Haggai Erlich - Ethiopia and The Middle East-Lynne Rienner Publishers (2023)

ETHIOPIA AND
THE MIDDLE EAST

ETHIOPIA AND
THE MIDDLE EAST
Haggai Erlich
LYN N E
R1ENNER
PUBLISHERS
B O U L D E R
L O N D O N
To Omri
Published in the United States of America in 1994 by

Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301
and in the United Kingdom by

Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU
© 1994 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Erlich, Haggai.
Ethiopia and the Middle East / Haggai Erlich.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55587-520-3 (alk. paper)
1. Middle East—Relations—Ethiopia. 2. Ethiopia—Relations—
Middle East. I. Title.
DS63.2.E7E75 1994
303.48763056—dc20 94-18824
CIP
British Cataloguing in Publication Data

A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements

of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Parti
From Muhammad to Iyasu:
Political Islam and the Uniqueness of Ethiopia
1 Muhammad's Message: "Leave the Abyssinians Alone" 3

2 Relations up to the Sixteenth Century:
Isolation, the Nile, and Muslim Sultanates 21
3 The Trauma of Gragn and the Diplomacy of Habesh 29
4 The Beginning of Modern Times:
Muhammad 'Ali and Tewodros 41
5 Yohannes, Isma'il, and the Ethio-Egyptian Conflict 53
6 Yohannes and Menelik: Between Religious
Confrontation and Diplomatic Dialogue 65
7 Iyasu, the Somali Mawla, and the Demise
of the Ottoman Empire 83
Part II
Ethiopia and Arabism: From Arslan to Nasser
8 The Arabs, Mussolini, and the Abyssinian Dilemma 95

9 Pan-Arabism, Arslan, and Conquered Abyssinia 111
10 Nasser, Haile Selassie, and the Eritrea Problem 127
11 Egypt's View of Ethiopia During the Nasserite Period 141
12 The Arabs, Ethiopia, and the Arabism of Eritrea 151
13 Israel and the Fall of Haile Selassie 165
14 Conclusion: The Struggle for Diversity 179
Notes 191
Selected Bibliography 215
Index 223
About the Book and the Author 228
V
PREFACE
My research for Ethiopia and the Middle East began as something else.
Five years ago I was given a generous grant by the United States Institute
of Peace to work on "Autonomy as a Solution to the Eritrea Problem." In
my research proposal I had sought to study the various approaches to the
idea of autonomy by each of the concerned parties: the Ethiopian govern-
ment. the liberation fronts, and Ethiopia's Middle Eastern neighbors. But as
I was gathering the source materials for this study, two things happened.
First, contemporary history, as it is wont to do, moved faster than my abili-
ty to digest the massive piles of documents, and in no time rendered irrele-
vant the very premise of my proposal.
Second, as I was studying the material, I was repeatedly struck by the
contradiction between the importance of the Middle East to Ethiopian polit-
ical strategy and how Ethiopians and Middle Easterners have historically
ignored each other, despite the fact that they share so much h i s t o r y —
ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary.
Not that either the Ethiopians or their neighbors lack a sense of history.
On the contrary: The two civilizations are enormously rich in legacies on
which they draw constantly. The Ethiopians have had their historical trau-
mas and the Muslims and Arabs have had their own concepts of Ethiopia,
stemming from their own historical experience. Yet there has hardly been
an effort on either side to understand the other. There is too little curiosity
and too much obscurity.
Thus, although Ethiopia and the Middle East is an attempt to recon-
struct the main m e e t i n g p o i n t s in the political a n d strategic r e l a t i o n s
between the two civilizations, it is also an effort to understand how each
culture has viewed the other and to review the basic concepts behind their
h i s t o r i e s . P u r s u i n g the r e a s o n s f o r this d i c h o t o m y b e t w e e n p r a c t i c a l
involvement and conceptual detachment I was sucked back to the history of
early f o r m a t i v e e p i s o d e s . Islamic and, later, m o d e r n A r a b c o n c e p t s of
Ethiopia were greatly influenced by the legacy of an early seventh-century
story. It left a dual message about the very legitimacy of Ethiopia but quite
a clear one about the need to keep a distance between Ethiopia and the
Islamic Middle East. The Ethiopian view of the Middle East as a potential
threat to be a v o i d e d — a n d i g n o r e d — s t e m m e d f r o m a sixteenth-century
VII
viii PREFACE
e x p e r i e n c e . T h e b o o k b e g i n s w i t h (he e a r l i e s t m e e t i n g s , b e f o r e t h e s e v e n t h
c e n t u r y , s u r v e y s t h e i n t e r p l a y b e t w e e n p o l i t i c s a n d c o n c e p t s , a n d e n d s with
the c o n t e m p o r a r y era.
In u s i n g t h e t e r m Ethiopia, I r e f e r t o t h e e n t i t y that h a s e x i s t e d f o r
s o m e t w e n t y c e n t u r i e s , h e l d by t h e p o l i t i c a l i n s t i t u t i o n s h e a d e d until 1974
by the royal d y n a s t i e s . T h e f a c t that t h e s e i n s t i t u t i o n s w e r e i d e n t i f i e d with
E t h i o p i a n C h r i s t i a n i t y p e r m i t s t h e u s e of t h e t e r m Christian Ethiopia, con-
n o t i n g its h o m o g e n e i t y a n d c o n t i n u i t y . 1 u s e this t e r m f o r t h e s a k e of c o n -
v e n i e n c e a n d b e c a u s e I a m d e a l i n g w i t h f o r e i g n r e l a t i o n s . E t h i o p i a itself is
a d i v e r s e e n t i t y . T h i s is a p r e m i s e w i t h o u t w h i c h its h i s t o r y c a n n o t b e
u n d e r s t o o d o r , in m y v i e w , its f u t u r e b e a s s u r e d .
N e i t h e r d o I i n t e n d to t e a r E t h i o p i a f r o m its A f r i c a n a n d A f r i c a n i s t
context. An i m p o r t a n t aspcct of E t h i o p i a has a l w a y s been " b l a c k " and
" A f r i c a n . " T h r o u g h o u t h i s t o r y E t h i o p i a h a s b e e n s o r e c o g n i z e d by m e m -
b e r s o f all c u l t u r e s , i n c l u d i n g E t h i o p i a n s t h e m s e l v e s a n d b y Middle
E a s t e r n e r s . In t h e 1960s E t h i o p i a ' s A f r i c a n d i m e n s i o n b e g a n to a t t r a c t the
s c h o l a r l y a t t e n t i o n it h a s l o n g d e s e r v e d . T h e o l d g u a r d o f modern
E t h i o p i a n i s t s ( T r i m i n g h a m , C e r u l l i , C o n t i R o s s i n i , U l l e n d o r f f , to n a m e but
a few), who approachcd Ethiopia from Oriental studies, was gradually
b e i n g r e p l a c e d by E t h i o p i a n i s t s w i t h b a c k g r o u n d s in e m e r g i n g A f r i c a n
s t u d i e s . T h e n e w g e n e r a t i o n ( t r a i n e d m o s t l y in t h e l e a d i n g u n i v e r s i t i e s of
t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s , t h e S c h o o l of O r i e n t a l A f r i c a n S t u d i e s of L o n d o n , a n d
t h e U n i v e r s i t y of A d d i s A b a b a ) a p p l i e d t h e n e w m e t h o d s of t h e s o c i a l and
p o l i t i c a l s c i e n c e s , d o i n g m o r e s c h o l a r l y j u s t i c e t o E t h i o p i a ' s e t h n i c , lin-
g u i s t i c , a n d r e l i g i o u s d i v e r s i t y . T h e y w e r e t h u s a b l e to b e t t e r a n a l y z e the
role of that d i v e r s i t y in h i s t o r y a n d m o r e p r o f o u n d l y r e l a t e to t h e i s s u e s of
Ethiopia's modernization.
In t h i s b o o k I c o n c e n t r a t e o n E t h i o p i a ' s r e l a t i o n s w i t h t h e o u t s i d e
w o r l d . T h r o u g h o u t its h i s t o r y , t h e c o u n t r y h a s b e e n c l o s e l y i n t e g r a t e d into
t h e s t r a t e g i e s of t h e R e d S e a a n d of t h e N i l e B a s i n , a n d t h r o u g h t h e m , as
well as t h r o u g h its c u l t u r e , to t h e O r i e n t a l w o r l d . R e l a t i o n s w i t h t h e M i d d l e
East h a v e a l w a y s b e e n c e n t r a l to E t h i o p i a ' s m a j o r h i s t o r i c a l d e v e l o p m e n t s ,
a n d p a r t i c u l a r l y s o s i n c e t h e 1950s.
E t h i o p i a w a s b o r n in a n c i e n t A k s u m ; t h e M i d d l e E a s t , b o t h as t e r m a n d
as political r e a l i t y , w a s b o r n in t h e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y . Middle East means a
r e g i o n of m o d e r n s t a t e s a n d a p o l i t i c a l c u l t u r e s t r u g g l i n g w i t h t h e l e g a c i e s
of I s l a m , of m o d e r n A r a b i s m , of E g y p t i a n i s m , Z i o n i s m , a n d o t h e r n a t i o n a l
a f f i l i a t i o n s . P r i o r to W o r l d W a r I a n d t h e fall of t h e O t t o m a n E m p i r e , t h e
r e g i o n w a s k n o w n as t h e p o l i t i c a l Land of Islam, an e s s e n t i a l l y d i f f e r e n t
c o n c e p t f r o m that of t h e M i d d l e E a s t .
Part I t r a c e s E t h i o p i a ' s p o l i t i c a l h i s t o r y a n d its r e l a t i o n s w i t h t h e r u l e r s
a n d d y n a s t i e s of the L a n d of I s l a m f r o m t h e d a y s of t h e Prophet
M u h a m m a d t o t h e c o l l a p s e o f t h e O t t o m a n E m p i r e . P a r t II e x p l o r e s
E t h i o p i a ' s n e w p o l i t i c a l i d e n t i t i e s a n d its r e l a t i o n s w i t h t h e m o d e r n M i d d l e
PREFACE ix
East. The book's thirteen chapters follow the chronology of Ethiopian his-
tory.
This study is intended to be a contribution to the history of Ethiopian
foreign relations. If it also serves to prepare for a future that is better than
the past, I shall be doubly rewarded. The student of Middle Eastern history
will also find much of interest here: From medieval Mecca to contemporary
Cairo, many issues involving the region's identity are discussed. By exam-
ining how the region's politicians have dealt with their non-Islamic and
non-Arab neighbor over the course of more than fourteen centuries, I have
attempted to shed light on the single most enduring issue of the Middle
East—the region's ability to deal with its own diversity.
The research for Ethiopia and the Middle East was made possible by a
generous grant from the United States Institute of Peace. Many of my
advanced students at Tel Aviv University, notably Elda Yerushalmi (who
translated pieces of Turkish literature for me), Rahamim Elazar, and Gil
Melzer, helped collect material. I tried to mention them all in the notes. I
wrote the work during my 1992-1993 sabbatical leave from Tel Aviv
University and appointment as the Visiting Israeli Professor at Georgetown
University.
I am grateful to the founders and supporters of the Georgetown Israeli
Chair, Professor Villiam O'Brien, Professor Robert Lieber, and the late
Professor Mai ver Bernstein, for their patience and help. Paul Henze and his
wife, Martha, friends of Ethiopia and leading experts on Ethiopia's modern
developments, offered invaluable advice as well as their warm hospitality.
Fawzi Tadros, the librarian of the Near Eastern Section at the Library of
Congress, a true gentleman and a professional, deserves my deepest grati-
tude for responding to my repeated nagging, unearthing material—cata-
loged or not. Hanan Aynor, Israeli ambassador to Ethiopia between 1971
and 1974 and the president of the Africa-Israel Friendship Association,
gave me precious material. He remained a man of noble virtue to his end:
Hanan read my last chapter and signed the letter containing his remarks
some twelve hours before dying of cancer, in January 1994.
I take pleasure at thanking all the scholars who helped me in various
ways. I shall mention only a few: Thomas Kane (who read the whole manu-
script), Nehemia Levtzion, Israel Gershoni, Mordechai Abir, and Ilay Alon.
I thank also the keepers of the archives mentioned in the bibliography, as
well as Dagefe Walda-Tsadiq, librarian of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies
at Addis Ababa University. My gratitude goes also to Ann Mandelbaum
and Jeanne Remington for their thoroughness in coping with my English,
and to Lynne Rienner and her staff for their efficiency and pleasantness.
The responsibility for mistakes and for the opinions expressed in the book,
is, however, all mine.
And I am grateful to my wife and partner, Yochi, for sharing it all.
H. E.
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Ethiopia in history:
Aksumite Ethiopia, presumed Ethiopia under Tewodros and Yohannes ™ ™ •
s
êre Ethiopia under Haile Selassie (after re-annextion
Zagwe dynasty of Eritrea)
Solomonic "golden era"
xi
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SUDAN
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ETHIOPIA
SOMALIA
The Middle East and Ethiopia The Ottomans in their heyday

Muhammad's Islamic Empire (note the province of habesh)
The Islamic Empire of the Umayyads Khedive Ismail's empire
The Sultanate of the Mamluks in Egypt The boundaries of "the Arab nation"
as in Ba'th maps •••••
FROM MUHAMMAD TO IYASU:
POLITICAL ISLAM AND THE
UNIQUENESS OF ETHIOPIA
m
MUHAMMAD'S MESSAGE:
"LEAVE THE ABYSSINIANS A L O N E "
AKSUMITE ETHIOPIA: AN ORIENTAL ENTITY
Ethiopia came into being as an extension of the Oriental world. Waves of

immigrants from the southern parts of the Arab Peninsula imported their
Semitic culture and languages, beginning in the seventh century B.C., set-
tling on the African coast of the Red Sea and on the Ethiopian Plateau.
Influenced by these immigrants, and as a result of their intermingling with
local cultures and ethnic groups, the kingdom of Aksum, the first stage of
today's Ethiopia, emerged in the first century A.D.'
Aksum developed an urban culture, an advanced peasantry, patriar-
chate, a legal system establishing the right of primogeniture, territorial
organizations, and other institutions imported from the Semitic world.
Aksumite culture was expressed in the Semitic language of Ge'ez, from
which developed other Ethiopian Semitic languages, primarily the Tigrinya
and Amharic. The culture was open and dynamic enough to assimilate
existing local cultures and, at the same time, to connect further with the
Oriental East. From there, from beyond the Red Sea, and from the direction
of the Nile additional influences continued to flow. Judaic concepts and tra-
ditions were chief among these, producing far-reaching implications for the
development of the country's spiritual and religious life as well as for
Ethiopia's future relations with Jerusalem and with the people of Israel.
Hellenic cultural influences were no less significant, for it was from the
Hellenic Orient and through the Greek language that Christianity was intro-
duced to Aksum.2
The adoption of Christianity by Negus (king) Ezana in the fourth cen-
tury A.D. strengthened the bridge between Aksum and the Orient, or, to cite
the phrase of the Ethiopian historian Sergew Hable Sellassie, the ties with
the "civilized world." It was two brothers, Frumentius and Aedesius, from
the town of Tyre who, saved from a shipwreck while en route to India,
brought the precepts of the Christian religion to the Aksumite royal court.
Aedesius ultimately returned to Syria to tell his story; Frumentius went to
Alexandria, where he laid the groundwork for the connection between the
3
4 ETHIOPIA & THE MIDDLE EAST
Egyptian Coptic Church and the f u t u r e church of Ethiopia. 3 He then

returned to Aksum to be the first Alexandria-appointed abun (bishop) over
Ethiopia. In Ethiopian history Frumentius became known as Abuna Abba
Salama. This Ethio-Egyptian Christian connection established in the fourth
century A.D. was to survive until the 1960s, often important and problemat-
ic enough to contribute to the vicissitudes of political relations.
Ethiopian Christianity was further enhanced following another event in
the Orient, the Council of Chalcedon, in A.D. 451. The so-called Nine
Saints, monks from various places in the Roman Empire who resisted the
doctrine laid down by the majority (that there were two natures, one divine,
one human in Christ) found in Aksum shelter as well as a fertile field for
spreading their Monophysite belief. They provided the young Ethiopian
church with translated Ge'ez scriptures, and founded the first chain of
monasteries.
Allied with the royal house and connected with the institutions and the
spirit of Oriental churches, Ethiopian Christianity spread rapidly. It was
not, however, merely a set of imported dogmas. Rather, it followed the path
of other influences from the Semite Orient that had combined with and
were assimilated in local cultures. Indeed, Ethiopian Christianity developed
in such a way as to absorb components of other local spiritual beliefs and
rituals. Assimilating aspects of Judaic traditions as well as local pagan cus-
toms, by the sixth century the Ethiopian church had become an all-embrac-
ing Ethiopian culture.
Aksum's Red Sea port, Adulis (today's Zula, south of Massawa), had
begun to develop into a lively center of trade with the Arab Peninsula in the
third century A.D. Although Aksum was a peasant culture, it nonetheless
built a commercial fleet to sail the Red Sea. Moreover, its diplomatic and
religious contacts with Constantinople drew Aksumite kings into the politi-
cal and e c o n o m i c strategy of the East, which r e v o l v e d a r o u n d the
Byzantine-Persian rivalry. 4 In 524 the intense Aksumite involvement in
Arab Peninsula affairs culminated when the army of Emperor Kaleb
(Ellesbaas to the Greeks), crossed the Red Sea and conquered Yemen,
d e s t r o y i n g the J e w i s h k i n g d o m of H i m y a r and l i b e r a t i n g the local
Christians. The Aksumites ruled in Yemen and turned Ethiopia into a Red
Sea empire for three generations before their eviction by the Persian army
in about 590.
One of Kaleb's generals, Abraha, had built churches in the provincial
capital of San'a. Equipped with armored elephants, he launched an expedi-
tion in 570 to Mecca to destroy the then-pagan shrine of the Ka'ba. It was
only through the intervention of Providence, according to later Islamic tra-
dition, that the holy place was saved. In that "year of the elephant," the
Prophet Muhammad was born.
Indeed, by the sixth century Ethiopia had emerged as an Oriental state,
deeply immersed in the affairs of the Eastern world and fully accepted as
MUHAMMAD'S MESSAGE 5
an equal if not a superior in the development of the strategy of the Red Sea.
Arabs, Jews, and Greco-Romans of the period, to judge by their writings,
revealed no racism in their dealings with the Ethiopians. Rather, for the
Arabs of the peninsula the Ethiopians were deemed the representatives of
an even higher civilization. 5 Words from the Ge'ez vocabulary penetrated
the Arabic language as Ethiopians—traders, conquerors, and slaves—inter-
mingled with Arabs in the urban centers of the Arab Peninsula.
Of particular significance was the high rate of intermarriage. Many
prominent Arabs in pre-Islamic Yemen and the Hijaz were of mixed
Ethiopian origin, such as the poet and warrior 'Antara bin Rabiba, whose
mother was Ethiopian. 6 A lively Ethiopian community existed in Mecca,
where the elite was especially known to favor Ethiopian women; centuries
later foreigners observed a typical Meccan darker "golden" complexion. 7
During the centuries immediately preceding the rise of Islam, Ethiopia
emerged as a political entity of obvious Semitic cultural characteristics. It
had a church that was dynamic enough to spread a literary civilization and
to support a political order under a royal dynasty residing in a flourishing
urban center. Aksum was an Ethiopian state linking the gradually assimilat-
ing local "African" ethnic and cultural groups, on the one hand, into the
dynamism of the Oriental East, on the other. Although perhaps not yet up
to the standard of most other capitals of the Orient, Askum had proved its
ability to face the challenge of participating in international relations and to
benefit from its growing involvement in world affairs.
The emergence of Islam in the early seventh century was to have far-
reaching consequences for Ethiopia. The great monotheistic revolution that
was soon fundamentally to change the Oriental world started in nearby
Mecca. The first chapter of Islamic history was closely connected to
Aksum, and for Islam this was a vital episode. For Ethiopian history it was
a moment that seemed to carry the promise of further cementing its ties
with neighboring civilizations.
THE FIRST FORMATIVE CHAPTER:

MUHAMMAD AND THE NAJASHI
E t h i o p i a p l a y e d a role in the life of P r o p h e t M u h a m m a d . I n d e e d ,

Muhammad's own nurse was an Ethiopian woman named Baraka 'Umm
Ayman. She looked after him from his birth, throughout his boyhood, and
until his marriage to Hadija. It was said that "Muhammad loved her like a
mother and confessed to that in public." After his death, his successors, the
four Rashidun caliphs, continued to pay her visits following the Prophet's
wish. 8 The many Ge'ez words in the Quran suggest that Muhammad him-
self acquired some of that language from the Ethiopians of Mecca. When
Muhammad started recruiting followers, preaching his universal message,
one of his earliest converts was an Ethiopian. In fact after his wife, Hadija,
the first to answer his call was Abu Bakr (later the first caliph, 632-634),
and then the Ethiopian, Bilal bin Rabah. Bilal had been the slave of a
prominent Meccan who is said to have tortured Bilal so that he would deny
Muhammad. When Abu Bakr heard about this he hurried to purchase Bilal
from his master, brought him to his home, and set him free. Bilal ("the first
fruit of Abyssinia") was to attain prominence by becoming the first mu'ad-
hdhin, the caller for prayers in Islam. By tradition, this function was to stay
in Ethiopian Muslims' hands ("The khalifa shall be of Quraysh, judicial
authority shall be in the hands of the Auxiliaries, and the call for prayers
with the Abyssinians"). By the same tradition and because Abu Bakr had
rescued Bilal, it also became part of Islamic tradition that "who brings an
Ethiopian man or an Ethiopian woman into his house, brings the blessings
of God there." 9
The first to host their neighbors, however, were the Ethiopians. They
gave shelter in Aksum to the first group of Muhammad's followers, the
sahaba (the term sahaba was coined later). The famous episode of the per-
secuted sahaba finding refuge in the Aksumite court, undoubtedly a true
historical event, is mentioned in various Islamic chronicles written cen-
turies later (by Ibn Yishaq, Ibn Hisham, al-Tabari, al-Nisa'i, Ibn Sa'ad, Ibn
Kathir, al-Baladhuri, among others). 10 Although their recounting contains
fictitious elements as well as legends, it is nevertheless pivotally important
to my study and shall be summarized in the following paragraphs. This
early encounter of Ethiopia with Islam was to become a formative event in
shaping Islamic (and later, Arab) attitudes toward Ethiopia. The concepts
created following that episode (although not necessarily stemming directly
from it) were to influence the course of Ethio-Islamic relations as well as to
influence the domestic history of Ethiopia to this very day.
In general, this early seventh century episode left a legacy of two con-
tradictory messages for future generations of Muslims. The dominant of the
two was a positive one in that it guided Muslims to be tolerant of the exis-
tence of Ethiopia. The other, a more latent message, would resurface at
later historical junctures, when radical Muslims would reinterpret the same
episode to mean that Ethiopia was illegitimate in the eyes of Islam.
In A.D. 615, five years after Muhammad had begun his preaching and
when the Qurayshi Meccan nobility were intensifying their persecution of
his followers, Muhammad urged them to emigrate to Aksum. He told his
sahaba (early followers), what he thought of Aksum's civilization: "If you
go to Abyssinia you will find a king under whom none are persecuted. It is
a land of righteousness where God will give you relief from what you are
suffering." 11
A group of seventeen followers including Muhammad's son-in-law,
who later became the Caliph ( 6 4 4 - 6 5 6 ) 'Uthman bin 'Affan, and the
Prophet's daughter, Ruqayya (and her maid, the same Ethiopian who had
nursed Muhammad, Baraka ' U m m Ayman) 1 2 fled secretly to Aksum. 1 3

They were well received by the Ethiopian king (most probably Adriaz,
610-630), whom some Arab chroniclers called Ella Saham, or, as he came
to be better known in Islamic tradition the Najashi (Ethiopic: ruler)
Ashama. (Read As-hama. In Ibn Ishaq he is referred to as "al-najashi al-
Asham bin Abjar". 14 In some texts he is referred to as Asmaha.) 15 Three
months later, having heard a false rumor that the Qurayshi Meccan leader-
ship accepted Islam, the refugees returned to Mecca only to discover to
their horror that persecution had instead intensified.
A much larger group of the now growing sahaba was then organized
by the Prophet to flee and find shelter in Aksum. 1 6 It consisted of at least
13217 newly converted Muslims—a substantial portion, at that time, of the
core of Muhammad's followers. They were headed by Ja'far bin Abu Talib,
Muhammad's cousin and the brother of the future Caliph 'Ali. Other promi-
nent immigrants were 'Abdallah bin Jahsh and his brother 'Ubaydallah, the
latter married to 'Umm Habiba, a daughter of one of the Quraysh leaders,
Abu Sufian.
The group reached Aksum in 616. In Aksum, they were warmly wel-
comed and in response they composed songs of glory for the najashi:
"Thou art noble and generous. . . . No refugee is unhappy with thee." 18
Soon, however, the Qurayshis sent for them. A Meccan emissary led
by 'Amru bin al-'As (who was himself of Ethiopian descent) came to
Aksum, distributed gifts among the clergy and the nobility, and then
approached the king about surrendering the Muslims. "Some foolish fel-
lows from our people," they told the negus, "have forsaken our religion and
not accepted yours, but have brought in an invented religion which neither
we nor you know anything about. . . . Surrender them to us and do not
speak to them."
It was a moment of importance in the early history of Islam. Had the
king of Ethiopia chosen to surrender the group to Quraysh, as he was said
to be advised by his generals, the Prophet might well have suffered a disas-
trous defeat. Najashi Ashama, however, saved the day and Muhammad's
followers. He ordered the Muslim refugees to meet with his bishops, and,
in the presence of the Qurayshi emissaries, he questioned the sahaba.
First, he asked them about abandoning the faith of their fathers, to
which Ja'far bin Abu Talib answered by recounting their previous primi-
tive, c r u e l , and m e r c i l e s s p a g a n i s m . T h e n he w e n t on to tell how
Muhammad brought the light and progress of monotheism: "He ordered us
to worship God and associate no other with him, to offer prayer, to give
alms and fast. . . . So we trusted in his word and followed the teaching he
brought us from God. . . . Wherefore our countrymen turned against us and
persecuted us to try to seduce us from our faith, that we might abandon the
worship of God and return to the worship of idols."
After this speech on the oneness of God, the najashi asked Ja'far about
Jesus Christ. On that, Ja'far quoted the Quran (Sura 4:169): "Verily Christ
Jesus, son of Mary, is the apostle of God and his word, which he conveyed
into Mary and a spirit proceeding from him." When the negus asked him
about Mary he recited Sura 19:16-34, which is copied from the Gospel of
Luke: "And my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my S a v i o r . . . . "
By making Islam appear to be a form of Christianity, Ja'far bin Abu
Talib managed to convince the king to grant the sahaba continued asylum.
The najashi returned the gifts to the Qurayshis and sent them back to
Mecca. ('Amru bin al-'As, perhaps influenced by this event, 19 would soon
convert to Islam, thereafter becoming one of the most important generals,
the occupier of Egypt in 640.)
When Muhammad made his hegira from Mecca to Madina (622) he
sent for the sahaba in Aksum, but only sixteen returned with a ship gener-
ously provided by the negus. The rest remained for the next nine years,
enjoying the hospitality of Aksum, marrying into local families, and fur-
thering relations between Ethiopia and early Islam. 20 Some twenty of the
sahaba died in Ethiopia; the rest, under Ja'far, returned to Mecca in 631.
At least one marriage of that era had far-reaching implications. One of
the sahaba residing in Aksumite Ethiopia, the aforementioned 'Ubaydalla
bin Jahsh, was said by later Islamic tradition to have joined Ethiopian
Christianity (thus being the first Muslim to do so). Thereupon his wife,
'Umm Habiba, divorced him. (By another version he did not convert to
Christianity but died.) 2 1 Upon hearing of the c o u p l e ' s separation, the
Prophet sent to Ja'far to propose to her in his name. When she consented,
the najashi betrothed 'Umm Habiba to the Prophet and sent her across the
Red Sea with a wedding present of 400 dinars. This marriage would soon
facilitate M u h a m m a d ' s way to victory because the bride's father, the
Qurayshi leader Abu Sufian, then joined his camp.
In the sixth year of the hegira (628) the story of Muhammad and the
najashi reached its climax. The Prophet sent emissaries to eight rulers of
the Oriental world: five local princes or viceroys and three kings and
emperors: Chosroes of Persia, Heraclius of Byzantium, and Ashama, the
najashi of Ethiopia. According to the Muslim historian al-Tabari, the emis-
sary to Aksum, 'Amru bin 'Umayya al-Damari, carried the following mes-
sage. It started with a Quranic verse inviting "the people of the book" to
reconsider their allegiance to Jesus and to adopt Islam:
In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. Muhammad, the

apostle of God, to Najashi Ashama, king of Abyssinia, greetings. . . . I
testify that Jesus, the son of Mary, is the spirit and Word of God, and that
He sent them down to Mary, the blessed and the immaculate virgin, and
she conceived. He created Jesus of his own spirit and made Him to live by
His breath. . . . I summon thee to worship the one God. . . . Accept my
mission, follow me, and become one of my disciples. For I am the Apostle
of G o d . . . . Set aside the pride of thy sovereignty....
According to another source, Muhammad's letter ended with a threat:

"and if you refuse you would be responsible for the guilt of your Christian
people." 22
According to medieval Islamic sources, the Ethiopian king did convert
to Islam. When he received this letter, the king was said to have placed it
on his head, stepped down from his throne and, seating himself on the
ground, uttered the shahada, the prayer of testimony of recognizing
Muhammad and accepting Islam. 23 According to this version the najashi
sent the following reply: "In the name of God. . . . To Muhammad the
Apostle of God. . . . There is no God but Allah, who has brought me to
Islam. . . . What thou said about Jesus is the right belief. . . . I testify that
thou art the Apostle of God, and I have sworn this in the presence of Ja'far,
and have acknowledged Islam before h i m . . . ," 24
When Muhammad later learned of Ashama's death, it was said that he
mourned over him as for a departed Muslim and prayed for the repose of
his soul. Islamic tradition was, indeed, to argue (contrary to modern
Western 25 and Ethiopian historians) that the najashi did convert to Islam
and that he refrained from proclaiming his conversion publicly, having to
leave his generals and fanatic bishops in ignorance out of fear that it would
cause riots.26 This story carried the latent negative message of a Christian
people resisting Islam. But the overt message of the sahaba story, as it was
accepted generally, was one of gratitude to Ethiopia for helping Islam. It
was embodied in the hadith (prophetic saying or tradition), attributed to
Muhammad: "Leave the Abyssinians alone, so long as they do not take the
offensive." This hadith ("utruku al-habasha ma tarakukum") became over
time a long-enduring legacy of detrimental influence on Muslims' attitudes
to Ethiopia.
The following three sections of this chapter summarize the reasons for
the ninth century hadith of "leave the Abyssinians alone," and discuss its
legal implications in declaring this orthodox Islamic attitude toward an
accepted though ignored Ethiopia.
The final section of the chapter presents the opposite idea, that of
Ethiopia's political illegitimacy, inspired and legitimized by the same saha-
ba-najashi story, but held by what may be labeled as "radical Islam."
MECCA, ETHIOPIANS, AND ETHIOPIA
Following the return of the sahaba in 630, Muhammad ordered his admiral
'Alkama bin Mujazziz to destroy the Ethiopian trading post in the port of
Shua'yba, thus bringing to an abrupt end the ancient Meccan-Aksumite
commercial relations. After the death of the Prophet (632), a competition
arose over the Red Sea trade between the new Islamic state and Ethiopia,
for we know that the same admiral was sent by Caliph 'Ummar in 640 to
raid Aksum's port, Adulis. He sailed with four ships and two hundred men
but was routed. 27
However, the image of Ethiopians and of Ethiopia in Islamic eyes
remained positive. In Mecca in this early phase of Islamic history many
newly converted Muslim Ethiopians played significant roles. Sadiq al-
'Azm, the author of Rihlat al-Habasha (1908), gathered from the Islamic
medieval literature some relevant data and included it in an appendix to his
book. He summarized the stories of twenty-one Ethiopians among the
sahaba, Muhammad's close followers, noting that there were many more.
All the stories are full of praise and reflect no racial discrimination. Bilal
bin Rabah, noted above, is perhaps the most famous. He was not only the
first mu'adhdhin but also became a jihadi warrior. Following the army of
Caliph 'Ummar (whose grandmother had also been an Ethiopian), Bilal "
al-Habashi" died later in Damascus, where his grave remained a sacred
shrine.
Like Bilal, many other of the Ethiopians in the sahaba had been slaves
who were liberated and Islamized by the Prophet himself. Some other
members of the sahaba were Ethiopians who had converted under the
influence of the sahaba in Aksum. Seventy-two of them are said to have
gone to Mecca in 631 with the returning sahaba. They were led by Dhu
Mahjar al-Habashi, a nephew of Najashi Ashama, who is reported to have
been close to the Prophet. Another member of the same group was Dhu
Mahdam al-Habashi. He was known for the poems (qasidas) he read to
Muhammad, in which he narrated the history of the Ethiopians as the
descendants of the Arab tribe of Bani Hud, who had emigrated f r o m
Arabia. Abrahah bin Sabbah al-Habashi was a grandson of "Abrahah the
owner of the elephant" who had threatened Mecca in 570, "the year of the
elephant."
Some of Muhammad's close associates and important figures in Mecca
during the times of the four caliphs were sons of Ethiopian women. One
such member of the sahaba was Asama bin Zayd, the great Arabian poet
and a grandson of the famous pre-Islamic poet Imru al-Qays. He was the
son of Baraka ' U m m Ayman, Muhammad's nurse and life-long friend.
' U m m Ayman herself was mentioned by Sadiq al-'Azm as one of the
Ethiopian sahabiyyat, the female followers of the Prophet. His list contains
the names of four more such women. Of those Ethiopians who adopted
Islam after the death of Muhammad it is notable that the Faqih 'Ata' ibn
Rabah became the mufti of Mecca at the time of the 'Umayyad Caliph
Sulayman ibn 'Abd al-Malik. It was said that the same caliph, passing
through Mecca, came to study under the Ethiopian mufti, who died in 735
at the age of ninety. 28
By the time the center of Islam moved from Arabia to Damascus, with
the establishment of the 'Umayyad dynasty in 661, the period of Ethiopia's
importance in Islamic history had ended. The 'Umayyads continued what
the successors of the Prophet had begun: the expansion of the Islamic
Empire away from the Red Sea. Islam extended into "Middle Eastern"
Asia, to Egypt, to North Africa, and into Europe. It did not attempt, howev-
er, at least not until the arrival of the Ottomans in the sixteenth century,
crossing into Ethiopia with armed forces.
Throughout the seventh century, the Aksumite navy was still among
the strongest in the Red Sea. In 702, the Ethiopians even attempted to
invade the Hijaz, occupying the port of Jidda and causing a panic in Mecca.
Caliph Sulayman ibn 'Abd al-Malik hurried from Damascus to expel the
invaders. He then went on in the same year to occupy the islands of Dahlak,
opposite Adulis, and appointed an amir over that strategic position. 2 9
Under such a blockade, Adulis, Aksum's port, began to deteriorate.
An Ethiopian presence in the Red Sea was revived occasionally later,
in the eighth century and in the late ninth and early tenth centuries (but
these were discrete episodes). The image of Ethiopia in Islamic eyes as a
respected nation remained at least until the middle of the eighth century. It
is clear from a painting that survived in the ruins of Qusayr 'Amra (in
today's Jordan), that the 'Umayyads regarded "the Negus of Ethiopia" as
one of the six members of "the family of kings," the major rulers of the
world, worthy of being their own predecessors. The negus is depicted in
this painting as equal to the last Visigothic king of Spain, the shah of
Sassanian Persia, the Byzantine Emperor, the Emperor of China, and a
Turkish or Indian ruler. 30 But while the Umayyads and their Abbasid suc-
cessors (after 750, in Baghdad) remained much concerned with their
Spanish, Byzantine, or Persian fronts, they never actually dared to chal-
lenge the mountainous Ethiopian citadel—they simply neglected the Red
Sea, ruined Aksum's seafaring, and condemned Ethiopia to isolation. For
them, Dahlak would serve as a prison island, not as a point of departure for
the African coast.
RACE, SLAVERY, ISLAM, AND THE "HABSH"
What was the historical significance and the cultural legacy of the Islamic
tradition to "leave the Abyssinians alone"? Many of the pertinent facts con-
cerning this tradition remain unknown. Did the najashi, in fact, adopt
I s l a m , as c o n t e n d e d by the M u s l i m s and d e n i e d by the C h r i s t i a n
Ethiopians? Did the Prophet really utter this sentence and, if so, was it in
response to the conversion of the Ethiopian king as well as in gratitude for
the shelter Ethiopia gave to the sahaba? Or was this hadith—first pub-
lished in the ninth century 31 —fabricated at a later stage to justify the fact
that Islam was unable to launch a combined sea-and-land operation against
the mountainous citadel of Ethiopia, and was, in any event, more attracted
elsewhere?
Whatever the case, much of ensuing Islamic-Ethiopian relations, as we
shall see, would be affected by the spirit of that hadith. However, as history
unfolded, Muhammad's utterance acquired an additional meaning. It came

to reflect not only a benevolent, charitable exemption from jihadi conquest,
but also the deeming of Ethiopia as marginal, irrelevant, and isolated.
Generally speaking, the rulers of "Middle Eastern" Islam, from the end
of the sahaba story, ignored Ethiopia. Their strategic interest in the Red
Sea and the Horn of Africa was only slight. Prior to the emergence in the
sixteenth century of the Ottomans, a strategic interest in Ethiopia was
revived only by the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt (1250-1517). Also, medieval
Arab geographers and travelers had little curiosity concerning anything
beyond the immediate Red Sea coast. Ethiopia or Abyssinia, "the land of
the habasha," is mentioned in the writings of such chroniclers and travelers
as Ibn Hawqal, al-Mas'Udi (tenth century), Ibn Khaldun (fourteenth centu-
ry), and some others, but it seems that only one of them, Ibn Batuta
(1304-1369), had first-hand knowledge of the Horn of Africa. Another
medieval Arab writer who provided some reliable information was al-
Maqrizi, whose 1434-1435 small treatise (Kitab al-ilmam) described the
spread of Islamic emirates in southern Ethiopia, to which we shall return
later. The Christian kingdom, however, was barely mentioned. 32
Although Ethiopia as a Christian entity was thus abandoned and
ignored by medieval "Middle Eastern" Muslims, Ethiopians remained an
intellectual subject of some importance—but, to be sure, not the Ethiopians
of the Horn of Africa, only habasha (black natives of the Horn of Africa,
who joined Islam and lived under its sway).
In his book Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis ana-
lyzes the medieval Islamic Arab literature and prophetic traditions (hadith)
that referred to Ethiopians, their color, and their role in Islam. In general,
the l i t e r a t u r e cited by L e w i s c o n v e y e d a p o s i t i v e view of M u s l i m
Ethiopians and reflects Islam's supraethnic concepts: "I was sent to the
red 3 3 and the black," said the Prophet in one relevant hadith. Another
hadith referring to the meaninglessness of ethnicity and the centrality of
religious authority in Islam quoted the Prophet: "Obey whoever is put in
authority over you, even if he be a crop-nosed Ethiopian slave." 34
Books written by medieval Islamic writers in defense of black Muslims
were chiefly concerned with al-habasha (the Ethiopians). Ethiopians,
because of their role in early Islam, could better serve the cause of
supraethnicity and the primacy of spiritual universalism over race and
color. There are a few such books, Lewis found, which survived in only a
few copies, and none of them has yet been printed. One of the earliest, writ-
ten by Jamal al-Din Abu Faraj ibn al-Jawzi (d. A.D. 1208), is entitled The
Lightening of the Darkness on the Merits of the Blacks and the Ethiopians.
In explaining the purpose of his book al-Jawzi wrote, "I have seen a num-
ber of outstanding [Muslim] Ethiopians whose hearts were breaking
because of their color. So I let them know that respect is based on the per-
formance of good deeds, and not on beautiful forms. I therefore composed

for them this book, which deals with a good number of Ethiopians and
blacks." 35
Other books studied by Lewis include the work of the Egyptian histori-
an Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d.1505), The Raising of the Status of the
Ethiopians, and the sixteenth-century book entitled The Colored Brocade
on the Good Qualities of Ethiopians.
All of these books, according to Lewis, dismissed color and empha-
sized Islamic piety as the only valid criterion for distinction. In seeking to
convey their message of universal supraethnicism, these medieval writers
went back to the aforementioned formative Ethio-Islamic episode, that of
the sahaba, and discussed the many Ethiopians among the slaves and the
freedmen in the sahaba. They also discussed the najashi's vital help to the
Prophet's followers and repeated the hadith concerning Christian Ethiopia:
"Leave the Abyssinians alone.. . . "
As for Islam itself, Lewis argues, the very need on the part of Islamic
thinkers to refer to the subject of color and preach ethnic equality among
Muslims suggests that racism among the peoples espousing the tenets of
Islam was a problem. In fact, these same writers sometimes resorted, sub-
consciously perhaps, to racist insinuations. One tradition, for example,
attributes to Muhammad the saying concerning the Ethiopian: "When he is
hungry he steals, when he is sated he fornicates." In another hadith,
Muhammad is said to have promised the Ethiopians that if they proved to
be pious Muslims on Earth, they would become white in heaven. 36
L e w i s ' s analysis c o n f i r m s that in the initial stage, the period of
Muhammad and the four rashidun caliphs, color and race were not issues.
Ethiopia and Ethiopians, as we have seen, were not looked down upon by
c o n t e m p o r a r y H i j a z i or Y e m e n i A r a b s . If a n y t h i n g , they a c c e p t e d
Ethiopians as equals and respected Ethiopia as a civilized neighbor.
It was only later, in the eighth century, when the 'Umayyads tended to
emphasize their "Arab" leadership in Islam, and during the period when
Ethiopia—indeed, the whole of the Horn of Africa—was abandoned and
ignored by Islam, that racist attitudes surfaced. With the creation of a vast
multiethnic Islamic empire, ethnically diversified, Arab Muslims, contends
Lewis, began to view blacks as inferiors. At that time they also started dis-
tinguishing between the habasha (the dark natives of the Horn of Africa)
and the even darker natives of the inner continent (whom they now called
Zanj or Sudan). In daily life, Lewis writes, the habasha were regarded by
"Middle Eastern" Muslims as above the other blacks. (Habsh in Arabic
means a mixture, and in popular usage it connoted a mixed ethnic origin,
partly black, partly brown.) The literature cited by Lewis, produced by
Islamic purists, was intended to protect black Muslims and to protect the
purity of Islam itself from existing racist tendencies. However, it also
served to maintain throughout the centuries the notion of Ethiopia itself as

a Christian kingdom. Although Ethiopia was practically ignored, it was
also seen as a legitimate entity.
Lewis's discussion of slavery in Islam sheds additional light on our
subject. Because Islam forbade enslaving fellow Muslims but did not abol-
ish the institution of slavery itself, it created the need to import slaves
(mamluks) from beyond its boundaries. Thus, a religion and an empire that
spread the universal concept of racial equality nonetheless engaged at the
same time in slave trade as an intercontinental business. Inescapably, this
trade enhanced racist attitudes. Islamic racism was further increased by the
fact that slaves imported from "the land of the habasha"—the Ethiopian
Horn of Africa (enslaved pagan Oromos, Gurages, Sidama, or the consider-
ably fewer enslaved Christians) 3 7 —were preferred to and higher priced
than Zanj slaves. The same was true of the habashi eunuchs. 38
Islamic slavery, it must be emphasized, was neither the cruel institu-
tion of the industrial West, nor were racist attitudes of medieval times simi-
lar to the modern "scientific" ones. Rather, slaves in Islam were often inte-
grated into society through marriage, even achieving political positions,
including even political and military leadership, through official appoint-
ments. Many of the aforementioned Ethiopian members of the sahaba were
slaves in such positions. Other Ethiopian slaves or eunuchs were later to
obtain social or political prominence.
It is thus apparent that Islamic rulers and traders viewed the non-
Muslim populations on their peripheries as appropriate sources of manpow-
er. The Abbasid caliphs brought their mamluks from the Turkish peoples of
the Caucasus, and the Ottomans imported their "slaves of the sultan," the
backbone of Ottoman administration and army, from the Caucasus and the
Balkans. It was most convenient for these rulers of Islam, in the Prophet's
phrase, "to leave" those territories and refrain from converting their inhabi-
tants en masse to Islam. It was equally convenient to "leave" the Horn of
Africa as a major source of domestic slavery, and to refrain from a costly
conquest of Ethiopia.
"LEAVE THE HABASHA ALONE" AND "DAR AL-HIYAD"
The cultural message of the famous hadith as interpreted in daily life in

medieval Islam was mixed. On the one hand, it carried the legacy of grati-
tude and respect (the heritage of the Meccan period), but on the other it also
reflected some racist attitudes (surfacing during the 'Umayyads). Whatever
was the original practical reason for "leaving" the habasha, a desire to have
a comfortable distance from a strong and mysterious neighbor, or the inter-
est in keeping the whole Horn as a slavery reservoir, the operational mes-
Ethiopia as long as Ethiopia committed no aggression against Islam. It was

a unique case.
Islam was, and remains, a comprehensive religion, a total world order
aimed at including and organizing all mankind within its sole and only
legitimate empire. By its very nature, it is in a constant state of rivalry with
the rest of the world. Ethiopia, as a political entity (the najashi, adopting
Islam or not) nevertheless remained Christian.
Islam at the apex of its military expansionist power refrained from try-
ing to challenge the mountain citadel of Ethiopia. It is doubtful that the
early Islamic empires could muster the combined naval and ground forces
necessary to the task. It failed, as well, to attract the Ethiopians through its
cultural message. What Islam offered so appealingly to other peoples—
combining monotheism with a comprehensive harmonious set of legal
answers to problems of earthly existence—Ethiopians already possessed in
their own form of Christianity. 39 For a variety of reasons, both cultural and
strategic, Ethiopia was to retain its uniqueness and not to be absorbed into
"the world of Islam." Islam, however, and against its own grain, in princi-
ple accepted Ethiopia. It was to be the only such case.
By Islamic law the world is divided into dar al-Islam, namely, the
house or the land of Islam, and dar al-harb, the land of war, the territories
of the infidels, where jihad must be conducted. Medieval Islamic jurists
occasionally accepted interim stages (dar al- 'Ahd, dar al-Sulh, namely, ter-
ritories enjoying a temporary agreement with Islam). However, as analyzed
by Majid Khadduri in his War and Peace in the Law of 1slam,40 in early
Islam there were, apart from Ethiopia, only three other cases of exemption
by tradition from jihad without such an agreement. These were Nubia, the
island of Cyprus, and the land of the Turks, each exempted for practical
reasons. The Turks, it was said in a hadith, because of their toughness and
difficult physical terrain of their country should be the last people the
Muslims should attack. The arrangement was thus temporary; and indeed
the Turks, although not by means of a holy jihad, would join Islam and
even become, in their time, its very leaders.
According to one version of the Abyssinian hadith, as analyzed by Van
Donzel, the Turks and the Ethiopians were combined into one case ("da'U
al-habasha ma wadda'Ukum wa-'truku al-turk ma tarakukum"). This case
may suggest that "leave the Abyssinians alone" ("utruku al-habasha ma
tarakukum") might well have implied only an interim arrangement. 4 1
However, while the other peoples and lands in question had long been con-
quered by or absorbed into Islam, the Islamic neutrality toward Ethiopia
was said to be a matter of gratitude and did, indeed, remain in force.
Khadduri discusses in a full chapter the legal meaning of neutrality in
Islamic jurisprudence. It referred to a status granted by the leaders of Islam,
not a self-declared position by non-Muslims. His conclusion is that the only
case of such a "land of neutrality" (dar al-hiyad) was Ethiopia. Writing in
1955 and referring to the crucial tale of the sahaba Khadduri concludes:
" P e r h a p s with the e x c e p t i o n of E t h i o p i a , no land or p e o p l e has ever
been declared immune from the jihad in the authoritative sources of Islamic
l a w . . . . In the c a s e of n e u t r a l i t y , t h e law is still v a l i d r e g a r d i n g
Ethiopia." 4 2
The special status granted to Ethiopia by medieval Islam was a positive
one for Ethiopia. Although reflecting some racist attitudes (beginning in
the eighth century) and perhaps convenient in permitting slave trade of
habashis, it was in essence a declaration of Ethiopian legitimacy as a sover-
eign, albeit non-Islamic state. Individual Ethiopians making a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem were o f t e n treated like dhimis, n o n - M u s l i m subjects of the
Islamic state, rather than as foreign infidels. 4 3 It may be argued that this
recognition stemmed primarily from Ethiopia's geographical inaccessibility
and military impregnability and was couched in terms of gratitude (or even
patronizing charity). But whatever the reason, Ethiopia's right to exist was
unique in Islam, and the legacy of gratitude to Ethiopia remains. Moreover,
in the eyes of many fundamentalist (as distinguished from radical) Muslims
in today's Middle East, Ethiopia, because of the formative episode of the
sahaba and their hegira, not only deserves the right to exist, but also serves
as the ultimate historical model for righteousness and justice. For example,
Shaikh Nimr al-Darwish, head of the Islamic Movement (an offspring of
the all-regional fundamentalist "Muslim Brethren"), in Israel in the early
1990s, made the Ethiopian case a pillar of his political platform. The shaikh
argues that in countries where Muslims are the majority, an Islamic govern-
ment should be constituted. But in countries (like Israel), in which Muslims
are a minority, they are allowed to recognize and even to cooperate with the
existing governments, provided these governments do not interfere with
their rights as M u s l i m s . T h e theological-historical legitimacy to such
recognition stems, according to Shaikh Nimr al-Darwish, from the story of
Muhammad and the najashi. "If the Israeli government," he wrote, "would
render justice to Muslims the way the najashi and Christian Ethiopia did
with the sahaba, I am full ready to follow in the line of Ja'far bin Abu
Talib, who, as instructed by the Prophet himself, lived respectfully under
the Ethiopian government and the najashi 'under whom none are persecut-
ed.'" 4 4
"ISLAM AL-NAJASHI" AND

THE LEGACY FOR THE RADICALS
Islam was and is din wa-dawla, both religion and state. Its spiritual mes-
sage was often compromised by the dictates of political reality. However,
in pursuing the aims of radical "pure" Islam, free from such compromises,
leaders such as the sixteenth-century Imam Ahmad bin Ibrahim Gragn, or
the late nineteenth-century mahdi, the Sudanese Muhammad Ahmad, did
declare jihad against Ethiopia. We shall return to these cases and their
implications for Ethiopian history, but at this point we must turn our atten-
tion to the theoretical legitimacy of such an anti-Ethiopian holy-war
approach.
R a d i c a l I s l a m is o r i e n t e d f u l l y to the p a s t : For its f o l l o w e r s ,
Muhammad's period is the ultimate source of guidance and legitimacy and
a model of conduct. This fact is true of the radicals of today who in refer-
ring to Ethiopia return inevitably to the najashi story. The radicals' inter-
pretation of the najashi story reflects the opposite of the "utruku" concept,
namely, the concept of Ethiopia as the historical enemy, which has also
existed, usually latently, throughout the centuries.
What is the message of the najashi story for radical Islamic literature?
Some of the books published in Cairo in the late 1980s make it clear that in
radical Islamic literature, Ethiopia has been, and remains, the country of the
infidels, of fanatic crusaders, who denied Muhammad and hated Islam.
One such book is The Immigration to Ethiopia and the Arguments over
the Issue of al-Najashi's Islam, published in 1987. 45 The author, an al-
Azhar professor, Muhammad 'Abd al-Fattah 'Aliyyan, fails in 120 pages of
details even to mention the "utruku" hadith~m fact, he hardly mentions
anything that even suggests that Ethiopia contributed to the Prophet's effort
to survive. The book makes two points relevant to our concerns: The first is
that the king of Ethiopia, being a just individual, did see the light of Islam
and convert. 4 6 That conversion was recorded by the great early Islamic
writers (Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sa'ad, and al-Tabari, among others). 47 To dispute
these learned sources, the author maintains, is an anti-Islamic act, and
much of his book is devoted to accusations against Muslim historians who
dared to doubt (especially against the author of a London School of
O r i e n t a l and A f r i c a n S t u d i e s 1960 M . A . t h e s i s , " M u h a m m a d ' s
Diplomacy," the Sudanese 'Awad al-Sharif Qasim). 48
'Aliyyan's second point is that Ethiopia did not follow the najashi in
conversion but rather forced him to conceal his devotion to Islam. 49 The
Ethiopian people led by the priests derided Ashama for his harboring of the
sahaba. After his death, his son destroyed the Prophet's letter to him. There
is no mention in 'Aliyyan's book that Muhammad was grateful to the
habasha in general. Ethiopia, says the author, was not occupied by Islam
for concrete military reasons, not because of the Prophet's gratitude. 50
For the Islamic radicals the premise of the whole sahaba-najashi
episode lies not in Ethiopia saving the sahaba but in the conversion of the
najashi to Islam. The idea of Muhammad and his successors was to expand
the Land of Islam by first convincing the political rulers to convert. What
mattered was that the kings themselves would recognize the Prophet, and
this was the essence of Muhammad's letter of 628 to the najashi. If the
ruler did declare his allegiance to the Prophet, then the country fell within
the boundaries of the Land of Islam and actual conversion of the inhabi-
tants could follow later. By opposing a Muslim najashi, Christian Ethiopia
betrayed Islam. It follows that only the return of a najashi to Islam can
redeem the country. Prior to such redemption the very existence of a
Christian Ethiopia is an offense against the legacy of the Prophet.
Another such book, published in 1985, reflecting the radical Islamic
attitude toward Ethiopia, is The Political Relations between the Muslims of
Zayla' and the Christians of Abyssinia in the Middle Ages.51 It is mainly
devoted to later events but does include a chapter on the najashi. The
author, a Cairo University professor, 'Abd al-Halim Muhammad Rajab,
writes that Ethiopia is one of the main historical enemies of Islam, and a
loyal, but by no means junior, partner to Europe in an on-going Christian
crusade. 52 In dealing with the najashi episode, Rajab makes the following
points:
First, the Ethiopians, even before the time of Muhammad, were cru-
saders who wanted to destroy the Ka'ba and Christianize the whole Arab
Peninsula.
Second, a najashi by the name of Ashama did convert to Islam, but he
was not the emperor of Ethiopia, only a provincial ruler, a bahr negash (a
position and title that were, in fact, established much later). This provincial
functionary (negasi in Ge'ez, indeed, means a ruler, although not necessari-
ly an emperor) adopted Islam out of fear (for a reason that had to do with
his personal background). But again, he had to conceal the adoption out of
fear of his own people, the Christian enemies of Islam (pp. 31-38).
Third, Muhammad himself understood that Ethiopia was an enemy and
that the najashi who converted was not a significant ruler. Indeed,
Muhammad warned the Muslims from Ethiopia, saying: "The lean-legged
from the Ethiopians, they will destroy the Ka'ba." (The hadith is quoted
from al-Bukhari.) It was a warning regarding Ethiopia, Rajab emphasizes,
that the Prophet also said: "Leave the Abyssinians alone" (pp. 31-38). The
Dahlak Islands, he adds, were occupied to prevent the Ethiopians from
invading and destroying Mecca and the Ka'ba. Rajab concludes: "Indeed
the Ethiopians revealed their enmity to Islam from the very beginning. It
was mostly out of their fear from Islam, for the new religion proved so
powerful in uniting the Arabs on the other shore of the Red Sea. They were
hostile from the very start. . . and the najashi affair made no difference, for
when he died it ended in any case, and their fanatic priests took over in
fighting Islam" (p. 37).
These two different legacies from the formative episode were to shape
Middle Eastern attitudes toward Ethiopia. They were not of equal impor-
tance. The concept of Ethiopia's illegitimacy (I shall call it "Islam al-
najashi") was a distant second in motivating Islamic politics. In the thirteen
centuries between Muhammad and Mussolini it surfaced rarely, but it was
in the background ready to be called forth. It was transmitted, we shall see
much later, into modern pan-Arabism during the 1935-1936 "Abyssinian
Crisis."
"Utruku al-habasha" or "Leave the Ethiopians as long as they do not

take the offensive" was the major principle guiding the Middle Eastern
Muslims. (I shall call it the "utruku legacy.") It meant that Ethiopia enjoyed
a special, symbolic status and had the right to exist, but only as a marginal,
irrelevant entity, isolated, and ignored. The Ethiopian case, though rarely in
the center of events, became "one of Islamic history's most delicate ques-
tions." 53 This was because the argument stemming from the ambivalence
over the sahaba-najashi story revolved in fact around the principal issue of
accepting or denying the legitimacy of a non-Islamic entity, and turned
often into a discussion among the believers over the very significance of
Islam itself.
m
RELATIONS UP TO THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY: ISOLATION,
THE NILE, AND MUSLIM SULTANATES
Islam was to remain until the twentieth century the major political identity
of today's Middle East. From the very beginning, we have seen, it declared
Ethiopia neutral to its goals and purposes and therefore irrelevant. This
principle, couched as it was in terms of piety, would remain virtually
unchallenged until the creation of the modern Middle East out of the
Ottoman Empire following World War I.
Throughout these centuries Islam, as a Middle Eastern culture and
state, isolated Ethiopia from its notion of the civilized world. It deprived
Ethiopia of most of the Oriental connections that had been essential to its
creation. Islam's empires inherited all the Oriental political entities with
which Aksum had been in contact, and then left Ethiopia to its own.
Until the sixteenth century there were two exceptions to this story of
benevolent indifference. First, Egypt, although it was an Islamic province,
always stood out as a country interested in Ethiopian affairs. Second, Islam,
as a culture rather than a political entity, penetrated the Ethiopian sphere of
the Horn of Africa. This phenomenon of local Islam became an integral
part of Ethiopian history, often linking it, at least potentially, with the strat-
egy of the Middle East.
ETHIOPIA IN ISOLATION
Following the occupation of the Dahlak Islands in 702 Islam began stran-
gling Aksum as a maritime entity. Cut off from its link to the Red Sea,
Aksumite Ethiopia began to decline. Ethiopian Christianity was left with
only an indirect contact with the Coptic center of Alexandria, and lost
much of the momentum—political, commercial, and spiritual—that had
marked the century prior to the emergence of Islam. What followed was the
gradual decline of a landlocked Aksum, and the inescapable movement of
21
the realm's center to the south, with important implications for its ethnic
and cultural development.
The process that led to the final fall of Aksum is in itself outside the
scope of this study. Aksum, as has been described by Sergew Hable
Sellassie, Taddese Tamrat, and others, 1 had disappeared by the tenth centu-
ry. It fell victim to the Islamic policy of condemning Ethiopia to isolation
by neutralizing it as dar al-hiyad. Islam, because of its beliefs, was unable
to accept Ethiopia as an active neighbor and a partner in commercial and
cultural relations. Deprived of the stimulus of international relations,
Middle Eastern Islam meted out to Ethiopia the greatest punishment, that of
indifference. Occasionally, as we shall see, Muslim rulers deviated, for
concrete strategic interests, from the principle of "leaving the Abyssinians
alone." However, the initial exemption of Ethiopia from jihad left the coun-
try to survive by depending on its own strength. Ethiopia managed to do
this quite successfully, 2 mainly by feeding on its own cultural and regional
diversity and by maintaining political continuity. But the price of isolation
was high.
The strength that made Ethiopia's continuity possible was aided by the
Oriental connections that survived the Islamic blockade. The main one was
with the Coptic Church of Egypt. The head of the Ethiopian Church, the
abun, remained until 1951, as we shall see, an Egyptian bishop appointed
by the Alexandrian patriarch. His presence in the royal Ethiopian court and
his contribution to the maintaining of the Church of Ethiopia as a branch of
Oriental Christianity was no doubt essential for the continuity of the coun-
try's religious as well as political institutions.
For e x a m p l e , the Coptic i n f l u e n c e can be seen in the revival of
Ethiopia under the Zagwe dynasty (from 1133) and then, even more force-
fully, under the Solomonic dynasty (from 1270). The country's renewed
judiciary code, the Fetha Negast, the implementation of which was consis-
tent with the process of that revival, was imported from Egypt. It was com-
piled by an Egyptian Copt, al-As'ad bin 'Asal, and consisted of two parts.
The religious part was based on the Coptic code, and the penal code was
based on the Islamic shafi'i school, especially on Kitab al-tanbih by Abu
Yishaq al-Shirazi. 3
The revival of the institution of the emperorship owed much of its
legitimacy to the ethos of the Kebra Negast, "The Glory of the Kings,"
which was also an importation from the Arab East. According to this offi-
cially adopted legend, translated into Ge'ez from an Arabic translation of a
Coptic version, the founder of Ethiopia's ruling dynasty, Menelik I, was the
son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Menelik removed the Ark of
the Covenant f r o m S o l o m o n ' s Temple in Jerusalem and brought it to
Aksum, which became Zion, the dwelling place of the Lord. 4 By the fif-
teenth century, the sanctuary of every Ethiopian Church edifice had come
to be regarded as a copy of the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple. 5 The
UP TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 23
Solomonic myth providing the main political ethos of Ethiopia thus owes
its existence to the cultural link to the Orient in general, and to Jerusalem in
particular.
EGYPT AND THE NILE-COPTIC CONNECTION
While the Middle Eastern Islamic empires under the 'Umayyads in

Damascus (661-750) and the Abbasids in Baghdad (from 750 to 1517 offi-
cially) turned their backs on Ethiopia, Islamic Egypt continued to maintain
relations. The issue of obtaining an abun from Alexandria made it impera-
tive for the Ethiopian emperors to communicate with Egypt's rulers.6 Upon
the death of the abun they sent emissaries and presents to placate Egypt's
Islamic rulers, who were not always tolerant of their own Copts. Egypt's
rulers were, however, most concerned about the Nile, the lifeline of their
country. More than two-thirds of the Nile waters reaching Egypt come from
Ethiopia (and more than four-fifths of the summer flood waters, which irri-
gate Egypt) by way of the Blue Nile (the Abbay in Ethiopie), its tributaries,
and the Atbara.7 The notion of Ethiopia's potential control of Egypt's very
existence has worried Egyptians from time immemorial.
The first written record of such a concern dates from the days of the
Fatimid dynasty (909-1171). Around 1090, with the Nile waters at a low
ebb, the Fatimid ruler al-Mustansir bil-Allah sent an appeasement mission
headed by the Coptic patriarch to the Zagwe court. Ethiopian tradition has
it that the greatest Zagwe king, Lalibela ( 1 1 3 3 - 1 1 7 3 ) had discussed the
idea of diverting the Nile but refrained from so doing because other
Muslims, in Ethiopia's east, would benefit from it, and also because the
Egyptians had agreed to pay an annual tribute. As a demonstration of good
will, the ruler of Egypt and the Islamic victor of the crusades, Salah al-Din
of the Ayyubi dynasty (1171-1250) restored the Ethiopian community in
Jerusalem in 1187, which had existed from the beginning of Ethiopian
Christianity.8 (The Jerusalem connection, as we shall see, would become a
political issue only in the nineteenth century.)
The rule of the Mamluk dynasties in Cairo (1250-1517) coincided with
Ethiopia's "Golden Age" under the early Solomonids, 1270-1529. 9 The
Mamluks turned Egypt into the center of Middle Eastern Islam. Although
the caliphate remained in the hands of the 'Abbasid dynasty, the latter's
capital of Baghdad had long been politically ineffective, and it was
destroyed by the Mongols in 1258. The Mamluks hosted the caliph in Cairo
and built up their capital as an Islamic theological center. But vis-à-vis
Ethiopia, however, they had to deviate from the Islamic legacy: they could
hardly afford "leaving the Abyssinians alone."
The major concerns of the Mamluks were Middle Eastern: expanding
their territory and facing repeated Mongol raids. They were also interested
in Red Sea commerce and were heavily involved in the affairs of Yemen,
Aden, and the Hijaz. 10 But like other rulers of Egypt, they, too, were wor-
ried about the Nile. The c o n t e m p o r a n e o u s e m e r g e n c e of a p o w e r f u l
Ethiopia under the Solomonic dynasty put the issue on their agenda.
Between the Mamluks and Ethiopia's emperors there developed a hostile
series of exchanges: The Mamluks delayed sending abuns to Ethiopia, mis-
treated their own Egyptian Copts, and punished the Ethiopian community
in Jerusalem, and the Ethiopians threatened to block the Nile. The corre-
spondence between Ethiopia's Yekuno-Amlak (1268-1285) and Sultan
Baibars I (1260-1277), and between Emperor 'Amda-Zion (1314-1344)
and Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad (1309-1340) expresses these positions. In
1381 Emperor Dawit (1380-1414) sent an army that reached Aswan before
appeasement had been effectuated by the Coptic patriarch. Emperor Yishaq
(1413-1430) sent letters to European monarchs offering an alliance against
Egypt. Zar'a-Ya'qob, Ethiopia's greatest emperor of the time (1434-1468),
tried at first to be cooperative and sent a constructive message in 1437 to
Sultan Barsbay (1422-1437). When, three years later, Zar'a-Ya'qob learned
from the Coptic patriarch that Sultan al-Zahir Jaqmaq (1438-1453) had
ruined an important church in Egypt, he again sent a message, this time
threatening to block the Nile unless the church was restored. Sultan Jaqmaq
responded in 1443 with kind words and presents but refused to rebuild the
church. Zar'a-Ya'qob replied, warning the Mamluk to cease persecution."
He kept the Egyptian envoys as hostages for two years. 12
These diplomatic exchanges bespeak the Mamluks' relations with
Ethiopia. 13 Although Egypt was Islamic in its culture it was always forced
to deal with the territorial importance of the Nile River. This concern arose
again in the early nineteenth century with the reemergence of Egypt as a
state, simultaneously with the revival of E g y p t ' s special interest in
Ethiopia.
Mamluk Egypt, as distinct from the rest of Islam in the medieval era,
expressed some modest intellectual curiosity in Ethiopia. A book by Ibn
Fadl-Allah al-'Ummari, Masalik al-absar fi mamalik al-amsar (written
between 1342 and 1349) and al-Maqrizi's Book of the True Knowledge of
the History of the Muslim Kings in Abyssinia (written in 1435-1436) are
two important sources for this period. They were both concerned with the
Muslims of the Horn, and in discussing the Muslims they also refer to the
Christian kingdom. However, by expressing any curiosity about Ethiopia at
all, they were the exceptions.
Mamluk E g y p t ' s relations with Ethiopia contributed to Ethiopia's
Golden Age. Emperor Saifa Ar'ad (1344-1371) used Egyptian experts, in
both his political administration and his armed forces. Emperor Yishaq
(1414-1429) was even more fortunate to host a group of Mamluks who had
fled from their rivals in Egypt. The group, led by al-Tabingha, was said to
help the emperor reorganize his army, introduce to Ethiopia the use of
naphtha, and to build an arsenal that produced swords, spears, and other
weapons. A m o n g the refugees f r o m Egypt there was also the Copt ad-
ministrator Fakhr al-Dawla, who helped Yishaq reform his financial sys-
tem. 1 4
The demise of Egypt as a separate political entity following the fall of
the Mamluks in 1517 deprived Ethiopia of the constructive challenge of an
active relationship with an Oriental neighbor. The Ottomans, after a brief
but important period of active interest (which we shall discuss), returned in
the late sixteenth century to the policy of ignoring Ethiopia, with all con-
comitant implications for its premodern history.
THE CHALLENGE OF LOCAL ISLAMIC SULTANATES
Islam in the Horn of Africa and in the Middle East forms two distinct sets
of political cultures and histories. In the East, Islam managed from its earli-
est days to fulfill itself as a dominant political philosophy. In the Horn, in
facing Ethiopia, Islam was less politically cohesive and, indeed, less pow-
erful.
From Muhammad to the abolition in the Middle East of the caliphate in
1924, Islam represented religion and state inseparably. The Islamic state
and empire were not always unified under effective dynasties, but they
were a l w a y s the only l e g i t i m a t e order in the e y e s of M i d d l e Eastern
Muslims. Also, Islam as an Oriental empire, f r o m the failure of Caliph
'Ummar to take Adulis until the advent of the Ottomans, virtually never
even attempted to cross the Red Sea. ('Ummar is said by tradition to have
sworn never to fight again in the sea.) 15 It not only "left alone" Ethiopia, it
also "left alone" the Muslims of the Ethiopian Horn of Africa.
Failing to assert itself in the Horn as an extension of its Oriental politi-
cal order, Islam crossed the Red Sea with traders 1 6 and holy men, rather
than with armies. Even so, the movement was far from a failure. Indeed,
ever since Islam spread in the Horn of Africa in the eighth century it has
competed up to the present time with Ethiopian Christianity over the cultur-
al and political order in Ethiopia and the adjacent areas.
Following the occupation of the Dahlak Islands in 702 Islam continued
to spread during the eighth century down the Red Sea coast to Zeila and
beyond. Zeila became a trading post that helped to diffuse the new faith to
the southern parts of modern Ethiopia. In Zeila, Massawa, and other coastal
towns Arab immigrants settled, and the Arabic language was adopted by
other indigenous groups. These Islamic communities maintained contact
with the spiritual centers of Middle Eastern Islam, like the great madrasa of
a l - A z h a r in C a i r o , the h o l y c i t i e s of M e c c a a n d M a d i n a , a n d e v e n
Damascus. They also coordinated the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj,
an institution central for the spreading of Islamic influence. In al-Azhar of
Cairo there was established a special riwaq (literally, a hall; an institution
devoted to the support of students of the madrasa) called Riwaq al-jabar-
tiyya in which several notable Islamic scholars emerged from these towns
over the centuries (the most f a m o u s being the early nineteenth-century
Egyptian historian 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti). 1 7 This connection between
the elite of the coastal towns of the Horn and al-Azhar in Cairo would last,
as we shall see later, to b e c o m e r e l e v a n t to the e m e r g e n c e of t o d a y ' s
Eritrean nationalist movement. But the peoples of the interior who came
under the Islamic influence f r o m the coast did not adopt Arabic: Arabic
was usually spread where migrating tribes from Arabia served as a cultural
and military backbone for the Islamic Middle Eastern empire. In the Horn
of Africa and the hinterland of southern Ethiopia this was never the case (I
shall underline the significance of this fact in discussing twentieth-century
history). The indigenous peoples, be they Sidama peoples or Afar (like the
Somalis in the coast), preserved their languages and their ethnic identity.
Their adoption of Islam was shallow. For example, they barely developed
the Islamic educational system based on quranic schools, nor did they, with
the notable e x c e p t i o n of the t o w n of Harar, d e v e l o p urban centers, so
essential for the spread of a universal message such as that of Islam. But
Islam in the hinterland proved useful in converting the traditional political
organization of the Sidama into political principalities under continuous
dynasties.
From the eighth century to the sixteenth there existed at least fourteen
such Islamic political entities on the territory spreading inland f r o m the
coast into southern and southwestern Ethiopia.
The history of these principalities was reconstructed by scholars such
as E. Cerulli, S. Trimingham, Taddesse Tamrat, Zahir Riyad, J. Cuoq, and
more recently by U. Braukamper, and 'Abd al-Halim M u h a m m a d Rajab. 1 8
The detailed story is outside our scope. Generally, the most important prin-
cipalities were Shoa (from 897 to the end of the thirteenth century), Ifat
( 1 2 8 5 - 1 4 1 5 ) , and Adal ( 1 4 1 5 - 1 5 7 7 ) . T h e Islam they adopted failed to
unite them, and they fought each other almost constantly. Islam was more
of a success as a political identity when they faced Ethiopia, for as the
Christian kingdom moved southward, and particularly after the rise of the
Solomonic dynasty, the collision was inevitable.
From the point of view of Ethiopian history the two and one-half cen-
turies of conflict with these Islamic principalities was of great importance.
Ethiopia was invariably the victor and the conqueror of the enemy territo-
ries. T h e conflict provided a continuing challenge that turned Ethiopia's
kings into "kings of k i n g s " and emperors. T h e conquests gave Ethiopia
some access to Red Sea commerce 1 9 (an access that had been lost since the
fall of A k s u m in the tenth century). T h e Ethiopian Church was revitalized
because of the stimulus of a religious confrontation and because of the
opportunities to spread the word and extend its chain of monasteries into
new lands.
Victories and expansion to the south thus contributed to the restitution
of a central imperial authority, combined with the spiritual and political

strength of a revitalized church. In terms of cultural and political creativity,
this was, indeed, the Golden Age of Ethiopian history. The extent of the
revival was such that Ethiopia was able to return to the north and attempt to
regain its place as a maritime power once again. Emperor Zar'a-Ya'qob
(1434-1468), reoccupied Massawa (after it had been temporarily taken by
'Amda-Zion [1314-1344]) and made the Muslim Amir Dahlak his tributary.
The entire region of the present province of Tigre, combined with the pre-
sent C h r i s t i a n T i g r e a n - p o p u l a t e d r e g i o n s in E r i t r e a (the d i s t r i c t s of
Hamasien, Serai, and Akelle Guzai), were known as Ethiopia's Bahr Midir
(the land of the sea), headed by a provincial ruler (bahr negash, literally a
"ruler of the sea"). 2 0
Enjoying stability and their military superiority over their local Islamic
neighbors, Ethiopians of this Golden Age developed their own concept of
Islam as r e f l e c t e d in the e m p e r o r s ' c h r o n i c l e s . I s l a m i c l e a d e r s w e r e
described as the ultimate embodiment of evil. In the chronicle of 'Amda-
Zion, his rival Sabr al-Din, the sultan of Ifat, is described as: "This rebel
son of a viper, seed of a snake, son of a barbarian, f r o m the origins of
Satan" and "enemy of righteousness who opposes the religion of Christ."
On the Muslims in general this chronicle says: "All Muslims are liars" and
"hyenas and dogs, sons of vipers and seeds of evil ones. . . ." 21 Christian
Ethiopian confidence in facing Islam was also demonstrated at the time in
the contacts with Egypt's Mamluks, as was described above.
What was the role of Middle Eastern Islam in this long chapter? In
their struggle with Christian Ethiopia the Muslim rulers of the southern
principalities sought their own salvation from the Muslim rulers of the
Middle East. Within their limits they sought to establish contacts. Members
of the Walashma' dynasty, which ruled in the principality of Damot and
later in Ifat, were said to be descendants of 'Aqil ibn Abu Talib, the brother
of Caliph 'Ali and of Ja'far ibn Abu Talib, the leader of the sahaba in
Aksum. (According to other tradition they claimed to be descendants of
'Ali's son, Hasan.) The Makhzumi dynasty ruling in Shoa were said to be
descendants of a Meccan tribe (from which had come Khalid ibn al-Walid,
the Muslim conqueror of Syria). 2 2
Islamic holy men, some arriving from Yemen or Arabia, others emerg-
ing from among the indigenous peoples, arose mainly in times of war with
Ethiopia and attempted to unite local Islam and connect it with the rulers of
the M i d d l e E a s t . T w o s u c h c a s e s in p o i n t w e r e Shaikh M u h a m m a d
'Abdallah, who appeared in 1298-1299, and Qadi Salih, who appeared dur-
ing the last days of Sabr al-Din, both in Ifat. 2 3 Of the Adalites, worth men-
tioning is Sultan Badlay's mission of 1452 to Cairo begging help in facing
Zar'a-Ya'qob. He was not answered and was destroyed by the Ethiopian.
Until the end of the fifteenth century, with few exceptions, the rulers of
the Islamic Middle East ignored their fellow Muslims in the Horn. Their
own political order was in a state of crisis. The Abbasid caliphate had long
been a political fiction and its capital of Baghdad as well as other centers
like Damascus were, during this period, subject to Mongol raids. These two
centers of Islamic power were not interested in contact with Ethiopia. The
Mamluks, as we have seen, were not desirous of a relationship with
Ethiopia after having a conflict with it, and the rising Ottomans were still
busy c o n q u e r i n g C o n s t a n t i n o p l e and w a g i n g jihad in E u r o p e . The
Ottomans of this period, until their occupation of Egypt in 1517, knew
nothing of Muslims fighting Ethiopians beyond the Red Sea. In the Arabic
literature of the period as well as in later publications, (as distinct from lit-
erature of today's radical Islam) 24 the Muslims of the Horn principalities
were often referred to as the "Muslims of al-habasha."25 As "habasha,"
they were hardly worthy of interest. Indeed, leaders of Islam in Ethiopia
from Badlay to the present who hope for politicizing Islam in the Horn at
the expense of Ethiopian integrity, yearn for the Middle East to come for-
ward to help them. Such help has never arrived on time. At least not yet.
Not that Middle Eastern Muslims were always so indifferent. When it
suited their purposes they put tradition aside and did intervene in Ethiopian
affairs. But occupying Ethiopia in the name of Islam was not a goal for the
Middle Easterners, and their occasional interventions were never seriously
coordinated with the efforts of local Muslims.
THE TRAUMA OF GRAGN
m
AND THE DIPLOMACY OF HABESH
The events unfolding throughout the second and third quarters of the six-
teenth century present a story of intense Islamic anti-Ethiopian effort. First,
local Islam united in the south and launched a devastating jihad on
Ethiopia. Then, the Ottomans entered the scene and occupied the northern
coast of the country. But, though effective enough to be the major trauma
in Ethiopian history, the Islamic assault lacked strategic coordination
between the local and the Middle Eastern Muslim centers of power.
AHMAD GRAGN, ETHIOPIA, AND THE MIDDLE EAST
The first decades of the sixteenth century were marked by a revival of

