalusia. In the years from 1609 to 1614, they were systematically expelled by the government. Henri Lapeyre has estimated that this affected 300,000 out of an estimated total of 8 million inhabitants of the peninsula. However many of them were converted to Christianity and settled permanently. This is clearly indicated by a "high mean proportion of ancestry from North African (10.6%)" that "attests to a high level of religious conversion (whether voluntary or enforced), driven by historical episodes of social and religious intolerance, that ultimately led to the integration of descendants."
In the meantime, the tide of Islam had rolled not just to Iberia, but also eastward, through India, the Malayan peninsula, and Indonesia up to Mindanao. This was one of the major islands of an archipelago which the Spaniards had reached during their voyages westward from the New World. By 1521, the ships of Magellan and other Spanish explorers had reached that island archipelago, which they named Las Islas de Filipinas, after Philip II of Spain. In Mindanao, the Spaniards named the kris-bearing people as Moros or 'Moors'. Today in the Philippines, this ethnic group of people in Mindanao, who are generally Muslims, are called 'Moros'. This identification of Islamic people as Moros persists in the modern Spanish language spoken in Spain, and as Mouros in the modern Portuguese language. See Reconquista, and Maure.
According to historian Richard A. Fletcher[13], 'the number of Arabs who settled in Iberia was very small. "Moorish" Iberia does at least have the merit of reminding us that the bulk of the invaders and settlers were Moors, i.e Berbers from Morocco.' Aline Angoustures[14] says that the Berbers were about 900,000 and the Arabs about 90,000 in Iberia.
Modern age
Beside its usage in historical context, Moor and Moorish (Italian and Spanish: moro, French: maure, Portuguese: mouro / moiro, Romanian: maur) is used to designate an ethnic group speaking the Hassaniya Arabic dialect. They inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, western Sahara, Morocco, Niger and Mali. In Niger and Mali, these peoples are also know as the Azawagh Arabs, after the Azawagh region of the Sahara.
In modern, colloquial Spanish, the sometimes pejorative term "Moro" refers to any Arab. Similarly, in modern, colloquial Portuguese, the term "Mouro" is used as a derogatory term by northern Portuguese to refer to the inhabitants of the southern parts of the country: (the Alentejo and Algarve). "Mouro" may also refer to an enchanted person (generally a women, called moura encantada). In Northern Portugal, moura also means "stone".
In the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, many residents call the local Muslim population in the Southern islands Moros. They also self-identify that way (see Muslim Filipino). The term was introduced by the Spanish colonizers. Within the context of Portuguese colonization, in Sri Lanka (Portuguese Ceylon), Muslims of Arab origin are called Moors (see Sri Lankan Moors).
Religious relations
The initial rule of the Moors in the Iberian peninsula under this Caliphate of Córdoba is generally regarded as tolerant in its acceptance of Christians, Muslims and Jews living in the same territories. The Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1031 and the Islamic territory in Iberia came to be ruled by the Almoravid dynasty. This second stage started an era of Moorish rulers guided by a version of Islam that left behind the tolerant practices of the past.
Barbers
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke various Berber languages, which together form a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Today many of them speak Arabic. Between 14 and 25 million Berber-speakers live within this region, most densely in Algeria and Morocco and becoming generally scarcer eastward through the rest of the Maghreb and beyond.
Many Berbers call themselves some variant of the word Imazighen (singular Amazigh), meaning "free people". This is common in Morocco, but elsewhere within the Berber homeland a local, more particular term, such as Kabyle or Chaoui, is more often used instead. Historically Berbers have been variously known, for instance as Libyans by the ancient Greeks, as Numidians and Mauri by the Romans, and as Moors by medieval and early modern Europeans. The modern English term is borrowed from Arabic, but the deeper etymology of "Berber" is not certain. (See also: Berber (Etymology).)
The best known of them were the Roman author Apuleius, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, and Saint Augustine of Hippo. A famous Berber living today is the International football star Zinedine Zidane.
Prehistory
A Berber family crossing a ford - scene in Algeria
Berbers in the world
Early inhabitants of the central Maghreb left behind significant remains including remnants of hominid occupation from ca. 200,000 B.C. found near Saïda. Neolithic civilization (marked by animal domestication and subsistence agriculture) developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghrib between 6000 and 2000 B.C. This type of economy, so richly depicted in the Tassili-n-Ajjer cave paintings in southeastern Algeria, predominated in the Maghrib until the classical period. The amalgam of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a distinct native population, the Berbers lacked a written language and hence tended to be overlooked or marginalized in historical accounts.
The Berbers have lived in North Africa between western Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean for as far back as records of the area go. The earliest inhabitants of the region are found on the rock art across the Sahara. References to them also occur often in ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sources. Berber groups are first mentioned in writing by the ancient Egyptians during the Predynastic Period, and during the New Kingdom the Egyptians later fought against the Meshwesh and Libu tribes on their western borders. From about 945 BCE the Egyptians were ruled by Meshwesh immigrants who founded the Twenty-second Dynasty under Shoshenq I, beginning a long period of Berber rule in Egypt. They long remained the main population of the Western Desert—the Byzantine chroniclers often complained of the Mazikes (Amazigh) raiding outlying monasteries there.
For many centuries the Berbers inhabited the coast of North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean. Over time, the coastal regions of North Africa saw a long parade of invaders and colonists including Phoenicians (who founded Carthage), Greeks (mainly in Cyrene, Libya), Romans, Vandals and Alans, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans, and the French and Spanish. Most if not all of these invaders have left some imprint upon the modern Berbers as have slaves brought from throughout Europe (some estimates place the number of Europeans brought to North Africa during the Ottoman period as high as 1.25 million). Interactions with neighboring Sudanic empires, sub-Saharan Africans, and nomads from East Africa also left impressions upon the Berber peoples.
In historical times, the Berbers expanded south into the Sahara (displacing earlier populations such as the Azer and Bafour), and have in turn been mainly culturally assimilated in much of North Africa by Arabs, particularly following the incursion of the Banu Hilal in the 11th century.
The areas of North Africa which retained the Berber language and traditions have, in general, been the highlands of Kabylie and Morocco, most of which in Roman and Ottoman times remained largely independent, and where the Phoenicians never penetrated far beyond the coast. But, these areas have been affected by some of the many invasions of North Africa, most recently including the French. The trans-Saharan slave trade was operated by the Berbers and Arabs.
Some pre-Islamic Berbers were Christians (but evolved their own Donatist doctrine), some were Jewish, and some adhered to their traditional polytheist religion. There were three African popes of probable Berber ancestry who came from the Roman province of Africa.[citation needed] Pope Victor I served during the reign of Roman emperor Septimus Severus, of Roman/Berber ancestry, who had led Roman legions in Roman Britain and against the Arsacid Empire.
Hamitic
Hamitic is an obsolete ethno-linguistic classification of some ethnic groups within the Afro-Asiatic (previously termed "Hamito-Semitic") language family. These populations were also termed the Hamitic race throughout the 19th century and most of the 20th century.
Further information: Curse of Ham
The term Hamitic originally referred to the peoples believed to have been descended from the biblical Ham, one of the Sons of Noah. Over history, there have been several separate, but interrelated, interpretations of the term. In the Bible, the sons of Ham include peoples who were traditionally enemies of the Jews, notably the Egyptians and the Canaanites. While the Canaanites competed with the Israelites for the same territory, Ham's sons were said to have fathered the peoples of Africa. Of Ham's four sons, Canaan fathered the Canaanites, while Mizraim fathered the Egyptians, Cush the Cushites and Phut the "Libyans".
A literal interpretation of the Bible leads literalists to believe that all of humanity was descended from Noah. Chapters 9 and 10 of the Book of Genesis deal with the dispersing of Noah's sons into the world. The name of Cush, Ham's eldest son, means "black" in Hebrew, and "Canaan" means "trader", "trafficker", or "lowland".[citation needed] The word "Ham" in Hebrew moreover means "hot" or "multitude", and is thus not necessarily a racial reference. However, using Hebrew to define these names will result in inaccurate translations because Noah and his sons were not, technically speaking, "Hebrew", since, according to Genesis 11:10-26, they lived thousands of years before Abram (later Abraham), who is the father of the Hebrew people.
According to Bernard Lewis, the sixth-century Babylonian Talmud states that "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being Black and are sinful with a degenerate progeny." Rabbis discuss what the nature of Ham's offense was, such that his fourth son was cursed. Nevertheless, slave holders, slavery defenders and racial theorists used similar formulations to justify African slavery in the Americas.
Use of Hamite after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt
After Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, European interest in that country increased dramatically. With the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics and the rapid increase in knowledge of Ancient Egyptian civilization, European academics became increasingly interested in the origin of the Egyptians and their connection to other groups nearby.
Non-religious and Darwinian writers theorised that the Biblical stories contained an element of truth about the ancestry of some populations in Africa, who may have migrated into Central Africa from the North. [Seligman, Races of Africa 1930: 19] These peoples were assumed to be racially superior to Black Africans. [Seligman 1930: 158]
Hamitic language group
During the Middle Ages and up until the early 19th century the term Hamitic was initially used by some Europeans to refer indiscriminately to Africans.
The term "Hamitic" was used for the first time in connection with languages by the German missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810–1881), but with regard to all languages of Africa spoken by people deemed "black".
It was the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) who restricted it to the non-Semitic languages in Africa which are characterized by a grammatical gender system. This "Hamitic language group" was proposed to unite various, mainly North-African languages, including the Ancient Egyptian language, the Berber languages, the Cushitic languages, the Beja language, and the Chadic languages.
Friedrich Müller named the traditional Hamito-Semitic family in 1876 in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, and defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments.
Leo Reinisch (1909) proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic, thus foreshadowing Greenberg; but his suggestion found little resonance. Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup, and included Hausa (a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. Joseph Greenberg (1950) strongly confirmed Cohen's rejection of "Hamitic", added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed the new name Afro-Asiatic for the family; almost all scholars have accepted his classification.
Hamitic race
The Hamitic race referred to various populations living in Africa (including Ancient Egyptians) that speak one of the so-called Hamitic languages (any of various groupings of non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages). Hamites were regarded as a Caucasoid people who probably originated in either Arabia or Asia on the basis of their cultural, physical and linguistic similarities with the peoples of those areas. Europeans considered Hamites to be more civilized than Black Africans, and more akin to themselves and Semitic peoples. In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Hamitic race was considered one of the branches of the Caucasian race, along with the Indo-Europeans, Dravidians, Semites, and the Mediterranean race.
Within colonialism
Further information: Second European colonization wave (19th century–20th century)
The so-called Hamitic Myth was used as a justification for European colonial policy in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the slave trade in earlier times.
As a result of this re-evaluation, the term "Hamitic" took on a new, more positive connotation for Europeans. During the 19th century Europeans explored more and more of Africa. In their travels, they found many different physical types, and they valued those that appeared most like themselves or had a redeeming cultural characteristic.
Soon the Hamitic theory became an important ideological instrument of colonialism, especially in German politics.[citation needed]
As racial theories became increasingly complex and convoluted, the term Hamitic was used in different ways by different writers and was applied to many different groups, mainly comprising Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, Berbers and Nubians.
Racial theory was very hierarchical; Europeans saw Hamites as leaders within Africa, instructing lesser peoples in the ways of civilization, just as they saw themselves teaching the Hamitic peoples.
However, the Hamitic peoples themselves were sometimes deemed to have failed as rulers, a failing that was usually ascribed to interbreeding with Negroes. For example, in the mid-20th century the German scholar Carl Meinhof claimed that the Bantu race was formed by a merger of Hamitic and Negro races,[citation needed] and that the Hottentots (Nama or Khoi) were formed by the union of Hamitic and Bushmen (San) races.
Rwanda
In Rwanda, the Hamitic hypothesis was a racialist hypothesis created by John Hanning Speke, which stated that the supposedly "Hamitic" yet Bantu-speaking Tutsi people were superior to the Bantu Hutus because they were deemed to be more Caucasoid in their facial features, and thus destined to rule over the Hutus.
While the Hutu majority ruled in Rwanda from independence in 1962 until their ouster in 1994 by a Tutsi rebel group, Tutsis in neighboring Burundi did, in fact, enjoy 400 hundred years of unmitigated minority rule over that country's largely Hutu populace.
This hypothesis is believed by some to be a significant factor in the Rwandan genocide. Scholars such as Mahmood Mamdani suggest that the Hutu began to see the Tutsi as an outside invader to their land, as "aliens" and usurpers, and that this led to genocide.
Today
These ideas were still in wide circulation until the last third of the 20th century. The Hamitic hypothesis is rejected by most scholars today on a multitude of grounds. Most "scientific" observations of the time were heavily culturally biased and generally returned results that suited Europeans. Many observations of the time have been corrected since then to reveal a much more complex picture of ethnic groups than was initially conceived.
Nonetheless, the term Hamitic is still used in some anthropological and historical academic settings.
Source: http://www.wikipedia.org
The term's linguistic use was effectively terminated by Joseph Greenberg (The Languages of Africa) in the 1950s, who introduced the use of geographical rather than racial terms for the various language families spoken in Africa.
Today, the Hamitic concepts have been widely discredited, and are often referred to as the Hamitic Myth.[14]
The Hamitic language group is no longer considered by most scholars to be a useful concept,though the phrase "Hamito-Semitic" is a dated term for the Afro-Asiatic linguistic group.
Source: http://www.wikipedia.org
The Afro-Asiatic languages
The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of Arabic).
The term "Afroasiatic" was coined by Joseph Greenberg (1950) to replace the earlier term "Hamito-Semitic" following his demonstration that Hamitic is not a valid language family. It is now most often spelled "Afro-Asiatic", though both spellings are in use. Some replace "Afro-Asiatic" with "Afrasian". Individual scholars have called the family "Erythraean" (Tucker 1966) and "Lisramic" (Hodge 1972). The term "Hamito-Semitic" remains in use in the academic traditions of some European countries. However, it now designates the Afro-Asiatic language family.
The Afro-Asiatic language family includes the following subfamilies:
Berber
Chadic
Egyptian
Semitic
Cushitic
Omotic (sometimes classified as part of Cushitic; inclusion within Afro-Asiatic disputed by some)
The position of Beja is controversial; it is sometimes listed as an independent branch but is widely included within the diverse Cushitic branch. The position of Ongota within the Afro-Asiatic family, and even whether it is Afro-Asiatic, is likewise uncertain, partly for lack of data. Harold Fleming tentatively suggests Ongota constitutes a branch of its own.
Classification history
Medieval scholars sometimes linked two or more branches of Afro-Asiatic together. As early as the 9th century, the Hebrew grammarian Judah ibn Quraysh of Tiaret in Algeria perceived a relationship between Berber and Semitic. The latter group was known to him through Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic.
In the course of the 19th century, Europeans also began suggesting such relationships. In 1844, Theodor Benfey suggested a language family consisting of Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic (calling the latter "Ethiopic"). In the same year, T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and Hausa, but this would long remain a topic of dispute and uncertainty.
Friedrich Müller named the traditional "Hamito-Semitic" family in 1876 in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft. He defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments (see Hamitic hypothesis).
Leo Reinisch (1909) proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity to Egyptian and Semitic, thus foreshadowing Greenberg, but his suggestion found little resonance.
Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct Hamitic subgroup and included Hausa (a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary.
Joseph Greenberg (1950) strongly confirmed Cohen's rejection of "Hamitic", added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed the new name "Afroasiatic" for the family. Nearly all scholars have accepted Greenberg's classification.
In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed the recognition of Omotic as a fifth branch, rather than, as previously believed, a subgroup of Cushitic. This proposal has met with general acceptance. Several scholars, including Fleming and Robert Hetzron, have since questioned the traditional inclusion of Beja in Cushitic, but this view has yet to gain general acceptance.
Subgrouping
Little agreement exists on the subgrouping of the five or six branches of Afro-Asiatic — Berber, Chadic, Egyptian, Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic (if Omotic is not included in Cushitic). However, Christopher Ehret (1979), Harold Fleming (1981), and Joseph Greenberg (1981) all agree that the Omotic branch split from the rest first.
Otherwise:
Paul Newman (1980) groups Berber with Chadic and Egyptian with Semitic, while questioning the inclusion of Omotic in Afro-Asiatic.
Harold Fleming (1981) divided non-Omotic Afroasiatic, or "Erythraean", into three groups, Cushitic, Semitic, and Chadic-Berber-Egyptian. He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed Ongotá as a new third branch of Erythraean. He thus divided Afro-Asiatic into two major branches, Omotic and Erythraean, with Erythraean consisting of three sub-branches, Cushitic, Chadic-Berber-Egyptian-Semitic-Beja, and Ongotá.
Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova (1995) group Berber with Semitic and Chadic with Egyptian. They split up Cushitic into five or more independent branches of Afro-Asiatic, viewing Cushitic as a Sprachbund rather than a language family.
Ehret (1995) groups Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic together in a "North Afro-Asiatic" subgroup.
Lionel Bender (1997) groups Berber, Cushitic, and Semitic together as "Macro-Cushitic". He regards Chadic and Omotic as the branches of Afro-Asiatic most remote from the others.
Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of lexicostatistics, groups Berber with Chadic and both more distantly with Semitic, as against Cushitic and Omotic.
Rolf Theil (2006), in line with the noted Chadicist Paul Newman, excludes Omotic from Afro-Asiatic. He proposes that it be treated instead as an independent language family on the basis that no closer genetic relations have been demonstrated between Omotic and Afro-Asiatic than between Omotic and any other language family.
| Newman (1980) | Fleming (post-1981) | Ehret (1995) | Orel & Stobova (1995) | Bender (1997) | Militarev (2000) | Theil (2006) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| • Berber-Chadic • Egypto-Semitic • Cushitic (excludes Omotic | • Omotic • Erythraean: • Cushitic • ? Ongotá • non-Ethiopian: • Chadic • Berber • Egyptian • Semitic • Beja | • Omotic • Cushitic • Chadic • North Afro-Asiatic: • Egyptian • Berber • Semitic | • Berber-Semitic • Chadic-Egyptian • Omotic • Beja • Agaw • Sidamic • East Lowlands • Rift | • Omotic • Chadic • Macro-Cushitic: • Berber • Cushitic • Semitic | • Omotic • Cushitic • non-Ethiopian: • Semitic • Berber-Chadic | (excludes Omotic from Afro-Asiatic) |
Position among the world's languages
Afro-Asiatic is one of the four language families of Africa identified by Joseph Greenberg in his book The Languages of Africa (1963). It is the only one also spoken outside of Africa.