Islam as a politically unifying factor in the Middle East. The revival was
diverted into external jihadi efforts. The Ottomans fought in Europe, the
P e r s i a n S a f f a w i d s in the C a u c a s u s , and the M a m l u k s a g a i n s t the
Portuguese, who had penetrated the Red Sea as they worked to solidify
their control over their newly discovered sea route to India.
A contemporaneous awakening of Islamic zeal in Arabia motivated
holy men and ashraf (that is, members of leading Arab families who were
descendants of the Prophet's family and tribe) to migrate from the southern
Arab Peninsula. Their destination was the other shore of the Red Sea, and
from 1 4 9 0 to 1540, as described by B . G. Martin 1 and 'Abd al-Halim
Rajab, 2 many such individuals from Yemen, Hijaz, and especially from
Hadrmawt reached Zeila and traveled inland to Harar and into the various
Islamic emirates. (Martin mentions members of such Hadrami families as
Ba 'Alawi al-Husayni and al-Shatiri.) Their influence was most significant
in Harar, the only major urban center in the hinterland, which in the thir-
teenth century had been reorganized as an Islamic center of learning by a
pioneer of Sufism in the region, Shaikh Abadir of the Qadiriyya order.
In Harar, the now revitalized religious spirit served as a background
for a revolution. The Walasma' sultans were ignored by the newcomers
from Arabia and soon disappeared altogether. Political power shifted into
29
the hands of military-religious leaders allied with the holy men. One of
these, Amir Mahfuz of Zeila, restored a new spirit of anti-Ethiopian jihad.
He was in t o u c h with the amir of M e c c a , the Sharif B a r a k a t II
(1495-1522), who had managed to control the Hijaz and spread the word of
Islamic militancy beyond the Red Sea. Amir Mahfuz proclaimed himself an
imam, hoisted Islamic holy-war flags, and erected velvet holy-war tents
f r o m A r a b i a in his c a m p . He even s c o r e d s o m e v i c t o r i e s over the
Ethiopians before he was killed by Emperor Lebna Dengel in 1516. It was
his son-in-law, Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, nicknamed Gragn (the left-handed)
who managed (from 1525) to unite around Harar and under the banners of
jihad all of Islam of southern Ethiopia.
The contemporary Yemeni (from Jizan) chronicler of Ahmad Gragn,
Shihab al-Din Ahmad bin 'Abd al-Qadir, better known as 'Arab Faqih,
emphasizes repeatedly in his Futuh al-habasha (History of the conquest of
Ethiopia) that jihad is central to, indeed, the essence of Islam. 3 He also
stresses the direct daily contact between the imam and the Arab 'ulama
(learned holy men), and in one passage reveals the way these holy men
legitimized the anti-Ethiopian jihad. Two of them recount the story of a
vision experienced by Yunis al-'Arabi:
A s I was sleeping one night, I suddenly saw the Prophet, peace and prayer
be upon him. 'Ummar bin al-Khattab was standing to his right, Abu Bakr
to his left, and 'Ali bin Abi Talib in front of him. And in front of 'Ali there
s t o o d Imam A h m a d ibn Ibrahim. A n d I a s k e d him [the Prophet]: Oh
M e s s e n g e r of God, w h o is this man in front of 'Ali? And he, peace and
prayer upon him, said: This is the man by w h o m G o d will bring peace and
Islam [yuslimu] to the land of the Habasha.4
Ahmad Gragn's was an Islamic revolution in full. 5 He assumed the

title of Imam, which appears to indicate a Zaydi-Yemeni influence. He suc-
ceeded in combining religious zeal with military leadership and attracted
many Muslims of the region: the Sidama of the interior and the Afar as well
as the Somalis. The latter had converted in previous centuries, and Ahmad
himself could have been a Somali, an Afar, or even an Arab—in the revolu-
tion he led, his exact origins were meaningless, for with the new Islamic
unity, ethnicity and language were rendered marginal. The later controver-
sy over Gragn's origin 6 is insignificant. In his time and place he was noth-
ing but the imam of Islam. He was, of course, also al-Ghazi, the conqueror.
Gragn's conquest of Ethiopia needs no retelling. The Ethiopian king-
dom had been weakening as Islam united, seeking its destruction and its
replacement. Muslim nomads were hungry for the richer upland pastures, 7
and their new movement led by the holy men and commanded by the imam
turned into a successful jihad. The Islamic army conquered Shoa in 1529,
Amhara in 1531, and Tigre in 1535. Emperor Lebna Dengel, some of his
family captured and sent to Yemen, fled from one mountain top to another
GRAGN & HABESH 31
and died in 1540, as the whole country was virtually conquered. Thus, for
the local Muslims the futuh of Ethiopia was accomplished: a conquest that
opened the country for full integration into the Land of Islam.
Ethiopia's conquest by Ahmad Gragn was surely the single most
important chapter in Ethiopia's long history. It was a far more traumatic
experience than even Mussolini's conquest of Ethiopia in 1936-1941. 8 By
Ethiopian records nine out of every ten Christians were forced to convert to
Islam. The destruction of cultural assets and national pride was immense. 9
"The very texture of Ethiopian civilization was being torn into a thousand
pieces in the course of this era of pillage." 10
The implications in terms of Ethiopians' concept of Islam were far
reaching. If the sahaba story was the formative episode for the Middle
Easterners as they viewed Ethiopia, Gragn was the central experience for
the Ethiopians. From that sixteenth century event until today the idea that
Islam, once politically revitalized, could well unite to destroy their national
existence, has been an integral and central part of Ethiopian consciousness.
A sixteenth-century Ethiopian chronicler and poet prayed: "May God exalt-
ed take vengeance on the house of Mujahid [that is, he who wages the
jihad] for a thousand generations." A few modern Ethiopian scholars and
historians still call this chapter "Ethiopia's holocaust." 11
Ethiopian fear of Islamic unity focuses on the idea that local Islam
always contains the potential of being supported by, indeed, even allied
with, the mighty Middle East. This fear, as we shall see, would turn into a
central factor in Ethiopian history. During the Gragn's conquests, however,
such an Islamic unity did not exist.
In general, Gragn'& was an effort by a united local Islamic front with
the backing of the Arab Peninsula only. This backing was certainly impor-
tant. According to Martin, the sharif of Mecca, a major authority in
Islam, was involved in sending holy men and arms. 12 Gragn possessed at
least one cannon, some two hundred firearms, and a similar number of
trained warriors f r o m beyond the Red Sea. It was enough to destroy
Ethiopia.
The cannon and firearms that Gragn used were newly introduced to the
area. They had been brought to Arabia by the Ottomans, the emerging great
power of Islam. By the time Gragn was launching his jihad in Ethiopia, the
Ottomans were already the masters of the Middle East. After two centuries
of successful holy wars in Europe, during which they had perfected their art
of cannon warfare and use of firearms, the Ottomans turned to occupy and
reunite the "land of Islam." They were in the process of creating the
strongest Islamic empire, and one of the largest in history. It brought them
into direct contact with Ethiopia.
In 1517 Sultan Selim the Terrible captured Egypt and established a
navy in the Red Sea. His successor, Suliman the Magnificent (1520-1566),
the greatest of the Ottomans, annexed the whole of North Africa (with the
exception of Morocco, which prevented the Ottomans from entering the

ocean). He also returned to the Red Sea seeking to defeat his great rivals,
the Portuguese. His navy clashed with the Portuguese, who had penetrated
the Red Sea in 1502, and engaged in decisive sea battles on at least five
occasions between 1520 and 1555. In 1538, when Gragn was solidifying
his control over Ethiopia, the Ottomans appeared to be on the threshold of a
strategic victory. They sent their Red Sea navy to India under the command
of the governor of Egypt, Suliman Pasha. En route, Suliman captured
Yemen and Aden. In India the local Muslims betrayed Suliman, and he was
defeated by the Portuguese. The latter retaliated by launching a daring cam-
paign into the Red Sea, which proved to be unsuccessful.
The mighty Ottomans, in a sea war, paid little attention to Ahmad
Gragn and his Ethiopian jihad. When in 1538 Imam Ahmad appealed to the
new Ottoman pasha in Zabid, Yemen, for military aid to effectuate the
Islamization of Ethiopia, he asked for three thousand men. Gragn promised
in return his allegiance to the Ottomans once he fully stabilized his new
Islamic entity in the Horn. 13 But the Ottoman commander in Yemen was
too busy fighting against the Zaydis in San'a to care greatly what happened
in Ethiopia. 1 4 He gave Gragn nine hundred trained warriors—Arabs,
Albanians, and Turks—as well as ten cannons. Although an impressive
force, it was nothing compared with what the Ottomans might have dis-
patched had they identified with the cause of jihad in Ethiopia. 15
The Ottoman failure to help Gragn to a final victory of Islam stands in
contrast to the fact that the Portuguese expeditionary force to the Red Sea
did land in Massawa to rescue Christian Ethiopia. Headed by Christopher
da Gama, four hundred highly trained Portuguese soldiers helped Emperor
Galadewos to recoup his strength. Da Gama himself was captured and exe-
cuted in August 1542, and Gragn, overconfident, sent the Ottoman contin-
gent together with da Gama's head to the pasha in Yemen. Dispensing with
Ottoman help proved premature. A few months later, on 21 February 1543,
in the battle of Zantara, Gragn himself was killed. The entire local Islamic
enterprise, losing its leader and lacking Ottoman support and interest, col-
lapsed. The remnants of the Islamic armies of Gragn returned to Harar.
Gragn's successor, Nur al-Din, assumed the title of Amir of the Believers
and built walls around the city. In 1559 he even dared to venture out of his
defenses, attacking Ethiopia's Emperor Galadewos and killing him in bat-
tle.
By that time, the Ottomans had already become interested in Ethiopian
affairs and in 1557 landed in Massawa. They were concerned with their
own strategic goals and did not attend to Nur al-Din and Harar. However,
they did save the town for Islam. Their landing in Massawa attracted
Ethiopia to the north, and it was the Oromos, the new invaders from the
south, not Christian Ethiopians, who captured Harar. In 1577 the political
center of the Adals moved to the remote oasis of Awsa, in the land of the
GRAGN & HABESH 33
Afar, and Harar remained under a local dynasty, a small center of Islam in
the midst of Oromo territory.
As Harar declined, the memory of Ahmad Gragn's jihad faded. It
meant little to the Muslims of the Ottoman Middle East. But to the Muslims
in the Horn of Africa, Gragn became their greatest historical hero. In
Middle Eastern medieval literature, by contrast, he is hardly mentioned.
The manuscript of Futuh al-habasha (The conquest of Ethiopia) written by
'Arab Faqih was never completed, and it was little known. A summary was
published for Middle Eastern Muslims and Arabs in 1933 by Shakib
Arslan16 (on whom I shall elaborate later). In 1904 a high-ranking Ottoman
official visiting Ethiopia, Sadiq al-'Azm, the author of Rihlat al-habasha,
was knowledgeable enough to lecture to his Ethiopian hosts on the history
of Islam and Ethiopia. He knew only little about Gragn, about whom he
was curious.17 The Turkish historian C. Orhonlu, who worked extensively
in Istanbul's archives on the history of the Ottomans and Ethiopia, found
there only brief mention of Gragn.18 Radical Muslims today lament the fact
that no significant contact existed between Middle Eastern Islam and
Ahmad Gragn's jihad,19 for the Ottomans were hardly interested in a holy
war against Ethiopia.
THE OTTOMANS AND THE HABESH EYALETI
The Ottomans soon became interested in occupying a part of Ethiopia. In

1555, after another frustrating clash with the Portuguese navy, it became
clear to the Ottomans that they were not going to dominate the sea route to
India. They decided instead that they wanted to control at least the Middle
East trade route to the Far East and sought to solidify their position in the
Red Sea. For this purpose, they established Habesh Eyaleti as their
province of Ethiopia.
A second reason for this decision was that the Ottomans, following the
European discovery of America, were now desperate to discover new
sources of gold and silver. In 1551 they had occupied Tunisia for that pur-
pose and now they sought access to Ethiopia's minerals.
Habesh was the Ottoman term referring to all the territory lying to the
south of Egypt, east to the Nile and down to the land of the Zanj. 20 The
Ethiopian project was therefore more of an Egyptian-Ottoman enterprise
than a matter of international political strategy planned by Istanbul. In 1555
Suliman Pasha, the governor of Egypt, entrusted the conquest of Habesh to
one of his generals, Ozdemir Pasha (previously an aide to the governor of
Zabid in Yemen with whom Gragn had been in contact, and later the con-
queror of San'a in 1547). Ozdemir's first move was to march in 1555 from
Egypt down the Nile and capture the sultanate of the Funj. He then had to
return to Egypt and in the same year landed in Suakin (which had been in
Ottoman hands since 1517). In 1557 he proceeded to Massawa leading

three thousand soldiers, established his headquarters there, and ascended
the escarpment to Debaroa, the capital of Bahr Midir, Ethiopia's coastal
province. 21 Debaroa was taken easily because the Bahr Negash Yishaq was
at that time accompanying Emperor Galadewos in his campaign against
Harar. Ozdemir Pasha erected a tower and built a wall around Debaroa, in
the midst of which he also constructed a mosque. He then proclaimed the
establishment of a new Ottoman province, the eyalet of Habesh. The
proclamation, officially made on 5 July 1557, was significant. Eyalet was
the term used for the basic Ottoman provincial unit and was applied to enti-
ties such as Egypt, Damascus, or the Hijaz. The entire empire, stretching
from near Vienna to the borders of Morocco, was divided at the time into
only twenty-five such units. The establishment of Habesh as an eyalet,
itself divided into five sanjaqs—Suakin, Massawa, Arkiko, Zeila, and Jidda
on the opposite shore, complete with a supreme qadi (residing in Suakin)—
was a clear indication of an intention to control the country permanently.
However, soon afterward (in 1559), Ozdemir died of sunstroke, and Bahr
Negash Yishaq returned and forced the Ottoman garrison from Debaroa. 22
An Ottoman conquest of Ethiopia, or of some hinterland for Massawa on
the Ethiopian Plateau, was never to materialize.
From the available information it is not clear whether the whole idea of
Habesh was really adopted at the time by Istanbul. It seems far more likely,
judging by the fact that the resources allocated for the enterprise came from
Egypt and that Ozdemir as well as all governors who were later to engage
in enterprises directed against Ethiopia were from Egypt, 23 that the enter-
prise was a local initiative of the pasha of Egypt rather than a full-scale
imperial effort. Two years after the death of Ozdemir, his son, 'Uthman,
was sent from Egypt to replace him. His first act was to contact the bahr
negash and make a treaty with him.
During the next thirty years, from 1559 to 1588, the Ottoman effort
was not to occupy Ethiopia but to return from Massawa to Debaroa. It
appears that they concluded (as would the Italians centuries later) that they
should control some of the highlands in order to secure their hold on the
coast. It is hardly conceivable that they desired or planned anything more
than that.
If the Ottomans had desired to occupy all of Ethiopia they would have
had to muster a huge army. In the 1550s they were, at least in terms of
ground forces, the strongest military power on earth. But it is apparent that
they confined themselves to a Red Sea province having the necessary hin-
terland. In any event their Habesh enterprise was by no means a matter of
an anti-Christian jihad. They were not aiming at the Islamization of the
country. Indeed, in the large territories the Ottomans had captured in east-
ern E u r o p e , w h e r e they would r e m a i n f o r s o m e f o u r c e n t u r i e s , the
Ottomans refrained (for practical reasons mentioned in Chapter 1) from
GRAGN & H A B E S H 35
Islamizing Greeks, Serbians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, and others. In Habesh

they were not seeking the spread of Islam but rather promoting their own
political interests.
Once the Ottomans presented themselves in Ethiopia as participants in
a strategic game rather than as religious warriors, they were free to play
politics. Their trump card was Bahr Negash Yishaq. 24 By the time Ozdemir
invaded in 1557, Bahr Negash Yishaq had long since acquired his reputa-
tion as an Ethiopian patriot. His northern province was the only one Gragn
had not managed to destroy. And it was through this territory and Yishaq's
personal mediation that the Portuguese came and helped in reuniting the
land against Gragn. Although Yishaq's father and brother had adopted
Islam to enter the service of Gragn, Yishaq remained a loyal and most effi-
cient supporter of Emperor Galadewos. In return he was allowed to exer-
cise an autonomous government over Bahr Midir, the land of the proud
T i g r i n y a speakers ( T i g r a i Tigrinya), the core territory of Aksumite
Ethiopia.
When 'Uthman Pasha contacted Yishaq in 1561 the bahr negash of the
T i g r e a n s was in revolt against the new e m p e r o r of Ethiopia, Minas
(1559-1563). The latter (who as a child had been taken hostage by Gragn
and kept in Yemen) deviated from the internal politics of pragmatic and
flexible decentralism pursued by many successful Ethiopian emperors. He
tried to force a rapid centralization of the government, with the same disas-
trous consequences experienced later by Ethiopian rulers. It led directly to
revolts by various regional leaders resorting to shiftnnet, an Ethiopian
sociopolitical institution of semilegalized defiance of established authority.
We shall return to discuss this central phenomenon and its modern develop-
ment in the context of Ethiopia's twentieth-century relations with the
Middle East.
Like many such rebels, Yishaq found it natural to cooperate with out-
siders against such an emperor. This cooperation was acceptable under the
Ethiopian cultural code, provided that the outsiders were playing a political
game and not threatening Ethiopia's Christian identity.
Yishaq allied himself with 'Uthman Pasha, and they united their
armies to defeat Minas in 1562 in Tigre. Minas fled to Shoa, where he died
the following year. His successor, Emperor Sertsa Dengel (1563-1597)
appeased the bahr negash and restored Tigrean autonomy. Yishaq broke
relations with 'Uthman (he was now supported locally by the Portuguese),
and for a brief time the Ottomans stopped meddling in Ethiopian affairs.
They had their hands full in nearby Yemen, where, upon the death of the
great Sultan Suliman in 1566, the Zaydi tribesmen and their imam had
started a revolt.
Suliman's successor, Selim II (1566-1574), did his best to restore the
Ottoman position in the Red Sea. He sent his emissary and architect, Sinan
Pasha, to quell the Yemenites (he scored a success in 1570), and in January
1568, ordered his pasha to Egypt to start working on the construction of a

c a n a l at the i s t h m u s of S u e z . Sultan Selim w a n t e d to send his
Mediterranean fleet to the Red Sea and then finally defeat the Portuguese in
India. But in 1571, the Ottoman Mediterranean fleet was destroyed at
Lepanto by a coalition of European navies, and the entire project was put
aside. It led to yet another attempt at solidifying the Ottoman hinterland of
Massawa.
Radwan Pasha was sent from Egypt with new forces, and he captured
Debaroa in 1572. Two years later he was evicted from the highlands by
Yishaq. In June 1577 Ahmad Pasha was appointed over Habesh. He came
with substantial forces and eight cannons and, like 'Uthman Pasha sixteen
years earlier, offered an alliance to the bahr negash. The latter, now an
aging man of undiminished ambition, was at the time in disgrace with the
emperor, who was considering abolishing his title and reorganizing the
north. In the ensuing clash (the so-called "Turkish-Ethiopian War") 2 5
Yishaq and Ahmad Pasha were twice defeated by the imperial army that
Sertsa Dengel was able to amass. They were both killed at Addi Quro on 17
December 1578.
Entering Debaroa, the emperor destroyed the town and abolished the
Bahr Midir arrangement that had united the Tigrinya speakers since the
days of Zar'a-Ya'qob. He also assembled the remnants of the local garrison
and built around them the first Ethiopian army unit equipped with firearms.
Its commander held the title of Turk Basha—"the Turkish Pasha"—which
would connote the king's commander of such units until the beginning of
modernization.
An Ottoman force of seven thousand men had to rush from Yemen to
ensure the safety of Massawa. In 1588 the Ottomans managed for a short
time to reoccupy the site of Debaroa. But then they gave up. They confined
themselves to Massawa where they would nominally stay and maintain
Habesh as a sanjaq subordinate to Jidda until the nineteenth century. But in
the seventeenth century they lost all hope of competing on the sea route to
I n d i a , e s p e c i a l l y a f t e r the British and the Dutch had r e p l a c e d the
Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. 26
It has been written that "the Turks made between 1576 and 1579 their
most serious bid to conquer Ethiopia." 27 It has also been observed that for
the Ottomans, Debaroa was the "Poitiers of Ethiopia," 28 referring to the
town in southern France where the Islamic armies of the 'Umayyads invad-
ing from Spain were stopped in 732 from advancing into the heart of
Europe. The analogy is valid only if the Ottomans were truly seeking the
occupation of all of Ethiopia. Orhonlu provided no evidence that this was
the goal of the Ottomans. It appears, rather, that the Habesh enterprise, an
Ottoman Egyptian provincial project, was aimed at Massawa and its hinter-
land; it was never an effort to destroy Ethiopia as a Christian nation.
How the Habesh developments, from the invasion of Ozdemir in 1577
GRACN & HABESH 37
lo the Ahmad Pasha War (the 1578 defeat as it was referred to by the
Ottomans of the time), 29 were conceived in Istanbul we do not know. We
have, however, interesting evidence of what may have been a theoretical
discussion of Ethiopia in the Ottoman court that took place just after the
last failure in 1588 to return to Debaroa. Sultan Murad III (1574-1595)
ordered the preparation of a Turkish translation of an Arabic biography of
Prophet Muhammad (by al-Waqidi). The Turkish version was handed to the
sultan in 1594-1595 complete with illustrations, which provided the only
way to add some contemporary interpretation to the earlier text. Two of the
drawings are of interest to us. 30 One of them accompanies the story of
Muhammad sending the sahaba to al-habasha, the land of justice, and to
the court of Aksum. The drawing depicts the najashi seated with four mem-
bers of the sahaba as they exchanged greetings. The other drawing is of
"Bilal al-habashi" and the sahaba with Bilal (black like the najashi, but not
as dark as Zanj Africans in other drawings), much distinguished as a leader
of Islam.
In the sixteenth century the power of the Ottomans was such that even
the partial effort they made in Habesh may be deemed an Islamic Middle
Eastern threat to Ethiopia. But such a threat was not to be revived before
the nineteenth century. The Ottomans did stay in Massawa, but their history
in their sanjaq of Habesh is of marginal significance. Gradually, with the
loss of any hope to use Massawa as a station en route to India, the
Ottomans lost interest in the region. They stayed there for local commercial
considerations as well as for regulating the Red Sea pilgrimage to Mecca.
Their province of Egypt, the base and reason for Red Sea policies, began
slipping from Ottoman grip, and, torn by its own internal rivalries, briefly
lost its strategic role. In addition, new Islamic movements, such as the ones
which in early sixteenth-century Arabia had influenced events in the
Ethiopian Horn, were not to reappear in this manner until the early nine-
teenth century.
In the first half of the seventeenth century the Ottomans in Massawa
still played an active role in Ethiopian affairs. They were, for example,
involved in the efforts by the Catholic Jesuit missionaries to convert
Emperor Susenius (1608-1632) and reform Ethiopian Christianity. When
the inevitable tension culminated with Emperor Fasiladas's expulsion of
the Catholics in 1632, the Ottomans in Massawa helped Ethiopia briefly
c o u n t e r E u r o p e a n C h r i s t i a n i t y . In 1647 F a s i l a d a s and the pasha in
Massawa agreed that the latter would kill any missionary attempting to
enter Ethiopia. 31 The Ottomans were interested in preventing the strength-
ening of Ethio-European relations as well as the reform and change they
might bring to the country. The significance of the episode from our per-
spective was the extent of Ottoman readiness to legitimize Ethiopia's exis-
tence as a dar al-hiyad, a concept that did not identify with Christian infi-
delity.
The Ottomans, in decline as an effective all-Middle Eastern govern-

ment, in time lost interest in Massawa itself. The town, deprived of its hin-
terland, remained dependent on Ethiopia for water and other basic necessi-
ties. These were usually obtained in return for not damaging Ethiopian
trade and passage. Such a petty game was not important enough to justify a
permanent Ottoman functionary on the spot. Ottoman authority was there-
fore delegated to a "replacer," a na'ib, a title given to a local Beja family
from the nearby town of Arkiko. The na'ib of Arkiko, with nothing but a
poor Ottoman military unit at his disposal, took care of local matters in the
name of the Ottoman Islamic Middle East until the Italian occupation of
Massawa in 1885. 32
Thus, by "leaving the Abyssinians alone," the Ottoman Empire ceased
to have any direct influence on internal Ethiopian matters. Significantly,
there was no important connection between this Islamic Middle Eastern
empire and the process of Islamic conversion by the Oromos during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was a major phenomenon in
Ethiopian history to which I shall soon refer.
The real significance of the Ottoman presence in Massawa lay in its
implications. The Ottomans guarded the gateway of Ethiopia, controlled
the Red Sea, and thus "left" Ethiopia alone. Their presence was efficient
enough to continue Ethiopia's isolation from Europe.
The Ethiopian emperors after Susenius (1608-1632), it is widely
accepted, were for their part ready to close themselves off by withdrawing
into political isolation in the town of Gondar. They resisted change, fearing
the conservative clerics and nobility. But it was even more convenient for
yet another reason. The isolation of the coast by an indifferent neighbor
meant the continuing marginalization, in the Ethiopian context, of the
Tigrean northerners.
The Middle Easterners were ready to see Ethiopia left alone. Indeed,
when Emperor Fasiladas (1632-1667) attempted to reach out to build con-
tacts with the Middle East, his efforts were rebuffed. According to Van
Donzel's analysis, 33 Fasiladas sought contact with Istanbul and even sent
letters to the shah of Persia and the mogul in India. These attempts yielded
nothing of substance.
More significant was Fasiladas's effort to build an alliance with the
Zaydi imams of Yemen. The latter had been successful in 1635 in ousting
the Ottomans from San'a; Fasiladas, much impressed, offered them an
alliance. He wanted not only arms but also an alternative outlet to the
Ottoman-occupied Massawa by way of Beylul and its connection to the
Yemeni port of Mukha. 3 4 In 1642, Fasiladas initiated a correspondence
with Imam al-Mu'ayyad bi-Allah, who would only respond if he believed
that the Ethiopian was considering conversion to Islam. Fasiladas finally
sent a mission to Gondar (1647-1649), headed by the qadi, Hasan bin
Ahmad al-Haymi. When al-Haymi learned that Fasiladas sought only
GRAGN & HABESH 39
friendship, he returned to Yemen. But Fasiladas did not give up and there-
a f t e r sent p r e s e n t s to the imam, now a l - M u a y y a d ' s s u c c e s s o r , al-
Mutawwakil 'Ala-Allah, whose response was categorically negative. In
1651-1652 he wrote to Fasiladas saying the only gift he wished was the
E t h i o p i a n ' s conversion. Citing the najashi episode in the life of the
Prophet, he wrote: "We have forefathers [who acted] like that: Our ances-
tor, the Messenger of God . . . and you have forefathers [who acted] like
that: the najashi."
Then, quoting lengthy passages from Muhammad's letter to Najashi
Ashama, and reproducing the alleged response in which the najashi recog-
nized the Prophet and professed to have adopted Islam, the imam contin-
ued: "Since the matter stands like that, it is our duty to call you to that
which called our forefather, and it is your duty to agree to that which [was]
agreed [to by] your forefather, if God permits. These are, from ourselves
and yourself, the presents and the greatest gifts." 3 5
The imam chose to give weight to that aspect of the najashi legacy that
implied that a Christian Ethiopia was not a legitimate entity unless it
accepted Islam. But the Zaydis never sought influence beyond their moun-
tainous Yemen, and the imam's response to Fasiladas was, in fact, a dis-
missal of Fasiladas's desire for cooperation.
Ethiopia, according to the analysis of Abir, 36 drifted into its "Era of the
Princes" (1769-1855), a long period of renewed isolation, political anar-
chy, and lack of cultural or economic creativity because the Red Sea was
ignored by the Ottomans who, as we saw, isolated Ethiopia and deprived it
of the challenge of international relations. 37
Viewed from the Middle Eastern Ottoman perspective, the sixteenth-
century Islamic encounter with Ethiopia was a story of noncooperation.
There was no significant contact, in terms of a coordinated effort, between
the local Islamic enterprise under Gragn, and the p o w e r f u l Ottoman
empire. Gragn's was a jihadi movement inspired by Islamic awakening in
the Arab Peninsula. The Ottomans neither paid attention to him nor did
they supply him substantially. When the Ottomans finally became interest-
ed in Habesh, it was not in the name of jihad, and Gragn and his movement
had been long dead. And the Ottomans never made a concerted, unified
effort. The eyalet of Habesh had been initiated in Egypt and in the context
of Red Sea affairs. It was not consistently coordinated with Istanbul, which
remained more interested in the maritime struggle over the route to India
than in the affairs of Ethiopia.
However, from the Ethiopian perspective the picture and legacy of the
sixteenth century may be viewed differently. The Ethiopians distinguished,
both contemporaneously and later, between Gragn, the jihadi destroyer of
their country, and Ozdemir, the invader who became an ally of the bahr
negash.38 But the trauma of the sixteenth century was engraved in the
Ethiopian consciousness as the threat of Islamic political unity. It left a
very clear legacy: the idea that local Islam could well eventually reunite,
and with the backing of the Islamic Middle East could again threaten to
annihilate Ethiopia's state and culture.
But, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed no such effort.
The Middle East, under Ottoman decline, had little interest in the Horn
affairs, and the local Muslims had no more Ahmad Gragns or political
unity.
0
THE BEGINNING OF MODERN TIMES:
MUHAMMED 'ALI AND TEWODROS
MUSLIMS A N D I S L A M IN
ETHIOPIA IN LATE MEDIEVAL TIMES
Although the history of Islam in Ethiopia during the periods of Ottoman

disengagement is outside our scope, we must nonetheless turn briefly to
developments before the nineteenth century because they will become
important before our story is over. The periods after the demise of Gragn
were marked by the penetration of Islam into the core of Ethiopia. The con-
quest opened the country to new waves of immigration from the south, and
the remnants of the Muslim invaders—those who preferred to stay—were
not expelled. It has been estimated that by the early seventeenth century no
less than one-third of Ethiopia's population were Jabarti Muslims. 1
The Jabartis were originally Muslims who had emigrated from the ter-
ritories of the Emirate of Ifat, which had also borne the name of Jabarta,
namely, "the burning country." 2 They settled in the highlands of Ethiopia,
mainly integrating into the local communities, occasionally forming their
own communities. Mixing with the indigenous population and spreading
their beliefs, they adopted Ethiopian languages, mainly Amharic. (An older
but rather small Muslim community had lived in Tigre and spoke Tigrinya.
Its origins date to the eighth century, when Dahlak Island was an important
Islamic cultural center. It is still known today as Jabarti.) The Jabartis set-
tled predominantly in urban centers and thrived on commerce, which
required frequent travel to Islamic territories. Commerce happened to be a
profession despised by the Christians. Over time, all Muslims of Ethiopian
origin and speakers of Ethiopian Semitic languages came to be called
Jabarti.
B y the seventeenth century the term Jabarti had changed to connote
religious affiliation in a cultural and a social sense. It lost the political
meaning from the days of the conflict with Adal. In fact, Ethiopian Islam,
since the demise of Gragn, had become largely depoliticized. The Jabartis,
being ethnic Ethiopians and following an Islam that was not based on an
institutionalized quranic educational system, never stood for the political
41
fulfillment of the Islamic identity. Instead, they formed an integral part of

an increasingly diversified Ethiopian society.
The record of Christian-Muslim relations during this period is multi-
faceted. 3 Some contemporary observers reported discrimination against the
Muslims, but others were impressed by the cultural similarities, indeed, the
harmony between the communities. Naturally there were vicissitudes, as
would be expected. For example, in 1647 Emperor Fasiladas allied himself
with the Ottomans against European Catholic meddling in Ethiopia; at the
time he was, as we have seen, seeking to establish ties with the Zaydi imam
of Yemen. The imam's envoy to Gondar (1648), al-Haymi al-Hasan, was
impressed by the thriving Muslim community in the Ethiopian capital. 4
Fasiladas's successor, Emperor Yohannes I (1668-1682), was alarmed
by the extent of the spread of Islam. He convened his nobles and clergy and
declared Islamic segregation, forcing Muslims in Gondar and throughout
the realm to move to separate neighborhoods. Muslims were now also
barred from owning land and from holding high offices, their leaders being
reduced to the position of nagadra, a functionary in charge of commerce
and markets.
Through both contemporaneous literature and popular expressions, we
see an era marked by cultural tension, if not of outright enmity. In daily life
Muslims were looked down upon by Christians, who called them eslam or
naggade (trader) with a contemptuous connotation. Christians wore a blue
neck cord, the matab, to distinguish themselves from the Muslims or
pagans, who in some respects were regarded as equally impure. Christians
would not eat from the same table as Muslims. Making love to a Muslim
woman was considered a sin. "The sky has no pillars," according to a say-
ing that succinctly reflects the attitude of the Christians, and "Muslims
have no land." Another saying ridiculed the male Muslim as measuring his
wealth by women instead of by land, as did the Christians. When a
Christian met a Muslim he saluted him with his left hand (instead of the
right one) to show his disrespect. When two Christians quarreled, they were
said to have "become like Christian and Muslim."
Muslims, in their turn, developed similar attitudes. They looked down
on Christians as semipagans. Christian ceremonies of the tabot (the sacred
"ark" carried during festivals in procession around the church) were regard-
ed by Muslims as tantamount to pagan worship. "Instead of cleansing him-
self in the river, the Christian goes to a priest," according to a Muslim say-
ing. 5 We shall return to this t h e m e suggesting uncleanliness in our
subsequent discussion of modern Middle Eastern attitudes.
But beyond these tensions, the general picture was one of functional
coexistence if not of partial assimilation between Muslims and Ethiopian
Christians. The apolitical Muslims even played a constructive role in
Ethiopian economy and society. Their economic contributions as traders
and artisans were obvious. Socially, and even politically, they became inte-
THE BEGINNING OF MODERN TIMES 43
grated into the general Ethiopian social fabric. Because the Jabartis claimed
no ethnic differentiation and used Ethiopian languages, they contributed to
the diversity of Ethiopian culture, rather than polarizing it. Those who
aspired to national leadership had to convert to Christianity, but in lower
regional or state positions and in daily social and economic life, they could
participate as Muslims. Taken as a whole, the general record of Islam with-
in premodern Ethiopian society was one of flexibility and openness. 6 It cer-
tainly compares favorably in terms of religious tolerance with the Ottomans
and with most contemporaneous European empires.
John Markakis found a remarkable symbol for what he calls intimacy
and enmity between the Christian and Muslim communities in Ethiopian
history. He writes:
There is no more poignant illustration of the intimacy and enmity which

characterize the relationship between Christian and M u s l i m communities
in E t h i o p i a n h i s t o r y than the l e g e n d o f the A k s u m i t e e m p e r o r w h o
befriended the disciples of the Prophet. Ethiopian M u s l i m tradition vener-
ates his memory under the name of Ahmad Negash. According to this tra-
dition, Ahmad N e g a s h travelled to M e c c a and espoused Islam. Upon his
return to Ethiopia, he was killed by Christians, and his death is attributed
to the treachery of his Christian w i f e , Maryam. At the top of the hill in the
village of Nagash, near the town of Wukro in the province of Tigre, a
mosque houses the tomb of Ahmad Negash. It is a place of worship for
M u s l i m s in northern Ethiopia and the site of annual pilgrimage. At the
foot of the same hill is a Christian church dedicated to Maryam, w h o is
referred to by the M u s l i m s as "Maryam the traitor." A l t h o u g h the t w o
p l a c e s o f w o r s h i p lie c l o s e to e a c h other, neither is v i s i b l e f r o m the
other—a fact which is regarded as s y m b o l i c of the historic relationship
between Muslim and Christian in northern Ethiopia. 7
Another element that added to the increasing Ethiopian diversity dur-

ing this period were the Oromos (formerly known as the Galla). 8 We have
already seen that the Oromos invaded the Sidama territories of the southern
Islamic emirates, which had been exhausted following the demise of
Gragn. There they settled, mixing with the Sidama, and were influenced by
their political tradition. In the late sixteenth century some of the Oromo
groups—the Wallo, the Raya, and the Yadju—went on to penetrate into the
very heart of the Ethiopian Christian highlands. There they settled, and,
unlike the Jabartis, they retained their ethnic identity and language. 9 During
the course of the eighteenth century, they adopted Islam, further emphasiz-
ing their distinction.
The settling of the Oromos in the very core of Ethiopia was a major
cause of the ensuing period of political disintegration ("the Era of the
Princes")- The Ethiopian political culture was, however, sufficiently flexi-
ble to absorb these highland Oromos into the Ethiopian system. All that
was required was that their leaders superficially adopt Christianity. Relying
on the military power of their Oromo Muslim followers, Oromo chiefs

could thus aspire to fuller political participation. A dynastic family of the
Muslim Yadju Oromos (whose ancestor, 'Ummar Shaikh, was said to have
emigrated from Arabia, arriving with Gragn's army) dominated the late
eighteenth century. Their Ras Ali I (d. 1788), Ras Gugsa (d. 1825), and Ras
Ali II (from 1831) were in their time the most powerful individuals in the
country. They were accepted by an Ethiopia in decline. But then, in the
early nineteenth century, the Middle East re-entered Ethiopian political his-
tory.
THE MIDDLE EAST AND RENEWED SPREAD OF ISLAM
The nineteenth century was a period in which some of the features of the
sixteenth century returned to rekindle the Ethiopian-local Islamic-Middle
Eastern triangular story. Local Islam would again be revitalized in Ethiopia
and its immediate periphery because of a religious reawakening across the
Red Sea in Arabia. And, again, political and military revival in the Middle
East would c o m b i n e with the r e i n v i g o r a t e d local Islam to threaten
Ethiopia's existence. This combination was the danger as viewed by
Christian Ethiopia. In the second half of the century the threat of a reunited
and repoliticized Islam, actual or imagined, was at least as important in
shaping the history of Ethiopia as the new, simultaneous challenge of
Western imperialism.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a revival of Islam in Arabia
was triggered by the Wahhabi-Saudi movement and dynasty in Riyad.
Spreading fundamentalism into the Hijaz, it encouraged the revival of
Sufism (mystical, popular Islam). Tariqas (religious orders) spread through
the preaching of holy men, especially in Mecca. Of special importance was
the work in Mecca of Sayyid A h m a d ibn Idris al-Fasi ( 1 7 6 0 - 1 8 3 7 ) .
Originally from Morocco, he sent his disciples to spread Sufi Islam in
Africa. 10
One of the most prominent of al-Fasi's disciples was Muhammad ibn
'Ali al-Sanusi (1787-1859), who established a chain of Sufi tariqas as well
as a movement that was to constitute the backbone of the modern Islamic
identity of Libya. Another student of al-Fasi, Shaikh Muhammad 'Uthman
al-Mirghani (1793-1853), worked in northern Sudan and areas in today's
western Eritrea beginning in 1817. It was due to his activities and to the
Sufi m o v e m e n t he e s t a b l i s h e d , the M i r g h a n i y y a (also c a l l e d the
Khatmiyya), that local tribes (some of whom had practiced Christianity)
converted to Islam. The most important of these were the Bani 'Amir clans,
which were the strongest in eastern Eritrea and were to play a major role in
the later emergence of the Eritrean nationalist movement.
The son of Muhammad 'Uthman al-Mirghani, Hasan al-Mirghani (who
died in 1869), established the headquarters of the Mirghaniyya in the town

of Kassala and entered, as we shall see, into the service of Egypt. 11 Other
"holy families" preached Islam at the same period in the area of what
would become Eritrea. One of these was the Ad-Shaikh family, claiming
Qurayshi origin and led at the time by Shaikh al-Amin ibn Hamad. 12
During this period, Islam was also being revived in the south, in the
areas of the defunct medieval Islamic emirates. The Oromos, who had
swept over these territories in the late sixteenth century and who had inher-
ited the political institutions from the Sidama, had established five such
entities in southeastern Ethiopia. These were Jimma, Gera, Guma, Limmu-
Enraya, and Gomma. At the end of the first half of the nineteenth century
their leaders came under the influence of Islamic preachers from Ethiopia
itself and from Yemen and the Hijaz. As a result, they adopted Islam. Islam
helped to sanction the new sultans and kings, especially as the inhabitants
followed their leaders by converting to Islam, as well. 1 3 The spread of
Islam was also on the rise because of the growing demand in Arabia for
Habasha slaves. In 1857 when slavery was abolished in the Ottoman
Empire the Arab Peninsula was exempted from the decree of abolition, and
the Habasha—mostly Oromo, Gurage, Walamo, and Kaffa—remained the
best merchandise. 14 Since Islam forbids the enslaving of Muslims it was
widely believed that conversion was the best preventive measure.
The most prosperous of these kingdoms was Jimma. The kingdom was
established in about 1830 by Sanna Abba Jifar who, having united many of
his Oromo followers, adopted Islam and encouraged its spread. He man-
aged to convert the merchants and centralize his administration. When he
died in 1855 Jimma Abba Jifar, as he came to be known, bequeathed to his
successor a thriving sultanate. In southeastern Ethiopia the revival of Islam
culminated in the reconstitution of Harar as the main center of Islamic dif-
fusion. 15 The town again attracted 'ulama (learned holy men) from Arabia
and gradually began to spread Islam among the Arusi, 16 the Borana, and the
Leqa.
The growth of Islam in Ethiopia during the first half of the nineteenth
century was a far greater threat to the Christian character of Ethiopia than it
had been during the similar period prior to Ahmad Gragn's destruction.
This situation was so for at least four reasons.
First, in the nineteenth century, Muslims held power in the very heart
of Ethiopia—among the Oromos of the highlands, in Wallo and Bagemdir.
(By Ethiopian oral tradition Ras 'Ali II was said to have contemplated
renewing the cult of Gragn by organizing ceremonies at Gragn's presumed
burial place.) 17
Second, Islam was spreading now through learned men and Sufi lead-
ers, who were now establishing quranic education in mosques and had their
centers in towns like Harar, Kassala, Massawa, and even in Gondar. 18
Third, Islam was now on the rise because of the Muslims' monopoly of
trade. Trade as well as 'ulama were also helping to increase the communi-
cation among these various centers of Islam. 19
And fourth, Ethiopia itself, as a state based on the institution of the
emperorship, was now in a clear decline. The emperors, by now political
nonentities, resided in Gondar under the direct control of Ras 'Ali and his
Muslim Oromos. The various provincial Christian centers, in contrast to the
Muslims, were drifting into regional isolation. And, as occurred in the six-
teenth century, the Middle East now witnessed a revival of its political
energy, a revival now centered on Egypt rather than Istanbul. In the nine-
teenth century, the attention of Cairo was inevitably drawn to the Red Sea
and the Nile.
MUHAMMAD 'ALI AND ETHIOPIA
The Ottoman pasha of the eyalet of Egypt, Muhammad 'Ali (1805-1849),

was the first and perhaps most effective modernizer of Egypt. 20 By the late
1820s he had introduced Western military methods and had created in his
province the largest and the best armed forces in the Ottoman Empire,
stronger even than the army of his official master, the Ottoman sultan.
Imitating Western ways, Muhammad 'Ali also introduced reforms in the
Egyptian economy (by introducing the cultivation of cotton) and its soci-
ety. In order to build a new, modern armed force, he had to move away
from old Ottoman traditions and recruit into his army the Arabic-speaking
peasants of Egypt. He thus initiated the process of creating a modern
Egyptian society and state, a process still going on in our own day, and one,
as we shall see, with implications for Ethiopian history.
In his early years Muhammad 'Ali still had to answer to Istanbul. In
1813, Istanbul ordered his forces, which were still traditional, premodern,
and modest, to Arabia to quell the Wahhabiyya. Five years later the pasha's
attention was again focused on the Red Sea when the sultan gave his son
Ibrahim the eyalet of Jidda including the sanjaq of Habesh. A small
Egyptian garrison was then stationed in Massawa, 21 but the entire enter-
prise was of little importance. With the goal of building larger forces,
Muhammad 'Ali sent his forces to the Sudan. He also sought gold and min-
erals, which were presumed to be available in eastern Sudan, but even
stronger was his desire for black slaves to serve as the backbone of his
Egyptian army. In 1820-1821, he occupied Sudan and established the capi-
tal of Khartoum in 1830.
The occupation of Sudan and of Massawa also caused increased
Islamic involvement on the Ethiopian periphery. We have already seen that
the work of Shaikh Muhammad 'Uthman al-Mirghani among the Bani
'Amir had been carried out under the auspices of the Egyptian administra-
tion in Sudan. In 1840, in order to control the region and the Bani 'Amir
more successfully, the Egyptians established the town of Kassala as the

c a p i t a l of t h e i r new d i s t r i c t of T a k a and the h e a d q u a r t e r s of the
Mirghaniyya. At the same time an increased number of Muslim youngsters
began attending school in riwaq al-Jabartiyya, the corridor of the Cairo
madrasa of al-Azhar designated from medieval times as the center of
Muslim Habasha students from Massawa or Zeila. The na 'ib of Arkiko also
became involved as many Eritrean tribes joined Islam. All of these simulta-
neous movements caused the imperialist newcomers to the Red Sea region,
the British and the French, to suspect that Muhammad 'Ali intended to
occupy Ethiopia, a notion that remained alive for more than two decades.
Europeans warned the pasha not to threaten Christian Ethiopia, and
Muhammad 'Ali repeatedly declared that he never planned to do so.
At this time, new tensions were arising on the Sudanese-Ethiopian bor-
der stemming from differences in the understanding of the concept of a bor-
der. The Egyptians had adopted the Western concept of a demarcated line,
which they were now pushing inland, claiming territories not inhabited by
Habashis. The Ethiopians, by contrast, conceived of a border as the limit of
their raiding and taxing abilities. The tension that inevitably arose occa-
sionally took the form of serious clashes, including the harboring of
Sudanese rebels by Ethiopian chiefs from Tigre or Bagemdir, and of
Egyptian punitive expeditions. 22
What rendered the situation more dramatic was the correspondence
between Ras 'Ali in Gondar and the Egyptians. The ras, only superficially a
Christian and the leader of the militarily powerful Oromo Muslims domi-
nating the heart of Ethiopia, was reported by many contemporary sources to
have invited Egyptian interference in Ethiopia. He is also said to have
urged M u h a m m a d 'Ali to refrain f r o m dispatching a new abun from
Alexandria to Ethiopia, a post that was essential to the Christian spiritual
life in Ethiopia. No new abun was sent for an entire decade (from 1831 to
1841). The documentary evidence provided by Rubenson of this correspon-
dence clearly indicates that Ras 'Ali conceived of himself (or at least that
he wanted Muhammad 'Ali to think of him) as a Muslim sultan of al-
Habasha, who yearned to solidify this position and rid himself of the rival
Christian regional warlords with the help of Muhammad 'Ali. 23 However,
as had occurred in earlier centuries, the Middle East Muslims were not
forthcoming with their assistance. 24 "In spite of the disorder in Ethiopia,
and the tension between Christians and Muslims in some parts, the Ethio-
Egyptian problem was basically a question of border conflict. . . not one of
interference in the internal affairs of the country." 25
Muhammad 'Ali's chief, and perhaps only, interest was to inherit the
all-Middle Eastern power of the Ottoman Empire, which he both defied
and challenged. By 1824, he understood the futility of building a janissary-
like traditional Ottoman army of Sudanese slaves. Instead, he began con-
scripting his own peasants en masse. With his newly formed, Western-style
army and navy, he began in 1824 to involve himself in the internal affairs
of the Ottoman Empire. First, he diverted his new army to help Sultan
Mahmud II in facing the Greek nationalists' uprising (1824-1827), and
then to undermine M a h m u d ' s power. For this purpose he sent his son
Ibrahim to invade Syria (1831-1832), to advance into Anatolia, and ulti-
mately, in 1833, to defeat the Ottoman imperial forces. Halted only by the
European ultimatum, the pasha's army remained in Syria for the next six
years.
Like previous Islamic rulers, Muhammad 'Ali's theater of operation
was the Middle Eastern lands of Islam. He wanted to placate the Europeans
in order to win their approval of the strategic change he sought for the
Middle East. He wanted to move the region's center from the shores of the
Dardanelles to Cairo. He knew the British, fearing that the Dardanelles
would fall into Russian hands, would be unlikely to agree. Nonetheless, he
took a risk, and, in 1840 (after once again defeating Sultan M a h m u d ' s
army), lost all he had won when the British army forced him to retreat from
Syria.
At the height of his power Muhammad 'Ali was never interested in
Ethiopia, and in any case he would not risk a rupture with Christian Europe
over Ethiopia. When he lost power he recognized Ethiopia as a Christian
entity. In 1841 he finally relented, and permitted an abun to depart for
Ethiopia from Alexandria. 26 This abun, Abuna Salama, was to become a
pivotal figure in the unfolding saga of Christian Ethiopian revival. In the
same year the Egyptians evacuated Massawa. They returned for a two-year
stay in 1846-1848, but by then the aging pasha was too senile to initiate
any further activity.
M u h a m m a d 'Ali's importance to Ethiopian history was great. He
revived Egypt, turning it from an Ottoman eyalet into a state that has
become a leader and the center of Middle Eastern affairs ever since. Egypt,
now an independent actor, pursued Red Sea and Nile policies that the
Ottomans or earlier Middle Eastern dynasties had long neglected. From
Muhammad 'Ali's conquest of Sudan in 1820, Ethiopia remained signifi-
cant to Egypt.
By increasing Egyptian international standing, Muhammed 'Ali gave
Ethiopia the long-needed challenge in its external relations. He provided
both an incentive and the model. The first was the traumatic fear he incited
in Ethiopia of Islamic local and Middle Eastern unity. The second was
M u h a m m a d ' A l i ' s centralized g o v e r n m e n t , which would later serve
Ethiopia's first modernizing emperor, Tewodros II, as a model.
TEWODROS II AND THE LEGACY OF MUHAMMAD 'ALI
Emperor Tewodros II (1855-1868) and Muhammad 'Ali are often com-

pared as the initiators of modern eras in their respective countries. 27 By the
time Tewodros assumed power in Ethiopia, Muhammad 'Ali had been dead
for six years. Even so, the general programs created by Emperor Tewodros
II were based on the assumption that he would rebuild Ethiopia fighting a
formidable, threatening Muslim power. Muhammad 'Ali, as we have seen,
never lived up to this Ethiopian image of him. His immediate successors,
the contemporaries of Tewodros, were not ready to provide any such chal-
lenge. Indeed, they even sought his friendship.
Tewodros was born Lij Kassa Hailu, a local contender to overseeing in
Quara, west of Lake Tana, a territory that had been in dispute with the
Egyptian Sudanese authorities. The monastery he joined in his childhood
was pillaged on one occasion by invading Egyptians, and this event was
interpreted by later scholars as inculcating in him a lifelong anti-Muslim
sentiment. Recently discovered documents, however, shatter this assump-
tion. They reveal that in 1847 Lij Kassa, by now controlling much of the
territory in question and on his way to assuming power at the center of
Ethiopia, was not a fanatical enemy of Islam. At that time, still eager for
domestic leadership, he corresponded with the Egyptians offering friend-
ship. In his letters he even pretended to be close to Islamic culture if not a
Muslim himself. 28 It is clear that he studied Arabic, a language he used, as
did many other Christian Ethiopian leaders of that time, as the main means
of communication with the outside world. 29
But when Kassa came to power he adopted an anti-Islamic stance as an
ideology. Upon coronation he took the name of Tewodros, who had been,
according to an early Solomonic legend, a messianic king and savior of
Ethiopia who would unite the country and would destroy Islam on his way
to redeem Jerusalem. 30 The new Tewodros was, however, not a messianic
visionary but, rather, a daring reformer 31 and a revolutionary. His general
concepts and strategy were best reflected in a letter he sent to Queen
Victoria in October 1862: "My fathers, the Emperors, having forgotten the
Creator, He handed their kingdom to the Gallas [i.e., the Oromos] and the
Turks. But God created me, lifted me out of the dust, and restored the
Empire to my rule. He endowed me with power, and enabled me to stand in
the place of my fathers. By this power I drove away the Gallas. As for the
Turks, I have told them to leave the land of my ancestors. They refuse. I am
going now to wrestle with them." 32
The letter summarizes some of his own personal history. Tewodros
was "lifted out of the dust" as a son of a remote district chief and a woman
of humble origin. He made his way up as a shifta (usually a political rebel
resorting to banditry). He "drove away the Gallas" by destroying the power
of Ras 'Ali II (1853) and later by moving his capital to Maqdala, in the cen-
ter of Oromo territory. Having defeated the provincial warlords of Tigre
and of Shoa, he began to amass an all-Ethiopian army, judiciary system,
and administration. His attempts at effective centralization, carried out by a
Christian king and around a capital town located in the previously dominat-
ed Oromo territory, proved successful in at least one respect. He managed
to neutralize the political power of the Oromos. The Oromos remained

Muslims and a strong military power in the heart of Ethiopia but would
henceforward be unable to return to their independent political role.
Until 1862, Tewodros was happy to concentrate his attention on his
efforts to centralize Ethiopia. He fought the Oromos, the various con-
tenders to power, and shiftas all over the country. He also struggled with
the Church, which he wanted to subsume into his centralized state, but
which, under Abuna Salama, was not ready to submit. But now Tewodros
reached the stage of needing foreign aid, specifically, European technology
and experts to solidify his government and begin serious economic devel-
opment. Europe was, however, not interested and instead sent missionaries
as well as some agents who were of little use. Earlier (in 1856) Great
Britain had been ready to make some gesture. Its powerful ambassador to
Istanbul, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, approached the sultan about letting
Ethiopia have the port of Massawa. Sultan 'Abd al-Majid (1839-1861)
refused to give up the Habesh Eyaleti, and the British, even though they
had just rescued the Ottomans in the Crimean War (1853-1856), let the
matter rest. 33
Having defeated a major rebellion in Tigre, Tewodros now had access
to the coast. To modernize his country he sought British or French techni-
cians and experts. He badly desired a port and European attention, and—as
he saw it—he needed Middle Eastern Islam to serve as a common enemy.
But he f o u n d none, nor was E g y p t ready to help. On the c o n t r a r y ,
Muhammad 'Ali's son, 'Abbas Pasha (1854-1863), shortly after the coro-
nation of Tewodros, had sent the Coptic Patriarch Qerilos IV to the
Ethiopian court. It was the first time in history an Alexandrian patriarch
had paid a personal visit to Ethiopia, and the message he brought to
Tewodros in December 1856 from the ruler of Egypt was one of appease-
ment and peace. The emperor was reported to be upset at seeing a Christian
in the service of Muslims, and as false (or fabricated) rumors spread that
'Abbas Pasha had gone to the Sudan to prepare an attack on Ethiopia,
Tewodros arrested the patriarch. Qerilos was allowed to return to Egypt
only in November 1857, but in spite of this provocation the Sudanese-
Ethiopian borderland remained quiet.
In 1859 'Abbas Pasha authorized the beginning of excavating the Suez
Canal and gradually became interested in reviving the Egyptian govern-
ment's claims to the Red Sea region and the Sudan. In 1862, tensions along
the Sudanese border nearly brought about an Egyptian invasion of Ethiopia.
Also, the French-British rivalry in the Red Sea had aroused the suspicion of
the Ottomans. Indeed the new sultan, 'Abd al-'Aziz (1861-1876), was in no
mood to suffer another humiliation. He had just been compelled by the
Great Powers to agree to political autonomy for the Christians in Lebanon.
In the Red Sea he ordered the raising of Ottoman flags along the coast of
Habesh and into the hinterland. Tewodros responded, as he mentioned in

his letter to Queen Victoria, by issuing an ultimatum for "the Turks."
But 'Abd al-'Aziz, as had 'Abbas Pasha, refused to play the role of
Gragn. He ordered the sending of the na'ib of Arkiko, Muhammad 'Abd al-
Rahim, to Tewodros's court. In March 1863 the envoy came bearing gifts
and a message of peace, but he was arrested. A month later he was permit-
ted to return. 34
Tewodros's idea of attracting European interest in his modernization
effort through common enmity with Islam was a failure. 35 Perhaps he was
overly frustrated by European indifference, for it appears that he was aware
that the Ottomans and the Egyptians did not seek Ethiopia's conquest. He
also knew that the British were the protectors of Ottoman survival and that
the French were behind the modernization of Egypt. The fact that he never-
theless pursued that line may have been a symptom of the depth of the
Gragn syndrome in Ethiopian Christian culture.
It was also a symptom of his own mental crisis. By 1860 he believed
his country to be on the brink of modernization, but the lack of European
support threatened a return to parochialism. At this point, he became merci-
less in dealing with his opponents, losing all sense of proportion. He alien-
ated the country and its culture as he seemed bent on self-destruction. One
e x a m p l e of his i r r a t i o n a l i t y was his o r d e r i n g in 1864 of m a s s
Christianization of the Jabarti Muslims. (He began by burning a mosque in
Gondar.) Tewodros's actions demonstrated that he was despairing of his
entire efforts on behalf of his country. He was, however, in no position to
carry out any policy, for he soon became involved in a dramatic struggle
against the British, which ultimately led to his suicide in Maqdala in April
1868.
Both Tewodros and Muhammad 'Ali ended their lives in deep frustra-
tion. Muhammad 'Ali's dream of controlling the Ottoman Islamic empire
was shattered because the West would not allow the fall of Istanbul.
Tewodros failed because the West paid no attention to his efforts at mod-
ernizing his country. It is ironic that Tewodros's image in later Ethiopian
historiography was o v e r s h a d o w e d by his battle with the British, for
Tewodros was not anti-European but rather a Westernizer. He dreamt of
rebuilding a centralized Ethiopia around Western technology and even cer-
tain W e s t e r n c o n c e p t s . T h e British u n d e r R o b e r t N a p i e r , " L o r d of
Maqdala," fought him not in order to conquer Ethiopia but rather to disen-
gage from it. (Indeed, the British had their own version of "leave the
Abyssinians alone.")
Tewodros's failure to solidify the measures he introduced into the
army, bureaucracy, land ownership, and state-church relations, prevented
him from truly reviving the Ethiopian state. But he nonetheless succeeded
in strengthening the all-Ethiopian awareness and identity to the point that
it was better equipped than before to cope with the challenges that lay
ahead.
Muhammad 'Ali failed to revitalize the identity he was struggling to
fulfill. He was not an Egyptian. He was a Turkish-speaking Ottoman who
only by accident found himself in Cairo at exactly the moment in history
when the West began interfering in the affairs of the Ottoman East. In his
effort to exploit the situation and create in Egypt modern Western military
capabilities "he may have identified Egypt with himself," but to distinguish
him f r o m T e w o d r o s , " h e never i d e n t i f i e d h i m s e l f with E g y p t . " 3 6
Muhammad 'Ali's success was the by-product of his Islamic-Ottoman
enterprise: He turned the Ottoman province of Egypt into a true state. He
did succeed where Tewodros failed, in building around modern concepts
the s t a t e h o o d and e c o n o m y of Egypt. He thus paved the way f o r a
Westernization process that was to create in the emerging identity of Egypt
a tension between the heritage of Islam and the new concepts borrowed
from the West. It is important to appreciate the difference between an
Ethiopia of a revived traditional identity and an Egypt undergoing a quick-
paced Westernization because this difference remained significant to their
ensuing conflict.
m
YOHANNES, ISMA'IL, AND
THE ETHIO-EGYPTIAN CONFLICT
THE IMPATIENT EUROPEANIZER

AND THE CONSERVATIVE EMPEROR
By far the most important period in the modern history of Ethio-Egyptian

relations was the decade of the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s; much has been
written about the open conflict and the Ethio-Egyptian War. 1 Khedive
Isma'il, Egypt's ruler between 1863 and 1879, departed from his grandfa-
ther Muhammad 'Ali's Ottoman Middle Eastern strategy and turned his
attention to Africa. In 1865 he obtained Massawa from the sultan and initi-
ated effective administrative reforms in the Sudan. After the opening of the
Suez Canal in 1869, his forces occupied the African Red Sea coast and con-
tinued down the Somali coast of the Indian Ocean. An Egyptian province
named Equatoria was then established in the African hinterland.
In 1875 the Egyptians occupied the Islamic center of Harar and simul-
taneously worked to strengthen the land route between the port of Massawa
and the Sudan. They wanted to control the territory of today's Eritrea—this
in spite of the fact that the nearby Ethiopian province of Tigre had just
become the center of Ethiopia.
As we remember from the days of Bahr Negash Yishaq, Tigre had
always been connected with the Tigrean-populated highlands of Eritrea, the
Mareb Melash ("Beyond the River Mareb," in the Ethiopian terminology of
the time). In 1872 the Tigrean Dajazmach Kassa Mircha was crowned
Emperor Yohannes IV ( 1 8 7 2 - 1 8 8 9 ) and for the first time since the
Aksumites shifted the country's political center back to the Red Sea
sphere.2
The inevitable conflict between Egypt's new ruler, Isma'il, and the
Ethiopian emperor, Yohannes, involved military clashes and diplomatic
struggles that the Ethiopian side won. The Egyptian army suffered defeats
(1875-1876), which contributed to the demise of Isma'il (1879). Egypt con-
tinued to deteriorate, both economically and socially, until it was occupied
in 1882 by Great Britain.
The Ethio-Egyptian conflict of the decade under discussion exempli-
53
fied the major opposing trends in each society. The military aspect of the
conflict was particularly important: The army of Yohannes defeated the
Egyptian invading forces, doing so twice on Eritrean soil—in Gundet
(November 1875) and Gura (March 1876). But these victories were effec-
tive only in preventing the Egyptians from advancing any farther than the
territories they had occupied in Eritrea. The Ethiopian army was unable to
loosen the Egyptian hold on Massawa, Keren, and other regions lying
between the Red Sea and the Egyptian positions in the Sudan. Furthermore,
as in the days of Muhammad 'Ali, the Egyptians erected a chain of forts in
Eritrea, which the Ethiopians were unable to storm. A long war of attrition
ensued (1876-1884), during which the Egyptians responded to Ethiopian
raids into their territory by supporting, as shiftas, local Ethiopian adver-
saries to Yohannes and to his deputy in Eritrea, Ras Alula. Under circum-
stances such as these, a military solution was impossible. 3
Neither was the conflict resolved through diplomacy. A historian
would hardly deem Yohannes IV to be adept in the art of international
diplomacy. Before coming to power he had been quite successful with the
British mission against Tewodros. But after the British left him, as they had
done with his predecessor, Yohannes despaired of the Westerners. He went
on to alienate the French, and, more fatefully, shied away from negotiations
with the Italians, when they appeared in Massawa beginning in 1885. His
greatest diplomatic failure was in dealing with the Islamic fundamentalist
Mahdist state that emerged in the Sudan in 1884 following a successful
rebellion against the Egyptian government. As we shall see, instead of try-
ing to avoid confrontation with the Mahdiyya, Yohannes undertook to fight
them, with fatal consequences. He did so in the only treaty he did sign, the
so-called Hewett Treaty of June 1884 with the British and the now British-
controlled Egyptians. 4
The Egyptian ruler, Khedive Isma'il, was a far more successful diplo-
mat. Educated in Europe and fluent in both French and Italian, he personal-
ly befriended many Western heads of state, most notably Napoleon III. It
was because of Isma'il's flexible diplomacy that he was able to secure
Egyptian autonomy from the Ottomans. He even achieved some modest
success with Ethiopia and managed at least until 1877, when it still mat-
tered, to drive a wedge between Yohannes and his major vassal, Negus
Menelik of the southern province of Shoa. 5
What determined the outcome of the Ethio-Egyptian conflict of the late
nineteenth century were matters beyond local warfare and diplomacy. In
that period Ethiopia, facing both Egyptian aggression and pressure from the
West while still recuperating from the devastation caused by Tewodros's
attempt at radical centralization, revived many of its ancient political and
cultural institutions. By contrast, at the same time Egypt was undergoing
virtually the opposite process and was breaking away from its old traditions
YOHANNES, ISMA IL & CONFLICT 55
and experiencing quick-paced Westernization. These processes in Egypt

were also marked by a social stratification that caused increasing polariza-
tion of the country. There was, as well, a growing involvement and interfer-
ence by foreign individuals and countries in areas of Egyptian life such as
its economy, its bureaucratic administration, and its army. In this regard,
Khedive I s m a ' i l has been a c c u r a t e l y d e p i c t e d as an " i m p a t i e n t
Europeanizer," 6 while Yohannes, in his confrontation with Westernization,
gained the reputation of a rejectionist. Yohannes's policy emphasizing
Ethiopia's traditional values culminated in October 1882 when he managed
to bring about a unification, albeit an unstable one, of Ethiopia. In that
month Negus Menelik of Shoa swore allegiance to Yohannes, thus tem-
porarily uniting the houses of Shoa and Tigre. Just a few weeks earlier
Egypt fell to the invading British army and lost its independence. Thus the
demise of a rapidly Westernizing society, Egypt, and the tenacity of a tradi-
tionalist one, Ethiopia, determined the outcome of the conflict between
them.
The differing characteristics and goals of the Europeanizer Isma'il and
the traditionalist Yohannes had historic roots. The Ethiopian rose to power
under the impact of Tewodros's failure and realized full well that Ethiopian
society would continue to resist changes that were forced upon it from
above. Isma'il, however, only continued the program of his predecessor,
Muhammad 'Ali, and thus further deepened Egypt's Westernization. One of
Isma'il's innovations was the diversion of Egypt's strategic orientation
from the Muslim Ottoman Middle East to Africa. This diversion was car-
ried out in accordance both with European interests and in line with
changes within Egypt. Thus Isma'il, while pursuing old Egyptian expan-
sionist goals in the Red Sea and the Nile Basin, actually paved the way for
Western imperialism in Africa. 7
Major differences are apparent in how these neighbors and rivals faced
the challenge of Western penetration. Isma'il continued to encourage the
proliferation of Western resources and concepts in order to effect Egypt's
break with its past. Yohannes, by contrast, let Ethiopian development run
its natural course. Isma'il followed an African strategy compatible with the
interests of European powers, and during his rule the construction of the
Suez Canal, turning Egypt into a bridge between Europe and the Afro-
Oriental world, was accomplished. Yohannes, on the other hand, aban-
doned whatever all-regional role Tewodros cherished for Ethiopia, and he
even attempted to avoid contact with European envoys to his country. He
also made little effort to develop Ethiopia's infrastructure or urbanization.
While under Isma'il, Cairo was replanned and largely rebuilt in imitation of
Paris, and both this modernized capital and Alexandria flourished as cos-
mopolitan E u r o p e a n - s t y l e cities with up-to-date municipal services,
Y o h a n n e s abandoned T e w o d r o s ' s plan of a central capital for all of
Ethiopia, and became, instead, a roving emperor, with campsites at Adwa,

Dabra-Tabor, and Maqale. Insignificant changes were made at these royal
campsites.
Of great significance was the difference in the two leaders' approach to
their countries' economies. Isma'il greatly expanded Muhammad 'Ali's pol-
icy of converting to large-scale agriculture of cotton, mainly for export.
Yohannes made no attempt to modernize or even to expand Ethiopia's tra-
ditional agriculture or to introduce any other economic innovations. Indeed,
he even fought against the cultivation of tobacco, a crop of great economic
potential that European missionaries in Eritrea and elsewhere had sought to
introduce. Yohannes justified his tobacco policy in religious anti-Islamic
terms, an issue to which we shall return. Yohannes expended considerable
effort to revive Ethiopia's ancient alliance between Church and state. It was
only in connection with the affairs of the Coptic Church that he was inter-
ested in relations with Egypt. (Yet it was not until 1881, two years after
Isma'il's demise, that Yohannes finally received from Egypt the four
Coptic bishops he needed for the restoration of the Ethiopian Church.)
Isma'il, although unmistakably a Muslim (and certainly not a modern
Egyptian nationalist) was nevertheless a child of European culture and
acted accordingly. He put an end to the financial independence of Islamic
institutions and of the 'ulama by putting the whole waqf system (endow-
ment of property) under state control. Much of the waqf income was then
directed to the expansion of modern, semisecular education, and state
examinations were imposed even on the Islamic university al-Azhar. In
1868 Isma'il inaugurated the French-oriented School of Law from which
later emerged the future leaders of Egypt's liberal nationalism. Yohannes,
by contrast, introduced no changes or new ideas in secular education. In
fact, the opening of the first modern primary school in Ethiopia did not take
place until the later years of his successor, Menelik II (1889-1913). In
1908, the y e a r C a i r o c e l e b r a t e d the i n a u g u r a t i o n of the E g y p t i a n
University, Menelik opened the Ecole Imperiale Menelik II. Even then the
school was staffed largely by a group of Egyptian schoolteachers and head-
ed by an Egyptian Copt, Hanna Salib Bey. 8
In the fields of military affairs and imperial administration, Isma'il was
again true to his reputation of being "the impatient Europeanizer" and
Yohannes to his rejectionist reputation. Isma'il hired dozens of high-rank-
ing officers, not only from Europe but also unemployed veterans of the
U.S. Civil War, to train, advise, and command the Egyptian army. Other
foreign personnel were employed to run the Egyptian Empire's administra-
tion in the Sudan, Eritrea, and Equatoria. It was under such personalities as
Charles Gordon, Samuel Baker, Werner Munzinger, William Loring,
William Dye, Soren Arendrup, and Eduard Schnitzer, to mention only a
few, that Isma'il's African enterprise was built up, and was therefore in
spirit and style fundamentally alien to Egypt's traditions. Yohannes—
unlike either Isma'il or his own predecessor, Tewodros—had little interest

in foreign experts. He avoided them even after his early military success
with the help of a British sergeant, J. C. Kirkham, whom General Robert
Napier had left behind in 1868 after the campaign against Tewodros, along
with a gift of firearms and a few pieces of light artillery. Kirkham's mili-
tary guidance helped Yohannes to power, but when Yohannes became dis-
illusioned with the British government's policy of ignoring Ethiopia, he
ceased seeking such assistance. By the time the battles of Gundet and Gura
took place, Yohannes's army was again purely Ethiopian in both its com-
mand and military strategy.
SOCIETIES A N D LEADERSHIP
BETWEEN TRADITION A N D CHANGE
Our perception of the personalities of Isma'il and Yohannes during this

period is important because of the broad effects their divergent policies had
on the social structure of both countries in the ensuing years. Isma'il was
the autocrat who imposed his grandiose plans on the Egyptian populace;
Yohannes was a flexible compromiser who realized how deeply embedded
were the regional loyalties of Ethiopians, who recognized the rulers of
Shoa and Gojjam as neguses (kings). In Egypt under Isma'il, socioeconom-
ic polarization broadened the division between rich and poor. The country's
agrarian elite, mostly of Ottoman-Circassian and non-Arab origin, and a
newer element of recent arrivals from Europe and the Levant, was enriched
and strengthened, while the landless peasants and unskilled urban laborers
were reduced to ever-increasing poverty. The class stratification created
during this period in Egypt was to endure for several generations. (We shall
see the problem in Ethiopian history again during the Abyssinian Crisis of
1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 6 . ) In Y o h a n n e s ' s Ethiopia no such radical reordering of the
c o u n t r y ' s society, e c o n o m y , or agriculture took place. Its agriculture
remained diverse and small scale. None of its families, at least not in the
territories under Yohannes's direct control, accumulated sufficiently signif-
icant wealth to lead to the creation of an e c o n o m y - b a s e d aristocracy.
Foreign influence and assistance were discouraged. Surprisingly, despite
this economic stagnation, Y o h a n n e s ' s reign was outstanding for a great
increase in sociopolitical mobility in Ethiopia, which was the basis of its
strength. It provided Ethiopia with the best possible leadership in all ranks
and at all levels of society. This situation could not happen in Egypt where
the old and newly formed upper classes as well as the large number of for-
eigners pouring into Egypt m o n o p o l i z e d the c o u n t r y ' s highest social,
administrative, and economic positions.
To illustrate this point and to elaborate on its implications, let us return
briefly to the battle of Gura, March 1876. Two young men were to emerge
from that confrontation as leaders of central importance in their respective

societies, the Ethiopian Ras Alula and the Egyptian Amir alai Ahmad
'Urabi. 9 Both Alula and 'Urabi were born into simple peasant families but,
by virtue of ambition, talent, and natural leadership qualities, they both
emerged as figures of some military standing. However, although the inter-
nal mechanism of Ethiopia's sociopolitics allowed for Alula's talents and
leadership to be accepted, 'Urabi's abilities to contribute and to lead were
stymied. Unable to penetrate Egypt's rigidly delineated upper stratum of
society and achieve a position of real leadership, his activities ultimately
contributed to Egypt's loss of independence.
Alula, the son of peasants from Tambien, in Tigre, had received a tra-
ditional education as an ashkar, a trainee rendering services to a great
chief, Ras Ar'aya Dimsu. He was lucky enough to be transferred to serve in
the house of Dajazmach Kassa Mircha of Tambien who, in the late 1860s,
made his way up the country's flexible sociopolitical ladder to emerge, in
1872, as Emperor Yohannes. Alula, excelling in administration, became the
balamwal, the royal favorite, of the new emperor. On the eve of the battle
of Gura, he was, at the age of twenty-nine, a trusted military counsellor
with the rank of shalaqa, a commander of a thousand.
Ahmad 'Urabi, only seven years older than Alula and of similar mili-
tary rank, that of amir alai (colonel), was stationed not far from the battle-
field of Gura. Born near Zagazig in the Nile delta, 'Urabi's future changed
when Sa'id Pasha, Isma'il's predecessor, decided to prepare a new cadre of
military officers. In order to contain the power of the entrenched Turco-
Circassian officers he had inherited from 'Abbas Pasha, Sa'id recruited
promising young men from among the Egyptian peasantry. In 1862 'Urabi
graduated from the military academy, received his commission, and rose
quickly through the ranks. In the early 1870s, h o w e v e r , the climate
changed again when Isma'il, as he was about to embark on his African ven-
ture, and in keeping with his dismissive attitude toward anything authenti-
cally Egyptian, lost faith in the officers of local Arab-Egyptian origin. He
reinstated the f o r m e r T u r c o - C i r c a s s i a n establishment as well as his
European and U.S. mercenaries. By the time of Gura many of the Arab-
Egyptian officers had left the army and 'Urabi had become an embittered
amir alai, with no combat units under his command. In fact, throughout
1875-1877, he served as a commissariat officer along the communication
lines between Massawa and the hinterland. From this vantage point he
could observe the lack of motivation and the endless rivalries and jeal-
ousies that characterized the Turco-Circassian officers and the mercenaries
and that led to the Egyptian defeat.
Shalaqa Alula won the battle and achieved personal renown at Gura.
He initiated the tactical maneuvers that lured the safely e n t r e n c h e d
Egyptians out into the open, where the Ethiopians overwhelmed them.
After this brilliant victory he was promoted by Yohannes. Much to the
anger of Tigre's nobility he was appointed governor of the territories of

today's Eritrea and was given the title of ras. He was also given the title of
turk basha, which m e a n t — a s we r e m e m b e r f r o m the days of Sertsa
Dengel's victory over the Ottomans in Debaroa in 1578—the commander
of the elite royal units. From that point on, for the next two decades until
the final victory over the Italians at Adwa, in March 1896, Ras Alula com-
manded many Ethiopian forces in s u c c e s s f u l battles against foreign
invaders. He also contributed to the strengthening of Ethiopia's unity, espe-
cially in 1894 when he brought about the reconciliation between Shoa and
Tigre under the supremacy of Emperor Menelik II.
Alula's career exemplifies Ethiopia's flexible sociopolitics.
Throughout its history, and particularly in periods of crisis and trial, a fresh
and robust leadership often emerged in that country. Natural leaders among
the ever-competing leading families, as well as frequently persons of hum-
ble origins such as Alula, could make their way to positions of leadership
through merit. Preeminent status was not guaranteed for the less talented
sons of leading figures. It was this kind of flexible competition for power,
combined with a sociopolitical mobility that gave Ethiopia its greatest
strategic asset: a continually self-renewing leadership at all levels of the
political and military command structure. This aspect of Ethiopia's political
culture, at once competitive and hierarchical, would later be adapted to the
changing realities of the twentieth century. Emperor Yohannes, in facing
his challenges, promoted and encouraged this dimension of Ethiopia's
political culture.
Amir alai Ahmad 'Urabi tasted defeat in Gura but, as noted above, the
Ethio-Egyptian conflict was not determined militarily; 'Urabi's true role in
Egyptian history was in the political sphere. For 'Urabi the war in Ethiopia
exposed all the deficiencies of Isma'il's hasty Westernization. In his mem-
oirs 'Urabi described the story of Isma'il's demise in a chapter entitled "The
Abyssinian Campaign." 1 0 He admired the Ethiopian management of the
war and despised the Turco-Circassian commanders of the Egyptian army
because of their corruption and lack of motivation. Moreover, he blamed
the Western mercenaries (particularly the American William Loring) for
betraying the movements of their army to the Ethiopian enemy. He under-
lined, time and again, the distinction between these foreign, non-Egyptian
elements and "the Egyptians," the poor peasant soldiers who died and the
poor Egyptians at home who paid for the calamity. The only high-ranking
combat officer of Egyptian-Arab origin who participated in the campaign,
according to 'Urabi's memoirs, was Amir alai Muhammad Jabar. Although
he fought bravely and wisely, because of the non-Egyptians no one could
save the day.
When 'Urabi returned to Egypt his frustration increased as he wit-
nessed the destruction of the social fabric of his country and the loss of its
sovereignty due to economic dependency as well as despoliation by for-
eign-controlled interests. After Isma'il was deposed by the Great Powers

(1879) 'Urabi's frustrations as a disenfranchised Egyptian-born officer,
together with the humiliation he felt as an Egyptian patriot, combined to
propel him to action. By January 1881 he had organized his fellow officers
and became the leader of a protest movement whose slogan was "Egypt for
the Egyptians." (He advocated fighting the European presence in the Red
Sea.) 11 In 1882 this movement turned into an open revolt against both the
local establishment (headed by Khedive Tawfiq, Isma'il's son) and foreign
involvement in Egyptian affairs. This episode is considered as the first
active manifestation of modern Egyptian nationalism. 'Urabi's movement
was finally defeated by a British invasion on 13 September 1882. He was
exiled by the British, who remained to occupy Egypt for the next seventy-
four years.
The British thus ended Isma'il's dream of an African Empire. In facing
the mahdi revolt in the Sudan and Egyptian eviction from that country, the
British made the Egyptians sign the Hewett Treaty with Yohannes (June
1884), by which they evacuated the territories disputed with Ethiopia. In
the same year the British forced the Egyptians to withdraw from Harar.
The end of imperial expansion combined with other major changes and
heralded a new era for Egypt. As the century drew to a close, the British
occupation gave rise to a nascent modern Egyptian nationalist movement.
Spearheaded by young intellectuals who sought to introduce new political
forms, these nationalists gave new interpretation to the Egyptian identity
and to its image of the outside world. For them, and for the next forty years,
Egypt included the Sudan, but Ethiopian affairs were left aside.
It may be that this new generation of nationalists in Egypt could not
forgive the Ethiopians for the humiliation Egypt had suffered twenty years
earlier in Gura. One source of evidence for this view are the military mém-
oires of an Egyptian officer, Muhammad Rif at, who had been taken prison-
er in Gura. The image of the Ethiopians as reflected in his 1896 published
book was of merciless, ferocious warriors, hardly a model of a respected
civilization. 12
The Egyptian public under the yoke of the British yearned for sources
of political inspiration. In 1905, when the news of Japan's victory over
Russia reached Egypt, the Japanese were quickly adopted as representa-
tives of the Orient who had managed to defeat the imperialistic representa-
tives of the West. Mustafa Kamil, a young Egyptian intellectual of that
time, wrote a book, The Rising Sun, on Japan's victory as a symbol for
Oriental nationalism. But Ethiopia, which had itself mounted a stunning
victory against Italian imperialism in 1896 and, unlike Egypt, had managed
to maintain its independence, was not to play any such role in Egyptian life.
In fact, in 1905 a new book on Ethiopia was published in Cairo: Entitled
The Beautiful Pearls in the History of the Ethiopians,13 it had little to tell
about contemporary affairs. Written by an al-Azhar religious scholar, the

book is essentially a compilation of early Islamic sources on the sahaba-
najashi story. Six al-Azhar scholars contributed introductory remarks, all
emphasizing the lack of informative literature in Arabic on Ethiopia; the
short chapters on Ethiopia's history and geography, though informative and
occasionally useful, carry no message of significance for the modern read-
er. Ethiopia's struggle with Italian imperialism is discussed, but is limited
to a mere mention of Ethiopia's 1896 victory.
Even the admission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations in 1923, the
year Egypt was granted a constitution under the British, had little resonance
in the land of the Nile. Indeed, throughout the first three decades of the
twentieth century, Ethiopia, independent and mysterious, was not on the
Egyptian agenda. Immersed in the struggle to fulfill the newly discovered
Egyptian identity and facing British occupation, the Egyptians would occa-
sionally host an Ethiopian prince on his way to Europe, but they showed
little curiosity. For the Egyptians as well as for the Ethiopians the only sig-
nificant connection during this period was the Coptic Church.
YOHANNES AND ISLAM
Isma'il attacked Ethiopia for strategic reasons. He used Islam whenever it

suited h i m . In the new E g y p t i a n p r o v i n c e of Harar, for e x a m p l e , the
E g y p t i a n c o n q u e s t ( 1 8 7 5 - 1 8 8 5 ) spread Islam a m o n g the n e i g h b o r i n g
Oromos and others. The two Egyptian governors in Harar made substantial
efforts to increase the spread of Islam in order to tighten their political con-
trol. 'Ulama were brought from al-Azhar and began teaching Arabic—the
language of politicization of Islam in the Horn of Africa—among the vari-
ous local populations, distributing Islamic holy books printed in Cairo.
These activities were accompanied by the coerced Islamization of pagans,
c o m p l e t e with attempts to f o r c e circumcision and the c o n s t r u c t i o n of
mosques. 1 4 But this had little to do with Ethiopian-held territories or with
Christianity. In Eritrea, where the main confrontation with Yohannes had
occurred, such activities were restrained. The Egyptians employed
E u r o p e a n m e r c e n a r i e s t h e r e as w e l l as C h r i s t i a n E t h i o p i a n shiftas.
Moreover, f r o m 1882-1883 they also faced an increased level of radical
Islam from nearby eastern Sudan that aimed at their own destruction. As a
result, they cautiously supported Islamic propaganda f r o m Massawa and
Kassala. Isma'il's strategic goal was to destroy Yohannes as a champion of
a northern-oriented Ethiopia, and he was eager to recognize Menelik of
Shoa as emperor.
Y o h a n n e s , h o w e v e r , and the clergy around him, clearly identified
Isma'il with what Ethiopians conceived as a centuries-old Islamic threat to
their very existence. They regarded the Egyptians as "the tribe of the
Ismaelites. . . wicked and apostate men." 15 The concept of a renewed jihad
was part of Yohannes's own religious policy. Yohannes's main effort was a
religious reunification of Ethiopia: His policy was marked by a strong anti-
Islamic element that had far-reaching implications on Ethiopia's relation-
ship with external Middle Eastern Islam. Yohannes's aim was to convert all
the natives of Ethiopia to Christianity. Whether his motivation was reli-
gious fanaticism or measured political calculation is debatable.
One contemporary Ethiopian source, not entirely sympathetic to
Yohannes, quoted him as saying: "I shall avenge the blood of Ethiopia.
Gragn Islamized Ethiopia by force, fire and sword." Yohannes himself, on
the other hand, wrote self-righteously to Queen Victoria claiming that the
"Muslims . . . begged me saying: We have no book handed down from our
forefathers; so baptize us and make us Christians. And I replied: All right,
if you like, b e c o m e Christians. And the Ethiopian Muslims became
Christians out of their own volition. There is nothing I have done by fire." 16
Yohannes's Christianization policy was clearly coercive. 17 It contained
harsh measures such as forcing Ethiopian Christian circumcision, and the
building of churches. Many of the Jabartis in towns such as Gondar or
Aksum were forced to convert; others, by the thousands, fled to nearby
Sudanese territory. The more powerful Oromos of Wallo and Yadju pre-
sented a major problem. In May and June of 1878, Yohannes convened the
prominent figures of Ethiopia in a religious council at Wallo. Two of the
major local chiefs of the Oromos were also summoned. According to an
Ethiopian chronicler, Yohannes and Menelik told them: "we are your apos-
tles. All this [Wallo and the central highland] used to be Christian land
until Gragn ruined and misled it. Now let all, whether Muslim or Galla
[pagan] believe in the name of Jesus Christ! Be baptized! If you wish to
live in peace preserving your belongings, become Christians. . . . Thereby
you will govern in this land and inherit in this world the one to come." 18
One of these two Muslim Oromo chiefs, Imam Muhammad 'Ali, is
notable in Ethiopian history: Converted by Yohannes, he was granted a title
and renamed Ras Mika'el and played a central role in future developments.
Yet, in spite of Yohannes's efforts, the majority of the Oromos in high-
land Ethiopia as well as the Jabartis in the urban centers remained Muslims.
According to one source, by 1880 some fifty thousand Jabartis and half a
m i l l i o n O r o m o s had b e e n b a p t i z e d . 1 9 But the p o l i c y of c o e r c e d
Christianization was not carried out along Ethiopia's borders. Yohannes's
major vassal, Menelik of Shoa, was in the process of expanding his king-
dom by annexing vast areas in the south populated by Muslims and pagans.
In 1887 his efforts culminated with the conquest of Harar. Yet Menelik, as
we shall see, did not carry out in the o c c u p i e d territories the m a s s
Christianization prescribed by Yohannes.
This disobedience was true, as well, of Ras Alula in Eritrea. Alula
sought to combine his military position against the Egyptians with the
establishment of prosperous commerce between Asmara and the coast. He
cultivated good relations with local Muslim traders, convinced Yohannes to
exempt his province from his campaign of Christianization, and even had
himself photographed dressed as a Muslim. 2 0 He came to terms with the
British, who were now behind the E g y p t i a n s , and persuaded E m p e r o r
Yohannes to sign the Hewett Treaty in June 1884.
By this treaty, Yohannes and Alula undertook to rescue the Egyptian
g a r r i s o n s b e s i e g e d by the M a h d i y y a in e a s t e r n S u d a n in return f o r
Egyptian-held portions of Eritrea. This trading of the Egyptian enemy,
modern but weak, with the Mahdiyya, radically Islamic and fresh, exposed
Yohannes's Ethiopia to the first jihad since Ahmad Gragn.
m
YOHANNES A N D MENELIK:
BETWEEN RELIGIOUS CONFRONTATION
A N D DIPLOMATIC DIALOGUE
A series of dramatic events at the end of the nineteenth century in Ethiopia

would shape much of its twentieth-century history. First, Ethiopia collided
with Western imperialism and emerged victorious. The confrontation with
the Italians in Massawa led not only to the loss of Eritrea (established as an
Italian colony in January 1890) but also to the military victory in Adwa
(March 1896), which stopped the invaders and brought international recog-
nition to Ethiopia. Second, Ethiopia managed to expand in the south,
annexing what is today nearly the entire country south of Addis Ababa.
Middle Eastern Islamic involvement in this period took the form of the
radicalism of the Mahdiyya, on the one hand, and the all-regional Islamic
diplomacy of the Ottoman Sultan 'Abd al-Hamid II (1876-1909) on the
other. In facing these two challenges Ethiopia's emperors, Yohannes IV
and his successor, Menelik II, adopted two different approaches.
YOHANNES AND THE MAHDIYYA:

THE LEGACY OF RADICAL ISLAM
In late 1884 a period of active conflict began between Ethiopia and the
newly established entity in the Sudan, the Mahdist state. The Mahdiyya
movement represented an explosion of Sudanese local anti-Egyptian rage.
It stemmed from a variety of grievances—social, economic, religious—and
was led by a Sufi leader, Muhammad Ahmad, who claimed to be a mahdi,
namely, one guided by God. The mahdi created the formative chapter in the
modern history of the Sudan. His messianic Islam, spearheaded by an anti-
Egyptian jihad, helped to build a supratribal unity that thrived on military
successes in driving the Egyptian Turks from Khartoum (January 1885).
The mahdi then established an Islamic state modeled on the early seventh-
century state of Muhammad in Mecca. When he died the following June, he
was replaced by 'Abdallah al-Ta'ishi, who took the title of khalifa, or
65
caliph. The new Sudanese state was intended to redeem the whole Islamic
nation. The mahdi and his successor viewed Egypt, and the modernizing
Middle East beyond it, as led by Turks—Westernizing infidels. Their prime
aim was to launch a jihad against these infidels. 1
The Mahdiyya was not interested in fighting Ethiopia, and, indeed, in
the beginning adopted the "leave the Abyssinians alone" approach. Yet, as
a m o v e m e n t of r a d i c a l I s l a m , it w a s in a p o s i t i o n to r e i n t e r p r e t t h e
Prophet's dictum. When Yohannes provoked the Mahdiyya a new line was
a d o p t e d in K h a r t o u m ; t h e e n s u i n g c o n f l i c t l a s t e d until t h e d e a t h of
Yohannes by Mahdist bullets in March 1889.
T h e m i l i t a r y h i s t o r y of t h i s c o n f l i c t h a s b e e n w e l l r e c o u n t e d
elsewhere. 2 In brief, there were two theaters of confrontation. One was in
the area and district of the Sudanese town of al-Qallabat (in Arabic) or
M e t e m m a (the name given to a nearby border town by the Ethiopians). The
other was around the town of Kassala and in western Eritrea.
Hostilities c o m m e n c e d f o l l o w i n g the signing of the H e w e t t Treaty
w h e n , in late 1884, E t h i o p i a n f o r c e s , s o m e t i m e s in c o o p e r a t i o n with
Egyptian officers, tried to rescue the besieged Egyptian garrisons in these
two towns and two other posts. Most of these operations were successful:
Ethiopian f o r c e s r e m a i n e d in the area around al-Qallabat, which w a s a
c o m m e r c i a l center and the strategic link b e t w e e n m a i n l a n d S u d a n and
Ethiopia.
Until 1888 the Ethiopians were usually the victors. The Ethiopian ruler
of Gojjam, Negus Takla-Haimanot (until his coronation as negus in 1882 he
was Ras Adal, or " R a s Adar" in Mahdist literature), a leading contender in
E t h i o p i a n political c o m p e t i t i o n , was e n c o u r a g e d by Y o h a n n e s to exert
pressure on the Mahdists. In January 1887 he scored a major victory over
his counterpart, the Amir M u h a m m a d Wad Arbab.
In t h e s e c o n d E t h i o p i a n - M a h d i s t f r o n t , in w e s t e r n E r i t r e a , t h e
Ethiopians had scored their main victory in S e p t e m b e r 1885 when Ras
Alula crushingly defeated the army of Amir 'Uthman Diqna in the battle of
Kufit, located between Kassala and Keren. 3
Much of the impetus for the escalation of Ethio-Mahdist hostility can
be traced to center-periphery relations and to the personal rivalries and jeal-
ousies within both the Mahdiyya and Ethiopia. In addition, there was also
the continuing issue of each group harboring the o t h e r ' s rebels. No less
important a factor was the involvement and manipulation of the British, the
E g y p t i a n s , a n d the n e w l y arrived Italians. T h e y w e r e all i n t e r e s t e d in
fomenting the Ethiopian-Mahdist conflict. Prior to the battle of Kufit, for
e x a m p l e , the Egyptians sent the aging 'Uthman al-Mirghani to the Bani
'Amir clans in western Eritrea to organize them in support of A l u l a ' s anti-
Mahdist campaign. At the same time British agents supplied Alula with
a r m s t o t e m p t h i m to m a r c h on ' U t h m a n D i g n a . H o w e v e r , b o t h t h e
Mahdiyya and Ethiopia had higher priorities than fighting each other. The
YOHANNES & MENELIK 67
Mahdists sought the redemption of Islam. They wanted to engage in a jihad

against Egypt and were thus on a collision course with Great Britain. The
Ethiopians soon discovered that the Italians had replaced the Egyptians in
coveting the Eritrean highlands and thus threatened Ethiopia's sovereignty.
Some time after the mahdi's occupation of Khartoum in January 1885,
Yohannes sent him a letter. Its content is lost, but by the mahdi's reply,
which survives, it is clear that its message was straightforward and that the
Ethiopian wanted to hear firsthand what the Mahdiyya's intentions were.
The mahdi replied on 16 June 1885, only a few days before his death. He
wrote to Yohannes that Islam had replaced all other religions including
Christianity; that Islam deteriorated because of the infidel Turks; and that
he, the mahdi, was sent by God to restore Islam. Then in a conciliatory
tone, the mahdi praised Yohannes for trying to understand the "truth of the
mahdi":
Know that we like your being a modest listener, and that I think well
of you because you insisted on having a letter from me, so that we can
explain to you what we are all about. This is an action of a reasonable and
a justice-seeking person. So I write to you this letter as a response to your
request and out of pleasure for your gifts, and in wishing you all the best
and calling you to become a Muslim, be Muslim. . . .
The Lord gave you the honor to live in the prophetic period of my
appearance as a caliph of our Prophet Muhammad. So be like your prede-
cessor the najashi, God bless him, who, when the Lord gave him the
honor to live in the time of our Prophet Muhammad, trusted and befriend-
ed him and sent him the sahaba. And the king of this world did not pre-
vent him from doing justice, and he was given by the Prophet Muhammad
all honor. And when he [the najashi], God bless him, died in his land, the
Prophet prayed for him in Madina as a show of respect. And there were
many hadith and wonderful stories on his high place with the Lord,
because he followed our Prophet Muhammad and because of his lack of
interest in this meaningless worldly kingdom. And I pray to the Lord who
made you live in this blessed time that He will make you a successor to
your predecessor by following me, and that He will lead you out of the
darkness of the infidels to the light of the true belief.
The mahdi then ended his letter with a threat (similar to Muhammad's
to the najashi as quoted by Ibn Kathir): 4 "but if you refuse . . . it will be
your fault and the fault of your followers, for it is inevitable that you fall
into our hands." 5
Compared with similar letters of warning (indharat) the mahdi sent to
other rulers, such as that to Tawfiq, Egypt's khedive, his letter to Yohannes
was not particularly provocative. Ethiopia and the Mahdiyya were already
at war initiated by the Ethiopian help to Egypt, a fact the mahdi refrained
from even mentioning. Indeed, the letter contained both contradictory mes-
sages of ancient times. By mentioning the "Islam of the najashi" and call-
ing on Yohannes to follow his example (as had been done by the imam of
Yemen in his letter to Fasiladas of 1647) or pay for his insubordination, the
mahdi was expressing the idea that a Christian Ethiopia was illegitimate.
However, by mentioning the positive sahaba story (which the imam had
failed to do) the mahdi indicated that he was willing to leave Ethiopia
alone. His message was far from overtly hostile: He was interested in dis-
engaging from the conflict, not in escalating it. Several weeks later his suc-
cessor, the khalifa, wrote to 'Uthman Diqna, who was contemplating an
attack on Ras Alula in Eritrea, instructing him to "leave the Abyssinians
alone" and return to fight the Egyptians and the British. 6 (The letter came
too late, after 'Uthman had been defeated in Kufit.) However in pursuing
his policy, Yohannes provoked the Mahdiyya, who, instead of following
the utruku tradition turned to launch a jihad legitimized by Yohannes's
refusal to follow the "Islam of the najashi."
Three and a half years later, in late December 1888, Yohannes sent to
the khalifa an appeasing letter. In that letter Yohannes stressed the futility
of the conflict between Ethiopia and the Mahdist state, in the face of a com-
mon enemy, Western imperialism. Yohannes described his wars with the
Egyptian Turks and the threat of the Ifranj, the Europeans. "If they destroy
Ethiopia," he argued, "they will surely storm the ansar [the Mahdists], and
if they destroy the ansar they will storm Ethiopia." He therefore suggested
a unified effort against the Europeans until victory is achieved, and then, in
peace, "traders from our country will trade in yours, and your traders will
come to Gondar for the welfare and prosperity of our two peoples." 7
But this message was sent only in late 1888, after both sides had been
for more than three years at each other's throat. In mid-1885, Yohannes,
after having coerced Ethiopian Christianization of Jabartis and Oromos,
was still in a militant, anti-Islamic mood. He despised the darbush, the
dervishes, as the Mahdists came to be called by the Ethiopians, and his
priests referred to them as "unclean pagans . . . [who] spoke great blas-
phemies against God . . . thought vanity and spoke it; they spoke lawless-
ness in the highest. They lifted up their mouths to heaven, and their tongues
went to and fro on the earth, and their hearts passed the bounds of pride." 8
His written reply to the mahdi was h a n d e d to Amir W a d A r b a b in
September 1885. Its contents were highly provocative. He mocked the invi-
tation to join Islam and derided as well the personality and pretensions of
the mahdi. He concluded his letter by calling the mahdi (and Amir Wad
Arbab) to convert to Christianity, the only true religion. 9
It was at this stage, in late 1885 or in early 1886, that a discussion of
E t h i o p i a took p l a c e in the new M a h d i s t c a p i t a l of ' U m m D u r m a n .
Y o h a n n e s ' s response arrived with the news of A l u l a ' s destruction of
'Uthman Diqna in Eritrea, as Ethiopian forces of Negus Tekla Haimanot
controlled the Muslim-inhabited territory around al-Qallabat. The follow-
ing passage is from the contemporary Mahdist official chronicler, Isma'il
'Abd al-Qadir al-Kurdufani, whose book The Embroidery Embellished with
the Good News of the Death of Yohannes the King of the Ethiopians10 was
published three months after the death of Y o h a n n e s in the battle of
Mettema-Qallabat. This passage is from the first chapter, and details a dis-
c u s s i o n in the khalifa's headquarters on the i w o old l e g a c i e s of the
habasha—a discussion that ended with a decision to declare jihad against
Ethiopia:
K n o w that this nation, I m e a n t h e E t h i o p i a n nation, a r e of the a n c i e n t

nations, m o s t f a m o u s a m o n g the k i n g d o m s in b r a v e r y , their n u m b e r s and
strength. A n d h o w m u c h b r a v e r y [they s h o w ] in w a r s , their m e n s t o r m i n g
like rivers of iron, c o n f r o n t i n g d e a t h as if it w o u l d not matter, and listen-
ing o n l y to the talk of their s w o r d s . . . .
T h e y w e r e r e p u t e d f o r that a m o n g the n a t i o n s f o r g e n e r a t i o n s until
G o d b r o u g h t t h e l i g h t of o u r m a s t e r [ t h e P r o p h e t ] M u h a m m a d b i n
' A b d a l l a h . . . . A n d w h e n G o d i n s t r u c t e d his P r o p h e t a b o u t the d u t y of
jihad, this w a s at a t i m e w h e n t h e i n f i d e l s w e r e still m a n y e v e n in the
A r a b P e n i n s u l a . . . a n d the P r o p h e t instructed his nation a n d s h o w e d t h e m
w h a t w a s first a n d w h a t w a s m o s t i m p o r t a n t . T h e r e f o r e [he told t h e m ] to
leave the E t h i o p i a n s a l o n e a n d o c c u p y in f i g h t i n g t h e o t h e r s in that time,
and he said: " l e a v e the E t h i o p i a n s a l o n e as long as they leave y o u a l o n e . "
It m e a n s that it is p e r m i t t e d to us to leave off f i g h t i n g the E t h i o p i a n s at [a
given] t i m e and f i g h t the others. T h e m e s s a g e of the hadith is that it per-
mits us to leave o f f f i g h t i n g t h e m . S o if l e a v i n g t h e m a l o n e is o p t i o n a l ,
f i g h t i n g t h e m is o p t i o n a l too. A n d all this is o n c o n d i t i o n that they stay in
their b o r d e r s as they w e r e in the early p e r i o d [of IslamJ.
L a t e r the k i n g s of o u r t i m e a n d e s p e c i a l l y t h e k i n g s of t h e T u r k s ,
b e c a u s e of t h e i r w e a k b e l i e f . . . a n d their n e g l i g e n c e of I s l a m i c c o m -
m a n d s , and their a b a n d o n i n g of t h e jihad . . . e n a b l e d t h e i n f i d e l s [the
E t h i o p i a n s ] to e n t e r in the land of I s l a m a n d take c o n t r o l o v e r p o r t i o n s of
it, and build c h u r c h e s with b e l l s . " A n d there w a s n o o n e f r o m the k i n g s
of I s l a m to d e f e n d I s l a m and t h e M u s l i m s . [ T h e r e f e r e n c e is p r o b a b l y to
t o w n s in Eritrea like K e r e n h a n d e d o v e r by the E g y p t i a n s to A l u l a . ] A n d
f o r this r e a s o n t h e E t h i o p i a n s m a n a g e d to i n v a d e a l - Q a l l a b a t a n d o t h e r
p l a c e s a n d they put a g e n t s of their k i n g w h o f o r c e t h e M u s l i m s to p a y
jizya [i.e., p e r s o n a l tax p a y a b l e by n o n - M u s l i m s o n l y ] .
W h e n Y u h a n n a [ Y o h a n n e s ] established himself on the E t h i o p i a n
t h r o n e h e b e c a m e a r r o g a n t . . . a n d h e i n v a d e d I s l a m i c territory a n d sent
his a r m y to c a p t u r e f r o m the T u r k s t o w n s in the R e d S e a c o a s t [Eritrea]
and p l a c e o v e r t h e m [ m e n ] f r o m a m o n g the i n f a m o u s p e o p l e of his c o u n -
try, like Ras A l u l a a n d o t h e r s . . . . A n d thus Y u h a n n a c o n q u e r e d f r o m t h e
land of I s l a m and he is the m o s t h a t e f u l of t h e E t h i o p i a n s t o w a r d s Islam.
S o m e o n e w h o k n e w h i m told m e that if h e s a w a M u s l i m in the m o r n i n g it
w o u l d d e p r e s s h i m s o that he w o u l d i m m e d i a t e l y take t h e c r o s s w h i c h h e
w o r s h i p s , and put it o v e r his f a c e . . . . A n d w h e n G o d sent t h e mahdi. . .
he w r o t e to Y u h a n n a c a l l i n g h i m to j o i n G o d , b u t he a n s w e r e d in an ugly
w a y a n d sent his a r m i e s t o f i g h t [the M a h d i y y a ] .
A n d f r o m this it is c l e a r to any o n e w h o h a s t h e f i r e of G o d in h i m
that t h e f i g h t i n g of the E t h i o p i a n s t o d a y is not o n l y a legal o p t i o n , but a
very e m p h a s i z e d d u t y f o r the I s l a m i c n a t i o n . T h i s is b e c a u s e t h e y w e n t
out of their b o r d e r s a n d they did not l e a v e t h e p e o p l e of I s l a m a l o n e . S o it
is p e r m i t t e d f o r u s t o f i g h t t h e m in a c c o r d a n c e w i t h t h e s a y i n g of t h e
Prophet "leave the Ethiopians alone as long as they leave you alone." It
shows clearly that the meaning of that is to leave them alone as iong as
they leave you alone, and if they do not, as happened with Yuhanna and
his aggression towards the land of Islam, so do not leave them alone, oh
you the people of Islam, but fight them. This is what every Muslim should
identify with, and God is the guide and on Him only we rely. 1 2
January 1887 witnessed the peak of Ethiopian power under Yohannes

IV. Negus Takla-Haimanot defeated the Mahdists; Negus Menelik con-
quered the town of Harar; and Ras Alula ambushed and destroyed an Italian
battalion in Dogali, near Massawa. But while the conquest of Harar
strengthened Menelik, the victory at Dogali brought down upon Yohannes
the wrath of Italy. An Italian army landed in April 1887 in Massawa, aim-
ing to capture the Eritrean highlands and punish Yohannes and Alula.
Tekla-Haimanot's (Ras Adal) victory over Wad Arbab also inspired the
khalifa to build up an army for war against Ethiopia. Later, in the same
January (1887) the khalifa wrote to Yohannes informing him of the new
holy war: "We were watching you in accordance with the saying of the
Lord of the Apostles, 'Leave the Abyssinians alone, while they leave you
alone.' So we did not allow the army of the Muslims to raid your land until
from your side serious aggression repeatedly took place against the weak
Muslims who are near your country, with slaughter, the taking of captives,
plunder and damage, while the apostates from their faith as Muslims take
refuge with you." 13
As the Mahdist buildup against Ethiopia was being overseen through-
out 1887 by Amir Hamdan Abu 'Anja, the khalifa strengthened his resolve
to depart from the policy of "leaving the Abyssinians alone." In early
January 1888 he published a "prophetic vision" he had in which "the
Prophet said to me, 'You are permitted to raid the Abyssinians in their
land.' So . . . we commanded Hamdan Abu 'Anja to raid them. . . . He raid-
ed them in the midst of their land and was victorious. . . . Then the Prophet
gave the battle cry against the Abyssinians repeatedly and we gave the bat-
tle cry with him." 14
Three days after the publication in 'Umm Durman of this "prophetic
vision," Abu 'Anja launched a deep penetration raid and captured Gondar.
Before retreating, his army massacred those local Christians who were slow
to flee and set fire to the churches of the Ethiopian capital (by tradition,
forty-four in number). In Yohannes's camp facing the Italians in Eritrea, as
reported in later Ethiopian historiography, the fire in Gondar was perceived
as if heralding the return of Ahmad Gragn. The clergy of Gondar wrote to
Yohannes: "O Lord, the pagans have invaded thy preserve, thy sacred
shrine they have profaned, Gondar have they laid in ruins." 15
Thus began a disastrous year for Yohannes. Unable to continue to face
the Italians, he now pulled back from Eritrea to deal with the revolting
Menelik and Tekla-Haimanot. At the end of the year, under pressure from
Y O H A N N E S & MENELIK 71
all quarters, he wrote his conciliatory letter to the khalifa, the one of
December 1888 mentioned above. It was, of course, too late. 16 Hamdan
Abu 'Anja responded in early January 1889 with provocative mockery: "As
for your request for peace while you remain infidel . . . it is a sign of your
stupidity and ignorance. . . . If you want peace say it from the bottom of
your heart that you testify that 'there is no God but Allah and that
Muhammad is his Prophet.' For if not, we shall kill you, destroy your
homes, and make your children orphans. . . ," 17
In spite of the rhetoric the Mahdists were in no position to destroy
Yohannes. They could at best raid Ethiopia when the imperial army was
occupied elsewhere. Their own major effort was concentrated on their
Egyptian front, and Hamdan Abu 'Anja himself died of an illness later that
month (January 1889). But this religious-cultural conflict was heading
toward a disaster. Yohannes, facing two threats, the Italians to the north
and Menelik in Shoa, decided to move against the Mahdists (now under
Amir al-Zaki Tamal). It was a decision (taken against the advice of his gen-
erals) that can be explained only in psychological terms and against the
background of Yohannes's concept of Islam as the ultimate enemy. He was
quoted saying: "Their religion says as follows: say 'No' to God, and 'Yes'
to the demon which is Muhammad. . . . The Muslims want to massacre the
Christians and burn the churches in Gondar. 18 Many dogs have surrounded
me and a gathering of evil people holds me. . . . Here we are ready to fight
against these Arabians, the doers of atrocities." 19
On 9 March 1889, a decisive battle took place in Mettema-Qallabat.
The Ethiopian army was winning the day when Yohannes was killed. The
Ethiopian forces dispersed as victory turned into defeat. Yohannes's body
was captured and his severed head sent to the celebrations in 'Umm
Durman.
The strategic implications of the confrontation in Mettema-Qallabat
were far reaching. When Yohannes decided to concentrate on fighting the
darbush he ordered Ras Alula from Asmara to join him. It was a decision
tantamount to giving up Eritrea, 20 and, indeed, the Italians, the real winners
of the Ethio-Mahdist battle, advanced to capture the province without firing
a single shot. They established their colony officially on 1 January 1890.
Four years later they captured Kassala, thus heralding the end of the
Mahdist state. With the fall of Yohannes there fell also Tigre as the politi-
cal center of Ethiopia. Power shifted to the south where Menelik of Shoa
was now in a position to become the next emperor. His policy toward the
Mahdiyya was conciliatory, in keeping with his general cultural and politi-
cal approach and—as we shall see—in accordance with the new strategic
circumstances.
In the context of Middle Eastern history the Mahdiyya was one of the
movements of Islamic revivalism that appeared at the end of the nineteenth
century as a reaction to the Westernization process. One dimension of this
revival was led by the Ottoman Sultan 'Abd al-Hamid II (1876-1909),

whose Ethiopian connection (and his acceptance of Ethiopia's legitimacy)
we shall soon discuss. Another dimension was the revival of Islamic val-
ues, in a modernized form, among members of the new intelligentsia locat-
ed mainly in Egypt. The leading figures in the late nineteenth century,
notably Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad 'Abduh paid little atten-
tion to Ethiopia, but their disciples (headed by Shaikh Rashid Rida) will be
relevant to our concerns. They also accepted Ethiopia's legitimacy, as we
shall mention later in discussing the stormy 1930s. A third dimension of
Islamic late nineteenth-century revival took the shape of supratribal unity
movements in the periphery of the Ottoman world. These movements
included the Wahhabiyya of the Saudis in Arabia, the Sanusiyya in Libya,
and the Somali "Mad M a w l a " movement. Each of these movements,
although carrying the fundamental universal message of Islam, compro-
mised at some point with the Western-imported phenomenon of the interna-
tional boundary. The Mahdiyya, as a state, was either too strong or too
short-lived, or both, to make this compromise with recognized boundaries.
Throughout its existence it was the most radical anti-Western and political-
ly successful Islamic movement. In its militant fundamentalist raison d'être
the Mahdist state experienced little compromise. What little spirit of com-
promise it had was for Ethiopia. The mahdi and his successors, as we saw,
wavered between the two basic Islamic approaches, that of utruku al-
habasha, which accepted Ethiopia, and that of Islam al-najashi, which
implied its illegitimacy. They decided for the latter and pursued jihad
because Ethiopia under Yohannes was first provocative and later exposed
as weak.
Indeed, the Mahdist jihad carried a message for the future: that in dis-
cussing the history between Ethiopia and Islam the radical Muslims (as had
been done by Gragn and the seventeenth-century Zaydi imam) should
declare Ethiopia illegitimate. It was a message that resurfaced during the
Abyssinian Crisis of the 1930s and served other radical visionaries of an
all-Middle Eastern cultural and political homogeneity.
MENELIK II AND 'ABD AL-HAMID II
The fall of Yohannes, and with him the short-lived Tigrean hegemony, her-
alded a change in Ethiopia's relations with the Islamic Middle East. With
power shifting to the southern-oriented Shoa, Menelik's Ethiopia compro-
mised with the Italians by acquiescing in the loss of Eritrea. The Italians,
the British, and the French took over the defunct empire of Isma'il along
the entire African coast of the Red Sea. During the mid-1880s they occu-
pied the Somali and Eritrean coast and their hinterland, thus creating a
buffer between Ethiopia and the Middle East.
The British, by occupying Egypt beginning in 1882, neutralized that
pivotal Middle Eastern country for the next three generations (until the
aftermath of World War II) as an independent factor in a regional strategy.
The Mahdist state remained in existence for some time, but its attention
was consumed in dealing with Egypt: first, offensively as a prime jihadi
objective, and then, defensively in an effort to stem the Anglo-Egyptian
invasion. Emperor Menelik (1889-1913) 2 1 did his best to avoid confronta-
tion with the Mahdists. He was not interested in the border disputes of the
north nor was he involved in the spirit of the anti-Islamic crusade. Menelik
led Ethiopia in a period that saw the political d e f e a t of Muslims in
Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia. He himself occupied Harar (1887), the historic
and symbolic capital of political Islam in the Horn. His confident policy
toward Islam and Muslims was hardly influenced by the "Ahmad Gragn
trauma."
Menelik was ready from the start to implement the relations Yohannes
had offered the khalifa too late, in December 1888. Mahdist-Ethiopian rela-
tions from 1889 remained good, marked by mutual restraint, sometimes
even rising to the level of cooperation. They remained constant until the
fall of the Mahdiyya state into British (and Egyptian) hands in 1898. 22
Menelik's period represented Ethiopia's introduction into the twentieth
century. It witnessed two major phenomena, each constituting a watershed
in Ethiopian modern history, and both marked by a military victory. The
first involved Ethiopia's taking on the challenge of Western imperialism, a
successful process that lasted a decade and culminated with the victory in
Adwa, in March 1896, over the Italian army. The second phenomenon was
the simultaneous Ethiopian occupation of the vast territories in the south,
the annexation of which more than doubled Ethiopia's size. Both these
demonstrations of Ethiopia's military strength must be seen against the
background of the country's process of modernization.
We have mentioned briefly the sociopolitical aspect of the process,
emphasizing the flexibility of the country's social mobility. Another impor-
tant element of Ethiopia's process of modernization was its absorption of
modern firearms.
In the pre-modern Islamic Ottoman Middle East warfare was exclu-
sively the preserve of the Turkish-speaking elite. Absorption of firearms in
quantities, and the need to build modern armies by resorting to massive
mobilization of the peasantry, necessitated revolutionary changes such as
those we saw in the case of Muhammad 'Ali (or later with Ahmad 'Urabi).
In Ethiopia, the mass mobilization of the peasantry had traditionally been
an integral part of the military structure. As long as the arms imported dur-
ing the second half of the nineteenth century were guns or rifles, Ethiopian
society could absorb them in unlimited quantities.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the period that had begun
with Ozdemir Pasha of Islam on the coast preventing the importation of
firearms came to an end. Firearms began pouring into the country and were
no longer a limited matter of small units led by a turk basha. Under
Menelik the combination of the traditional military mobilization system

(with battle-tested, constantly renewed leadership at all levels), with mod-
ern, mainly individual, weaponry, proved enough to defeat Western forces.
It also proved enough to resume Ethiopian expansion in the south.
Menelik's conquests in the south returned Ethiopia to areas that had
been Ethiopian during the early Solomonic Golden Age and beyond. The
occupation was a landmark in the history of local Ethiopian Muslims. But
although lasting for two decades, the period went virtually ignored by fel-
low Middle Eastern Muslims. They were too busy in their own growing
struggle with the challenge of the West to take notice. In fact, even the
1887 occupation by Menelik of Harar, the old capital of Islam, the town the
Egyptians had renewed as a base for spreading quranic studies only a few
years earlier, 23 received barely a headline in the Cairene press.
Even less Middle Eastern attention, if any, was paid to the demise of
other Islamic sultanates of the Oromos and the Sidama. Menelik, equipped
with unmatched superiority in firepower, accomplished the process in three
stages: first, when still a vassal of Yohannes, he captured the country of the
Tuluma Oromo, Jimma and Leka in the southwest, and Harar in the east.
Second, before the Adwa victory he annexed to Ethiopia the vast territories
of the Arusi, Sidama, and Bale. And third, after Adwa, more powerful than
ever, Menelik expanded the empire to Ethiopia's current borders, destroy-
ing the kingdoms of Kaffa, Gimira, and Boran; annexing the Ogaden; and
capturing Awsa of the Afars, which had been the last refuge (until the late
seventeenth century) of Gragn's successors. 24
With the exception of Jimma, these southern entities were all officially
abolished, their territories absorbed into Ethiopia's new provincial system.
Christianity began to spread as the Ethiopian state religion, and churches
were built for the colonizing newcomers as well as for members of the
local elite, who opted for political cooperation and cultural integration.
Practitioners of Islam were not persecuted or oppressed. Islam was
given cultural autonomy and the religion was permitted to be exercised, as
both a judicial system and a social identity. 25 Under Menelik's confident
flexibility, Ethiopia, no longer in conflict with external Islamic Sudan or
Egypt, 26 returned to the religious tolerance of the pre-Yohannes and pre-
Tewodros era. But Islam in the newly occupied territories lost its political
message, whatever remained of it from the heyday of Gragn. Of all the sul-
tanates only Jimma remained in existence because of Abba Jifar's surren-
der in 1883 without a fight. In return for his submission Abba Jifar was
granted autonomy for Jimma, a promise that was kept until the eve of
Mussolini's invasion in 1935.
As we shall see, the fact that the "Abyssinians" under Menelik did
"take an offensive" against Islam would ultimately be put on the Middle
Eastern agenda only during the Fascists' 1935 aggression. But at that time,
no such hostility existed. To the contrary, the Ottoman Sultan 'Abd al-
Hamid II (1876-1909) was eager for a diplomatic channel to and a friendly

dialogue with Menelik.
'Abd al-Hamid II, to be sure, was a restorer of political Islam in the
Ottoman Empire. A short time after his accession to the sultanate, he abol-
ished the 1876 constitution that was intended to integrate Ottoman politics
around Western pluralism (including political equality for Christians).
Instead, he revived the daily usage of his own title as "the Caliph of the
Believers." Islamic ways were implemented in all parts of Ottoman life to
the extent that contemporary Europeans and Ottoman nationalists depicted
'Abd al-Hamid as a theocratic reactionary. His renewed emphasis on the
caliphate was also aimed at preserving Ottoman influence on Muslims in
territories that had been lost to Russia in recent decades. But he cared very
little about Islamic territories lost to M e n e l i k ' s Ethiopia. The new
Ethiopian-Ottoman dialogue revolved rather around the Ethiopian commu-
nity in Jerusalem. We have already noted that a community of Ethiopian
m o n k s lived in J e r u s a l e m f r o m the e a r l i e s t y e a r s of E t h i o p i a n
Christianity. 2 7 Their existence, combined with Ethiopian pilgrimages to
Jerusalem, constituted a modest but a steady bridge into the cultural sphere
of Oriental Christianity.
We have only sketchy references to the whereabouts of the Ethiopians
in Jerusalem during the period before the thirteenth century (we have
already mentioned their restoration by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi), but there is
no d o u b t that they c o e x i s t e d and s h a r e d p r o p e r t y with the o t h e r
Monophysite local communities, the Syrians, the Armenians, and the
Egyptian Copts.
The Ethiopian community in Jerusalem, and continuing pilgrimages
from Ethiopia to the Holy Places, flourished during the period of the early
Solomonic Golden Age. At that time Ethiopian emperors felt confident
enough to look after Christianity in Jerusalem. When the Mamluk sultan
Barsbay ended the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1422, Emperor Yishaq
(1414-1429) retaliated by persecuting Ethiopian Muslims. But after the
destruction of Ethiopia by Ahmad Gragn and the simultaneous Ottoman
conquest of Jerusalem, the Ethiopian local c o m m u n i t y in Jerusalem
declined. Although the Ethiopians themselves were deprived of a niche in
Jerusalem's Church of Holy Sepulchre, at least as early as 1530, Ethiopian
monks inhabited the roof of the St. Helena Chapel, which is a part of the
church complex. They called it Dabra Sultan, better known by its Arabic
name, Dayr al-Sultan (henceforward Deir al-Sultan), the monastery of the
ruler. They believed it to have originally been Ethiopian property from the
days it was given by King Solomon to the Queen of Sheba. From the six-
teenth to the nineteenth century it remained the only site left to symbolize
Ethiopia's Christian, biblical, and national link to Zion.
The place, small and shabby, gave shelter to the few monks who chose
to remain in Jerusalem. During the Era of the Princes no aid was received
from the motherland, and the Ethiopians lived on the charity of fellow
Monophysite Armenians. They also coexisted with their fellow Egyptian
Copts. The roof of the St. Helena Chapel forms a courtyard shared by the
latter's Monastery of St. Antony, and next to it is a small edifice with an
opening from which a passageway runs past the Chapel of the Four Martyrs
and the Chapel of St. Michael. Control of the passageway, and thus of the
two chapels, depends on who holds the keys to the padlocks of the gates at
either end of it. For many generations possession of the keys alternated
between the Copts and their fellow Monophysites, the Ethiopians, symbol-
izing the ownership of the two chapels and the passageway. In the middle
of the nineteenth century this partnership soured into a dispute.
In 1838, when Jerusalem was under the government of Muhammad
'Ali's son Ibrahim, nearly the entire Ethiopian community perished in a
plague. 28 The Armenians and the Copts obtained the governor's permission
to burn the Ethiopians' belongings, which they hastened to do. The belong-
ings included their library and its documents. When the Ethiopians returned
several years later the Copts were ready to accept them as their guests,
although not their partners. A complicated negotiation ensued, with British
and Russian missionaries and lawyers pleading unsuccessfully with the
restored Ottoman government on behalf of the Ethiopians.
Emperor Tewodros II had conceived of the redemption of Jerusalem as
a symbolic Ethiopian nationalist goal. But his relations with Islam and with
the British neutralized his ability to pursue this goal. Yohannes IV was
more practical. 29 He sent money for the purchase of a plot of land outside
the Old City in West Jerusalem for the purpose of building a new Ethiopian
church. In 1884 he also sent an energetic priest, Mamher Walda-Sama'at
Walda-Yohannes, to organize and lead the community and to oversee the
construction that began the same year. The work was completed in 1893,
and the Ethiopian church of Kidana Mihrat and the monastery of Dabra
Gannat were inaugurated four years after the accession of Menelik II.
Menelik, unlike his predecessors, was in a position to build a construc-
tive dialogue with an Islamic ruler. He reached out to 'Abd al-Hamid II,
seeking mainly to solidify the Ethiopian position in Jerusalem.
As early as 1889, after the death of Yohannes but prior to his own
coronation, Menelik sent emissaries to Istanbul. They carried a letter to the
Ottoman sultan-caliph in which Menelik described the religious freedom
he granted to the Muslims in his country. In return he asked for justice for
the Ethiopians in Deir al-Sultan. 30 'Abd al-Hamid was reluctant to intervene
in the delicate legal case of Deir al-Sultan but the Ethiopians were given
permission to purchase land and build elsewhere in Jerusalem.
The following year, Ras Makonnen, the conqueror and governor of
Harar, passed through Istanbul with presents from Menelik and a renewed
request to build in Jerusalem. Makonnen became a guiding spirit in what
turned into a full-scale Ethiopian endeavor. He was overshadowed, howev-
er, by the energy of Menelik's wife, Empress Taitu. 3 1 In the next two
decades more than a dozen buildings were built or purchased with Ottoman
permission in West Jerusalem. Many were located near the new church in
what came to be known as Ethiopia Street.
Menelik, nevertheless, did not give up his hope of restoring the heart
of the Ethiopian presence in Jerusalem, the ownership of Deir al-Sultan. In
1902 he intensified his personal control over the community by organizing
a conference there of Ethiopian clergymen, and by the appointment of his
devotee Mamher Faqade, as a replacement for Walda-Sama'at. In June
1904 Menelik promised an envoy of 'Abd al-Hamid that he would permit
the Muslim community of Addis Ababa to build a major mosque in that
town, to be named after the sultan, al-Hamidiyya.
Following the visit of this Ottoman envoy, Menelik canceled the
arrangement by which the Italian consul in Jerusalem had overseen local
Ethiopian legal affairs and decided instead to deal directly with 'Abd al-
Hamid. In May 1905 he sent a mission to 'Abd al-Hamid headed by
Dajazmach Mashasha-Warq and Ato Hailu Mariam. In Istanbul they hired a
Russian lawyer who looked into the Ottoman archives, as they collected
more evidence in Jerusalem. On the basis of their findings an Ottoman
court decided that one of the keys to the gates of Deir al-Sultan should be
turned over to the Ethiopians, but because of a legal maneuver, this was not
done. (Menelik, for his part, shelved his promise concerning the grand
mosque in Addis Ababa, a fact that will become an issue much later in our
account.)
In 1907, a ten-man Ethiopian delegation headed by Dajazmach
Mashasha-Warq arrived in Istanbul. They obtained a court decree that an
investigation be carried out in Jerusalem, but in March 1908 the governor
of Jerusalem ruled against the Ethiopians. By that time Menelik had
already been paralyzed by his illness and 'Abd al-Hamid was about to be
deposed by a group of army officers, known as "Young Turks."
'Abd al-Hamid was the last Islamic Ottoman ruler of the Middle East.
He was not, however, the fanatic religious reactionary often depicted by
contemporary Westerners and local young nationalists. What concerns us is
his attitude toward Ethiopia, which was both pragmatic and constructive.
Ethiopia was not on his crowded agenda but, clearly, it was not totally
ignored. Moreover, the Christian country was accepted by 'Abd al-Hamid
as a legitimate neighbor, particularly after it proved a strong state in the
aftermath of Adwa.
This attitude was apparent in 'Abd al-Hamid's authorization of the
Ethiopian settling in Jerusalem. We also have implicit evidence in the form
of an account produced by the envoy, Sadiq al-Mu'ayyad al-'Azm, that
'Abd al-Hamid had sent in 1904 to Menelik. The account was published in
that year as a book in Turkish (under the title of Habesh Siyahetnamehsi)
and translated into Arabic four years later. Entitled Rihlat al-habasha (The
Ethiopian voyage), al-'Azm's written account became the most oft-cited

standard work, a near classic on Ethiopia, in the twentieth-century Arab-
Islamic Middle East. 32
The author, a lieutenant general in the Ottoman army, gained diplomat-
ic experience as an Ottoman representative in Bulgaria. In the 312 pages of
his book the exact objective of the mission assigned to him by the sultan is
not discussed. It appears that 'Abd a l - H a m i d ' s suspicion of Italian
encroachment in Tripolitania drove him to explore the possibility of some
anti-Italian cooperation with Menelik. (Sadiq al-'Azm was sent later by
'Abd al-Hamid to the Sanussis in Tripolitania.) 33 Moreover, as the Hijazi
Railway was being constructed, Istanbul grew increasingly interested in
Red Sea affairs. Sadiq al-'Azm carried a letter from 'Abd al-Hamid to
Menelik which, we may infer from the narrative, mentioned also the issue
of the Deir al-Sultan. Altogether, the general nature of the mission was to
renew Ottoman intelligence of Ethiopia and pave the way for some eventu-
al strategic cooperation. The sharp-eyed al-'Azm, traveling in Ethiopia
between 11 March and 15 June 1904 (accompanied by two aides), provided
a richly, multifaceted account.
Al-'Azm's descriptions of Islam in Menelik's Ethiopia show that his
basic impression was one of an honorable existence under a benevolent
Christian elite. The author entered Ethiopia by way of Djibouti and reached
Harar on 11 March. His description of his meeting with the Islamic town
(pp. 59-60) is enthusiastic. Nearly all of the thirty-five thousand Muslims
(of forty thousand inhabitants) marched from the town to receive him as the
sultan's personal envoy. Headed by their muftis, qadis, and the imams of
the numerous mosques they represented a flourishing town that thrived on
both commerce and learning. In addition, some Ethiopian soldiers came to
salute him. The only person who did not appear was Amir 'Abdallah, the
last Islamic ruler (1884-1887). According to al-'Azm, Menelik had occu-
pied Harar because of the arrogance of the amir. After the Egyptian evacu-
ation of 1884, 'Abdallah had replaced the Ottoman-Egyptian flag with his
own, and pretentiously proclaimed himself Amir of the Believers. He then
challenged Menelik by inviting him to adopt Islam. Menelik, according to
al-'Azm, tried to appease 'Abdallah and, failing that, he took the town.
'Abdallah confined himself to his residence out of shame, and the Ottoman
envoy met only with his brother. Apart from a few hints elsewhere in the
text this is the only mention of M e n e l i k ' s recent occupation of vast
Muslim-populated areas. There is no indication whatsoever of the various
sultanates or other entities that, until their recent annexation to Ethiopia,
had exercised political sovereignty under Islamic flags. In a later passage
(p. 161) is a detailed description of his meeting with part of the ruling fami-
ly of Jimma, the only kingdom surviving as an autonomous Islamic entity.
Suliman, the brother of Muhammad bin Dawud Abba Jifar, came to see
him in the outskirts of Addis Ababa. With his two sons, all speaking good
Arabic and dressed as distinguished Muslims, they asked him about

Istanbul, Damascus, and Mecca and expressed the hope of making a pil-
grimage to the holy city. They were overwhelmed with joy to see the
emblem of the sultan (tughra) carved on al-'Azm's watch, and he promised
to send them Islamic printed materials and a fez (headgear).
Wherever 'Abd al-Hamid's envoy went, Muslims were free to pray for
the Ottoman sultan. Al-'Azm was especially moved when he attended a
Friday prayer in Harar's main mosque with some two thousand local
Muslims, who expressed great excitement when the imam mentioned the
Ottoman caliph in his sermon. In Addis Ababa, however, there was neither
a mosque nor an Islamic cemetery. As we have already seen, al-'Azm man-
aged to obtain Menelik's promise to authorize the building of a major
mosque to be named after 'Abd al-Hamid. The promise to build the mosque
in Addis Ababa was made through al-'Azm to the local Muslim leadership,
headed by 'Abdallah al-Sadiq (pp. 138-143, 201, 204). The latter was a
prominent figure from Harar, where he had served under Ras Makonnen as
Ra'is al-Muslimin, the chief of the Muslims, serving Menelik in important
diplomatic missions to which we shall return later.
The picture given in Rihlat al-habasha of Christian-Muslim relations is
not a happy one. Al-'Azm discerned a cultural barrier between Muslims and
Christians. A Christian would not touch the skin of an animal slaughtered
by Muslims (pp. 160-161, 209). Neither Muslims nor Christians would eat
from the same table. The Christians, he wrote, even their nobles, do not
wash. One can easily "feel the d i f f e r e n c e " because the Muslims are
required ritually to wash several times a day. The Christians "are too free in
mixing with w o m e n , " and as a result they s u f f e r f r o m diseases that
Muslims have very rarely (p. 182).
Turning his analysis to the political dimension, al-'Azm's overwhelm-
ing impression was of the Ethiopian state's benevolent protection of
Muslims and of Islam. He described how the Muslims of Gondar asked Ras
Gugsa to act against one of them, a man named Zakarya, who became a
false prophet (zindiq), whom they feared would turn into a new mahdi (pp.
167, 193). Ras Makonnen (a main figure in al-'Azm's book, a man who was
just and noble) allowed the Muslims of Harar to celebrate in public, when
news reached them of an Ottoman military success against the Greeks. He
did so in spite of the local Harari Greeks' argument that it was an Islamic
victory over Christians (p. 234). Another Christian c o m m u n i t y , the
Armenians of Addis Ababa, had settled there after fleeing Istanbul follow-
ing the 1894-1896 Ottoman anti-Armenian atrocities. According to al-
'Azm, once in Addis Ababa they wanted to initiate anti-Ottoman propagan-
da activities, but M e n e l i k p r e v e n t e d this by t h r e a t e n i n g them with
expulsion (p. 168).
In addition to this portrait of Menelik's Ethiopia are the passages in
Rihlat al-habasha concerning the history of Islamic-Ethiopian relations. It
is apparent that al-'Azm made an effort not to emphasize conflicts or to

blame them on Ethiopia. There is very little in the book about Ahmad
Gragn apart from a brief mention (p. 186) and Tewodros II is mentioned
(p. 151) without discussing his relations with Islam.
Two historical chapters of great relevance are presented, however. The
first concerns Yohannes IV and Islam: In one passage referring to the con-
flict with Egypt, the author blames the war on Isma'il, and then proceeds to
blame the British for diverting Yohannes to fight the Mahdiyya. Later, a
full chapter is devoted to a discussion of Yohannes and the Mahdiyya (pp.
175-181). In al-'Azm's version the Mahdists are clearly the aggressors. He
mentions how 'Uthman Diqna provoked Ras Alula (prior to Kufit), and how
Abu 'Anja (in January 1888) massacred the priests of Gondar and commit-
ted atrocities there. What al-'Azm wrote was accurate, but only a partial
view of history. Indeed, the Ottoman observer had nothing but harsh criti-
cism of the Mahdiyya, and by comparison Yohannes fared much better in
his analysis.
Al-'Azm went so far as to ignore basic facts and dates when he present-
ed a kindly view of Yohannes's oppression of Islam in Ethiopia. According
to al-'Azm's account Yohannes began his anti-Muslim campaign only after
an Ethiopian Muslim named Muhammad Jibril went to serve the mahdi.
Muhammad Jibril was returned to Ethiopia by the mahdi to convert the
Christians to Islam: "When the najashi Yuhannis heard about it he became
madly angry, and from that time he started oppressing the Muslims con-
trary to the policy of his predecessors, and maltreated them contrary to the
spirit of religious freedom prevailing in his country. This spirit had been to
the extent that even his own sister followed Islam with no restrictions and
married one of the Muslim princes. . . " (pp. 176-177).
Al-'Azm writes that he saw people mutilated by Yohannes for clinging
to Islam, and that many fled to the Sudan. But he then blames some of the
refugees themselves for instigating many of the border problems that
aggravated the conflict. Yohannes's generals and nobles, concluded al-
'Azm, particularly Menelik, were against his anti-Islamic policy.
The second historical chapter in Rihlat al-habasha that is of signifi-
cance to us is entitled, "The cordial relations between the Ethiopians and
the Muslims in the early days of Islam" (pp. 193-197). It contains a
detailed description of the Muhammad-/ia/'as/n' story, compiled from vari-
ous sources, and clearly emphasizes the role of Aksumite Ethiopia in sav-
ing the Prophet's followers. It is obvious that al-'Azm made an intensive
study of early Ethio-Islamic relations prior to undertaking his mission. His
a t t i t u d e to E t h i o p i a was c l e a r l y i n f l u e n c e d by his k n o w l e d g e of
Muhammad's saying to the sahaba: "If you go to Abyssinia you will find a
king under whom none are persecuted. It is a land of righteousness."
At the end of the book (pp. 315-323) al-'Azm annexed a long list under
the rubric, "The famous Ethiopians," containing brief sketches and an
extensive listing of Ethiopians who followed the Prophet in his early days,
such as Bilal, "the first mu'adhdhin," Baraka 'Umm Ayman, and many of
those we have already noted in discussing that first formative chapter of
Aksum history. The climax of the mission was al-'Azm's meeting with
Menelik himself, on 13 June 1904. He reveals little about the talks them-
selves, but perhaps the most illuminating point in the entire book is al-
'Azm's telling Menelik in detail the story of Muhammad and the najashi:
He [ M e n e l i k ] then asked me about the historical relations b e t w e e n

Ethiopia and the Muslim world, and I started telling His Highness in gen-
eral and in detail on the c o n n e c t i o n and the e x c h a n g i n g of presents
between the Prophet and Najashi Ashama, and how the refugees found the
best of shelters in Ethiopia, and how many of the followers of our master
Muhammad were Ethiopians, the same as today there are Ethiopians in
high p o s i t i o n with our sultan ['Abd a l - H a m i d ] , and they are c a l l e d
musahibun. It all made the emperor very happy and he said he wanted the
good relations to continue for ever, and that he loved his fellow Muslim
Ethiopians like he loved the Amhara without distinction, (p. 230)
The book is filled with praise of Menelik as an enlightened king, a just

ruler for Muslims and for Islam, and as a man who seeks knowledge and
progress (p. 223).
S u b s t a n t i a l parts of the book are d e v o t e d to the description of
Ethiopia's military might. The Ethiopians' courage, tactical mobility, and
resourcefulness impressed the Ottoman observer, and he described them, in
combination with the Ethiopians' ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands
of warriors in time of war (pp. 210-215).
This description provides the introduction to a detailed chapter (pp.
277-313) that concludes the book. In it, he describes Ethiopia's victory at
Adwa. The chapter is clearly derived from Western sources and contains no
new information on the diplomatic and military dimensions of the Ethio-
Italian conflict. It is, however, of great value because it conveyed to gener-
ations of Arabic readers in the Middle East the notion that the Ethiopians,
although in some respects a strange people "who do not wash," were not
only legitimate neighbors but were also strong enough to succeed in what
the Middle Easterners themselves were now failing: in maintaining inde-
pendence.
Rihlat al-habasha became the standard work on Ethiopia for at least
the period until the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935. Published in Cairo in 1908 it
became the best source on Ethiopia for a new generation in Egypt and the
Fertile Crescent. This was a generation that would experience the revival of
Islam as well as the beginnings of modern nationalism, both Egyptian and
Arab. The book was translated by two cousins of the author, Haqqi al-'Azm
and his brother Rafiq. Both were pioneers of modern Arabism in its first
form, namely, an emerging Arab identity and ideology compatible with the
main messages of traditional (not radical) Islam. For when the Young
Turks toppled 'Abd al-Hamid in the name of Turkish identity, educated

Arabic-speakers in the Middle East started discovering their own modern
Arab identity. In 1913, Rafiq al-'Azm became the cofounder of the main
prewar political party in Cairo advocating this line of Arabism and Islam.
(Haqqi j o i n e d somewhat later.) It was called the Ottoman Party for
Decentralization, and the other cofounder was one of the main advocates of
Islamic spiritual (nonmilitant) revival in the Middle East between the world
wars, Shaikh Rashid Rida. As we shall see, many members of this first gen-
eration of Islamic-Arab nationalists absorbed al-'Azm's image of Ethiopia.
IYASU, THE SOMALI MAWLA,
m AND
THE DEMISE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
The next chapter in the history of Ethiopian-Middle Eastern relations

was the O t t o m a n T u r k i s h one. U n d e r 'Abd a l - H a m i d the O t t o m a n
dialogue with Menelik did not turn into formal diplomatic relations.
Ottoman agents were sent to Ethiopia but a consulate was opened only in
April 1912, three years after the deposition of 'Abd al-Hamid by the Young
Turks.
From this movement of the Young Turks there would emerge in the
1920s the radically secular-nationalist leadership of M u s t a f a Kemal
Ataturk. But in the years leading up to World War I and the period of the
war itself, the movement was still a diverse one: a mixture of the Ottoman-
Islamic with the emerging new Turkish identity. Diverse too was the for-
eign policy of Istanbul. In Ethiopia the new Turkish leaders went on to
invest in local Islam. Their information on Ethiopia, as well as their image
of the country, stemmed clearly from al-'Azm's The Ethiopian Vogage,
which, as mentioned, was first published in Turkish in 1904.1 The Ottoman
consulate was opened not in Addis Ababa but in Harar. The consul (from
March 1913), Mazhar Bey, had clearly adopted al-'Azm's concepts about
Ethiopia's close affiliation to the Oriental Middle East and about the poten-
tiality of Christian-Islamic alliance in Ethiopia in the service of Ottoman
strategy. Mazhar began his tenure by registering Ottoman subjects residing
in Ethiopia, and, even more important, began cultivating relations with the
local Islamic community. 2 Prominent among his local new associates in
Harar was Menelik's Ra'is al-Muslimin (chief of the Muslims) 'Abdallah
al-Sadiq (who, after meeting with Sadiq al-'Azm in 1904, had become a
member of Menelik's mission to Istanbul headed by Dajazmach Mashasha-
Warq). Harar was also an ideal location to establish contacts with the
Sayyid Muhammad bin 'Abdallah Hasan (the so-called "Mad Mullah" or
"the mawla") who, since 1899, had been leading an Islamic jihad against
the British in nearby Somaliland. Although modest in scope, this Ottoman
diplomatic overture to Ethiopia was soon to become part of a global storm.
For when World War I began, Istanbul, although under young nationalists,
83
r e v e r t e d to I s l a m in its war e f f o r t a g a i n s t the B r i t i s h , F r e n c h , and

Russians.
By World War I, particularly after mid-1914, the internal situation in
Ethiopia was ready for a new wave of influence. Menelik died in December
1913; he h a d b e e n very ill and out of p o w e r b e g i n n i n g as e a r l y as
1907-1908. However, the political establishment he built was strong, and,
unlike earlier cases in modern Ethiopian history, his power was not chal-
lenged by a new group of warlords headed by a chief of another region.
Shoa and Addis Ababa remained the center of events, but the Shoan nobili-
ty was not homogenous. It was rather the product of Menelik's policy of
integration. Composed mainly of Amhara elite, it also included many of
Oromo origin and of others as well. When the struggle for power within
this establishment began, some of Menelik's achievements at integration
proved fleeting.
Ethiopian domestic events of this period have been presented and ana-
lyzed in detail by Harold Marcus, among others. 3 A f t e r the p o w e r of
Empress Taitu was curtailed, Lij Iyasu, Menelik's grandson and only male
descendant, was accepted by the Shoan nobility as the legitimate heir to the
throne. However, he was not satisfied with being a mere figurehead for
such a p o w e r f u l g r o u p ; his authority over its m e m b e r s was f a r f r o m
absolute. With Menelik still alive, Iyasu left Addis Ababa and traveled the
country as a kind of roving emperor-to-be. He went about acquiring a net-
work of loyalties throughout the provinces, especially in the newly annexed
territories.
In so doing, the young Iyasu was laying the groundwork for the begin-
nings of a fundamental change in the country's political culture. Menelik
had built his system on a Christian or newly Christianized center-oriented
elite and tolerated Islam only as a cultural aspect of Ethiopian provincial
life. Iyasu, in defying the Shoan elite, sought the repoliticization of Islam.
It was not the only element of his strategy, but it was a main pillar of it.
Iyasu was the son of Ras Mika'el, a prominent member of Menelik's estab-
lishment who had been the former Imam Muhammad 'Ali of Wallo, and
who was converted to Christianity in 1878 by Yohannes and Menelik. By
the time Menelik died, Iyasu had already cemented his new loyalties in the
periphery by marrying, according to Islamic tradition, the daughters of var-
ious chiefs.
In early 1914, Iyasu did not insist on a coronation ceremony in Addis
Ababa, a highly religious Christian event, but he made his father negus of
Wallo and Tigre. Negus Mika'el, second to none of the Shoan warlords,
went on to behave like a Christian, but the inscription on his new seal was
more revealing. It was in both Ge'ez and Arabic. The Ge'ez words were the
insignificant biblical quotation "The government shall be upon his shoul-
ders" but the Arabic read: "Mika'el, the king of Wallo and Tigre, the son of
IYASU, THE MAWLA & THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 85
Imam 'Ali, the king of Wallo." 4 It is possible that he entertained the idea of
reviving Islam politically, and through his son making it dominant in
Ethiopia.
The story of Iyasu turned into one of the most controversial affairs in
all Ethiopian history. 5 With the outbreak of the World War I, it acquired an
international dimension. In the first week of November 1914 the Ottomans
j o i n e d the German and Austrian side, and on 7 N o v e m b e r 1914 the
Ottoman Empire's chief mufti, the Shaikh al-Islam, issued a fatwa (an
Islamic legal proclamation) declaring jihad on Britain, France, Russia, and
on whoever sided with them.
The Ottomans' idea was to encourage Muslims under these empires to
revolt: The main strategic object was India. In some cases the response was
significant. The Sanussis of Libya invaded Egypt; the Zaydi Imam Yahia of
Yemen did the same in threatening Aden; and Sultan 'Ali Dinar revolted in
Dar Fur in western Sudan. More important were other consequences. In
India the British were now ready to negotiate with modern Indian national-
ists, and in the Middle East they encouraged the amir of Mecca, the Sharif
Husayn bin 'Ali, to start the anti-Ottoman Arab revolt (to which we shall
soon return).
However, beyond the jihad policy there lay an Ottoman-German grand
scheme to reconstruct, after achieving victory, the whole Oriental East.
German and Ottoman agents worked toward this goal in Iran, Afghanistan,
the Caucasus, and elsewhere. During 1915 and the first half of 1916 the
victory of the Ottoman side in the Oriental arena seemed likely. The
Ottomans defeated the British at Gallipoli (in January 1916) and in Iraq
(where some three British divisions surrendered in April 1916 in Kut-al-
Amara). The Ottomans failed twice (January 1915 and April 1916) in their
attempt to storm the Suez Canal from their staging area in Palestine. But
their daring campaigns in Sinai were impressive, and their agents were in a
position to promise that victory was near.
Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa were marginal to this Ottoman effort.
The fact that a Somali jihadi movement (the Mad Mawla) was already in
action 6 and that Ethiopia's emperor was potentially leaning toward Islam,
was hardly important to Istanbul. The British, the French, and the Italians
had long created a territorial buffer between the Ottomans and Ethiopia,
and even in the heyday of Habesh Eyaleti it would have been too much to
imagine a najashi of Ethiopia joining in an Islamic jihad. Yet the idea that
Ethiopia might side with the Ottomans arose because of the activities of
Mazhar Bey, the consul general in Harar, and because of his observations
and dialogue with Iyasu.
Isolated as he was in Ethiopia, Mazhar was able to correspond with
Istanbul only rarely through couriers infiltrating from Yemen. We are for-
tunate in having his correspondence with the Ottoman Foreign Ministry,
and it is worth following some of it, as it recounts Iyasu's story. 7 It begins

with Mazhar's report of 19 December 1914:
The Ethiopian policy has not yet been established. It is possible to get the
Ethiopians on our side if w e manage s o m e c o m p r o m i s e with them. B y
using this situation w e can have the profit in the Sudan and in Somalia. I
sent the messengers to Somalia and the Sudan with the declarations [of
jihad by the Shaikh al-Islam], I e v e n published the fatwas. . . . The mawla
in Somalia has rebelled. I am trying to involve the other tribes. With all
Muslims w e are praying for the sultan.8
Mazhar's idea was that pushing Ethiopia with its known military abili-
ty into the war on the side of the Ottomans would prove fruitful. "We must
follow the Ethiopian affairs closely," he wrote on 17 March 1915, "the
importance of this is very obvious. There are so many important moments
according to the phases of war, one should not lose the chance to sign an
agreement." 9 In a previous letter of 13 February 1915 he mentioned the
price:
The Ethiopians want to h a v e a harbor. If the British are thrown out of