There are no generally accepted relations between Afro-Asiatic and any other language family. However, several proposals grouping Afro-Asiatic with one or more other language families have been made. The best-known of these are the following:
Hermann Möller (1906) argued for a relation between Hamito-Semitic (the term subsequently replaced by Afro-Asiatic) and the Indo-European languages. This proposal was accepted by some linguists (e.g. Holger Pedersen and Louis Hjelmslev) but has little currency today.
Apparently influenced by Möller (a colleague of his at the University of Copenhagen), Holger Pedersen included Hamito-Semitic in his proposed Nostratic language family (cf. Pedersen 1931), which also included the Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, and Eskimo languages. This inclusion was retained by subsequent Nostraticists, starting with Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky. Like all aspects of the Nostratic hypothesis, it is highly controversial.
Joseph Greenberg (2000-2002) did not reject a relationship of Afro-Asiatic to these other languages, but he considered it more distantly related to them than they were to each other, proposing instead to group these other languages in a separate language family, which he termed Eurasiatic.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara. It contrasts with North Africa, which is part of the Arab World
The Sahel is the transitional zone between the Sahara and the tropical savanna (the Sûdân region) and forest-savanna mosaic to the south. The Horn of Africa and large parts of Sudan are geographically part of sub-Saharan Africa, but nevertheless show strong Middle Eastern influence and are also part of the Arab world.
The Sub-Saharan region is also known as Black Africa, in reference to its "black" populations. Notably commentators in Arabic in the medieval period used a similar term, bilâd as-sûdân which literally translates to "land of the blacks" in contrast with populations of the classic Islamic world.
Geography
Sub-Saharan Africa covers an area of 24.3 million square kilometers.
Since around 5,400 years ago, the Saharan and sub-Saharan regions of Africa have been separated by the extremely harsh climate of the sparsely populated Sahara, forming an effective barrier interrupted by only the Nile River in Sudan, though the Nile was blocked by the river's cataracts. The Sahara Pump Theory explains how flora and fauna (including Homo sapiens) left Africa to penetrate the Middle East and beyond to Europe and Asia. African pluvial periods are associated with a "wet Sahara" phase during which larger lakes and more rivers exist.
Climate zones and ecoregions
Further information: Afrotropic ecozone, Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, and List of tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests ecoregions
Climate zones of Africa, showing the ecological break between the desert climate of the Sahara and the Horn of Africa (red), the semi-arid Sahel (orange) and the tropical climate of Central and Western Africa (blue). Southern Africa has a transition to semi-tropical or temperate climates (green), and more desert or semi-arid regions, centered on Namibia and Botswana.
Sub-Saharan Africa has a wide variety of climate zones or biomes. South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular are considered Megadiverse countries.
The Sahel cuts across all of Africa at a latitude of about 10° to 15° N. Countries that include parts of the Sahara proper in their northern territories and parts of the Sahel in their southern region include Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan.
South of the Sahel, there is a belt of savanna, (Guinean forest-savanna mosaic, Northern Congolian forest-savanna mosaic) widening to include most of Southern Sudan and Ethiopia in the east (East Sudanian savanna).
The Horn of Africa includes arid semi-desert along its coast, contrasting with savanna and moist broadleaf forests in the interior of Ethiopia.
Africa's tropical rainforest stretches along the southern coast of West Africa and dominates Central Africa (the Congo) west of the African Great Lakes
The Eastern Miombo woodlands are an ecoregion of Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique.
The Serengeti ecosystem is located in north-western Tanzania and extends to south-western Kenya.
The Kalahari Basin includes the Kalahari Desert surrounded by a belt of semi-desert
The Bushveld is a tropical savanna ecoregion of Southern Africa.
The Karoo is a semi-desert in western South Africa.
History
Prehistory
The East African Rift region is the presumed area of human origins. Homo sapiens appeared some 250,000 years ago, and spread within Africa, to Southern Africa (L1) and West Africa (L2), before also migrating out of Africa some 70,000 years ago (L3).
The Bantu expansion is a major migration movement originating in West Africa around 2500 BC, reaching East and Central Africa by 1000 BC and Southern Africa by the early centuries AD.
After the Sahara became a desert, it did not present a totally impenetrable barrier for travelers between North and South due to the application of animal husbandry towards carrying water, food, and supplies across the desert. Prior to the introduction of the camel the use of oxen for desert crossing was common, and trade routes followed chains of oases that were strung across the desert. It is thought that the camel was first brought to Egypt after the Persian Empire conquered Egypt in 525 BC, although large herds did not become common enough in North Africa to establish the trans-Saharan trade until the eighth century AD.
East Africa
Further information: History of Ethiopia
The distribution of the Nilo-Saharan linguistic phylum is evidence of a certain coherence of the central Sahara, the Sahel and East Africa in prehistoric times. Ancient Nubia appears to have acted as a link connecting Ancient Egypt to sub-Saharan Africa, based on traces of prehistoric south-to-north gene flow. Kush, Nubia at her greatest phase is considered sub-saharan Africa's oldest urban civialization. Nubia was a major source of gold for the ancient world. Accordingly, the Old Nubian language is itself a member of the Nilo-Saharan phylum. Old Nubian (arguably besides Meroitic) represents the oldest attested African language outside the Afro-Asiatic group.
The Axumite Empire spanned the southern Sahara and the Sahel along the western shore of the Red Sea. Located in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, Aksum was deeply involved in the trade network between India and the Mediterranean. Emerging from ca. the 4th century BC, it rose to prominence by the 1st century AD. It was succeeded by the Zagwe dynasty in the 10th century.
Parts of northwestern Somalia came under the control of Ethiopian Empire in the 14th century, until in 1527 a revolt under Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi led to an invasion of Ethiopia. The Ajuran dynasty ruled parts of East Africa from the 16th to 20th centuries.
Kenya's proximity to the Arabian Peninsula invited colonization, and Arab and Persian settlements sprouted along the coast by the 8th century. During the first millennium AD, Nilotic and Bantu-speaking peoples moved into the region, and the latter now comprise three-quarters of Kenya's population. In the centuries preceding colonization, the Swahili coast of Kenya was part of the east African region which traded with the Arab world and India especially for ivory and slaves. Swahili, a Bantu language with many Arabic, Persian and other Middle Eastern and South Asian loan words, developed as a lingua franca for trade between the different peoples.
In 1498 Vasco da Gama became the first European to reach the East African coast, and by 1525 the Portuguese had subdued the entire coast. Portuguese control lasted until the early 18th century, when Arabs from Oman established a foothold in the region. Assisted by Omani Arabs, the indigenous coastal dwellers succeeded in driving the Portuguese from the area north of the Ruvuma River by the early 18th century.
January 23, 2009
The Ghassanids
The Ghassanids were a group of South Arabian Christian tribes that emigrated in the early 3rd century from Yemen to the Hauran in southern Syria, Jordan and the Holy Land where they intermarried with Hellenized Roman settlers and Greek-speaking Early Christian communities. The term Ghassān refers to the kingdom of the Ghassanids.
Migration from Yemen 3rd Century AD
The Ghassanid emigration has been passed down in the rich oral tradition of southern Syria. It is said that the Ghassanids came from the city of Ma'rib in Yemen. There was a dam in this city, however one year there was so much rain that the dam was carried away by the ensuing flood. Thus the people there had to leave. The inhabitants emigrated seeking to live in less arid lands and became scattered far and wide. The proverb “They were scattered like the people of Saba” refers to that exodus in history. The emigrants were from the southern Arab tribe of Azd of the Kahlan branch of Qahtani tribes.
Settling Syria
The king Jafna bin ‘Amr emigrated with his family and retinue north and settled in Hauran (south of Damascus). where the Ghassanid state was founded. There it is assumed that the Ghassanids adopted the religion of Christianity from the native Aramaeans.
The Ghassanid Kingdom in the Roman era
The Romans found a powerful ally in the new coming Arabs of Southern Syria. The Ghassanids were the buffer zone against the other Bedouins penetrating Roman territory. More accurately the kings can be described as phylarchs, native rulers of subject frontier states. The capital was at Jabiyah in the Golan Heights. Geographically, it occupied much of Syria, Mount Hermon (Lebanon), Jordan and Israel, and its authority extended via tribal alliances with other Azdi tribes all the way to the northern Hijaz as far south as Yathrib (Medina).
Phillip the Arab
Precise Arab ancestry of the Roman Emperor Philip the Arab is not known, since all sources give only the Latin names of him and his family members. However, having originated from the general area in which the Ghassanids settled, many historians consider he may have been of that origin. His being mentioned either as a Christian himself or at least tolerant of Christians would fit with his originating from a people which was in the process of Christianization at the time of his rule.
Phillip the Arab
Precise Arab ancestry of the Roman Emperor Philip the Arab is not known, since all sources give only the Latin names of him and his family members. However, having originated from the general area in which the Ghassanids settled, many historians consider he may have been of that origin. His being mentioned either as a Christian himself or at least tolerant of Christians would fit with his originating from a people which was in the process of Christianization at the time of his rule.
The Ghassanid kingdom in the Byzantine era
Near East in 565 AD, showing the Ghassanids and their neighbors.
The Byzantine Empire was focused more on the East and a long war with the Persians was always their main concern. The Ghassanids maintained their rule as the guardian of trade routes, policed Bedouin tribes and was a source of troops for the Byzantine army. The Ghassanid king al-Harith ibn Jabalah (reigned 529–569) supported the Byzantines against Sassanid Persia and was given the title patricius in 529 by the emperor Justinian I. Al-Harith was a Miaphysite Christian; he helped to revive the Syrian Miaphysite (Jacobite) Church and supported Miaphysite development despite Orthodox Byzantium regarding it as heretical. Later Byzantine mistrust and persecution of such religious unorthodoxy brought down his successors, al-Mundhir (reigned 569-582) and Nu'man.
The Ghassanids, who had successfully opposed the Persian allied Lakhmids of al-Hirah (Southern Iraq and Northern Arabia), prospered economically and engaged in much religious and public building; they also patronised the arts and at one time entertained the poets Nabighah adh-Dhubyani and Hassan ibn Thabit at their courts.
The Ghassanids and Islam
The Ghassanids remained a Byzantine vassal state until its rulers were overthrown by the Muslims in the 7th century, following the Battle of Yarmuk in 636 AD. It was at this battle that some 12,000 Ghassanid Arabs defected to the Muslim side.
Jabalah ibn-al-Aiham ordeal with Islam
There are different opinions why Jabalah and his followers didn't convert to Islam. All the opinions go along the general idea that the Ghassanids were not interested yet in giving up their status as the lords and nobility of Syria below the famous story of Jabalah return to the Byzantine's land.
Jabalah ibn-al-Aiham sided with the Ansar (Azdi Muslims from Medina) saying, "You are our brethren and the sons of our fathers" and professed Islam. After the arrival of 'Umar ibn-al-Khattab in Syria, year 17 (636AD), Jabalah had a dispute with one of the Muzainah (Non Arab Caste) and knocked out his eve. 'Umar ordered that he be punished, upon which Jabalah said, "Is his eye like mine? Never, by Allah, shall I abide in a town where I am under authority." He then apostatized and went to the land of the Greeks (the Byzantines). This Jabalah was the king of Ghassan and the successor of al-Harith ibn-abi-Shimr.
The Ghassanids After Jabalah
In the Levant
Most of the Ghassanids remained Christians and stayed in the Levant.
Many Christian as well as Muslim families of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine trace their roots to the Ghassanid dynasty, including the Abla, Abou Haidar,Al Ashkar, Al-Khazen sheikhs, Aranki,Atiyah, Ayoub, Ammari, Batarseh,Barsa, Barakat, Bayouth, Chakar, Chalhoub, Fares, Farhat, Farhoud, Gharios, Ghanem ,Ghanma, Ghannoum, Ghulmiyyah, Habib, Hanna, Hamra, Howayek, Hadadin, Ishaq, Jabara (Jebara or Gebara, Gibara), Kandil, Karadsheh, Khazens, Lahd, Maalouf, Madi, Makhlouf, Matar, Moghabghab, Mokdad, Nawfal (of Tripoli), Nayfeh, Nimri, Obeid, Oweis, Rached, Rafeedie/Rafidi, Rahhal, Razook, Saab, Saah, Saliba, Sarkis, Sheiks Chemor, Semaan (of Kaftoun), Sfeir, Shdid, Smeirat, Swies, Sweidan, Theeba and Tyan. The religious backgrounds of these families tend to be either Greek Orthodox or Greek Catholic and some are Maronite Catholic, despite the Ghassanids' initial affiliation to Non-Chalcedonian Syriac Orthodox Christianity. They are identified by being Christian families with South Arabian names.
The Palestinian city of Ramallah, and most villages around like Birzeit and Al-Taybeh, was a Christian majority city until the 1960s when many Palestinian Arab Christians emigrated to America and Canada. Most of the Arab Christian families of Ramallah are linked to the Ghassanid Arab tribe known as the Hadadins.
The City of Fuheis Jordan is a predominately Arab Christians town with many of its families trace their roots to the Ghassanid tribe, they include the Aranki, #REDIRECT Jreisat, Farahat, Dawod, Makhamreh, Smeirat, Kawar, Medaain, Samawi, and Swies families.
In the Byzantine empire
Jabalah and about 30,000 Ghassanids left Syria North and settled the new Byzantine borders they were never able to build another kingdom. However, they maintained a high status within the Byzantine empire and even produced the Nikephoros Byzantine dynasty that ruled the Byzantine empire from 802AD to 813AD.
Nikephoros was credited for his efforts to revive the greatness of the Byzantine empire in the 9th century. He was the first Byzantine emperor to refuse paying the Tribute to the Caliph in Baghdad. However, he was betrayed by his own officers and later defeated in Phrygia, forcing him to make peace and focus on the Balkans; during his era he settled Byzantine loyal tribes from Anatolia in what is today northern Greece to prevent Bulgar incursions.
In Alexanderia and Malta
After the council of Nicea a small group of Ghassanids settled Alexanderia. Three centuries later a bigger Ghassanid settlement was present in Alexanderia. This group spread to Northern Egypt and Malta prodcuing the Schebbara's (Gebara) Maltese nobility that sold the peninsula named after them. The capital Valleta will be buit on the Xiberras peninsula in the 16th century.
In the rest of the World
Ghassanid Christian families are found in Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. Many native Christians in these countries are Ghassanid Christians. Many have since emigrated to the Americas, Europe and the rest of the world due to persecution during the Ottoman period in the 19th century, the creation of Israel 1948, with the palestinian Nakba as a result and following the Lebanese civil war.
Ghassanid Kings
Al-Harith the Ghassanid king of the Arab in Arab folktales and Sagas
Jafnah I ibn `Amr (220-265)
`Amr I ibn Jafnah (265-270)
Tha'labah ibn Amr (270-287)
al-Harith I ibn Th`alabah (287-307)
Jabalah I ibn al-Harith I (307-317)
al-Harith II ibn Jabalah "ibn Maria" (317-327)
al-Mundhir I Senior ibn al-Harith II (327-330) with...
al-Aiham ibn al-Harith II (327-330) and...
al-Mundhir II Junior ibn al-Harith II (327-340) and...
al-Nu`man I ibn al-Harith II (327-342) and...
`Amr II ibn al-Harith II (330-356) and...
Jabalah II ibn al-Harith II (327-361)
Jafnah II ibn al-Mundhir I (361-391) with...
al-Nu`man II ibn al-Mundhir I (361-362)
al-Nu`man III ibn 'Amr ibn al-Mundhir I (391-418)
Jabalah III ibn al-Nu`man (418-434)
al-Nu`man IV ibn al-Aiham (434-455) with...
al-Harith III ibn al-Aiham (434-456) and...
al-Nu`man V ibn al-Harith (434-453)
al-Mundhir II ibn al-Nu`man (453-472) with...
`Amr III ibn al-Nu`man (453-486) and...
Hijr ibn al-Nu`man (453-465)
al-Harith IV ibn Hijr (486-512)
Jabalah IV ibn al-Harith (512-529)
al-Harith V ibn Jabalah (529-569)
al-Mundhir III ibn al-Harith (569-581) with...
Abu Kirab al-Nu`man ibn al-Harith (570-582)
al-Nu`man VI ibn al-Mundhir (582-583)
al-Harith VI ibn al-Harith (583)
al-Nu'man VII ibn al-Harith Abu Kirab (583- ?)
al-Aiham ibn Jabalah (? -614)
al-Mundhir IV ibn Jabalah (614- ?)
Sharahil ibn Jabalah (? -618)
Amr IV ibn Jabalah (618-628)
Jabalah V ibn al-Harith (628-632)
Jabalah VI ibn al-Aiham (632-638)
"Ghassan" as a first name
Arab Nationalism, seeking to unite all Arabs regardless of their religious affiliation, took up the memory of the Ghassanids as part of its historic heritage. "Ghassan" is currently used as an Arab first name, attested among Muslims as well as Christians - a tribute to the lasting impression made by the Ghassanids' valour, even among their foes. Present-day use of the name does not necessarily imply that the bearer claims a Ghassanid descent (see Ghassan (disambiguation)).
Source: http://www.wikipedia.org
The Lakhmids, Banu Lakhm, Muntherids,
The Lakhmids, Banu Lakhm, Muntherids, were a group of Arab Christians who lived in Southern Iraq, and made al-Hirah their capital in (266). Poets described it as a Paradise on earth, an Arab Poet described the city's pleasant climate and beauty "One day in al-Hirah is better than a year of treatment". al-Hirah ruins is located 3 kilometers south of Kufa, on the west bank of the Euphrates.
The Banu Judham
The Banu Judham is a Yemeni tribe that emigrated to Syria and Iraq and dwelled with the Azd and Hamdan Kahlani tribes. Most Arab genealogists are not sure whether they are a Kahlani or a Himyarite tribe.
The Judham(Jurham) tribe itself claimed Yemeni origin. They maintained an alliance with the Kalbid and Azdi tribes in the Ghassanid kingdom, they mainly settled Amman, Jabal Amel, Northern Egypt and Tabuk.
At the time of the Battle of Yarmouk 636AD, they were combined to the Ghassanid columns that defected to the Muslims. Most the tribe converted to Islam and eventually broke off the alliance with the Ghassanids, along wth the Kalbids they played an important role in the Islamization of Syria.