O t t o m a n S o m a l i a , it m i g h t w o r k t o g i v e E t h i o p i a part o f the c o a s t
between Zeila and Bulkar and the territory between the coast and the east-
ern border of Harar. If an agreement is reached with the Ethiopians, this
need can be covered from this place. The mawla is ready to conquer what-
ever the Sublime Port [The Ottoman government] orders, and his power is
enough. He only applied for our help in ammunition for next year. 1 0
To enhance his scheme and to be in closer contact with the German

embassy, Mazhar moved to Addis Ababa in March 1915. He was now in
constant touch with Lij Iyasu and helped to intensify the already existing
connection between him and the mawla.
The idea of E t h i o p i a n - S o m a l i anti-British c o o p e r a t i o n was not
unthinkable. (Indeed, in the 1905-1908 period, the mawla and Menelik cor-
responded, and the mawla seemed ready to accept Somali autonomy—
Jimma style—in the Ethiopian Ogaden in return for Menelik's help against
the British.) 11 Istanbul was now in favor of such cooperation, although it
never approved Somali autonomy under Ethiopia. In Istanbul, it was con-
templated that after the war the mawla would have autonomy under the
Ottomans. He was promised the title of Shaikh al-mashayikh and the mili-
tary rank of mushir (field marshal) as well as power over all the territories
he would liberate. 12
Mazhar convinced Istanbul to recognize Ethiopia's future status as an
independent state and did his best to convince Lij Iyasu that an Ottoman
victory was forthcoming. His strategy was to lure Iyasu into the war by
leading him to believe that upon victory he would have the Somalis under
his sovereignty.
For his part, Iyasu reciprocated by showing the Ottoman his Islamic
leanings. A letter Iyasu had sent to the mawla in May 1915 through Mazhar
(accompanying some token military aid) opened with the Islamic shahada
(the testimony that Muhammad was the Messenger of God). "Lij Iyasu is in
favor of us with all his heart," wrote Mazhar on 3 June 1915. "He will give
the imperial order [to enter the war] soon."
But Iyasu was in no position to declare war on Britain, France, and
Italy. In any event the members of the Shoan establishment would not fol-
low such a militarily suicidal and a pro-Islamic action. Iyasu's policy was
to bide his time. It is apparent from Mazhar's reports that Iyasu was wait-
ing for the Ottomans to invade Egypt and defeat the British. Meanwhile, he
reassured Mazhar he would bring Ethiopia into the war. "The prince is
firmly in favor of us," Mazhar reported to Istanbul on 23 June 1915, sug-
gesting that two airplanes should be sent through Yemen as a present to
Iyasu.
But the Ottoman government could hardly send written messages. As
much as three months or more would pass before a response would arrive
from Istanbul. In October 1915 Iyasu and Negus Mika'el told Mazhar they
had made a decision to enter the war, and they gave him a medal of honor.
A few days later Mazhar was told that "the malik [king in Arabic] Mika'el"
was ill, and then he was even told the rumor that Mikael had died. "I am
praying for the prince [Iyasu]," he concluded his dispatch, "who is entirely
pro-Ottoman and pro-Islam."
Iyasu (and his father) were waiting not only for the Ottomans to win in
Egypt but also for the mawla to beat the British in Somaliland and conquer
the coast that Mazhar led them to believe would be theirs. If either of these
was to materialize, they would be in a position to drag the country onto the
Ottoman side, and, in what would be their greatest prize of the war, to
eventually do away with the Shoan establishment.
But the war in the Middle East came to a deadlock and the mawla,
without massive Ethiopian aid, was little more than a nuisance for the
British. Mazhar's correspondence with the Ottoman Foreign Ministry was
hopelessly delayed. His message of November 1915 was replied to by
Istanbul only on 22 May 1916, six months later. It contained the decision of
Enver Pasha, Istanbul's strong man:
We are following with interest your relations with the mawla of

Somalia. It is understood that he is ready for every action under Ottoman
supremacy. A guarantee can be given that in case he conquers any place
from the Italians or the British, that place will be given to him. The
Ottomans and their allies are defeating their enemies and shall win. The
enemy has been defeated in the Dardanelles, . . . in Iraq, . . . in the
Caucasus,... the Sanussis won a victory on the borders of Egypt....
If Ethiopia takes action against our common enemy as we hope, you
have the permission to say that whatever they capture from Britain, Italy
or France [emphasis mine], w e will support the Ethiopians s o that they

will k e e p these territories e v e n in peace time. [These territories] were cap-
tured [by the British, Italians, and the French] from the Ottomans in older
times. W e will support them [the Ethiopians] even in peace time to keep
their conquests. This suits the Ottoman interest t o o . 1 3
The Ottoman government's design for the Horn and that of Iyasu were
incompatible. The Ottomans wanted the mawla to exercise autonomy of the
Somalis within their empire, while Iyasu wanted such autonomy to be exer-
cised under his new Ethiopia. From Enver's letter to Mazhar it is apparent
that ultimately the Ottomans wanted to pressure Iyasu to capture "French
territory," namely Djibouti. They wanted him to settle for Djibouti and the
Eritrean highlands. Istanbul was far from convinced that suddenly Ethiopia
would become a Muslim nation, worthy of controlling the entire Horn.
In May 1916 the Ottoman Foreign Ministry wrote to Mazhar that in
order to encourage Ethiopia to enter the war he was authorized to promise
the Ethiopians the return of the keys to the gates of Deir al-Sultan in
Jerusalem. This was the most important spiritual goal of Christian Ethiopia,
and, clearly, that was still how Ethiopia was viewed in Istanbul. (The
Young Turks, for their part were wavering between religious and secular
nationalist ideas and were ready, unlike their predecessor, 'Abd al-Hamid
II, to use holy places as bargaining chips.) Mazhar, however, realized that
such an Ottoman promise, once made public, would enhance Ethiopia's
Christian nationalism and endanger Iyasu. In a letter of 4 September 1916
Mazhar responded briefly: "The decision about Jerusalem is all right. I
would like to have the authority to use this decision according to the proper
time and place." 14 Mazhar, in the short time left to him in Ethiopia, did not
tell anyone about the Deir al-Sultan promise, 15 nor did he tell Iyasu that the
Somalis were not to be under his emperorship.
Iyasu's strategy was his struggle with the Shoan establishment and his
trump card, as agreed to on the spot with Mazhar, was the mawla. Only an
Islamic buildup in the Ogaden and around Harar could make him powerful
enough to face down his opponents at home. Indeed, since late 1914, Iyasu,
encouraged by Mazhar, had been working on his Harar-Islamic-maw/a con-
nection. For that purpose he constantly sought to undermine the Harar gov-
ernment of Dajazmach Tafari, the son of Ras Makonnen, an equally ambi-
tious contender for the throne, who, for his part, was ready to settle on the
province.
A few days after hearing of the Ottoman entry into the war, Iyasu
appointed 'Abdallah al-Sadiq, the ra'is al-Muslimin of Harar, deputy gover-
nor of the Ogaden. 'Abdallah, Menelik's (and Makonnen's) assistant in
building Christian-Islamic social and economic coexistence, now became
Iyasu's political channel to the Ogaden Muslims. He married one of his
daughters to Iyasu and became Iyasu's tutor in Islamic customs and man-
ners. In February 1915 Iyasu visited Harar and, accompanied by 'Abdallah,
he prayed in a mosque for the first time. Then, between June 1915 and
April 1916 Iyasu spent most of his time in eastern Ethiopia, in and out of
Harar, Dire Dawa, Jijiga, constructing mosques and building contacts with
the Muslims and with the mawla. He was reported to have married a daugh-
ter of the mawla and also sent him some military aid. His clear message for
the local Muslims, and through them to the Somali clans beyond the border,
was to unite under the jihadi banner of the mawla. The mawla and his
jihad, Iyasu conveyed to the Somalis, had Ethiopia's backing. For his own
part, mired as he was in his conflict with the Shoan establishment, Iyasu
was in no position to drag Ethiopia into war against the Allies.
In early August 1916 Iyasu started to panic. Despite Mazhar's efforts
and communications between Istanbul and Berlin, the Germans were reluc-
tant to guarantee postwar independence to Ethiopia under Iyasu. Moreover,
the Ottomans had begun losing their initial military momentum in the
Middle East. In April 1916 they remained victorious in Iraq, but their Sinai
campaign aimed at Egypt failed the same month. Earlier in March the
Sanussis of Libya were driven back from Egyptian territory and, two
months later, the jihad of Sultan 'Ali Dinar of Dar Fur was quelled by the
British. In July 1916 the Ottomans' third attempt to cross Sinai met with a
disaster.
Closer to the Red Sea and the Horn was yet another development of
major significance: the outbreak of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman
Empire on 5 June 1916. The Arab Revolt had a double impact on Iyasu.
First, the Arab army of Sharif Husayn (the amir of Mecca), helped by
British advisers, took control of Mecca (10 June) and went on in July and
August to capture all of Hijaz (with the exception of Madina, which
remained under siege until the end of the war). Thus, in August 1916 the
total collapse of the Ottoman position in the Red Sea was in the offing (in
both Arabia and Sinai), with clear implications for any possible Ottoman-
inspired military enterprise in the Horn. (In fact, with the loss of Ottoman
communications through Yemen, Mazhar could now correspond with
Istanbul only through Europe, as the correspondence now became exposed
to the Allies's counterintelligence.)
Second, the Arab army of the sharif was spreading anti-Ottoman pro-
paganda. Instigated by the British and led by Sharif Husayn, the Arab
Revolt was no less a traditional Islamic movement against the nationalist
Young Turks than a modern Arab uprising. Husayn in his propaganda
depicted the Young Turks as a band of secular infidels who had toppled
'Abd al-Hamid II and humiliated the caliphate. The British used the fact
that the Islamic figure of the amir of Mecca was fighting the Ottomans to
neutralize Istanbul's declaration of jihad against them. Again, their main
concern was India, but they lost no time in spreading the word among the
Somali rivals of the mawla.
Iyasu's time was running out. On 13 August 1916 Iyasu removed
Dajazmach Tafari from the government of Harar and appointed him over
Kaffa. Tafari stayed in Addis Ababa as Iyasu himself left for Harar. Before
he entered the town, Iyasu published a proclamation in leaflets distributed
all over the Ogaden. He called the British "imperialist oppressors of Islam"
who had humiliated the caliphate and promoted disunity. They had allied
themselves with Sharif Husayn, Iyasu explained, and made him fight
against the sultan. They, the British and Sharif Husayn of Mecca, destroyed
the Holy Hijaz with their cannons and airplanes. The British had occupied
India and Egypt and now they sought to oppress Islam in the Arab
Peninsula and in Somalia. It was all, continued Iyasu, because they fear
Islamic unity. William Gladstone, the British prime minister, cursed the
Holy Quran in Parliament, and the British were about to steal the black
holy stone from the Ka'ba in Mecca and put it in one of their museums.
Iyasu concluded his proclamation by calling on all Muslims to unite in
order to save the Ka'ba. The British, he promised the Somalis, because they
had tried to destroy the holy Ka'ba and even the Prophet himself, were
doomed. But the true Muslims should unite in action against the false
Muslims and the infidels. As long as they were united, victory would be
assured. 16
On September 5, Iyasu entered Harar. During the next three weeks he
acted feverishly, sparing no effort in seeking to prove to the locals that
even though his name meant Prince Jesus he was a militant Muslim. He
prayed in public, made speeches, published his own genealogy showing
himself to be a descendant of Prophet Muhammad, 1 7 disbanded the local
police and built a new one from Muslim recruits. On 21 September, he left
for Dire Dawa where he inspected a parade of the new local Islamic forces
and waved his new banner, an Ethiopian one with the Islamic shahada
embroidered on it, complete with an Islamic red crescent. 18
Iyasu's plan to instigate an all-Somali anti-British revolt, and to install
himself as a future emperor of a new Islamic order in the Horn, was now an
act of despair. He gathered the Muslim chiefs, telling them (what Mazhar
probably still let him believe) that the Ottomans had promised him all the
territory from Harar to Massawa. At the same time he asked them not to
share this information with Christians so that the Shoans would not hear
about it. But he was unable to create unity among the Somalis, and the
British as well as the Italian Intelligence had no problem following his
moves. In Addis Ababa the British, French, and Italian embassies did not
have to work hard to persuade the Shoan establishment to depose Iyasu.
This deposition was done on September 27. The abun, under pressure,
excommunicated Menelik's heir and grandson on the basis of his conver-
sion to Islam.
Menelik's daughter, Zawditu, was now proclaimed empress, with
Dajazmach Tafari, promoted to ras, as her heir. In October Ras Tafari led
the Shoan forces to defeat Iyasu's father, Negus Mika'el. Ras Tafari was
crowned Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930. Iyasu himself survived to the

mid-1930s, wasting his life between prisons and escapes, and resurfaced
during his last days, in our Ethiopian-Middle Eastern story.
In the wider context of Ethiopian-Middle Eastern Islamic relations the
1915-1916 Lij Iyasu affair closed a circle that began centuries earlier in the
story of Muhammad and the najashi. Through Mazhar Bey the Ottoman
Middle East acted as if to adopt the Islam al-najashi version and abandoned
the utruku approach, inviting an Islamic Ethiopia to rejoin the strategic and
cultural sphere of the Islamic Orient. Iyasu, in the modern version of that
old episode, was ready to pay the price: to convert to Islam, and, conse-
quently, to gamble on the survival of Ethiopian culture and identity. "There
are two paths to the future of this country," wrote Mazhar Bey to Istanbul,
"either to leave her in her poverty or to spread our influence over her." 19
His recommendation was not to "leave" Ethiopia any more, especially
an Ethiopia under a Muslim najashi. One can imagine Harar as the capital
of a Red S e a - o r i e n t e d and O t t o m a n - a f f i l i a t e d state, with a tolerated
Christian minority left.
After the war Ethiopia would enjoy continuity, safe for a time as a
political system that was slowly paying the price of victory and conser-
vatism. Islam in Ethiopia was again, as it had been under Menelik, reduced
to an apolitical dimension of the country's cultural diversity.
A fundamental change had occurred in the Middle East. With the
demise of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war, there came to an end
the last all-regional manifestation and embodiment of Islam as a political
ideology. The Turks, the political and military leaders of Islam for four
hundred years, now pursued secular nationalism. In March 1924 Ataturk
abolished the caliphate. The Western occupiers of the Arab-inhabited areas
in the Middle East demarcated international boundaries, splitting the
Islamic nation and carving out new states and entities built upon Western
political concepts: Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, and Palestine. Egypt
was led now by a political class motivated primarily by a non-Islamic con-
cept of Egyptian identity shared actively by fellow Copts. The Arab
Peninsula, left independent, came under Saudi domination, based in Riyad,
away from the Red Sea.
Indeed, in the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s the new Middle East
sent no major messages to Ethiopia. Its inhabitants were busy struggling for
independence and searching for their own identities. They were to find
some of it in modern Arabism, through which, from the mid-1930s and in
conjunction with the Abyssinian Crisis, the Ethiopian-Middle Eastern dia-
logue would be renewed and reinterpreted.
II
ETHIOPIA AND ARABISMI

FROM ARSLAN TO NASSER
m
THE ARABS, MUSSOLINI,
AND THE ABYSSINIAN DILEMMA
During the first third of the twentieth century Ethiopians showed little
curiosity about the Middle East. After their Adwa victory in 1896, and
especially in the aftermath of World War I, their country's independence
seemed secure, and it seemed even more so after 1923, when the country
was admitted to the League of Nations. The Middle East was now occupied
by Europeans, and in itself presented no threat. Islam had lost its empire
and presented no political challenge.
The only active Middle Eastern interest Ethiopians demonstrated in
this period was in their Christian Middle Eastern connections, to
Alexandria and to Jerusalem. The first Ethiopian newspaper, Berhanena
Selam, appeared in the mid-1920s; in its pages, little was written on the
Middle East. Of the twenty relevant articles published between 1926 and
1935 only three brought information on affairs in the region that were not
related to Ethiopia or to its Christian interests. Four of the twenty were on
Deir al-Sultan and the Ethiopian presence in Jerusalem. Nearly all the rest
focused on Ethiopia's relations with the Copts in Egypt or on relations with
the government of Egypt that had to do with Church affairs.1
Ethiopian attitudes to the modern Middle East are a subject of great
importance for both an understanding of the past and for preparing for
future events. So, too, are the post-World War I Middle Eastern attitudes to
Ethiopia. The region has seen the emergence of new identities, Arab,
Egyptian, and Zionist. How do Arab or pan-Arab nationalists view
Ethiopia? What was transmitted in this respect to modern Arabism from
Islam? Was it the utruku message of acceptance and tolerance or the Islam
al-najashi message of illegitimacy? What are the approaches to Ethiopia
stemming from the values of modern Egyptian nationalism? What were the
legacies for modern Egyptian nationalism of the history we surveyed?
What are the deeper considerations behind the policies of other Middle
Eastern states, movements, and organizations? Are these monolithic? And
do different Middle Eastern identities predetermine different basic concepts
of their neighbor, Ethiopia?
95
In trying to answer these questions in the first third of the twentieth

century a scholar would search in vain through Arabic literature and jour-
nalistic writings. During that time Middle Easterners, experiencing the
traumatic humiliation of the conquered, ignored Ethiopia (which, during
these years, was being adopted as a model of freedom by blacks in Africa
and in the Americas) exercising some of the ancient attitudes. The pan-
Arabists who led their countries during the 1950s and 1960s were interest-
ed in the Arabism of the Eritrean people, but they attached little legitimacy
to—and therefore had little regard for—Ethiopia beyond the River Mareb.
Dozens of Arabic books and innumerable journalistic pieces were produced
in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was assumed that an Arab victory was
about to be scored in an Arab Eritrea. This wave subsided with the demise
of the Islamic wings of Eritrean nationalist movements. Arab public opin-
ion in the last two decades has devoted only superficial attention to
Ethiopia's revolutions and wars. As of the early 1990s, an Arab scholar in
the Islamic Arab world 2 seeking to understand Ethiopia on its own terms
has yet to appear.
The literature that reveals the undercurrents of the many modern
Middle Eastern concepts of Ethiopia, and mainly of pan-Arabism, was pro-
duced during the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935-1936. This was a period during
which political-strategic developments of great consequence took place,
but also one that witnessed sociopolitical changes of a far-reaching charac-
ter. In both Ethiopia and the major countries of the Middle East the
sociopolitical establishments created at the turn of the century were on the
verge of losing their power during these crucial years. In Ethiopia they
were replaced (after 1941) by the autocratic rule of Haile Selassie, and in
the Arab Middle Eastern countries by new social and ideological forces,
which would pave the way for Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser and his generation.
The ideas expressed in the events and writings of 1935-1936, and the
struggle between them, are thus crucial to our understanding of the region
today.
MIDDLE EASTERN BACKGROUNDS

AND MUSSOLINI'S PROPAGANDA
In the 1920s the Arabs of the Middle East had no political leader to admire.
Sa'ad Zaghlul of Egypt came close to being a national hero for the younger
generation of that country, but he was unable to accomplish anything hero-
ic and died in 1927. Two other personalities, Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal) of
Turkey and Muhammad Reza Shah of Iran, who were regarded in the
Oriental Middle East as charismatic historical leaders, were non-Arabs,
and, moreover, also ardent fighters against Islam. Both initiated Western-
oriented reforms in their respective countries, which spread into the rest of
THE ARABS, MUSSOLINI & DILEMMA 97
the region the message of Islamic and Arab-Islamic weakness. The 1920s
(and to a lesser extent the early 1930s) were indeed a period of Western-
oriented modernization in the Middle East, of parliamentarian politics, and
even of some attempts at liberalism. Having lost their political dimension,
Islam's leaders in countries such as Egypt included thinkers who tried to
modernize its concepts and make them compatible with contemporary
Western values. It was also a period of nonviolent opposition to the British
and French rulers of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. From the
social perspective, it was a period of stability, verging sometimes on stag-
nation. Socially and economically, the land-owning urban elite of Arab
societies enjoyed the nonviolent atmosphere, and they confined themselves
to a parliamentarian, mildly nationalistic struggle against their occupiers.
This spirit of the 1920s was slowly eroding during the early 1930s. It
was shattered in late 1935 and 1936, in the aftermath of the Abyssinian
Crisis.
The Italo-Ethiopian conflict had a tremendous impact on the entire
world, including the Middle East. The year 1935 was a time of tension dur-
ing which the conquered peoples of the region began to redefine their atti-
tudes toward Europe and European values. Italian, and later German, totali-
tarianism as a model of political organization began to compete with
British and French parliamentarian democracies. Most of the established
Arab leaders were still pinning their hopes on new flexible political gen-
erosity on the part of the British or the French, but others were praying for
B r i t i s h and F r e n c h h u m i l i a t i o n in the f a c e of F a s c i s t i n r o a d s .
Simultaneously, the political rank and file throughout the Middle East were
busy during that year redefining their attitudes toward themselves: What
are we? they asked. Are we Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, and so on, that is,
members of communities defined by the newly Western-created and
Western-modeled states? Or are we Muslims by our own political-cultural
history and Arabs by our modern nationalism?
This ambivalence in their self-image led to two sets of closely connect-
ed questions: political-strategic and cultural-nationalist. Islamic pan-
Arabism, as it emerged in the 1930s, meant a revolt against the parliamen-
tarian methods and political restraint followed by the old generation of
urban elites. This blend of politically revived Islam with the new sense of
Arab identity provided a militant ideology against Western hegemony. It
appealed to the young generation in Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, and
Baghdad as well as to the representatives of newly emerging, nonprivileged
social groups. T h e c o m b i n a t i o n of Islam and A r a b i s m was used by
Mussolini who, seeking to generate and fan regional instability, presented
himself as the champion of Islam and helped the propagators of pan-
Arabism in various ways. 3
Mussolini's propaganda dragged Ethiopia into the middle of these
Middle East dilemmas. On the strategic level he challenged Britain and
F r a n c e and a p p e a r e d on the brink of h u m i l i a t i n g t h e m m i l i t a r i l y on

Ethiopian soil. On the cultural-ideological level II Duce portrayed Ethiopia
as a barbarous black Christian kingdom that had oppressed Islam and
Muslims throughout its history. The message that he conveyed to his listen-
ers in the Middle East was that by destroying Ethiopia, an illegitimate enti-
ty, Islamic and Arab prestige would be rebuilt. Arabs and Muslims should
therefore support his anti-Ethiopian, anti-British, anti-French campaign.
British propaganda, and to a lesser extent that of the French, resorted
to arguments contradicting Mussolini's. Mussolini, they maintained, was
neither a pro-Arab nationalist nor a champion of Islam. He was, rather, a
power-seeker who aspired to resurrect the Roman Empire in the East. His
"civilizing mission" in Ethiopia was only a thin guise for racist aggression,
which should fool no one in the Orient. The British and French hoped that
in comparison to Mussolini's schemes, their own occupation regimes in the
Middle East would be better appreciated, at least by the ruling elites of the
Arab countries.
EGYPTIAN RESPONSE UNTIL THE BEGINNING

OF HOSTILITIES: GESTURES OF SOLIDARITY
The Abyssinian Crisis was a pivotal issue in the Egypt of 1935. The coun-
try's relations with its British occupiers, the power struggle within the
political establishment, the spirit and methods of participation in politics by
the e m e r g i n g new g e n e r a t i o n as well as by the representatives of the
deprived classes—all these were directly affected by the drama between
Ethiopia and Mussolini. After all, the Fascists' military enterprise was built
up by passing through the Suez Canal, and the Italians were about to occu-
py the main sources of the Nile. This is not the place to discuss the details
of the 1935-1936 domestic Egyptian story (part of which I have discussed
elsewhere). 4 I shall only summarize here part of the action and focus my
attention on the question of basic attitudes toward Ethiopia.
Generally speaking, the political establishment of Egypt was deter-
mined not to miss the opportunity to make progress on the road to indepen-
dence. One wing of this establishment, consisting mainly of individuals and
parties that had tired of the country's experiment with parliamentarianism,
sought open hostilities with the British. They sought to benefit from the
British weakness as exposed by Mussolini and effectuate political gains
through violent riots. This wing believed the Fascist propaganda and was
even instrumental in transmitting it to the public.
The other wing wanted to exploit the opportunity to promote the cause
of independence by strengthening the autonomous parliamentarian life that
Egypt had enjoyed since 1923. In 1930, the British (through the services of
Prime Minister Sidqi) had suspended the constitution of 1923 in order to
undermine the power of the popular Wafd Party, which had led the anti-
British struggle. The Wafd, still the most powerful political organization in
the country, wanted to show the British it was reasonable and moderate and
a better partner for Great Britain than the rising tide of their antiparliamen-
tarian rivals. Because the W a f d could not support the British directly it sent
its message by showing sympathy for Ethiopia. Showing solidarity with
Ethiopia demonstrated understanding for British interests as well as for law
and order in international relations. Beneath the political calculation there
was also a strand of secular liberalism motivating many of the intellectual
elite. In addition, many of the young Coptic generation had joined the liber-
al wing of young Egyptian nationalism. In 1935 the second in command in
the W a f d (and perhaps the m o v i n g p o w e r of the party) was the Copt
William Makram 'Ubayd, who also supervised the party's youth organiza-
tion. In this capacity he missed no opportunity to praise Ethiopia, "the
nation in the Upper Nile, those who sacrifice their lives for their country,
who had bought their existence with death," 5 as a source of inspiration for
the youth of Egypt. (Strengthening Egypt's relations with Ethiopia was to
be a line pursued by future modern Copts. The Church itself abstained from
action.)
No less significant was the position of the Islamic thinkers, mainly the
modernists. Here the most important figure in 1935 was Shaikh Rashid
Rida, the leader of the Salafiyya movement that had advocated rational and
open reinterpretation of Islam most effectively in the liberal 1920s. (The
movement had been established at the end of the 1890s.) In Rida's view,
modernization was part of Islam, and Western values of liberalism and of
diversity, unlike Western aggression and occupation, were not to be reject-
ed. For Rida and his followers (soon to be challenged by a new generation
of m o r e militant M u s l i m s ) , M u s s o l i n i was the e m b o d i m e n t of c r u d e
Western brutality, but Ethiopia was a victim and a neighbor. We have
already noted that Rashid Rida was a close associate of the al-'Azm broth-
ers, the translators and publishers, in 1908, of Rihlat al-habasha. It was this
book that had conveyed to Arabic readers and to Islamic modernizers of
that period the notion of "Ethiopia as the land of righteousness." Rida was
the spiritual leader of the first Islamic association established in Egypt in
the 1920s, the Young M e n ' s Islamic Association ( Y M M A , Jam'iyyat al-
shubban al-muslimiyyin). This association supported the pro-Ethiopian
activities of Egyptians in 1935.
The Egyptian public, to be sure, could do little, and the political estab-
lishment was not willing to risk a confrontation with the Italian Fascists
and their potential supporters at h o m e . Ethiopian attempts to mobilize
Egyptian diplomatic or other assistance yielded little. Some of the official
missions sent by Haile Selassie (including one seeking contact in Egypt
with the exiled remnants of the Sanusiyya movement, in an attempt to
revive their anti-Italian revolt in Libya) 6 were virtually ignored. The gov-
ernment's policy was to remain uninvolved, and it was only a month after
the beginning of active hostilities that Egypt joined the sanctions imposed
on Mussolini by the League of Nations. Even that was done amid strong
protest, by both the Wafd and its rivals.
Nevertheless, the degree of sympathy expressed at this stage in some
of the press (we shall discuss it later), and the Egyptian public's gestures of
identification with Ethiopia were all but unique.
The most important action was the establishment in Cairo in early
1935 of the General Committee for the Defense of Ethiopian Independence
(Lajna 'amma lildifa' 'an istiqlal al-habasha). Its early formation began in
January and the guiding spirit was the head of the Association of Islamic
Youth, 'Abd al-Hamid Sa'id. Soon the committee came under the auspices
of two princes of the royal family, Amir 'Ummar Tusun and the Nabil
Isma'il Dawud. Other members were affiliated with the Wafd, and one
other prominent was the Copt and ex-minister of war, Salib Sami. 7 The
committee itself was torn by internal rivalries but it did effectively manage
to spread its word. The historical record on this point is unclear, but the
committee may have supported sending, early in February 1935, two al-
Azhar teachers. Shaikh Mahmud al-Nashawi and Shaikh Yusuf 'Ali, to
Ethiopia. The two Islamic scholars were welcomed in Addis Ababa by the
Ethiopian government and were encouraged to establish a madrasa, an
Islamic school. 8 They helped to rally local Islamic support behind the
emperor.
The committee also supported a campaign in the press to prevent the
hiring of Egyptian workers by Italian firms contracted to help with the mili-
tary buildup, especially by constructing roads in Eritrea. 9 More significant
and impressive was the initiative to enlist volunteers to fight in the
Ethiopian army. By August 1935 it was reported that some eight thousand
E g y p t i a n s had s i g n e d up. L a t e r r e p o r t s put the n u m b e r at t h i r t e e n
thousand. 10 Very few of those enlisted (who were not Ethiopians residing
in Egypt) reached Ethiopia to experience battle. They were led by a color-
ful figure, an ex-Ottoman officer named Muhammad Tariq (called al-
Ifriqi), to whom we shall return. The significance in any case was symbol-
ic, reflecting wide popular identification at that stage with Ethiopia.
The most notable action initiated by the Committee for the Defense of
Ethiopian Independence was the organization of medical aid. Though mod-
est in scope it was nevertheless the most substantial official aid from the
outside world for the Ethiopian d e f e n s e e f f o r t . T w o weeks after the
Fascists' invasion, on 15 October 1935, Nabil Isma'il Dawud left f o r
Ethiopia with three medical doctors. Meanwhile, an extensive effort to
raise money and enlist doctors (in which the Syrian exile, doctor, and
leader of the 1925 anti-French revolt, 'Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, was
involved) enabled the sending of another mission under the banner of the
Red Crescent. It left for Ethiopia on 23 October 1935, and consisted of
twelve physicians and sixty trained assistants. A third mission of the same
size left at a later date. 11
WHAT IS ETHIOPIA? FOUR BOOKS IN CAIRO
Throughout this period, from the beginning of the international Abyssinian

Crisis and its first repercussions in the Middle East (in December 1934 and
January 1935) to the beginning of the actual invasion by the Fascists (3
October 1935), a major debate raged throughout the Middle East.
The issue raised by the Abyssinian Crisis was the basic orientation of
the Middle East. The public was fed by opinions and propaganda from all
quarters, and the main stage for the competing currents was the daily press.
The press was in daily touch with both the unfolding drama and with the
public. It thus reflected changes in the attitudes toward Ethiopia as they
were developing. It was in the daily Arabic press, in Egypt and the rest of
the Middle East, that at the end of the crisis the image of Ethiopia was to be
remolded.
However, in order to follow the essentials of the drama we should first
focus our attention on four books of that period. In Cairo alone at least four
books on Ethiopia appeared in 1935. They were published in October and
November, just as the war erupted, and thus they reflected a full year of
public controversies. More important, they were all published in order to
acquaint the public in Egypt and in the neighboring Arab countries with
Ethiopia in general, a subject they had long neglected. As such, they were
devoted substantially to Ethiopian and Ethio-Islamic history.
Returning to Muhammad and the najashi as well as turning to later his-
tory was indeed the starting point of any discussion of Ethiopia. The four
books may be viewed as two distinct pairs.
First, the pro-Ethiopians. In the introduction to The Ethiopian Question
from Ancient History to the Year 1935,12 the Egyptian lawyer, judge, and
journalist 'Abdallah al-Husayn tells how he came to write this book. He had
c o n t r i b u t e d t h r o u g h o u t 1935 to a daily c o l u m n , " T h e A b y s s i n i a n
Question," in the Cairo newspaper, al-Ahram. Readers started turning to
him for basic background information, and as their curiosity grew he real-
ized that he himself knew next to nothing about Ethiopia. He had written a
book on the history of Islamic Sudan, but, he admits, whenever Ethiopia
appeared in the story he almost ignored it. He had to study from scratch.
The book he wrote is clearly a product of a liberal Egyptian nationalist.
In the book he makes a point of emphasizing that the Ethiopian woman is
free, drinks beer, divorces, and participates in wars when necessary. 1 3
Ethiopian society in general, he writes, with a few exceptions, is Semitic in
culture and origin, similar in ethnicity to the Arabs of the Arab Peninsula.
M u c h of E t h i o p i a n culture c a m e f r o m the ancient E g y p t i a n s . Haile
Selassie, for example, used royal symbols with hieroglyphic script similar
to the ones of the great pharaohs.
In the Egypt of the time this was a statement of particular significance,
for Pharaohnism was the school of the liberal elite that believed in educat-
ing the public about the pre-Islamic past of Egypt. It was a pluralistic mes-
sage that accepted the Copts into Egyptian identity, and it was Egyptianism
that conveyed tolerance of, indeed, even sought regional solidarity with,
neighboring non-Muslims.
Al-Husayn's interpretation of history is full of respect for Ethiopia. His
recounting of the "Muhammad and the najashi" story is clear. 14 He quotes
the najashi's letter to Muhammad, in al-Tabari, and then adds that the
Prophet, upon reading it, uttered the f a m o u s utruku al-habasha ma
tarakukum: "And because of this order none of the rulers of Islam ever
even contemplated occupying Ethiopia or exerting his influence over it. To
the contrary, the states and principalities of Islam always were in peace and
friendship with the Ethiopian Empire, until after the Middle Ages. Even
now, some of the 'ulama and the muftis of Somalia published a decree for-
bidding the Muslims to fight Ethiopia."
Respect for and goodwill toward Ethiopia, however, were not enough
to produce an accurate survey. The book, consisting of hastily compiled
newspaper pieces, is full of factual mistakes. But the educational message
was clear. Tewodros, al-Husayn writes, had a constructive dialogue with
Sa'id Pasha and was convinced by peaceful means to evacuate areas he had
taken from the Sudan (p. 28). Yohannes's conflict with Isma'il is reduced
by al-Husayn to a brief mention, but his obtaining four bishops from Egypt
in 1881 is emphasized (pp. 62-63). There is nothing negative on Christian-
Muslim relations with Ethiopia, according to al-Husayn. Throughout, he
emphasizes Ethiopia's affiliation to the Oriental world as well as its suc-
cessful facing up to Western imperialism. A long chapter (pp. 151-170)
devoted to the prospect of Italian use of poisonous gas in Ethiopia implies
that it was the Fascists who were barbarians while Ethiopia is depicted as a
respectful neighbor deserving full support.
The second member of the first pair, Between the African Lion and the
Italian Tiger,15 by Muhammad Lutfi Jum'a, appeared in the last weeks of
1935. Jum'a, a lawyer and a well-known intellectual, was one of the pro-
moters of the cultural-national identity of Easternism, an idea developed at
the time by secular-minded Egyptianists. The people of the Orient, they
maintained, irrespective of their religious or ethnic differences, share a
common culture and must unite in stemming Western aggression. For
Jum'a (the author of The Life of The East)16 Haile Selassie was thus a lion
symbolizing the hopes of the East. The Italian tiger, he predicted, would be
defeated. Oriental Ethiopia deserved sympathy and support and would reci-
procate by helping fellow Orientals, Arabs, Egyptians, and others, in their
common, secular, progressive struggle for the redemption of the entire
Oriental world. He wrote:
Egypt and the rest of the East both Near and Far, and Arabism ('uruba)
embracing its many peoples and states, are all concerned with Ethiopia,
with its centrality in the world and its present crisis. If Europe is interest-
ed in the Abyssinian Crisis because of fear for the world order, or resis-
tance to Italian aggression, with us it is different. W e are interested in
Ethiopia because it represents both the East and Africa at their very best
and most l o f t y — i n terms of beauty, form, quality and dignity. What is
more honorable than maintaining freedom, generation after generation
and era after era, and resisting foreign e n e m i e s whatever their might? And
indeed the Ethiopians (like us) c o n c e i v e freedom to be the most precious
value in life. 1 7
Jum'a's book, which is subtitled A Social and Psychological Analytical

Study on the Italo-Ethiopian Question, is a historical survey. The first
chapter is devoted to Ethiopia's early relations with Islam, particularly the
Muhammad-najas hi story. The emphasis is on Ethiopia's saving of the
sahaba and on the "beautiful special relations" between the najashi and the
Prophet. There is no mention of the possibility that the najashi converted to
Islam. The reader is left with the impression that the Aksumite king
remained a good Christian, together with his priests. At one point Jum'a
notes that the priests, having received gifts from 'Amru bin al-'As, tried to
persuade the najashi to send the sahaba back to Mecca, but then they
accepted his decision to let them stay. The story of 'Ubaydallah bin Jahsh's
conversion to Christianity, as told by Jum'a, was one of an open-minded
person persuaded by his hosts, not a story of coercion: "The Ethiopians
headed by the najashi and by the priests proved that they were a noble peo-
ple, lofty in spirit and humanity, having mercy on anyone oppressed, be he
of their religion or of other persuasion. They, the najashi and his people,
proved that they were men of principles and justice, and that the Prophet
was right in sending the sahaba to their country, the land of righteousness"
(p. 18).
In later chapters the author chooses to gloss over Ahmad Gragn and
other medieval conflicts, and focus instead on the relations of Egypt with
Ethiopia's modern emperors. Here again the presentation is a positive one.
"Tewodros's vision" of a unifying emperor is mentioned, but not in terms
that show him as d e f e a t i n g Islam. T o the c o n t r a r y , when d i s c u s s i n g
Emperor Tewodros II (pp. 21-22, 76-77) Jum'a blames Khedive Isma'il for
enabling the British army of Napier, the destroyer of the Ethiopian, to pass
through Egypt. Tewodros, according to Jum'a, was a progressive moderniz-
er who saw Egypt as a model. He failed to prevail over the British but he
nonetheless united his people, "watering the tree of unity with his blood."
Yohannes IV in Jum'a's account was no less a hero, but a victim as
well. There is no mention of his domestic religious policy or his coercive
anti-Islamic measures. The conflict he waged with Egypt was the fault of
European meddlers and spies, who had tempted Isma'il to invade Ethiopia.
In describing Yohannes's victory at Gura, Jum'a praises the emperor for his
bravery and criticizes the Egyptian army as commanded by foreigners who
deprived the authentic Egyptian, Ahmad 'Urabi, of leadership (pp. 23-27).

In a later chapter (pp. 77-78) on Yohannes, Jum'a blames the Ethiopian for
being narrow-minded and thus unable to reach understanding with Egypt
after Gura.
Menelik is Jum'a's hero. Although there is no word on his conquests,
Menelik is praised for accomplishing the unity envisioned by Tewodros.
His benevolence was such that "all his subjects, Christians and Muslims
alike, loved him and admired his beauty" (pp. 79-80). The Egyptians,
writes Jum'a, never forget that the Ethiopians never intervened in the flow
of the Nile (p. 34). For the Muslims in Ethiopia, Egypt is the spiritual cen-
ter, as is Alexandria for the Christians. Ethiopia is portrayed as a neighbor,
an important part of the East. Its enemy was and still remains the West. The
Italian conquest of Eritrea and the reducing of it to a colony, argues Jum'a,
was "stabbing the heart of Ethiopia with a dagger" (p. 84). The Fascist
Italians, he concludes, sought revenge for their defeat at A d w a , but
Ethiopia, the Eastern, Christian-Muslim country, would prevail (p. 117).
The first member of the second pair is Yusuf A h m a d ' s ¡slam in
Ethiopia, published in November 1935. This book finally took the place of
Rihlat al-habasha as the standard volume on Ethiopia for the next genera-
tions of Arabic readers. Subtitled Evidences and Authentic Documents on
the Situation of Muslims in Ethiopia,18 it is a hate-filled condemnation of
Ethiopia's culture and history. "Now that the Muslims all over the world
have pity for Ethiopia I want to tell them the truth on her relations with
Islam so that they exert pressure on Haile Selassie to depart in future from
the way of his predecessors in that respect" (p. 3).
In the first chapter Ahmad writes:
S o m e writers talk of the sahaba as a reason to support Ethiopia. W e want

to e x p l a i n that if w e h a v e s o m e s y m p a t h y t o E t h i o p i a it is b e c a u s e
Ethiopia is an Eastern country facing a Western one, not because of any-
thing historical. A s for the honor g i v e n to the sahaba it was by one man
only, Najashi Ashama. Indeed he converted to Islam. But he had to con-
ceal it from his people until he died. . . . A s for the priests and the people,
they g a v e the sahaba o n l y troubles. T h e y rebelled against the najashi
because he was g o o d to the Muslims, (pp. 4—5)
In late 1935 Yusuf Ahmad had no difficulty in focusing the attention of

the Egyptian public on the Islam al-najashi version. Earlier, in March
1935, the great author and scholar Muhammad Husayn Haykal had pub-
lished his most famous study The Life of Muhammad. The book highlighted
the general return to traditional Islamic thinking typical of the 1930s in
Egypt, and it turned instantly into the bestseller of the whole period (ten
thousand copies were sold out by May 1935, and a new edition was pub-
lished in November and sold out by mid-1936). In narrating the sahaba-
najashi story Haykal merely reemphasized the traditional version that the
najashi did convert to Islam. He also added his own interpretation that the
first group of the sahaba returned to Arabia (in 616) because the Ethiopians
revolted against their Muslim king. 1 9 However, apart from thus raising the
issue Haykal avoided passing any judgment on Ethiopia.
In presenting the background to his version of the story, Yusuf Ahmad
discusses an inherent hatred the Ethiopians felt for Arabs from the begin-
ning of history. The story of the sahaba represented for Yusuf Ahmad the
culmination of that hatred. The Ethiopians forced 'Ubaydallah bin Jahsh to
renounce Islam and convert to Christianity. The priests and the people, he
writes, tortured the M u s l i m r e f u g e e s , f o r c e d them to attend Christian
churches, and ridiculed their arguments in favor of Islam. "The learned
researcher will find it easy to prove, and after we show and prove our
points by comparing what we know about the sahaba with the travellers'
accounts of later Islamic visitors, you will see that what the sahaba met
with in Ethiopia was only hatred. If it had not been for the najashi they all
would have to become Christians, die, or be returned to Mecca so that
Quraysh could do with them as they pleased." 2 0
Ahmad concludes: "So what right do they have that we shail remember
this story in their favor? They never respected them and only tortured them.
If it had not been for the Muslim najashi they could not have lived in
Ethiopia even one day!" (p. 20)
Failing even to mention the "utruku" hadith, Yusuf Ahmad assures his
readers that it was only because the pioneers of Islam were so kind-hearted
that "they left us with a positive story about the najashi, refraining from
telling us about the terror and threats they suffered from the priests" (pp.
11-12).
The reason Ethiopia was never conquered by Islam, he asserts, was
practical, and not because of gratitude. To the contrary, the entire history as
Yusuf Ahmad tells it is permeated by the Ethiopians' hatred. He cites a
story from al-Tabari, "which is another testimony to their [the Ethiopians']
bad nature and inherent inhospitality: When Marwan bin Muhammad, the
last of the 'Umayyad caliphs, was killed [A.D. 750], his two sons fled to
Ethiopia. But the Ethiopians killed one of them and forced the other to flee.
And look at that savage people! How do they treat refugees who look for
shelter in their c o u n t r y ? T h e y r e c e i v e t h e m with s w o r d s , killing and
expelling them!" (pp. 2 8 - 2 9 )
A c c o r d i n g to Y u s u f A h m a d ( p p . 3 4 - 3 9 ) , in m e d i e v a l t i m e s the
Ethiopians fought the Islamic emirates because the Muslims were prosper-
ous and they were jealous. Ahmad Gragn's was a defensive war, which
turned into an epic of Islamic bravery second only to the early Islamic con-
quests. Tewodros is dismissed as a fanatic crusader who burned the mosque
of Gondar (p. 46). Yohannes, much to the delight of his savage followers,
humiliated the Egyptian prisoners he captured in Gura. He then forced fifty

thousand Muslims to become Christians, but God sent the mahdi to punish
him for maltreating Muslims (pp. 47-49).
Menelik II fares no better in Ahmad's book. His conquests, culminat-
ing in his capture of Harar, sought the defeat of Islam and the Muslims.
Menelik did away with flourishing Islamic entities and culture. Only in
Jimma did he permit the Muslims to enjoy autonomy. In 1934, after the
death of Abba Jifar, a jealous Haile Selassie put an end to that autonomy.
"Thus ended the last Islamic principality in Ethiopia. . . . They were all
destroyed not because of fear but because of fanaticism and hatred" (pp.
49-54).
The ending of Jimma's autonomy in 1934 was part of Haile Selassie's
program of centralization that was to affect nearly every province of
Ethiopia. But Yusuf Ahmad, and, as we shall see, many of the anti-
Ethiopian, Fascist-inspired thinkers in the Middle East, equated Haile
Selassie with Menelik and saw Yohannes as a destroyer of Islam. In an
effort to mobilize the support of Ethiopia's Muslims, Emperor Haile
Selassie made a number of gestures during 1935. These included proclama-
tions emphasizing constitutional equality of religions as well as one
promising to build a grand mosque in Addis Ababa (the mosque promised
in 1904 to Sadiq al-'Azm). For Yusuf Ahmad it was a matter of mockery:
Has anyone ever heard of such a w a y to keep a promise? Oh what a glori-

ous gift from an Oriental country, ancient and deep rooted, to its Muslim
citizens! A gift for M u s l i m citizens w h o lived there for thirteen centuries,
for its neighbors and guests. D o they not know, the people of that country,
that even in European capitals like London or Paris there are mosques? In
any case thank you, Your Highness, I hope you do not soon forget your
promise like your predecessor. . . . (p. 7 7 )
Apart from the historical interpretations summarized above, Ahmad's

book revolves around one theme: Ethiopia's savage ingratitude to its
Muslims. In Yusuf Ahmad's view, the Muslims brought to Ethiopia their
virtue, the richness of their commerce, and their connections with the out-
side world. They even defended Ethiopia. What they got in return was
killing, religious coercion, extra taxation, the maltreating of their women,
and social segregation (pp. 7 8 - 8 8 , 98). The social segregation, Yusuf
Ahmad remarks at one point, was the only action taken against the
Ethiopian M u s l i m s that turned out to be a blessing: " T h e Christian
Ethiopian hatred for the Muslim brings the latter important benefit. The
Ethiopians live in dirt and they have sexual habits which are hazardous to
health" (p. 88) and on that he quotes al-'Azm's Rihlat, a passage I cited
above. 21
In contrast to Jum'a, who regarded the Italian occupation and colonial-
ism in Eritrea as "a dagger in the heart of Ethiopia," Yusuf Ahmad viewed
the Italians as having brought improvement to Eritrea. He compared Islam

in Eritrea and in Somalia to the Ethiopian case and wrote that it fared much
better under the Fascists (p. 91).
In conclusion, Yusuf Ahmad makes three statements: first, that the his-
tory of Ethiopia vis-à-vis Islam was a story of injustice. Second, that the
majority of the Muslims in Ethiopia are not Ethiopians, that they differ
essentially in language, race, and culture. (He implies that they are Arabs
by stating that their main language is Arabic, "which they preserved since
the time of their ancestors' arrival from Yemen and the Hijaz" [p. 61].)
And third, that the majority of these Muslims live outside historic Ethiopia
and they deserve full freedom (p. 104). In sum, Yusuf Ahmad believed the
oppressed Muslims under backward Christian Ethiopia were entitled to
both Islamic and Arab liberation. Yusuf Ahmad's writings, together with
the writings of many of his contemporaries, marked a change from Islamic
attitudes toward Ethiopia to modern, pan-Arab ones.
The author of the fourth book was a Lebanese Christian resident of
Cairo, an advocate and a historian of modern Arab secular nationalism, the
journalist and author Bulus Mas'ad. Entitled Al-Habasha or Ethiopia in a
Turning Point of Her History,22 his book was aimed at the young modern
Arab rather than the Muslim reader. Islam in Ethiopia is one of his main
topics, not in itself, but rather as a measure of how barbaric Ethiopia was.
In describing Ethio-Islamic relations the Christian author returns inevitably
to the Muhammad-nay'as/ii story (pp. 80-92) but he deftly avoids the issue
of Islam al-najashi. Najashi Ashama, he writes, obtained a holy book from
the Prophet and put it in an ivory box, and the Prophet said: "Let the
Ethiopians prosper as long as they have this book." In referring to the
M u s l i m s in E t h i o p i a he e c h o e s Yusuf A h m a d ' s c o n d e m n a t i o n s of
Tewodros, Yohannes, and Menelik, but attributes their behavior to a differ-
ent motivation; he saw them as maltreating a minority group.
One of the book's themes is that Ethiopia has failed to uphold the stan-
dards of civilized modernity. Ethiopia, in Mas'ad's view, was a barbarous
medieval entity; this was not unlike Mussolini's view. 23 The theme of sav-
age Abyssinia is central and extensively elaborated throughout. Three
pages (32-35) are devoted to descriptions of cruelty in the traditional
Ethiopian punitive system, ten pages (60-70) to the argument that slavery
is an organic part of Ethiopian culture and society. The various decrees
abolishing it by Tewodros, Yohannes, Menelik, and Haile Selassie, argues
Bulus Mas'ad, were of no avail.
Summarizing his attitude toward the Ethiopian domestic situation,
Mas'ad writes:
The Abyssinians are Semites in the general sense, but they are not the
original inhabitants of the land. They are warlike people having no inter-
est in anything but power and bravery. They raise their children to be
obsessed by fighting to such an extent that they attribute no importance to

anything else of what life can offer. They consider themselves the masters
of the country, patronizing their fellow countrymen and neighbors, the
Muslims and the pagans, and look down on them. (pp. 44-45)
Ethiopian savagery, according to Mas'ad, was manifested not only in

domestic affairs but also in fighting foreigners. He cites descriptions of
maltreating the Italian prisoners of the Adwa battle. Menelik, he says, quot-
ing al-'Azm's Rihlat, was an enlightened man, but his attempts at introduc-
ing progress were defeated by his own people.
Much of M a s ' a d ' s book (mainly pp. 9 6 - 1 2 8 ) is devoted to Ethio-
Egyptian relations, especially during the periods of Muhammad 'Ali and
Isma'il. He emphasizes that Egypt, as it was modernizing under these
enlightened leaders, was seeking to bring progress to Ethiopia. "It was a
period when Egypt renewed her youth and reached a golden era of moder-
nity which astonished the whole world," he writes. The Egyptians, in
Mas'ad's view, came to Ethiopia to bring books and build houses. They
built Harar, including the castle where Ras Makonnen lived and Haile
Selassie was born. They brought the light of culture to that region. Mas'ad
observes that Yohannes in the north failed to see the advantage of Isma'il's
scheme to construct a railroad from Massawa to Khartoum. Thus the battle
of Gura was fought, which "ended with a truce, the first stipulation of
which was the freedom of commerce and trade between Ethiopia and
Egypt." Indeed, he asserts, "in spite of the conflict Egyptian occupation
enlivened solid and good Ethio-Egyptian relations."
Mas'ad implies that Egypt's role was to perform a "civilizing mission."
The reader needs little imagination to note the similarity to Mussolini's
enterprise. The British did all they could to undermine Egypt's mission,
expelling the Egyptians from Harar and from the Sudan. "It is well known,"
Mas'ad asserts, "that the Egyptians were forced out by the British not by
the Ethiopians. On the contrary, the Ethiopians remember that period with
favorable sentiments. It left them with good memories and served as the
basis for good relations" (p. 122). Lij Iyasu, writes Bulus Mas'ad, cooperat-
ed with the Ottomans and the Germans because he knew that Britain sought
to annex Ethiopia to its government of the Sudan.
On two issues Mas'ad expresses positive views toward Ethiopia. First,
he admires Haile Selassie, and spares no praise in depicting him as a mod-
ernizer, a man of diligence and insight, a great reformer and organizer, a
man of letters and humanistic approach, and a person who understood the
West (pp. 171-182). Second, he admires Ethiopia's military ability. The
Ethiopians had only a small modern standing army but they were able to
amass two million fighters when the need arose. Under a leader like Haile
Selassie, defending their country on their soil and with their patriotic zeal,
they were a formidable force (pp. 36-37).
It is apparent that when he wrote his book, finishing as the actual com-
bat was in a very early stage, Mas'ad was uncertain of the outcome. He and
many others in the Arab Middle East, as we shall see in the next chapter,
admired Haile Selassie and what he represented as long as they thought
Ethiopia could win the war.
When Bulus Mas'ad and Yusuf Ahmad were working on their manu-
scripts, the greater part of the Egyptian public was still sympathetic to
Ethiopia. This was also true, as we shall see, in other Middle Eastern coun-
tries. Neither author had to worry about selling his book: the Italian lega-
tion in Cairo covered their expenses. Bulus Mas'ad (who rendered the lega-
tion various other services) also received source material and illustrations.
The legation bought in advance 750 copies of his book out of the 2,000
published. 2 4 Yusuf Ahmad was subsidized even more handsomely. The
Fascist propaganda machine covered the £E 75 for the proofreader and the
printers and bought in advance half of the 4,000 copies printed. Both the
authors and the Italians witnessed a wide distribution of their works in the
entire Arab world. By Italian reports the first 1,000 copies of Yusuf
Ahmad's book were sold or distributed in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon,
and Iraq in less than two weeks after publication. 25
As the war progressed with sweeping Italian victories, Islam in
Ethiopia by Yusuf Ahmad became immensely popular. The atmosphere in
Egypt changed to such an extent that the Wafdist newspaper, al-Balagh (in
Cairo) published chapters from the book in late 1935 and early 1936. 26 The
Syrian paper, al-Jazira, published in Damascus, 27 and Cairo's Ruz al-Yusuf
also reprinted parts of Ahmad's book. Very positive reviews were pub-
lished in numerous newspapers, some of them of the highest reputation. In
its January and February 1936 issues al-Hilal, the most respected Cairo
monthly, published favorable reviews for both Ahmad Yusuf and Bulus
Mas'ad. (As if to be on the safe side a no less favorable review of Jum'a's
The Ethiopian Lion was published next to those.) 28
Yusuf Ahmad quotes the anti-Ethiopian writings of the noted Islamic-
Arab thinker and journalist, Shakib Arslan. 29 Arslan, the central figure of
the next chapter, did his best to promote the book and the ideas of Yusuf
Ahmad. In a review he published in the Egyptian newspaper Kawkab al-
Sharq, on 23 February 1936, he praised Yusuf Ahmad for expressing the
state of mind of the true courageous Muslim. Indeed, the ideas of Yusuf
Ahmad and his book, which became a classic, would live through the era of
pan-Arabism and would later be transmitted to the radical Muslims of
today. 30
0
PAN-ARABISM, ARSLAN,
AND CONQUERED ABYSSINIA
WHAT IS ETHIOPIA? AN ALL-REGIONAL PRESS DEBATE
Even more influential than books about Ethiopia were newspaper articles.
Throughout 1935, thousands of articles dealing with the Abyssinian Crisis
and with Ethiopia were published in the numerous dailies of Cairo,
Alexandria, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut, and Baghdad. 1
Newspapers were the real political forums of the period. At that time, they
were free to present extreme ideas and opinions and occasionally did so
quite boldly. Enjoying full liberty of expression under British or French
mandatory rule, politicians and thinkers often used newspaper columns as
their popular outlet, their main connection to the emerging generation and
to the wider masses. In the 1920s such articles could help them at the polls.
In the mid-1930s, the discussion on Ethiopia, Mussolini, and on the British
not only played a role in domestic political rivalries, it also became part of
the preparations for future politics of a very different nature than hereto-
fore.
The discussion of Ethiopia held in the Arabic press during this period
was a unique show of curiosity and interest. No similar seminar by Arabs
on that neighbor country has taken place since. The writers derived much
of their information from European sources, but some also reread medieval
Arabic literature or the new books discussed in the previous chapter. They
were discovering their neighbor, a mysterious, ancient kingdom.
A variety of subjects were raised: Ethiopia's relations with Middle
Eastern Islam from Muhammad to Lij Iyasu and the Ottomans; Ethiopia's
treatment of local Muslims from Zar'a-Ya'qob's war against the Sultanate
of Ifat to the conquests of Ahmad Gragn, and from Tewodros's and
Yohannes's enforced Christianization of Muslims to Menelik's conquest of
Harar and Haile Selassie's abolition of Jimma's autonomy in 1932-1934;
and Ethiopian customs, culture, law, church, and Christianity. Much of the
journalistic writings repeated the themes discussed more thoroughly in the
current books already noted.
Of special interest, however, was the issue of slavery. It was a major
111
theme of the Fascists and had also been emphasized by Bulus Mas'ad.
Numerous anti-Ethiopian articles echoing or copying Italian and other
European propaganda pieces condemned Ethiopia as practicing slavery. 2
They never mentioned the fact that it was Muslim Middle Easterners who
had traded in habashi slaves for centuries and that Islam encouraged the
existence of slavery in both principle and practice. Indeed, the anti-
Ethiopian line was a blend of ideas typical of the period. It was based on
the history of Islam but was now aimed at a generation motivated by the
modern concepts of Arab nationalism.
Opinions in the press were polarized. At one end of the spectrum stood
those who sought to exploit the international situation in order to force the
British (in Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq) and the French (in Syria and
Lebanon) into a more generous dialogue. These leaders and personalities
were inclined to see Ethiopia in favorable terms. Many of these wrote of
Ethiopia as an Oriental sister, Semitic by virtue of ethnicity and language,
Eastern by virtue of its Coptic Church, and even Islamic by virtue of the
religion of half of its population. Their concept of Ethiopia was generally
in line with Jum'a's African Lion: a close neighbor that was able to main-
tain its independence, and, hence, a source of Oriental pride. They admired
the country's ability to mobilize military power and face Europe with dig-
nity. We have already seen the Wafdists, and the more liberal-parliamentar-
ianist circles in Egypt that adopted that attitude. In journalism it was the
leading newspaper of the country, Al-Ahram, that advocated the clearer
pro-Ethiopian line. Al-Ahram sent a special correspondent to Ethiopia, who
stayed in Addis Ababa until the Italian occupation (in May 1936) and sent
many pro-Ethiopian dispatches to his newspaper, including interviews
enabling the emperor to appeal directly to the Egyptian public. 3
Similar articles appeared in other Arab countries, written by members
of the political establishments that had emerged in the nonviolent parlia-
mentarian 1920s. Among Palestinian Arabs, the pro-Ethiopian side was
a d o p t e d by the m o d e r a t e l y B r i t i s h - o r i e n t e d wing, the s o - c a l l e d
Nashashibis. Their attitude was clearly expressed by their Jaffa-based
newspaper, Filastin: "The Muslims always remember Abyssinian favor
with early Islam, the same as they remember the Fascists' recent atrocities
against their fellow Muslims in Libya. The Arabs support Ethiopia because
of Oriental solidarity and historical love." 4
A " F r i e n d s of E t h i o p i a A s s o c i a t i o n " was active in J e r u s a l e m .
A c c o r d i n g to Filastin of 31 O c t o b e r 1935, it held a s y m p o s i u m on
Ethiopian history with a main lecture on the Ethiopian victory over the
Italians at Adwa in 1896.
A number of politicians in Syria and their newspapers expressed sym-
pathy for Ethiopia. A leading newspaper in that respect was Al-Qabas of
Damascus (which, for example, published a favorable biographical piece
PAN-ARABISM, ARSLAN & ABYSSINIA 113
on Haile Selassie on 13 February 1936). The most persistent pro-Ethiopian

of the Syrians, however, was the exiled nationalist hero, doctor, and leader
of the 1925 anti-French revolt, 'Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar. Based in
Cairo (and pinning his hopes for Syrian liberation from France on the
British) Shahbandar wrote:
I shall not hesitate to sacrifice m y s e l f for Ethiopia in 1935 the same as I

was not hesitant to d o so for Syria in 1925. I do not hesitate to stand by
Ethiopia and identify with her, for indeed the highest obligation for free-
d o m and liberation c o m m a n d s us to do so. If w e do not have the chance to
fight for the freedom o f our o w n country, at least w e have to do so for oth-
ers. A n d especially in the region neighboring us, with w h i c h w e have so
many historical and political ties. W e are proud to see that w e stand for
freedom, and that our brothers in the Arab world pursue a noble line with
regard to Ethiopia. 5
As noted earlier, Shahbandar had been active in the sending of medical

missions from Egypt to the Ethiopian army.
The Iraqi public and press was somewhat less involved than were the
E g y p t i a n s , the S y r i a n s , and P a l e s t i n i a n A r a b s . Iraq was not a
Mediterranean entity and her anti-British totalitarian spirit was oriented
more toward Germany than toward Italy. It was mainly members of the
non-Muslim minorities who raised the Ethiopian issue. The Christian
Razuq Shammas, one of Iraq's leading journalists, was persistent in con-
demning the Fascists as barbarians and in declaring that "all the Oriental
people regard Ethiopia as their sister who is brutalized and with whom they
identify." 6 The Jewish Iraqi poet, Anwar Shawul, followed the same line in
his Baghdad literary weekly, Al-Hasid. He composed a poem dedicated to
an imaginary Ethiopian Joan of Arc leading four hundred Ethiopian girls in
battle against the invaders:
The feelings and hopes in my poem

are dedicated to you, descendant of Menelik.
They stem from Iraq, land of the light,

land of the two rivers, Mesopotamia,
which respects men and honor.
Oh you Virgin of Ethiopia, you fight for justice

when evil-doers try to extinguish freedom.
They will not succeed as long as in one country
there are still those who sacrifice their lives
for their motherland. 7
In addition to modern nationalists and politicians who cooperated with

the British and French, there were Islamic thinkers of the older generation
who identified with Ethiopia. We have already noted the most prominent
among them, the Cairene Shaikh Muhammad Rashid Rida, the leader of the
Salafiyya movement and the greatest promoter of Islamic modernism in
that period. Rida, as noted, was the spiritual father of the Young Men's
M u s l i m A s s o c i a t i o n that was b e h i n d many of the a c t i v i t i e s of the
Committee for the Defense of Ethiopian Independence. Rida was ready to
exploit the opportunity in order to promote Islam in Ethiopia by sending
books and 'ulama. He had corresponded with King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi
Arabia, seeking to establish in Mecca a center to coordinate his plans. On
the subject of politics he was quite clear: "As for the Italo-Ethiopian con-
flict, all people of the East and surely the Muslims have to side with
Ethiopia. It is inconceivable that any of them will side with the imperialists.
Even if the Muslims in Ethiopia were deprived of their rights it does not
follow that Italian conquest is preferable. . . . We must avoid any support
for the Italians and any humiliation for Ethiopia, or her smearing." 8
The group in the Arab Middle East that stood ready to smear Ethiopia
consisted generally of the elements that were frustrated by the liberal
experiment of the 1920s. Parliamentarianism, after all, failed to address the
region's deepening socioeconomic problems and had brought no national
salvation. Indeed, the British and the French were not ready, at that time, to
loosen their grasps and grant full political autonomy. With the growing
economic, cultural, and international crisis many despaired of the hopeless-
ness of the continuing dialogue between their parliamentarian leaders and
the Western occupiers. New social forces, spearheaded by the educated
youth, who yearned for immediate solutions and strong political leadership,
were exerting growing pressure on the established politicians.
Mussolini's propaganda was falling on attentive ears. Islam was now
politically reintroduced in a renewed, militant manner. Pan-Arabism pre-
sented itself in a new form, carrying the promise of unity and strength
achieved through struggle. Mussolini appealed to them both, depicting his
Ethiopian campaign as a war against the barbarian entity that had oppressed
Islam as well as against the liberal imperialists who also had oppressed
Arabism.
The man who played a central role in transmitting Mussolini's anti-
Ethiopian propaganda into the rising anti-parliamentarian tide was the
Lebanese Druze, Amir Shakib Arslan (1869-1946). 9 Based in Geneva,
Arslan was one of the most important figures in Islamic-Arab history dur-
ing the interwar period. A prolific author and journalist, he gained the epi-
thet of the mujahid (the holy warrior) for being an ardent fighter for Islamic
political revival and for the joining of Islamic unity with modern Arabism.
He did not advocate a secular liberal Arab nationalism that had animated
the nonviolent dialogue in each separate Arab country with the British and
the French, but rather an all-regional spirit of revolt. The Islamic-Arab

region for him included, as well, North Africa and the Horn.
Arslan had begun corresponding with Ethiopian Muslims in the late
1920s. In 1928 he wrote to Ras Tafari, the future Haile Selassie, calling
upon him to improve their situation, but he received no reply. 10 However,
his views of Ethiopia and of its relations with Islam before the Abyssinian
Crisis were far from being totally negative. In 1933 he published a very
long article, "The Muslims of Ethiopia." In forty-one pages of historical
survey, 11 from the Prophet to Lij Iyasu, there is nothing to suggest the ille-
gitimacy of Ethiopia or that M u s l i m s s u f f e r e d there. T e w o d r o s and
Yohannes are both mentioned briefly as acting against Islam, but the word-
ing is very mild, and their actions are placed in a context of their fear of
Egyptian aggression. The Ethiopia he presented in his 1933 article is a
mixed Christian-Islamic entity in which, although it witnessed some reli-
gious tension over the centuries, its Muslims were not always in the most
difficult situation. The majority of the piece is a long historical overview,
with quotations from the description of the epic of Ahmad Gragn, 'Arab
Faqih's Futuh al-Habasha, leaving the reader with the impression that
Islam did have its share of victories and honor in Ethiopian history.
In 1930-1932, when the Fascists had brutally quelled the Sanusiyya
movement in Libya, Arslan raised his voice against Mussolini, whom he
otherwise admired. During that period, Arslan was particularly concerned
with North African affairs: He supported the anti-French Moroccan, 'Abd
al-Karim al-Khattabi (whom he considered the greatest warrior of the peri-
od for Islam and Arabism). 12 A generation later, 'Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi
would go to Cairo to become a mentor to young Muslim students from
Eritrea and to teach them the Arab North African experience with the poli-
tics of liberation fronts.
It was only in 1934 when Mussolini began appeasing Islam in Libya in
preparation for his propaganda campaign in the eastern Mediterranean that
Arslan changed his line and turned against Ethiopia. In October 1934
Arslan returned from a tour in Eritrea and published an article in his edited
French-language journal, La Nation Arabe (published in Geneva), which
was full of praise for Italian treatment of Islam in that colony. In January
1935 he published another article in the same journal warning Ethiopia that
it should restore autonomy to Jimma and should grant autonomy to Harar
or face destruction. 1 3 Around mid-February 1935 he was summoned to
M u s s o l i n i ' s o f f i c e . He presented II Duce with three memoranda: on
Palestine, Syria, and Libya. A c c o r d i n g to Arslan, the Italian leader
promised him that he would support the Arabs and the Muslims and would
do his best to prevent the British and the Zionists f r o m evicting the
Palestinian Arabs from their land. A few days later, on 20 February 1935,
he wrote to his closest ally, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of
Palestinian militancy, Hajj Amin al-Husayni:
I do not know if Ihsan al-Jabiri [Arslan's associate] told you about all
that was agreed between me and the Italian government concerning what
both of us had discussed together in Mecca, and what we had agreed upon
in Jerusalem. Now I want to tell you that following the last meeting I had
with Mussolini himself, my conscience is clean. I am sure Italy would
treat us differently than the British and the French. If you send Jamal al-
Husayni here I shall confide through him things I should not put in writ-
ing.
In any case, it was agreed to start at once a propaganda campaign in
support of Italy. Mussolini said he was afraid of a world war, and that if
we fail to start paving the ground right away, we shall not be able to
exploit the opportunity. In my opinion we have to exploit the crisis
between Italy and Abyssinia and begin emphasizing the Abyssinians' bad
attitude towards Muslims. It is possible that the Italian Propaganda
Ministry would provide our journals with relevant material. I gave them
the addresses of Al-Jami'a al-'Arabiyya and Al-Wahda. . . . I wrote to
Riyyad al-Sulh [a Lebanese Muslim and an associate of Arslan] that he
would see to that matter in Syria, and asking him to meet with you so that
you may give him the proper instructions. 14
S o o n a f t e r w a r d s , A r s l a n p u b l i s h e d the f i r s t o f m a n y a r t i c l e s o n
Ethiopia in Arabic for consumption in the Middle East. It appeared in Al-
Jami'a al-'Arabiyya o f 4 March 1935, o n e of the n e w s p a p e r s under the
Palestinian Grand Mufti. In it, he wrote:
All those who would like to defend Ethiopia have first to read about its
history and particularly regarding the Muslims living there and what they
received from the Ethiopians. They will see that apart from the Muslims
of Spain no other Muslim people has suffered over the centuries such
atrocities as the Muslims of Ethiopia. We do not even talk about maltreat-
ment in the early ages, of which we have historical records. We talk about
events that took place in the not too distant past. It is enough to refer to
what h a p p e n e d sixty to seventy years ago, in the time of E m p e r o r
Yohannes, and mention the number of means he used against the Muslims
that were forced to become Christians.
The rest o f the article w a s in the same spirit, claiming that six million
M u s l i m s were then living in Ethiopia, deprived of their rights, barred from
a c c e s s to governmental posts, and living in c o n d i t i o n s worse than under
European imperialism. Italy, he wrote, w a s the true friend of the Arabs and
Islam. H e w a s not justifying Ethiopia's occupation by Italy, but, he asked:
"Are w e so strong and secure as to forget our o w n needs and g i v e our atten-
tion and aid to the land of the najashi? . . . W e should not alienate such a
power as Italy just for the beautiful e y e s o f a certain people w h o for years
d o nothing but oppress the M u s l i m s w h o live on the s a m e land."
In o n e o f his articles p u b l i s h e d in Al-Ayyam o f D a m a s c u s 1 5 Arslan
attacked the entire generation o f the 1920s in the Arab world, blaming them
for their lack of solidarity. H e enumerated instances in which M u s l i m s and
Arabs did or said nothing w h e n f e l l o w M u s l i m Arabs in other countries
were attacked by imperialism. "And now, Palestine is about to fall to the

Jews and I see no Muslims in the entire world do anything comparable to
their interest and sympathy to Ethiopia. . . . Now Britain is about to declare
war on Italy while she herself is in control of Egypt, Palestine, Iraq and
Transjordan, countries which are far superior in culture to Ethiopia. . . .
How many Islamic countries fell in British hands and nobody protested like
now when it comes to E t h i o p i a . . . . "
Throughout 1935, Arslan wrote dozens of such articles, publishing
them in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. The major newspapers were
forums for an Arab intrastate debate. Arslan began broadcasting in Arabic
on the popular Italian Radio Bari. In September he organized a congress of
orientalists, in Geneva, attended by some seventy scholars and politicians
in which Italy was praised as the true ally of Islam and Arabism. 16
The entire controversy concerning Ethiopia came to revolve around
Arslan. Although widely praised, he was also attacked in many quarters.
Shaikh Fahmi, for example, wrote in Al-Jihad of Aleppo: "The amir is
wrong . . . all Muslims should support Ethiopia. . . . In preaching to the
contrary, he ruins his lifetime contribution of twenty years' effort for Islam
and Arabism. I regret to see us losing for that reason one of Islam's greatest
leaders." 17 Salim Khayyata, a Lebanese author of a book on Ethiopia that
was published in Beirut in 1936, mocked Arslan: "And if someone chal-
lenges the Arabs asking: But how can you explain that your spokesman on
Ethiopia is a certain amir from Lebanon? You answer to him: There are in
Lebanon ten thousand amirs of that type. If Mussolini represents Italy
while he leads to its destruction, so is Shakib Arslan representing the Arabs
as he trades in them." 18
Arslan's articles reached Ethiopia where they made a significant
impact. In the Amharic Berhanena Selam of 30 May 1935, the leader of the
country's Muslim community, Muhammad Sadiq (a relative of Menelik's
and Iyasu's ra'is al-Muslimin, 'Abdallah Sadiq) wrote:
Some Arab journalists wrote about Ethiopia's need for help. But others,
those who understand nothing about this country . . . say that Muslims are
discriminated against. . . . Mussolini's men want to separate the Muslims
and Ethiopia. My people, let us not fall into this trap. Let us prove that we
are the same nation. Let us forget the old saying "Skies have no pillars,
Muslims have no land." It is no longer the case that in Ethiopia people are
selected for governmental posts by their religion. This is my message to
anyone who wants to see Ethiopia free.
The most important figure to publicly dispute Arslan was his lifetime
associate Shaikh Rashid Rida. Rida was against violence and he regretted
Arslan's attack on Ethiopia. In an exchange of letters he admonished
Arslan for supporting Mussolini and defaming Ethiopia. 1 9 Rida died in
August 1935, but Arslan did not follow his advice. In January 1936 he pub-
lished in Al-Ayyam of Damascus his last letter to Rida. He also quoted f r o m