They were allies to the Umayyids, supporting the Kalb tribe against that of Qais. Their alliance with the Kalbids was to cost them dearly. The Qaisi tribes gained more power after the fall of Ummayids and the raise of their new allies in Baghdad (the Abbasids) this led to a series of revenge wars that extended until the 18th century.
source: http://www.wikipedia.org
The Azd
The Azd or Al Azd, are an Arabian tribe. They were a branch of the Kahlan tribe, which was one of the two branches of Qahtan the other being Himyar.
In the ancient times, they inhabited Ma'rib, the capital city of the Sabaean Kingdom in modern-day Yemen. Their lands were irrigated by the Ma'rib Dam, which is thought by some to have been one of the Ancient World Wonders because of its size. When the dam collapsed for the third time in the 3rd century AD, a large number of the Azd tribe left Yemen and immigrated in many directions. Azd is also a widely used male name in Yemen.
Azd branches
In the 3rd century AD. The Azd branched into four branches each led by one of the sons of Amr bin Muzaqiba
Imran Bin Amr
Imran bin Amr and the bulk of the tribe went to Oman where they established the Azdi presence in Eastern Arabia and later invaded Karman and Shiraz in Southern Persia. Another branch headed west back to Yemen and a group went further West all the way to Tihama on the Red Sea (Azd Al-Suna'a). This branch will become known as Azd Uman after Islam.
Jafna bin Amr
Jafna bin Amr and his family, headed for Syria where he settled and initiated the kingdom of the Ghassanids who was so named after a spring of water where they stopped on their way to Syria. This branch will produce:
The Ghassanid Dynasy,
A Roman Emperor (Philip the Arab)
A Byzantine dynasty (Nikephoros)
The Ghassanids remained mostly Christian and today they makeup the majoirty of Arab Christians in Lebanon.
Thalabah bin Amr
Thalabah bin Amr left his tribe Al-Azd for Hijaz and dwelt between Thalabiyah and Dhi Qar. When he gained strength, he headed for Yathrib where he stayed. Of his seed are the great Aws and Khazraj, sons of Haritha bin Thalabah. Those will be the muslim Ansar and will produce the last Arab Dynasty in Spain (the Nasrids).
Haritha/Khuza'a bin Amr
Khuza'a known as Haritha Amr bin Muzaqiba. Lead a branch of the Azd Qahtani tribes wandered with his tribe in Hijaz until they came to Mar al-Zahran. Later, they conquered the Haram, and settled in Mecca after having driven away its people, the tribe of Jurhum, They were later replaced by their Adnani allied tribe of Quraish. Banu Almustaliq will branch out of Khuza'a and settled Qadid on the Red Sea shore between Jeddah and Rabigh.
Azd 'Uman
The Azd 'Uman were for a while the dominant Arab tribe in the eastern realms of the Caliphate being instrumental in the conquest of Fars, Makran and Sindh.[6] They were the chief merchant group of Oman and Al-Ubulla who organized a trading diaspora with settlements of Persianized Arabs on the coasts of Kirman and Makran extending into Sindh since the days of Ardashir. They were strongly involved in the western trade with India and with the expansion of the Muslim conquests they began to consolidate their commercial and political authority on the eastern frontier. During the early years of the Muslim conquests the Azdi ports of Bahrain and Oman were staging grounds for Muslim naval fleets headed to Fars and Hind. From 637 A.D the conquests of Fars and Makran were dominated by the Azdi and allied tribes from Oman and Bahrain. Between 665 A.D and 683 A.D the Azdi 'Uman became especially prominent due in Basra on account of favors from Ziyad bin Abihi, the Governor of Muawiya I, and his son Ubaidullah. When a member of their tribe Al- Muhallab ibn Abi Suffrah became governor their influence and wealth increased as he extended Muslim conquests to Makran and Sindh where so many other Azdi were settled. After his death in 702 though they lost their grip on power with the rise of Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf as governor of Iraq. Al-Hajjaj pursued a systematic policy of breaking Umayyad power as a result of which the Azdi also suffered. With the death of Hajjaj and under Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik as Caliph, their fortunes reversed once again with the appointment of Yazid ibn al-Muhallab.
Source: http://www.wikipedia.org
Eritrea
Eritrea officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in Northeast Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea. Its size is just under 118,000 km² with an estimated population of 4,400,000. The capital is Asmara.
Italy conquered Eritrea and the Italian government formally consolidated it into a colony on January 1, 1890. In 1936 it became a province of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana), along with Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland. The British expelled the Italians in 1941 and continued to administer the territory under a UN mandate until 1951 when Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia as per UN resolution 390(A) adopted in December 1950.
Increasing unrest and resistance in Eritrea against the federation with Ethiopia eventually led to a decision by the Ethiopian government to annex Eritrea as its 14th province in 1962. An Eritrean independence movement formed in the early 1960s which later erupted into a 31-year long war against successive Ethiopian governments that ended in 1991. Following a UN supervised referendum in Eritrea dubbed UNOVER in which the Eritrean people overwhelmingly voted for independence from Ethiopia, Eritrea declared its independence and gained international recognition in 1993.[3] Eritrea's constitution, adopted in 1997, stipulates that the state is a presidential republic with a unicameral parliamentary democracy. The constitution, however, has not yet been implemented fully due, according to the government, to the prevailing border conflict with Ethiopia which began in May 1998. English is also used in all of the government's international communication and is the language of instruction in all education beyond the fifth grade.
Pre-History
One of the oldest hominids, representing a possible link between Homo erectus and an archaic Homo sapiens, was found in Buya (Eritrean Danakil) in 1995 by Italian scientists. The cranium was dated to over 1 million years old.[5] Furthermore, in 1999, the Eritrean Research Project Team, discovered some of the earliest remains of humans using tools to harvest marine resources. The site contained obsidian tools dated to the paleolithic era, over 125,000 years old.[6] Epipaleolithic or mesolithic cave paintings in central and northern Eritrea attest to early hunter-gatherers in this region. A US paleontologist, William Sanders of the University of Michigan, also discovered a possible missing link between ancient and modern elephants in the form of the fossilized remains of a pig-sized creature in Eritrea. The fossil which is 27 million years old pushes the origins of elephants and mastodons five million years further into the past and asserts that modern elephants originated in Africa.
Pre-colonial civilization
The oldest written reference to the territory now known as Eritrea is the chronicled expedition launched to the fabled Punt (or Ta Netjeru, meaning land of the Gods) by the Ancient Egyptians in the twenty-fifth century BC under Pharaoh Sahure. Later sources from the Pharaoh Hatshepsut in the fifteenth century BC present a more detailed portrayal of an expedition in search of frankincense. The geographical location of the missions to Punt is described as roughly corresponding to the southern west coast of the Red Sea. The name Eritrea is a rendition of the ancient Greek name Ερυθραία, Erythraía, the "Red Land" The earliest evidence of agriculture, urban settlement and trade in Eritrea was found in the western region of the country consisting of archeological remains dating back to 3500 BC in sites called the Gash group. Based on the archaeological evidence, there seems to have been a connection between the peoples of the Gash group and the civilizations of the Nile Valley namely Ancient Egypt and Nubia.
1913 sketch by the Deutsche Aksum-Expedition of Hawulti, a pre-Aksumite or early Aksumite stela at Matara.
In the highlands, in the capital city Asmara's suburbs, scores of ancient sites have been documented, including Sembel, Mai Chiot, Ona Gudo, Mai Temenai, Weki Duba, and Mai Hutsa. Mostly dating to the early and mid-1st millennium BCE (800 to 350 BCE), these communities consisted of small towns, villages, and hamlets built of stone. The proximity of these ancient communities to gold mines suggest that part of their prosperity was linked to the mining and processing of gold. Around the mid-1st millennium, several sites with Sabaean remains (inscriptions, artifacts, monuments, etc.) seem to emerge in the central highlands, for example, at Keskese. ref> Peter Schmidt, Matthew Curtis, and Zelalem Teka, The Ancient Ona Communities of the First Millennium BCE: Urban Precursors and Independent Development on the Asmara Plateau. In The Archaeology of Ancient Eritrea, eds. P. R. Schmidt, M. C. Curtis, and Z. Teka. Trenton NJ: Red Sea Press, 2008, pp. 109-162.</ref> Between the eighth and fifth century BCE, a kingdom known as D'mt was supposedly established in what is today Eritrea and northern Ethiopia (Tigray).[8][9][10] After D'mt's decline around the fifth century BC, the state of Aksum arose in much of Eritrea and the northern Ethiopian Highlands. It grew during the fourth century BC and came into prominence during the first century AD, minting its own coins by the third century, and converting in the fourth century to Christianity, thereby becoming the second official Christian state (after Armenia), and the first country to feature the cross on its coins. According to Mani, it grew to be one of the four greatest civilizations in the world, on a par with China, Persia, and Rome. In the seventh century, with the advent of Islam across the Red Sea in Arabia and the Arab invasion and subsequent destruction of Adulis, Aksum's trade and power on the Red Sea began to decline and the empire gradually diminished and was overtaken by smaller rival kingdoms.
During the medieval period, contemporary with and following the gradual disintegration of the Aksumite state between the 9th and 10th centuries, several states as well as tribal and clan lands emerged in the area known today as Eritrea. Between the eighth and thirteenth century, northern and northwestern Eritrea had largely come under the domination of the Beja, a Cushitic people from northeastern Sudan.[11] The Beja brought Islam to large parts of Eritrea and connected the region to the greater Islamic world. Christians of the Axumite era continued nonetheless to inhabit these areas and retain their religion. In the main highland area and adjacent coastline of what were previously Moslem (Beja) ruled areas, a Christian Kingdom called Midir Bahr or Midri Bahri (Tigrinya for land of the sea) arose, ruled by the Bahr negus or Bahr negash, ("ruler of the sea") emerged in the 15th century.[12] The southeastern parts of Eritrea, inhabited by the independent Afar since ancient times, came to form part of the Islamic sultanate of Adal in the early 13th century. Parts of the southwestern lowlands of Eritrea were under the dominion of the then Christian/animist Funj sultanate of Sinnar.
An invading force of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, under Suleiman I, conquered Massawa in 1557 from the Christians, building what is now considered the "old town" of Massawa on Batsi island. They also conquered the towns of Hergigo, and Debarwa, the capital city of the contemporary Christian Bahr negus (ruler), Yeshaq before being repulsed back to the coast by 1578. The Ottomans remained in control of the important ports of Massawa and Hergigo and their environs, and maintained their dominion over the coastal areas for nearly 300 years, absorbing the coastal areas of the disintegrated Adal sultanate as vassals in the 16th century. The Funj sultanate of Sinnar converted to Islam in the 16th century but maintained independent control of the southwestern areas of Eritrea until being absorbed into the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century. With the feudal rule of the Bahr negash in the predominantly christian highland interior severely weakened from the 17th century up until modern times, the area became dubbed Mereb Mellash by locals and neighboring Ethiopians alike, meaning "beyond the Mereb" (in Tigrinya). This name defined the territory as being north of the Mareb River which to this day is a natural boundary between the modern states of Eritrea and Ethiopia. Roughly the same area also came to be referred to as Hamasien, a name that survived until modern times, designating a much smaller area (province) immediately surrounding the capital Asmara, until being absorbed into the new administrative divisions in 1994. In these areas, feudal authority was particularly weak or nonexistent, and the autonomy of the landowning peasantry was particularly strong; a kind of "Republic" was prevalent, governed by local customary laws legislated by elected elder's councils (shimagile). In 1770, the Scottish researcher James Bruce describes Hamasien and Abyssinia as "different countries who are often fighting" (SUKE, p. 25).
Colonialism
Italian colonisation began arguably with the purchase of the locality of Assab by a Roman Catholic priest by the name of Giuseppe Sapetto acting on behalf of a Genovese shipping company called "Rubattino" who bought the land from the Afar Sultan of Obock (a vassal of the Ottomans) in 1869. This happened in the same year as the opening of the Suez Canal.[15] With the approval of the Italian parliament and King Umberto I of Italy (later succeeded by his son Victor Emmanuel III), the government of Italy bought the Rubattino company's holdings and expanded its possessions northward along the Red Sea coast toward and beyond Massawa, encroaching on and quickly expelling previous 'Egyptian' possessions but meeting stiffer resistance in the Eritrean highlands from the invading army of the Emperor Yohannes IV of Ethiopia. Italy declared Eritrea, a territory of Italy, as of New Years Day 1890. The Kingdom of Italy ruled Eritrea from 1890 to 1941. Between 1936 and 1941, dictator Benito Mussolini briefly created the Italian Empire, with the shortlived union of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland. Eritrea enjoyed considerable industrialization and development of modern infrastructure during Italian rule (such as roads and the Eritrean Railway). The Italians remained the colonial power in Eritrea throughout the lifetime of fascism and the beginnings of World War II, when they were defeated by Allied forces in 1941, and Eritrea came under British administration.
In the Peace Treaty of February 1947 Italy surrendered all her colonies, including Eritrea. While under British trusteeship, the United Nations decided after a lengthy inquiry regarding the status of Eritrea, to federate it with Ethiopia in 1950.
Struggle for independence
The sandals worn by the fighters of independence have become iconic. This monument in Asmara was erected in memoriam.
Barely 10 years into the federation with Ethiopia, in 1961, the 30-year Eritrean Struggle for Independence began, following the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I's dissolution of the federation and shutting down of Eritrea's parliament. The Emperor declared Eritrea the fourteenth province of Ethiopia in 1962.[17] Eritreans formed the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and rebelled. The ELF was initially a conservative grass-roots movement dominated by Muslim lowlanders and thus received backing from Arab socialist governments such as Syria and Egypt. Ethiopia's imperial government received support from the United States which had established a radio listening base (the Kagnew base) in Eritrea's Ethiopian-occupied capital, Asmara. Internal divisions within the ELF based on religion, ideology, ethnicity, clan and, sometimes, personalities, led to the weakening and factioning of the ELF from which sprung the Eritrean People's Liberation Front.
File:EPLFrebels.jpg
Members of the EPLF. Isaias Afwerki, the current president of Eritrea, is second from bottom left.
The EPLF professed Marxism and egalitarian values devoid of gender, religion, or ethnic bias. Its leadership was educated in China. It came to be supported by a growing Eritrean diaspora. Bitter fighting broke out between the ELF and EPLF during the late 1970s and 1980s for dominance over Eritrea. The ELF continued to dominate the Eritrean landscape well into the 1970s when the struggle for independence neared victory due to Ethiopia's internal turmoil caused by a socialist revolution against the monarchy there. The ELF's gains suffered when Ethiopia's ailing US-backed Emperor was deposed and replaced by the Derg, a Marxist military junta with backing from the Soviet Union and other communist countries, who continued the Ethiopian policy of repressing Eritrean "separatists" with increased military assistance and fervor. Nevertheless, the Eritrean resistance, which saw itself forced to retreat from most of the Eritrean countryside it had previously occupied, became instead entrenched in the northern parts of the country around the Sudanese border from where the most important supply lines came. The heavily bombarded and embattled northern town of Nakfa came to symbolize the Eritrean struggle. (The Eritrean currency is named after it.) The numbers of the EPLF swelled in the 1980s. The EPLF relied largely on armaments captured from the Ethiopian army itself as well as financial and political support from the Eritrean diaspora and the cooperation of neighboring states hostile to Ethiopia's government Somalia and Sudan (although the support of the latter turned into hostility in agreement with Ethiopia during the Gaafar Nimeiry administration between 1971 and 1985) as well as Ethiopian resistance and separatist movements. Drought, famine, and intensive offensives launched by the Ethiopian army on Eritrea took a heavy toll on the population — more than half a million fled to Sudan as refugees. In 1985, Eritrean elite commandos infiltrated the Ethiopian- and Soviet-held air force base in Asmara and destroyed all 30 fighter jets there, suffering only one casualty. In 1988, a massive Ethiopian military offensive against Eritrean rebels backfired with a third of the Ethiopian army annihilated in the northern Eritrean town of Afabet. Following the decline of the Soviet Union in 1989 and diminishing support for the Ethiopian war, Eritrean rebels advanced further, capturing the port of Massawa and putting the Ethiopian and Soviet naval capabilities there out of action. By 1990 and early 1991 virtually all Eritrean territory had been liberated by the EPLF except for the capital, whose only connection with the rest of government-held Ethiopia during the last year of the war was by an air-bridge. In 1991, the Ethiopian army finally capitulated and its leader Mengistu Hailemariam fled to Zimbabwe where he resides to this day. Eritrean rebels entered the capital Asmara and began to govern Eritrea on May 24, 1991. The new Ethiopian government consisting of a coalition of Ethiopian resistance and separatist movements allied with Eritrea's rebels, conceded to Eritrea's demands to have an internationally (UN) supervised referendum dubbed UNOVER to be held in Eritrea, which ended in April 1993 with an overwhelming vote by Eritreans for independence. Independence was declared on May 24, 1993.
Independence
Map of Eritrea
Upon Eritrea's declaration of independence, the leader of the EPLF, Isaias Afewerki, became Eritrea's first Provisional President, and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (later renamed the People's Front for Democracy and Justice, or PFDJ) created a government.
Faced with limited economic resources and a country shattered by decades of war, the government embarked on a reconstruction and defense effort, later called the Warsai Yikalo Program, based on the labour of national servicemen and women. It is still ongoing and deploys the enlisted into a combination of duties ranging from military service to construction projects, health care, teaching and training/education as well as agricultural work to improve the country's food security.
The government also attempts to tap into the resources of the Eritreans living abroad by levying a 2% tax on the gross income of those who wish to gain full economic rights and access as citizens in Eritrea (land ownership, business licenses and other privileges for nationals etc), while at the same time encouraging tourism and investment both from Eritreans living abroad and other foreign investors. This has been complicated by Eritrea's tumultuous relations with its neighbours, lack of stability and subsequent political problems.
Eritrea severed diplomatic relations with Sudan in 1994, citing that the latter was hosting Islamic terrorist groups to destabilize Eritrea, and both countries entered into an acrimonious relationship, each accusing the other of hosting various opposition rebel groups or "terrorists" and soliciting outside support to destabilize the other. Diplomatic relations were resumed in 2005 following a reconciliation agreement reached with the help of Qatar's negotiation in 1999. Eritrea now plays a prominent role in the internal Sudanese peace and reconciliation effort.