Yusuf A h m a d ' s book, which had appeared two months earlier in November
1935 (and to which he had himself contributed).
What do we remember about Ethiopia? That she ruined the seven flourish-
ing Islamic emirates, the last one, Jimma, was ended by Haile Selassie
only a year ago. The mass Christianization of 1880 by Yohannes. The
destruction of mosques. If God had not punished Yohannes by sending the
Muslims of the Sudan to finish him off, the whole Islamic community of
Ethiopia would be Christian today. When did we ever see Ethiopia doing
anything for Egypt, Syria, or Palestine? For ten years she has been a
member of the League of Nations; has she done anything for us? 20
The mentioning by Arslan of the Mahdiyya in the Ethiopian context as

the m e s s e n g e r s of G o d and doers of Islamic j u s t i c e is s i g n i f i c a n t . As
r e m e m b e r e d , t h e late n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y S u d a n e s e m i l i t a n t M u s l i m s
wavered b e t w e e n the two basic a p p r o a c h e s of Islam to Ethiopia. W h e n
Ethiopia was exposed as weak, they interpreted the historical past as justi-
fying a jihadi approach. E t h i o p i a ' s weakness in facing the Fascists was
soon to have a similar impact.
Arslan was not alone in his views. His ideas as well as those of Yusuf
Ahmad were echoed in numerous articles. Newspapers such as Al-Waqit of
Aleppo, Al-Bilad of Beirut, and Al-Jami'a al-Arabiyya of Jerusalem were
examples. The Palestinian-Islamic leader, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, helped
Arslan, although he himself was careful not to be provoked into writing
anti-British diatribes. 2 1 In Iraq, it was the journalist Yunis al-Bahri, through
his newspaper, Al-'Uqab, who spread anti-Ethiopian propaganda, and in
Damascus it was mainly the newspaper, Al-Jazira. The editor of Al-Jazira,
M u h a m m a d Z a b i y a n a l - K a y l a n i , w a s p a r t i c u l a r l y active in p o r t r a y i n g
Ethiopia as backward and anti-Islamic. He fully supported Arslan and, in
the f u l l n e s s of time, the t w o would together celebrate the fall of Haile
Selassie.
HAILE SELASSIE'S IMAGE AND

THE OUTCOME OF THE DEBATE
The public discussion of the figure of Haile Selassie reflected the Ethiopian
issue in its earlier stages, later development, and conclusion. His story can
be divided roughly into two stages. The first one began in early 1935 and
c o n t i n u e d until a p p r o x i m a t e l y M a r c h 1936, w h e n it b e c a m e c l e a r that
Ethiopia was on the verge of defeat. Until then, Haile Selassie was widely
regarded with respect. Some even considered him a hero. Throughout this
period, only Shakib Arslan dared to criticize Haile Selassie as a person. In
this he was persistent, referring to the emperor by his old name, Ras Tafari,
and describing him as an illegitimate, arrogant, and unjust ruler. Tafari,

argued Arslan, deserved no justice, for he himself, in addition to his other
sins, had put an end to the last area of Islamic autonomy in Ethiopia, that of
Abba Jifar's Jimma. Arab and Muslim solidarity should be solely with their
own peoples and countries, he argued, and not with the vainglorious king
of a primitive country. 22
For the great majority of the writers, however, Haile Selassie was still
a hero. In the daily Al-Ayyam of Damascus, for example, 'Abd al-Salam al-
Jaza'iri attacked Arslan for confusing the public and attributing the anti-
Muslim policy of Emperor Yohannes IV to Haile Selassie. "What the
Abyssinians did sixty to seventy years ago, if they did it at all, is nothing in
comparison to what the Italians did in Tripoli (Libya) six to seven years
ago." 23 "Haile Selassie," wrote the Egyptian daily, Al-Balagh,24 "is a pro-
gressive, enlightened ruler who works days and nights for his country." The
Cairene newspaper Akhir Sa'a published "an open letter to his Imperial
Majesty Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia and friend of the Egyptian
people. . . . The Nile has united our two countries for thousands of years.
Brutal imperialism tries to separate us. . . . We should have sent you half a
million Egyptians to fight the Italian fascist aggressors. . . . May God help
you blacken with shame the faces of the descendants of Nero, and whiten
the faces of the people of Ethiopia." 25
The Al-Ahram correspondent in Addis Ababa praised Haile Selassie's
progressive policies, including his enlightened approach to Ethiopian
Muslims, 26 and The Egyptian Gazette27 spared no superlatives in describing
the Ethiopian emperor as "the builder of modern Ethiopia, a successful
reformer, a genius, a phenomenon, a leader and a brain far greater than any
other Ethiopian of the time. . . ." The paper concluded: "If war is to occur,
he will no doubt lead a united people, and fight for what the whole world
recognizes as a just cause." In one other example, printed on 4 November
1935, a month after the c o m m e n c e m e n t of hostilities, Al-Ayyam of
Damascus still wrote with admiration: "Haile Selassie will win. In any case
he will prefer to die rather than to surrender." Four days later Al-Ayyam
published a fictitious letter by Haile Selassie, in which the emperor
explained to the Syrian people how the Fascists distorted the truth about his
country, aiming to subjugate their country. Alif-Ba of Damascus published
"a letter by the Syrian youth to Haile Selassie" expressing sympathy and
support for "Ethiopia, our Oriental neighbor." 28
However, as the war continued and it became clear that the Italians
were on the road to victory, such expressions of sympathy and identifica-
tion with Ethiopia dwindled and then ceased altogether. In March 1936,
with Ethiopia's defeat nearly a fait accompli, the Arab press portrayed
Haile Selassie as a naive victim. Articles published in the Syrian and
Lebanese press were still merciful, and compared him to the Hashemite
King Husayn of the Hijaz and to his son, later to become King Faysal of
Iraq. 2 9 The Arab consensus was that both kings were deceived by the
British during World War I and in its aftermath. Both went to war with a
British promise, were deserted by perfidious Albion, and ended in exile.
Haile Selassie, according to their analysis, was equally naive to drag his
people into a hopeless war based on his own belief in the word of the
British.
In May 1936, following Haile Selassie's flight from Ethiopia, he was
viewed as a vanquished loser and a fainthearted traitor. Al-Taqaddum of
Aleppo compared him to Emperor Tewodros and called him a coward. 30 Al-
Jazira of Damascus wrote that he deserved his fate, for he had deposed Lij
Iyasu, the legitimate Muslim successor of Menelik II. 31 Al-Waqit of Aleppo
put the entire blame for the demise of Ethiopia on the shoulders of Haile
Selassie, calling him the usurper, the tyrant, the oppressor of Islam. 32 Al-
Jazira went so far as to blame the British for saving Haile Selassie's skin
by enabling him to flee. 33
In July 1936 many Middle Eastern Arab newspapers (for example, Al-
Waqit, July 9; Fattah al-Arab, July 19) repeated Italian propaganda to the
effect that the ex-emperor was a mere thief, fleeing from his country with
its stolen treasury. Only a few articles (for example, Al-Qabas, 18 May
1936) expressed disbelief in such allegations and still d e f e n d e d the
Ethiopian emperor's honor.
After fleeing from Addis Ababa to Djibouti, the emperor sailed to
Haifa and then went by train to Jerusalem. The British-controlled "Voice of
Jerusalem" tried to turn his appearance into an anti-Fascist occasion. This
move was to no avail: The Arab world was no longer interested. It was, in
fact, becoming a new Middle East, and a different one from that of 1935. A
violent anti-British, anti-French spirit was sweeping through the whole
region. Anti-British riots had begun in Egypt on 13 November 1935. They
were spearheaded by students and led to the emergence in January 1936 of
youth organizations that imitated the Fascists. One of them, the Blue Shirts,
was a branch of the Wafd Party, which had been the guardian of parliamen-
t a r i a n i s m . In D e c e m b e r 1935 s i m i l a r a n t i - F r e n c h riots e r u p t e d in
Damascus, and in April 1936 Arab-Palestinian revolt began. 3 4 Baghdad
was also about to erupt, and disturbances began there later in the summer,
leading to the first modern officers' coup, the Bakr Sidqi coup of October
of that year. 35
For all intents and purposes, 1936 witnessed the demise of the "liberal
age" in the Arab Middle East. The Abyssinian Crisis was undoubtedly one
of the main causes of that fundamental change in Arab politics. It coincided
with momentous local developments in social, economic, and cultural
spheres that had been long preparing for the upheaval that was triggered in
the aftermath of the crisis. The fall of Ethiopia and the subsequent erosion
of British and French prestige was another factor that defeated parliamen-
tarianism and its methods; it thus contributed to the emergence of pan-

Arabism and Islamic radicalism.
THE LAST WORD TO ARSLAN:

ARABISM AND ETHIOPIA'S ILLEGITIMACY
In these formative years of modern Arab and pan-Arab nationalism,

Ethiopia was viewed by the Arab press as both an Oriental sister and as a
mysterious, distant African country. An independent, valiant Ethiopia was
a source of great pride to the Eastern self-image but Ethiopia as the oppres-
sor of Islam was also viewed as a backward and unjust Christian monarchy.
For the new generation of Arabs who wavered nervously during 1935
and 1936 between these contradictory perspectives, the most important
facts were that Ethiopia was suddenly exposed as weak and defeated and
that the Italian occupiers practically abolished Ethiopia, and began prepar-
ing the ground for turning the Horn into an Islamic-Arab extension of the
Middle East.
Haile Selassie had failed in his prewar attempt to mobilize help from
the Arabs. He had thought of urging the Egyptians to block the Suez Canal,
of encouraging the Sanussis' revolt against the Italians in Libya, and, more
realistically, to persuade the Saudis and the Yemenites to refrain from sell-
ing camels and food to the Fascists. 36 But although nothing of substance
came of his diplomatic missions, there were some signs of sympathy and
help. We have already noted that the Egyptians sent medical missions.
Thousands of volunteers registered in Egypt to help Ethiopia, but in the end
it was only some one hundred and fifty Ethiopians residing in Egypt and
Palestine who, with the help of the Egyptian Committee for the Defense of
Ethiopia, traveled to the battlefields. Two former Ottoman officers of Arab
origin also came to distinguish themselves in the fighting and to symbolize
the solidarity with Ethiopia. One was General Wahib Pasha, a prominent
officer in the Turkish army during World War I, who acted as General
Nasibu's chief adviser in the Ogaden front. 37 The other was his old friend,
the dark-skinned Sudanese, General Muhammad Tariq Bey, nicknamed al-
Ifriqi (the African).
Al-Ifriqi gave several newspaper interviews 38 and wrote a book, My
Memories of the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-1936, published in Damascus
in 1937, 3 9 which reflect the transformation from the initial respect for
Ethiopia to pity. In the early chapters of his book Tariq describes how he
thought it was his duty to defend Ethiopia, the only African country able to
retain independence, and how he traveled to Addis Ababa, the capital built
by Menelik, the victor over the Italians and the "Bismarck of Ethiopia" (p.
16). He then met with Haile Selassie who, he wrote, was no less a man of
skill and knowledge than any European leader. He quotes the emperor
telling him: "I have confidence in the sympathy of the noble Arab nation
toward Ethiopia, since between the Arabs and the Ethiopians there exists a
historical bond of friendship from the very beginning, from the days of
Muhammad. I believe and hope that the help the Arabs render us, and espe-
cially the Egyptians, will hoist the flag of civilization in the Near East" (pp.
14-15).
The Ethiopians, Tariq wrote, are truly brave, do not fear death, and can
sustain all difficulties. But they cannot face warfare in the modern world.
Their bravery is outdated. Their psychology is irrelevant. It is the era of
technology and they have nothing of it (p. 112). And, he summarized his
ultimate conclusion: "We have to understand that the only justice is power
and power is the only justice" (pp. 4-5).
Ethiopia's defeat was analyzed in many articles as the ultimate proof
of its backwardness and sins. 40 The policies of the Italian occupiers added
to the Arab impression of Ethiopia as an entity of little legitimacy. The
Italians all but abolished Ethiopia, divided the territory along religious and
ethnic lines, and worked for the spread of Arabic, declaring it the official
language of the Muslim-populated regions of eastern Ethiopia. (Earlier they
had adopted the same policies in Eritrea.) The new Fascist rulers in Addis
Ababa encouraged Islam in the whole Horn by building mosques, imple-
menting the shari'a (Islamic law), and by subsidizing other Islamic institu-
tions. They sought to repoliticize Islam and Arabize it in order to make
their "Italian Oriental Africa" part of their Oriental Mediterranean dream.
As summarized by Alberto Sbacchi, the Italian goals in Ethiopia were as
follows:
Italian interests in the M u s l i m s of Ethiopia had international repercus-

sions. Favorable treatment of the M u s l i m s in East Africa made a g o o d
impression in the M i d d l e East and in the Islamic countries in favor of
Italy and it enhanced its claim to be the protector of the Arabic-speaking
nations with a v i e w t o b e c o m i n g the leader of the M u s l i m world. . . .
C l o s e relations with Arab states were maintained by means of cultural
activities, health missions, official visits, trade, radio and newspaper pro-
paganda. B e s i d e s the yearly pilgrimage of Ethiopian Muslims to M e c c a ,
there were also special visits of M u s l i m c h i e f s to Egypt and Arabia to
advertise the g o o d treatment of Ethiopian M u s l i m s by the Italians. . . .
Mussolini w a s anxious to expand trade and commercial relations with the
countries across the Red Sea. . . . Plans were made for a center of Islamic
propaganda in Massawa, w h o s e Arab elite had strong family, e c o n o m i c
and cultural ties with the other side of the Red Sea. The political courting
of the Arab countries paid its dividends during the S e c o n d World War. . . .
W h i l e the Italian rule lasted, the M u s l i m s dreamed of making Ethiopia
M u s l i m and the Italians hoped to b e c o m e a M u s l i m power. 4 1
The fall of Ethiopia and the ensuing declarations of Italian Islamic pol-
icy in Italian Oriental Africa created a wave of enthusiasm in the Arabic
Middle Eastern press. The first thrill was caused by the rumor that the
occupiers were about to install a son of Lij Iyasu on the Ethiopian throne.
The name mentioned was of Menelik, a son of a former Arab wife of Iyasu,
Fatima Abu Bakr, who lived in Djibouti. But the idea that a Muslim
Menelik III—an Islamic najashi, after all—would rule in Addis Ababa was
short lived. 42 The Italians did not seek to foster Ethiopian imperial continu-
ity.
More substantial was the news about the declaration of Arabic as the
official language, substituting Amharic in non-Christian areas, and that
Harar was to be revived as an Islamic scholarly center. The appearance of
Arabic newspapers in these regions, and most notably in Addis Ababa
itself, the building of mosques, including the promise to build the long-
awaited grand mosque of Addis Ababa, were all celebrated in dozens of
articles, even in Egyptian newspapers that had been identified with the plu-
ralism of the 1920s. Al-Siyasa of Cairo said on 9 September 1936: "The
victory of Italy over Ethiopia is God's punishment of Ethiopia for maltreat-
ing Islam. God never fails to settle with the sinners and He sent the Italians
to end centuries of crimes against Islam. The emperor fell like Iyasu had
fallen. Those who oppressed Islam got what they deserved."
The Al-Ahram correspondent in Addis Ababa, who had been an enthu-
siastic supporter of Haile Selassie, turned into an admirer of Graziani, the
new ruler. He sent to Cairo a long report praising the Fascists for restoring
Islam and Arabism. 4 3 The liberated Muslims of Ethiopia, the press in
Palestine and Syria reported, were interested in the struggle for the libera-
tion of Palestine (the Arab revolt in Palestine, it will be remembered, had
begun in April 1936). One of their missions was said to have been sent to
Jerusalem to express solidarity "with their Arab brothers in Palestine." 44
The editor of the Damascene daily, Al-Jazira, was especially forceful in
connecting the victory of Islam and Arabism in Ethiopia to the Palestinian
issue:
In Palestine the British expel Arabs to make room for the Jews. . . . In
E t h i o p i a the Italians did the o p p o s i t e . There, a g o v e r n m e n t that had
oppressed the M u s l i m s w a s toppled. It w a s an uncivilized government of
the kind that had deserved no existence in medieval primitive times, let
alone in the twentieth century. The Ethiopians are a people which never
knew enlightened government, yet they were spared the y o k e of foreign
rule, while the Arabs were conquered. 4 5
The editor of Al-Jazira, Muhammad Tayasir Zabiyan al-Kaylani, wrote

vividly of the new image of Ethiopia. In October 1937 he published a book
in Damascus, Muslim Ethiopia: My Experiences in the Lands of Islam.46 It
is based on his tour of the new Horn of Africa under the Fascists. The text
begins as a series of conversations with various Muslims who testified to
the deprivation—economic, social, and cultural—they had suffered in the
now defunct empire of Ethiopia. The second part of the book consists of
descriptions of the situation under the Italians. It culminates in the author's
visit to Harar, now no longer a Christian Ethiopian town but a lively and
flourishing center of Islamic life and Arab studies. This new Arab-Islamic
freedom in a Muslim Ethiopia was achieved because of the benevolence of
Fascism and the Fascists. When the author describes the interview he had
in Addis Ababa with Graziani (pp. 39-45), Zabiyan cannot conceal his
admiration for the determined general. Neither does he hide his gratitude
for the restoration of Islam, the building of mosques, the spread of Arabic,
the implementation of shari'a, and the whole administrative reconstruction
of the Horn. All these developments occurred under Graziani, who himself
spoke Arabic from his days in Libya. Zabiyan extensively quotes Graziani,
a man who systematically massacred the Sanussis and other Libyans, as
presenting himself as the born friend of Islam and Arabism. Indeed,
Zabiyan returned to Syria via Libya where he interviewed Mussolini him-
self. He quotes Mussolini: "We granted the Muslims of Ethiopia full reli-
gious freedom, we made Arabic the official language, built mosques all
over, and replaced non-Muslim functionaries in the Muslim-inhabited
regions with Muslims. For that we have received the gratitude of the
Muslims" (p. 15).
Another theme in the book is the author's admiration for Shakib
Arslan. For Zabiyan, he was the true hero of the Abyssinian war. To
Zabiyan, Arslan was the man who, from the start, had foreseen where histo-
ry was going—he was right about Ethiopia and about the Italians. There
were times, writes Zabiyan, when Arslan stood alone against all those who
were misled in thinking that in the name of humanity Ethiopia had to be
supported. "We were then sorry to see that except for Arslan nobody stood
up to tell the truth. . . . The Ethiopians destroyed six million Muslims by
forced Christianization and enslavement . . . their government was much
worse than imperialism and more awful than occupation . . . " (p. 12).
Arslan himself wrote the preface to Zabiyan's book. In October 1937
Arslan seemed to be in a position to celebrate his victory. He did it by com-
bining the fall of Ethiopia with the hope for a triumph for Arabism. He said
he had never supported the strong against the weak but had believed in per-
suading the Muslims and the Arabs that Britain and Ethiopia, not Italy, was
their enemy:
H o w can Britain blame Italy for her doings in Ethiopia when she is
ten times more wrong? She kills the Arabs in Palestine in their h o m e s in
front of their w o m e n , and this is just because they are not ready to aban-
don their h o m e s and leave them for the Jews. The Arab nation has been
the o w n e r of Palestine for fourteen centuries and the British want to wipe
it out in order to establish an E n g l i s h - J e w i s h state. T h e y have no right
whatsoever to say anything about the Italians in Ethiopia.
The blind Muslims w h o fell for British propaganda forgot what the
Ethiopians had done to the M u s l i m s in their country and in neighboring
countries. What indescribable atrocities, generation after generation, what

enslavement, land confiscations, and forced Christianization! What primi-
tive and hostile destruction inflicted on the seven Islamic emirates, what
enslavement of Muslims w h o had been sovereign in their country! In the
n a m e of the Lord, it was strange to s e e M u s l i m s still h a v i n g pity on
Ethiopia after all t h a t . . . . Oh y o u Muslims w h o blame Italy for o c c u p y i n g
Ethiopia, would you not remember J i m m a , . . . H a r a r , . . . the tens of thou-
sands of slaves, the majority of them M u s l i m s , and that Tafari himself
[Arslan refused to call him Haile Selassie] personally o w n e d one thousand
of them? Would you not remember Yohannes . . . ?
T w o years ago the distinguished author Yusuf A h m a d wrote a book
based on Arabic and European sources and documented all that. A n d now
the distinguished author Tayasir Zabiyan al-Kaylani of D a m a s c u s went
himself to Ethiopia and confirmed all w e knew. Y o u should all read it so
that you will know the truth, (pp. 4 - 7 )
Zabiyan's book vividly describes Arslan's final triumph in the 1935—

1936 struggle over the proper image of Ethiopia. It also illustrates how
Ethiopian concepts of radical Islam were transmitted to the emerging mili-
tant Arabists. Zabiyan declared that Islam was the only way to save human-
ity, but in Islam the Arabs formed a distinct nation. They were the pioneers
of Islam in the Arab Peninsula (thus he called his newspaper Al-Jazira [the
peninsula]) since they were destined to be its future leaders. Without men-
tioning him by name, he repeats the ideas of 'Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi,
the pioneer proponent of Arab nationalism of the early twentieth century.
Kawakibi's book, 'Umm al-Qura (Mecca), considered the first expression
of modern Arab identity, concerns a meeting of Muslims in Mecca. They
complain about the weakness of Islam until one of them suggests that the
Arabs should resume their initial leadership. Zabiyan tells a similar story
(pp. 10-11). He had read about Ethiopia in Arslan's articles, but his active
interest was aroused when he visited Mecca. There, in the holy city, just
after the fall of Ethiopia, there was a gathering of Muslims f r o m Ethiopia,
Eritrea, and Somalia for the hajj. They told him at length about the plight
of E t h i o p i a ' s M u s l i m s . It was then and there that he d e c i d e d to go to
Ethiopia to see things for himself. Although he does not say so in so many
words, the implication for Ethiopia's Muslims is the victory of Arabism.
This was the essence of Arslan's message.
10
NASSER, HAILE SELASSIE,
AND THE ERITREA PROBLEM
In May 1941 Haile Selassie, helped by the British, returned to his throne.
He initiated an effective process of political centralization and, in 1943, he
quelled the only serious challenge to his authority at home, the Woyane
revolt in Tigre. He then proceeded to expel British advisers (accomplished
in 1944) and to expand his empire. He managed to regain Somali-inhabited
territories (the Ogaden, 1948, and the Haud, 1954) that Mussolini had
annexed to Somalia but failed to incorporate Somalia in his envisioned
Greater Ethiopia. 1
Far more important, however, was his effort to reclaim Eritrea. The
future of that colony, which the Italians had occupied in the late 1880s,
became a very complex international issue. Finally, in December 1950 the
United Nations decided to federate an autonomous Eritrea with Ethiopia
under the sovereignty of the Imperial Crown.
The Middle Eastern Ethiopia agenda was reestablished in the 1950s.
The countries of the Middle East regained their independence and began to
pursue regional strategies. Their individual foreign policies became
involved with Ethiopia and Eritrea. We have discussed Islamic concepts of
Ethiopian history from Muhammad to Iyasu. There was, as mentioned, a
tension between the orthodox approach toward Ethiopia's legitimacy and
the rival version supporting jihad, but there was little argument on the
question of Ethiopia's border. Islam was not concerned about drawing
international boundaries and Ethiopia was abstractly and generally recog-
nized as a non-Islamic entity lying south of Egypt and east of the Nile. (The
Ottomans, for example, had no problem in identifying the Massawa coast
and the hinterland, today's Eritrea, as their "Province of Habesh." Most
Islamic writers discussed the Muslims in the whole area as the "Muslims of
Abyssinia.")
However, in the modern Middle East, itself a region demarcated now
by Western-conceived and Western-created international boundaries, this
could no longer be the case. Furthermore, the modern concept of Arab
nationalism, taking the place of universal Islam, necessitated a territorial
definition and the drawing of national-political maps. We have seen that
127
Arabism burst into Middle Eastern politics in the mid-1930s. We saw the
role of Ethiopian affairs in the important events of early pan-Arabist histo-
ry. We also discussed the simultaneous early tentative conceptualization of
the Muslims in Ethiopia and in Eritrea as Arabs.
In the aftermath of World War II, particularly from the mid-1950s to
the late 1960s, pan-Arabism became the hegemonic all-regional ideology.
What were the international boundaries of the revolutionary all-regional
Arab nation? Was Eritrea a part of it? Was the rebellion there against
Ethiopia's government a part of the all-Arab struggle for unity? Or was it a
matter of strategic concern to the Middle East but not an issue of Arab
identity? The discussion of the Arabism of Eritrea in these years was not as
central as had been the discussion of Ethiopia in the days of Shakib Arslan
and Rashid Rida—there were too many other more pressing issues on the
region's agenda—but since the Middle East became directly relevant to
Ethiopian affairs, the Arab concepts of the country's legitimacy were of
greater importance.
Egypt remained, as it had been in the past, the main Middle Eastern
country relevant to Ethiopia. It was to become, following its 1952 revolu-
tion and under the presidency of Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser, the center of pan-
Arabism. The Egyptians-becoming-Arabs strove, especially beginning in
the mid-1950s, to lead a struggle for the fulfillment of supra-Egyptian iden-
tities: Arab, and to some extent Islamic, as well as African. They saw Egypt
as a pioneering leader of a great Afro-Asian revolution and they attempted
to modernize the Nile economy and to look outward in their political and
military efforts. They therefore focused much attention on Ethiopia, which
was connected to Egypt through the Nile, to Arabism and Islam through
Eritrea and through the issue of Ethiopia's Muslims, and to Africa by virtue
of Ethiopia's special status in the emerging all-African politics.
PRE-NASSERITE EGYPT AND ERITREA
The first postwar Ethiopian-Egyptian encounter took place in the corridors

of international diplomacy. Egypt, still a parliamentary monarchy in 1945,
demanded Eritrea. The Egyptian political establishment was still motivated
by the ideas of Egyptian nationalism as formed in the early 1920s. These
included the slogan of Unity of the Nile Valley and the dream of building a
Greater Egypt, including the Sudan. In the context of that strategy Egyptian
diplomacy sought to realize Khedive Isma'il's dream of imperial expansion
in claiming Massawa as the corridor from the Red Sea to the Sudan. As
described by the Egyptian historian Muhammad Rajab Harraz of Cairo
University, 2 the Egyptian diplomatic campaign lasted more than two years
and was led by the Copt diplomat Wasif Ghali. In London, Paris, and then
at the United Nations, the Egyptians collided with Ethiopian diplomats over
NASSER, SELASSIE & ERITREA 129
the legacies of the Isma'il-Yohannes period. The Egyptians argued that the
Italians had captured Massawa in 1885 from the Egyptian garrison and had
promised at the time to preserve it under Egyptian sovereignty. Now that
the Italians had left Massawa, they argued, the Arab-populated town should
be restored to Egypt. The Ethiopians countered by referring to Ras Alula's
government in Eritrea and to the June 1884 Hewett Treaty under which
Egypt renounced Massawa. When bilateral contacts between the two mis-
sions failed, Egypt decided to claim all of Eritrea, and on 17 November
1947 submitted a memorandum to this effect. However, as it became clear
that they stood no chance of regaining Eritrea, and since the Ethiopians
countered by airing the issue of the Nile (in 1950, Haile Selassie declared
that Ethiopia had the right to use its waters), the Egyptians abandoned their
claim. 3 In December 1950, against the other Arab delegations, Egypt joined
the majority at the United Nations in voting for Eritrean federation with
Ethiopia. 4
The shift in Egyptian policy was part of a major change developing
gradually in the Egyptian self-image. Egyptianism, representing a set of
political and social values, was now seen as failing to address the mounting
postwar problems of Egypt. The British, who occupied Egypt until 1956,
made it clear that they would not allow Egyptian-Sudanese reunification.
Following the Nasserite revolution of 1952 Egyptian policy began to focus
on the Middle East rather than on the African countries watered by the
Nile.
In his book, The Philosophy of the Revolution, Nasser emphasized the
Arab Circle as Egypt's main sphere of identity, taking primacy over the
"circles" of Islam and of Africa. But while a serious effort would be made,
until the demise and death of Nasser, in an attempt to unite the Arab
Middle East, the African sphere was rendered secondary. Africa, even the
Nile countries, were defined now as a sphere of influence rather than as a
theater of the Arab unity struggle. Like Muhammad 'Ali in the 1830s,
Nasser had to give up on the Sudan in order to focus on the more promising
Fertile Crescent and Arab Peninsula. In 1953, he signed a treaty with the
British concerning their 1956 evacuation of Egypt, in which he acknowl-
edged Sudan as an entity separate from Egypt. Sudan was granted its inde-
pendence in January 1956.
Did Nasser ever fully relinquish the hope of spreading Egyptian gov-
ernment along the length of the Nile? The answer cannot be given with cer-
tainty. An analysis of the scholarly literature produced in Egypt, including
the writings and speeches of Nasser himself, make it appear that he sought,
above all, stability along the Nile, and the welfare of Ethiopia, including
Eritrea. I shall turn to that literature in the next section. It is clear that
Egypt's order of strategic priorities was rearranged, but it is also clear that
the possibility of future expansion into the Sudan and into Eritrea (as well
as into Somalia) was never ruled out. Nasser was said to have never given
up on the idea of unity among the Nile countries, including Ethiopia. In the
second half of the 1950s, especially after the Suez War, he even toyed with
the idea that Haile Selassie might be persuaded to form a Sudanese-
Ethiopian-Egyptian alliance under Nasser's hegemony.5 He was, however,
to fail in both his diplomatic efforts to embrace Ethiopia and in seeking to
eventually undermine it through Eritrea and Somalia.
THE BIRTH OF THE ERITREAN

LIBERATION FRONT IN CAIRO
Nasser used a variety of measures to spread his influence in Africa, but it

was in the Nile and Horn countries that he concentrated his efforts. He was
deeply involved in Sudanese affairs, a subject that in one respect is highly
relevant to our concern with Ethiopia.
Sudanese politics in the volatile period leading up to the emergence of
Ja'far al-Numayri in 1969 to a great extent revolved around the old
Mahdiyya-Mirghaniyya rivalry. The Mahdist Ansar had, under the British,
turned into the wing that supported Sudanese independence from Egypt,
while the Mirghaniyya, from the days of Muhammad 'Ali and Isma'il under
Egyptian auspices, was cultivated by the Egyptians. Nasser, while trying to
reach a modus vivendi with the Khartoum government (in 1957 and finally
in 1959 they reached an agreement on distribution of the Nile waters), con-
tinued playing the Mirghaniyya card. The Mirghaniyya were concentrated
in and around the town of Kassala; a main pillar of theirs in northeastern
Sudan was the Bani 'Amir tribes, 90 percent of which lived in Eritrea.
These were the same Bani 'Amir who would come to constitute the main
power behind the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), which was born in 1961.
Thus, from a Nasserite Egyptian perspective, the struggle over Eritrea was
detrimental to far more than just the future of the Red Sea province and
Egyptian relations with Ethiopia. A future ELF-led independent Eritrea
could also help Egypt to achieve an Arab-Egyptian unity with the Sudan,
leading one day to the establishment of a Greater Egypt embracing the Nile
countries.
The ELF was born in Cairo, in the bosom of Nasser and Arab national-
ism. 6 As described by one of Nasser's chief aides for the African Circle
affairs, Muhammad Muhammad Fa'iq, 7 Nasser decided in 1955 to encour-
age the organization of an Eritrean anti-Ethiopian community of exiles in
Cairo. Nasser himself, because his priorities were not focused there, did not
seek an open clash with Haile Selassie, but privately Nasser did see the
Ethiopian emperor as an enemy. Haile Selassie was said to have helped the
anti-Egyptian wing in the Sudan and to have had economic and other rela-
tions with Israel beginning in 1954. Moreover, he was undermining the
autonomy of Eritrea and was depriving the Muslims of their rights. He
made Amharic the official language of Eritrea in place of Tigrinya and

Arabic. Arabic had been encouraged in Eritrea to some extent under the
Italians as well as even more energetically under the British Military
Administration (1941-1952). The British wanted to annex western Eritrea
to the Sudan and did their best to emphasize the distinction between
Christians and Muslims. They promoted Arabic by importing books and
teachers from Egypt. Massawa flourished as a center of Arabic education,
but the fundamental change was taking place in western Eritrea, among the
Bani 'Amir, connected to Egypt traditionally through the Mirghaniyya. The
Bani 'Amir were speakers of the Tigre language (as distinct from Tigrinya,
the language of the Tigrean Christians) who had hardly used Arabic. Their
younger generation, in revolt during the 1940s against the feudal elite of
the tribe, 8 was attracted to an Arabic education.
When Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia many young Christians
moved to Addis Ababa to pursue new careers. Young Muslims went
instead to Sudan, and from there, traveled to Cairo. In 1955, Nasser decid-
ed to make their life easier in the capital's institutions of higher education,
and primarily in al-Azhar. Al-Azhar, as noted above, had had its Riwaq al-
Jabartiyya in the days of medieval Islamic Zeila and Massawa. It was
swelling now with students from western Eritrea, their numbers during this
period estimated at between 300 and 700. 9 (In 1962 it was estimated that
the number of students from sub-Saharan Africa in al-Azhar was approxi-
mately one thousand.) They were given scholarships, jobs, other benefits,
and access to a special club of their own. Like other students from
Palestine, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and other countries in which the
battle for Arab unity was soon to take place, they were exposed to the
Cairene atmosphere of the time—that of rising revolutionary expectations.
Another decision made by Nasser in 1955 was to welcome Eritrean
politicians who had had to flee into exile. The most prominent of them, the
Christian proponent of Eritrean independence Wolde-Ab Walda-Mariam,
had been in Cairo since 1953, having exerted some influence on the young
Eritrean students there. Thanks to N a s s e r ' s decision, W o l d e - A b was
allowed to broadcast daily to Eritrea and Ethiopia in Tigrinya. (There were
also broadcasts in Arabic.) However, when, after the 1956 Suez War, Haile
Selassie offered Nasser his diplomatic support, the broadcasts by Wolde-
Ab were stopped. 10
Nasser was in no rush to deal with Ethiopia and Eritrea. The Eritrean
Muslim youngsters were not indoctrinated to conceive of themselves as
A r a b s . T h e y w e r e sent to a l - A z h a r (not to the s e c u l a r A r a b C a i r o
University) to advance their Islamic awareness, which was to be channeled
politically into an African, not Arab, struggle. Nasser, according to the
analysis of Muhammad Fa'iq, always accepted the principle of territorial
integrity in Africa. But in his eyes Eritrea was a different case. As a former
Italian colony it was recognized by the United Nations, and its people were
entitled to postcolonial self-determination. Fa'iq wrote that Nasser believed

Haile Selassie should have preserved Eritrea's identity by maintaining the
spirit of its autonomy.
Not all Eritrean exiles turned to Cairo. Those who sought immediate
action or who were dissatisfied with the prominence accorded the western
Eritreans of the Bani 'Amir organized elsewhere. In 1958 five young stu-
dents from eastern and northern Eritrea established an Eritrean Liberation
Movement (ELM) in Port Sudan. They were joined by an Arabic teacher
from Massawa (a Saho and native of Arkiko), 'Uthman Salih Sabbe, who
would play a central role both in organizing the Eritrean movement in east-
ern Eritrea and in creating the myth that Eritrea was Arab.
When a new wave of Muslim Eritrean leaders of Bani 'Amir origin
headed by Ibrahim Sultan and Idris Adam came to Cairo in 1959, the local
Eritrean students were ripe for action. Some were being trained by the
Egyptians in a special camp near Alexandria. They were excited by the
Arab Algerian revolt against the French.
It was the atmosphere in Cairo even more than Nasser's policy toward
the Eritreans that helped to create an Arab-oriented ELF. Indeed, the most
influential non-Eritrean in the situation was not an Egyptian but the
Moroccan exile 'Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi. 11 We have already referred to
him as the leader of the anti-French Rif War in the Atlas Mountains in the
1920s. Living as an exile in Cairo since 1947, 'Abd al-Karim was active in
spreading the ideas of Arab solidarity and of guerrilla tactics. 'Abd al-
Karim, along with another hero of Moroccan Islamic nationalism and a fel-
low exile in Cairo, 'Alal al-Fasi, was a great favorite of students from vari-
ous Muslim and Arab countries. But his special interest was the Eritreans.
It may have been because of the similarities in the terrain of the Atlas
Mountains and of Eritrea, and between the Moroccan royal house and the
Ethiopian monarchy. He had been, as we have seen, a close friend of
Shakib Arslan; the latter traveled to Morocco in the stormy year of 1935,
and surely the two of them discussed Ethiopia and Haile Selassie.
In talking to the students in Cairo, 'Abd al-Karim preached action in
the field. In addition to sharing with them his experience in waging tribal
mountain warfare, he also lectured to them about the modern organization
of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN). In fact, the Algerian
liberation front, which had scored impressive successes and which was on
the verge of defeating the French, was to become the source of inspiration
and the model upon which the Eritrean Liberation Front was based. In
Cairo, in July 1960, the E L F was established by Idris Adam, Ibrahim
Sultan, and a group of students, prominent among them was Idris 'Uthman
Qaladiyos (Galadewos). They established their base in Kassala (the head-
quarters of the Mirghaniyya) and began gaining momentum after the
November 1962 annexation of Eritrea by Ethiopia. By 1965 they had estab-
lished provincial commands ( w i l a y y a s ) on the FLN model, a General
Command, and a Supreme Council in Kassala, with Arabic as the language
of their foreign relations and military affairs. Beginning in 1965, they were
troubled by internal rivalries12 as more elements joined the front f r o m the
M u s l i m coastal and northern Eritrea (the E L M had d i s a p p e a r e d b e f o r e
a c h i e v i n g its goals), and f r o m the n e w y o u n g C h r i s t i a n s f r u s t r a t e d by
the loss of political freedoms. The fact that the E L F was founded in Cairo
was still reflected four years later in the August 1969 General C o m m a n d of
the ELF. Of thirty-eight members we have a list of thirty-one names, and
we have specific background records given for thirteen of them. Of these,
eight were al-Azhar graduates, two were trained by the Syrians in Aleppo,
t w o were e x - s e r v i c e m e n in the S u d a n e s e army, and one was trained in
Iraq.'3
THE E T H I O P I A N R E S P O N S E -
AVOIDANCE AND AFRICANIZATION
Throughout this period, Nasser showered Haile Selassie and Ethiopia with
compliments. In 1955, the year he made Cairo the base for Muslim Eritrean
separatists, Nasser also invited the emperor to Cairo in an attempt to per-
suade him to join in a show of unity. Although the emperor was inventing
excuses to avoid such a meeting, 1 4 Nasser went on exerting pressure on
Haile Selassie to visit Egypt, couching his repeated invitations in rhetorical
flourishes on brotherhood, his admiration for the emperor, and Ethiopia's
historical greatness.
Even though Nasser's major energies were directed to the Arab Middle
East, he was viewed as their greatest threat by the Ethiopian political estab-
lishment. 1 5 Ethiopian functionaries were filled with fear as they watched
Nasser undermine the monarchical regimes in Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
and Libya. In December 1956 the emperor sent an envoy (his ambassador
to Sudan) to Nasser to explain why he would not visit Cairo. Returning to
Khartoum, the envoy described his conversation with Nasser to the British
ambassador:
Nasser had then asked whether a military alliance between Egypt, the
Sudan and Ethiopia would not be in their common interest. "We drink of
the same water" he had said. My Ethiopian colleague had replied bluntly,
to the following effect: You claim to be an Arab and to lead the Arab
world but you interfere in the affairs of your Arab neighbors and have
tried to cause trouble for the Governments of Iraq, Libya, Lebanon and
Sudan. We Ethiopians are not Arabs. We are Africans and we are black.
We do not belong to your world although like you we drink of the water
of the Nile. Yet you have tried to interfere in our affairs also and make
trouble for His Majesty. . . . Secondly, you have military objectives. We
do not know exactly what they may be but we have no confidence in the
strength of your armed forces, and we are strongly against the
Communists who arm you. For these reasons your proposal is unaccept-
able and we are not prepared to discuss it even. 16
A year later, in December 1957, this same envoy, Meles Andom, was
appointed ambassador to Cairo. 17
Nasser's view of royal houses as outdated and reactionary was echoed
in Eritrean anti-Ethiopian propaganda. In 1958 when Nasserism was gain-
ing strength in the Middle East the emperor appeared to have lost some of
his confidence. He saw the winds of an Arab revolution sweeping the
region, nearly toppling King Hussein of Jordan, removing the Iraqi royal
family amid bloodshed, 18 and threatening to do away with Christian-domi-
nated Lebanon. That year also witnessed the culmination of the Arab unity
effort when Egypt and Syria united to form the United Arab Republic
(UAR). Simultaneously, as the Eritrean movement in Cairo was beginning
to take shape, the Egyptians opened another Islamic Arab bridgehead in the
Horn. They worked to strengthen the Somalis, who would become indepen-
dent in July 1960 in the idea of a Greater Somalia, in the name of which the
Somalis started claiming the Ethiopian-controlled Ogaden, including the
town and the rest of the province of Harar. In the first years after indepen-
dence the Egyptians were very influential in Somalia. 19 As Haile Selassie
told the visiting Israeli Agriculture Minister, General Moshe Dayan, in
September 1960, "The Somalis would not have dreamt of such an idea
without being incited by Nasser." 20
The notion of a powerful united Middle East threatening to join forces
with emerging Islam in the Horn reawakened the ancient Ahmad Gragn
fear. Not only in Somalia and in Eritrea but even in the core of Ethiopia,
Islam seemed to be responding to a call from a revitalized Middle East.
Haile Selassie confided to a visiting Israeli diplomat in 1955: "The Arabs
were always our enemies. Till lately they were weak and powerless. The
E u r o p e a n s , u n f o r t u n a t e l y , i n f l a t e d their strength and will regret it.
Meanwhile we Ethiopians have to be considerate of their power, especially
as we have such a big Muslim minority in Ethiopia." 21
"Colonel Nasser," he told a British journalist in early 1957, "is trying
to stir up the large Muslim minority with the aim of dismembering this
Christian kingdom." 22 In March 1957 Haile Selassie in Parliament blamed
Egypt publicly for pursuing this strategy. 23
Indeed, Haile Selassie's policy of Amharization and centralization,
pursued forcefully after World War II, deprived many Muslims (as well as
other groups) of important elements of their culture. Some of the Muslim
elite were successfully integrated into the expanding state machinery and
social establishment, but, as a prominent Ethiopian scholar and diplomat
admitted, the government sought the cultural disconnection of the Muslim
youth from the Arabic language and from the spirit radiating from the
Middle East. 24 In the late 1950s many Muslims in Ethiopia demonstrated
their admiration for Nasser and began expressing their resentment of their
own government. 25 For example, in 1960 an underground Arabic book was
published in Addis Ababa, entitled The Wounded ¡slam in Ethiopia, which
blamed Haile Selassie for retaliating against the Muslims because they had
supported Mussolini by depriving them of their basic rights. The book, not
u n l i k e the works of Arslan and Yusuf A h m a d , also e s t i m a t e d that
Ethiopia's Muslims constituted 75 percent of the population, and claimed
that therefore the country was Muslim. 26
According to the contemporary analysis of a young Ethiopian diplo-
mat, Yiftah Demitrios, the medieval "Ahmad Gragn s y n d r o m e " was
increased by ignorance. Ethiopian politicians, even of the postwar genera-
tion, had not been trained to observe and study the new Middle East.
Rather, they were accustomed to the E t h i o p i a n - C h r i s t i a n a f f a i r s of
Jerusalem, Cairo, and Alexandria. They now faced a Nasserite pan-Arab
momentum and they seemed afraid even to learn about it. 27 We have men-
tioned Haile Selassie wishing to avoid Nasser, refusing to pay a visit to
Cairo. Instead, the emperor sent his foreign minister, Aklilu Habte-Wold,
who had become the emperor's authority and closest adviser on Arab
affairs.
Aklilu was the man who, more than anyone else, influenced Haile
Selassie's Middle Eastern policy. It sought a low profile for Ethiopia and to
placate the Arabs in hopes that the storm would soon disappear. One
dimension of that policy in the 1950s was an attempt to avoid high-profile
relations with Israel. The emperor said he was looking for non-Arab friends
in the East. He saw Ethiopia as an island in an Arab sea and sought the
friendship of Iran, Turkey, and India. 28 But these states were not interested
in ties with Ethiopia. Israel was, but the Ethiopians were afraid of provok-
ing the Arabs. Indeed, twelve days after the Egyptians, on 17 November
1947, claimed Eritrea, the Ethiopian delegation to the United Nations,
seeking to avoid contact with the Zionist delegation, abstained from voting
for the establishment of Israel. 29 When Nasser began to have prestige and
influence, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Makonnen Endalkachew was not
impressed. In 1955, in Bandung, he met with Nasser, by then having
attained global prominence. He found the Egyptian leader "an unsophisti-
cated theater actor and a shallow thinker rather than a statesman." He said
he was glad that Israel was strong, because otherwise the Arabs would have
been all over it. 30 But his foreign minister, Aklilu Habte-Wold, was taken
in by Nasser. According to British sources, he traveled to see Nasser in
Cairo, and returned as his admirer. 31 The emperor was more trustful of
Aklilu and was careful not to alienate Nasser by responding to Israeli diplo-
matic overtures. In spite of the growing Israeli presence beginning in 1954,
Ethiopia sent no diplomats to Israel. (In 1953, two persons were sent to the
Israeli part of Jerusalem to look into a renewed effort to obtain the keys to
the monastery of Deir al-Sultan, then in Jordanian Jerusalem.) In 1956
Israel finally managed to persuade the emperor to permit it to open a con-
sulate in Addis Ababa, but, following Aklilu's advice, the emperor pre-
ferred relations to remain low key.
The Ethiopian policy of seeking to avoid contact with the Middle East
became apparent in 1957 when the emperor canceled visits he had planned
to Turkey, Jordan (the Deir al-Sultan issue), and Saudi Arabia (in response
to King Sa'ud's friendly visit earlier that year, his warm approval of the
state of Islam in Ethiopia, and the opening of diplomatic relations). 3 2
According to British sources the emperor canceled these visits to avoid irri-
tating Nasser and in order not to be faced with the necessity of visiting him
as well. When the following year, 1958, brought about the above-men-
tioned pan-Arab momentum, Haile Selassie began an active Ethiopian
diplomatic campaign in Africa. The Israeli consul general analyzed the
emperor's 1958 Crown Speech delivered on 12 November 1958 as follows:
The speech w a s a declaration on foreign policy of historic importance. . . .

Ethiopia is doing n o w its utmost to count itself among the African peoples
which obtain independence, and break her isolation. . . . A s remembered,
Ethiopia w a s until lately hesitant to participate in African affairs and
c l a i m e d she w a s f o r historical r e a s o n s a M i d d l e Eastern and not an
African country. 3 3 W e have no doubt that Ethiopia would have continued
in that line if not for the Nasserite threat. This threat increased to the
extent that it forced Ethiopia to look for allies not only to her north but
also to the south and her West. R e l y i n g on Africa will be the most natural
result of the Arab and Islamic pressure. 3 4
The Nasserite Middle Eastern challenge did contribute to the ensuing

Africanization of Ethiopian diplomacy. It moved Haile Selassie to find
comfort in African international relations, a field that provided prestige and
glory as well as political assets to counter the Arab challenge to Ethiopia.
Africa needed Ethiopia, already a source of inspiration for a generation of
African nationalists. Africa admired Ethiopia's proud history, 35 it accepted
Addis Ababa to be the headquarters for the Organization of African Unity
(OAU), established in 1963, and it looked up to Haile Selassie, a man of
global prestige and a symbol of the anti-imperialist stance, to be the conti-
nent's elder statesman. The emperor, encouraged mainly by Aklilu, was
said to be happy to play that role rather than pay attention to the mounting
problems at home. Many observers believed that he made the ultimate
switch to engage in African affairs following the December 1960 abortive
coup led by the commander of his body guard, General Mangistu Neway.
The general and his associates were said to be inspired by Nasser's Free
Officers' 1952 coup, and by the revolutionary antimonarchical spirit of
Nasserism. (The coup was foiled partly because Israel passed information
about the coup to the emperor, who was then touring Brazil.) 36 A semioffi-
cial book on Ethiopia issued in Cairo in February 1961 devoted extensive
paragraphs to the recent December 1960 coup. It made no mention of any
direct Nasserite connection but it carried a clearly revolutionary message.
Entitled Abyssinia Between Feudalism and Modern Times, it depicted Haile
S e l a s s i e ' s E t h i o p i a as a m e d i e v a l and b a c k w a r d s y s t e m and urged
Ethiopian society to catch up with the world by moving immediately

toward a fundamental revolution. 37
The new African orientation and the new emphasis on Ethiopia's
Africanism were not incompatible with Ethiopia's historical role. Not only
did they provide Ethiopia with a welcome and deserved position of interna-
tional leadership, but they also linked the country's foreign policy to many
aspects of its multiethnic culture. However, from the perspective of our
discussion of Ethiopia's Middle Eastern ties, the Africanization of the
1960s carried yet another message. African consensus had crystallized
around the principle of the territorial integrity of the continent's nations.
The Middle Eastern Nasserite momentum of Arab unity (and the war
against Israel) ran counter to changing international boundaries and politi-
cal entities.
As 1958 ended with some modicum of stability restored to the Middle
East following U.S. and British intervention in Lebanon and Jordan, Haile
Selassie's fear of Nasser subsided. He was finally ready to go to Cairo and
visit Nasser in June 1959. Earlier he had been gratified to hear from Israeli
diplomats that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion looked forward to what
he called Israel's "Periphery Strategy," meaning that Israel would outflank
the Arab world by building an alliance with the non-Arabs: the Iranians, the
Turks, and the Ethiopians. Though very interested in promoting Ben-
Gurion's idea, the Ethiopian response was outwardly cautious. The emper-
or said he would tell Nasser he was ready to recognize Israel de jure, but he
did not do so. He sent Nasser a signal by laying a foundation stone of a
small hydroelectric plant in Bahr Dar on the Nile 38 and then, following the
advice of Aklilu, left for Cairo.
The emperor's visit to the Egyptian capital highlighted the contradic-
tion between the two leaders' rhetoric and the mutual suspicion in which
each held the other. Haile Selassie was received with great warmth by
Nasser and his people. Nasser made speeches that were full of praise and
admiration for his guest. Nasser revealed that in 1940, as a young Egyptian
officer stationed in Khartoum, he had the chance to meet with the emperor
as he was preparing to reenter his country. Nasser said he had admired him
ever since. In his speeches Nasser avoided any mention of, or even an indi-
rect allusion to, Eritrea or to a Greater Somalia. Rather, he spoke as if quot-
ing from Lutfi Jum'a's book on Oriental brotherhood. He did not fail to
mention the najashi's saving of the sahaba, delivering the message of his
acceptance of Ethiopia as a legitimate neighbor—a subject to which we
shall shortly return. 39
Haile Selassie was less gracious. He showered praise on his host, but
mentioned difficulties as well. The main outcome of his visit was to further
distance Ethiopia from the Arab Middle East. He came to secure the inde-
pendence of Ethiopia's Church from the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria.
During the Italian occupation, the Fascists had severed the ties between
the two Churches and had appointed an Ethiopian as abun. The Egyptian
Coptic Patriarchate, to the anger of some Ethiopians, did not recognize
him. When Haile Selassie returned to Ethiopia, he restored the ties, but
reached an agreement that the next abun would be of Ethiopian origin.
Now, in 1959, he insisted on the Coptic Church recognizing the Ethiopian
Abuna Basiliyos (who had been in office since early 1951) as a patriarch,
equal in rank to Abuna Qerilus VI of Alexandria. The agreement, signed
during the visit, made the Ethiopian Orthodox Church autocephalous. At
the ceremony, Haile Selassie stated that the Ethiopian Church was a part of
a reawakening Africa. (The final official agreement severing the Ethiopian
Church from Egypt was signed in 1965.) 40
1962-1967: CULMINATION A N D RELIEF
Relations between Ethiopia and the UAR remained tense. Not long after
promising Haile Selassie that Radio Cairo would refrain from broadcasting
to the Somalis concerning Greater Somalia, the station resumed its propa-
ganda. In November 1959 the Egyptians, preparing for the construction of
the Aswan Dam, signed a new agreement with the Sudanese on the distrib-
ution of the Nile waters. They did so without notifying Ethiopia, in defi-
ance of Haile Selassie's declaration of September 1957 that he would con-
sider such disregard of Ethiopia to be a gross offense. 4 1 In 1960, Ethiopia
and Israel drew closer, 42 and one Ethiopian minister, apparently guided by
the e m p e r o r , floated an idea that J o r d a n , too, would be included in a
Turkish, Iranian, Ethiopian, and Israeli f r o n t . 4 3 The interest in Jordan
stemmed from the effort to obtain the keys to Deir al-Sultan, an issue which
the Ethiopians had put on Jordan's agenda (with the advice of the Israeli
Haim Vardi) in 1953. On 2 December 1960, a Jordanian committee ruled
that the keys should be handed over to the Ethiopian monks, but soon after-
wards, in early 1961, the Egyptians exerted pressure on King Hussein and
the keys were returned to the Egyptian Copts. 4 4
In 1961 Nasser suffered his first major setback on the pan-Arab front
when Syria broke away from the UAR. Later, in October, Ethiopia recog-
nized Israel, and the daily Addis Zaman (of 25 O c t o b e r 1961) openly
mocked Nasser's efforts to undermine Israel. As the first Israeli ambas-
sador was about to leave for Addis Ababa, the E L F began its armed strug-
gle in Eritrea.
The next years were marked by dichotomy. On the one hand, Nasser
became a more direct threat. In September 1962 his army landed in Yemen
to launch a five-year war against the Yemeni Royalists and the Saudis who
backed them. It would be a war over the future of the Arab Peninsula, its
vast resources, and, ultimately, over the Arab Middle East and the Red Sea.
The journal of Egypt's armed forces declared that Egypt was seeking to
make the Red Sea an Arab sea. 45 Haile Selassie feared the implications of a
Nasserite pan-Arab victory in Yemen. Such a victory would inevitably be
linked to the drive of the newly independent Somalis (a united Somalia had
gained its independence in July 1960) committed to restoring the Ogaden,
as well as to the struggle of the Eritrean Muslims of the ELF. In fact,
Nasser's landing in Yemen prompted Haile Selassie to annex Eritrea in
November 1962.
On the other hand, Nasser was also involved in the African agenda.
With his attention focused on the outcome of the Yemen War, Nasser paid
relatively less attention to injecting anti-Western spirit in his African
Circle. 4 6 When Haile Selassie inaugurated the Organization of African
Unity in Addis Ababa in 1963, which created a consensus for each coun-
try's territorial integrity, Nasser was ready to participate. Moreover, he was
eager to be part of the organization's leadership, even if it meant being sec-
ond to Haile Selassie. The two leaders were now showing a mutual respect,
which may even have been authentic. Haile Selassie asked Nasser to join
him in leading the inaugural ceremonies, and Nasser hosted the next gath-
ering in Cairo in 1964.
Despite outward appearances of cordiality with Nasser, the emperor
and his advisers bided their time. Aklilu was ecstatic over the success of his
diplomacy, but others were suspicious about the potential of a Nasserite
Yemeni-Somali-Eritrean coalition.
In May 1963, an Ethiopian minister wrote later, when Nasser came to
the opening of the OAU "hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian Muslims
spontaneously travelled (many on foot) to the airport to welcome him, com-
pletely surprising the Ethiopian authorities, who had very little way of
gauging people's sentiments. The thunderous cry of 'Nasser! Nasser!' still
rings in the ears of many of the Ethiopian police and military." 47
Meanwhile, also in 1963, Nasser ceased aiding the ELF 4 8 which, as we
shall see, meant that the front had to move its Middle Eastern base to Syria.
The anti-Arab wing in the Ethiopian political establishment was still not
convinced that Nasser posed no threat. The head of the group that rivaled
the one led by Aklilu, Ras Asrate Kassa, was appointed governor of Eritrea
in 1964. In the field he found ample evidence that pan-Arabism was a
major source of fueling the separatists.
To the majority of Ethiopia's elite the Nasserite pan-Arab active pres-
ence was undoubtedly traumatic. It combined the collective awareness of
the two historic cases in which their country had been destroyed. The
Nasserite potential threat was reminiscent of the Ahmad Gragn sixteenth-
century disaster in aiming to unite and politicize Islam in the whole Horn of
Africa and to recreate the Horn as an extension of a revitalized, monolithic
Middle East. And it seemed to be aiming at doing so through Arabization
of local Muslims, in both language and identity, and in a manner reminis-
cent of the Arabization campaign under Mussolini.
T h e g e n e r a l m o o d d u r i n g this p e r i o d a m o n g E t h i o p i a ' s political e l i t e

a n d t h e C h r i s t i a n p u b l i c w a s r e v e a l e d in J u n e 1 9 6 7 . B o g g e d d o w n in
Y e m e n in M a y 1 9 6 7 N a s s e r g a m b l e d o n e s c a l a t i n g the E g y p t i a n t e n s i o n s
w i t h Israel. H e o p e n l y t h r e a t e n e d Israel w i t h d e s t r u c t i o n by a u n i t e d A r a b
f r o n t — E g y p t i a n , Syrian, Jordanian. A s the Israeli a m b a s s a d o r w r o t e , f o l -
l o w i n g the S i x D a y War:
From the m o m e n t the crisis began we suddenly had no need to per-

suade the Ethiopians, of w h a t e v e r walk of life, of our case. More so, that
the Israeli effort for survival is vital to Ethiopia. T h e identification with us
on the part of the C h r i s t i a n s — a n d there were s o m e cases of sympathy
expressed by M u s l i m s — w a s nearly total, astonishing in depth and magni-
tude. Not only the m e m b e r s of the tiny intelligentsia but also the masses,
workers, peasants, the poorest merchants in the " M e r c a t o , " they were all
immersed in a wave of emotions. As tension built, and with it the repeti-
tious threats by the Arabs to w i p e Israel out, there w a s an intensively
growing anxiety. It was manifested in a variety of ways. . . .
Part of this can be explained by religious traditional feelings towards
Israel, part by the recognition that the o u t c o m e of the Arab war against
Israel would be detrimental to the future of Ethiopia. . . . The Emperor,
the various advisers and Foreign Ministry functionaries, they all, on their
o w n initiative, e m p h a s i z e d how m u c h was the Israeli survival of vital
importance to their own destiny. . . . Finally after the news of our victory
penetrated to the p u b l i c 4 9 there f o l l o w e d d e m o n s t r a t i o n s of joy and an
endless wave of congratulations, amazingly untypical of a society usually
reluctant to show emotions. . . . 5 0
T h e S i x D a y W a r had a m a j o r l o n g - r a n g e e f f e c t o n E t h i o p i a ' s r e l a t i o n s
w i t h the M i d d l e E a s t . It d e a l t a fatal b l o w t o a c t i v e p a n - A r a b i s m . T h e
r e g i o n w a s n o t t o s e e the t r i u m p h o f A r a b i s m a s an i d e o l o g y s e e k i n g a
m o n o l i t h i c A r a b entity. M o r e o v e r , the role o f E g y p t , b o t h the l e a d i n g state
in the M i d d l e E a s t and the M i d d l e Eastern state m o s t important to E t h i o p i a ,
w a s to c h a n g e c o u r s e .
EGYPT'S VIEW OF ETHIOPIA
DURING THE NASSERITE PERIOD
During the 1960s and the 1970s, the E L F made an effort to depict Eritrea as
an integral part of the Arab world. But, Nasser, despite the pan-Arab ideol-
ogy he espoused, refrained from extending his rhetoric to include Eritrea.
Surprisingly, the Egyptian scholarly literature and press as well as Nasser's
own speeches were silent on the issue. We have seen that Radio Cairo per-
mitted Wolde-Ab Wolde-Maryam to broadcast to Eritrea in the period prior
to the Suez War. Significantly, these broadcasts were made in Tigrinya, not
Arabic, and they emphasized Eritrea's uniqueness, not its Arabism. We
have also seen that 'Uthman Salih Sabbe, the Eritrean champion of Eritrea's
Arabism, was hardly a welcome guest in Cairo. Ethiopia was deemed in
Egypt a close and dear sister, and the problem of Eritrea was nearly
ignored.
MURAD KAMIL AND

THE PRE-NASSERITE CONCEPT OF ERITREA
This Egyptian silence on Eritrea is even more surprising given the fact that
in the late 1940s, as we recall, pre-Nasserite Egypt had claimed Eritrea,
arguing at the United Nations that the former Italian colony was an integral
part of Egypt's historical legacy.
The idea of Eritrea being an Egyptian land was clearly expressed in a
book published in Cairo in 1949, In the Land of the Najashi, by Murad
Kamil. 1 A Copt and a noted historian, who had pursued Ethiopian studies
in Germany (under E. Littmann), Murad Kamil was sent to Ethiopia in
1943 as the head of a group of Egyptian teachers. The group helped restruc-
ture Ethiopia's educational system as part of the Egyptian effort that had
begun in 1908 to help Ethiopian education. The najashi of the book's title
refers to the concept of a righteous benevolent king, a close ally, and a
legitimate Oriental Christian neighbor. Ethiopia, according to Kamil, is an
Oriental country of great culture, ancient tradition, and a rich literature.
This has been expressed in its two major religions, Coptic Christianity and
141
Islam. Relations between the two religious communities, Murad Kamil

asserted repeatedly (p. 91), are of tolerance, unlike in other Eastern coun-
tries. Ethiopia's hope of progress lies in promoting modern education in an
ecumenical spirit, and Egypt must cooperate in this venture. More Muslim
Ethiopians should be sent to Riwaq al-Jabartiyya in al-Azhar and more
Copts should be sent to Ethiopia to build schools, particularly a secondary
school in Addis, which is much needed as a vehicle for Egyptian influence.
"The Ethiopians trust only us," he wrote, "for they know that the Egyptians
carry no political ambitions when it comes to Ethiopia" (p. 91). They want
and deserve their own patriarch, but they do not seek a severing of relations
with Alexandria. (He quoted an Ethiopian song about the Armenians and
the Syrians who have their patriarchs even though they have no kings, and
that only the Ethiopians have no patriarch of their own.) In Kamil's view,
Haile Selassie is an enlightened friend of Egypt. He told Kamil, "Egypt is
our dearest sister. . . . She is the first to whom we turn in difficult times,
and she never let us down" (p. 123).
The first part of the book is dedicated to Kamil's en route visit to
Eritrea (which in 1943 was un<_.er the British Military Administration). He
summarizes the history of Eritrea as if such an entity had existed from
ancient times. There had been ties, he asserts, between Pharaohnic Egypt
and Eritrea. Aksum, he says, was an Eritrean empire. It was the Egyptians
who had occupied Eritrea in the sixteenth century (Ozdemir Pasha and the
Habesh Eyaleti, we recall, were subjects of the Ottomans in Egypt), and
Egypt lost Eritrea three hundred years later because of the Mahdiyya. But it
remained connected to the Eritrean Church, and Muslim Eritreans contin-
ued to go to al-Azhar. Egypt, writes Kamil, should strengthen its education-
al and religious mission to Eritrea (he mentions as a good example the
work of the Faruk Religious Institute, which was operating in Massawa).
Murad Kamil emphasizes the uniqueness of Eritrean culture, especially
its oral poetry, citing two Eritrean poems that convey his political message.
Both date from the period of Ras Alula's rivalry with the Egyptians over
Eritrea (1876-1884). The poems deal with tribesmen who were wavering
between the Ethiopian Alula in Asmara and the Egyptian garrison stationed
in Keren. Alula is depicted as a predatory bird, but the Egyptians are por-
trayed as people of order and justice. The choice is clear, and the hero of
one song calls his friend to join him in finding shelter in Egypt (pp. 40-45).
After Egypt decided to vote for the Eritrean federation with Ethiopia in
D e c e m b e r 1950, K a m i l n e v e r r e f e r r e d in his l a t e r w r i t i n g s to the
Egyptianness of Eritrea. In 1958, in Cairo, he published his annotated edi-
tion of Sirat al-habasha by the seventeenth-century Yemeni envoy to
Fasiladas, Al-Haymi al-Hasan bin Ahmad. 2 In his annotations he did his
best to emphasize al-Haymi's impressions of medieval Gondar as a town
typical of Ethiopian tolerance toward Islam.
EGYPT & ETHIOPIA DURING NASSER 143
NASSERITE LITERATURE ON ETHIOPIA
After the Nasserite revolution in which Egypt began to spread its influence
in the African Circle there was much written and spoken in Cairo about the
similarities between the Arab revolution and the African one. At times,
Nasser appeared to identify the two "circles" as if they were, in fact, but
one anti-imperialist (anti-Zionist) revolution. He was, however, careful
never to mention Eritrea in an Arab context. Even when the Ethiopian
r e g i m e w a s c r i t i c i z e d f o r b e i n g b a c k w a r d , as in Abyssinia Between
Feudalism and Modern Times (Cairo, 1961), and where the recent history
of Eritrea was discussed in detail, no mention of Eritrea's "Arabism" was
made. 3 Moreover, in the Egyptian press, mention of Eritrea all but disap-
peared. From 1955 to 1959, for example, the years during which Nasser
allowed the Eritrean students and the exiled Eritrean leaders to organize in
Cairo, very little was published on Eritrea. In all the material published on
Ethiopia in the influential daily Al-Ahram (edited by Nasser's closest advis-
er) throughout these years, there appeared only four brief items on Eritrea.
On the other hand, Ethiopia was the subject of many favorable articles. 4
Nasser, in his annual speeches on Revolution Day, would invariably note
that July 23 was also Haile Selassie's birthday and would make a point to
bless him in his remarks. 5 All in all, Nasser avoided the " A r a b i s m of
Eritrea" because he had to accept Ethiopia in the African terms dictated by
Haile Selassie. Ethiopia was the Nile and for the time being at least Nasser
had no other option than accepting Ethiopia's territorial integrity and his-
torical legitimacy.
The most prolific Egyptian scholar who wrote on Ethiopia during this
period was Zahir Riyad. In 1934 he was sent from Cairo by the Egyptian
ministry of education to teach history in the new secondary school opened
by Haile Selassie. He stayed in Ethiopia until 1937, teaching history and
learning Amharic. Then in 1943 he joined his fellow Copt, Murad Kamil,
in returning to Ethiopia to continue the Egyptian effort to help building
Ethiopia's modern education. He returned to Egypt in 1945 and in 1954
joined the African Section of the newly opened Institute of Coptic Studies.
Riyad published his articles on Ethiopia mainly in the journal of Cairo
University's faculty of humanities, which was widely read by the young
Egyptian intelligentsia. He was very favorably disposed toward Ethiopia as
a land of justice and as a good neighbor to Egypt. Of special interest is his
twenty-one-page review of British scholar Spencer Trimingham's Islam in
Ethiopia, p u b l i s h e d in l a t e 1 9 5 7 . 6 R i y a d w a s e x t r e m e l y c r i t i c a l of
Trimingham. He tried to prove that Trimingham could read no Arabic or
Ge'ez and that he had misunderstood much of the source material that he
had derived from translations. By discrediting Trimingham, Riyad sought
to demonstrate that the British scholar was wrong in describing Ethio-
Islamic relations as an endemic conflict. In Riyad's view, there were only

twelve years of enmity—the Ahmad Gragn period. Other than that brief
exception, it was mainly tolerance and mutual respect that characterized
relations between the Ethiopian Christians and Muslims. Moreover, he crit-
icized Trimingham for overemphasizing Ethio-Egyptian conflicts and for
failing to view Egypt as the main outside source of inspiration f o r
Ethiopia's Christian and Islamic cultures.
In 1958 Riyad published a study of Ethiopia's 1955 constitution, which
granted Muslims and Christians equal rights under Ethiopian law. Then, in
his 1961 article, "The Shifta in Ethiopia from Medieval Ages and Their
Political and Social S i g n i f i c a n c e , " 7 he analyzed the phenomenon of
Ethiopia's political and social banditry. Drawing from European and
Arabic sources, he described the constant tension between the established
politicians and the shifta, the outlaw, the bandit, an institution of individual
opposition that generated much energy to Ethiopia's political dynamism.
He concluded by describing Haile Selassie's modernization of the 1940s
and 1950s as ending shiftnnet. A particularly interesting point is that Riyad
completely refrained from mentioning shiftnnet in Eritrea during that peri-
od. In the late 1940s the term was widely used by practically all observers
to depict the terrorist activities of the Christian Eritreans working for reuni-
fication with Ethiopia. Much was published on the Ethiopian government's
using shiftas against the proponents of Eritrean independence. 8 The
Eritreans in Cairo, many of whom had been subjected to the violence of the
Ethiopian-recruited shiftas, were spreading the word of their activities.
In 1964 Riyad published his book, Islam in Ethiopia in the Middle
Ages, subtitled: "With Special Interest in Christian-Islamic Relations." 9
Relying on extensive reading of Islamic and European sources, Riyad
undertook to shatter the picture of endemic Christian-Islamic enmity in
Ethiopia, a picture that, he wrote, Trimingham had helped to engrave.
Riyad devoted his first chapter (pp. 15-47) to the sahaba-najashi formative
episode emphasizing time and again the Islamic tradition about Ethiopia as
the "land of righteousness" and the amicable relations between the Prophet
and the najashi. In analyzing the relations between Ethiopia and the south-
ern emirates prior to Gragn (Chapter 2, pp. 49-94), Riyad argues forcefully
that the conflict was essentially political, only occasionally couched in reli-
gious terminology. The same was true, he contends, of the nature of rela-
tions between Ethiopia's emperors and Egypt's Mamluk sultans (Chapter
3, pp. 95-152). Islamic-Christian religious and cultural enmity, writes
Riyad, was aroused only during the twelve years of the Ahmad Gragn "rev-
olution" (Riyad uses the modern-Arab term, thawra). In analyzing Gragn's
period (Chapter 5, pp. 195-259) Riyad's main point is that the religious
hostility then revealed was mostly an import from the Ottomans on the one
hand and the Portuguese on the other. The legacy of mutual suspicion and
enmity was mainly due to foreign involvement and lack of historical under-
standing. In practice the record of Christian-Islamic relations in Ethiopia,

he says, was good. It was the Fascist occupiers, he learned upon returning
to Ethiopia in 1943, who spread among local Muslims the notion of Gragn
as the redeemer of Islam, to foment problems. Ethiopians, both Christians
and Muslims, as well as modern Arab Egyptians, should study the true his-
tory in order to promote mutual understanding.
In his 1966 book, A History of Ethiopia, Riyad repeats his very favor-
able version of the Muhamrnad-nq/as/ii story; 10 he devotes a chapter to the
history of Eritrea but does not mention the rebellion (p. 213), and con-
cludes by emphasizing the good contemporary relations between Egypt and
Ethiopia as based on African fraternity (pp. 225-237).
Riyad's main ideas about modern Ethiopia and its relations with mod-
ern Egypt are summarized in his book, Egypt and Africa.11 In it he discuss-
es the relations between the two countries in modern times as essentially
friendly, although occasionally marred by problems. Tewodros and Sa'id,
he writes, came to terms after a misunderstanding; between Isma'il and
Yohannes it was the Egyptian who provoked the conflict. However, the
Church was particularly constructive in aiding political relations and very
helpful in promoting Ethiopia's educational system. He notes that the Copt
Hanna Salib served as Menelik's minister of education, and that all cultural
and educational contacts until the death of Abuna Matewos in 1926 went
through the Church. In 1927, diplomatic relations were established between
the two countries and an Egyptian consulate was opened in Addis Ababa.
Additional educational missions, organized by the Egyptian Ministry of
Education, came to Ethiopia: one in 1928, another headed in 1943 by
Murad Kamil (pp. 151-160, 165-174).
Riyad was an advocate of Ethio-Egyptian relations but he refrained
from exaggerating the contemporary picture. He described relations under
Nasser as tense and blamed Ethiopia because it recognized Israel. In 1964,
he wrote, he visited Addis Ababa and was told by the head of a newly
opened cultural center at the Egyptian embassy that the cultural attaché had
instructions to respond generously to any Ethiopian request, but that the
Ethiopians were suspicious and avoided him. Shortly afterwards the center
was closed (pp. 241-245).
Riyad does not mention the Eritrean problem and also avoids dis-
cussing Eritrea's Arabism. The same was true of another book, Lights on
Ethiopia, which appeared in Cairo, probably in 1957 or 1958. It was part of
an official series entitled "We chose it for you" published by the Ministry
of Indoctrination and personally endorsed by Nasser. 12 The last chapter of
it carries the same message as Riyad's last chapter: It describes Ethiopia's
overtures to the West, mainly to the United States and Israel, and suggests a
sense of danger. The first chapter, by contrast, is positive in tone. It was
written by Nasser himself, and under the title of "Ethiopia, a Sister State,"
it is extremely amicable toward Ethiopia. "Between us and Ethiopia there
are eternal relations of love incomparable to anything else between two

brothers," Nasser begins. He then summarizes Ethiopian history with
European imperialism and claims that the Ethiopians resisted the imperial-
ism of the Crusaders; then of the Portuguese; and in the nineteenth century,
that of the British, the French, and the Italians. It was Western imperialism,
he writes, that made the Ethiopians isolationists. (He mentions nothing of
the role of Islam.) The last Italian aggression, that of Mussolini, was almost
a blessing because it brought Ethiopia to the attention of Egypt and other
friends. (Nasser himself was a young student participating in the anti-
British November 1935 riots which, as noted, erupted in conjunction with
the Abyssinian Crisis. Following the Abyssinian Crisis he decided to leave
his university studies and join the military academy, then opened in
Aswan.) Nasser hints at no conflict between Ethiopia and Islam. To the
contrary, he presents the najashi story: "And we, first and foremost, togeth-
er believe in one God and follow the same ideals. Our Muslims and the
Muslims of Ethiopia remember in any of their thoughts that distant day in
which the first emigrants, the sahaba of Muhammad bin 'Abdallah, found
shelter with the najashi as they escaped from the infidels of Mecca. And
that he took care of them, and gave them security and shared his land with
them giving them all the best" (p. 6).
The legitimacy of Ethiopia is emphasized throughout the publication.
That is not surprising because although it claimed to have been prepared by
Amin Sakir, Sa'id al-'Ariyyan, and Mustafa Amin the publication, with the
exception of the last chapter, and of Nasser's first chapter, is a shameless,
occasionally condensed translation of A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth
Monroe's 1935 classic, A History of Ethiopia. It contains minor adaptations
whenever the Ethio-Islamic conflict was too heavily emphasized by Jones
and Monroe to serve Nasser's purposes.
The Nasserite message of brotherly acceptance of Ethiopia within the
family of the Middle East is even more pronounced in another book to
which Nasser contributed the identical introductory chapter he had pre-
pared for Lights on Ethiopia. It was published in 1960 in Beirut by an
admirer of Nasser and the owner of a publishing house, 'Abd al-Rahman
Mahmud al-Huss. Entitled Ethiopia in the Period of Haile Selassie,13 the
book is a song of praise for the emperor. On the cover, just below the name
of the emperor, is the quotation from Prophet Muhammad to the sahaba.
"If you go to Abyssinia you will find a king under whom none is persecut-
ed. It is a land of righteousness where God will give you relief from what
you are suffering." Indeed, al-Huss writes that he went to see this phenom-
enon for himself and was received in Ethiopia with great respect. He was
invited to broadcast over Radio Addis Ababa a message from the Arab peo-
ple of Lebanon. The text of the message (pp. 16-19) was a combination of
quotations from Nasser's welcome to Haile Selassie in Cairo, June 1959,
with a detailed version of the najashi hosting the sahaba, sent by "the Arab
[note, not the Muslim] Prophet Muhammad." The book claims that the
Ethiopians are essentially Arabs who emigrated from Yemen, an Oriental
nation that should be reunited with the East. It reports on the situation of
Islam and Muslims in Ethiopia, on their flourishing educational system,
and their history of good relations with the Christians. At one point (p. 108)
he quotes al-'Azm's Rihlat al-habasha on Ras Makonnen and the equal
treatment he gave to Harar's Muslims and Christians. Haile Selassie, he
notes, inherited the same spirit of justice from his father. Another hero of
al-Huss' was Aklilu Habte-Wold (whom he calls Ethiopia's expert on the
Middle East), who had many friends in the Arab world (pp. 62-63).
The only mention of Eritrea in al-Huss' book is of the emperor's
speeches there. He quotes in detail the speech the e m p e r o r gave in
Asmara's main mosque in 1952 (just after the proclamation of the federa-
tion). The speech concerned religious equality and tolerance, to which al-
Huss adds his own impressions of Ethiopia's pluralism. In the conclusion
to the book al-Huss quoted in full an article that appeared in the Cairene
weekly, Al-Musawwar, during Haile Selassie's visit in June 1959. It was
entitled "The Lion of Judah Taught the World a Lesson," and summarized
the emperor's pre-World War II dialogue with the League of Nations.
First, he managed to have Ethiopia admitted to the international organiza-
tion by successfully fighting slavery and bringing progress to his nation.
Second, he addressed the league on 3 June 1936, swearing he would
redeem Ethiopia, a task he ultimately accomplished.
BOUTROS-GHALI AND EGYPT'S STRATEGIC CONTINUITY
After the founding of the OAU and Nasser's joining Haile Selassie in its
leadership, the pro-Ethiopian literature produced in Egypt became official.
In 1965, the semiofficial Al-Ahram Institute founded a quarterly, Al-Siyasa
al-Duwaliyya (International Affairs). The first editor was a Copt, Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, an academician and diplomat of repute. (In his memoirs
Boutros-Ghali describes how as a child he had dreaded hearing the news
from the Italo-Abyssinian front, and how his family had volunteered to par-
ticipate in the activities of the Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia; 14
Boutros-Ghali always remained interested in Ethiopia. At the time he
undertook the editorship of Al-Siyasa al-Duwaliyya, he was also involved
in archeological activities in Lalibela, which were sponsored by the United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation [UNESCO].)
Under Boutros-Ghali Al-Siyasa al-Duwaliyya turned into the most seri-
ous forum of foreign policy analysis in Egypt, with a discernable emphasis
on Africa. This emphasis was because Boutros-Ghali considered Africa as
important to Egypt as the Arab Circle. Over the ensuing years, the quarterly
became committed to enhancing the Egyptian understanding of Ethiopia.
Boutros-Ghali himself would, in 1977, b e c o m e the most influential

Egyptian formulating his country's Ethiopian policy, so we will return in
the conclusion to his role under Sadat and Mubarak. However, under
Nasser, the quarterly published writers such as Murad Kamil, Mirrit
Boutros-Ghali, and others, who discussed Ethio-Egyptian history, Church
relations, and the need to cooperate on the issue of the Nile. 15 The journal
published no significant discussion of Eritrea during Nasser's time, and in
later pieces it asserted that Nasser had never given any meaningful help to
Eritrea's separatists. Instead, it emphasized that beginning in 1950 Egypt
was consistent in demanding the implementation of the federation of
Ethiopia and Eritrea in the spirit of the United Nation's autonomy plan. 16
An article written by Boutros-Ghali immediately after the death of
Nasser reemphasized the centrality of Africa for Egypt and described the
bond between Nasser and Haile Selassie in promoting the OAU. Nasser,
wrote Boutros-Ghali, had worked to create stability and, just before his
death, had been working on a solution to the Ethio-Somali dispute and on
bringing peace between Ethiopia and Sudan. 17
Eleven years later, after the death of Sadat, Boutros-Ghali, writing
again in Al-Siyasa al-Duwaliyya, returned to the subject of Nasser and con-
cluded that when it came to Africa, indeed, when it came to the Nile,
Egyptian policy had remained consistent in the pursuit of stability. 18
The leaders of Egypt from the days of the Mamluks' dialogue with
'Amda-Zion and Zar'a-Ya'qob to Muhammad 'Ali, Isma'il, and Nasser, were
concerned about the Blue Nile. They were always fearful of the Ethiopians
interrupting the flow of the Nile, and dreamt of extending their control, or
at least their influence, to the Ethiopian source of Egypt's life. For that rea-
son, Ethiopia was always on their minds. In seeking to secure that vital
interest they alternated between diplomatic friendliness toward Ethiopia
and exerting pressure on Ethiopia, the latter through their leverage on the
Church, their influence on local Islam, and through their control of the Red
Sea. Nasser opted for both approaches.
His verbal messages were of friendliness toward Ethiopia. These mes-
sages were expressed in a variety of assurances, culminating with the
najashi-sahaba message, that he accepted Ethiopia as a legitimate neigh-
bor. In so doing he was first seeking an Egyptian-dominated Egypto-
Sudanese-Ethiopian alliance, similar to his 1958 unification with Syria.
When this approach yielded little in the way of a response from Haile
Selassie (and as Ethiopia was gaining strategic strength) he then worked,
more successfully, toward building relations with Ethiopia through the
OAU.
Nasser was not viewed in this way in Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian
establishment took note of Nasser's speeches but was far more impressed
with the Eritrean separatists' efforts to establish an Arab Eritrea and with
the Somalis' admiration for Nasser as they began working for a Greater
Somalia. When Nasser moved his base of Middle Eastern activity to nearby
Yemen and continued to undermine the royal houses of Yemen, Saudi
Arabia, Libya, and Jordan, seeking to fulfill his dream of pan-Arabism
through revolutions and wars (rather than through the diplomacy of the
1950s), the Christians of imperial Ethiopia were reminded of Ahmad
Gragn. The idea that the Middle East was about to unite and that local
Islam in the Horn was fully prepared to join Nasser's victory was most
vividly on the mind of many Ethiopians, and it made little difference in
Addis Ababa if the terminology was modern Arab rather then traditional
Islamic.
We can only speculate on how Nasser's Ethiopian strategy might have
differed had he won in Yemen or had he defeated Israel in the 1967 war. As
it turned out, Nasser died in 1970 with his dream of Arab unity still unreal-
ized. The Ethiopian dimension of that unrealized dream was a combination
of potentially the greatest threat to Ethiopia's existence since the days of
Gragn and the Egyptian diplomatic recognition of Ethiopia as "the land of
righteousness."
THE ARABS, ETHIOPIA,
AND THE ARABISM OF ERITREA
Nasser's death in September 1970 was received with relief in Ethiopia.