Perhaps the conflict with the deepest impact on independent Eritrea has been the renewed hostility with Ethiopia. In 1998, a border war with Ethiopia over the town of Badme occurred. The Eritrean-Ethiopian War ended in 2000 with a negotiated agreement known as the Algiers Agreement, which assigned an independent, UN-associated boundary commission known as the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC), whose task was to clearly identify the border between the two countries and issue a final and binding ruling. Along with the agreement the UN established a temporary security zone consisting of a 25-kilometre demilitarized buffer zone within Eritrea, running along the length of the disputed border between the two states and patrolled by UN troops in the mission named UNMEE. Ethiopia was to withdraw to positions held before the outbreak of hostilities in May 1998. The peace agreement would be completed with the implementation of the Border Commission's ruling, also ending the task of the peacekeeping mission of UNMEE. The EEBC's verdict came in April 2002, which awarded Badme to Eritrea. However, Ethiopia refused to withdraw its military from positions in the disputed areas, including Badme, and also refused to implement the EEBC's ruling, and the dispute is ongoing.
Eritrea's diplomatic relations with Djibouti were briefly severed during the border war with Ethiopia in 1998 due to a dispute over Djibouti's intimate relation with Ethiopia during the war but were restored and normalized in 2000. Relations are again tense due to a renewed border dispute. Similarly, Eritrea and Yemen had a border conflict between 1996 to 1998 over the Hanish islands and the maritime border, which was resolved in 2000 by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague.
Djibouti
Djibouti officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Eritrea in the north, Ethiopia in the west and south, and Somalia in the southeast. The remainder of the border is formed by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. On the other side of the Red Sea, on the Arabian Peninsula, 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the coast of Djibouti, is Yemen. Djibouti's size is just over 23,000 km² with an estimated population of under 500,000. Its capital is the city of Djibouti.
The history of Djibouti is recorded in poetry and in songs of its nomadic people and goes back thousands of years to a time when Djiboutians traded hides and skins for the perfumes and spices of ancient Egypt, India, and China. Through close contacts with the Arabian peninsula for more than 1,000 years, the Somali and Afar tribes in this region became among the first on the African continent to accept Islam.
French interest developed in the nineteenth century when the area was ruled by the sultan of Raheita, Tadjoura and Gobaad. The French bought the anchorage of Obock in 1862 and expanded it eventually to a colony called French Somaliland with essentially the current boundaries. In 1967 the area became the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas.
The Republic of Djibouti gained its independence from France on June 27, 1977. Djibouti is a Somali, Afar and Islamic country which regularly takes part in Islamic affairs as well as Arab meetings.
Politics
The Red Sea
The Red Sea is a salt water inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden. In the north are the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez (leading to the Suez Canal). The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion.
Location of the Red Sea
Occupying a part of the Great Rift Valley, the Red Sea has a surface area of about 438,000 km² (169,100 square miles ). It is roughly 2250 km (1398 mi) long and, at its widest point at 355 km (220.6 miles) wide. It has a maximum depth of 2211 m (7254 ft) in the central median trench and an average depth of 490 m (1,608 feet ), but there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life and corals. The sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species and 200 soft and hard corals and is the world's northernmost tropical sea.
Red Sea is a direct translation of the Greek Erythra Thalassa (Ερυθρά Θάλασσα), Latin Mare Rubrum, Arabic Al-Baḥr Al-Aḥmar (البحر الأحمر), and Tigrinya Qeyyiḥ bāḥrī (ቀይሕ ባሕሪ).
The name of the sea may signify the seasonal blooms of the red-coloured (Archabactera) Trichodesmium erythraeum near the water's surface.[3] Some suggest that it refers to the mineral-rich red mountains nearby which are called Harei Edom (הרי אדום). Edom, meaning "ruddy complexion", is also an alternative Hebrew name for the red-faced biblical character Esau (brother of Jacob), and the nation descended from him, the Edomites, which in turn provides yet another possible origin for Red Sea.[citation needed]
Another hypothesis is that the name comes from the Himyarite, a local group whose own name means red.[citation needed]
Yet another theory favored by some modern scholars is that the name red is referring to the direction South, just as the Black Sea's name may refer to North. The basis of this theory is that some Asiatic languages used color words to refer to the cardinal directions[4]. Herodotus on one occasion uses Red Sea and Southern Sea interchangeably.[5]
A final theory suggests that it was named so because it borders the Egyptian Desert which the ancient Egyptians called the Dashret or "red land"; therefore it would have been the sea of the red land.[citation needed]
The association of the Red Sea with the Biblical account of the Israelite Crossing of the Red Sea is ancient, and was made explicit in the Septuagint translation of the book of Exodus from Hebrew into Koine Greek in approximately the third century B.C. In that version, the Hebrew Yam Suph (ים סוף) is translated as Erythra Thalassa (Red Sea). (See also the more recent suggestion that the Yam Suph of the Exodus refers to a Sea of Reeds).
History
The earliest known exploration expeditions of the Red Sea were conducted by Ancient Egyptians seeking to establish commercial routes to Punt. One such expedition took place around 2500 BC and another around 1500 BC. Both involved long voyages down the Red Sea.
The Biblical book of Exodus tells the story of the Israelites' miraculous crossing of a body of water which the Hebrew text calls Yam Suph, traditionally identified as the Red Sea. The account is part of the Israelites' escape from slavery in Egypt, and is told in Exodus 13:17--15:21. (For another possible translation of Yam Suph, see Sea of Reeds.)
In the 6th century BC Darius I of Persia sent reconnaissance missions to the Red Sea, improving and extending navigation by locating many hazardous rocks and currents. A canal was built between the Nile and the northern end of the Red Sea at Suez. In the late 4th century BC Alexander the Great sent Greek naval expeditions down the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. Greek navigators continued to explore and compile data on the Red Sea. Agatharchides collected information about the sea in the 2nd century BC. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, written sometime around the 1st century AD, contain a detailed description of the Red Sea's ports and sea routes. The Periplus also describes how Hippalus first discovered the direct route from the Red Sea to India.
The Red Sea was favored for Roman trade with India starting with the reign of Augustus, when the Roman Empire gained control over the Mediterranean, Egypt, and the northern Red Sea. The route had been used by previous states but grew in the volume of traffic under the Romans. From Indian ports goods from China were introduced to the Roman world. Contact between Rome and China depended on the Red Sea, but the route was broken by the Aksumite Empire around the 3rd century AD.
During medieval times the Red Sea was an important part of the Spice trade route.
In 1798, France charged General Bonaparte with invading Egypt and capturing the Red Sea. Although he failed in his mission, the engineer J.B. Lepere, who took part in it, revitalised the plan for a canal which had been envisaged during the reign of the Pharaohs. Several canals were built in ancient timesfrom the Nile to the Red Sea along or near the line of the present Sweetwater Canal, but none lasted for long. The Suez Canal was opened in November 1869. At the time, the British, French, and Italians shared the trading posts. The posts were gradually dismantled following the First World War. After the Second World War, the Americans and Soviets exerted their influence whilst the volume of oil tanker traffic intensified. However, the Six Day War culminated in the closure of the Suez Canal from 1967 to 1975. Today, in spite of patrols by the major maritime fleets in the waters of the Red Sea, the Suez Canal has never recovered its supremacy over the Cape route, which is believed to be less vulnerable.
Oceanography
Bathymetric map of the Red Sea
The Red Sea lies between arid land, desert and semi-desert. The main reasons for the better development of reef systems along the Red Sea is because of its greater depths and an efficient water circulation pattern, The Red Sea water mass exchanges its water with the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean via the Gulf of Aden. These physical factors reduce the effect of high salinity caused by evaporation and cold water in the north and relatively hot water in the south.
Climate
The climate of the Red Sea is the result of two distinct monsoon seasons; a northeasterly monsoon and a southwesterly monsoon. Monsoon winds occur because of the differential heating between the land surface and sea. Very high surface temperatures coupled with high salinities makes this one of the hottest and saltiest bodies of seawater in the world. The average surface water temperature of the Red Sea during the summer is about 26 °C (79 °F) in the north and 30 °C (86 °F) in the south, with only about 2 °C (3.6 °F) variation during the winter months. The overall average water temperature is 22 °C (72 °F). The rainfall over the Red Sea and its coasts is extremely low averaging 0.06 m (2.36 in) per year; the rain is mostly in the form of showers of short spells often associated with thunderstorms and occasionally with dust storms. The scarcity of rainfall and no major source of fresh water to the Red Sea result in the excess evaporation as high as 205 cm (81 in) per year and high salinity with minimal seasonal variation. A recent underwater expedition to the Red Sea offshore from Sudan and Eritrea[9] found surface water temperatures 28°C in winter and up to 34°C in the summer, but despite that extreme heat the coral was healthy with much fish life with very little sign of coral bleaching, and there were plans to use samples of these corals' apparently heat-adapted commensal algae to salvage bleached coral elsewhere.
Salinity
The Red Sea is one of the most saline water bodies in the world, due to the effects of the water circulation pattern, resulting from evaporation and wind stress. Salinity ranges between 3.6 and 3.8%.
Tidal range
In general tide ranges between 0.6 m (2.0 ft) in the north, near the mouth of the Gulf of Suez and 0.9 m (3.0 ft) in the south near the Gulf of Aden but it fluctuates between 0.20 m (0.66 ft) and 0.30 m (0.98 ft) away from the nodal point. The central Red Sea (Jeddah area) is therefore almost tideless, and as such the annual water level changes are more significant. Because of the small tidal range the water during high tide inundates the coastal sabkhas as a thin sheet of water up to a few hundred meters rather than inundating the sabkhas through a network of channels. However, south of Jeddah in the Shoiaba area the water from the lagoon may cover the adjoining sabkhas as far as 3 km (2 mi) whereas, north of Jeddah in the Al-kharrar area the sabkhas are covered by a thin sheet of water as far as 2 km (1.2 mi). The prevailing north and northeastern winds influence the movement of water in the coastal inlets to the adjacent sabkhas, especially during storms. Winter mean sea level is 0.5 m (1.6 ft) higher than in summer. Tidal velocities passing through constrictions caused by reefs, sand bars and low islands commonly exceed 1-2 m/s (3–6.5 ft/s).
Current
In the Red Sea detailed current data is lacking, partially because they are weak and variable both spatially and temporally. Temporal and spatial currents variation is as low as 0.5 m (1.6 ft) and are governed mostly by wind. In summer NW winds drive surface water south for about four months at a velocity of 15-20 cm/s (6–8 in/s)., whereas in winter the flow is reversed resulting in the inflow of water from the Gulf of Aden into the Red Sea. The net value of the latter predominates, resulting in an overall drift to the northern end of the Red Sea. Generally the velocity of the tidal current is between 50-60 cm/s (20–23.6 in/s) with a maximum of 1 m/s (3.3 ft). at the mouth of the al-Kharrar Lagoon. However, the range of north-northeast current along the Saudi coast is 8-29 cm/s (3–11.4 in/s).
Wind regime
With the exception of the northern part of the Red Sea, which is dominated by persistent north-west winds, with speeds ranging between 7 km/h (4.3 mph) and 12 km/h (7.5 mph)., the rest of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are subjected to the influence of regular and seasonally reversible winds. The wind regime is characterized by both seasonal and regional variations in speed and direction with average speed generally increasing northward.
Wind is the driving force in the Red Sea for transporting the material either as suspension or as bedload. Wind induced currents play an important role in the Red Sea in initiating the process of resuspension of bottom sediments and transfer of materials from sites of dumping to sites of burial in quiescent environment of deposition. Wind generated current measurement is therefore important in order to determine the sediment dispersal pattern and its role in the erosion and accretion of the coastal rock exposure and the submerged coral beds.
Geology
Dust storm over the Red Sea
The Red Sea was formed by Arabia splitting from Africa due to plate tectonics. This split started in the Eocene and accelerated during the Oligocene. The sea is still widening and it is considered that the sea will become an ocean in time (as proposed in the model of John Tuzo Wilson).
Sometimes during the Tertiary period the Bab el Mandeb closed and the Red Sea evaporated to an empty hot dry salt-floored sink. Effects causing this would be:-
A "race" between the Red Sea widening and Perim Island erupting filling the Bab el Mandeb with lava.
The lowering of world sea level during the Ice Ages due to much water being locked up in the ice caps.
Today surface water temperatures remain relatively constant at 21–25 °C (70–77 °F) and temperature and visibility remain good to around 200 m (656 ft), but the sea is known for its strong winds and unpredictable local currents.
In terms of salinity, the Red Sea is greater than the world average, approximately 4 percent. This is due to several factors: 1) high rate of evaporation and very little precipitation, 2) a lack of significant rivers or streams draining into the sea, and 3) limited connection with the Indian Ocean (and its lower water salinity).
A number of volcanic islands rise from the center of the sea. Most are dormant, but in 2007, Jabal al-Tair island erupted violently.
Living resources
Red Sea coral and marine fish
The Red Sea is a rich and diverse ecosystem. More than 1100 species of fish[10] have been recorded in the Red Sea, and around 10% of these are found nowhere else.[11] This also includes around 75 species of deepwater fish.[10] The rich diversity is in part due to the 2,000 km (1,240 mi) of coral reef extending along its coastline; these fringing reefs are 5000-7000 years old and are largely formed of stony acropora and porites corals. The reefs form platforms and sometimes lagoons along the coast and occasional other features such as cylinders (such as the Blue Hole (Red Sea) at Dahab). These coastal reefs are also visited by pelagic species of red sea fish, including some of the 44 species of shark.
The special biodiversity of the area is recognised by the Egyptian government, who set up the Ras Mohammed National Park in 1983. The rules and regulations governing this area protect local wildlife, which has become a major draw for tourists, in particular for diving enthusiasts.
Divers and snorkellers should be aware that although most Red Sea species are innocuous, a few are hazardous to humans.
Other marine habitats include sea grass beds, salt pans, mangroves and salt marshes.
Mineral resources
In terms of mineral resources the major constituents of the Red Sea sediments are as follows:
Biogenic constituents:
Nannofossils, foraminifera, pteropods, siliceous fossils
Volcanogenic constituents:
Tuffites, volcanic ash, montmorillonite, cristobalite, zeolites
Terrigenous constituents:
Quartz, feldspars, rock fragments, mica, heavy minerals, clay minerals
Authigenic minerals:
Sulfide minerals, aragonite, Mg-calcite, protodolomite, dolomite, quartz, chalcedony.
Evaporite minerals:
Magnesite, gypsum, anhydrite, halite, polyhalite
Brine precipitate:
Fe-montmorillonite, goethite, hematite, siderite, rhodochrosite, pyrite, sphalerite, anhydrite.
Desalination plants
There is extensive demand of desalinated water to meet the requirement of the population and the industries along the Red Sea.
There are at least 18 desalination plants along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia which discharge warm brine and treatment chemicals (chlorine and anti-scalants) that may cause bleaching and mortality of corals and diseases to the fish stocks. Although this is only a localized phenomenon, it may intensify with time and have a profound impact on the fishing industry.
The water from the Red Sea is also utilized by oil refineries and cement factories for cooling purposes. Used water drained back into the coastal zones may cause harm to the nearshore environment of the Red Sea.
Facts and figures at a glance
Length: ~2,250 km (1,398.1 mi) - 79% of the eastern Red Sea with numerous coastal inlets
Maximum Width: ~ 306–355 km (190–220 mi)– Massawa (Eritrea)
Minimum Width: ~ 26–29 km (16–18 mi)- Bab el Mandeb Strait (Yemen)
Average Width: ~ 280 km (174.0 mi)
Average Depth: ~ 490 m (1,607.6 ft)
Maximum Depth: ~2,211 m (7,253.9 ft)
Surface Area: 438-450 x 10² km² (16,900–17,400 sq mi)
Volume: 215–251 x 10³ km³ (51,600–60,200 cu mi)
Approximately 40% of the Red Sea is quite shallow (under 100 m/330 ft), and about 25% is under 50 m (164 ft) deep.
About 15% of the Red Sea is over 1,000 m (3,300 ft) depth that forms the deep axial trough.
Shelf breaks are marked by coral reefs
Continental slope has an irregular profile (series of steps down to ~500 m/1,640 ft)
Centre of Red Sea has a narrow trough (~ 1,000 m/3,281 ft; some deeps may exceed 2,500 m/8,202 ft)
Some of the research cruises in the Red Sea
Numerous research cruises have been conducted:
Arabia Felix (1761-1767)
Vitiaz (1886-1889)
Valdivia (1898-1894)
Pola (1897-98) Southern Red Sea and (1895/96 – Northern Red Sea
Ammiraglio Magnaghi (1923/24)
Snellius (1929 –1930)
Mabahiss (1933-1934 and 1934-1935)
Albatross (1948)
Manihine (1849 and 1952)
Calypso (1955)
Atlantis and Vema (1958)
Xarifa (1961)
Meteor (1961)
Glomar Challenger (1971)
Sonne (1997)
Meteor (1999)
Tourism
The sea is known for its spectacular recreational diving sites, such as Ras Mohammed, SS Thistlegorm (shipwreck), Elphinstone, The Brothers, Dolphin Reef and Rocky Island in Egypt and less known sites in Sudan such as Sanganeb, Abington, Angarosh and Shaab Rumi (see photo above).
The Red Sea became known a sought-after diving destination after the expeditions of Hans Hass in the 1950s, and later by Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Popular tourist resorts include El Gouna, Hurghada, Safaga, Marsa Alam, on the western shore of the Red Sea, and Sharm-El-Sheikh, Dahab, and Taba on the Egyptian side of Sinaï, as well as Eilat, in Israel in an area known as the Red Sea Riviera.
Tourism in the South of Red Sea is presently considered risky because of the presence of pirates originating from uncontrolled zones of Somalia. Large vessels such as cargoes are sometimes attacked by high-speed boats heavily armed. The situation is even worse in the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen.
Bordering countries
Tihama on the Red Sea near Khaukha, Yemen
Bordering countries are:
Northern shore:
Egypt
Israel
Jordan
Western shore:
Egypt
Sudan
Eritrea (Ethopia)
Eastern shore:
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Southern shore:
Somalia
Djibouti
Eritrea(Ethopia)
Towns and cities
Al Hudaydah (الحديدة)
Alwajh (الوجه)
Alqunfutha (القنفذة)
Al-Qusair (القصير)
Alleeth (الليث)
Arrayes (الرايس)
Berbera
Dhuba (ضبا)
El Suweis (السويس)
Hurghada (الغردقة)
Jeddah (جدة)
Mait
Marsa Alam (مرسى علم)
Massawa (ምጽዋ)
Nuweiba (نويبع)
Port Safaga (ميناء سفاجا)
Port Sudan (بورت سودان)
Rabigh (رابغ)
Sharm el Sheikh (شرم الشيخ)
Soma Bay (سوما باي)
Suakin (سواكن)
Taba (طابا)
Yanbu (ينبع)
Umluj (أملج)
Source: http://www.wikipedia.org
Alwajh (الوجه)
Alqunfutha (القنفذة)
Al-Qusair (القصير)
Alleeth (الليث)
Arrayes (الرايس)
Berbera
Dhuba (ضبا)
El Suweis (السويس)
Hurghada (الغردقة)
Jeddah (جدة)
Mait
Marsa Alam (مرسى علم)
Massawa (ምጽዋ)
Nuweiba (نويبع)
Port Safaga (ميناء سفاجا)
Port Sudan (بورت سودان)
Rabigh (رابغ)
Sharm el Sheikh (شرم الشيخ)
Soma Bay (سوما باي)
Suakin (سواكن)
Taba (طابا)
Yanbu (ينبع)
Umluj (أملج)
Afar people of Ethiopia
Afar are an ethnic group in the Horn of Africa who reside principally in the Danakil Desert in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, as well as in Eritrea and Djibouti. They are sometimes called Danakil, a name used specifically to refer to northern Afars, while southern Afars can be called Adel (also transliterated as Adal), similar to the former Adal Sultanate.