Sadat seemed to be much less of a challenge to Ethiopia; his focus was
Egypt's conflict with Israel. Sadat abandoned the ideas of pan-Arabism and
put aside all dreams of regional grandeur. He established good relations
with Sudan's new ruler, Ja'far al-Numayri, and helped him and Haile
Selassie mend their differences. In February and July 1972 Ethiopian-
Sudanese agreements were signed, under which Ethiopia agreed to refrain
from interfering in southern Sudan in return for the Sudanese ceasing to aid
the Eritrean separatists.1 Sadat's reassuring relations with Haile Selassie
and his abandoning of pan-Arab terminology (in November 1971 Sadat
relinquished the name UAR and reverted to using Egypt) indicated to Haile
Selassie that Aklilu's diplomacy of appeasing and waiting had finally
proven successful. The fact that he had outlived Nasser was a significant
factor in Haile Selassie's preferring of Aklilu to Asrate Kassa in the last
three crucial years of his reign. Asrate, as we have seen, had been leading
the pro-Israeli wing of the imperial establishment. We shall return to that
rivalry in discussing the Middle Eastern angle in the story of Haile
Selassie's demise in 1974.
As important as was the Egyptian role in Ethio-Arab relations there
were other significant factors as well. Egypt continued to be concerned
with issues of the Nile River and the African Circle; even at the height of
Nasser's power, it still showed at least superficial respect for Ethiopia.
Egypt now attached (perhaps only temporarily) less importance to Red Sea
Eritrean affairs and to the ideology of Eritrean Arabism. Other Arab coun-
tries bordering on Ethiopia, such as the Sudan or Saudi Arabia, had also
followed a similarly pragmatic approach in dealing with Ethiopia and the
Eritrean separatists. But Arabs in more distant countries, primarily the
Syrians, the Palestinians, and the Iraqis, had little to gain or to risk by med-
dling in the affairs of the Horn. They were more interested in the Red Sea
within the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as a theater of operations for
advancing anti-Israeli and anti-American strategies. They did not concern
themselves with Ethiopia, but they were quite interested in the establish-
151
ment of an Arab Eritrea. As such they were instrumental in shaping the his-
tory of the struggle over Eritrea in the years leading to the fall of Ethiopia's
ancien regime.2
In 1963, when Nasser closed the ELF office in Cairo, the center of the
Eritrean exile leadership moved to Damascus. It was once more the veteran
Moroccan leader of the 1920s Rif War, 'Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, who
was said to have helped to establish in Cairo an earlier Eritrean-Syrian con-
nection. According to the memoirs of 'Uthman Salih Sabbe's aide, 'Abd al-
Karim had been trying since the late 1950s to mediate b e t w e e n the
Eritreans and various Arab governments. Sabbe, perhaps because he was
not particularly welcome in Cairo, did the majority of the mediation. In
1962, he made contact with the Syrian president, Nazim al-Qudsi, but
scored a greater success by being introduced to Muhammad Amin al-Hafiz
who, with the Ba'th Party, came to power in Damascus in March 1963.
Soon thereafter, Sabbe brought to Damascus from Cairo some thirty of his
students, mostly natives of eastern Eritrea and the Massawa area, headed by
Muhammad Ramadan Nur. 3
The accession to power of the Ba'th Party, just as Nasser had aban-
doned the Eritreans, was well timed. The Ba'th had been the party that had,
since the very early 1950s, stood for pan-Arab nationalism and had under-
girded this political identification with modern ideological philosophy. The
founders of the Ba'th, notably Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bittar, had
no other "circles," or international strategic concerns, as had Nasser, to
compete with Arabism. Their approach was based on secular interpreta-
tions of history. At any rate, in the 1952 Constitution of the Ba'th Party
they defined the "Arab homeland" as "a national home for the Arabs. It
consists of that area which extends beyond the Taurus Mountains . . . the
Gulf of Basra, the Arabian Sea, the Ethiopian mountains [italics added] . . .
the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and constitutes one single
complete unit, and no part thereof may be alienated." 4
The existing literature on the Ba'th provides no clue as to why the
founders of the Ba'th Party made it a point to include Eritrea in their territo-
rial definition of Arabism. (At the time of their drafting Eritrea was still not
yet federated with Ethiopia.) They were most probably relying on the writ-
ings of Shakib Arslan, Yusuf Ahmad, and the many others who, as noted
above, had transmitted this message during the Abyssinian Crisis to the
younger generation, particularly in Syria and Palestine. Aflaq and Bittar
were in their mid-twenties during the time of Mussolini's invasion of
Ethiopia, studying in Damascus and Paris. They established their "al-Ba'th
al-Arabi" group in Paris at around that period and their views on Ethiopia
and on Islam in the Horn undoubtedly stemmed from their reading of the
material discussed in my chapter on the Abyssinian Crisis.
In the 1960s the Ba'thist government translated the "Arabism of
Eritrea" idea into politics. Ethiopia had recognized Israel; an Israeli
ARABS, ETHIOPIA & ERITREA 153
embassy had opened in Addis Ababa in 1962; and Ethio-Israeli relations

were gradually rising to the level of an alliance. Damascus declared the
Eritrean revolt a part of the Arab struggle. Syrian maps of the Arab world,
without exception, always included Eritrea. According to the weekly jour-
nal of the Syrian army: "The sons of Eritrea are of various Arab origins. . . .
Eritrea formed from the year 80 after the Hijra [i.e., from the occupation of
the islands of Dahlak in 702 A.D.] part of the Umayyad caliphate and later
on of the Abbasid c a l i p h a t e . . . . The revolt in Eritrea is a revolutionary trib-
utary which flows into the main stream of the Arab revolution." 5
In June 1963 the main office of the ELF, headed by Idris Adam, moved
from Cairo to Damascus. The Guerrilla Academy near Aleppo opened its
doors to Eritrean youngsters, but others came from Egypt and others still,
directly through the Sudan. Their recruitment in the field and their transfer
to Syria was supervised by Idris Qaladiyos and Idris Adam, and gradually
the whole matter was taken over by the Bani 'Amir from western Eritrea.
By 1968 it was estimated that some 300 ELF fighters had finished a year-
long training course in Aleppo, further strengthening the dominance of the
western wilayyas of the organization's General Command in Eritrea. 6 (The
General Command, although officially still in control of all fighters in the
field, was now identified with the western Eritreans, mainly of Bani 'Amir
origin.) Sabbe, whose base was Massawa and its surrounding area, was
experiencing difficulties in his overly ambitious effort to become the leader
of the movement. Although he was the architect of the new Arab connec-
tion, his position as the secretary of the ELF's Foreign Mission meant that
he had little influence in the field. In Syria he was allowed to broadcast
from Radio Damascus and increase his public profile. He was successful in
befriending the powerful Syrian head of intelligence and later the army's
commander-in-chief, Ahmad al-Suwidani, but his rivals within the ELF,
the leaders of the General Command in Eritrea, outweighed his influence in
Syria by their ties with a rival wing in the Ba'th. 7
In June 1965, these complications in Syria surfaced through a small
political drama in the Sudan. In Syria, Sabbe had managed to organize two
planeloads of arms and fly them, with some of his eastern Eritrean follow-
ers, to Khartoum. His goal was to smuggle them to the Massawa area
where, the previous January, his local men had tried unsuccessfully to
begin anti-Ethiopian activities. The Sudanese government was now a loose
coalition, which in October 1964 had managed to topple the military gov-
ernment of General Ibrahim 'Abbud. The new regime, unlike its predeces-
sor, was ready to challenge Haile Selassie but was not unanimous on
Eritrea. The Mirghaniyya-Khatmiyya wing of the coalition (supporters of
the Bani 'Amir and the ELF General Command) soon learned of Sabbe's
move and leaked word to the Mahdiyya people, who, in turn, arrested
Sabbe and notified the Ethiopian government. Sabbe was released follow-
ing the intervention of the Syrian ambassador, but the Sudanese power
struggle and the growing hostility among the Eritreans continued to feed on
each other. 8
In late 1965, having returned to Syria, Sabbe had his moment when the
wing of the Ba'th establishment that supported him, headed by Amin al-
Hafiz and the ideologue Michel 'Aflaq, managed to defeat their rivals, the
so-called "military wing" of the party. Soon however, in February 1966,
the military wing ousted their rivals, who fled to Iraq. The new rulers,
notably General Sallah Jadid and General Hafiz al-Assad, favored the ELF
General Command, and Sabbe's men now faced serious problems. The
memoirs of Sabbe's aide, Abu al-Qasim Hamad, reported that it was only
because of the personal intervention of Sallah Jadid that they were not
expelled from Syria altogether. 9 Following the Six Day War, however, the
military Ba'thist rulers of Damascus lost active interest in Eritrea. Under
Assad, beginning in 1969-1970, they continued to train and equip their
wing of the ELF, but the amount of aid was modest and had more impact
on the internal affairs of the Eritrean separatists than on their guerrilla
activities against the Ethiopian government.
We have already seen the impact of the Six Day War on Nasserism and
on pan-Arabism. It dealt a nearly fatal blow to the idea of secular Arab all-
regional unity. In a span of two to three years after the traumatic defeat, a
period began of strengthening the various regimes in the Arab Middle
Eastern world. With the notable exception of Lebanon (as hosting the
Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO]) all the other states began to enjoy
a considerable amount of internal stability. The states of the region contin-
ued to pay lip service to the idea of Arab unity, but the idea inspired little
more than that. The 1970s witnessed little of the rapid political change of
the previous two decades and far less of the propaganda warfare and violent
subversion of the kind that had fed the ELF.
Moreover, the 1967 war had resulted in the closing of the Suez Canal,
which, in turn, rendered the Red Sea strategically marginal. Syria was
ready to invest modestly in the ELF through the Sudan, but it had nothing
to gain from Sabbe and his eastern Eritrean groups.
It was at this point that Sabbe initiated a connection between the ELF
and the PLO, an action that would have serious consequences for Ethiopia
and Eritrea. It is clear that the PLO adopted the Ba'thist concept that the
Eritreans were Arabs. As one PLO journalist wrote: "The Arabs have to
understand that in Eritrea a revolution in an Arab country is in the making,
a revolution that is inseparable from the Arab liberation movement or from
the struggle to liberate Palestine or from the Arab revolution in any other
Arab country. We are therefore obliged to support the struggle of this peo-
ple and do so in words and deeds." 10
The PLO, according to its radio station, was working to liberate "Arab
Eritrea from Ethiopian occupation" and to rescue "the Arab Eritreans from
the reactionary Ethiopian terror, which colludes with imperialism and

cooperates with Zionism." 1 1
Sabbe increased the connection to the PLO by moving to Amman and
later to Beirut and by cultivating personal ties with Yasser Arafat and many
other PLO leaders. Not only was he effective in persuading them that the
Eritrean revolution was an Arab one, but he was also ready to cooperate
with the PLO in its new methods of air piracy and international terrorism.
After 1967, according to Sabbe's aide, Sabbe established a small unit that
engaged in such activities. 1 2 He stated time and again that he wanted to
make the Eritrean Arab struggle "a main pillar of the Palestinian revolu-
tion." 1 3
By 1969, relations between Sabbe's men in the field and the PLO had
become closer. Eritreans were training in PLO camps in Jordan, while
Palestinian e x p e r t s , notably H a s a n S a l a m e h (later head of the Black
September organization and architect of the 1972 massacre of Israeli ath-
letes at the Munich Olympic Games) were training Eritreans in the Danakil
desert in eastern Eritrea. Early in 1970 it was estimated that some 250
Eritreans were being trained in PLO camps. Some of them were said to par-
ticipate in fighting on the side of the Palestinians when King Hussein of
Jordan drove the PLO from Amman in "Black September" of 1970. By
early 1971, according to Sabbe's aide, the volume of the P L O ' s aid to the
Eritrean revolution was greater than that of all Arab countries combined.
"If not for the distance," he wrote, "we would have been practically united
into one organization." 1 4
Sabbe's connection to the PLO expanded to include Muammar Qaddafi
who seized power in Libya in 1969. Sabbe was introduced to the Libyan
through Arafat, and the acquaintance yielded financial aid as well as a con-
nection to South Yemen—the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen
(PDRY)—where more Eritreans underwent training.
Sabbe's PLO connection had far-reaching consequences. It introduced
the Eritreans to a new sphere of guerrilla warfare and terrorism at a time
(post-1967) that they appeared to be losing their momentum. More signifi-
cantly, it enabled eastern Eritreans to maintain their independence from the
western Bani 'Amir fighters who controlled the ELF institutions.
T e n s i o n b e t w e e n t h e s e t w o w i n g s and b e t w e e n t h e i r r e s p e c t i v e
wilayyas aggravated as young Christian Tigreans began joining the move-
ment. The majority of them, following the logic of geography and history,
opted to join the eastern wilayyas, which were now supported by Sabbe, by
his Foreign Mission and by the PLO-Qaddafi connection. After a compli-
cated series of political in-fighting Sabbe and some of his associates found-
ed an organization that rivaled the ELF, called the Popular Liberation
Forces (PLF) in a PLO camp in Amman, in November 1969. 15 From these
beginnings, the Eritrean Popular Liberation Forces (EPLF) was born in
1972, comprising field commanders such as Ramadan Muhammad Nur, the

Christian Issayas Afeworqi, and the Foreign Mission under Sabbe. Twenty
years later, the EPLF would emerge victorious and establish an indepen-
dent, yet non-Arab, Eritrea.
In the early 1970s, the more the PLO was drawn into internal Lebanese
conflicts, the less it contributed to the Eritrean cause. In Beirut, the PLO
contributed to the production of the ELF Arab literature, to which we shall
soon turn. However, in military and political terms it was now the turn of
the Iraqis to carry the torch of Eritrea's Arabism. Their role, viewed from
the perspective of later years, was to create unity among the "Eritrean
Arabs" in order to save them from forces that, later in the decade, would
cause the group's demise.
In the early 1960s Sabbe was attempting to build an Iraqi-Eritrean con-
nection and managed to be introduced to the president, 'Abd al-Karim
Qasim, and later to President 'Abd al-Rahman 'Arif. Both offered some lip
service to Arab solidarity but provided no real help. 16 In July 1968 the
Ba'th Party came to power in Baghdad, aided by the Ba'thist Syrian exiles
(headed by 'Aflaq), and adopted Eritrea's Arabism. As one Baghdad publi-
cation reported: "The Arab masses all over the Arab countries and all the
fighters in the name of Ba'th Arab socialism live and breathe the Eritrean
revolution with all their souls and consciousness . . . [for] in principle the
Eritrean revolution is an inseparable part of the Arab revolution." 17
Despite their intense rivalry with the Syrians, the Iraqis opted to join
with the ELF General Command. They rejected 'Uthman Sabbe, perhaps
because he was too dependent on the PLO and Qaddafi. As the Syrians lost
interest, many young ELF fighters from western Eritrea left to undergo
training in Iraq.
The main role of the Iraqis, however, was as mediators between the
rival Eritrean wings. The split in the movement was formalized when the
ELF created its Revolutionary Council (RC) in November 1971, and the
E P L F was f o r m e d in February 1972. Following the Haile S e l a s s i e -
Numayri agreements in 1972 the Sudanese border was nearly sealed. With
the continued closing of the Suez Canal the Eritrean movement deteriorat-
ed. For their part, the Iraqis attempted to unify the movement and send
mediators to the field. As it was described by one of their mumber, As'ad
al-Ghuthani, the main difficulty in mending fences between the two fronts
of "Arab Eritrea" were the growing number of young Christians joining the
movement. They resented the Arabization of their cause and sought the
establishment of working-class parties in their respective fronts. In the
ELF-RC an Eritrean Labor Party was formed by Heruy Tedla Bairu, the son
of a prominent leader in Eritrean Christian politics of the federation period,
Tedla Bairu. Within the EPLF, an Eritrean Peoples' Revolutionary Party
was formed (in fact even prior to unification with Sabbe's PLF), headed by
Ramadan Nur and Issayas Afeworqi.
According to al-Ghuthani the leaders of both parties met in Aden in

1972 but they failed to unite. Nonetheless, they agreed on fighting the
rhetoric and ideology of Arabism in the Eritrean movement. 18
In addition, the young EPLF members, Christian and Muslim alike of
the Revolutionary Party, were now adopting Marxist terms of class strug-
gle, giving the concept of Eritrea's revolution an entirely different meaning
from the Arabic thawra (revolution). The latter, an early twentieth-century
Arab and Egyptian nationalist term, revived by the Ba'th Party and by
Nasserites, was used extensively by the Arabized ELF (and became the
standard term for revolution in Eritrean Tigrinya). It was an idealistic,
nationalist concept, denoting fighting against an alien, a non-Arab oppres-
sor, and containing a nonmaterialistic social message. This difference in
seeing the social and nationalistic aspects of the Eritrean revolution would
later have far-reaching consequences for the victory of the EPLF over the
ELF. The nationalist Eritrean (-Arab) concept of the ELF failed to attract a
new generation of mainly young Christian Tigreans, while the Marxist ter-
minology of the EPLF bridged religious backgrounds and served to stimu-
late the construction, beginning in the late 1970s, of a stronger and authen-
tically Eritrean revolutionary organization.
In the early 1970s, however, the influence of Christian Eritreans, and
of these parties, began to grow after the removal of Asrate Kassa as the
Ethiopian governor of Eritrea in 1972 (to which we shall return), and as the
brutality of the Ethiopian army drove more young Christians to the cause of
Eritreanism.
The Iraqi effort to unite the wings of an Arab movement met with little
success. The Iraqis were more successful in helping their trained youth to
gain positions of power within the ELF-RC. In May 1975 the Iraqi-trained
Ahmad Nasser took over the leadership of the organization after toppling
the Syrian-trained old guard. The new leaders emphasized that they were an
integral part of the Arab world. Several months later, in September 1975,
the Iraqi mediators, amid a much-publicized conference in Khartoum, final-
ly managed to unite the ELF-RC with Sabbe's Foreign Mission of the
EPLF. By that time, however, the Tigrean Christian element in the Eritrean
movement had grown to the extent that this unity was only marginal in
importance. Other developments to which we shall turn in our conclusion
were already at work pushing the Arabism of Eritrea into the sidelines.
THE TERMINOLOGY AND

LITERATURE OF ERITREA'S ARABISM
Except in Egypt, where countries of the Nile always remained a subject of

great interest, very little was published on Ethiopia during this period in
other Arab countries. The Arabic press demonstrated little curiosity, and
even the drama of 1974 and the fall of Haile Selassie in September yielded
only brief mention. Eritrea, although regarded as part of the Arab world by
the Ba'thists, the PLO, and many others, fared little better. In fact, the Arab
press virtually ignored the internal developments in Eritrea. Eritrea was
discussed more in the context of the region's Red Sea strategy than as the
center of a struggling Arab liberation movement.
The Muslim Eritrean pioneers of the ELF, who had gone into exile and
who had undergone training in the Arab countries, produced most of the lit-
erature on Eritrea's Arabism. They were seeking Arab support and they
therefore worked to spread the concept of Eritrea's history as both unique
and Arab. They also sought to spread the idea of Ethiopia's inherent
aggressiveness, and of its alliance with "Zionist imperialism." The premise
of that literature was that an Eritrean victory would make a substantial con-
tribution to pan-Arabism.
The ELF adopted Arabic and Tigrinya as its two official languages, but
until the emergence of the Christian-Tigrean wing in the mid-1970s nearly
all of the official publications were in Arabic. Arabic, we reiterate, was
always a vehicle of Islamic politicization in the Horn of Africa, and a lan-
guage promoted by all those who had worked for the unification of local
Islam as an antithesis to Ethiopia's Christian identity and statehood. Of the
fifteen titles listed in an ELF Arabic-language book in 1970, Eritrea's
Struggle, only one was published in both Arabic and Tigrinya. The rest
were written during the 1960s for the consumption of Middle Eastern
Arabs. Three of these were: Eritrea, A New Algeria; Eritrea, Algeria of the
Red Sea; and Algeria of the African Coast. They emphasized the similari-
ties between the ELF and the FLN and spread the notion of their common
Arab anti-imperialist ideology. Other titles included Eritrea Under the
Devilish Ethiopian Imperialism and Facts on the Genocide in Eritrea.
Three other titles concerned Eritrea's history. 19
The Eritrean Struggle (no place of publication mentioned) carried a
clear message conveyed even by the cover drawing: it depicts a map of the
Red Sea area, with Eritrea a part of the Arab world, and an angry Eritrean,
backed by an angry Arab, stabbing Ethiopia with a dagger. The name of
Ethiopia comes with three question marks symbolizing its being—like
Israel—"a self-styled state," an artificial temporary entity. The book con-
sists mainly of a chronology of the ELF battles until October 1969. A major
section is dedicated to those who had died in the struggle as well as to a
discussion of the enemy. Of the latter, Ras Asrate Kassa, Eritrea's gover-
nor, is mentioned as the suppressor of the use of Arabic in Eritrea and as a
friend of the Israelis who supported the atrocities committed by the
Ethiopian special services. The Amharization policy of Asrate, according to
the book, would fail, for the young Eritreans who had gone to the Arab
countries had returned to the field and were teaching Arabic in the ELF-lib-
erated areas. 20
Of significance is the book's terminology. It is clearly derived from

similar PLO literature, with the same methods and techniques. Terms such
as martyrdom (istishad) and strugglers (munadilun), with their heavy
Islamic-Arab symbolism, are used throughout, and there is a similar use of
words like "refugees" and "genocide." The term thawra, a "revolution" in
the Arab nationalist liberation sense rather than the traditional political one,
is prominent in this book as well as in most ELF publications.
The man who was the moving spirit behind much of the Eritrean Arab
literature was 'Uthman Salih Sabbe. He was not only the most active pro-
moter of the Syrian connection, the PLO, Qaddafi, and the PDRY, but also
a prolific and talented writer, well versed in Arabic. His appearing promi-
nently in our chapters should not, however, be misleading. The Eritrean-
Ethiopian history of this period developed in the fields of Eritrea itself,
where Sabbe had had negligible influence from the start.
Sabbe published dozens of articles and gave innumerable interviews,
but it was in two books that he elaborated his concept of Eritrea. One was
published in Beirut in 1974, under the title Eritrea's History.21 In the intro-
duction Sabbe admitted to being an amateur historian but his work has a
professional quality. He made two main points: the first is that Eritrea was
always unique and Middle Eastern. This argument is supported by a wealth
of information and is based on the assumption that Eritrea is, and was, a
diversified albeit cohesive entity shaped by many influences: Ottoman,
Egyptian, Italian, Sudanese, among others. In his argument, Sabbe took
great pains to play down or ignore any influence from Ethiopia (for exam-
ple, he failed to mention Ras Alula's government in Asmara) and exagger-
ated the influence of Arabs and of Arabic, which he admitted is only one of
Eritrea's languages, but implied it is the language of Eritrean unity. 22
The other point he made throughout his book is the illegitimacy of
Ethiopia's claim to Eritrea, indeed, the illegitimacy of Ethiopia as a Red
Sea entity. A main thrust of Sabbe's argument was his contention that the
Aksumite kingdom had nothing to do with the future Ethiopia. Aksum was
a part of the Oriental East, which disappeared five hundred years before the
appearance in the thirteenth century of the Solomonides and the birth of
"Amharic" Ethiopia. Aksum, according to Sabbe, was not Abyssinian.
When he ran into difficulty in narrating the story of Muhammad and the
najashi, he disposed of it quickly, failing to mention that in the Arabic and
Islamic terminology of the period, Aksum was al-Habasha and that the
Prophet was said to have left a hadith with a message of gratitude to the
Ethiopians (p. 70). (Sabbe was too well read not to be aware of that saying.
In any case, in a book by one of his followers, it was reported that Sabbe
had met in the early 1960s the imam of Yemen, whom Sabbe asked to sup-
port the Eritrean separatists, and who then reminded Sabbe of the utruku al-
habasha legacy.) 23
Ever since they founded their landlocked kingdom, the Amhara had
strived to reach the sea at the expense of Eritrea, according to Sabbe. For
that purpose they joined forces with the powers of Western imperialism—
Europeans, Americans, and Zionists. The Middle Easterners, he wrote,
have always helped the Eritreans against these enemies.
This argument was presented even more forcefully in Sabbe's The
Struggle over the Red Sea, published in about 1972. Although I have been
unable to find the book itself, it is extensively summarized in a 1974 book
by Sabbe's chief aide, the Sudanese Muhammad Abu al-Qasim Hamad,
during their period in Damascus. 24
Entitled The International Dimensions of the Eritrean War, Hamad's
book is mainly dedicated to Sabbe's work in the Arab world. Its premise is
that Eritrea was always the Middle Eastern bridgehead in the struggle
against an Ethiopian-Western imperialist alliance that sought to deprive the
Red Sea region of Islam and the Arabs. Thus, the Persians separated
Ethiopia and Byzantium, the Ottomans disrupted an Ethiopian alliance with
the Portuguese, and now it is up to the Arabs to prevent an Ethiopian-
Zionist-American imperialistic plot to accomplish the same goal. The Red
Sea, the author quotes Sabbe as saying, was always the key to the Middle
East and the Mediterranean. It is even more important in modern times than
ever before because of the importance of oil. And the key to the Red Sea is
what Sabbe depicted as The Crucial Triangle, the Assab-Massawa-Asmara
area. There, argue Sabbe and his aide, the future of the Red Sea will be
determined. The Eritrean revolution can give Arabism this precious gift if
the Arabs come forward with the necessary aid.
The book makes two arguments. First, that the eastern Red Sea part of
the Eritrean battlefield, that of the EPLF, is far more important than the
western Eritrean wing of the ELF. Sabbe had made this point elsewhere,
such as in his introduction to the Arabic translation of G.K.N Trevaskis's
Eritrea: A Colony in Transition.25 (Sabbe argues that the British adminis-
trator, Trevaskis, overstated the importance of the 1940-1950s Muslim
League of Western Eritrea, a group that can be seen as the original ELF.
Sabbe added that Trevaskis, the embodiment of imperialism, ended over-
seeing the British 1967 flight from Aden, then returned to Britain, wounded
by an Arab grenade.)
Hamad laments the lack of Eritrean unity (and the ELF failure to rec-
ognize the supremacy of eastern Eritrea). He also laments the Arab failure
to respond to the call to liberate The Crucial Triangle.26 The Ba'thist
Syrians and Iraqis helped the ELF while the Egyptians, the Algerians, the
Saudis, and others did little more than pay lip service to their cause. After
the Suez Canal was closed as a result of the Six Day War, it was difficult to
convince these busy governments of the importance of the triangle, and the
book is filled with details on the frustrating negotiations in the Arab capi-
tals.
In Sabbe's view, the main ray of hope was the PLO. Sabbe missed no
opportunity to praise the Palestinian organization as the most authentic sup-

porter of Eritrea's Arabism. In Filastin al-thawra of 19 September 1973, to
quote one example, he stated that "the Palestinian people is the true friend
of the Eritrean people and its chief ally. The Eritrean revolution for its part
should work to move the Arabs to unite in standing by the Palestinian
struggle." The PLO press and radio station spoke in the same language, and
Abu al-Qasim Hamad illustrates it by quoting a long poem written by the
Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim:
I heard of a girl immersing herself in her blood

to purify the dust and the tears from her doors
and expel the ghosts from her skies.
It is said that her face is ripe with fertility
and the sun, and Arabism.
And who is she—Eritrea, (pp. 148-149)
The PLO helped and subsidized Sabbe in his effort to publicize the
issue of Eritrea's Arabism. Of the relevant literature thus produced in
Beirut in the mid-1970s I shall mention only Khalaf al-Munshidi's Eritrea
from Conquest to Revolution (1973), Sa'id Ahmad al-Janahi's Eritrea on
the Threshold of Victory (1975), and Muhammad 'Abd al-Mawla's The
Eritrean Revolution and the International Struggle in the Red Sea (1976). 27
In their basic premises they share much with Sabbe; they reflect a tendency
to ignore Ethiopia. There is no real discussion, not even a mention of
Ethiopian affairs as meriting some interest. Ethiopia, like some of the
Palestinian writings on the conflict with Israel, is depicted as an artificially
created nation that deserves to be ignored.
In fact, the literature of Eritrea's Arabism mentioned Ethiopian affairs
mainly in the context of the country's unholy alliance with Israel. One case
in point is the booklet "Israeli Penetration into Eritrea" (no author men-
tioned) issued by the PLF in 1970. 28 The booklet contains much informa-
tion on Israeli involvement in Ethiopia, in such fields as agriculture, educa-
tion, health, transportation, and security. By 1970, the relations between the
two countries had reached the stage of a near alliance, with dozens of
Israeli experts busy in the capital, the rural areas, and in Eritrea. The book-
let gives some details of this activity in an effort to prove that Ethiopia is
the enemy of the Arabs, which fell into the hands of the "Zionist-American
octopus." The Zionists, according to the booklet, promote the Ethiopian
Jewish "Falasha" community so that it will serve to further undermine the
Ethiopian people as Jews had been long doing in Europe and America (p.
37). Essentially, the booklet asserts, Ethiopia in itself is as inherently impe-
rialistic as Israel, and Menelik's circular letter of 1891 to the European
governments is quoted as proof.
A list of Israeli economic enterprises in Eritrea, primarily the Incode
meat factory at Asmara and a fishery in Massawa, is presented as evidence

that Eritrea is the main target of this imperialism. Israeli penetration into
Eritrea was increased after the appointment of Ras Asrate Kassa as
Eritrea's governor in 1964. The ras and the Israelis, the booklet recounts,
worked to build up the Ethiopian forces that were quelling the Eritrean rev-
olution. A base near the town of Decamere served as the Israeli-run training
camp for the Ethiopian Eritrean c o m m a n d o e s (mostly local Eritrean
Christians). The author writes that Eritrea was a prime Israeli-Ethiopian
colonial target. It was both the base to insure that the Red Sea would not be
an Arab lake and the gateway to Israeli and U.S. imperialist expansion into
the continent of Africa. The PLF publication concludes:
It is a fact that world Zionism as e x e m p l i f i e d by its racist and imperi-

alistic base [Israel], shares certain dreams and c o m m o n interests with the
autocratic Ethiopian regime, . . . for both, where international affairs are
concerned, find themselves linked to the U S A . Both pursue a political line
which is an exact replica of American aggressive policies. Each of them is
involved in the persecution of a w h o l e people in an attempt to impose a
racist and settler colonialism. Thus, a puppet state which was politically
created by world Zionism, led in turn by the U S , in direct contradiction to
the historical dialectic, has succeeded in subjecting a w h o l e people to the
attacks of a hateful settlers' invasion supported by the U S on Palestinian
soil. . . . And this same Zionism occupies our land by force and imposes a
coercive union on us in an attempt to enlarge the borders of the Ethiopian
empire, and to place the Red Sea coasts in his hands. The Red Sea coast
w o u l d thus remain the legal gateway o p e n to world Zionism from which
entry into Africa w o u l d be gained. . . . This . . . [is] to insure the success
of America's strategic plans.
It is not surprising that we should find this c l o s e cooperation between
Israel and Ethiopia, since the t w o of them are t w o sides of the same bad
coin . . . t w o sides which are not different at all in the political implica-
tions of their racism and chauvinism. . . . Supported by Arab revolutionary
forces the PLF's role is to liquidate the foundation of Ethiopian-Zionist
imperialism in Eritrea, (pp. 4 6 - 4 7 )
The literature of Eritrea's Arabism was produced mainly in the 1960s

and 1970s by Eritrean Muslims and their PLO supporters. In the final
analysis, it promoted not only the idea that Eritrea was Arab and was not
Ethiopian but also the concept that Ethiopia's legitimacy was questionable.
The idea of Eritrea's Arabism was widely accepted by Middle Eastern
Arabs at this time. In Egypt, however, it was widely accepted that Eritrea
was historically unique. (Sayyid Harraz of Cairo University, whose book
Modern Eritrea, 1557-1941 was published in 1974, makes no mention of
Arabism.) 29 In the press of the Ba'thist countries of Syria and Iraq Eritrea's
Arabism was simply assumed. The Lebanese (Christian Maronite and left-
ist) historian, Yusuf Ibrahim Yazbak, to cite but one more example, wrote
the introduction to Sabbe's History of Eritrea, in which he confessed little
knowledge of Eritrea's background and history, yet we read that Eritrea "is
a part of the Arab entity. . . . Her future is inseparable from that of the Arab
homeland . . . and . . . it is the duty of the Arabs . . . to stand by that sister in
her effort to realize her just demands." 30
But what of Ethiopia itself? As noted, the amount of literature pro-
duced in Arab countries on Ethiopia proper (as distinct from the Arabs'
interest in the Eritrean conflict) was astonishingly small. Of the available
literature a comparison of two books published in Iraq illustrates the gener-
al Arab attitude in the 1970s toward Ethiopia.
The only book on Ethiopia proper discovered in the course of research
for this study was published in Baghdad in 1975 under the title, The
Abyssinians Between the Marib and Aksum.3I The author, Mumtaz al-'Arif,
came to Ethiopia by chance as an agricultural expert for the United
Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization and spent eight years in vari-
ous African countries before returning home to Baghdad in 1969. Although
he visited nearly the entire continent of Africa, he was impressed only by
Ethiopia. The rest of the continent, he writes, is composed of artificial
countries with no real cultures, only poor creations of the colonialists.
Ethiopia, by contrast, is authentic and valid, a nation that was able to main-
tain its sovereignty for thousands of years. He decided to write about that
country to reacquaint the Arabic reader with Ethiopia (pp. 3-7). It is only
African in a geographic sense. Other than that Ethiopia is Oriental, with an
Oriental sense of continuity of religions and other aspects of life. The Arab
Peninsula's origins of Ethiopian culture are clear, says Mumtaz al-'Arif, to
the point that when he was in Ethiopia he often thought he was visiting
'Asir, Jizan, and Yemen.
The premise of the book is that Ethiopia is not an African Christian
entity but rather an Oriental one, Islamic, Christian, and Jewish (he puts the
number of Falashas, at no fewer than 60,000). He recounts the country's
long history, emphasizing the role of the Muslims (there is a long chapter,
pp. 230-241, on Lij Iyasu), and makes a point in another chapter (10) that
the majority of the Ethiopians are, in fact, Muslims. The chapter on the
Eritrean conflict does not mention Arabism, and there is also no mention of
depriving Muslims of Arabic and Arabism. To the contrary, the Amharic
language is even praised as the all-Ethiopian language and a symbol of
national unity. The general attitude toward Ethiopia is one of respect. In a
short passage he concludes that the Arabs were right in denouncing Haile
Selassie for his alliance with Israel, but since the emperor's days were
numbered (the book was written in 1974) it is up to his successors, the
young officers, to open Ethiopia to Arab friendship (pp. 6-7).
As'ad al-Ghuthani's book, The Events in the Horn of Africa and the
Truth about the Ethio-Eritrean Struggle, was published in Baghdad in
1980. The author had been one of the Ba'thists we have already seen trying
to mediate between the Eritreans. He makes no mention of Mumtaz al-
'Arif s book, but his own volume reads like an official response to the lat-
ter's call to accept Ethiopia. His reply is negative. The book considers only
the Eritrean Arab side and is derogatory whenever it briefly refers to
Ethiopia. Haile Selassie, the author asserts, hated the Arabs and suppressed
the Arabic language in Eritrea. He spread anti-Arab propaganda. His policy
stemmed from his concept of a Christian nation under Islamic-Arab siege,
and his country was therefore hateful and aggressive. He and his successor,
Mengistu Haile Mariam, shared this view of Arabs, and they allied them-
selves with Israel. The Arabs, the book predicts, will recognize Ethiopia
only after the Arab self-determination of the Eritreans and the Somalis has
been accomplished. 32
13
ISRAEL AND THE FALL OF HAILE SELASSIE
MUTUAL CONCEPTS
The main practical significance of the literature of Eritrea's Arabism was

its impact on the Ethiopian political establishment. The literature conveyed
a threat to Ethiopia's existence, and that message was magnified by Arab
diplomatic pressure on Ethiopia to sever its relations with Israel. This pres-
sure mounted to become a factor in Ethiopia's internal power game. It
intensified particularly after 1972 when Haile Selassie reached the age of
eighty and the issue of imperial succession polarized the network of rival-
ries. Finally, in October 1973 (during the Yom Kippur War and four
months before the collapse of Haile Selassie's regime) 1 the wing in the
political establishment that had stood for appeasing the Arabs managed to
undermine its rivals and persuaded the emperor to break with Israel.
Seven years earlier, in the aftermath of the Six Day War, Haile
Selassie's government appeared to have reached a plateau of stability.
Nasserism had been shattered, and the closing of the Suez Canal, although
it created economic difficulties, also reduced the importance of the Red
Sea. Israel, which was now considered the strongest power in the region,
became a main supporter of Ethiopia, involved in nearly all aspects of
Ethiopian domestic politics.
The Israeli presence in Ethiopia in the late 1960s and early 1970s was
almost unique in the Israeli diplomatic effort; the Israeli diplomatic com-
munity in Ethiopia was Israel's second largest, next only to New York.
Some seventy Israeli families were in Addis Ababa, about ten in Asmara,
and the quality of the Israelis was exceptional. Many of them had come
from or would later enter the top echelons of Israeli life. In Ethiopia they
were trusted advisers in the fields of economic planning, agriculture, edu-
cation, transportation, health, industry, and banking.
The Ethiopian attitude toward Israel was a mixture of trust and fear.
The trust stemmed from the traditional sense of biblical Zionist brother-
hood, which was an organic dimension of Ethiopian Christianity and cul-
ture. Indeed, the Ethiopian religious self-awareness of being dakika Esrael,
"the children of Israel," has been from the very beginning a pillar of
165
Ethiopia's historical identity, due to strong Hebraic and Judaic influences

in various formative stages. A fuller analysis of Ethiopia's traditional
attachment to the concept of Israel would entail a detailed discussion of
Ethiopia's basic culture, which is outside this book's scope. 2 These tradi-
tions, however, were strengthened by, and in turn contributed to, the mod-
ern trust, verging on admiration, for the Israeli modern abilities at various
vital fields. The fear aroused by the Ethio-Israeli connection was part of the
"Gragn syndrome," namely, the idea that a strategic alliance with Israel
might well result in a renewed Islamic Arab onslaught. The Israelis, for
their part, brought into the picture a somewhat different approach, more
practical, less culturally and historically oriented.
Ethiopia entered the history of modern Zionism during the Abyssinian
Crisis. But unlike the multifaceted argument over the historical significance
of Ethiopia, which was so central in 1935 to the politics of Middle Eastern
Arabs, Ethiopia in itself was hardly on the agenda of the Jewish yishuv
(community) in Palestine. Immersed in anxieties over its very existence
Jewish public opinion was focused on European and Middle Eastern devel-
opments. An extensive reading of the Hebrew Zionist press of that year
would reveal a consensual support for British policy combined with an
effort not to overly alienate Mussolini. The Italian dictator was still on
record as an admirer of the Zionist enterprise, and it seemed wise not to
provoke him into an alliance with either Hitler or the Arab nationalism of
the Shakib Arslan type. 3 Of the two leading Hebrew papers in Palestine, the
"general Zionist" Ha'arets conveniently refrained throughout 1935 from
discussing Ethiopia, let alone elaborating on the moral aspects of its con-
temporary fate. Only the socialist Davar was openly anti-Italian, 4 and it
published occasionally some informative material on Ethiopian history.
The articles in Davar were written mostly by A. Z. Aescoly, a journal-
ist and historian who had published articles and books on the Ethiopian
community in Jerusalem and on the Falasha. In the summer of 1935 he
started assembling these pieces into a book which appeared later in the
same year. Entitled Abyssinia: The People, the Country, the Culture, the
History, the Government, the Politics, it was the first modern Hebrew book
on Ethiopia. 5 It opened with a question: "A political storm which casts a
shadow over the whole world has put on our agenda the name of a near yet
a distant country, an entity that was floating between the legendary and the
real, between the concrete and the imagined. Is it really 'a state': a country
of black inhabitants ruled by a black emperor, which is connected by its
religion to the civilized world?" 6
In trying to answer this question Aescoly summarized the basic litera-
ture on Ethiopia. He emphasized legendary elements of the c o u n t r y ' s
image, devoting substantial parts to the Western concept of Prester John,
and to the Ethiopian Solomonian ethos. 7 He also discussed Mussolini's pol-
icy, which, behind the new Fascist terminology was for the author merely
ISRAEL & THE FALL OF SELASSIE 167
the continuation of nineteenth-century Italian imperialism. The book

reflected a measure of indifference. Nowhere in the book is there an out-
right condemnation of the Fascists' brutal strategy nor is there any clear
moral identification with Ethiopia and Haile Selassie. Ethiopia is depicted
throughout as a curiosity. It deserves sympathy, but there is no hint that the
issue of its survival bears relevance to the fate of Jews and Zionism. A sim-
ilar general attitude, a blend of curiosity and detachment, was reflected in
other Hebrew publications of the same year, including Ben-Zion Furman's
Habash.
Soon, however, the impact of Mussolini's victory on the Arab Middle
East rendered Ethiopia very relevant. When the defeated Haile Selassie
entered Jerusalem in May 1936, a couple of weeks after the beginning of
the Palestinian Arab Revolt, Ha'arets wrote:
The coming of the negus to Jerusalem is a matter of great interest for

us not only because the king of Ethiopia, who considers himself a descen-
dent of the Hebrew royal dynasty, returns to the land of his ancestors in an
hour of plight. . . . It is of importance because the events in Ethiopia had,
and will continue to have in the future, an enormous influence on the situ-
ation in this country. It is a fact that the beginning of the war in Abyssinia
was the first push towards instability in Palestine. It was first felt in the
economic field, then in politics. Who can really deny the role of these
developments in creating the crisis which today storms Palestine?
. . . And in this complex of global escalation there plays a central yet
so tragic a role a state with which we are most vitally connected,
Ethiopia. 8
The seed of Ethiopian-Israeli relations was indeed planted that year. As

the Palestinian Arab Revolt intensified a British guerrilla expert, Orde
Wingate, was assigned to modernize the Hagana Jewish militia. His 1938-
initiated "Night Squads" were to become the conceptual and organizational
nucleus of the future Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Motivated by biblical,
Christian attachment to the people of Israel, Wingate's contribution to the
development of the Israeli strategic thinking was seminal. He won the nick-
name "The Friend" and a very special place in the Israeli security ethos. In
1940 Wingate was assigned to oversee the return of Haile Selassie from
Khartoum to Addis Ababa. He brought with him from Palestine one of his
Jewish disciples, Avraham 'Aqavia, and appointed him his secretary and
personal aide. 'Aqavia accompanied Wingate all the way from the begin-
ning in Khartoum to the entrance of the emperor and the "Gideon Force" to
Addis Ababa. (A Palestinian unit, Commando 51, mostly Jewish with a few
Arabs, fought under British flag in Eritrea and Tigre.) In Ethiopia, Wingate
implemented the guerrilla principles he had taught in Palestine and through
the services of 'Aqavia he left some of the lesson to the future first com-
mander of the IDF, Ya'aqov Dori. More important, however, was 'Aqavia's
own account. Back in Palestine he published in 1944 (the year Wingate was
killed in Burma) his book With Wingate in Abyssinia. It was the first
Hebrew book on the war, and against the tragic news infiltrating f r o m
Europe it was a story of victory and resourcefulness. It soon became a best-
seller, selling 4,000 copies, an enormous number for a community only one
hundred times more.
With Wingate in Abyssinia was not only a tribute to a f o u n d e r of
Israel's strategic concepts but also a very favorable and a lively description
of Ethiopia. It followed the spirit of Wingate himself, who molded his own
biblical attachment to both the Zionist enterprise and to Ethiopia. He told
'Aqavia: "The war to liberate Ethiopia is a war for all the oppressed peo-
ples, it is a war for the liberation of the Jews. Anyone who is a friend of
Ethiopia is automatically a friend of the Jews. . . . In your work here and in
Ethiopia you can help me, and if I succeed there I can better help Zionism.
So it is for Zionism that you fight in Ethiopia." 9
With Wingate in Abyssinia made fascinating reading and was instru-
mental in shaping the initial Israeli concept of that country. Its legacy com-
bined reliance on a daring military approach with an awakening of the bib-
lical attachment between Ethiopia and Israel. 10 Turning into a near classic,
it introduced Ethiopia to a new generation of Israelis.
The Israeli concept of Ethiopia, however, was never romantic. The
Solomonian ethos and Haile Selassie being the "Lion of Judah" made little
impression in 1935, as we saw, when Ethiopia was struggling for survival.
It was only when Ethiopia became a part of the Israeli security ethos that it
won a special place in the Israeli consciousness. When in 1959 David Ben-
Gurion started pursuing his "periphery strategy," the idea of Ethiopia's rel-
evance to Israel's struggle for survival in the Middle East had been long
entrenched. The fact that the Ethiopians were "Zionist" in their own eyes
only added some flavor.
RELATIONS UP TO THE FALL OF HAILE SELASSIE
D u r i n g the 1 9 4 0 - 1 9 4 1 c a m p a i g n 'Aqavia b e f r i e n d e d young Lij Asrate

Kassa, already Haile Selassie's most trusted aide. Asrate, later a ras, would
become the Ethiopian chief promoter of an Ethiopian-Israeli alliance. The
relations, however, as we have seen above, developed tentatively and slow-
ly. In the 1940s and later, the emperor entrusted his legal affairs to the
Palestinian Jew Nathan Marein, a lawyer from Jerusalem, who had helped
in 1936 to counter the Italian Fascists' claim to Ethiopian property in
Jerusalem. Marein was later instrumental in preparing the 1955 constitu-
t i o n . " In the 1950s and early 1960s Israeli experts had been dispatched all
o v e r the c o u n t r y , but it w a s only a f t e r the Six Day War victory that
Ethiopia's trust in Israel increased. Beginning in 1967, Israelis were invited
to advise Ethiopia on all positions of sensitivity, the security branches, the
secret services, the police forces, the territorial army, to train the elite units
(mainly the paratroopers), to teach in the army's staff college, and to advise
in the various military units, mainly in Divisions III and IV, in some cases,
including even the battalion levels. In about 1970, the Israeli embassy in
Addis Ababa appeared to be one of the country's major nerve centers, with
Israeli Ambassador Uri Lubrani joking that he made it a rule to update the
emperor about what was going on in Ethiopia at least once a week.
In the spring of 1968, the two countries agreed in principle to work
secretly for the establishment of a military alliance. Following a meeting
between Israeli officials and the emperor, an Ethiopian mission spent a
week in Israel in mid-April. A program under the code name "Coffee
Project" was designed. It involved a close Ethio-Israeli military coopera-
tion in the Red Sea, the turning of Assab Port into a joint naval base, with
Israel obtaining ground facilities for the use of its air force on Ethiopian
soil. In return, Israel was to build a new mechanized brigade and supply
Ethiopia with a sophisticated radar system. Moreover, a joint committee
was appointed to plan close cooperation in military intelligence. Israel was
also to extend its involvement into further modernization of the Ethiopian
armed forces. The whole project was to lead to a tripartite alliance with the
Iranians. 12
On the Israeli side the project was taken most seriously. The IDF chief
of staff, Lt. General Tsur, wrote:
Our interest is to prevent turning the Red Sea into an Arab-Soviet lake.
W e h a v e b e e n c o u r t i n g E t h i o p i a f o r years n o w , but l a t e l y they h a v e
b e c o m e more responsive, for they are worried because of Eritrea. They
lead us now to b e l i e v e that w e have a chance to sign a military and politi-
cal alliance. S i n c e w e are very interested in d e e p e n i n g our presence in
Ethiopia and turning it into our c l o s e military and political ally, w e have
to respond to Ethiopian d e m a n d s . 1 3
One such demand to which Israel was ready to respond concerned the
issue of Deir al-Sultan. As noted, the Ethiopians had lost their rights to the
monastery in 1838 when their fellow Copts, the Egyptian monks, took pos-
session of the keys to its gates. Ever since, Ethiopian emperors had made
repeated efforts to regain the rights over what was considered Ethiopia's
share in the holiness of Jerusalem. In the preceding pages we followed
these efforts by Tewodros II, Yohannes IV, Menelik II, the Ottomans' plan
to offer the keys to Lij Iyasu, and Haile Selassie's attempts to get them
from the British. We also noted that the last rulers in East Jerusalem, the
Jordanians, decided in December 1960, after a long legal procedure (with
the Ethiopians receiving legal advice from the Israelis) to return the keys to
the Ethiopians. But forty days later they took them back, under pressure
from the Egyptians. When Jerusalem was united during the Six Day War,
the Ethiopians laid the matter at Israel's doorstep again.
As the Coffee Project was under way, the Israelis finally responded.
On 26 May 1969, a ministerial committee authorized Israeli Foreign
Minister Abba Eban to announce to Haile Selassie during his June 1969
visit to Ethiopia:
I h a v e the h o n o r and p l e a s u r e to i n f o r m Your H i g h n e s s that the

Government of Israel has decided to recognize the historical rights of the
Ethiopian Church to Deir al-Sultan, without prejudice and detriment to the
historical status and rights of other Christian denominations.
The Government of Israel will therefore and as a token of friendship
to the Emperor's Government and people of Ethiopia assist the Ethiopian
Church in the restoration of their rights, including the possession of the
key to the South Gate and the key of the Church of the Angel Michael.
Taking into consideration the manyfold complexities of this problem,
it is p r o p o s e d that the m o d a l i t i e s f o r this charge w i l l be w o r k e d out
b e t w e e n the Ethiopian Church authorities and the Israel G o v e r n m e n t
authorities c o n c e r n e d . 1 4
The Israelis even helped the Ethiopian monks to change the locks at
midnight 25 April 1970. As a result, the Egyptian Copts filed a legal com-
plaint, and on 16 March 1971 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the keys
should be returned to the Egyptians. But at the same time it also ruled that
the Israeli government could itself become a party to the action and make
suitable temporary arrangements before reaching a final judgment. 1 5 Under
these temporary arrangements, the keys are still with the Ethiopians.
On another sensitive international issue, Israel refrained from troubling
Haile Selassie about the matter of Ethiopia's Jews, the Beta Israel or the
Falasha. T h e Israeli F o r e i g n M i n i s t r y simply shelved the m a t t e r .
Coincidentally, Israel's Chief Rabbinate denied the Falasha recognition as
Jews, which would have meant they were eligible for Israeli citizenship
under the Law of Return. (Recognition was finally given by the Sepharadi
and Ashkenazi rabbis in 1973 and 1974, respectively, but by then the entire
political climate had changed.)
In Ethiopia, the issue of the alliance with Israel became an important
subject of domestic debate.
Internal Ethiopian politics, usually a competition among government
elites over proximity to the emperor, entered an intensively competitive
stage in the mid-1960s. The members of the imperial establishment were
maneuvering and planning for the post-Haile Selassie period. The promi-
nent political figures were taking sides with various potential heirs.
Heading the two main rival groups were Aklilu Habte-Wold, the prime
minister, and Ras Asrate Kassa. The latter, as noted earlier, had his power
base in Eritrea, of which he had been governor since 1964. With the help of
the Israelis he had built special counterinsurgency units in Eritrea to quell
the separatists. His policy in Eritrea sought to attract the support of the
local C h r i s t i a n s ( w i t h o u t s a c r i f i c i n g the e m p e r o r ' s p r e s c r i b e d
Amharization), but he was mainly concerned with preparing for the upcom-
ing struggle over succession in Addis Ababa. Close to the emperor by
virtue of old family relations and his long-proven loyalty, Asrate was also
the guiding spirit behind the Israeli connection. In this, he was joined in the
aftermath of the Six Day War by Foreign Minister Ketema Yifru. 1 6
Aklilu had been the chief opponent of the Israeli alliance. As prime
minister, he controlled the regular Ethiopian army and favored its units,
rather than Asrate's special Eritrean Police, in dealing with the Eritrean
rebels. At the same time, as noted earlier, Aklilu, a born diplomat, was in
favor of appeasing the Arabs. On 1 March 1968 he attended the meeting
between the Israeli Foreign Ministry officials and the emperor in which the
Coffee Project was conceived. He said:
Ethiopia is interested in a strong Israel the same as Israel is interested

in a strong Ethiopia. H o w e v e r , the t w o countries have their problems and
limitations, and w h e n e v e r w e try to work out s o m e cooperation the differ-
ences in basic approaches are r e v e a l e d . . . .
Ethiopia is a Christian island in a Muslim sea, and the Muslims make
no d i s t i n c t i o n b e t w e e n r e l i g i o u s and p o l i t i c a l g o a l s . T h e i r aim is to
destroy Ethiopia, and they criticize her for every step she takes together
with Israel. Recently the Egyptian delegate to the O A U told us they knew
about every detail in the Ethio-Israeli context. . . . If they find out about
the suggested project, about a joint base in A s s a b and the like, they will
do everything to destroy Ethiopia. . . . Ethiopia's e n e m i e s might assault
her in order to pre-empt any such strengthening. The Arabs m a y a l s o
leave the O A U if they hear w e have a treaty with Israel. 1 7
Until the end of 1970 the emperor allowed the two rivals to compete on
an equal footing. Aklilu allowed the Israelis to train the Ethiopian army but
insisted on their not appearing at official occasions wearing Israeli uni-
forms. Under A k i l u ' s supervision, negotiations on the C o f f e e Project
dragged on at a pace that was irritatingly slow to the Israelis. The same
foot-dragging occurred on the issue of an Ethiopian embassy in Israel.
Consul Yiftah Demitrios, fluent in Hebrew, was the toast of Jerusalem's
diplomatic community, but he was never promoted to ambassador. The
Israelis insisted on an Ethiopian embassy in Jerusalem. The Ethiopians con-
tinued to procrastinate, claiming to have decided in favor of it, then sug-
gesting the possibility of moving to Tel Aviv to avoid angering the Arabs.
Eventually they allowed the issue of the embassy to die unresolved.
Meanwhile, Aklilu scored a major victory over Asrate. In 1970, the sit-
uation in Eritrea deteriorated (due in great measure to new guerrilla and ter-
rorist attacks introduced by PLO and PDRY operatives in central and east-
ern Eritrea).
The assassination of an Ethiopian general and other acts of political
sabotage helped Aklilu to convince Haile Selassie that Asrate was losing
his grip on the province. In December 1970 the emperor removed Asrate
from Eritrea and appointed him to head the Crown Council in the capital.
Ethiopia's central army was given a free hand to solve the Eritrea problem
its own way.
In 1971, only one Coffee Project meeting on intelligence cooperation
was convened. It was the last of the project. A visit by the IDF chief of staff
Lt. Gen. Haim Bar-Lev brought no progress, and Arab press attacks on
Ethiopia led to the dispatching of the country's minister of defense to
Cairo. Aklilu launched a diplomatic campaign in the Arab capitals that
resulted in a 1972 agreement with Numayri at Addis Ababa and an agree-
ment with the PDRY against the Eritreans.
The emperor then adopted Aklilu's policy, and a new foreign minister,
Minasse Haile, was appointed to help implement it. The emperor was par-
ticularly concerned with the integrity of the OAU and his position as its fig-
urehead. To ensure that the Arabs would not secede from the organization
or undermine the emperor's position, beginning in mid-1971 Ethiopia took
the lead in condemning Israel for occupying the "African territories"
(meaning the Sinai Desert), captured in the Six Day War. Israeli officials,
alarmed at the harshness of the Ethiopian position, were reassured by
Aklilu and Minasse that all was well. The general director of the Israeli
Foreign Ministry rushed to Ethiopia twice in the first half of 1972. Aklilu
assured him that that Ethiopia had to pretend to be siding with the Arabs,
but in fact it favored a strong Israel in the Middle East and an Israeli pres-
ence in Ethiopia. But, he said, it had to be done without publicity, "because
otherwise all the Arab hatred would be focused on Ethiopia, which is weak
economically and socially, poor, and torn by the civil war in the north."
This pretense, Aklilu said, "is good for Israel, because what Israel needed is
a strong Ethiopia." Asrate's advice was quite different: "You have to do
your utmost to deepen the economic presence and aid. . . . Our future
depends on our economic development. If we will not succeed in bettering
the economic situation most substantially in the very immediate future, we
will be facing a tremendous crisis." 18
In late 1972, after he had failed to persuade Haile Selassie to begin
transferring power to his designated heir, Asrate gave up and moved to
London. Meanwhile, Aklilu and Minasse had intensified their campaign in
the Arab countries. Their overtures to Syria, Iraq, and Yemen were, howev-
er, futile. Although they had failed in early 1972 to convince Qaddafi to
stop helping the Eritreans, they kept trying. 19 In April 1972 Qaddafi paid
Idi Amin to expel the Israeli mission from Uganda. In May 1973 when
Qaddafi dared to attack Haile Selassie at an OAU meeting in Addis Ababa,
they tried to convince the emperor to sever relations with Israel. They were
also seeking Saudi goodwill: when King Faysal met with Haile Selassie in
September 1973 at the nonaligned conference in Algiers, he promised the
e m p e r o r A r a b f i n a n c i a l aid on condition that the Israelis would be
expelled. 20 In March 1973 an Egyptian researcher and journalist, 'Abd al-
Tawwab 'Abd al-Hayy, was invited to Ethiopia to meet with the emperor.
He was also allowed to see the Ethiopian schemes for the Blue Nile and
was flown to Bahr Dar to see the actual sites. These activities paved the
way for a meeting between Haile Selassie and Sadat at the May 1973 OAU
meeting. At that meeting, the Ethiopian emperor promised the Egyptian
president that his country would not interfere with the flow of the Nile
without an agreement among the riparian countries. 21 These were welcome
words for Sadat, but not quite enough. In October 1973, after Egypt had
launched war on Israel, Sadat sent messages to Haile Selassie pressuring
him to sever his relations with Israel. "It is time to act," he cabled on
October 19th, "no more talking between us. Do what you have to do, but do
not just talk." 22
At this time Aklilu formed a committee to examine Ethiopia's relations
with Israel. The foreign minister prepared a survey on Israeli aid since the
relations were established, and those who took part in the consultations
were told the purpose of the survey was merely to lower Israel's profile.
The army's chief of staff, invited to testify, resisted strongly, arguing that
the army should not be deprived of its advisers, and especially not at a time
when the Somalis were renewing their threats to invade the Ogaden. He
warned of a crisis in the army and said it was high time to strengthen it, not
to subject it to a sudden shock. A few days earlier the United States had
finally turned down Ethiopia's request for new arms. After reviewing
Sadat's cable, the emperor invited the committee to his resort outside Addis
Ababa for the weekend, and it was then that the decision to sever the rela-
tions with Israel was made. Announcing the decision to Israeli ambassador
Hanan 'Aynor, on 23 October 1973, Foreign Minister Minasse Haile said:
Ethiopia has nothing against Israel for not supplying us with advanced
arms. W e k n o w y o u are fighting n o w for your lives and you cannot spare
us anything significant. Every Ethiopian k n o w s your situation and every
Ethiopian h o p e s for your victory, for w e know you are right in your war
with the Arabs. But we have to take care of our interests, and this calls
upon us today to break the relations with you. It is not a popular m o v e and
w e have n o doubt that it will help us in the short run only. W e hope that
the moderate Arabs, the Egyptians, the Moroccans, Tunisia, and Jordan
will restrain the radical ones, Somalia, Syria, Libya, w h o target at us, and
that they, the moderates, will not allow them to attack us. . . . It is with
great sorrow that w e do it, and w e hope that the breaking of relations will
not last l o n g . 2 3
The same day, the emperor announced the severing of relations on

Radio Addis Ababa. 2 4
During the Yom Kippur War sixteen African countries broke relations
with Israel. It was a dramatic culmination of a process that had started two
years earlier. Among the reasons were the influence of the Arabs and the
Soviets as well as the loss of Israeli contributions of the 1960s. But
Ethiopia was a different case from the other fifteen African states, both in
terms of the historical background and the consequences. Of the back-
ground, Ambassador 'Aynor wrote:
The Ethiopian public was taken by surprise and reacted with amaze-
ment upon hearing this u n e x p e c t e d n e w s . The roots of historical, reli-
gious, and e m o t i o n a l ties b e t w e e n Christian Ethiopia and Israel are s o
d e e p and rich that they occasionally verge on the irrational. The cutting of
relations while Israel is struggling for survival had a stunning e f f e c t on
many, for on top of all that it had the smack of betrayal and a stab in the
back. . . . A m o n g the m e m b e r s of the establishment as w e l l as by the
masses there was first disbelief, then f o l l o w e d grief. . . . Soon the issue
was added to the growing resentment by the masses against the regime.
Ethiopian political humor resorts to double meaning rhymes and the fol-
l o w i n g line w a s heard all over: "I, H a i l e S e l a s s i e the first, E t h i o p i a ' s
Emperor, the Lion of Judah, betrayer of Israel."
. . . It may be the case that some, not all, of the Muslims are happy
about it, but there is no doubt that the o v e r w h e l m i n g majority of Christian
Ethiopians, from the royal family, the nobility, down to the peasants in the
remotest provinces c o n c e i v e the breaking of relations a matter of great
shame and little benefit. T h e basic Ethiopian historic concept is funda-
mentally anti-Islamic. What w a s done is seen as an act of surrender to
Arab blackmail, an act for which Ethiopia is soon to pay dearly. In the
e y e s of the Ethiopians Israel has a special status with Providence. A n y
hurting of Israel cannot but yield the worst of evils. 2 5
In February 1974 Haile Selassie's regime collapsed. A popular protest

movement spearheaded by the students and by the army's intermediate- and
low-ranking officers was fueled by the fast-deteriorating economic situa-
tion. Some of the factors leading up to the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia were
Middle Eastern. These included the long-term effects on Ethiopia's econo-
my of the 1967 closing of the Suez Canal; the immediate effects of the
1973 oil crisis; and the dramatic rise of oil prices following the October
1973 war. King Faysal's promise to reward Ethiopia with Arab aid if it
broke off relations with Israel was not fulfilled. Soon after the severing of
relations with Israel, he sent a cable to Haile Selassie congratulating him
for getting rid of Zionism, "which aims at controlling the world." He
promised again that the action would be rewarded with friendlier Arab-
Ethiopian relations. 26 But beyond words, he did nothing. In January 1974
Haile Selassie was warmly received in Riyad. King Faysal pledged a token
35 million dollars and urged the emperor to initiate the construction of a
new grand mosque in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia was no longer "taking the
offensive"; thus he left Ethiopia.
By the end of February 1974 the officers who had revolted arrested the
upper echelons of the armed forces and some members of the political
establishment. They formed committees, which took over the army's vari-
ous battalions. In the following months a complicated power struggle
ensued. The country's elite was in confusion and had no control of most of
the armed forces, as the rival wings continued their internal struggle. They
did so riding, even fueling, a growing spontaneous revolt, in the armed
forces, the rural areas, and the urban centers, which they did not under-
stand. The young officers slowly organized, astonished to find themselves
acting against a helpless establishment.
On 5 April 1974 Ras Asrate landed in Paris. He contacted the Israeli
embassy and arranged for an immediate meeting with a high official.
Asrate told him that the Ethiopian security services had totally failed to
understand the situation. For that and for other reasons everyone in
Ethiopia was saying that if the Israelis were not expelled, chaos would not
have ensued. The paratroopers who were trained in Israel were the only
reliable force left. Ras Asrate then added that he had convinced the emper-
or to create a new intelligence service, and that on behalf of the emperor he
had been asked to transmit to Colonel Avraham Orli, the Israeli military
attaché until 1971, and to the minister of defense, Moshe Dayan, that
Ethiopia urgently requested an Israeli expert to be secretly sent to Addis
Ababa to assess the situation and reopen the office of the Mosad there.
Asrate told them:
In spite of the problems I am confident that the Emperor will prevail. The
masses and the bulk of the army are still loyal to him. He is active and
k n o w s what he is doing, and s o far he compromised with the rebels for
tactical considerations only. If y o u give him a hand n o w , in spite of what
he did to y o u in the last months, and although the situation looks con-
f u s e d , it w o u l d be a very w i s e step on your b e h a l f . It w i l l be greatly
appreciated in due course by the Emperor and by those w h o will be party
to your effort. 2 7
It was in late September, only after General Aman Andom had been
proclaimed Ethiopia's new head of state, that his old friend General Orli
flew to Nairobi and reestablished contact. By then all the important mem-
bers of Haile Selassie's elite were in prison. The most prominent among
t h e m , t o g e t h e r with G e n e r a l A m a n , w e r e e x e c u t e d or killed on 23
N o v e m b e r 1974 by the o f f i c e r s of the Derg (the Committee). M a j o r
Mengistu Haile Mariam was on his way to power.
To what extent was the expulsion of the Israelis a factor in the demise
of Haile Selassie's regime? Clearly, many causes produced that result.
However, at least two points must be emphasized. First, the Israeli advisers
were so deeply involved in the a r m y ' s various battalions that in many
cases, up to the moment they were expelled, they served as the daily link
between the generals and the intermediate officers. Their removal acceler-
ated the already deepening crisis within the army. It also created a certain
vacuum in the units that enabled the organization and activation of the vari-
ous intermediate officers battalions' committees without the upper echelon
of the army even noticing. 28
The second point is that many observers were impressed that the
expulsion of the Israelis significantly added to the state of disorientation

and confusion among the country's elite. Haile Selassie himself, a promi-
nent member of the royal family later said, behaved as someone vulnerably
exposed, uprooted from his o w n history after he announced the expulsion.
He was not the same person afterward. 2 9
Ethiopians are very reluctant writers of memoirs, and when they do
write them, very rarely do they reveal their emotions. The following is a
page from the draft m e m o i r s of Ahadu Sabure, a part of w h i c h I shall
quote at length for it reflects s o m e of the important concepts and allows a
glimpse into the inner thoughts of Haile Selassie's elite. Ahadu Sabure, in
his long career, had served as a provincial governor, an editor of various
o f f i c i a l j o u r n a l s , a j o u r n a l i s t , E t h i o p i a ' s a m b a s s a d o r to S o m a l i a
( 1 9 6 1 - 1 9 6 6 ) , and as a governmental minister (Information) in 1974. While
in the Derg's prison he wrote his Amharic diary, Years of Darkness and
Trial:30
Today [1 December 1976] while Ketema Yifru [Foreign Minister in

the late 1960s] and I were sunning ourselves, I asked him to tell me why it
had been decided to break relations with Israel in 1973, and who had pres-
sured the government to do this. After mentioning that those who pushed
hard for this were Prime Minister Aklilu Habte-Wald and [the then]
Foreign Minister Minasse Haile, he said the matter was submitted to the
Council of Ministers, and when all the other ministers approved . . . only
he took a different stand and voiced his objections. He explained to me in
details the reasons he objected.
He told me that the briefing he gave the Council of Ministers was in
brief the following: "It seems to me the reason we are planning to break
our diplomatic relations with Israel is to please the Arabs and win their
friendship. However, I doubt that we will be able to win the friendship of
the Arabs no matter what we do. The Arabs will not place any value on
this thing we are going to do and will not change the hatred they have for
us nor their policy. They will not halt aid they are giving the Eritrean
secessionists. It is best that we not be deceived in this respect. It does not
seem good policy to me to break the relations which we have with a reli-
able friend of ours for something we know we will not derive any benefit
from. I fear that if we do this, the Arabs will become more arrogant and
that it will encourage them to dictate to us in other matters."
Again I asked him what was the reason Aklilu Habte-wald and
Minasse Haile urged relations to be broken. He explained to me that basi-
cally the ex-prime minister was one who from the start was frightened
every time the Arabs' name was mentioned, and that he believed they
could hurt us in various ways, i.e., by stirring up the Muslims of Ethiopia
against us, by helping the Eritrean secessionists with arms and money,
and also by supporting our neighbor and antagonist Somalia, and that
when it was planned to establish official diplomatic relations with Israel
in 1962 he opposed this proposal, and that Minasse Haile's views were
not much different [than Aklilu's].
. . . (My [Sabure's] views and comment). The Saudi King Faisal's
telling His Majesty in Algiers that Ethiopia's having relations with Israel,
which was the Arabs' enemy, had been grieving them for some time was
basically nothing new. It was the Arabs' plaint, which they had been utter-
ing for some years and which was getting terribly boring. The fact that
they were singling out Ethiopia from among 80 or 90 countries with
which Israel had official relations and indicting ana accusing her, dearly
indicates the extent of the hatred they have for our country. Previously,
during the years from 1941 to 1960, one used to hear repeatedly the song
that went, "Many kinds of wrong are being perpetrated on the Muslims
living in Ethiopia. All rights are denied them. They are oppressed". . . .
While they were repeating this song until the record got old and everyone
got tired of it, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel unex-
pectedly fell into their hands and they rejoiced. They were jubilant. After
that, who could withstand them? On account of that matter they threw
upon us all the putrid cud they had been ruminating on for ten years. They
sprayed us with their poison. . . . There is no bad name or insulting appel-
lation they did not apply to us. The Arabs are a people who are very
sophisticated in insults and insolence and have no peers. . . . If insulting
words could kill and bury one's enemies, they would have reduced Israel
and America to dust in one minute.
King Faysal said in Algiers that if Ethiopia broke diplomatic rela-
tions with Israel, he would try hard for Ethiopia to get much aid from the
Arabs and for the Eritrea problem . . . to be peacefully resolved. However,
he did not keep his promise. To please him and the Arabs Ethiopia can-
celed in one day the diplomatic relations she had with Israel. In exchange
she got nothing. . . . On the contrary it was confirmed that the amount of
aid in arms and money given to the Eritrean bandits after the Algiers
Conference was even much greater than before. During the time he ruled
in Ethiopia for more than fifty years Haile Selassie used to think that there
was no leader who was more sophisticated than he in the arts of politics,
trickery, and cunning. However, it is only to be regretted that he died still
hoodwinked without understanding that the Arabs were our enemies who
for a long time had never let up in wounding and bleeding us by looking
for opportunities to attack us and injure us, that leaders like Gamal 'Abd
al-Nasser and King Faysal were the uttermost faithless knaves who made
their principal work gulling Ethiopia and other black African states with
sweet words and promises, whose breaths stank, whose pledges were
completely untrustworthy, who used prevarication as a major political
method and instrument and who, while they turned their face five times a
day toward Mecca and prostrated themselves in worship to Allah, were
only plotting this swindling action of theirs.
The former Emperor's cunning and trickery never went beyond the
stage of causing clashes and divisions among his ministers. . . . We ought
not to judge him if he was unable to cope with foxes like Faysal and his
ilk. Even if the pickpockets of downtown Addis Ababa were a thousand
times more skillful, there is no one who would wager that they could be
considered the equals of the hamstringers of Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus,
or Riyad. If God in His subtle wisdom had not confronted the Arabs with
a deadly enemy, namely Israel, who would trample them under his feet
whenever they got arrogant, the Arabs would be devils who would be
good for no one and would be upsetting all creation without letup.
Ahadu's views can only be understood as a reflection of traditional