The Afar make up over a third of the population of Djibouti, and are one of the nine recognized ethnic divisions (kililoch) of Ethiopia. The Afar language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, is spoken by ethnic Afars in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, as well as eastern Eritrea and Djibouti. However, since the Afar are traditionally nomadic herders, they may be found further afield.
January 22, 2009
Somalis
Somalis (Somali: Soomaaliyeed, Arabic: الصوماليون) are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Ethnic Somalis number around 15-17 million and are principally concentrated in Somalia (more than 9 million), Ethiopia (4.5 million[2]), Yemen (a little under 1 million), northeastern Kenya (about half a million), Djibouti (350,000), and an unknown but large number live in parts of the Middle East, North America and Europe due to the Somali Civil War.
History
Somalia has experienced a turbulent past and as such, the history of the Somalis is fraught with a great deal of speculation. Numerous sources place Arabia as the original homeland of the Somali people. Others suggest a more indigenous provenance that some say can be traced all the way back to the 1st millennium BCE. The ancient ancestors of the Somali people, proponents of this theory propose, split off from an early Cushitic-speaking group in the highlands of Ethiopia, and are referred to as the Sam. The Sam themselves are said to be a sub-type of the Omo-Tana and are believed to have transitioned first into the Somaal and later the Somali people. The Somali people are then said to have moved into the Zeila region by at least 850 CE and then expanded into all of what is modern-day Somalia.[citation needed]
It is likely that Somalis were already exposed to Islam through a small group of Arabs, who settled in parts of East Africa during the time when the Ethiopian Emperor Armah of Axum (see also Ashama ibn Abjar) gave sanctuary to Muhammad's followers. However, it was not until the coming of Arab traders in the 10th century that Islam would significantly shape much of modern Somali culture. Trading communities in northern Somalia that had already been present by the 1st century, according to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, began to trade with the Arabian Peninsula. This trade and interaction significantly altered Somali society, as the vast majority converted to Islam. Due to the conversion of the Somalis to Islam, conflict with the neighboring Christians of Ethiopia led to numerous wars from the 13th to the 16th century. After the Somali Ajuuraan Dynasty collapsed in the 18th century, Omani rule spawned a trade network spanning much of the Arabian Sea from Zanzibar to Arabia. Thus, making Somalia an important center of early trade. In spite of Arab rule along the coast, the Somali clans of the interior exercised almost total independence and often raided the coastal settlements until the Arabs began to withdraw by the 19th century. Egypt and Britain both attempted to colonize Somalia, with the British eventually succeeding in forming a protectorate over northern Somalia, which they called British Somaliland. After much fighting and bloodshed, Italy later managed to claim the southern portions of Somalia, which they in turn dubbed Italian Somaliland. France ended up colonizing the northern-most Somali region, which is now Djibouti.
Following a few decades of British and Italian rule, Somalia gained its independence in 1960, with Djibouti following suit in 1977. Other Somali-inhabited areas of the Horn of Africa are currently administered by neighboring countries such as the Somali Region in Ethiopia and the North Eastern Province (NFD) in Kenya. In 1977, the Ogaden War broke out after the government of Siad Barre sought to unite the various Somali-inhabited territories of the region into a Greater Somalia (Soomaaliweyn).
Pan Somalism
Somali people in the Horn of Africa are divided among different countries (Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and northeastern Kenya) that were artificially and some might say arbitrarily partitioned by the former colonial powers. Pan Somalism is an ideology that advocates the unification of all ethnic Somalis under one flag and one nation. The Siad Barre regime actively promoted Pan Somalism, which eventually led to the Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia.
Geographic distribution
Somalis comprise the majority of Somalia's population at approximately 94% of the total Somalia population. They are traditionally a nomadic ethnic group, but since the late 20th century, many have moved to the cities. While most Somalis can be found in Somalia proper, large numbers also live in Ethiopia, Yemen, Djibouti and the Middle East.
Somali diaspora
The Somali Civil War led to the Somali diaspora, where most of the best educated Somalis left for Northern Europe, The Middle East, and North America.
In Canada, the cities of Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Hamilton all harbor Somali populations. Statistics Canada's 1996 Census ranks the people with a Somali background as the 69th largest ethnic group in Canada.
While the distribution of Somalis per country in Europe is hard to measure because the Somali community on the continent has grown so quickly in recent years, the official 2001 UK census reported 43,515 Somalis living in the United Kingdom. Somalis in Britain are largely concentrated in the cities of London, Sheffield, Birmingham, Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Leicester, with London alone accounting for roughly 78% of Britain's Somali population. There are also significant Somali communities in Norway: 19,656 (2007); the Netherlands: 19,549 (2008); and Denmark: 16,550 (2008).
In the United States of America, Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Columbus, San Diego, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, Nashville, Lewiston, Portland, Maine and Cedar Rapids have the largest Somali populations.
Between 1992 and 2005, 64,439 persons born in Somalia were admitted to the United States as refugees. Unlike the European figures, however, this statistic does not include US-born children. (Source: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services)
An estimated 20,000 Somali refugees ended up in the US State of Minnesota some 10 years ago. Now the Twin Cities has the highest population of Somalis in North America. The city of Minneapolis hosts hundreds of Somali-owned and operated businesses. Colorful stalls inside several malls offer everything from Halal meat, to stylish leather shoes, to the latest fashion for men and women, gold jewelry, money transfer or Xawaala offices, banners advertising the latest Somali movie, video stores fully stocked with nostalgic love songs not found in the mainstream supermarkets, groceries, and boutiques. Refugees have surged into the Cedar-Riverside area (in particular, Riverside Plaza) of Minneapolis.
Somalis now comprise one of the largest immigrant communities in the United Arab Emirates. Somali-owned businesses line the streets of the Dubai city centre, Deira; internet cafes, hotels, coffee shops, restaurant and import-export businesses are a testimony to the Somalis' entrepreneurial spirit. Star African Air is one of three Somali-owned airlines which have headquarters in Dubai rather than in Somalia.
The Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa (Somali: Geeska Afrika, Ge'ez: የአፍሪካ ቀንድ, Arabic: القرن الأفريقي) (alternatively Northeast Africa, and sometimes Somali Peninsula; shortened to HOA) is a peninsula in East Africa that juts for hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea, and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the easternmost projection of the African continent. Referred to in medieval times as Bilad al Barbar ("Land of the Berbers"),[1][2] the Horn of Africa denotes the region containing the countries of Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia.[3][4][5][6][7] As such, it covers approximately 2,000,000 km² (772,200 sq mi) and is inhabited by about 90.2 million people (Ethiopia: 75 million, Somalia: 10 million, Eritrea: 4.5 million, and Djibouti: 0.7 million). Regional studies on the Horn of Africa are carried out, among others, in the fields of Ethiopian Studies as well as Somali Studies.
The Horn of Africa is almost equidistant from the equator and the Tropic of Cancer. It consists chiefly of mountains uplifted through the formation of the Great Rift Valley, a fissure in the Earth's crust extending from Turkey to Mozambique and marking the separation of the African and Arabian tectonic plates. Most of the region is mountainous due to faults resulting from the Rift Valley, with the highest peaks in the Simien Mountains of northwestern Ethiopia. Extensive glaciers once covered the Simien and Bale Mountains, but melted at the beginning of the Holocene. The mountains descend in a huge escarpment to the Red Sea and more steadily to the Indian Ocean. Socotra is a small island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia. Its size is 3,600 km² (1,390 sq mi) and it is a territory of Yemen, the southernmost country on the Arabian peninsula.
The lowlands of the Horn are generally arid in spite of their proximity to the equator. This is because the winds of the tropical monsoons that give seasonal rains to the Sahel and the Sudan blow from the west. Consequently, they lose their moisture upon reaching Djibouti and Somalia, with the result that most of the Horn receives little rainfall during the monsoon season. On the windward side in the west and center of Ethiopia, and the extreme south of Eritrea, monsoonal rainfall is heavy. In the mountains of Ethiopia, many areas receive over 2,000 mm (78 in) per year, and even Asmara receives an average of 570 mm (23 in). This rainfall is the sole source of water for many areas far from Ethiopia, most famously for Egypt, which — in terms of rainfall — is the driest nation on Earth.
In the winter, the northeasterly trade winds do not provide any moisture except in mountainous areas of northern Somalia, where rainfall in late autumn can produce annual totals as high as 500 mm (20 in). On the eastern coast, a strong upwelling and the fact that the winds blow parallel to the coast means annual rainfall can be as low as 51 mm (2 in).
Temperatures on the Red Sea coast are some of the hottest in the world, typically around 41°C (106°F) in July and 32°C (90°F) in January. On the east coast, owing to the upwelling, they are somewhat, cooler but still hot. As elevation increases, temperatures decrease, so that at Asmara, maxima are around 20°C (68°F), though frosts are frequent on cloudless nights. On the highest peaks of the Simien Mountains, however, temperatures rarely reach 14°C (57°F) and can be as low as –10°C (14°F) on cloudless nights.
Asmara
Asmara (English) (Ge'ez: ኣስመራ Asmera, formerly known as Asmera, or in Arabic: أسمرا Asmara) is the capital city and largest settlement in Eritrea, home to a population of around 579,000 people. At an elevation of 2,400 meters (7 874 ft), Asmara is on the edge of an escarpment that is both the northwestern edge of the Great Rift Valley and of the Eritrean highlands. Textiles and clothing, processed meat, beer, shoes, and ceramics are the major industrial products. Asmara started with four villages, to being a regional center under Emperor Yohannes IV of Ethiopia, to "Little Rome" of Benito Mussolini's unsuccessful second Roman Empire, to being a provincial capital under Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia and lastly a national capital of Eritrea.
Zoskales
Zoskales (c.100) was a king in the Horn of Africa, whose realm is thought to include Axum.
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions him as ruler of the port of Adulis, whose territory extended "from the Moschophagoi ['calf-eaters'] to the rest of Barbaria ... a stickler about his possessions and always holding out for getting more, but in other respects a fine person and well versed in reading and writing Greek”.
Some scholars have identified him with Za Haqala, who is included in the King Lists of Ethiopia. G.W.B. Huntingford points out, on the other hand, that there is not enough information to be certain of this identification, and argues instead that Zoskales was a petty king whose power was limited to only Adulis.
s;orce: www.wikipedia.org
January 21, 2009
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. They constitute a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, the only branch of that family to be spoken not only in Africa but also in Asia.
The most widely spoken Semitic language today is Arabic (322 million native speakers, approx 422 million total speakers). It is followed by Amharic (27 million), Tigrinya (about 6.7 million), and Hebrew (about 5 million).
Semitic languages are attested in written form from a very early date, with texts in Eblaite and Akkadian appearing from around the middle of the third millennium BC, written in a script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform. The other scripts used to write Semitic languages are alphabetic. Among them are the Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, South Arabian, and Ge'ez alphabets. Maltese is the only Semitic language to be written in the Latin alphabet and is the only official Semitic language within the European Union.
The term "Semitic" for these languages, after Shem, the son of Noah in the Bible, is etymologically a misnomer in some ways (see Semitic), but is nonetheless in standard use.
Origins
The Semitic family is a member of the larger Afro-Asiatic family, all the other five or more branches of which are based in Africa. Largely for this reason, the ancestors of Proto-Semitic speakers are now widely believed to have first arrived in the Middle East from Africa, possibly as part of the operation of the Saharan pump, around the late Neolithic. Diakonoff sees Semitic originating between the Nile Delta and Palestine as the northernmost branch of Afro-Asiatic. Blench even wonders whether the highly divergent Gurage indicate an origin in Ethiopia (with the rest of Ethiopic Semitic a later back migration). However, an opposing theory is that Afro-Asiatic originated in the Middle East, and that Semitic is the only branch to have stayed put; this view is supported by apparent Sumerian and Caucasian loanwords in the African branches of Afro-Asiatic.
In any event, Proto-Semitic itself is assumed to have reached the Arabian Peninsula by approximately the 4th millennium BC(E), from which Semitic daughter languages continued to spread outwards. When written records began in the mid 3rd millennium BC(E), the Semitic-speaking Akkadians and Amorites were entering Mesopotamia from the deserts to the west, and were probably already present in places such as Ebla in Syria.
2nd millennium BC(E)
By the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC(E), East Semitic languages dominated in Mesopotamia, while West Semitic languages were probably spoken from Syria to Yemen, although Old South Arabian is considered by most to be South Semitic and data are sparse. Akkadian had become the dominant literary language of the Fertile Crescent, using the cuneiform script they adapted from the Sumerians, while the sparsely attested Eblaite disappeared with the city, and Amorite is attested only from proper names.
For the 2nd millennium, somewhat more data are available, thanks to the spread of an invention first used to capture the sounds of Semitic languages — the alphabet. Proto-Canaanite texts from around 1500 BC(E) yield the first undisputed attestations of a West Semitic language (although earlier testimonies are possibly preserved in Middle Bronze Age alphabets), followed by the much more extensive Ugaritic tablets of northern Syria from around 1300 BC(E). Incursions of nomadic Aramaeans from the Syrian desert begin around this time. Akkadian continued to flourish, splitting into Babylonian and Assyrian dialects.
1st millennium BC(E)
In the 1st millennium BC(E), the alphabet spread much further, giving us a picture not just of Canaanite but also of Aramaic, Old South Arabian, and early Ge'ez. During this period, the case system, once vigorous in Ugaritic, seems to have started decaying in Northwest Semitic. Phoenician colonies spread their Canaanite language throughout much of the Mediterranean, while its close relative Hebrew became the vehicle of a religious literature, the Torah and Tanakh, that would have global ramifications. However, as an ironic result of the Assyrian Empire's conquests, Aramaic became the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent, gradually pushing Akkadian, Hebrew, Phoenician, and several other languages to extinction (although Hebrew remained in use as a liturgical language), and developing a substantial literature. Meanwhile, Ge'ez texts beginning in this era give the first direct record of Ethiopian Semitic languages.
Common Era / A.D.
Syriac, a descendant of Aramaic used in the northern Levant and Mesopotamia, rose to importance as a literary language of early Christianity in the 3rd to 5th centuries and continued into the early Islamic era.
With the emergence of Islam in the 7th century, the ascent of Aramaic was dealt a fatal blow by the Arab conquests, which made another Semitic language — Arabic — the official language of an empire stretching from Spain to Central Asia.
With the patronage of the caliphs and the prestige of its liturgical status, it rapidly became one of the world's main literary languages. Its spread among the masses took much longer; however, as native populations outside the Arabian Peninsula gradually abandoned their mother tongues for Arabic and as Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became the main language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen, the Fertile Crescent, and Egypt. Most of the Maghreb (Northwest Africa) followed, particularly in the wake of the Banu Hilal's incursion in the 11th century, and Arabic became the native language even of many inhabitants of Spain. After the collapse of the Nubian kingdom of Dongola in the 14th century, Arabic began to spread south of Egypt; soon after, the Beni Ḥassān brought Arabization to Mauritania.
Meanwhile, Semitic languages were diversifying in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where, under heavy Cushitic influence, they split into a number of languages, including Amharic and Tigrinya. With the expansion of Ethiopia under the Solomonic dynasty, Amharic, previously a minor local language, spread throughout much of the country, replacing languages both Semitic (such as Gafat) and non-Semitic (such as Weyto), and replacing Ge'ez as the principal literary language (though Ge'ez remains the liturgical language for Christians in the region); this spread continues to this day, with Qimant set to disappear in another generation.
Present situation
Arabic is spoken natively by majorities from Mauritania to Oman, and from Iraq to the Sudan. As the language of the Qur'an and as a lingua franca, it is widely studied in much of the non-Arabic-speaking Muslim world as well. Its spoken form is divided into a number of dialects, some not mutually comprehensible, united by a single written form. Maltese, genetically a descendant of the extinct Siculo-Arabic dialect, is the principal exception, having adopted a Latin orthography in accordance with its cultural situation as a predominantly Catholic nation and the influence of Romance vocabulary and grammar over the language's history.
Despite the ascendancy of Arabic in the Middle East, other Semitic languages are still to be found there. Hebrew, long extinct as a colloquial language and in use only in Jewish literary, intellectual, and liturgical activity, was revived at the end of the 19th century by the Jewish linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and has become the main language of Israel, while remaining the language of liturgy and religious scholarship of Jews worldwide.
Several small ethnic groups, especially the Assyrians, continue to speak Aramaic dialects (especially Neo-Aramaic, descended from Syriac) in the mountains of northern Iraq, eastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and northeast Syria, while Syriac itself, a descendant of Old Aramaic, is used liturgically by Syrian and Iraqi Christians.
In Arabic-dominated Yemen and Oman, on the southern rim of the Arabian Peninsula, a few tribes continue to speak Modern South Arabian languages such as Mahri and Soqotri, very different both from the surrounding Arabic and from the (presumably related) languages of the Old South Arabian inscriptions.
Historically linked to the peninsular homeland of the Old South Arabian languages, Ethiopia and Eritrea contain a substantial number of Semitic languages, of which Amharic and Tigrinya in Ethiopia, and Tigre and Tigrinya in Eritrea, are the most widely spoken. Both Amharic and Tigrinya are official languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, respectively, while Tigre, spoken in the northern Eritrean and central lowlands, as well as parts of eastern Sudan, has over one million speakers. A number of Gurage languages are to be found in the mountainous center-south of Ethiopia, while Harari is restricted to the city of Harar. Ge'ez remains the liturgical language for Christians in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Habesha
The term Habesha refers to a South Semitic-speaking group of people whose cultural, linguistic, and in certain cases, ancestral origins trace back to the tribes of the Axumite (Habasha) and the Da'amat kingdom. Today they include the Amhara and Tigray-Tigrinya ethnic groups of Ethiopia and Eritrea who are predominantly Orthodox Christians, and have been since 332 AD. The Amhara and Tigray ethnicities combined make up about 36% of Ethiopia's population (ca. 23 million Amhara, 4.5 million Tigray) while Tigrinyas make up about half of Eritrea's population (ca. 2.25 of 4.5 million). It should be noted, however, that a broader definition of this term may include some segments of the Semitic-speaking Gurage groups (in the southwest) and the Harari (in the east/southeast), as well, because of their strong historical links to the Amhara and Tigray. In the broadest sense, the word "Habesha" may refer to anyone from Ethiopia or Eritrea, while some would exclude themselves from this association.
The modern term derives from the vocalized Ge'ez ሐበሣ (ḥabaśā), first written unvocalized as ሐበሠ (ḥbś, but probably pronounced ḥbs) or the "pseudo-Sabaic ḥbštm". The earliest known use of the term dates to the second or third century AD South Arabian inscription, recounting to the defeat of the Aksumite king (nigus) GDRT (vocalized Gadarat or Gedara) of Aksum and HBSHT. The term "Habashat" seems to refer to a group of peoples, however, rather than a specific ethnicity, as evidenced by a Sabaean inscription about the alliance between the Himyarite king Shamir Yuhahmid and Aksum under King in the first quarter of the 3rd century AD. They have been living alongside the Sabaeans who lived across the Red Sea from them for many centuries:
Shamir of Dhu-Raydan and Himyar had called in the help of the clans of Habashat for war against the kings of Saba; but Ilmuqah granted . . . the submission of Shamir of Dhu-Raydan and the clans of Habashat.
The term "Habesha" was formerly thought by some to be of Arabic descent (who used the word Habash, also the name of an Ottoman province comprising parts of modern-day Eritrea), because the English name Abyssinia comes from the Arabic form. South Arabian expert Eduard Glaser claimed that the hieroglyphic ḫbstjw, used in reference to "a foreign people from the incense-producing regions" (i.e. Punt, probably located around southern Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, and the Sudanese border) used by Queen Hatshepsut ca. 1460 BC, was the first usage of the term or somehow connected, a claim repeated by others; however, this etymology is not at all certain, given the large time difference in the usage of the terms.
Historically, the province of Tigray and central Eritrea was where Ethiopian and Eritrean Habesha civilization had its origins. The first kingdom to arise was that of D`mt in the 8th century BC. The Aksumite Kingdom, one of the powerful civilizations of the ancient world, was centered there from at least 400BC to the 10th century AD. Spreading far beyond Tigray and Eritrea, it molded the earliest culture of Ethiopia and left many historical treasures: towering finely carved stelae, the remains of extensive palaces, and the ancient places of worship still vibrant with culture and pageantry.
Ancient Period
Throughout history, indigenous peoples had been interacting through population movement, warfare, trade, and intermarriage in the Horn of Africa region, resulting in a predominance of peoples speaking languages of the Afro-Asiatic family. The main branches represented were the Cushitic and the Semitic. (Munro-Hay 62) As early as the third millennium BCE, the pre-Aksumites had begun trading along the Red Sea. They mainly traded with Egypt. Earlier trade expeditions were taken by foot along the Nile Valley. The Egyptians main object in the trade from the Ethiopian region (which they may have called Punt) was to acquire myrrh, which the northern Horn of Africa region had much of.
The foundation of the Kingdom of Aksum’s is suggested to be as early as 300 BCE. Very little is known of the time period between the mid-first millennium BCE to the beginning of Aksum’s flourish around the first century CE. Aksum is thought to be a successor kingdom of D'mt (usually vocalized Da`amat) a kingdom in the early 1st millennium BC most likely centered at nearby Yeha(Munro-Hay 1991, 4).
The Aksumite kingdom was located in the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray and Eritrea and it Aksum remained the capital until the seventh century CE. Aksum owes its prosperity to its location. The Blue Nile basin and the Afar depression are both within a close proximity of Aksum. The former is rich in gold and the latter of salt: both materials having a highly important use to the Aksumites. Aksum was also within an accessible distance to the port of Adulis, on the coast of the Red Sea, hence maintaining trade relations with other nations, such as Egypt, India, and Arabia. Aksum’s ‘fertile’ and ‘well-watered’ location produced enough food for its population as well as its exotic animals, such as elephants and rhinoceros (Pankhurst 1998, 22-3).
From its capital on the Tigray Plateau, Aksum was in command of the trade of ivory with Sudan. It also dominated the trade route leading south and the port of Adulis on the Gulf of Zola. Its success depended on resourceful techniques, production of coins, steady migrations of Greco-Roman merchants and ships landing on the port of Adulis. In exchange for Aksum’s goods, traders bid many kinds of cloth, jewelry, metals and steel for weapons.
At its peak, Aksum controlled territories as far as southern Egypt, east to the Gulf of Aden, south to the Omo River, and west to the Nubian Kingdom of Meroe. The South Arabian kingdom of the Himyarites and also a portion of Western Saudi Arabia was also under the power of Aksum. At this point in time the majority of the citizens of Aksum were one of the ancestors of the present day Amhara and Tigray,the Biher-Tigrigna (also Tigrinya speakers) and Tigre of Eritrea.
Medieval Period
Some time in the early Middle Ages, the Amharic and Tigrinya languages began to be differentiated, and Ge'ez eventually became extinct (except in churches). Amhara warlords often competed for dominance of the realm with Tigrayan warlords. While many branches of the Imperial dynasty were from the Amharic speaking area, a substantial amount were from Tigray. The Amharas seemed to gain the upper hand with the accession of the so-called Gondar line of the Imperial dynasty in the beginning of the 17th century. However, it soon lapsed into the semi-anarchic era of Zemene Mesafint ("Era of the Princes"), in which rivalling warlords fought for power and the Yejju Oromo inderases (or regents) had effective control, while emperors were just considered to be figureheads. The Tigrayans only made a brief return to the throne in the person of Yohannes IV, whose death in 1889 allowed the base to return to the Amharic speaking province of Shewa.
Some consider the Amhara to have been Ethiopia's ruling elite for centuries, represented by the line of Emperors ending in Haile Selassie. Many commentators, including Marcos Lemma, however, dispute the accuracy of such a statement, arguing that other ethnic groups have always been active in the country's politics. One possible source of confusion for this stems from the mislabeling of all Amharic-speakers as "Amhara", and the fact that many people from other ethnic groups have Amharic names. Another is the fact that most Ethiopians can trace their ancestry to multiple ethnic groups. In fact, the last Emperor, Haile Selassie I, often counted himself a member of the Gurage ethnicity[citation needed] on account of his ancestry, and his Empress, Itege Menen Asfaw of Ambassel, was in large part of Oromo descent. The expanded use of Amharic language results mostly from its being the language of the court, and was gradually adopted out of usefulness by many unrelated groups, who then became known as "Amhara" no matter what their ethnic origin.
Modern Period
The Eritreans mounted a revolt against the status of Eritrea as a province in 1961, which culminated in the defeat of the Derg in 1991 and independence by referendum in 1993. During the time of the Derg in the 1970s, various movements arose in Tigray and throughout Ethiopia against its persecution. One of these, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, formed in the mid 1970s, grew disgruntled with the Derg and advocated the secession of Tigray. By 1991, however, when both groups collectively defeated the Derg, TPLF's views had changed, and it became the helm of the EPRDF, created under its guidance (and dominated by the TPLF), the current dominant party. As a result the nation Eritrea finally became an independent state, separating itself from the failed federation with Ethiopia. However, despite being of different nations, the Tigrinya people in Eritrea are of the same ethnic background and share the same language (ignoring small dialect differences) as the Tigrayans in Ethiopia. Today, there exists a large amount of habesha in the diaspora of the western world and many European countries.
Origins
The Imperial family of Ethiopia (which is currently in exile) claims its origin directly from the offspring of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (Ge`ez: ንግሥተ ሣብአ nigiśta Śab'a , who is named Makeda (Ge`ez: ማክዳ) in the Ethiopian account. The Ethiopian epic 'Glory of Kings', the Kebra Negast, is supposed to record the history of Makeda and her descendants. King Solomon is said in this account to have seduced the Queen, and sired a son by her, who would eventually become Menelik I, the first Emperor of Ethiopia. The tradition that the biblical Queen of Sheba was a ruler of Ethiopia who visited King Solomon in Jerusalem in ancient Israel is supported by the 1st century AD Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who identified Solomon’s visitor as a queen of Egypt and Ethiopia.
In the past, scholars like Hiob Ludolf and Carlo Conto Rossini postulated that the ancient communities that evolved into the modern Ethiopian state were formed by a migration across the Red Sea of Semitic-speaking South Arabians around 1000 BC who intermarried with local non-Semitic-speaking peoples. Indeed, the ancient Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum ruled much of Southern Arabia including Yemen until the rise of Islam in the 7th century, and both the indigenous languages of Southern Arabia and the Amharic and Tigrinya languages of Ethiopia are South Semitic languages. However, the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia, is now known to not have derived from Sabaean, and there is evidence of a Semitic speaking presence in Ethiopia and Eritrea at least as early as 2000 BC. There is also evidence of ancient Southern Arabian communities in modern day Ethiopia and Eritrea in certain localities, attested by some archaeological artifacts and ancient Sabaean inscriptions in the old South Arabian alphabet. However, scholars like Stuart Munro-Hay point to the existence of an older D’mt or Da'amot kingdom, prior to any Sabaean migration ca. 4th or 5th c. BC, as well as evidence of to Sabaean immigrants having resided in Ethiopia for little more than a few decades Furthermore, there is archeological evidence of a region in Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea also called Saba, now referred to as Ethiopian Saba to avoid confusion.
There is little archaeological evidence to verify the story of the Queen of Sheba — and the longstanding presumption that Sabaean migrants had played a direct role in Ethiopian civilization has recently come under attack. Sabaean influence is speculated by some recent authors to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the Ethiopian civilization of D`mt.
In the reign of King Ezana (ca. early 4th c. AD, the term is listed as one of the nine regions under his domain, translated in the Greek version of his inscription as Αἰθιοπία (Aithiopia, i.e. "Ethiopia"), the first known use of this term to specifically describe the region known today as Ethiopia (and not Kush or the entire African and Indian region outside of Egypt). The 6th c. author Stephanus of Byzantium later used the term "Αβασηγοί" (i.e. Abasēnoi) in reference to:
an Arabian people living next to the Sabaeans together with the Ḥaḍramites. The region of the Abasēnoi produce[d] myrrh, incense and cotton and they cultivate[d] a plant which yields a purple dye (probably wars, i.e. Fleminga Grahamiana). It lies on a route which leads from Zabīd on the coastal plain to the Ḥimyarite capital Ẓafār.
The Abasēnoi spoken of by Stephanus was located by Hermann von Wissman as a region in the Jabal Hubaysh (perhaps related in etymology with the ḥbš root). Other places names in Yemen contain the ḥbš root, such as the Jabal Habashi (Ḥabaši), whose residents are still called al-Ahbuš (pl. of Ḥabaš). The location of the Abasēnoi in Yemen may perhaps be explained by remnant Aksumite populations from the 520s conquest by King Kaleb; King Ezana's claims to Sahlen (Saba) and Dhu-Raydan (Himyar) during a time when such control was unlikely may indicate an Aksumite presence or coastal foothold. Traditional scholarship has assumed that the Habashat were a tribe from modern-day Yemen that migrated to Ethiopia. However, the Sabaic inscriptions only use the term ḥbšt to the refer to the Kingdom of Aksum and its inhabitants, especially during the 3rd c., when the ḥbšt (Aksumites) were often at war with the Sabaeans and Himyraites
Gurage
Gurage is an ethnic group in Ethiopia. The Gurage people inhabit a semi-fertile, semi-mountainous region in southwest Ethiopia, about 150 miles southwest of Addis Ababa. Their homeland extends to the Awash River in the north, the Gibe River (a tributary of the Omo) to the southwest, and to Lake Zway in the east. The Gurage ethnic group has usually been said to consist of three distinct subgroups, Northern, Eastern and Western, but the largest grouping within the Eastern subgroup, known as the Silt'e, have not necessarily considered themselves to be Gurage, and in a referendum in 2000 they voted unanimously to break away from the Gurage Zone within the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region, forming their own autonomous region.
Description
According to the historian Paul B. Henze, their origins are explained by traditions of a military expedition to the south during the last years of the Aksumite Empire, which left military colonies that eventually became isolated from both northern Ethiopia and each other.
The Gurage languages do not constitute a coherent linguistic grouping, rather, the term is both linguistic and cultural. The Gurage people speak a number of separate languages, all belonging to the Southern branch of the Ethiopian Semitic language family (which also includes Amharic). The languages are often referred to collectively as "Guraginya" by other Ethiopians (-inya is the Amharic suffix for most Ethiopian Semitic languages).
Gurage, also known as Guragie or ጉራጌ is written with the Ethiopic alphabet. The Guragie subset of Ethiopic has 44 independent glyphs.
There is no general agreement on how many languages or dialects there are, in particular within the West Gurage grouping.
The following are listed as separate languages by Ethnologue: Soddo (Kistane), Inor, Mesqan, Mesmes, Silt'e (not strictly speaking a Gurage language since the people do not consider themselves Gurage), Zay, and Sebat Bet Gurage. Sebat Bet (or Sebat Beit), in particular, is best understood as a grouping in itself; the term means literally "Seven Houses," and refers to seven specific Western Gurage groups and lects. Silt'e is more closely related to Amharic than it is to Soddo.
As the Gurage people are surrounded by speakers of Cushitic languages, these languages have influenced the Gurage languages perhaps even more than they have other Ethiopian Semitic languages. For example, the East Gurage languages have a ten-vowel system characteristic of the neighboring Cushitic languages rather than the seven-vowel system common to most other Ethiopian Semitic languages, including the West Gurage languages.
Over 50 % of the Gurage claim allegiance to Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, an Oriental Orthodox church related to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and another 40 % are adherents of Islam.
According to the 1994 Ethiopian census, self-identifying Gurage comprise about 4.3 % of Ethiopia's population, or about 3 million people.
The Gurage live a sedentary life based on agriculture, involving a complex system of crop rotation and transplanting. Ensete is their main staple crop, but other cash crops are grown, which include coffee and chat. Animal husbandry is practiced, but mainly for milk supply and dung. Other foods consumed include green cabbage, cheese, butter, and roasted grains, with meat consumption being very limited (also used in rituals or ceremonies).
The Gurage, the writer Nega Mezlekia notes, "have earned a reputation as skilled traders". One example of an enterprising Gurage is one Tekke, whom Nathaniel T. Kenney described as "an Ethiopian Horatio Alger, Jr.":
he began his career selling old bottles and tin cans; the Emperor [Haile Selassie] recently rewarded his achievement in creating his plantation by calling him to Addis Ababa and decorating him.
Ensete
The ensete or “false banana plant” has a massive stem that grows underground and is completely involved in every aspect of Gurage life. It has a place in everyday interactions among community members as well as specific roles in rituals. (For example: uses of Ensete would be wrapping a corpse after death with it, or after birth, the umbilical cord being tied off with an ensete fiber.) Historically, westerners have nicknamed the Gurage "The People of the Ensete", since they are the only people in the world to cultivate ensete as a crop.
Strangely enough, the nutritional value this plant contains as their primary food source is not considered to be of much importance. The plant can be prepared a number of different ways, and the practical uses of ensete in Gurage culture are varied. In addition to this plant, a few cash crops are maintained and livestock is raised (though mainly for milk and fertilizer). A normal Gurage diet consists primarily of kocho, a thick bread made from ensete, and is supplemented by cabbage, cheese, butter, and grains. Meat is not consumed on a regular basis, but usually eaten sparingly during a ritual or ceremonial event.
Quotation
Ensete is totally involved in every aspect of the daily social and ritual life of the Gurage, who, with several others tribes in Southwest Ethiopia, form what has been termed the Ensete Culture Complex area... the life of the Gurage is enmeshed with various uses of ensete, not the least of which is nutritional.
Source: www.wikipedia.org
The Aksumite Empire
The Aksumite Empire or Axumite Empire (sometimes called the Kingdom of Aksum or Axum), (Ge'ez: አክሱም), was an important trading nation in northeastern Africa, growing from the proto-Aksumite period ca. 4th century BC to achieve prominence by the 1st century AD. Its ancient capital is found in northern Ethiopia. The Kingdom used the name "Ethiopia" as early as the 4th century. It is also the alleged resting place of the Ark of the Covenant and the home of the Queen of Sheba. Aksum was also the first major empire to convert to Christianity.
History
Located in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, Aksum was deeply involved in the trade network between India and the Mediterranean.
Aksum is mentioned in the 1st century AD Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as an important market place for ivory, which was exported throughout the ancient world, and states that the ruler of Aksum in the 1st century AD was Zoscales, who, besides ruling in Aksum also controlled two harbours on the Red Sea: Adulis (near Massawa) and Avalites (Assab). He is also said to have been familiar with Greek literature.
The economically important northern Silk Road and southern Spice (Eastern) trade routes. The sea routes around the horn of Arabia and the Indian sub-continent were Axum's specialty for nearly a millennium.
The Kingdom of Aksum benefited from a major transformation of the maritime trading system that linked the Roman Empire and India. This change took place around the start of the Common Era. The older trading system involved coastal sailing and many intermediary ports. The Red Sea was of secondary importance to the Persian Gulf and overland connections to the Levant. Starting around 100 BC a route from Egypt to India was established, making use of the Red Sea and using monsoon winds to cross the Arabian Sea directly to southern India. By about 100 AD the volume of traffic being shipped on this route had eclipsed older routes. Roman demand for goods from southern India increased dramatically, resulting in greater number of large ships sailing down the Red Sea from Roman Egypt to the Arabian Sea and India.
The Kingdom of Aksum was ideally located to take advantage of the new trading situation. Adulis soon became the main port for the export of African goods, such as ivory, incense, gold, and exotic animals. In order to supply such goods the kings of Aksum worked to develop and expand an inland trading network. A rival, and much older trading network that tapped the same interior region of Africa was that of the Kingdom of Kush, which had long supplied Egypt with African goods via the Nile corridor. By the 1st century AD, however, Aksum had gained control over territory previously Kushite. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea explicitly describes how ivory collected in Kushite territory was being exported through the port of Adulis instead of being taken to Meroë, the capital of Kush. During the 2nd and 3rd centuries the Kingdom of Aksum continued to expand their control of the southern Red Sea basin. A caravan route to Egypt was established which bypassed the Nile corridor entirely. Aksum succeeded in becoming the principal supplier of African goods to the Roman Empire, not least as a result of the transformed Indian Ocean trading system.
In the 3rd century, Aksum began interfering in South Arabian affairs, controlling at times the western Tihama region among other areas. By the late 3rd century it had begun minting its own currency and was named by Mani as one of the four great powers of his time along with Persia, Rome, and China. It converted to Christianity in 325 or 328 under King Ezana and was the first state ever to use the image of the cross on its coins. At its height, Aksum controlled northern Ethiopia, Eritrea, northern Sudan, southern Egypt, Djibouti, Yemen, and southern Saudi Arabia, totalling 1.25 million km².
It was a quasi-ally of Byzantium against the Persian Empire of the day and declined after the 7th century due to unknown reasons, but informed speculation suggests the rise of Islam heavily impacted its ability to trade with the Far East in the era when shipping was limited to coastal navigation as well as cut it off from its principal markets in Alexandria, Byzantium and Southern Europe.
After a second golden age in the early 6th century, the empire began to decline, eventually ceasing its production of coins in the early 7th century. It finally dissolved with the invasion of the pagan or Jewish queen Gudit in the 9th or 10th century, resulting in a Dark Age about which little is known until the rise of the Zagwe dynasty.
Origins
Aksum was previously thought to have been founded by Semitic-speaking Sabaeans who crossed the Red Sea from South Arabia (modern Yemen) on the basis of Conti Rossini's theories and prolific work on Ethiopian history, but most scholars now agree that it was an indigenous development. Scholars like Stuart Munro-Hay point to the existence of an older D’mt or Da'amot kingdom, prior to any Sabaean migration ca. 4th or 5th c. BC, as well as to evidence of Sabaean immigrants having resided in the region for little more than a few decades.[1] Furthermore, Ge'ez, the ancient Semitic language of Eritrea and Ethiopia, is now known not to have derived from Sabaean, and there is evidence of a Semitic speaking presence in Ethiopia and Eritrea at least as early as 2000 BC. Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the civilization of D`mt or some proto-Aksumite state. Adding more to the confusion, there existed an Ethiopian city called Saba in the ancient period that does not seem to have been a Sabaean settlement.
The Empire
The Empire of Aksum at its height extended across most of present-day Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia northern Djibouti, and northern Sudan. The capital city of the empire was Aksum, now in northern Ethiopia. Today a smaller community, the city of Aksum was once a bustling metropolis, cultural and economic center. Two hills and two streams lie on the east and west expanses of the city; perhaps providing the initial impetus for settling this area. Along the hills and plain outside the city, the Aksumites had cemeteries with elaborate grave stones called stelae, or obelisks. Other important cities included Yeha, Hawulti, Matara, Adulis, and Qohaito, the last three of which are now in Eritrea.
Societal structure
The Aksumite population consisted of Semitic-speaking people (collectively known as Habeshas),[8][9][10] Cushitic-speaking people, and Nilo-Saharan-speaking people (the Kunama and Nara).
The Aksumite kings had the official title ነገሠ ፡ ነገሠተ ngś ngśt - King of Kings (later vocalization Ge'ez ንጉሠ ፡ ነገሥት nigūśa nagaśt, Modern Ethiosemitic nigūse negest).
Aksumites did own slaves, and a modified feudal system was in place to farm the land.
Foreign relations and economy
Aksum traded with India and Rome (later Byzantium), exporting ivory, tortoise shell, gold and emeralds, and importing silk and spices. Axum's access to both the Red Sea and the Upper Nile enabled its strong navy to profit in trade between various African (Nubia), Arabian (Yemen), and Indian states. In the 3rd century AD, Axum acquired tributary states on the Arabian Peninsula across the Red Sea, and by 350, they conquered the Kingdom of Kush.
The main exports of Axum were, as would be expected of a state during this time, agricultural products. The land was much more fertile during the time of the Aksumites than now, and their principle crops were grains such as wheat and barley. The people of Aksum also raised cattle, sheep, and camels. Wild animals were also hunted for things such as ivory and rhinoceros horns. They traded with Roman traders as well as with Egyptian and Persian merchants.
The empire was also rich with gold and iron deposits. These metals were valuable to trade, but another mineral was also widely traded. Salt was found richly in Aksum and was traded quite frequently.
Aksum remained a strong empire and trading power until the rise of Islam in the seventh century. However, because the Axumites had sheltered Muhammad's first followers, the Muslims never attempted to overthrow Axum as they spread across the face of Africa. Nevertheless, as early as 640, Umar ibn al-Khattāb sent a naval expedition against Adulis under Alkama bin Mujazziz, but it was eventually defeated.[11] Axumite naval power also declined throughout the period, though in 702 Aksumite pirates were able to invade the Hejaz and occupy Jeddah. In retaliation, however, Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik was able to take the Dahlak Archipelago from Axum, which became Muslim from that point on, though later recovered in the 9th century and vassal to the Emperor of Ethiopia.
Eventually, the Islamic Empire took control of the Red Sea and most of the Nile, forcing Axum into economic isolation. However, it still had relatively good relations with all of its Muslim neighbors. Two Christian states northwest of Axum (in modern day Sudan), Maqurra and Alwa, survived until the thirteenth century when they were finally forced by Muslim conversion to become Islamic. Axum, however, remained untouched by the Islamic movements across Africa.
Religion
Ruins of Dungur palace in Aksum.
Before its conversion to Christianity the Aksumites practiced a polytheistic religion not unlike the Greek’s system. Astar was the main god of the pre-Christian Aksumites, and his son, Mahrem (Maher), was who the kings of Aksum traced their lineage. In about 324 AD the King Ezana II was converted by his slave-teacher Frumentius, the founder of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Frumentius taught the emperor while he was young, and at some point staged the conversion of the empire. We know that the Axumites converted to Christianity because in their coins they replaced the disc and crescent with the cross. Frumentius was in contact with the Church in Alexandria and was appointed Bishop of Ethiopia around 330 AD Alexandria never reined Aksum in tightly, rather allowing its own form of Christianity form, however, the church did retain a minor influence. Aksum is also the alleged home of the holy relic the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark is said to have been placed in the Church of Mary of Zion by Menelik I for safekeeping...
Cultural achievements
The Empire of Aksum is notable for a number of achievements, such as its own alphabet, the Ge'ez alphabet (which evolved from Epigraphic South Arabian during the late pre-Aksumite and proto-Aksumite period), which was modified to include vowels, becoming an abugida. Furthermore, in the early times of the empire, around 1700 years ago, giant Obelisks to mark emperor's (and nobles') tombstones (underground grave chambers) were constructed, the most famous of which is the Obelisk of Axum.
Aksum obelisk, symbol of the Aksumite civilization
Under Emperor Ezana, Axum adopted Christianity in place of its former polytheistic and Judaic religions around 325. This gave rise to the present day Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (only granted autonomy from the Coptic Church in 1959), and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church (granted autonomy from the Ethiopian Orthodox church in 1993). Since the schism with orthodoxy following the Council of Chalcedon (451), it has been an important Miaphysite church, and its scriptures and liturgy are still in Ge'ez.
It was a cosmopolitan and culturally important state. It was a meeting place for a variety of cultures: Ethiopian, Egyptian, Sudanic, Arabic, and Indian. The major Aksumite cities had Sabean, Jewish, Nubian, Christian, and even Buddhist minorities.
Coinage
The Empire of Aksum was also the first African polity to issue its own coins. From the reign of Endubis up to Armah (approximately 270 to 610), gold, silver and bronze coins were minted. Issuing coinage in ancient times was an act of great importance in itself, for it proclaimed that the Axumite Empire considered itself equal to its neighbors. Many of the coins are used as signposts about what was happening when they were minted. An example being the addition of the cross to the coin after the conversion of the empire to Christianity. The presence of coins also simplified trade, and was at once a useful instrument of propaganda and a source of profit to the empire.
Ark of the Covenant
Aksum is the purported home of the Ark of the Covenant. According to regional tradition, the Ark is said to be housed in the Church of Mary of Zion, and is guarded heavily by the priests there. The Ark, according to legends, was brought to Aksum by King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba's son and placed under guard. Controversy still surrounds this building, since no one but the one guard priest is allowed in, and thus no one can verify the Ark's existence.
Perhaps related to this is the fact that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church today is the only Christian church in the world where the Ark of the Covenant is an integral part of every church. Each church has its replica of the Ark of the Covenant and its tablets (tabot), and its presence, symbolizing the presence of God, is necessary for the building to be considered a church. In the absence of the tabot, the church is no longer sacred. Each year, at the feast of T'imk'et, the arks are taken in procession to be blessed by the bishop, before being returned to the church. It is the presence of the Ark (and its symbolism of the presence of God) that leads the faithful to bow and cross themselves in the direction of a church whenever they pass one.
Typical Aksumite architecture - the monastery of Debre Damo.
Stelae
The Stelae are perhaps the most identifiable part of the Aksumite legacy. These stone towers served to mark graves or represent a magnificent building. The largest of these towering obelisks would measure 33 meters high had it not fallen. The Stelae have most of their mass out of the ground, but are stabilized by massive underground counter-weights. The stone was often engraved with a pattern or emblem denoting the king's or the noble's rank.
Decline
Aksum began to decline in the 7th century, and the population was forced to go farther inland to the highlands, eventually being defeated c. 950. Local history hold that a Jewish Queen named Yodit (Judith) or "Gudit" defeated the empire and burned its churches and literature, but while there is evidence of churches being burned and an invasion around this time, her existence has been questioned by some modern authors. Another possibility is that the Axumite power was ended by a southern pagan queen named Bani al-Hamwiyah, possibly of the tribe al-Damutah or Damoti (Sidama). After this period, the Axumite Empire was succeeded by the Zagwe dynasty in the eleventh century or twelfth century, although limited in size and scope. However, Yekuno Amlak, who killed the last Zagwe king and founded the modern Solomonic dynasty traced his ancestry and his right to rule from the last emperor of Axum, Dil Na'od.
Other reasons for the decline are less romantic and more scientific. Climate change and trade isolation are probably also large reasons for the decline of the culture. Overfarming of the land led to decreased crop yield, which in turn led to decreased food supply. This, in turn with the changing flood pattern of the Nile and several seasons of drought, would make it less important in the emerging European economy.
Aksumite Empire in Fiction
The Aksumite Empire is portrayed as the main ally of Byzantium in the Belisarius series by David Drake and Eric Flint published by Baen Books.
Source: www.wikipedia.com
Yeha
Yeha is a village in northern Ethiopia, located in the Mehakelegnaw Zone of the Tigray Region. The Central Statistical Agency has not published an estimate for this village's 2005 population.
The oldest standing structure in Ethiopia is located in Yeha; it is a tower built in the Sabaean style, and dated to either the 8th or 7th century BC. This tower is one of the reasons some believe Yeha was the capital city of the D’mt kingdom. The walls of its early temple survive, while other ruins include Grat Beal Gebri, with square pillars.
Yeha is also the location of an Ethiopian Orthodox monastery, founded according to tradition by Abba Aftse, one of the Nine Saints. In his account of Ethiopia, Francisco Álvares mentions visiting this town in 1520 (which he called "Abbafaçem"), and provides a description of the ancient tower, the monastery, and the local church, which also has been dated to the time of the Axumite Kingdom.[2] This ancient structure houses a museum.
Yeha has also been the site of a number of archeological excavations, beginning in 1952 by the Ethiopian Institute of Archeology. Although interrupted during the Derg regime, excavations were resumed in 1993 by a French archeological team.
Source: www.wikipedia.com
Dʿmt
Dʿmt was a kingdom located in current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia that existed during the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Few inscriptions by or about this kingdom exist, as very little archaeological work has taken place. As a result, it is not known whether Dʿmt ended as a civilization before Aksum's early stages, evolved into the Aksumite state, or was one of the smaller states united in the Aksumite kingdom possibly around the beginning of our era.
The capital was once thought to have been Yeha, but recent archeologists such as Peter Schmidt believe Yeha is hardly sufficient to qualify as a capital site. He states, "It may have been a major ritual center and, without question, was an important necropolis. But certainly not a capital."
The kingdom developed irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and made iron tools and weapons.
Most modern historians like Stuart Munro-Hay, Rodolfo Fattovich, Ayele Bekerie, Felder, and Isaac consider this civilization to be indigenous, although Sabaean-influenced due to the latter's hegemony of the Red Sea, while others like Michels, de Contenson, Mekouria, and Burstein view Dʿmt as the result of a mixture of "culturally superior" Sabaeans and indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, Ge'ez, the ancient Semitic language spoken in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in ancient times, is now known to not have derived from Sabaean, and there is evidence of a Semitic speaking presence in Ethiopia and Eritrea at least as early as 2000 BC. Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the civilization of Dʿmt or some other proto-Aksumite state. After the fall of Dʿmt in the 5th century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms, until the rise of one of these kingdoms, the Aksumite Kingdom, ancestor of medieval and modern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia during the first century, which was able to reunite the area.
Source: www.wikipedia.com
The Land of Punt
The Land of Punt, also called Pwenet, or Pwene by the ancient Egyptians, at times synonymous with Ta netjer, the "land of the god", was a fabled site in the Horn of Africa and was known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, African blackwood, ebony, ivory, slaves and wild animals. Information about Punt has been found in ancient Egyptian records of trade missions to this region.
Egyptian expeditions to Punt:
The earliest recorded Egyptian expedition to Punt was organized by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (25th century BC) although slaves from Punt are recorded as having been in Egypt in the time of king Kuffu of the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt.
Subsequently, there were more expeditions to Punt in the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt, the Eleventh dynasty of Egypt, the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt and the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt.
In the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt trade with Punt was celebrated in popular literature in "The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor"
In the reign of Mentuhotep III (around 1950 BC), an officer named Hannu organized one or more voyages to Punt, but it is uncertain whether he traveled on these expeditions. Trading missions of the 12th dynasty pharaohs Senusret I and Amenemhat II had also successfully navigated their way to and from the mysterious land of Punt.
In the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt {{Hatshepsut]] built a Red Sea fleet to facilitate trade between Thebes port Elim, Elat at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba and points south as far as Punt to bring mortuary goods to Karnak in exchange for Nubian gold (Nub). Hatshepsut personally made the most famous ancient Egyptian expedition that sailed to Punt. During the reign of Queen Hatshepsut in the 15th century BC ships regularly crossed the red Sea in order to obtain bitumen, copper, carved amulets, naptha and other goods transported overland and down the dead sea to Elat at the head of the gulf of Aqaba where they were joined with Frankincense and myrrh coming north both by sea and overland along trade routes through the mountains running north along the east coast of the Red Sea.
A report of that 5 ship voyage survives on reliefs in Hatshepsut's funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri. Throughout the temple texts, Hatshepsut "maintains the fiction that her envoy" Chancellor Nehsi, who is mentioned as the head of the expedition, had travelled to Punt "in order to extract tribute from the natives" who admit their allegiance to the Egyptian pharaoh. In reality, Nehsi's expedition was a simple trading mission to a land, Punt, which was by this time a well-established trading post. Moreover, Nehsi's visit to Punt was not inordinately brave since he was "accompanied by at least five shiploads of [Egyptian] marines" and greeted warmly by the chief of Punt and his immediate family. The Puntites "traded not only in their own produce of incense, ebony and short-horned cattle, but [also] in goods from other African states including gold, ivory and animal skins." According to the temple reliefs, the Land of Punt was ruled at that time by King Parahu and Queen Ati. This well illustrated expedition of Hatshepsut occurred in Year 9 of the female pharaoh's reign with the blessing of the god Amun:
“ | Said by Amen, the Lord of the Thrones of the Two Land: 'Come, come in peace my daughter, the graceful, who art in my heart, King Maatkare [ie. Hatshepsut]...I will give thee Punt, the whole of it...I will lead your soldiers by land and by water, on mysterious shores, which join the harbours of incense...They will take incense as much as they like. They will load their ships to the satisfaction of their hearts with trees of green [ie. fresh] incense, and all the good things of the land.' | ” |
While the Egyptians "were not particularly well versed in the hazards of sea travel, and the long voyage to Punt, must have seemed something akin to a journey to the moon for present-day explorers...the rewards of [obtaining frankincense, ebony and myrrh] clearly outweighted the risks." Hatshepsut's 18th dynasty successors, such as Thutmose III and Amenhotep III also continued the Egyptian tradition of trading with Punt. The trade with Punt continued into the start of the 20th dynasty before terminating prior to the end of Egypt's New Kingdom.[17] Papyrus Harris I, a contemporary Egyptian document which detailed events that occurred in the reign of the early 20th dynasty king Ramesses III, includes an explicit description of an Egyptian expedition's return from Punt:
“ | They arrived safely at the desert-country of Coptos: they moored in peace, carrying the goods they had brought. They [the goods] were loaded, in travelling overland, upon asses and upon men, being reloaded into vessels at the harbour of Coptos. They [the goods and the Puntites] were sent forward downstream, arriving in festivity, bringing tribute into the royal presence. | ” |
After the end of the New Kingdom period, Punt became "an unreal and fabulous land of myths and legends."
Ta netjer
The ancient Egyptians also called Punt Ta netjer, meaning "God's Land". This designation did not mean that Punt was considered a "Holy Land" by the Egyptians; rather, it was used to refer to regions of the Sun God, i.e., regions located in the direction of the sunrise. These eastern regions were blessed with precious products, such as incense, used in temples. The term was used not only in reference to Punt, located southeast of Egypt, but also in reference to regions of Asia east and northeast of Egypt, such as Lebanon, which was the source of wood for temples.
Qift
Qift (Arabic: قفطCoptic: Keft or Kebto; Egyptian Gebtu; Greek Coptos or Koptos; Roman Justinianopolis) is a small town in the Qena Governorate of Egypt about 43 km north of Luxor, on the east bank of the Nile.
History
In ancient Egypt, Qift, known then as Gebtu, was an important center for administration, religion, and commerce, being the chief city of the fifth Upper Egyptian Nome of Harawî (Two Hawks). From Qift and Qus, trading expeditions heading for the Red Sea and many mining expeditions into the Eastern Desert left the Nile Valley. Gebtu was at the starting-point of the two great caravan routes leading to the coast of the Red Sea, the one toward the port Tââou (Myoshormos), the other more southerly, toward the port of Shashirît (Berenice).
Under the native pharaohs, the whole trade of southern Egypt with the Red Sea passed over these two roads; under the Ptolemies as well as in Roman and Byzantine times, merchants followed the same roads for purposes of barter at the coasts of Zanzibar and in Southern Arabia, India, and the Far East.
Gebtu was the most important religious center in the area. Its principal male deity was Min, a sky-god whose symbol was a thunderbolt. He became a male fertility deity, and also was regarded as the male deity of the desert region to the east.
His cult rose to prominence in the Middle Kingdom. At that time, he became associated with Horus as the deity, Min-Horus. Later, he was fused with Amen in the deity Min-Amen-ka-Mut-ef, as "Min-Amen-bull of his mother" (Hathor-Isis).
Isis (Hathor-Isis) and her infant, Horus, were the deities connected with Gebtu, named Coptos during the Greco-Roman period, probably due to the reinterpretation of the Two Hawks of the Nome, Harawî, standard as Min and Horus.
Gebtu, once politically important, especially under the eleventh dynasty, was overshadowed by Thebes. It recuperated its prominence under the Antonines; it was the base camp of Legio III Cyrenaica, or at least one of its subunits. It rebelled, but soon was captured in 292 by Diocletian after a long siege and almost destroyed, but soon recovered its former standing.
In the 6th century, Qift was called by the Roman name, Justinianopolis. This century is considered the end of the Classical Age in Europe where the Dark Ages followed.
The Christian see was suffragan of Ptolemais in Thebais Secunda. Five bishops are known (Lequien, II, 607): Theodorus, a partisan of Meletius; Phoebammon in 431; Sabinus in 451; Vincent, author of the "Canonical Solutions", preserved in an Arabic translation and highly esteemed by the Copts; Moyses, who wrote the panegyric of Vincent.
Under the Muslim caliphs and the sultans, Qift remained one of the chief cities of Upper Egypt. In 1176, its Christian inhabitants raised the standard of revolt against the Muslims, but were suppressed promptly by Al-Adil, brother of Saladin, who hanged nearly 3,000 Copts on the trees around the city. In the 13th century, there still were numerous monasteries around the city. Qift was ruined in the 16th century by the Ottomans.
Archaeology
Remains of three temple groups surrounded by an enclosure wall were located during the excavations of W. M. Flinders Petrie in 1893-1894, and later, by Raymond Weill and Adolphe Joseph Reinach in 1910-1911.
The undecorated northern temple of Min and Isis was the work of an official named Sennuu on behalf of Roman occupiers during the Ptolemaic kingdom, namely, Ptolemy II Philadelphus ruling from 281 BC to 246 BC.
This northern temple has some later additions by Ptolemy IV Philopator ruling from 221-205 BC. He was the son of Ptolemy III and Berenice II of Egypt and was the fourth pharaoh of the Ptolemaic Egypt, when the decline of the Ptolemaic kingdom began. More additions were added by Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome, Caligula, and Nero.
This temple stands on the site of earlier Ancient Egyptian temple structures, those of the visor to Mentuhotep IV who became Amenemhat I and his son, Senusret I, both of the twelfth dynasty, and Thutmose III of the eighteenth dynasty. The remains of a chapel of Osiris, erected by Amasis II of the twenty-sixth, also were found near the northern temple.
At the site of the later middle temple built by Romans during the Ptolemaic kingdom, blocks of an earlier structure by Senusret I and a gate of Thutmose III, with additions probably made by Osorkon II of the twenty-second dynasty, were found. This later middle temple was built during the Ptolemaic kingdom by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, with minor additions by members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty of Rome, Caligula, Claudius, and Trajan.
At the site of the southern temple, are the gates of Nectanebo II of the thirtieth dynasty, who was the last native king of Egypt. He was placed on the throne by a Spartan king and lost a conflict with the Persians, who then overtook Egypt.
Other structures found at the site include a set of stelae, now known as the Koptos Decrees. These stelae date to the Sixth and Seventh Dynasties, with copies of royal decrees from the pharaohs concerning the temple and its personnel. The name by which the stelae are known reflects the much later Greek name for the city, Coptos or Koptos however.
A chapel of Ptolemaic dynasty pharaoh Cleopatra VII and her son, Ptolemy XV Caesarion, has been found at the site as well. These rulers of Ancient Egypt for six hundred years were not native, but of Greek origin. Without many changes, however, they adopted the culture and religious practices of the country they occupied. Cleopatra even learned the ancient Egyptian language, which never had been used by these rulers. The Greeks sought to find parallels to their own religious beliefs and would describe the Egyptian deities as related to their own.
Built even later, after the conquest by the Romans in 30 AD, gates associated with the Roman emperors Caligula and Claudius are documented at the site. The Romans also continued the religious traditions of Ancient Egypt, adopting some completely, and drawing parallels (similar to the Greek rulers) for others.
Northeast of Qift, at the modern village of El-Qala, the Roman emperor Claudius also built a small temple and dedicated it to Min, Isis, and Horus.
Qift was the focus of an Australian archaeological project between 2000 and 2003.
The Beta Israel
The Beta Israel (Hebrew: Beta Israel, "House of Israel"; Ge'ez: ቤተ እስራኤል Bēta 'Isrā'ēl, modern Bēte 'Isrā'ēl) is the Jewish community originating in Ethiopia (Biblical Cush), but now most of which lives in Israel. They are also known as Falasha (Amharic for "Exiles" or "Strangers") by non-Jewish Ethiopians, but this term is considered pejorative. Other terms by which the community have been known include the Tigrinya Kayla and the Hebrew Habashim, associated with the non-Jewish Habesha people.
Nearly 85% of the Ethiopian Beta Israel community, comprising more than 120,000 people, have emigrated to Israel under its Law of Return, which gives Jews and those with Jewish parents or grandparents, and all of their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and obtain citizenship. The Israeli government has mounted rescue operations, most notably during Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991), for their migration when civil war and famine threatened populations within Ethiopia. Some immigration has continued up until the present day.
The related Falasha Mura are the descendants of Beta Israel who converted to Christianity. Some are returning to the practices of Judaism, living in Falash Mura communities and observing halakha. Beta Israel spiritual leaders, including Chief Kes Raphael Hadane have argued for the acceptance of the Falasha Mura as Jews. This claim has been a matter of controversy within Israeli society.
Beta Israel beliefs:
The Ethiopian legend described in the Kebra Negast, or "Book of the Glory of Kings," relates that Ethiopians are descendants of Israelite tribes who came to Ethiopia with Menelik I, alleged to be the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (or Makeda, in the legend) (see 1 Kings 10:1-13 and 2 Chronicles 9:1-12). The legend relates that Menelik, as an adult, returned to his father in Jerusalem, and then resettled in Ethiopia, and that he took with him the Ark of the Covenant. In the Bible there is no mention that the Queen of Sheba either married or had any sexual relations with King Solomon; rather, the narrative records that she was impressed with his wealth and wisdom, and they exchanged royal gifts, and then she returned to rule her people in Kush. However, the "royal gifts" are interpreted by some as sexual contact. The loss of the Ark is also not mentioned in the Bible.
Those who accept the Kebra Negast believe that the Beta Israel are descended from a battalion of men of Judah that fled southwards down the Arabian coastal lands from Judaea after the breakup of the united Kingdom of Israel into two kingdoms in the 10th century BCE (while King Solomon still reigned over Judah).
Although the Kebra Nagast and some traditional Ethiopian histories have stated that Yodit (or "Gudit"), a tenth century usurping queen, was Jewish, it's unlikely that this was the case. It is more likely that she was a pagan southerner or a usurping Christian Aksumite Queen.
Most of the Beta Israel consider the Kebra Negast legend to be a fabrication. Instead they believe, based on the ninth century stories of Eldad ha-Dani (the Danite), that the tribe of Dan attempted to avoid the civil war in the Kingdom of Israel between Solomon's son Rehoboam and Jeroboam the son of Nebat, by resettling in Egypt. From there they moved southwards up the Nile into Ethiopia, and the Beta Israel are descended from these Danites.
Other sources tell of many Jews who were brought as prisoners of war from ancient Israel by Ptolemy I and also settled on the border of his kingdom with Nubia (Sudan). Another tradition handed down in the community from father to son asserts that they arrived either via the old district of Qwara in northwestern Ethiopia, or via the Atbara River, where the Nile tributaries flow into Sudan. Some accounts even specify the route taken by their forefathers on their way upstream from Egypt.
Rabbinical views:
The ninth century Jewish traveler Eldad ha-Dani claimed the Beta Israel descended from the tribe of Dan, claiming Jewish kingdoms around or in East Africa existed during this time. His writings may represent the first mention of the Beta Israel, but his accuracy is uncertain; scholars point to Eldad's lack of firsthand knowledge of Ethiopia's geography and any Ethiopian language, although he claimed the area as his homeland.
Rabbi Ovadiah Yare of Bertinoro wrote in letter from Jerusalem in 1488:
I myself saw two of them in Egypt. They are dark-skinned... and one could not tell whether they keep the teaching of the Karaites, or of the Rabbis, for some of their practices resemble the Karaite teaching... but in other things they appear to follow the instruction of the Rabbis; and they say they are related to the tribe of Dan.
Some Jewish legal authorities have also asserted that the Beta Israel are the descendants of the tribe of Dan, one of the Ten Lost Tribes. In their view, these people established a Jewish kingdom that lasted for hundreds of years. With the rise of Christianity and later Islam, schisms arose and three kingdoms competed. Eventually, the Christian and Muslim Ethiopian kingdoms reduced the Jewish kingdom to a small impoverished section. The earliest authority to rule this way was the Radbaz (Rabbi David ben Zimra, 1479 – 1573). Radbaz explains in a responsum concerning the status of a Beta Israel slave:
But those Jews who come from the land of Cush are without doubt from the tribe of Dan, and since they did not have in their midst sages who were masters of the tradition, they clung to the simple meaning of the Scriptures. If they had been taught, however, they would not be irreverent towards the words of our sages, so their status is comparable to a Jewish infant taken captive by non-Jews … And even if you say that the matter is in doubt, it is a commandment to redeem them.
In 1973 Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, then the Chief Sephardic Rabbi, based on the Radbaz and other accounts, ruled that the Beta Israel were Jews and should be brought to Israel. He was later joined by a number of other authorities who made similar rulings, including the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi.
Other legal authorities, primarily Ashkenazim, have maintained that the Jewishness of the Beta Israel is seriously suspect. Such dissenting authorities include Rabbis Moshe Feinstein, Elazar Shach, Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, and Shlomo Zalman Auerbach.
In either case, some modern rabbinical authorities require the Beta Israel to undergo shortened conversions as a religious precaution. Those who believe this consider the conversion a necessity for an Ethiopian Jew to be accepted within other Jewish communities.
DNA evidence:
A 1999 study by Lucotte and Smets studied the DNA of 38 unrelated Beta Israel males living in Israel and 104 Ethiopians living in regions located north of Addis Ababa and concluded that "the distinctiveness of the Y-chromosome haplotype distribution of Beta Israel Jews from conventional Jewish populations and their relatively greater similarity in haplotype profile to non-Jewish Ethiopians are consistent with the view that the Beta Israel people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism." This study confirmed the findings of a 1991 study by Zoossmann-Disken et al. A 2000 study by Hammer et al of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes of Jewish and non-Jewish groups suggested that "paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population," with the exception of the Beta Israel, who were "affiliated more closely with non-Jewish Ethiopians and other North Africans."
A 2001 study by the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University found a possible genetic similarity between 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews who took part in the testing. The differentiation statistic and genetic distances for the 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews tested were quite low, among the smallest of comparisons involving either of these populations. The 4 Yemenite Jews from this study may be descendants of reverse migrants of African origin who crossed Ethiopia to Yemen. The study result suggests gene flow between Ethiopia and Yemen as a possible explanation for the closeness. The study also suggests that the gene flow between Ethiopian and Yemenite Jewish populations may not have been direct, but instead could have been between Jewish and non-Jewish populations of both regions.
A 2002 study of Mitochondrial DNA (which is passed through only maternal lineage to both men and women) by Thomas et al showed that the most common mtDNA type found among the Ethiopian Jewish sample was present only in Somalia. This further supported the view that most Ethiopian Jews were of local or Ethiopian origin.
Scholarly view:
In the past, secular scholars were divided on the origins of the Beta Israel; whether they were the descendants of an Israelite tribe, or converted by Jews living in Yemen, or by the Jewish community in southern Egypt at Elephantine. In the 1930s Jones and Monro argues that the chief Semitic languages of Ethiopia may suggest an antiquity of Judaism in Ethiopia. "There still remains the curious circumstance that a number of Abyssinian words connected with religion, such as the words for Hell, idol, Easter, purification, and alms – are of Hebrew origin. These words must have been derived directly from a Jewish source, for the Abyssinian Church knows the scriptures only in a Ge'ez version made from the Septuagint." Richard Pankhurst summarized the various theories offered about their origins as of 1950 that the first members of this community were
(1) converted Agaws, (2) Jewish immigrants who intermarried with Agaws, (3) immigrant Yemeni Arabs who had converted to Judaism, (4) immigrant Yemeni Jews, (5) Jews from Egypt, and (6) successive waves of Yemeni Jews. Traditional Ethiopian savants, on the one hand, have declared that 'We were Jews before we were Christians', while more recent, well-documented, Ethiopian hypotheses, notably by two Ethiopian scholars, Dr Taddesse Tamrat and Dr Getachew Haile... put much greater emphasis on the manner in which Christians over the years converted to the Falasha faith, thus showing that the Falashas were culturally an Ethiopian sect, made up of ethnic Ethiopians.
According to Jacqueline Pirenne, numerous Sabaeans crossed over the Red Sea to Ethiopia to escape from the Assyrians, who had devastated the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. She further states that a second major wave of Sabaeans crossed over to Ethiopia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE to escape Nebuchadnezzar. This wave also included Jews fleeing from the Babylonian takeover of Judah. Most historians generally dismiss these theories of an early Jewish presence in Ethiopia in favor of a later ethnogenesis of the Beta Israel and presence of Judaism among Ethiopians. In 1992 Pankhurst stated "The early origins of the Falashas are shrouded in mystery, and, for lack of documentation, will probably remain so for ever."
Modern scholars of Ethiopian history and Ethiopian Jews, such as James Quirin, Steve Kaplan, Kay Shelemay, and Harold Marcus, consider the Beta Israel to be a native group of Ethiopian Christians, who took on Biblical practices, and came to see themselves as Jews. As Paul B. Henze explains:
These groups came into conflict with the military colonies and Christian missions which were the main instruments of the extension southward of the Ethiopian state. They may have been joined by dissidents or rebelling northern Christians who felt their interpretation of ritual, sacred texts and traditions of art represented a more ancient Israelite connection than Orthodox Miaphysite Christianity itself. The Beta Israel can thus be understood as a manifestation of the kind of rebellious archaism that has often come to the surface in Christianity -- e.g. Russian Old Believers and German Old Lutherans. Assertion of Jewish derivation, they felt, provided them with a stronger claim to legitimacy than their Christian enemies.
In The Middle Ages
In 1329, Emperor Amda Seyon campaigned in the northwest provinces of Semien, Wegera, Tselemt, and Tsegede, in which many had been converting to Judaism and where the Beta Israel had been gaining prominence. He sent troops there to fight people "like Jews" (Ge'ez ከመ:አይሁድ kama ayhūd).
For the next three centuries, these regions were frequently areas of Beta Israel rebellion against the Solomonic dynasty. Religion was less important to the Emperors than loyalty, however. Rebellious Beta Israel leaders often formed alliances with other enemies of the Emperor despite their differing faiths. The late fourteenth century Christian monk Qozmos, for instance, copied the Orit (Old Testament) for the Beta Israel communities. He led them against local Christians before being defeated by Emperor Dawit I. Likewise, the fifteenth century governor of Tsellemt used both Jewish and Christian troops for his revolt. The first personal campaign against rebelling Beta Israel areas did not come until the reign of Emperor Yeshaq (r.1414-29). When Yeshaq I defeated the governors of Semien and Dembiya, he began to exert religious pressure. He reduced the Jews' social status below that of Christians. Yeshaq forced the Jews to convert or lose their land. It would be given away as rist, a type of land qualification that rendered it forever inheritable by the recipient and not transferrable by the Emperor. Yeshaq decreed, "He who is baptized in the Christian religion may inherit the land of his father, otherwise let him be a Falāsī." This may have been the origin for the term "Falasha" (falāšā, "wanderer," or "landless person"). In the 1400s, Emperor Zara Yaqob carried out some of the worst massacres, attacks and forced conversions of the Christian kingdom. Zara Yaqob added the title "Exterminator of the Jews" to his name.
Another convert was Abba Sabra (or Sabriqu) of Madra Kabd near Zeqwala in Shewa, who lived in the fifteenth century. According to Falasha tradition, in which he is a seminal figure, Abba Sabra turned to a life of penance after having committed a murder; one act of this penance was building a church in Dankaz near Gondar. Not long afterwards, he "embraced the faith of the Israelites", and converted one of Zara Yaqob's sons, Saga-Amlak, who according to some accounts also converted many other people. Abba Sabra is also remembered for his teaching of the Orit, as well as the laws of purity known in Amharic as attenhugn. He is also believed to have introduced to the Beta Israel monastic practices, which became one of its most distinctive practices as a Jewish sect. The influence of converts like Qozmos and Abba Sabra complicates the work of tracing this group's possible heritage from its earliest adherents.
Beta Israel autonomy in Ethiopia ended in 1624, when Emperor Susenyos confiscated their lands, sold many people into slavery and forcibly baptized others. Jewish writings and religious books were burned. The practice of any form of Jewish religion was forbidden in Ethiopia. As a result of this period of oppression, much traditional Jewish culture and practice was lost or changed.
Nonetheless, the Beta Israel community appears to have continued to flourish during this period. The capital of Ethiopia, Gondar, in Dembiya, was surrounded by Beta Israel lands. The Beta Israel served as craftsmen, masons, and carpenters for the Emperors from the sixteenth century onwards. Such roles had been shunned by Ethiopians as lowly and less honorable than farming. According to contemporary accounts by European visitors: Portuguese merchants and diplomats, French, British and other travellers, the Beta Israel numbered about one million persons in the seventeenth century.[citation needed] These accounts also recounted that some knowledge of Hebrew persisted among the people in the seventeenth century. For example, Manoel de Almeida, a Portuguese diplomat and traveller of the day, wrote that:
The Falashas or Jews are... of [Arabic] race [and speak] Hebrew, though it is very corrupt. They have their Hebrew Bibles and sing the psalms in their synagogues.