Ethiopian concepts that began with the Ahmad Gragn trauma. The fear of
Middle Eastern Islam (or Arabism) joining hands with local repoliticized
Islam to destroy Ethiopia was a product of a long history. In itself, as we
have seen, this history was far from simple, but facts are always more com-
plicated than beliefs.
Also rooted in the past was Ethiopia's inherent trust in Israel. It was
because of a religious attachment combined with the Ethiopians' ancient
yearning for a reliable anti-Islamic ally. Haile Selassie's expulsion of the
Israelis, giving in to Arab pressure, went against the grain of Ethiopia's
culture. There was no precedent in Ethiopian history for such an act of
political capitulation. It had a significant impact on the course of events in
the crucial year of 1974. It contributed to the disorientation and paralysis of
the imperial establishment and to the unexpected effectiveness of a protest
movement led by young army officers.
The officers who led the 1974 revolt, much to the sorrow of Ethiopia,
were far from being their country's best and brightest. They were not what
Ethiopia deserved. Ethiopia was surely ripe for change, and thousands of
highly educated young people were ready to revolutionize Ethiopian poli-
tics and society. In 1974 it was inevitable that Ethiopia's patriarchal system
would be toppled by the energy of a younger generation. The young gener-
ation was waiting—liberals, Marxists, bureaucrats, professionals, a rapidly
growing intelligentsia—both in Ethiopia and in exile. Some of these people
of quality were in uniform, especially the graduates of the Harar military
academy and the officers of the air force. With less confusion, disorienta-
tion, and cultural crisis, and with a modicum of intelligence, things could
have turned out differently. The year 1974, and the years that immediately
f o l l o w e d , m i g h t h a v e b e e n m o r e in k e e p i n g w i t h the t r a d i t i o n s of
Ethiopia's historical continuity, but this was not to be. That out of all the
great and proud history of Aksum and Ethiopia would emerge the ruffians
of the Derg and the brutal dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam was per-
haps only to be expected in that most unexpected of years.
CONCLUSION: T H E STRUGGLE FOR DIVERSITY
We have followed the history of Ethiopia within the context of the Middle
East to the year 1974, a good point to end for two major reasons:
First, we have, in 1994, sufficient perspective to see that an era ended
in 1974, in both Ethiopia and the Middle East. A revolution in Ethiopia
shattered the imperial regime and led to the emergence of the Mengistu
Haile Mariam dictatorship. In the Middle East, from the Ethiopian perspec-
tive, the era of political pan-Arabism was coming to an end. By 1977, both
the regime in Addis Ababa and the gist of the Middle Eastern strategy had
changed irrevocably.
The second reason for concluding this history in 1974 is that we lack
the perspective to go beyond that cataclysmic year, even though we have a
wealth of information, and the importance of the Middle East to Ethiopia
and of Ethiopia and Eritrea to the Middle East have only increased since
1974.
ETHIOPIA AND ERITREA: FROM SHIFTA TO FRONTS
In Ethiopia the period beginning in 1974 seems to be defined by the nature

of the revolution that took place there. What Mengistu labeled a "revolu-
tion" was really an attempt on his part to overcentralize Ethiopia's entire
system of government. Domestically, he betrayed Ethiopia's tradition of
flexibility in political, social, and cultural spheres. In foreign policy, he
sought a Soviet connection. Seeking to imitate the structures and terminol-
ogy of the Communist countries and to link Ethiopia to the Communist
bloc, Mengistu did his best to sever his country not only from its own past
but also from the Middle East. Mengistu saw the Arabs as Ethiopia's reac-
tionary enemies, who were supporting the rebellion in Eritrea. He main-
tained contact with pro-Soviet Arab countries, but alienated the most
important of these: Sadat's Egypt, Numayri's Sudan, the Saudis. At the
beginning, he flirted briefly with Israel. In 1975 he invited the Israelis to
rebuild part of the now politicized and disbanded army. The Israelis formed
a new division and new special units, unaware that they were, in fact,
equipping Major Mengistu with the wherewithal to eliminate his political

rivals. As soon as Mengistu was sure of his Soviet connection, when the
Soviets and the Cubans rescued him from the July 1977 Somali invasion to
the Ogaden, he unceremoniously expelled the Israelis at the war's end in
February 1978.
The Ogaden War, which was conducted between two Marxist states,
was nonetheless a twentieth-century chapter in Ethiopia's Gragn story.
Like his two great jihadi predecessors, Gragn and the mawla, Siyyad
sought to cement the fragmented Somali society through an external war.
His failure, again, resulted with disastrous dismemberment. Siyyad's siege
in the second part of 1977 on the strategic town of Harar was conceived in
both countries as a battle on Ahmad Gragn's medieval capital, the historic
and symbolic center of political Islam. This notion—for a while—helped
Mengistu to mobilize Ethiopian society around old national collective
memories. The Cubans and Soviets who helped expel the Somalis from the
walls of Harar resorted to the terminology of Communist brotherhood. For
many in Ethiopia they nevertheless played the Christian role of the
Portuguese in 1540-1543.
But it was in Eritrea that the real battle over the future of Ethiopia was
waged. Eritrea, as has been reflected throughout Ethiopia's long history,
had two historical roles. One was as a Middle Eastern bridgehead into
Ethiopia—the 'Umayyads in Dahlak, the Ottomans' Habesh Eyaleti, the
Egyptians in Massawa, Mussolini's Red Sea-Mediterranean dream, the
"Arabism of Eritrea." The other was as an autonomous part of a decentral-
ized E t h i o p i a — t h e Bahr Midir of Bahr Negash Yishaq, Ras A l u l a ' s
Asmara, the autonomy and federation of 1952-1962. It was, as we have
seen, Haile Selassie's destruction of the Eritrean-Ethiopian autonomy that
led to the province becoming a potential bridgehead of pan-Arabism (rather
than being a parliamentarian autonomy that might well have influenced the
beginning of political openness in Ethiopia).
Mengistu's crude attempts at solving the Eritrea problem brutally with
military force drove the Christian Tigreans of the province into the EPLF.
The more Ethiopia became identified with Mengistu's brutality, the more
the younger generation of Eritrea abandoned the hope for Ethiopian plural-
ism and resorted to separatism. Believing in Eritrea's nationalist unique-
ness, the core of the Eritrean Tigrean youth achieved victory over Mengistu
in 1991. In April 1993 Eritrea finally achieved full statehood.
However, the struggle over Eritrea never ceased being a battle over
Ethiopia as a political system. Indeed, the struggle itself made possible the
emergence of a potential change.
Mengistu changed Ethiopia's political vocabulary and introduced new
political structures, but his absolute dictatorship prevented a real political
revolution. In spite of his new Workers' Party of Ethiopia (established in
1984) and the other seemingly modern institutions, the political transforma-
CONCLUSION 181
tion was only skin deep. Politics remained, even was fostered, as a highly
personified hierarchy of power, a game of endless individual intrigues, dif-
ferent essentially from the imperial "no-party system" only by its borrowed
symbols and gross brutality. A real revolution, the introduction of authenti-
cally institutionalized politics, was beginning on the political periphery, in
the oppositional "liberation fronts."
The shifta (the bandit), we recall, was, in fact, the institution of the
opposition in traditional Ethiopian politics. Being a culturally legitimate
institution it reflected Ethiopia's political permissiveness. But the shifta, an
ambitious natural leader who sought to advance his personal position, was
part of the Ethiopian system rather than a promoter of change. Successful
shiftas were accepted and appointed, some making it all the way to the
imperial throne. Shiftnnet, as a flexible tradition encouraging and accom-
modating individual political initiative, was thus useful in preventing the
emergence of political modernizations: It kept fresh energy in Ethiopian
politics. Also, Ethiopian society never experienced a long anticolonial
struggle that created such popular uprisings and the ensuing political mod-
ernization in other Afro-Asian countries. A proper discussion of Ethiopia's
political shiftnnet would lead us from medieval Ethiopian internal politics
and foreign relations, from the days of Bahr Negash Yishaq to the 1950s.
During the 1936-1941 Fascist occupation, guerrilla resistance was led by
individual arbannyoch (patriots, guerrilla fighters), but they failed to form
a modern movement. The 1943 Woyane rebellion in Tigre came close to
being a combination of traditional shiftnnet and a popular protest move-
ment, but it, too, failed to form a valid synthesis. In post-World War II
Eritrea, Ethiopian shiftnnet was successfully orchestrated and subsidized by
the emperor to terrorize and destroy the political modernization of Eritrean
autonomy, its parties, and its constitutional parliamentarianism. It was only
the creation of the fronts in the 1970s, in rural Ethiopia, that started the
introduction of modern structured politics. The roots of this change in
Ethiopia's political culture extend to the EPLF, the ELF, and to its birth in
the Arab Middle East.
Indeed, the anti-Mengistu struggle was for Ethiopia what their anti-
colonialist periods were for other countries. Out of the opposition there
emerged parties, movements, and fronts, but those at the center were
crushed by the regime. Those who emerged victorious had come from the
political periphery, and mainly f r o m the northern, Tigrean P e o p l e ' s
Liberation Front (TPLF) and Eritrea's EPLF. They were effective partly
because they had easy access to offices, and could develop connections in
Middle Eastern capitals, but mainly because they were able to integrate into
the front the political energy of the Christian Ethiopian shifta tradition.
This amalgamation of the imported structure (which would itself undergo
substantial modification) and the highly energetic Ethiopian permissive
politics represented a major change. It proved efficient in forming a force
that was successful at waging modern guerrilla warfare and toppling a dic-
tatorship undermined by its own betrayal of the country's political culture.
But the question we must answer is whether these fronts—and the other
fronts of the same era, which joined to form new governments in Addis
Ababa and in Asmara in 1991—are capable of further development that
will lead to the formation of political parties representing the diversity of
Ethiopian culture. Or will they fall back upon traditional Ethiopian instinct
of individualistic power games, and erode whatever they have thus far
achieved in terms of pluralism? The answer to this question is still unclear,
but it may well determine the very existence of the country: whether it will
be reunited through a modern cultural and political dialogue or whether it
will be again immersed in bloodshed and chaos.
THE MIDDLE EAST AND ETHIOPIA:

ISLAM, ARABISM, AND DIVERSITY
For its part, the Middle East, during much of the period beginning in 1974,
conveyed to Ethiopia a message that was distinct from the pan-Arabist
threat of the 1960s.
It did not appear so different at the beginning. In the period from 1975
to 1977, just after the reopening of the Suez Canal, the slogan of "Arabism
of the Red Sea" was raised again and interpreted in Addis Ababa as the
Arab menace of yore. It activated the Gragn syndrome and led Mengistu to
see a renewed pan-Arab plot behind the Eritreans, a concept which he con-
veniently adapted to his ends.
But the 1975-1977 Arab politics in the Red Sea region was not what
Mengistu believed. It was, rather, an attempt to stem Soviet penetration
into Somalia, into the PDRY, and into Ethiopia. Indeed, the three countries
behind the "Arabism of the Red Sea" campaign of the mid-1970s, Sadat's
Egypt, Numayri's Sudan, and the Saudis, were far from advocating the rev-
olutionary all-Arab Ba'thist ideology, or an all-regional, subversive
machinery, such as that of Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s. Seen from the
Eritrean perspective, there appeared to be little coordination in 1975-1977
between this Arab Red Sea effort, and the Arab ELF-RC, led by Iraqi-
trained and other Arab revolution-oriented cadres. The latter were about to
lose the leadership of the Eritrean movement to the EPLF, which, as we
have seen, resented the Arabization of the Eritrean cause. In the 1980s, the
EPLF's dialogue with most Arab countries was at best problematic and
yielded no significant support. The collapse of the ELF-RC earlier in the
decade and the diverting of the strategic attention of the Middle East from
the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf (with the break of the Iran-Iraq War) com-
bined to render the whole concept of "Eritrea's Arabism" no longer an
issue.
CONCLUSION 183
W i t h the d e m i s e of p a n - A r a b i s m , M i d d l e Eastern attitudes t o w a r d

Ethiopia and Eritrea b e c a m e a state-by-state matter. Syria, Iraq, and the
P L O lost interest, while in Beirut, production of literature on Eritrea for the
general Arab public has virtually ceased to exist as of this writing. Other
A r a b countries remained involved, notably Q a d d a f i ' s Libya, the P D R Y ,
Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, and Somalia. The history of the Horn, with the
war in Eritrea, the escalating war in Tigre, the rise of the Afars and the
O r o m o s , the E t h i o - S o m a l i and the E t h i o - S u d a n e s e c o m p l i c a t i o n s , the
drought and starvation, and the involvement of the Great Powers, was cen-
tral to the strategies of the Red Sea and the Nile Basin, and of particular
interest for these Middle Eastern countries. But pan-Arabism was no longer
the motivating force.
A s in the past, it was again Cairo and Jerusalem that mattered most,
and their message underlined the fact that a p o s t - p a n - A r a b Middle East
was ready to invite Ethiopia into its fold.
In 1977, Sadat went to Jerusalem, culminating his historic withdrawal
f r o m active pan-Arabism and from his alliance with the Soviets, and his
reorienting of his country back to Egyptianism. At the same time Mengistu
was moving in the opposite direction, as he betrayed Ethiopianism. He fell
into the hands of the Soviets, and allied himself, as well, with Qaddafi and
the P D R Y . When Mengistu began discussing anew the old idea of interfer-
ing with the flow of the Nile, Sadat labeled him one of the region's greatest
dangers. Yet in 1977 Sadat authorized Boutros Boutros-Ghali to initiate a
d i p l o m a t i c m o v e m e n t t o w a r d E t h i o p i a , c h a r a c t e r i z e d by r e s t r a i n t and
appeasement. It came to be known as the Boutros-Ghali Thesis, and it has
continued into the early 1990s to guide Egyptian policy toward Ethiopia.
B o u t r o s - G h a l i b r o u g h t with h i m the t e r m i n o l o g y of Al-Siyasa al-
Duwaliyya (the quarterly we discussed above, International Politics), with
the emphasis on the historical attachment between Ethiopia and Egypt. His
purpose was to strengthen diplomatic relations with the Nile countries to
ensure the regular flow of the river to Lake Nasser beyond the Aswan Dam.
The importance of Ethiopia as the provider of more than four-fifths of the
flood waters (and some two-thirds of the annual quantity) made Boutros-
G h a l i ' s d i p l o m a t i c e f f o r t s to b r i d g e the g a p b e t w e e n C a i r o and A d d i s
A b a b a a matter of the highest priority for Egypt.
Its m a g n i t u d e was dramatically illustrated in the s u m m e r of 1988.
After several years of drought in Ethiopia the water level in Lake Nasser
fell f r o m 175 meters above sea level to below 150 meters. Production of
electricity was interrupted, and the irrigation of some crops was stopped.
The leaders of Egypt could hardly conceal their anxiety. One more dry year
in Ethiopia, the experts told them, and it would not be only electricity and
irrigation, but the very existence of the Egyptian economy that would be
threatened. At a level of 123 meters, not a far-fetched eventuality (perhaps
a matter of two more similar years) the Nile in Egypt would be virtually
dry. The potential consequences had no precedent in the history of natural

disasters along the Nile.
The rains of 1988 in Ethiopia brought some relief. Egypt's concern
focused on Ethiopia's plans to use the waters of the Blue Nile and of the
other tributaries for its own needs. Boutros-Ghali's effort to establish a
diplomatic dialogue with Mengistu were helped when Mubarak took
Sadat's place after his 1981 assassination, bringing a more relaxed style
and better chemistry with the Ethiopian dictator. Mengistu, for his part,
enjoyed the Egyptians' anxiety. He refused to join a forum of Nile coun-
tries, which Boutros-Ghali initiated in 1983. When the latter warned in
early 1985 that the next war in the Middle East would probably be over
water, Mengistu took note. He nonetheless authorized various spokesmen
to emphasize Ethiopia's right to exploit the Nile waters and to stress that
the 1902 agreement that Menelik had signed with the British, under which
the emperor undertook not to act unilaterally, had long since expired.
When, in 1987, Boutros-Ghali established Endugu, the organization of the
Nile riparian countries, Ethiopia was the only one to join solely as an
observer.
In the same year, change began to take place. The Soviets grew impa-
tient with Mengistu's centralization of economy and society and with his
penchant for costly wars. Returning from Moscow in April, Mengistu land-
ed in Cairo and opened a dialogue with Mubarak. The two leaders drew
closer in later years, but the Egyptian political establishment and public
remained worried. Subjects of intense interest in the Egyptian press in the
early 1990s were: the Nile; Eritrea and its break with Ethiopia; the fall in
May 1991 of Mengistu; the nature of the new regime in Addis Ababa;
implications on the Red Sea; and Israeli renewed involvement. Academic
conferences were held and a new political literature came into being to
examine these issues. In general, the government position was in line with
the Boutros-Ghali Thesis.
Israeli interest in Ethiopia also increased during this period. When
Menachem Begin became prime minister in 1977, it signaled a change in
the Israeli foreign p o l i c y . Begin continued to attach i m p o r t a n c e to
Ethiopia's role in the strategy of the Red Sea and the Nile, but the expul-
sion of the Israelis from Ethiopia by both Haile Selassie and Mengistu, and
the fall of the shah in Iran in 1979 ended the so-called "periphery strategy"
that had been established by David Ben-Gurion. Begin made peace with
Egypt in 1979, and the strategic importance of Ethiopia to Israel was thus
greatly reduced.
A new focus of interest was the Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel, the so-
called Falasha. The old guard of the Israeli political establishment, in
power until May 1977, had ignored the issue that these Jews posed. At the
time, Israel preferred not to irritate Haile Selassie; in addition, the Israeli
chief rabbis were not yet ready to recognize the Beta Israel as full Jews.
CONCLUSION 185
But by the time Begin came to power such recognition, implying entitle-
ment under the "Law of Return," had been granted (1973, 1974), and
Jewish organizations in the West were much involved in increasing interna-
tional awareness of the problem as well as in organizing the Falasha in the
field. Begin brought to the picture his own concepts of Israel's biblical
roots, his hatred of the Soviets and of their client Mengistu, and his own
attachment to the Oriental Jewish diaspora. He saw the redemption of Beta
Israel as a Zionist obligation of the highest priority. Moreover, the 1975
United Nations Resolution equating Zionism with racism (for which
Ethiopia had voted) strengthened Begin's resolve to bring "the black Jews
of Ethiopia" to Israel.
"Operation Moses" (1984-1985) and "Operation Solomon" (1991) by
which Israel (and Jewish American organizations) organized the Falasha
and brought them to live in Israel are too complex to be dealt with in this
volume. However, they placed Ethiopia on the Israeli agenda more inten-
sively than ever. Moreover, they resulted in the establishment in Israel of
an Ethiopian community of some 40,000 new citizens, a substantial size by
Israeli standards. The process of their integration into Israeli society, the
r e l a t i v e s they l e f t b e h i n d ( m a n y of w h o m had long c o n v e r t e d to
Christianity and lost their rights under the "Law of Return") and the energy
of the community's young leadership, suggest that Ethiopian-Israeli rela-
tions will continue to be of much mutual interest.
In spite of its peace with Egypt and the rupture of its relations with
Ethiopia, Israel refused to succumb to the constant pressure brought by
Egypt to return the keys of Deir al-Sultan to the Egyptian Copts. (For his
part, Mengistu, in order to counter the Egyptians, had sent to Jerusalem a
permanent representative of the Ethiopian Ministry of Culture.) In 1987,
when Mengistu sensed he lost his carte blanche with the Soviets, he was
ready to revive the old connection to Israel. Diplomatic relations were
resumed between the two countries in 1989. However, Mengistu allowed
himself to believe that this resumption of relations would be similar to the
1960s, with Israel courting Ethiopia and seeking to take the Soviets' place
as suppliers and advisers to the Ethiopian army. Few Israeli strategists
imagined that they would do any such thing, and many in the establishment
remembered Ethiopia's questionable record of reliability. Those who did
toy with the idea of assisting Mengistu's Ethiopia met with stiff U.S. resis-
tance to any arming of the tyrant. As Mengistu exerted pressure on Israel to
receive planes, sophisticated bombs, and military advisers he became a fig-
ure of mockery in defense circles. Some token shipments of arms were sent
to avoid having the Falasha treated as hostages.
Soon the Israeli-Fa/ai/ia-Mengistu connection would have an impact
on Ethiopia's history: In May 1991, as the forces of the TPLF (allied with
others to form the Ethiopian P e o p l e ' s Revolutionary and Democratic
Forces [EPRDF]) besieged Addis Ababa, Mengistu seemed on the brink of
turning the capital into his own Stalingrad. Because of the simultaneous
Israeli "Operation Solomon," the Americans joined the action with a full
diplomatic effort. Four days after Mengistu was persuaded to flee Addis
Ababa, thirty-five Israeli Air Force and ten El-Al planes landed at Addis
Ababa Airport to take the Falasha to Israel. Under an agreement with the
Americans the EPRDF forces kept their distance. They entered the town
two days later, and the dreaded battle of Addis Ababa was thus avoided.
Israeli and Egyptian interest in Ethiopia is, at this writing, far from
being a matter of amicability and shared interests. The Egyptians are espe-
cially anxious about what they consider Israeli presence near the sources of
the Nile. The Israelis are unhappy with the Egyptian record of working to
undermine Ethio-Israeli relations. The Deir al-Sultan issue adds another
element of uncertainty. There are countless grievances between Addis
Ababa and Jerusalem and between Cairo and Addis Ababa. But given the
lessons of history, the very existence of such a new triangular axis of
regional diplomacy is a development of great significance for Ethiopia.
Egypt and Israel are still the most powerful states of the Middle East. Their
orientation to the West and their mutual recognition is the key to the
Middle East having a chance to survive in the face of the current assault of
Islamic radicalism (or an eventual resurgence of pan-Arabism). The strug-
gle over the future of the Middle East is not yet over, but the receptive atti-
tudes toward Ethiopia in both Cairo and Jerusalem may well carry a
promise of good things to come.
Tolerance for diversity is necessary for both the survival of Ethiopia
and its acceptance within the Middle East. After more than fourteen and a
half centuries of exclusion one can only hope that the great potential may
one day be realized in the economic, cultural, and political spheres for
Ethiopia to be a bridge between the worlds of the Middle East and Africa.
But the threat from the Middle East is no less than its promise. It comes
from the very force that threatens the region's diversity: radical Islam.
In the beginning of this study we noted the theoretical concept of
Ethiopia as seen by today's Islamic radicals. In Chapter 1, we saw a sample
of the vehemently anti-Ethiopian literature produced by those circles in
Cairo during the 1980s. Their theological and historical premise is that the
Aksumite Ethiopians rather than saving the sahaba attacked the pioneers of
Islam, and that ever since that episode the historical role of Ethiopia has
been to join hands with the infidels of Europe to destroy Islam. Their lega-
cy is clear: Ethiopia is an illegitimate entity that should be dismembered
and integrated into the state of Islam. Indeed, an extensive reading of such
c o n t e m p o r a r y material leads to the c o n c l u s i o n that t o d a y ' s radical
Muslims' denial of Ethiopia is expressed in terms far harsher than those
used by pre-modern jihadi anti-Ethiopian movements. Much of the new ter-
minology is in fact a recycling of the writings of Shakib Arslan, Yusuf
Ahmad, and the other Fascist-inspired propagators of the anti-Ethiopian
CONCLUSION 187
campaign during the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935. Publications filled with

such anti-Ethiopian rhetoric in the name of Islam are even produced outside
the Middle East. The message that Ethiopia is illegitimate and is destined to
be dissolved into Islam is being conveyed by a variety of other means.
Qaddafi's 1991 declaration that the Ethiopians are actually Arabs is but one
case in point. The establishment in the Sudan of a radically Islamic govern-
ment, allied since 1992 with the Islamic government of Iran, and commit-
ted (like the Mahdist state in its time) to the spread of Islamic revolution to
the entire Middle East, may well turn anti-Ethiopian literature into anti-
Ethiopian action.
Throughout history, we have seen, Ethiopia faced the three political
identities and forces of the Middle East. The Islamic core empires, for a
variety of reasons, refrained from seriously attempting a conquest of the
Ethiopian citadel. Their orthodox Islam, from the very beginning, proved
tolerant of Ethiopia's existence but denied it acceptance within the region
and condemned it to isolation. Part of the Islamic force—what is known
today as radical Islam—denies Ethiopia's legitimacy.
The modern Arab political force of the Middle East derived much of its
ideas about Ethiopia from radical Islam. Pan-Arabism became a central
idea amid the Abyssinian Crisis, and in the 1950s and the 1960s worked to
undermine Ethiopia by adopting the concept of Eritrea's Arabism. Now
that an independent Eritrea, non-Arab and non-Islamic, finally exists, has
the impact on Ethiopia of the pan-Arabists or the radical Muslims been
spent? We do not yet know.
The third force of the Middle East, that of its being a land of Oriental
diversity, was always receptive to Ethiopia. From the Aksumite kingdom to
the Easternism of Muhammad Lutfi Jum'a, the Egyptian aid during the
Abyssinian Crisis, to the Israeli periphery strategy, and the Boutros-Ghali
Thesis, this receptivity can be seen. Can Ethiopia and the new Eritrea bene-
fit from the current supremacy in the Middle East of the spirit of diversity?
The answer largely depends on their own ability to accept pluralism as
the key to their own survival. Thus, the struggle for diversity has yet to be
won.
HISTORY AND HISTORIANS
As mentioned in the preface, my initial idea was to survey the modem rela-
tions of Ethiopia with the Middle East. But in trying to understand the basic
cultural concepts behind the relevant politics I had to turn to their medieval
roots. Moreover, as both Ethiopian and Middle Eastern civilizations are
strongly history oriented, all modern issues involved fundamental discus-
sions of earlier formative chapters. The legacies of the past—and the argu-
ments over their interpretations—were so central to the making of the
unfolding contemporary, that I could not escape dealing with historical

junctures spreading over fifteen centuries.
To some of the numerous issues along such a long sequence I hope I
made informative and analytic contribution. However, they all deserve far
more intensive research and study, for which there is no lack of source
material. In fact, in most cases I felt that I was just scratching the surface
under which a wealth of evidence, documents of varied natures, waits to be
used. None of these issues—all going to the very heart of Ethiopia's history
and some of importance to the history of the Middle East—is the subject of
a definitive study.
Although I hope to be challenged by new studies and expect to be cor-
rected on various issues, I feel quite sure about the validity of my overall
thesis: that in spite of the pivotal centrality of the Middle East to Ethiopian
history, the eye contact between the two worlds is very problematic. John
Markakis's description of the mosque in Negash, Tigre, housing the pre-
sumed grave of the najashi and invisible from the nearby church of the
very same village, 1 is reflective of the entire story. The Ethiopians, still
captive of the Ahmad Gragn trauma, and the Middle Easterners, still
inclined to "leave alone" their Ethiopian peculiar neighbor, should both
reexamine their mutual concepts. Such reexamination is needed for the
démystification of history as well as to prepare for a better future.
Ethiopian politicians of the last two generations have hardly served to
build such understanding. Haile Selassie, we saw, initiated in 1958 his
Africanization of Ethiopia's foreign policy, culminating with the establish-
ment in 1963 of the Organization of African Unity's headquarters in Addis
Ababa. Though in itself very compatible with Ethiopia's historical identity
the move was no less aimed at artificially disconnecting from the then
Nasserite Middle East. Mengistu missed the opportunity to rebuild relations
with a post-pan-Arab Middle East. Pursuing a pro-Soviet line, a brutal pol-
icy of centralization, and a military solution in Eritrea, he only aggravated
Ethiopia's sense of siege. Both Mengistu and Haile Selassie, like Tewodros
and Yohannes in their times, conceived the Middle East through the Ahmad
Gragn syndrome. One can only hope that a new reality in the Middle East
will justify restoring a modern version of Menelik's relaxed and confident
diplomacy.
In any event the transmission of history's messages is the responsibili-
ty of h i s t o r i a n s . But, u n f o r t u n a t e l y , in our case the g e n e r a t i o n of
Ethiopianists emerging since the 1960s have done little to maintain the
proper scholarly balance between Ethiopia's African and Oriental souls.
Educated in the new, excellent university of Addis Ababa, the African
History Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies of
London University, or in other leading European and U.S. universities, the
overwhelming majority of the new scholars defined Ethiopian history as a
part of the then rising African studies. This in itself, as I mentioned in the
CONCLUSION 189
preface, was needed in order to better understand Ethiopia's ethnic and cul-
tural diversity and in order to better integrate approaches stemming from
social and political sciences into the historiographical texture. In this
respect my generation of Ethiopianists, and the emerging new one, have
scored major achievements, balancing the contributions of the previous
guard, led mostly by Orientalists. But, with only a few exceptions, it was
all done at the expense of the Middle Eastern dimension. The impact of the
Middle East on various internal developments, the study of Islam in
Ethiopia and its contacts with the Middle East, even the role of the Middle
East in Ethiopia's sphere of foreign relations, were all grossly marginal-
ized.
Even the old guard of Ethiopianist Orientalists (Conti Rossini, Cerulli,
Guidi, Trimingham, Ullendorff, and others) paid little attention to the actu-
al history of Middle Eastern-Ethiopian relations. The majority were not
historians of the Middle East, and they worked during a period in which the
Arab Middle East was still under Western occupation. But since the 1950s
the central importance of the Middle East to the making of Ethiopia's histo-
ry, both domestic and external, was renewed and became apparent in nearly
every avenue. It had been central to Ethiopia from its birth.
In an extensive article surveying the recent historiography of Ethiopia
a call was made to break "the old line between the study of Ethiopia and
the rest of Africa . . . [and] draw Ethiopia into the mainstream of African
historiography." 2 If the idea is to further relate Ethiopian history to the
experiences of societies in Kenya, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe at the expense of
researching the historical connections with Egypt, Yemen, Somalia, Israel,
Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Middle East, then I beg to differ.
To overemphasize the Africanism of Ethiopia at the expense of advancing
scholarly awareness of the multidimensional contributions of the Oriental
East, and to further academically marginalize the ever-active legacies of
the Ethio-Middle Eastern common rich past is misleading. Historians
should work for the restoration of direct contact between civilizations.
They should not allow politicians, who may occasionally be interested in
blurring such contact, to reshape history and its meaning. After two thou-
sand years of history Ethiopia struggles today with its own identity. In
searching for a better tomorrow Ethiopians should look back to their diver-
sified past, both African and Oriental.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
1. For the latest discussion of Aksumite culture and its relations to Arabia,
see also the 1991 issue of Henock, Journal of Historical and Philosophical
Thought, Vol. 2, articles by Wosene Yefru, A. K. Irvine, Getachew Haile, A. G
Loundin, and J. Michels. Recent Eritrean and also Arab historians have argued that
Aksum was not the cradle of Ethiopia, but an Eritrean entity. I am not going to enter
into such debate, and the following passages on ancient and medieval history are
based on the mainstream literature.
2. For the history of Aksumite Ethiopia, consult Sergew Hable Sellassie,
Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270 (Addis Ababa, 1972); and A.H.M.
Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia (Oxford, 1935) and later
reprints. For Hebraic and Hellenic cultural influences as well as for a general intro-
duction on related dimensions and aspects see E. Ullendorff, The Ethiopians
(Oxford, 1960). For the most updated analysis of Hebraic and biblical influences on
Aksumite Ethiopia, see S. Kaplan, The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia (New
York, 1992), Chapters 1-2, especially pp. 1 3 ^ 3 .
3. For the relations between the churches of Ethiopia and of Egypt, see Otto
Meinardus, Christian Egypt; Faith and Life (Cairo, 1970), mainly Appendix 4:
"The Coptic Church and the Church of Ethiopia," pp. 369-398.
4. For a fresh and a detailed analysis of the Aksumite involvement in the
affairs of Arabia in the fifth and sixth centuries, see Z. Rubin, "Byzantium and
Southern Arabia—The Policy of Anastasius," in D. H. French and C. S. Lightfoot
(eds.), The Eastern Frontier of the Roman Empire in British Archeological Reports
International Series, 553 (2), 1989, pp. 383-419. The article, based on hitherto
insufficiently noticed Persian sources, argues that the main purpose of the Roman
policy in Arabia in that time was to maintain and consolidate a commercial route to
the Far East, a route that would circumvent the Persian Sasanian monarchy and
enable Roman trade, especially the silk trade, to avoid the exorbitant customs duties
imposed by the Sasanians. In this policy the eastern Roman Empire shared a com-
mon interest with the Ethiopian kings of Aksum. This, Rubin argued, was the back-
ground to the conversion of the Aksumite Empire to Christianity and to the persecu-
tion of Christians in the realm of Himyar in Yemen by its Jewish king Dhu Nuwas.
The attempts of this king to establish an independent block between the great pow-
ers caused concern in both Constantinople and the Sasanian kingdom. The
Aksumites, already long involved in the affairs of Himyar, invaded in the year 524
the kingdom of Himyar in accordance with Roman policy. (This was the second or
even third invasion of Himyar by the Aksumites.)
5. See Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical
Enquiry, (New York, 1990), Chapter 3.
191
192 NOTES
6. Ibid., p. 24. See also Yusuf Ahmad, Al-Islam ft al-habasha (Cairo, 1935),
p. 7.
7. Lewis, Race and Slavery, pp. 90-91.
8. See Sadiq Basha al-Mu'ayyad al-'Azm, Rihlat al-habasha (Cairo, 1908),
p. 319.
9. See Husein Ahmed, "The Historiography of Islam in Ethiopia," Journal of
Islamic Studies, 3(1), 1992, pp. 15-46; Shehim Kesim, "The Influence of Islam on
the Afar," Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington, 1982, p. 45.
10. See details and analysis in Muhammad 'Abd al-Fatah 'Aliyyan, Al-Hijra
ila al-habasha wa-munaqashat qadiyyat Islam al-najashi (Cairo, 1987); also Yusuf
Ahmad, Al-Islam fi al-habasha (Cairo, 1935), pp. 11-20.
11. The following passage on the sahaba in Aksum is based on A. Guillaume,
The Life of Muhammad, Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Oxford,
1955); al-'Azm, Rihlat al-habasha: J. S. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia (second
impression, London, 1965); Hable Sellassie, Ethiopian History; and E. Van
Donzel's article "Al-Nadjashi" in his edited Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden, 1993),
pp. 862-863. For more details and compilation of medievel Islamic writings on the
episode see also: Ahmad al-Hifni al-Qina'i al-Azhari, Kitab al-Jawahir al-hisan fi
ta'rikh al-hubshan, Cairo 1905.
12. For the full list see al-'Azm, Rihlat al-habasha. pp. 193-194.
13. The story summarized here is according to the Islamic medieval sources.
Various modern scholars dispute substantial parts of it. For a critical version see
Montgomery Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (Oxford, 1961), pp. 65-70.
Watt, and many others, accepts the story of persecutions against the sahaba but
contends that Muhammad had presumably other plans and ideas in sending them to
Aksum, one being mobilizing the Aksumite might against Mecca.
14. See A. Guillaume, A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Oxford,
1955), p. 657.
15. On his names see more in 'Aliyyan, Al-Hijra, p.74.
16. Most Western modern historians dispute the story about two hegiras to
Aksum. See Watt, Muhammad, pp. 65-70.
17. There is no consistency as to their number; the figure quoted is from al-
'Azm, Rihlat al-habasha. In 'Aliyyan, Al-Hijra, for example, the number is 101. See
a list of their names on pp. 15-16. According to Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, the
number of men ("apart from the little children") was 83. See also Guillaume, Ibn
Ishaq's Sirat, p 148.
18. See Guillaume, Ibn Ishaq's Sirat, pp. 148-149; also Hable Sellassie,
Ethiopian History, pp. 182-183.
19. See E. C e r u l l i , " E t h i o p i a ' s R e l a t i o n s with the M u s l i m W o r l d , " in
Cambridge History of Africa: Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century, p.
575.
20. See details in al-'Azm, Rihlat al-habasha, pp. 312-313.
21. Ibid., p. 196.
22. 'Aliyyan, Al-Hijra, pp. 7 7 - 8 1 ; the last quotation from Ibn Kathir, Al-
Bidaya wal-nihaya (Cairo, ND). But see Watt, Muhammad, pp. 194-195, arguing
that such versions of Muhammad's letters must have been fabricated later in order
to justify universal jihad. Muhammad, in his time, Watt contended, was not pursu-
ing such policy, and his letter to the Ethiopian king must have been on matters such
as his marriage to 'Urara Habiba and the call for the other members of the sahaba to
return to his camp.
23. See also E. Van Donzel, A Yemenite Embassy to Ethiopia, 1647-1649
(Stuttgart, 1986), p. 242, Note 7.
NOTES 193
24. See also Ibn Ishaq's version of the correspondence between Muhammad
and the najashi in Guillaume, Ibn Ishaq's Sirat, p. 657.
25. Of the Western historians it seems that only Wallis Budge, the British his-
torian, accepted that the najashi did convert to Islam. The najashi did so, Budge
argued, to avoid provoking the power of Islam and to thus enable Christianity to
flourish in Ethiopia. See E. A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia (London, 1928,
rep. New York, 1970), pp. 270-273. For refuting the Muslims' contention that the
"nadjashi" adopted Islam see Van Donzel, "Al-Nadjashi," pp. 862-863; and also J.
Cuoq, L'Islam en Ethiopie: Des origines au XVI siecle (Paris, 1981), pp. 32-35.
26. According to Ibn Ishaq; "Ja'far b. Muhammad told me on the authority of
his father that the Abyssinians assembled and said to the negus, 'you have forsaken
our religion,' and they revolted against him. So he sent to Ja'far and his companions
and prepared ships for them, saying, 'Embark in these and be ready. If I am defeat-
ed, go where you please; if I am victorious, then stay where you are.' Then he took
paper and wrote, 'He testifies that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is
His slave and apostle; and he testifies that Jesus, son of Mary, is His slave, His
apostle. His spirit and His word, which He cast into Mary.' Then he put it in his
gown near the right shoulder and went out to the Abyssinians, who were drawn out
in array to meet him. He said, 'O people, have I not the best claim among you?'
'Certainly,' they said. 'And what do you think of my life among you?' 'Excellent.'
'Then what is your trouble?' 'You have forsaken our religion and assert that Jesus
is a slave.' 'Then what do you say about Jesus?' 'We say that he is the Son of
God.' The negus put his hand upon his breast over his gown, (signifying), 'He testi-
fies that Jesus, the Son of Mary, was no more than this.' By this he meant what he
had written, but they were content and went away. News of this reached the
Prophet, and when the negus died he prayed over him and begged that his sins
might be forgiven." See A. Gillaume, Ibn Ishaq's Sirat, pp. 154-155.
27. Cerulli, "Ethiopia's Relations."
28. See al-'Azm's Rihlat, p. 320.
29. For a short summary of Islamic presence on Dahlak Islands at that period
see Cerulli, "Ethiopia's Relations."
30. For a discussion on the painting "The Family of Kings" found in the ruins
of Qusayr 'Amra (50 miles east of Amman), which was produced between 712 and
750 A.D., see R. Ettinghausen, Arab Painting (Geneva 1977), pp. 30-31, 190; Oleg
Grabar, "The Painting of the Six Kings at Qusayr 'Amrah" in Ars, no. 1 (1954), pp.
185-187; K. A. Creswell, Early Muhammedan Architecture (London 1932), vol. 1,
pp. 263-264; and Hana Taragan, The Umayyad Sculpture, Ph.D. thesis, Tel Aviv
University, 1991, p. 191. While the early scholars like Creswell interpreted the
painting as implying submission to the 'Umayyads, the more recent scholarship
found the painting to be of a conciliatory character, reflecting respect to these rulers
as members of "the family of kings," from which the 'Umayyads themselves want-
ed to derive legitimacy. I am indebted to Dr. Taragan of Tel Aviv University for her
help.
31. The hadith is first found in Abu Dawud, Sunan Abi Dawud. See Van
Donzel, "Al-Nadjashi," in Encyclopedia of Islam, 1993. Suliman Abu Dawud died
in 888.
32. See Hussein Ahmed, "The Historiography of Islam in Ethiopia," Journal
of Islamic Studies, 3(1), 1992, pp. 15-46; see also I. Guidi's article "Abyssinia," in
First Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden, 1987); and Jones and Monroe, A History of
Ethiopia, p. 44.
33. "Red" in Arab tradition meant people of swarthy skin color; in Ethiopian
tradition "red" [qay] meant light-skinned Ethiopians.
194 NOTES
34. Lewis, Race and Slavery, p. 34.

35. Ibid., p. 33.
36. Ibid., p. 35.
37. See more in M. Abir, Ethiopia and the Red Sea (London, 1980), pp. 7 - 9 .
38. Lewis, Race and Slavery, Chapters 5 and 7.
39. See D. Levine, Greater Ethiopia (Chicago, 1974), pp. 4 3 ^ 4 , 151-152.
40. See Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore,
1955), Chapter 12, "Neutrality."
41. Van Donzel, "Al-Nadjashi," pp. 862-863.
42. Khadduri, War and Peace, p. 267.
43. See M. Abir, "Trade and Christian-Muslim Relations in Post-Medieval
Ethiopia," in R. L. Hess (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on
Ethiopian Studies (Session B) (Chicago, 1978), pp. 411-414.
44. An interview with Shaikh Nimr al-Darwish, Kafr Qasim, March, 1994. At
the time of the interview the shaikh was in the middle of preparing for publication a
pamphlet on the legacy of the sahaba-najashi story. The Ethiopian precedence
legitimizing recognition of a non-Islamic yet benevolent government is the subject
of numerous articles by Shaikh Nimr in the movement's publications, Sawt al-haqq
and al-Sirat.
45. M u h a m m a d 'Abd a l - F a t t a h ' A l i y y a n , Al-Hijra ila al-Habasha wa-
munaqashat qadiyyat islam al-najashi (Dar al-turath, Cairo, 1987).
46. See a bibliographical survey of the literature relevant to the question of the
najashi conversion, in Hussein Ahmad, "The Historiography of Islam in Ethiopia,"
Journal of Islamic Studies, 3(1), 1992, pp. 15^16.
47. 'Aliyyah, Al-Hizra, pp. 77-81, 85, 93, 97.
48. Ibid., pp. 8 - 9 , 9 7 , 106, 111.
49. See the quotation from Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah in Note 26.
50. 'Aliyyah, Al-Hizra, see pp. 103, 106, 108.
51. 'Abd al-Halim Muhammad Rajab, Al-'Alaqat al-siyasiyya bayna muslimi
al-Zayla' wa-nusara al-habasha fi al-'usur al-wusta (The Institute of African
Research and Studies, Cairo University, 1985).
52. Ibid., pp. 3, 7. 254.
53. See Ahmad al-Hifni al-Qina'i al-Azhari, Kitab al-jawahir al-hisan fi
ta'rikh al-hubshan (Cairo, 1904), p. 4, and introductory note by Isma'il Rafit ("A
history teacher at al-Azhar").
CHAPTER 2
1. Hable Sellassie, Ethiopian History, Chapters 9 and 10; also Taddesse

Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270-1527 (Oxford, 1972), pp. 31-34.
2. For a discussion of Ethiopia's diversity and its internal cultural-political
dynamism in historical perspective see Donald Levine, Greater Ethiopia (Chicago,
1974).
3. See Sadiq Al-'Azm, Rihlat al-habasha, p. 172; 'Abdallah Husayn, Al-
mas'ala al-habashiyya (Cairo, 1935), p. 20; I. Guidi, II Fetha Nagast o Legislazione
deiRe (Rome, 1899).
4. See analysis in Levine, Greater Ethiopia, pp. 92-108.
5. See the most recent analysis in Marilin E. Heldman, "Architectural
Symbolism, Sacred Geography and the Ethiopian Church," Journal of Religion in
Africa, Vol. 3 (1992), pp. 222-241.
NOTES 195
6. See more details in Otto Meinardus, Christian Egypt; Faith and Life
(Cairo, 1970), pp. 369-399.
7. The relevant modern data are as follows: Some 84 billion cubic meters of
water reach the Aswan area annually, some 10 billion having evaporated en route.
Of these 94 billion the Blue Nile supplies 54, the Atbara 11, and the White Nile 29
billion. The data for the four months of Egypt's summer floods are: Of a total 76
billion cubic meters 50 stem from the Blue Nile, 11 from the Atbara, and 15 from
the White Nile. See Arnon Sofer and Nurith Kleaot, Water Plans in the Middle
East, a Study Presented to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Haifa University, 1988 (in
Hebrew), quoting M. Shain, Hydrology of the Nile Basin (Amsterdam, 1985).
8. On the relations between the Zagwe kings and Egypt see more in Hable
Sellassie, Ethiopian History, pp. 268-270.
9. The most authoritative study of the period in Ethiopia, containing also a
wealth of analyzed information on external relations, is Tamrat, Church and State.
10. See details and analysis in M. Abir, Ethiopia and the Red Sea (London,
1980), p. 6.
11. See J. Plante, "The Ethiopian Embassy to Cairo of 1443," Journal of
Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 13(2), pp. 133-140.
12. See a summary of Islamic literature on the Mamluks and the Ethiopians in
'Abd al-Halim Rajab, Al-'Alaqat, pp. 38-42. See also Elizabeth-Dorothea Hect,
"Ethiopia Threatens to Block the Nile," Azania, 23, 1988, pp. 1-11.
13. See also Zahir Riyad, Misr wa-Ifriqya (Cairo, 1976), pp. 81-104, "The
Mamluk Period as the Climax of the Ethiopian-Egyptian Connection." Also, Zahir
Riyad, Al-Islam fi Ityubya, pp. 95-152.
14. Yusuf Ahmad, Al-Islam fl al-Habasha, p. 32; Abir, Ethiopia and the Red
Sea, p. 29.
15. See 'Abd al-Halim Rajab, Al-'Alaqat, p. 36, quoting Ibn al-Athir.
16. For a detailed analysis of the commercial aspect behind the history of the
conflict between the Islamic sultanates of southern Ethiopia and the Christian king-
dom of Ethiopia see Abir, Ethiopia and the Red Sea, especially Chapter 1. Also, R.
Pankhurst, A Social History of Ethiopia, from Early Medieval Times to the Rise of
Emperor Tewodros II (Addis Ababa, 1990).
17. See Yusuf Ahmad, Al-Islam ft al-habasha (Cairo, 1935), p. 68. For more
on Massawa and Zeila see R. Pankhurst, History of Ethiopian Towns, from the
Middle Ages to the Early Nineteenth Century (Wiesbaden, 1982), pp. 54-64, 80-94.
18. The paragraphs above and below are based on Enrico Cerulli, I'lslam di
Ieri e di Oggi (Rome, 1971). This volume combines much of Cerulli's writing on
the subject, ten articles, assembled in the section "L'Islam in Ethiopia," pp. 99-394.
For a condensed summary of his main theses see Cerulli, "Ethiopia's Relations with
the Muslim World" in Cambridge History of Africa, Africa from the Seventh to the
Eleventh Century, pp. 575-585. Also Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, pp. 58-76,
138-143; I. Guidi, "Abyssinia," in First Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden, 1987);
Tamrat, Church and State and " E t h i o p i a , the Red Sea and the H o r n " in the
Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 3, edited by R. Oliver, pp. 99-182 ; Zahir Riyad,
Al-Islam fi Ityubya (Cairo 1964), pp. 49-94; J. Cuoq, L'Islam en Ethiopie (Paris,
1981), pp. 119-192. Also Ulrich Braukamper, "Islamic Principalities in Southeast
Ethiopia Between the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Centuries," Ethiopianist Notes, Vol.
1(1), 1977, pp. 17-55, and Vol. 1(2), pp. 1-42. Also the detailed description in
Rajab, Al-'Alaqat.
19. See Abir, Ethiopia and the Red Sea, especially pp. 19-23.
20. For a succinct analysis of such "northern policy" and the bahr negash see
F. A. Dombrowski, Ethiopia's Access to the Red Sea (Leiden, 1985), pp. 11-15.
196 NOTES
21. See Abraham Demoz, "Moslems and Islam in Ethiopic Literature,"

Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 1972, 10(1), pp. 1-12; G.W.B Huntingford (ed.), The
Glorious Victories of Amda Seyon, King of Ethiopia (Oxford, 1965), pp. 57-58.
22. See E. Cernili, "Il Sultanato dello Scioa nel Seolo XIII Secondo un Nuovo
Ducumento Storico" in his L'Islam di Ieri e di Oggi, pp. 207-243; Yusuf Ahmad,
Ai-Islam fi al-habasha (Cairo, 1935), pp. 23-28.
23. See E. Cernili, "L'Islam Etiopico" in his L'Islam di Ieri e di Oggi, pp.
113-133.
24. 'Abd al-Halim Rajab in his interpretation of medieval history in the Horn
called the Muslims "Zayla'iyyun," after the town of Zayla', and in distinction from
the habasha who were the Christians.
25. See, for example, an article under that title by the greatest Islamic oppo-
nent of Ethiopia in the twentieth century—Shakib Arslan—in his edited translation
into Arabic of L. Stoddard's work, Hadir al-'alam al-islami (Cairo, 1933), Vol. 3,
pp. 78-119.
CHAPTER 3
1. B. G. Martin, "Arab Migrations to East Africa," International Journal of

African Historical Studies, Vol. 7(3), 1974, pp. 367-390. Also his "Mahdism,
Muslim Clerics, and Holy Wars in Ethiopia, 1300-1600" in H. Marcus (ed.),
Proceedings of the First United States Conference on Ethiopian Studies, 1973 (East
Lansing, 1975), pp. 91-100.
2. Rajab, Al-'alaqat, pp. 4, 67-76, 221-226.
3. See Chihab ed-Din Ahmed Ben Abd el-Qader (Arab Faqih), Futuh al-
habasha—Histoire de la Conquete de L'Abyssinie (Trans, and ed. R. Basset), Paris,
1897.
4. See R. Basset's edition of 'Arab Faqih's Futuh al-Habasha, pp. 29-30;
also 'Arab Faqih (Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jayzani), Tuhfat al-
zaman aw Futuh al-habasha, edited by Fahim Muhammad Shalut (Cairo, 1974),
especially Chapter 4, "Miracles that Happened to the Imam." Also J. Couq, L'Islam
en Ethiopie (Paris, 1981), pp. 221-222.
5. In his Islam in Ethiopia the Egyptian scholar Zahir Riyad analysed the
whole chapter of Gragn's conquest of Ethiopia under the title of thawra, a revolu-
tion in modern Arabic. See Riyad, Al-Islam fi Ityubya, Chapter 5.
6. See a s u m m a r y of the c o n t r o v e r s y in Hussein A h m e d , " T h e
Historiography of Islam in Ethiopia," Journal of Islamic Studies, 3(1), 1992, pp.
15-46.
7. For Abir's interpretation of the demographic-economic aspect see his
Ethiopia and the Red Sea, pp. 87-92.
8. For an Ethiopian interpretation of the conflict with Ahmad Gragn see
Takla-Tsadiq Makuriya, Ya'ityopia tarik, ka'atse Lebna Dengel eska atse Tewodros
(Addis Ababa, 1953 E.C., A.D. 1961), pp. 71-196. The volume covers more than
three hundred years of history in 455 pages, and the Gragn story consumes nearly a
third of it. See also his later, expanded version, YaGran Ahmad Warara (Addis
Ababa, 1966 E.C., A.D. 1974).
9. See also J. Couq, L'Islam en Ethiopie, pp. 242-244.
10. Sylvia Pankhurst, Ethiopia, A Cultural History (London, 1955), p. 329.
11. See Abraham Demoz, Moslems and Islam.
12. B. G. Martin, Arab Migrations.
13. Cengiz Orhonlu, Habesh Eyaleti (Istanbul, 1974), pp. 26-30.
NOTES 197
14. J. R. B l a c k b u r n , " T h e O t t o m a n P e n e t r a t i o n of Y e m e n , " Archivum

Ottomanicum, Vol. 6, 1980, pp. 5 5 - 1 0 0 .
15. See analysis in Dombrowski, Ethiopia's Access, pp. 16-20.
16. The extensive summary of Futuh al-habasha was included in the chapter
"Muslimu al-habasha" (The Muslims of Ethiopia), by Shakib Arslan, in the Arabic
edition of Lothrop S t u d d a r d ' s book Hadir al-'alam al-Islami (Cairo, A.H. 1352,
A.D. 1933), pp. 7 8 - 1 1 9 . The above quotation on the vision in which the Prophet
said it was G o d ' s will that Gragn would "bring peace [and Islam] to Ethiopia" is on
p. 88.
17. Al-'Azm, Rihlat al-habasha, p. 186.
18. Orhonlu, Habesh Eyaleti, pp. 2 6 - 3 0 .
19. See Rajab, Al-'alaqat, pp. 197, 207, 2 2 6 - 2 3 9 , 256.
20. The most detailed study on the subject of the Ottomans and their Ethiopian
Province enterprise is the work of Orhonlu, Habesh Eyaleti. Many of the details
below are from that book. I am grateful to my student Elda Yerushalmi for helping
me with the Turkish text. The definition of habesh is on p. 21 of that book.
21. On Debaroa see R. Pankhurst, History of Ethiopian Towns, pp. 6 5 - 7 2 .
22. Orhonlu, Habesh Eyaleti, pp. 3 0 - 5 0 .
23. Ibid., pp. 4 8 - 5 8 .
24. The following reconstruction of the relations between the Ottomans and
the Bahr Negash is based on Orhonlu, Habesh Eyaleti; Carlo Conti Rossini, "La
Guerra Turco-Abbisina del 1578," Oriente Moderno, Vol. 1, 1922, pp. 6 3 4 - 6 3 6 ,
6 8 4 - 6 9 1 , and Vol. 2, pp. 4 8 - 5 7 ; Also E. Van Donzel, "Les Ottomans et L'Ethiopie
au XVIIe siecle," a paper presented at an Ottomanists' conference, Paris, April
1992, and his article " M a s s a w a " in his edited Encyclopedia of Islam. I am most
grateful to him for his help.
25. This is how Conti Rossini titled his above-mentioned detailed article.
26. M o r e on the s u b j e c t is given in Abir, Ethiopia and the Red Sea, pp.
124-130, 142-150; Dombrowski, Ethiopia's Access, pp. 19-24.
27. Abir, Ethiopia and the Red Sea, p. 127.
28. Van Donzel, "Les Ottomans."
29. See Orhonlu, Habesh Eyaleti, pp. 5 8 - 6 1 .
30. See B. L e w i s , Race and Slavery in the Middle East ( O x f o r d , 1990),
Illustrations 17 and 18.
31. Van Donzel, " M a s s a w a " ; T r i m i n g h a m , Islam in Ethiopia, pp. 9 9 - 1 0 2 ;
Dombrowski, Ethiopia's Access, pp. 2 9 - 3 0 .
32. S e e R . P a n k h u r s t , " S o m e N o t e s on t h e H i s t o r i c a l a n d E c o n o m i c
Geography of the Mesewa Area ( 1 5 2 0 - 1 8 8 5 ) , " Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Vol.
13(1), 1975, pp. 8 9 - 1 1 6 . T h e f a m o u s O t t o m a n traveller, Evliya Celebi, visited
Massawa in 1672. But unlike the detailed and insightful descriptions he dedicated
to other regions of the Ottoman empire the passages on Massawa and the province
of Habesh are quite dull. See Evliya Celebi, Siyahatname (Istanbul, 1938), vol. 10,
pp. 9 4 2 - 9 4 6 .
33. See E. Van Donzel, Foreign Relations of Ethiopia, 1642-1700 (Leiden,
1979), pp. 1 - 3 8 ; also his "Correspondence Between Fasiladas and the Imams of
Y e m e n , " in G. Goldenberg (ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference
of Ethiopian Studies (Rotterdam, 1986), pp. 9 1 - 1 0 0 . Also E. Van Donzel, A Yemeni
Embassy to Ethiopia 1647-1649 (Stuttgart, 1986).
34. See also Dombrowski, Ethiopia and the Red Sea, pp. 3 0 - 3 1 .
35. Van Donzel, A Yemeni Embassy, pp. 2 3 5 - 2 4 0 .
36. This is a main thesis of his Ethiopia: The Era of the Princes (London,
1968).
37. See Abir's Ethiopia and the Red Sea, pp. xix, xx.
198 NOTES
38. See Takla Tsadiq Makuriya, YaGran Ahmad Warara (Addis Ababa, 1966
E.C.), p. 11.
CHAPTER 4
1. J. S. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia (London, 1965), p. 101.

2. See Braukamper, Islamic Principalities, p. 28.
3. On Islam in Ethiopia during the period under discussion see inter alia:
T r i m i n g h a m , Islam in Ethiopia, pp. 9 8 - 1 1 4 ; Cerulli, " L ' I s l a m E t i o p i c o , " and
"L'Islam in Africa Orientale" in his L'Islam di leri e di Oggi (Rome, 1971); Hussein
A h m e d , "The Historiography of Islam in Ethiopia," Journal of Islamic Studies,
1992, pp. 15-46; M. Abir, "Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa," in R. Gray (ed.), The
Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 ( C a m b r i d g e , 1975), pp. 5 3 7 - 5 7 7 ; Abir,
Ethiopia and the Red Sea; Abir, The Era of the Princes; A. Demoz, "Muslims and
Islam in E t h i o p i a n L i t e r a t u r e , " Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 1972, pp. 1 - 1 2 ;
Abussamad H. Ahmad, "The Gondar Muslim Minority in Ethiopia: The Story Up to
1935," in Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 9(1), 1988, pp.
76-85.
4. See E. Van Donzel, A Yemeni Embassy to Ethiopia, ¡647-1649 (Stuttgart,
1986), which is an English-annotated translation of al-Haymi al-Hasan bin Ahmad,
Sirat al-habasha. An Arabic edition was prepared by Murad Kamil (Cairo, 1958).
See also E. Van Donzel, "Correspondence between Fasiladas and the Imams of
Y e m e n , " in G i d e o n G o l d e n b e r g (ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth International
Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Rotterdam, 1986), pp. 9 1 - 1 0 0 .
5. The above is based on John Markakis, Ethiopia: Anatomy of a Traditional
Polity (Oxford, 1974), pp 6 2 - 6 7 ; C. H. Walker, The Abyssinian (London, 1928), pp.
18, 71; E. Ullendorff, The Ethiopians (Oxford, 1960), p. 114; and M. Volpe, "Unity
Through Enmity; Ethiopian Christian Attitudes Towards Muslims," a draft article. I
am grateful to Dr. Volpe for letting me see this draft.
6. See Zahir Riyad, Al-Islam ft Ityubya (Cairo, 1964); the main thesis of the
book is that relations between Muslims and Christians in pre-modern Ethiopia were
good and relaxed; and were spoiled only due to external influences.
7. See Markakis, Ethiopia, p. 62n.
8. S e e a l s o M o h a m m e d H a s s e n , The Oromo of Ethiopia: A History,
1570-1860 ( N e w York, 1990). This is the most recent research on the O r o m o ,
though controversial in claiming that the Oromos always lived in the territories of
southern Ethiopia.
9. The Ethiopian monk Bahrey wrote in 1593 A History of the Galla. He
explained his purpose: "To make known the number of their tribes, their readiness
to kill people, and the brutality of their manners. If anyone should say . . . 'why has
he written a history of bad people?' . . . I would answer by saying, 'search in the
books and you will find that the history of M o h a m m e d and the Moslem kings has
been written and they are our enemies in religion.'" See "Ye-Galla Tarik," translat-
ed by C. F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford, in Some Records of Ethiopia,
1593-1646 (Cambridge, 1954). See more in P. Henze, The Horn of Africa: From
War to Peace (London, 1991), pp. 2 3 - 2 4 .
10. See Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, pp. 112-113, 234-235, 2 4 2 - 2 4 3 . See
also B. G. Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa (Cambridge,
1976), Chapter 7.
11. See "Eritrean Colony, Historical Notes, on Muslim Religion and Division
of Islam in Eritrea" by Adorizzi Dante (Asmara, 1916), translated and edited by F.
NOTES 199
Lijian, in Asmara University, ¡AS Research work (Asmara, 1986); Trimingham,

Islam in Ethiopia, pp. 244-245.
12. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, p. 252.
13. See a summary in S. Rubenson, "Ethiopia and the Horn" in J. F. Flint
(ed.), The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 5 (Cambridge, 1976), pp 51-98.
14. See B. Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Chapter 11. For more
on Islam and slaves in Ethiopia see R. Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia
(Addis Ababa, 1968), Chapter 3; R. Austen, "The Islamic Red Sea Slave Trade: An
Effort at Quantification," in R. Hess (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International
Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Chicago, 1978), pp. 433-468.
15. See also R. Caulk, "Harar Town and Its Neighbors in the Nineteenth
Century," Journal of African History, Vol. 18(3), 1979, pp. 369-386.
16. See U. Braukamper, "The Islamization of the Arsi-Oromo" in Taddese
Beyene (ed.), Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian
Studies (Addis Ababa and Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 767-777.
17. Personal communication from Professor Getachaw Haile, 1993.
18. Concerning Shaikh 'Ali Musa' mosque in Gondar see S. Rubenson (ed.),
Correspondence and Treaties, ¡800-1854 in Acta Aethiopica, Vol. I (Lund, 1987),
p. 93.
19. Analysis and details in Abir, Era of Princes.
20. In the following chapters, which include references to Egyptian and other
Middle Eastern modern developments relevant to our discussion, I shall avoid men-
tioning the sources on internal Middle Eastern issues. They are too numerous and
mostly have little to do with Ethiopian history. Much of that material is derived
f r o m my two Hebrew-language series: Introduction to Modern History of the
Middle East (five volumes) (Tel Aviv, 1987-1990), and The Middle East Between
the World Wars (six volumes, the first three, titled The Middle East During the
1920s, already published) (Tel Aviv, 1991-1993). (The three volumes on the 1930s
up to 1945 are in preparation.)
21. See R. Pankhurst, History of Ethiopian Towns, p. 243.
22. See M. Abir, "The Origins of the Ethiopian-Egyptian Border Problem in
the Nineteenth Century," Journal of African History, Vol. 8(3), 1967, pp. 4 4 3 ^ 6 1 ;
Abir, Era of Princes, p. 102; F. Dombrowski, Ethiopia's Access, pp. 44-48. Also
Muhammad Rajab Harraz, Iritriya al-haditha, 1557-1941 (Cairo, 1974), pp. 3 5 -
53.
23. See Ras 'Ali's letters to Muhammad 'Ali, in Rubenson, Correspondence
and Treaties ¡800-1854, especially his letter of 7 June 1844, pp. 94-95. Also Ras
'Ali to Ahmad Mankili, same day, pp. 9 6 - 9 7 . See also A l e m e Eshete, " U n e
Ambassade du Ras Ali en Egypte; 1852," Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 9(1),
1971, pp. 1-8.
24. See Abir, "Border Problem."
25. S. Rubenson, The Survival of Ethiopian ¡ndependence (London, 1976), p.
99.
26. Abir, "Border Problem." Also O. Meinardus, Christian Egypt: Faith and
Life (Cairo, 1970), pp. 389-390.
27. For the latest historiographical survey and discussion of Tewodros see
Shiferaw Bekele, "Kasa and Kasa: The State of Their Historiography" in Taddese
Beyene, R. Pankhurst, and Shiferaw Bekele (eds.), Kasa and Kasa: Papers on the
Lives, Times and ¡mages of Tewodros II and Yohannes IV (¡855-¡889) (Addis
Ababa, 1990), pp. 289-347. For a condensed yet thorough analysis of Tewodros
and Ethiopian history from his period to the fall of Haile Selassie see Bahru Zewde,
History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1974 (London, 1991).
28. S. Rubenson, "Shaikh Kassa Hailu" in S. Rubenson (ed.), Proceedings of
200 NOTES
the Seventh International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa, Uppsala,

and Michigan, 1984), pp. 279-285.
29. Rubenson, Ibid.: "In all probability Arabic was used in seals as well as in
letters simply because it was convenient to do so. The chance that the message
would be read and understood outside Ethiopia was greater when Arabic, rather
than Gi'z or Amharic, was used."
30. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, pp. 117-118.
31. D. Crummey, "Tewodros as a Reformer and a Modernizer," Journal of
African History, Vol. 10(2), 1969, pp. 4 5 7 ^ 6 9 .
32. See Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, p. 119. For a slightly different version
from the P.R.O., see S. Rubenson, "Ethiopia and the Horn" in J. E. Flint, The
Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 5 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 51-98.
33. See Harraz, Iritriya al-haditha, pp. 53-59.
34. Ibid., pp. 57-59.
35. See Rubenson, The Survival, p. 237; Chapter 4 (pp. 172-287) provides the
most authoritative analysis of Tewodros's relations with the Ottomans and Egypt.
36. P. M. Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent (Ithaca, 1966), p. 192.
CHAPTER 5
1. For details consult, among others, G. Douin, Histoire du Regne du

Khedive Ismail, especially Vol. 3 (Cairo, 1933-1941); Sven Rubenson, The
Survival of Ethiopian Independence (London, 1976), pp. 288-406; W. M. Dye,
Muslim Egypt and Christian Abyssinia (New York, 1880); Muhammad Rifat Bek,
Jabr al-Kasr fi al-khilas min al-asr (Cairo, 1896); H. Erlich, Ethiopia and the
Challenge of Independence (Boulder, 1986), Chapter 2; Hesseltine and Wolf, The
Blue and the Gray on the Nile (Chicago, 1961).
2. On Yohannes' history see two different versions by Ethiopian scholars:
Zewde Gabre-Selassie, Yohannes IV of Ethiopia (Oxford, 1975), and Takla-Tsadiq
Makuriya, Atse Yohannes ena Yaltyopia Andnat (Emperor Yohannes and Ethiopia's
unity), (Addis Ababa, 1989). On Yohannes's way to power see Bairu Tafia, A
Chronicle of Emperor Yohannes IV (1872-1889) (Stuttgart, 1977). See more on
Yohannes and the period in H. Erlich, Ethiopia and Eritrea During the Scramble
for Africa, A Political Biography of Ras Alula, 1875-1897 (East Lansing and Tel
Aviv, 1982).
3. On the Ethio-Egyptian border relations in the period under discussion see
Erlich, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Chapters 1-6.
4. Perhaps the most critical assessment of Yohannes as a diplomat was pro-
duced by a British visitor to his court: G. Portal, who wrote My Mission to
Abyssinia (London, 1892). Working in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.,
I found in the catalogue that an Arabic translation of that book was published in
Cairo in 1984 (titled: "Al-Ba'tha al-Injliziyya ila malik al-habasha, Yuhanna, sanat
1887"). Why was such a book reproduced for the Egyptian public in 1984? I wanted
to discuss it later in the proper context, but unfortunately the book itself (with, most
probably, an introduction by the translator) was lost.
5. See Rubenson, Survival; H. Marcus, The Life and Times of Menelik II
(Oxford, 1975).
6. This is the title of the relevant chapter in P. J. Vatikiotis, The History of
Egypt: From Muhammad 'Ali to Sadat (Second Edition, London, 1980).
7. For a discussion of Isma'il as continuing the Egyptian tradition of expan-
sion rather than as heralding Western imperialism see G. Talhami, Suakin and
Massawa under Egyptian Rule, 1865-1885 (St. Louis, 1979). See also her article
NOTES 201
" M a s s a w a u n d e r K h e d i v e I s m a ' i l , " in R. H e s s (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth

International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Chicago, 1978), pp. 4 8 1 - 4 9 4 .
8. See H. Erlich, Student and University in Twentieth-Century Egyptian
Politics ( L o n d o n , 1989), Introduction and C h a p t e r 1. M o r e details on Egyptian
Copts serving in Menelik's educational effort are given in Zahir Riyyad, Misr wa-
if riqya (Cairo, 1976), p. 168.
9. The comparison below between Alula and Ahmad 'Urabi is based mainly
on my book on Ras Alula (Ethiopia and Eritrea) and the following on 'Urabi: W. S.
Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (reprint, Cairo, 1980); N.
K e d d i e , Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani ( L o s A n g e l e s , 1972); 'Isa Salih, Al-
Thawra al-'Urabiyya (Beirut, 1972); 'Abd a l - R a h m a n al-Rafi'i, Al-Thawra al-
'Urabiyya wal-ihtilal al-Injilizi (Cairo, 1949); 'Urabi Ahmad, Mudhakirat Ahmad
'Urabi Basha (Cairo, 1975).
10. Al-Sayyid Ahmad 'Urabi al-Husayni al-Misri, Kashf al-sitar 'an sirr al-
asrar (Cairo, 1929), pp. 3 0 - 5 0 .
11. See Muhammad R a j a b Harraz, Iritriya al-haditha, Introduction and p. 146.
12. Muhammad Rif at, Jabr al-kasr fl al-khilas min al-Asr (Cairo, 1896).
13. See Ahmad al-Hifni al-Qin'i al-Azhari, Kitab al-jawahir al-hisan fi ta 'rikh
al-hubshan (Cairo, 1905). In the history and geography chapter there is no signifi-
cant mention of Ahmad Gragn's conquest of Ethiopia (pp. 16-17); Tewodros is dis-
cussed with little reference to his conflict with Islam (pp. 19-20); and Yohannes's
policy against Islam is mentioned but not elaborated (pp. 2 1 - 2 3 ) . Altogether the
book, written from an Islamic religious point of view, refrains from passing judg-
ment on the issue of Ethiopia's legitimacy.
14. Yusuf A h m a d , Al-Islam f i al-habasha (Cairo, 1935), pp. 4 3 - 4 4 . More
information on the Egyptian government in Harar is given in two works by the same
Egyptian historian: Shawqi 'Atallah al-Jamal, Siyasat Misrfi al-bahr al-ahmarfi al-
nisf al-thani min al-qarn al-tasi' 'ashar [Egyptian policy in the Red Sea during the
second half of the nineteenth century] (Cairo, 1974); and his earlier Al- Watha'iq al-
ta'rikhiyya lisiyasat Misrfi al-bahr al-ahmar, 1863-1879 [The historical documents
on Egyptian policy in the Red Sea, 1863-1879] (Cairo, 1959).
15. For an Ethiopian description of the period reflecting also attitudes toward
Islam, the Egyptians, and the Mahdiyya see Erlich, "A Contemporary Biography of
Ras Alula: A Ge'ez Manuscript from Manawe, T a m b e n , " Chapter 5 in my Ethiopia
and the Challenge of Independence (Boulder, 1986). It was first published in the
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 39, 1976, pp. 1 - 4 6 ,
2 8 7 - 3 2 7 . (The manuscript was translated by Roger Cowley.)
16. R. A. Caulk, "Religion and State in Nineteenth-Century Ethiopia," Journal
of Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 10(1), 1972, pp. 2 3 - 4 1 . T h i s is the best analysis of
Y o h a n n e s ' s Islamic policy; the paragraphs above and below the quotation are based
on it.
17. A b d u s s a m a d A h m a d , " T h e G o n d a r M u s l i m Minority in Ethiopia; T h e
Story up to 1935," Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 9(1),
1988, pp. 7 6 - 8 4 .
18. Caulk, "State and Religion."
19. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, p. 123.
20. Erlich, Ras Alula, Chapter 8.
CHAPTER 6
1. The best detailed analysis of the Mahdist state is P. M. Holt, The Mahdist
State of the Sudan, 1881-1898 (Oxford, 1970). See it also for a summary of existing
202 NOTES
bibliography, pp. 2 6 7 - 2 7 7 . I shall refer below only to new sources published

later.
2. For more on the p o l i t i c a l and i n t e r n a t i o n a l a s p e c t s see R. C a u l k ,
"Yohannes IV, the Mahdists, and the Partition of North-East Africa," Transafrican
Journal of History, Vol. 1(2) 1971, pp. 2 3 - 4 2 . Also Zewde Gabre-Sellassie,
Yohannes IV of Ethiopia.
3. For Kufit and later confrontations between Ethiopia and the Mahdiyya see
details in my Ras Alula. Chapter 7, devoted to the confrontation at Kufit, is titled:
"The Year in Which the Dervishes Were Cut Down," a quotation from a popular
Ethiopian contemporary poem.
4. See al-Athir.
5. See Na'um Shuqayr, Ta'rikh al-Sudan, a new edition prepared and annotat-
ed by Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim (Beirut, 1981), pp. 728-729. The original
composition: Naum Shoucair, Ta'rikh al-Sudan al-qadim wal-hadith wa-jughrafiy-
atuhu (Cairo, 1903) is one of the wealthiest sources on the Mahdiyya and its rela-
tions with Ethiopia.
6. See my Ras Alula, p. 65.
7. Muhammad Sa'id al-Qaddal, Al-Mahdiyya wal-Habasha, dirasa fi al-
siyasa al-dahiliyya wal-harijiyya lidawlat al-mahdiyya, 1881-1898 (Beirut, 1992),
pp. 1 2 1 - 1 2 3 (quoting S h o u c a i r ' s Ta'rikh, 1903 edition, pp. 1 0 7 3 - 1 0 7 4 ) . Al-
Qaddal's study is based also on new documentary sources and is richer than Holt in
describing the Ethio-Mahdist conflict.
8. See "A Contemporary Biography of Ras Alula" in my Ethiopia and the
Challenge of Independence, p. 96.
9. Al-Qaddal, Al-Madiyya, pp. 39-40.
10. Isma'il Ibn 'Abd al-Qadir al-Kurdufani, Al-Tiraz al-manqush bibushra qatl
Yuhanna malik al-hubush. The manuscript was edited and published in Khartoum in
1971 by Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim. It was recently republished under the title:
Al-Harb al-habashiyya al-sudaniyya, 1885-1888, by Muhammad Abu Salim and
Muhammad Sa'id Qaddal (Beirut, 1991).
11. In countries under Islamic sovereignty, until the mid-nineteenth century,
Christians were not allowed to have bells in their churches.
12. See Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-habashiyya al-sudaniyya, pp.
59-60.
13. Holt, The Mahdist State, p. 150.
14. Ibid., pp. 151-152.
15. See Zewde Gebre-Sellassie, Yohannes IV, p. 526, and a similar version in
D. Levine, Wax and Gold (Chicago, 1965), p. 28. Another, similar version is in
Bairu Tafia, A Chronicle of Emperor Yohannes IV (Wiesbaden, 1977), p. 155.
16. See details in Erlich, Ras Alula, pp. 110-140.
17. Al-Qaddal, Al-Mahdiyya, pp. 122-123.
18. See both quotations, from a Ge'ez contemporary biographies of Ras Alula,
and of Ras Gubana, in Erlich, Ras Alula, p. 128.
19. Bairu Tafia, A Chronicle of Emperor Yohannes (Wiesbaden, 1977), p. 157.
20. For Yohannes's policy leading to fighting the Mahdiyya at Mettema and to
the ensuing loss of Eritrea to the Italians, see my Ras Alula, Chapters 12, 13.
21. For a detailed and comprehensive analysis of Menelik II and his period see
H. Marcus, The Life and Times of Menelik II: Ethiopia 1844-1913 (Oxford, 1975).
See there a bibliography on the period.
22. G. N. Sanderson, "Conflict and Co-Operation Between Ethiopia and the
Mahdist State, 1884-1898," Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. 2, 1969; and his "The
Foreign Policy of Negus Menelik II: 1896-1898," in Journal of African History,
Vol. 5, 1964, pp. 87-97.
23. After the Egyptians were forced by the British to evacuate Harar, Amir
NOTES 203
'Abdallah restored the power of the local dynasty. During the two years he ruled
prior to being conquered by Menelik, 'Abdallah further intensified the spreading of
Islam among the Oromos and other neighboring groups. Amir 'Abdallah's relevant
activities were discussed in an Arabic manuscript on Menelik's conquest of Harar
d i s c o v e r e d in 1978 by R i c h a r d C a u l k , then of A d d i s A b a b a U n i v e r s i t y . In
1982-1983 I helped Professor Caulk prepare the text for annotated publication. His
sudden death was a great loss to the community of Ethiopianists and to Ethiopian
historiography. (He was about to complete a fifteen-year effort to produce a com-
prehensive study of Menelik's period.) For Amir 'Abdallah's spreading of Islam see
also Carlo Conti Rossini, "Testi in Lingua Harari," in Rivista degli Studi Orientali,
Vol. 8, 1919, pp. 413-^15.
24. The occupation of the south has been described and analyzed by many.
See Marcus, Menelik II. See also a map in Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, p. 97.
25. See more in Kofi Darkwa, Shewa, Menilek and the Ethiopian Empire
(London, 1975), pp. 136-137.
26. Menelik's basic concepts of political Islam were perhaps revealed in his
f a m o u s circular letter of April 1891 to the heads of state of Britain, France,
Germany, Italy, and Russia, in which he stated: "Ethiopia has been for fourteen cen-
turies a Christian land in a sea of pagans. . . ." See text in R. Greenfield, Ethiopia: A
New Political History (New York, 1965), p. 464. In practice, however, he refrained
from following the religiously motivated policies of Yohannes and Tewodros.
27. For a detailed history see E. Cerulli, Etiopi in Palestina, I and II (Rome,
1943 and 1947).
28. The following passages on the nineteenth-century history of the Ethiopian
community in Jerusalem and the related activities of Ethiopian modern emperors is
based on Kirsten Pedersen, The History of the Ethiopian Community in the Holy
Land from the Time of Emperor Tewodros II until 1974 (Jerusalem, 1983). (See
there also a bibliographical list.) Also her articles (in Hebrew): "Bney malkat Shva
beZion" in Haetiopim hanotsrim beYerushalaim (Tel Aviv, 1992), pp. 3-40, and
her "Dir al-Sultan" in E. Shiler (ed.), Sefer Ze'ev Vilnai (Jerusalem, 1984), pp.
155-163; also Yehushua Ben-Arie, "Habatim haEtiopim mihuts lahomot" in his
Yerushlaim hahdasha bereshita (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 423-430; H. Scholler, "The
Ethiopian Community in Jerusalem from 1850 to the Conference of Dar-el-Sultan
1902: The Political Struggle for Independence" in G. Goldenberg, Proceedings of
the Sixth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, pp. 487-500.
29. For Yohannes's correspondence regarding the monastery see appendices
in Bairu Tafia, A Chronicle of Emperor Yohannes IV; for Tewodros's diplomatic
effort consult R u b e n s o n ' s Survival, Chapter 4; and for the period just before
Tewodros see Letters from Ethiopian Rulers (Early and Mid-Nineteenth Century),
translated by D. Appleyard and A. K. Irvine, annotated by R. Pankhurst (Oxford,
1985), pp. 91-134.
30. G. Orhonlu, Habesh Eyaleti, p. 164.
31. See details in Chris Prouty, Empress Taytu and Menilek II: Ethiopia,
1883-1910 (London, 1986), Chapter 14, "Jerusalem and Ethiopia," pp. 247-256.
32. Sadiq al-Mu'ayyad al-'Azm, Rihlat al-habasha (Arabic translation by
Rafiq al-'Azm and Haqqi al-'Azm) (Cairo, 1908).
33. Information given to me by his grandson, Professor Sadiq al-'Azm of
Damascus University, in Washington, D.C., 1993.
CHAPTER 7
1. Sadiq al-'Azm al-Mu'ayyad, Habesh Siyahetnamehsi, Istanbul 1322 H
(1904). The Ottoman-Turkish Original book (484 pp) is available in Tel Aviv
University's Library.
204 NOTES
2. The passages above and below are based on G. Orhonlu, Habesh Eyaleti,
pp. 165-167.
3. See H. Marcus, Life and Times of Menelik II, Ethiopia 1844-1913 (Oxford
1975), Chapter IX, and his Haile Sellassie I, The Formative Years, 1892-1936
(Berkeley, 1987), Chapter One.
4. Getachaw Haile, "Religion in Ethiopian Politics" (Paper presented at the
Michigan State University International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, East
Lansing, April 1992).
5. For a comprehensive analysis of Iyasu see the last chapter in H. Marcus,
Life and Times of Menelik II, and the first chapter in his Haile Sellassie: The
Formative Years, 1892-1936 (Berkeley, 1987). See the latter for a bibliography.
6. Of the vast literature on the mawla perhaps the best analysis of his Islamic
dimension is B. G. Martin, "Sayyid Muhammad 'Abdallah Hassan of Somalia,"
Chapter 7 in his Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa (Cambridge,
1976).
7. Turkey; Sublime Porte, Ministere des Affaires Etrangères, UH (General
War), Dossier 120. (Hereafter Turkey, UH 120.) The correspondence between
Mazhar and Istanbul in this dossier was studied by the late C. Orhonlu for his book
Habesh Eyaleti, where Mazhar's policy and his relations with Iyasu are discussed
on pp. 167-175. Sven Rubenson persuaded the Turkish scholar to translate this cor-
respondence into English. I am grateful to Professor Rubenson for letting me photo-
copy these translations. (A set of copies is available also at the Institute of
Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University.)
8. Turkey, UH 120, Mazhar to Istanbul, 14 December 1914.
9. Turkey, UH 120, Mazhar to Istanbul, 17 March 1915.
10. Turkey, UH 120, Mazhar to Istanbul, 13 February 1915.
11. See Alame Eshete, "A Page in the History of the Ogaden—Contact and
Correspondence Between Emperor Minilik of Ethiopia and the Somali Mahdi,
Muhammad Abdullah Hassan (1907-1908)" in S. Rubenson (ed.), Proceedings of
the Seventh International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, pp. 301-314.
12. Turkey, UH 120, Istanbul to Embassy in Berlin, 23 August 1916. See also
B. G. Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa (Cambridge,
1976), Chapter 7, "Sayyid Muhammad Abdallah Hasan."
13. Turkey, UH 120, Istanbul to Mazhar Bey, 22 May 1916.
14. Turkey, UH 120, Mazhar to Istanbul, 4 September 1916.
15. In his Ethiopia and Germany, Cultural, Political and Economic Relations,
1871-1936 (Wiesbaden, 1981), Bairu Tafia asserts that a decision to restore the
monastery of Deir al-Sultan in order to lure Ethiopia to enter the war on their side
was made by the g o v e r n m e n t s of G e r m a n y and the Ottomans in early 1915.
However, as he narrates on pp. 133-134, the Germans were unable to pass the
information to Ethiopia prior to October 1915. It is not clear from Bairu's text if by
the information he had from the German documents the matter was subsequently
discussed with Iyasu or Ras Mika'el. It is probable that Mazhar, whose strategy was
to build up an Islamic momentum through Iyasu and the mawla, convinced the
Germans to shelve the matter.
16. 'Ali Mahmud 'Ali Ma'yuf, Ta'rikh harakat al-jihad al-islami al-sumali
didd al-isti'mar (1899-1920) (Cairo, 1992). This book on the mawla and his holy
war against imperialism is based also on research in the British archives. The pas-
sage is from pp. 230-231, in which there is a summary and a reference to Public
Record Office (PRO) Colonial Office (CO), 535\43 "Translation of Proclamation
Exhibited in Harar, August, 1916."
17. See the genealogy and other details on Iyasu's Islam, in E. A. Wallis
Budge, A History of Ethiopia (London, 1928), pp. 542-547.
NOTES 205
18. Al-Ma'yuf, Ta'rikh harakat, pp. 232-233, quoting CO, 535\43 "Précis of
Abyssinian Intelligence received in Somaliland during weeks ending 23, 30
September 1916."
19. Turkey, UH 120, Mazhar to Istanbul, 4 September 1916.
CHAPTER 8
1. See in the volumes of Berhanena Selam the following pieces (summary of

the titles): 18 March 1926, p. 87: Pilgrims in Jerusalem; 26 August 1926, p. 271:
The London Times on water from Ethiopia to the Sudan; 2 September 1926, p. 279:
Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, water affairs; 23 September 1926, p. 303: Egypt wants to
join the League of Nations; 10 March 1927, p. 73: An Egyptian newspaper on
Ethio-Egyptians relations; 14 April 1927, p. 113: On Deir al-Sultan; 7 February
1929, p. 43: Ethio-Egyptian relations; 21 February 1929, p. 60: Correspondence
between the Egyptian king and the Coptic Patriarch; 29 February 1929, p. 60: An
Egyptian consul appointed to Addis Ababa; 13 June 1929, p. 197: Appointment of
bishops from Egypt; 4 July 1929, p. 215: Ethiopian religious functionaries return
from Egypt; 5 September 1929, p. 294: On conflict between Jews and Arabs in
Palestine; 25 January 1930, p. 25: The Voyage of the patriarch from Egypt to
Ethiopia; 21 May 1931, p. 163: On the religious connections between Ethiopians
and Egyptians in Jerusalem; 22 February 1935, p. 64: On appointment of Ethiopian
consul to Jerusalem; 19 March 1935, p. 86: Water floods in Palestine; 30 May 1935,
p. 178: On Arabic press. I am grateful to my ex-student and friend El'azar Rahamim
for helping me with Berhanena Selam. For church affairs as the main interest in the
Middle East at the period under review see also Haile Selassie's descriptions of his
1924 visits to Egypt and to Jerusalem, in E. Ullendorff, The Autobiography of
Emperor Haile Selassie, "My Life and Ethiopia's Progress, 1892-1937, " Chapters
21 and 48.
2. The only exceptions are Egyptian Copts, who are naturally interested in
Ethiopia. I shall mention below the works on Ethiopia by some prominent Copt
scholars, notably Murad Kamil, Zahir Riyyad, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and others.
3. See C. A. MacDonald, "Radio Bari, Italian Wireless Propaganda in the
Middle East and British Countermeasures, 1934-1938," Middle Eastern Studies,
Vol. 13, 1977, pp. 195-207.
4. I have analyzed the internal situation in Egypt and the impact of the
Abyssinian Crisis on Egyptian youth during the stormy and detrimental 1935 in my
Students and University in Twentieth-Century Egyptian Politics (London, 1989),
Chapter 3. See also H. A. Ibrahim, "The Italian Conquest of Ethiopia as a Factor for
the Conclusion of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty," in Taddese Beyene (ed.),
Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 2
(Addis Ababa, 1989), pp. 225-231.
5. Erlich, Students and University, p. 115.
6. Italian reports on Arab Middle Eastern countries during the Abyssinian
Crisis, their policies and public opinion, are to be found in Rome in the series
Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Archivio Storicho, Etiopia Fondo la Guerra, Affari
Politici Etiopia (hereafter ASMAE), Buste (folders) 6-137. The reports from Egypt
are in Buste 37, 38, 61, 62, 68, 97, 102, 117, 125. The report on the mission to con-
tact the Sanussis is from 28 July 1935.
7. Al-Ahram (newspaper), 1 August 1935; ASMAE, Report from Alexandria,
4 August 1935.
8. See details on the al-Azhar mission in Yusuf Ahmad, Al-lslam f i al-
206 NOTES
habasha (Cairo, 1935), pp. 69-74; 'Abdallah Husayn, Al-Mas'ala al-habashiyya

(Cairo, 1935), pp. 29-32.
9. Al-Ahram, 10 April 1935; 15 April 1935.
10. Al-Ittihad, 28 August 1935; Abdallah Husayn, Al-Mas'ala al-habashiyya,
p. 86.
11. Al-Ahram, 10 October 1935; 18 October 1935.
12. 'Abdallah al-Husayn, Al-mas'ala al-habashiyya, min al-ta'rikh al-qadim
ila 'am 1935 (Cairo, 1935).
13. Ibid., p. 16. 'Abdallah al-Husayn was also an editor of a law journal and
the author of a book entitled The New Woman and How Shall We Treat Her, a high-
ly sensitive subject that had been tackled already by the early pioneers of Egyptian
liberalism.
14. Al-mas' ala al-habashiyya, pp. 18-19.
15. Muhammad Lutfi Jum'a, Bayna al-asad al-Ifriqi wal-nimr al-ltali, Bahth
tahlili ta'rikhi wanafsani wa'ijtima'i fi al-mushkilla al-habashiyya al-Italiyya
(Cairo, 1935).
16. See Ahamd Lutfi Jum'a, Hayat al-sharq (Cairo, 1932), as the best elabora-
tion of the idea of a pluralist modern East.
17. Jum'a, Bayna al-asad wal-nimr, p. 9.
18. Yusuf Ahmad, Al-Islam ft al-habasha, watha'iq sahiha qayyima 'an ahwal
al-muslimin fi mamlakat ¡thyubya min shuruq shams al-Islam ila hadhihi ayyam
(Cairo, 1935). A graduate of law studies in Cairo, Yusuf Ahmad's main field was
Arab architecture and Arabic language. He served as inspector of Arab antiquities
and then as a teacher of Arabic calligraphy. The book is decorated with quranic
verses in Kufi script in an attempt to lend the book an air of Islamic piety.
19. See Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Hayat Muhammad (Cairo, 1935), pp.
168-172, 178-179. Also: A. Wessels, A Modern Arabic Biography of Muhammad
(Leiden, 1972), pp. 59-60, and I. Gershoni, "The Reception of Muhammad Husayn
Haykal's Biography of Muhammad, 1936-1939" in Poetics Today, Vol. 15(2),
Spring 1994 (forthcoming). I am indebted to my friend Israel Gershoni of Tel Aviv
University for this information as well as for many other points of information and
interpretation.
20. Yusuf Ahmad, Al-Islam ft al-habasha, pp. 11-12.
21. See Al-'Azm's description of the uncleanliness of the Ethiopian Christians
in Chapter 6.
22. Bulus Mas'ad, Al-Habasha, aw Ithyubya f i munqalab min ta'rikhiha
(Cairo, 1935). Bulus Mas'ad collaborated with Yusuf Ahmad, exchanging material
and views. The two finished their books at the same time (they were published on
the 18th and 20th of November 1935), and each thanked the other for his help. They
both were subsidized by the Fascists, as will be pointed out below.
23. The reader can make no mistake about the connection between the Italians
and Bulus Mas'ad. Just as he opens the book he finds a set of pictures hastily glued
to the bindings, which were supplied by the Fascist perpetrators of "the civilizing
mission." It is the well-known Italian-made visualization of backwardness and cru-
elty: Ethiopians carry horrible diseases, babies from the Eritrean frontier castrated
by Ethiopians, thieves flogged in Addis Ababa, mutilated or hung on a tree. And,
ranking first: Ethiopia the slave house: crippled slaves in Harar, a slave market in
Addis Ababa. All this was old early-twentieth century stuff recycled by the Italian
propaganda machine. Finally, a picture just arrived from the war field, "Italian offi-
cers liberate a slave" in the newly Italian-captured Makkale.
24. See a file on Bulus Mas'ads book in ASMAE, 1936, Busta 125.
25. See a file on Yusuf Ahmad and his book in ASMAE, 1936, Busta 125.
26. Al-Balagh, 29 December 1935; 17 January 1936; 27 January 1936.
NOTES 207
27. Al-Jazira, 9 January 1936.

28. See the volume of Al-Hilal, 1936, pp. 355, 476-477.
29. Yusuf Ahmad, pp. 100-102.
30. The book by 'Abd al-Halim Muhammad Rajab (Al-'Alaqat al-siyasiyya)
that I quoted in my opening chapter as an example for contemporary radical Islamic
attitudes toward Ethiopia, draws substantially from Yusuf Ahmad's book. See
above p. 18.1 shall return briefly to this point in my conclusion.
CHAPTER 9
1. The Italians collected carefully nearly every newspaper piece that had to
do with their Ethiopian enterprise. The material is kept in Rome in the series
Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Archivio Storicho, Etiopia fondo la Guerra, Affari
Politici, Etiopia, 1935, 1936 (hereafter ASMAE), Buste 6-167. Material on Islam in
Ethiopia is in B. 6; press reports from Egypt are in B. 37, 38, 61, 62, 97, 102, 117,
125, 151, 165, 166; press reports from Palestine in B. 49, 121, 130, 152, 166; from
Syria and Lebanon B. 49, 50, 97, 131, 166; from Iraq B. 49, 65, 121, 128, 154, 167.
There are also pieces from Morocco, Iran, Turkey, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. These
files contain unsystematically the pieces themselves, translations, summaries, gen-
eral reports, and so on. Nearly all the articles I quote below are from that enormous
collection. I also worked separately on the volumes of the Egyptian newspapers: al-
Ahram, al-Hilal, and al-Musawwar, 1935-1936.
2. A particularly vicious series of articles titled "Slavery in Ethiopia" was
published in Al-Waqit of Aleppo starting 4 December 1935.
3. See, for example, Al-Ahram, 22 July 1935.
4. Filastin, 25 September 1935, 2 October 1935.
5. Al-Qabas, 1 December 1935.
6. Al-Tariq, 10 October 1935.
7. "The Ethiopian Virgin" (Azra' Ithyubya), as reproduced in Anwar
Shawul's autobiography, Qisat hayyatifi wadi al-Rafidin (My life in Mesopotamia)
(Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 216-219. I am grateful to Dr. Reuven Snir and Professor
Sasson Somekh of Tel Aviv University for this information.
8. See Shakib Arslan's biography of Rida and his analysis of their relations:
Al-Sayyid Rashid Rida, aw ikha' arba'in sanah ("The Master Rashid Rida, or forty
years of brotherhood") (Beirut, 1937), quoting two letters of Rida to him, from 24
January 1935 on p. 766, and from 10 May 1936 on p. 783.
9. For his general role in Islamic-Arab history see William L. Cleveland,
/slam Against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism
(Austin, Texas, 1985).
10. Arslan, Rashid Rida, p. 791.
11. Shakib Arslan, "Muslimu al-Habasha" in his edited and extensively anno-
tated and expanded Arabic translation (by 'Ajaj Nuyahid) of Lothrop Stoddard's
work, Hadir al-'alam al-lslami (Cairo, 1933), Vol. 3, pp. 78-119.
12. See Arslan's article in Al-Ayyam of Damascus, 10 November 1935. Arslan
wrote an article on 'Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi in Hadir al-'alam al-lslami.
14. The text and a photograph of that letter were published on 18 March 1935
in the Jaffa-based Al-Jami'a al-lslamiyya, a journal rival to the mufti. The pro-Mufti
press responded with counter-allegations and contended that the letter was a forgery
coordinated with the British and aimed at discrediting Hajj Amin. The issue of the
letter's authenticity produced a long scandal. (See a long article in the Hebrew jour-
208 NOTES
nal Ha'arets, 22 April 1935; also articles on 19 March, 21 April, and 10 May 1935.)
Hajj Amin himself refrained from denying the letter nor was he tempted—as yet—
to provoke the British by personally expressing an opinion on the Ethio-Italian cri-
sis. But his press started hosting Arslan's anti-Ethiopian campaign, and his alliance
with Arslan was further cemented in the following years.
15. Al-Ayyam, 10 November 1935.
16. Reports on the conference in Al-Jazira and Alif Ba of Damascus, 16
September 1935, 21 September 1935. Two Fascist Orientalists, V. Vilieri and A.
Barbiglieni (who had converted to Islam), participated.
17. Al-Jihad, Aleppo, 18 April 1935.
18. Salim Khayyata, Al-Habasha al-mazluma, fatihat akhar niza' lil-isti'mar ft
dawr inhiyarihi ("The oppressed Ethiopia: The beginning of the last battle of impe-
rialism in a period of its demise") (Beirut, 1937), Introduction p. 3. The author, a
Communist, produced a highly emotional anti-Fascist composition which, other
than the reference to Arslan and general praise for Ethiopia, has little to offer to our
discussion.
20. Al-Ayyam, 24 January 1936.
21. ASMAE, 1935, B. 49, " R e p e r c u s s i o n s in Palestine to our action," 3
October 1935.
23. Al-Ayyam, 15 April 1935.
24. Al-Balagh, 6 April 1935.
25. AkhirSa'a, 1 April 1935.
26. Al-Ahram, 3 June, 22 July 1935.
27. Egyptian Gazette, 19 July 1935.
28. Alif-Ba, 9 November 1935.
29. See Al-Ahwal, 18 March 1936; Al-Jazira, 6 May 1936; Al-Ayyam, 1 July
1936.
30. Al-Taqaddum, 1 May 1936.
31. Al-Jazira, 12 May 1936.
32. Al-Waqit, 19 May 1936.
33. Al-Jazira, 5 June 1936.
34. It is worth noting that not only Hajj Amin al-Husayni became an admirer
of Hitler, but also his opponent in 1935, and the then defender of Ethiopia, the
Jaffa-based newspaper Filastin, adopted in 1938-1939 a pro-Nazi line.
35. The journalist Yunis al-Bahri, whom we mentioned leading in 1935 the
anti-Ethiopian line in the Iraqi press, became a Middle Eastern analyst for Radio
Berlin during World War II.
36. On Ethiopian missions to San'a and Jidda see reports in 1935, ASMAE, B.
50 and 56.
37. See a l s o t h e Autobiography of Haile Selassie ( t r a n s , and ed. E.
Ullendorff), p. 238. See mainly Tariq al-Ifriqi's book in Note 39.
38. See Al-Ayyam, 8 June 1936, 10 July 1936, 15 July 1936.
39. Muhammad Tariq Bey (al-Ifriqi), Mudhakkirati fi al-harb al-habashiyya
al-Italiyya, 1935-1936 (Damascus, 1937).
40. ASMAE, B. 131, Report from Beirut, 2 June 1936, quoting the local paper
Al-Ittihad al-Lubnani; Al-Jazira, 4 June 1936\ Al-Ayyam, 29 June 1936.
41. Alberto Sbacchi, Ethiopia Under Mussolini: Fascism and the Colonial
Experience (London, 1985), pp. 161-165; the quotation is from pp. 164-165.
42. Al-Qabas, 14 May 1936; Al-Jazira, 20 May 1936.
43. Al-Ahram, 9 September 1936.
44. Al-Waqit, 12 June 1936.
NOTES 209
45. Al-Jazira, 7 July 1936.

46. Muhammad Tayasir Zabiyan al-Kaylani, Al-Habasha al-muslima, musha-
hadatifl diyar al-Islam (Damascus, 1937).
CHAPTER 10
1. In September 1960 Haile Selassie told the visiting Israeli minister of agri-
culture, Moshe Dayan, that after World War II he had hoped that not only Eritrea
but also Somalia would be united with Ethiopia. Israeli Foreign Ministry, Papers of
Ambassador Hanan Aynor, kept at Truman Institution, Jerusalem (hereafter IMF-
Aynor), Bar-On to FM, 16 September 1960.
2. Muhammad Rajab Harraz, Al-'Umam al-muttahida wa-qadiyyat Irtirya
1945-1952 (Cairo, 1974). See mainly pp. 6-12.
3. According to John Spencer, Haile Selassie's adviser, this whole Egyptian
diplomatic enterprise was aimed at forcing Ethiopia to negotiate an agreement on
the Nile waters. As part of that effort, in April 1947 King Faruq sent two envoys to
the emperor to tell him that the Egyptians had prevented an attempt to assassinate
him. Spencer advised against opening to these Egyptian overtures. Years later, fac-
ing Nasserite subversion, Spencer regretted his advice. See J. Spencer, Ethiopia at
Bay (Michigan, 1984), p. 188.
4. Just before the fall of the royal-parliamentary regime in Egypt a "League
for Strengthening Friendship with Ethiopia" was established in Cairo; see Al-
Ahram, 16 June 1952.
5. See PRO FO 371/12563 "Ethiopian Egyptian Relations," a report on U.S.
assessment of Nasser's policy, FO to Addis Ababa 18 January 1957. See also Tariq
Ismail, The UAR in Africa (Evanston, 111., 1971), pp. 178-179. Also see below
Nasser's conversation with Haile Selassie's envoy, Meies Andom, December
1956.
6. For more details see, among others: John Markakis, National and Class
Conflict in the Horn of Africa (Cambridge, 1987, and London, 1990), Chapter 5;
and Haggai Erlich, The Struggle Over Eritrea, 1962-1978 (Palo Alto, 1983),
Chapter 2.
7. Muhammad Muhammad Fa'iq, 'Abd al-Nasir wal-thawra al-Ifriqiyya
(Beirut, 1980), pp. 85-87.
8. See Jordan Gebre-Medhin, Peasants and Nationalism in Eritrea (New
Jersey, 1989), pp. 49-53, 64-65, 77, 151-165.
9. Three hundred was the number estimated for the early 1950s; see
Markakis, National and Class Conflict, p. 109. Seven hundred was the number esti-
mated in 1960, IMF-Aynor, Bar-On to MF, 11 October 1960. 'Aynor was the Israeli
ambassador to Ethiopia from 1971 to 1973 and witnessed first hand the process
leading to Haile Selassie's decision to break relations with Israel. I am most grateful
to him for allowing me to study the documents and correspondence he put together.
10. See PRO/FO 371/131287, H.M. Consulate in Asmara to Addis Ababa
Embassy, 5 November 1958.
11. See Muhammad Abu al-Qasim Hajj Hamad, Al-Ab'ad al-duwaliyya li-
ma'rakat Irtirya (Beirut, 1974), p. 165; also, Markakis, National and Class Conflict,
p. 111.
12. See Erlich, Struggle Over Eritrea, Chapter 2. Also Khalaf al-Munshidi,
Irtirya, min al-ihtilal ila al-thawra (Beirut, 1973), pp. 171-178.
13. Khalaf al-Munshidi, Irtirya, pp. 183-184.
14. PRO FO 371/125363, Furlonge to Lloyd, 16 May 1957.
210 NOTES
15. lMF-Aynor, Bar-On to FM, 11 October 1960, summarizing talks between

Moshe Dayan and the top Ethiopian politicians, including the emperor.
16. PRO FO 371/125363, British Embassy, Khartoum to FO, 9 January 1957.
17. Al-Ahram, 26 December 1957.
18. When the emperor heard of the fall of the Iraqi royal house, reported the
British ambassador, he panicked. He called immediately the ambassadors of the
United States, United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and India asking for comfort,
"which was not an easy thing to do," PRO FO 371/138024, "Ethiopia: Annual
Report for 1958."
19. A. H. "Mediniyut mitsrayim b e ' a f r i c a " (Hebrew: Egyptian policy in
Africa), Hamizrah Hehadash, Vol. 12, 1962, pp. 19-28. Also J. Spencer, Ethiopia
at Bay (Michigan, 1984), pp. 306-309.
20. IFM-Aynor, Bar-On to FM, summarizing Dayan's meeting with Haile
Selassie, 16 September 1960.
21. IFM-Aynor, D. Levin to Foreign Ministry, 7 December 1955.
22. PRO FO 371/125363, Furlonge to Bell, 22 February 1957, discussing
interview in Daily Telegraph, 16 February 1957.
23. Keesing's Contemporary Archives, Vol. 11 ( 1 9 5 7 - 1 9 5 8 ) , p. 15410C,
15233B.
24. Israeli Archives, Ginzach Hamdinah (hereafter IGM), Documents in Files
2403/1, 5558/201, 2414/14, 2414/13A+B, 2454/15, FO 42/16. (I am indebted to my
student Itamar Levin who helped me with that material.) Divon to FO from Paris,
10 July 53, reporting on his conversation with the historian and diplomat Takla-
Tsadiq Makuriya.
25. For example, in September 1956 two Arabs who had opened a business in
Addis Ababa's "mercato" were deported from Ethiopia for distributing pictures of
Nasser and for allegedly being engaged in other activities in the service of the
E g y p t i a n s . See P R O , FO, 3 7 1 / 1 1 8 7 8 4 , C h a n c e r y A d d i s A b a b a to A f r i c a n
Department, 6 September 1956.
26. See a long reference to the book by Abu Ahmad Al-Ithyubi (pseud.), Al-
Islam al-jarih f i al-habasha (Addis Ababa, 1960), in Hussein A h m e d , " T h e
Historiography of Islam in Ethiopia," Journal of Islamic Studies, 1992, pp. 15-46.
27. IMF-Aynor, A. Levin to FM, "A conversation with Yiftah Demitrios," 23
July 1964. Yiftah, fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, was a close adviser of the emperor
on Middle Eastern affairs. He was later to serve as Ethiopia's consul general in
Israel.
28. IGM, Israeli ambassador to Paris, Y. Tsur, reporting on a conversation
with Haile Selassie, 17 November 1954.
29. IGM, Abba Eban to Foreign Ministry, 29 November 1952.
30. IFM-Aynor, Consul Pilpul to FM, 16 May 1956.
31. See PRO FO 371/125355, Annual Report, 1956.
32. PRO FO 371/131241, Annual Report for 1957, 10 January 1958.
33. See R. L. Hess, Ethiopia, The Modernization of Autocracy (Ithaca, 1970),
Chapter 10, "The Africanization of Ethiopia," mainly pp. 234-239.
34. IFM-Aynor, Bar-On to FM, 13 November 1958.
35. Compare, for example, Chapters 8 and 9 above to S.K.B Asante, Pan-
African Protest: West Africa and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 1934-1941 (London,
1971).
36. See my Struggle Over Eritrea, p. 57.
37. Rashid al-Barawi, Al-habasha bayna al-iqta wal-'asr al-hadith (Cairo,
1961); see mainly the preface, pp. 6 - 8 , and Chapter 7, pp. 176-186. (The book
appeared in a semiofficial series: African Studies, by Maktabat al-nahda al-mis-
riyya.)
NOTES 211
38. PRO FO 371/138092. Addis Ababa Embassy to FO, 9 June 1959.

39. Details on the visit and the texts of the speeches in 'Abd al-Rahman al-
Huss, Ilhyubya ft 'ahd Hayla Silasi al-awwal (Beirut, 1960), pp. 116-146.
40. See more details in Otto Meinhardus, Christian Egypt; Faith and Life
(Cairo, 1970), pp. 391-399. On final disconnection, see two articles in Al-Siyasa
Al-Duwaliyya, by Murad Kamil (1967, No. 8) and Miryit Boutros-Ghali (1966, No.
3).
41. PRO FO 371/146567, Ethiopia: Annual Report, 1959. Also, IFM-Aynor,
Pilpul to FM, "The Waters of the Nile," 16 December 1957. And two pieces in
Ethiopian Herald, 12 December 1957.
42. PRO FO 371/154836, Ethiopia: Annual Report, 1960.
43. IFM-Aynor, Bar-On to FM (the date is not clear, should be late September
1960).
44. lMF-Aynor, MF to Embassy in Addis, 5 December 1966. Also "A Report
on Deir al-Sultan" by M. Shamgar, Government's legal adviser to the minister of
justice, 16 March 1971.
45. A. H. "Egyptian Policy in Africa" (Hebrew), Hamizrah Hehadash, 1962,
pp. 19-28.
46. See details in Spencer, Ethiopia at Bay, pp. 305-309.
47. Bereket Habte Selassie, Conflict and Intervention in the Horn of Africa
(New York, 1980), p. 155.
48. See, for example, a description by 'Uthman Sabbe's Sudanese assistant,
Muhammad Abu al-Qasim Hamad. In the mid-1960s he went to Egypt to meet with
the head of the African Section in the Republican presidency, Hasan Farnuwani, but
his request for some help for the Eritreans was turned down. The description is in
his book: Al-Ab'ad al-duwaliyya li-ma'rakat Irtirya (Beirut, 1974), p. 175. See also
a discussion in Muhammad Muhammad Fa'iq, 'Abd al-Nasir wal-thawra al-
ifriqiyya (Beirut, 1980), pp. 86-87.
49. Dr. Thomas Kane, who was during that time in Addis Ababa, heard that
the students of the university were planning a mass demonstration in favor of Israel
but to their surprise the war ended before they could implement their plan.
50. IMF-Aynor, Ambassador Ben-David to FM, "Ethiopia and the Crisis in the
Middle East," 22 August 1967.
CHAPTER 11
1. Murad Kamil, Fi bilad al-najashi (Cairo, 1949).

2. Al-Haymi al-Hasan bin Ahmad, Sirat al-habasha, edited and annotated by
Murad Kamil (Cairo, 1972), (2d ed.). See E. Van Donzel's criticism of Kamil's
work in his A Yemeni Embassy to Ethiopia, ¡647-1649 (Stuttgart, 1986).
3. See Rashid al-Barawi, Al-habasha bayna al-iqta' wal-'asr al-hadith,
Chapter 4, pp. 76-92.
4. See Al-Ahram, 30 April 1955 and 24 July 1955 on Haile Selassie, the far-
seeing leader, and on good relations with Egypt. A message received at the
Ethiopian embassy mentioned the students in al-Azhar as Ethiopians, not Eritreans
(see 24 July 1957); on greetings from Nasser to Haile Selassie see 24 July 1958.
See 17 October 1957 article on a possible Egyptian-Sudanese-Ethiopian alliance.
The four short pieces of chronicle from Eritrea were on 2 August 1956, 9 August
1956, 25 October 1956, and 17 September 1956; the last one on foreign students in
Cairo simply mentions Eritreans. I am thankful to my student S. Press for working
on Al-Ahram of these years.
212 NOTES
5. A search in the collection of Nasser's speeches and in Al-Ahram and Al-

Jumhuriyya during the years 1962-1967 on attitudes toward Eritrea resulted with
not even one quotation on the "Arabism" of Eritrea. I am thankful to my student
Hanna Hershkovitch for assisting me in that.
6. Zahir Riyyad, "Al-Islam fi Ithyubya," Majallat Kulliyat al-Adab, J ami'at
Al-Qahira, Vol. 18, December 1957, pp. 121-142.
7. Zahir Riyyad, "Al-Shifta fi Ithyubya mundhu al-'usur al-wusta," Majallat
Kulliyat al-Adab, Jami'at Al-Qahira, Vol. 19, 1961, pp. 215-238.
8. See G.K.N. Trevaskis, Eritrea: A Colony in Transition, 1941-1952
(Oxford, 1960), pp. 9 1 - 9 6 ; Angelo Del Boca, Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale,
Nostalgia delle Colonie (Rome, 1984), pp. 137-142; also PRO, FO 1015/539, "A
Study of the Present Shifta Problem" by G. Trevaskis, June 1950.
9. See Zahir Riyyad, Al-Islam fi Ityubyafi al'usur al-wusta (Cairo), 1964.
10. Zahir Riyyad, Ta'rikh Ithyubya (Cairo, 1966), p. 48.
11. Zahir Riyyad, Misr wa-Ifriqya (Cairo, 1976).
12. Adwa' 'ala al-habasha, f r o m t h e s e r i e s " I k h t a r n a l a k a , " N o . 6.
"Participated in the preparation of this book: Amin Shakir, Sa'id al-'Ariyyan,
Mustafa Amin," (Cairo, ND).
13. 'Abd al-Rahman Mahmud al-Huss, Ithyubya fi 'ahd Hayala Silasi al-
awwal (Beirut, 1960).
14. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Qadaya 'Arabiyya (Cairo, 1975), p. 225.
15. See articles on church relations by Murad Kamil (1967, no. 8) and Miryit
Boutros-Ghali (1966, no. 3). I am thankful to my student Makram Khuri Makhul for
helping me with Al-Siyasa al-Duwaliyya.
16. 'Abd al-Malik 'Awda, "Nahwa hall siyasi li-qaddiyat Irtirya," Al-Siyasa
Al-Duwaliyya, 1975, No. 40.
17. Boutros-Ghali, "Al-Nasiriyya wa-siyasat misr al-harijiyya," Al-Siyasa Al-
Duwaliyya, 1971, No. 23.
18. Boutros-Ghali, "Siyasat misr al-harijiyya fi 'ahd ma ba'da al-Sadat," Al-
Siyasa Al-Duwaliyya, 1982, No. 69.
C H A P T E R 12
1. See Erlich, The Struggle Over Eritrea, pp. 65-66.

2. Ibid., Chapter 5, "The Middle East and Eritrea, 1962-1974," gives a gen-
eral analysis and details.
3. Muhammad Abu al-Qasim Hamad, Al-Ab'ad al-duwaliyya li-ma'arakat
Irtirya (Beirut, 1974), pp. 165-166.
4. Muhammad Khalil, The Arab States and the Arab League (Beirut, 1962),
Vol. l , p . 685.
5. See Shumet Sishagne, "Notes on the Background to the Eritrean Problem"
in B a h r u Z a w d e ( e d . ) , Proceedings of the Second Annual Seminar of the
Department of History (Addis Ababa University, 1984), pp. 180-213.
6. John M a r k a k i s , National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa
(London, 1990), p. 109; Chapter 5, "The Eritrean Revolution," is the most detailed
analysis of the Eritrean movement in the years under discussion.
7. Hamad, AMÒ'ad, Chapter 4.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 167.
10. Al-Muharrir, 19 April 1969.
11. Voice of the Fatah, 20 November 1969, in BBC/ME 22 November 1969.
NOTES 213
12. Hamad, Al-Ab'ad, p. 140.

13. Filastin al-thawra, 19 September 1973.
15. See Chapter 2.
16. Hamad, Al-Ab'ad, p. 167; Khalaf al-Munshidi, Iritirya, min al-ihtilal ila
al-thawra (Beirut, 1973), pp. 169-170.
17. As'ad Ghuthani, Ahdath al-qaran al-Ifriqi wa-haqiqat al-sira' al-Ithyubi
al-Iritri (Baghdad, 1980), p. 101.
18. Ibid., pp. 12-21. Also chapter on the ELF starting p. 23 and on the EPLF
starting p. 35. More on the EPLF's party led by Ramadan Nur and Isayas in Sa'id
Ahmad al-Janahi, ¡ritriya 'ala abwab al-nasr (Beirut, 1975), p. 50.
19. E.g., Jabhat ai-Tahrir al-Irtiriyya, Kifah Irtiriya, 132 pp. (no place of pub-
lication, ND). The list of ELF publications is on the back cover.
20. Ibid., especially p. 101.
21. 'Uthman Salih Sabbe, Ta'rikh Iritriya (Beirut, 1974). An English transla-
tion, History of Eritrea, was issued in the same year in Beirut.
22. Sabbe, History of Eritrea, Introduction, pp. 11-15, and also pp. 118,
260.
24. Hamad, Al-Ab'ad, Introduction, pp. 7 - 1 4 ; pp. 114-120. For more on
Sabbe's book, The Struggle in the Red Sea see also a note, "About the Author," in
his History of Eritrea, and a quotation from the book in Ahbar al- 'alam at-Islami,
17 March 1975.
25. Sabbe's introduction to G.K.N Trevaskis, Eritrea: A Colony in Transition
(Arabic translation, Musta'mara ft marhalat al-intiqal) (Beirut, 1977).
26. Hamad, Al-Ab'ad, Chapter 4, "From the crucial triangle to the closed
door," p. 151.
27. Muhammad 'Abd al-Mawla, Thawrat Iritriya wal-sira' al-duwali ft al-bahr
al-ahmar (Beirut, 1976). The other two books are mentioned above.
28. Jabhat al-Tahrir al-Iritriyya, Al-Taghalghul al-Israilifi lrtirya, 1970.
29. Sayyid Rajab Haraz, lrtirya al-haditha, 1557-1941 (Cairo, 1974).
30. Sabbe, History of Eritrea, a foreword by Yusuf Ibrahim Yazbak.
31. Mumtaz al-'Arif, Al-Ahbash bayna Marib wa-Aksum (Baghdad, 1975).
32. Ghuthani, Ahdath al-qaran al-lfriqi, pp. 13, 54, 61, 75, 101-109.
CHAPTER 13
1. See more in Erlich, The Struggle Over Eritrea, 1962-1978, pp. 55-59.
2. For the best succinct analysis of the Judaic and Hebraic dimensions of
Ethiopian culture and history, see E. Ullendorff, The Ethiopians, An introduction to
Culture and People (Oxford, 1960), mainly Chapter 5.
3. See Ha'arets, 21 April 1935, the editorial.
4. Two students of mine wrote B.A. papers (in Hebrew) on these two jour-
nals and Ethiopia throughout 1935. T h e pieces in Davar were assembled in
A e s c o l y ' s book (see Note 5 below). See also "Repercussions in Palestine—A
Survey of the Press," 3 October 1935, in ASMAE, Ethiopia fondo la guerra, B. 49.
5. Aharon Ze'ev Aescoly, Habash, Ha'am, Ha'arets, Hatarbut, Divrey
Hayamim, Hashilton, Hapolitika (Jerusalem, 1935).
6. Ibid., p. 5.
7. Ibid., pp. 28-33.
8. Ha'arets, 5 May 1936, the editorial.
214 NOTES
9. Avraham 'Aqavia, 'Im Wingate Behabash (Tel Aviv, 1944).

10. Ibid. 'Aqavia published a full biography of Wingate, Orde Wingate—
Hayyav Wupo'alo (Tel Aviv, 1993). The new book makes the connection between
the building by Wingate of the first modern commando units of the yishuv, and the
later Ethiopian campaign. Major General Wingate was killed in action in Burma,
1944.
11. S e e N a t h a n M a r e i n , The Ethiopian Empire Federation and Law
(Rotterdam, 1955).
12. IFM-Aynor, Israeli Embassy, Addis Ababa, 4 March 1968, "Report on
Bitan's meeting with the emperor"; "Coffee Project—Proposals arising out of dis-
cussions between representatives of the two countries—14 April—21 April, 1968"
(Tel Aviv, 24 April 1968).
13. IFM-Aynor, "Political and military cooperation between Israel and
Ethiopia," Lt. Gen. T s u r t o Finance Minister Sapir, 31 July 1969.
14. IFM-Aynor, "The Key," African Department to Israeli Embassy, Addis
Ababa, 18 June 1969.
15. IFM-Aynor, African Department to Israeli Ambassador, 14 June 1969, 18
June 1969, M. Shamgar, Israeli government legal adviser to minister of justice, 16
March 1971.
16. See Erlich, The Struggle Over Eritrea, Chapter 3, pp. 34-42.
17. IFM-Aynor, "Report on the meeting between Bitan and the emperor," 4
March 1968.
18. IFM-Aynor, "The visit of Mr. Shim'oni to Addis Ababa—a Political
Report," Aynor to African Department, 25 May 1972.
19. IFM-Aynor, "Conversation with Minasse Haile," 19 March 1972.
20. The memoirs of Ahadu Sabure, see Note 30.
21. 'Abd al-Tawab 'Abd al-Hayy, Al-Nil wal-mustaqhal (Cairo, 1988). See pp.
120-125, 141-143.
22. IFM-Aynor, "Ethiopia—the Breaking," by Hanan Aynor, 26 November
1973.
23. Ibid.
24. Text published in Ethiopia Observer, Vol. 16, 1973, p. 130.
25. IFM-Aynor, "Ethiopia—the breaking," Aynor, 26 November 1973.
26. Al-Bilad (Saudi Arabia), 25 November 1973.
27. IFM-Aynor, Paris Embassy to Africa Department, 8 April 1974.
28. See my Ethiopia and the Challenge of Independence (Boulder, 1986),
Chapter 11: "The Ethiopian Army and the 1974 Revolution."
29. Interview with Dajazmach Zawde Gabre-Selassie, New York, April 1978.
30. Ahadu Sabure managed to find a way to smuggle out of prison the pages
upon which he wrote his diary. One by one they reached Thomas Kane, one of
America's leading scholars on Ethiopian languages and literature. Dr. Kane was
kind enough to let me have the relevant page from the draft translation he is prepar-
ing for Ahadu Sabure's memoirs.
CHAPTER 14
1. See above p. 43.

2. S e e D. C r u m m e y , " S o c i e t y , S t a t e and N a t i o n a l i t y in the R e c e n t
Historiography of Ethiopia," Journal of African History, Vol. 31 (1990), pp.
103-119.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
A R C H I V E S A N D A R C H I V A L MATERIAL
Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Roma, Archivio Storico (ASMAE), Etiopia Fondo la
Guerra, Etiopia, Affari Politici, Buste 6 - 1 3 7
Public Record Office, London
Israeli Foreign Ministry, papers of Ambassador Hanan Aynor (IMF-Aynor) kept at
Truman Institution, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Israel State Archives, Ginzach Hamedinah
Turkey, Sublime Porte, Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, UH (general war),
Dossier 120. Documents collected and translated by C. Orhonlu, available at the
Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa
NEWSPAPERS A N D MAGAZINES
Al-Ahram, Cairo
Al-Ayyam, Damascus
Al-Balagh, Cairo
Berhanena Selam, Addis Ababa
Davar
Ethiopian Herald, Addis Ababa
Filastin, Jaffa
Ha'arets
Al-Hilal, Cairo
Al-Jazira, Damascus
Al-Siyasa al-Duwaliyya, Cairo
Al-Waqit, Aleppo
B O O K S A N D ARTICLES
'Abd al-Hayy, 'Abd al-Tawwab, Al-Nil wal-mustaqbal, Cairo, 1988.

'Abd al-Mawla, Muhammad, Thwrat lritriya wal-sira' al-duwali fi al-bahr al-
ahmar, Beirut, 1976.
Abir, M., "The Origins of the Ethio-Egyptian Border Problem in the Nineteenth
Century," Journal of African History, Vol. 8(3), 1967, pp. 4 4 3 ^ 6 1 .
, The Era of the Princes, London, 1968.
, "Ethiopia and the Horn of A f r i c a , " in R. Gray (ed.), The Cambridge
History of Africa, Vol. 4, 1975, pp. 537-577.
215
216 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
, "Trade and Christian-Muslim Relations in Post-Medieval Ethiopia," in R.

L. Hess (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Ethiopian
Studies (Session B), Chicago, 1978, pp. 4 1 4 ^ 1 4 .
, Ethiopia and the Red Sea, London, 1980.
Aescoly, Aharon, Habash, Ha'am, Ha'arets, Hatarbut, Divrey Hayamim, Hashilton,
Hapolitika, Tel Aviv, 1935.
Ahmad, Abussamad, "The Gondar Muslim Minority in Ethiopia," Journal of the
Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 9(1), 1988, pp. 76-85.
Ahmad, Yusuf, Al-Islam fi al-habasha, Cairo, 1935.
Ahmed, Husein, "The Historiography of Islam in Ethiopia," Journal of Islamic
Studies, Vol. 3(1), 1992, pp. 15^16.
'Aliyyan, M u h a m m a d 'Abd al-Fattah, Al-Hijra ila al-habasha wa-munaqashat
qadiyyat Islam al-najashi, Cairo, 1987.
Appleyard D., Irvine, A., Pankhurst, R., Letters from Ethiopian Rulers (Early and
Mid-Nineteenth Century), Oxford, 1985.
'Arab Faqih (Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jayzani), Tuhfat al-zaman
aw Futuh al-habasha, in Fahim Muhammad Shalut (ed.), Cairo, 1974. (See also
Chihab ed-Din)
al-'Arif, Mumtaz, Al-Ahbash bayna al-Marib wa-Aksum, Baghdad, 1975.
Aqavia, Avraham, 7m Wingate behabash, Tel Aviv, 1944.
Arslan, Shakib, Hadir al-'alam al-Islami, Cairo, 1933.
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INDEX
Abba Jifar, and Jimma's autonomy, 45, 74, Aqavia, Avraham, 167, 168
78, 106, 119 Arabic language, 5, 13, 22, 25, 26, 28, 37,
Abbas Pasha, 50, 58 46, 49, 61, 66, 75, 78, 81, 82, 85, 87, 96,
Abbasid dynasty, 11,14, 23, 28, 153 99, 101, 104, 107, 111, 116, 117, 122,
Abbay, 23. See also Nile. 123, 124, 131, 132, 133, 134, 141, 143,
'Abd al-Hamid II, 65, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 144, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163, 164, 200
79, 81, 82, 83, 88, 89 Arab Revolt (1916), 85, 89
Abdallah al-Sadiq ("ra'is ai-muslimin"), 79, Arafat, Yasser, 155
83, 88, 117 Arslan, Shakib, 33, 95, 109, 111, 114, 115,
Abdallah al-Ta'ishi, the Mahdi's "Khalifa," 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 124, 125, 128,
65, 68, 70, 73 132, 135, 152, 166, 186
Abir, M , 39 Asrate, Ras, 139, 151, 157, 158, 162, 168,
Abu 'Anja, Hamdan, 70, 71 170, 171, 172, 175
Adal, sultanate, 26 Aswan Dam, 24, 138, 183
Afar (people), 26, 30, 33, 74, 183, 192 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 83, 91, 96
Afaworqi, Issayas, 156 Aynor, Hanan, xi, 173, 174, 209
Africa: Horn of Africa, Africanization of al-'Azm, Sadiq al-Mua'ayyad, 10, 33, 77-81,
Ethiopia, x, xi, 3, 5, 11, 12, 13, 14, 25, 83,99, 106, 108, 147
31, 33, 37, 44, 53, 55, 56, 58, 60, 72, 85,
96, 102, 103, 115, 120, 121, 122, 128, Ba'th Party, Ba'thism, 152-158, 160, 162,
129, 130, 131, 133-138, 139, 143, 145, 163, 182
147, 148, 151, 162, 163, 172, 173, 174, Bahrnegash, Yishaq, 18, 27, 34-36, 39, 53,
177,186, 188-189 180, 181
Ahmad, Shihab al-Din ("'Arab fafih"), 30, Bani 'Amir (tribe), 44, 46, 47, 130-132, 153,
33, 115 155
Al-Ahram, 101, 112, 123, 143, 147, Begin, Menahem, 184, 185
Ahmad, Yusuf, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 118, Ben Gurion, David, 137, 168, 184
125, 135, 152, 186 Beta Israel (Falasha), 161, 163, 166, 170,
Aklilu Habte-Wold, 135, 136, 137, 139, 147, 184-186
151, 170, 171, 172, 173, 176, 177 Bible, biblical, 75, 85, 165, 167, 168, 184
'Ali, Ras, 45, 46, 47, 49 Bilal bin Rabah, "Bilal al-habashi," 6, 10, 37,
'Aliyyan, 'Abd al-Fattah, 17 81
Alula, Ras, 54, 58, 59, 62, 63, 66, 68, 69, 70, Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 147-148, 183-
7 1 , 8 0 , 129, 142, 159, 180 184
Amharic, Amharization policy, 3, 41, 117, Britain, British citizens, 36, 47, 48, 50, 51,
123, 131, 134, 158, 159, 163, 171, 176 53-55, 57, 60, 63, 66, 68, 72, 73, 76, 80,
'Amru bin al-'As, 7, 8, 113 83, 85-90, 9 7 - 9 9 , 103, 108, 109,
Andom, Meles, 134 111-118, 120, 123-125, 127, 129, 130,
223
224 INDEX
131, 133-135, 137, 142, 143, 146, 160, Fa'iq, Muhammad, 130-132
166, 167, 169, 184 Falasha. See Beta Israel.
Byzantium, 4, 8, 11, 160 "The Family of Kings," 11, 193
Fascists, Fascism, 74, 97-100, 102, 104, 106,
Cairo, 17, 18, 23, 2 5 - 2 7 , 4 5 , 4 7 , 4 8 , 5 2 , 5 5 , 107, 109, 112, 113, 115, 118-124, 137,
56, 61, 81, 82, 97, 100, 101, 107, 109, 166-168, 181,206
111, 113, 115, 123, 128, 130-137, 139, Fasiladas, Emperor, 37-39, 42, 68, 142
141- 146, 152, 153, 162, 172, 177, 183, Faysal, king of Saudi Arabia, 172, 174, 177
184, 186 Fetha Negast, 22
Caliphate, 23, 25, 28, 75, 89-91, 153 France, French citizens, 36, 47, 50, 51, 54,
Cerulli, E„ x, 26, 189, 195 56, 72, 85, 87, 88, 90, 97, 97, 100,
Christianity, Ethiopian, x, 3, 4, 8, 15, 22, 23, 113-116, 120, 121, 132, 146
25, 37, 43, 44, 61, 62, 67, 68, 74, 75, 85, Front de Liberation National (FLN), 132,
103, 105, 111, 141, 142, 191, 193 158
Church of Ethiopia, 4, 5, 22, 26, 27, 52, 43,
50, 51, 56, 62, 69- 71, 76, 77, 95, 105, Gala. See Oromo.
111, 137, 138, 142, 148, 170, 188 Galadewos, Emperor, 32, 34, 35
"Coffee Project," 169-172 da Gama, Christopher, 32
"Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia" Gragn, Ahmad bin Ibrahim, "Gragn
(Egyptian), 100, 114, 121 Syndrome," "Ahmad Gragn trauma," 16,
Conti Rossini, C., x, 189 29-39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 51, 62, 63, 70,
Copts, Coptic Church, 3, 21-25, 50, 56, 61, 7 2 - 7 5 , 8 0 , 103, 105, 111, 115, 134, 135,
7 5 - 7 7 , 9 1 , 9 5 , 9 9 - 1 0 2 , 112, 128, 137, 144, 149, 166, 178, 180, 182, 188
138, 141-143, 145, 147, 169, 170, 185, Greece, Greek citizens, 3, 4, 35, 48, 79
205 Gura, battle of, 54, 57-60, 103, 104, 106,
108
Dahlak Island, 11, 18, 21, 25, 27, 41, 180
Dar al-hiyad (land of neutrality), 14-16, 22, Habasha, habsh, 12-14, 16, 17, 28, 30, 45,
37 47, 69, 112, 159. See also "utruku al-
Darwish, Shaikh Nimr, 16, 194 habasha" legacy.
Dayan, Moshe, 134, 175 Habesh eyaleti (Ottoman province of
Deir al-Sultan (monastery), 75-78, 88, 95, Ethiopia), 29, 3 3 ^ 0 , 46, 50 51, 85, 127,
135, 136, 138, 169, 170, 185 142,180
Derg, 175, 176, 178 Hable Sellassie, Sergew, 3, 22, 191
Dervishes, darbush, 68, 71, 202 Haile Selassie, Emperor, 91, 96, 99, 102,
104, 106, 108, 109, 111, 113, 115,
Easternism, 102, 187 118-123, 125, 127-140, 142, 146, 147,
Education, 26, 41, 42, 45, 56, 58, 131, 141, 148, 151, 153, 156, 158, 163-178, 180,
142, 144, 145, 147, 161, 165 184, 185, 188, 2 0 9 , 2 1 0
Egyptian nationalism, Egyptianism, Hajj, 25, 125
Pharaohnism, x, 59, 95, 99, 102, 128, Harar, 26, 29, 30, 32-34, 45, 53, 60-62, 70,
129, 142, 183 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 83, 85, 86, 88-91, 106,
Era of the Princes, 39, 43, 75 108, 111,115, 123-125, 134, 147, 178,
Eritrea, ix, 26, 27, 44, 45, 47, 53, 54, 56, 59, 180, 202, 203
61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68-72, 88,96, 100, al-Haymi, al-Hasan bin Ahmad, 38, 39,
104, 106, 107, 115, 122, 125, 127-189, 41
209,211,212 Husayni, Haj Amin al-, 115, 116, 118, 207,
Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), 130, 132, 208
133, 138, 139, 141, 152-160, 181, Hussein, king of Jordan, 134, 138, 155
182
Eritrean Popular Liberation Forces (EPLF), Ibn Sa'ud, 'Abd al-'Aziz, 114
155-160, 181, 182 Ifat, Emirate of, 26, 27, 41, 122
INDEX 225
al-Ifriqi, Gen. Muhammad Tariq, 100, 121, Mahdi, mahdiyya, Mahdist state, 16, 54, 60,
122 63, 65-73, 79, 80, 106, 118, 130, 142,
Iran (Persia), 4, 8, 11, 29, 38, 85, 96, 135, 153, 187
137, 138, 160, 169, 182, 184, 187, 191 Makonnen, Ras, 76, 79, 88, 108, 147
Iraq, Baghdad, 11. 23, 28, 85, 87, 89, 91, 97, Makonnen Endalkatchw, 135
109, 1 1 1 , - 1 1 3 , 117, 118, 120, 131, 133, Mamluks, 12, 14, 23-25, 27-29, 75, 148
134, 151, 154-157, 160, 162, 163, 172, Marcus, H„ 84
177, 182, 183, 210 Markakis, J., 43, 188
"Islam al-najashi legacy," 16-19, 72, 91, 95, Martin, B., 31
104, 107 Mas'ad, Bulus, 107-109, 112
Isma'il bin 'Abd al-Qadir al-Kurdufani, 68, Massawa, 4, 25, 27, 32, 34-38, 4 5 ^ 8 , 50,
69 53, 54, 58, 61, 65, 70, 90, 108, 122, 127,
Isma'il, Khedive, 53-63, 72, 80, 102-104, 129, 131, 132, 142, 152, 153, 160, 162,
108, 128-130, 148 180
Israel, 3, 30, 134-140, 145, 149, 151-153, "Mawla," the Somali mawla, Muhammad ibn
155, 158, 161-189 'Abdalla Hasan, 72, 83-91, 180,
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), 167-169, 172 204
Iyasu, Lij, 83-91, 108, 111, 115, 120, 123, Mazhar bey, 83, 85-91
127, 163, 169 Menelik II, 54-56, 61, 62, 65, 70, 71 -86, 88,
9 0 , 9 1 , 104, 106-108, 113, 118, 120, 121,
Ja'far bin Abu Talib, 7 - 9 , 16, 27, 193 123, 145, 169, 184, 188, 203
jabarti, 25, 26, 4 1 , 4 3 , 4 7 , 51, 62, 68, 131, Mengistu Haile Mariam, 164, 175, 178-
142, 189
Jerusalem, 3, 16, 22-24, 49, 75-77, 88, 95, Minasse Haile, 172, 173, 176, 177
97, 111, 112, 115, 116, 118, 120, 123, Mika'el, Ras, 62, 85, 90, 204
135, 166-169, 171, 183,203 Mirghaniyya, 44, 4 5 , 4 7 , 130-132, 153
jihad, 10, 12, 15-17, 22, 28-34, 39, 62, 63, Mubarak, Hosni, 184
65-69, 72, 73, 83, 85, 86, 89, 118, 127, Mussolini, Benito, 18, 31, 74, 95-100, 107,
180, 186, 192 108, 111, 114-118, 122, 124, 127, 135,
Jordan, 131, 134-138, 140, 149, 155, 169, 139, 146, 152, 166, 167, 180
173 Muhammad, the Prophet, x, 4 - 1 9 , 25, 29, 30,
Judaism, judaic, 3, 4, 165, 191 37, 39, 41, 43, 66-71, 80, 81, 87, 90, 91,
Jum'a, Muhammad Lutfi, 102-104, 106, 109, 101-104, 107, 111, 115, 122, 127, 145,
112, 137, 187 146, 191, 192
al-Mutawwakil 'Ala Allah, Imam, 39
Ka'ba, 4, 1 8 , 9 0
Kaleb, negus, 3, 4 N a ' i b of Arkiko, 38, 4 7 , 5 1
Kamil, Murad, 141-143, 145, 148 Najashi (najashi Ashama), 5 - 1 9 , 37, 39, 67,
Kebra negasi, 22 72, 80, 81, 85, 91, 95, 101-105, 107, 116,
Khadduri, M „ 15, 16 123, 137, 141, 145, 146, 148, 159, 188,
al-Khattabi, Abd al-Karim, 115, 132, 192, 193
152 Nashashibis, 112
Nasser, Gamal Abd al-, Nasserism, 96,
Land of Islam (dar al-lslam), x, 11, 15-17, 127-140, 141, 143-149, 151, 152, 154,
3 1 , 6 9 , 70, 95 157, 165, 177, 182, 183, 188,212
"Leave the Abyssinians alone" legacy. See Nile River, Blue Nile (Abbay), x, 3, 21,
"utruku." 23-25, 3 3 , 4 6 , 4 8 , 55, 58, 61, 9 8 , 9 9 , 104,
Lewis, B„ 12-14 119, 127-129, 130, 133, 138, 148, 151,
"Liberation fronts," ix, 115, 130, 132, 157, 173, 183, 184, 186, 195,209
181 Numayri, Ja'far, 130, 151, 156, 172, 179,
Libya, 44, 72, 8 5 , 9 9 , 112, 115, 119, 121, 182
124, 133, 149, 155, 173, 183 Nur, Muhammad Ramadan, 152, 156
226 INDEX
Ogaden War, 173, 180 Shahada, 9, 87, 9 0

Operation Moses, Operation Solomon, 185, Shafi'i (legal Islamic school), 22
186 Shari'a, 122, 124
Organization of African Unity (OAU), 136, Shifta, shiftnnet, 49, 54, 61, 144, 179, 181
139, 147, 148, 171-173 Six Day War, 140, 154, 160, 165, 169, 171,
Orhunlu, C., 3 3 , 3 6 172
O r o m o (people), 14, 32, 33, 38, 4 3 ^ 7 , 49, Siyasa Duwaliyya, 147, 148, 183
5 0 , 6 1 , 6 2 , 6 8 , 7 4 , 84, 183, 198 Slavery, slaves, 5, 6, 10-16, 4 5 - ^ 7 , 107, 11,
Ottoman Empire, Ottoman citizens, x, xi, 11, 112, 124, 125, 1 4 7 , 2 0 6
12, 1 4 , 2 1 , 2 4 , 25, 28^13, 45- 48, 5 0 - 5 5 , Solomonic myth, dynasty, 2 2 - 2 4 , 26, 49, 74,
57, 59, 6 5 , 7 2 - 9 1 , 9 5 , 100, 108, 111, 121, 75, 159, 166, 168
127, 142, 159, 160, 169, ' 8 0 , 204 Somalia, Somali citizens, 26, 30, 53, 72, 73,
Ö z d e m i r Pasha, 3 3 - 3 5 , 39, 73, 142, 8 3 - 9 1 , 102, 107, 125, 127, 129, 130, 134,
137-139, 148, 149, 164, 173, 176, 177,
Palestine, Palestinian citizenss, 85, 91, 97, 180, 182, 183, 1 8 9 , 2 0 9
109, 112, 113, 115-118, 120, 121, 123, Sudan, Sudanese citizens, 13, 16, 17, 44,
124, 131, 151, 152, 154, 155, 161, 162, 4 6 - 5 0 , 53, 54, 56, 6 0 - 6 3 , 6 5 - 7 4 , 86, 101,
166, 167, 168 102, 108, 118, 121, 128-133, 138, 148,
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 151, 153, 154, 156, 159, 160, 179, 182,
154-156, 158-162, 171, 183 183, 187, 189
Patriarch, Patriarchate, 3, 2 2 - 2 4 , 50, 137, Suez, Suez Canal, Suez War, 36, 50, 53, 55,
138, 142, 178 8 5 , 9 8 , 121, 130, 131, 141, 154, 156, 160,
P e o p l e ' s Democratic Republic of Yemen 165, 174, 182
(PDRY), 155, 159, 171, 172, 182, 183 Sufi movements, sufism, 29, 44, 45, 65
Popular Liberation Forces (PLF), 155, 156, Suliman the Magnificent, Sultan, 31, 35
161, 162 Susenios, Emperor, 37
Syria, Syrian citizens, 3, 27, 48, 75, 91, 97.
Qaddafi, M u a m m a r , 155, 156, 159, 172, 183, 100, 109, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 119,
187 123, 124, 133, 134, 138-140, 142, 148,
Qaladiyos, Idris 'Uthman, 132, 153 151-154, 156, 157, 159, 160, 162, 172,
Quran, 5, 8, 2 6 , 4 1 , 4 5 , 7 4 , 9 0 173, 183
R a ' i s al-muslimin, 79, 83, 88, 117 Taddesse Tamrat, 22, 26

R a j a b 'Abd al-Halim, 17, 18, 26, 29 Taitu, Empress, 77, 84
Rida, Shaikh M u h a m m a d Rashid, 72, 82, 99, Takla-Haimanot, negus, 66, 68, 7 0
114, 117, 118, 128 Tariqa, 4 4
R i f W a r , 132, 152 Tewodros II, 4 1 - 5 2 , 54, 55, 57, 74, 76, 80,
Riwaq al-Jabartiyya, 25, 26, 47, 131, 142 102-105, 107, 111, 115, 120, 145, 169,
Riyad, Zahir, 143-145 188
Rubenson, S., 47 Thawra, 157, 159
Tigre, Tigrinya, 3, 27, 30, 35, 36, 38, 41, 43,
Sabbe, 'Uthman Salih, 132, 141, 152-157, 47, 49, 50, 53, 55, 58, 59, 71, 72, 85, 127,
159-162 131, 141, 155, 157, 158, 167, 180, 181,
Sabure, Ahadu, 176 183, 188
Sadat, Anwar, 148, 151, 173, 179, 1 8 2 - 1 8 4 Tigrean P e o p l e ' s Liberation Front (TPLF),
Sahaba, 6 - 1 9 , 27, 31, 37, 67, 68, 80, 181,185
103-105, 137, 146, 148, 186 Trimingham, J. S., x, 26, 143, 144, 189
Sa'id Pasha, 58, 102, 145 Turk basha, 36, 59, 73
Sanusiyya, 7 2 , 9 9 , 115
Sbacchi, A., 122 'Ubayd M a k r a m , 99
Sertsa Dengel, Emperor, 35, 36, 59 'Ubaydalla bin Jahsh, 7, 8, 103, 105
Shahabandar, 'Abd al-Rahman, 100, 113 Ullendorff, E „ x, 189
INDEX 227
'Umayyads, 10, 11,23, 36, 193 Yemen, 4, 5, 13, 24, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35,
' U m m A y m a n , Baraka, 5, 7, 10, 81 36, 38, 39, 42, 45, 68, 85, 87, 89, 107,
'Umm Habiba, 7, 8, 192 121, 138, 139, 140, 142, 147, 149, 155,
"Ummar, calif, 9, 10, 25, 30 163, 172, 189, 191
United Arab Republic (UAR), 134, 138, 151 Yishuv, 166
United States, U.S. citizens, ix, x, 56, 58, 59, Yoannes IV, 5 3 - 7 4 , 76, 80, 85, 102, 103,
96, 137, 145, 151, 161, 162, 173, 177, 105-108, 111, 115, 116, 118, 119, 125,
185, 188 129, 145, 169, 188
al-'Urabi A h m a d , 5 8 - 6 0 , 73, 104 Yom K i p p u r W a r , 165, 173
Uthman Diqna, 66, 68, 80 Y o u n g M e n ' s Muslim Association ( Y M M A ) ,
USSR, Soviet citizens, 169, 173, 179, 180, 99
182-185, 188 Y o u n g Turks, 77, 81, 83, 88, 89
"ulruku al-habasha" ("leave the Abyssinians
alone" legacy), 3 - 1 9 , 2 1 - 2 3 , 25, 38, 51, Zabiyan, M u h a m m a d al-Kaylani, 118,
66, 6 8 - 7 0 , 72, 91, 95, 159, 174, 188 123-125
Z a g w e (dynasty), 22, 23
Van Donzel, E „ 1 5 , 3 8 Zani, 13, 14, 33, 37
Zar'a Ya'qob, 24, 27, 36, 111, 148
W a f d Party, 99, 100, 109, 112, 120 Zawditu, Empress, 9 0
Wahhabiyya, 44, 46, 72 Zaydiyya, Yemen, 30, 32, 35, 38, 39, 72,
W a h i b Pasha, Gen., 121 85
Walasma' (dynasty), 27, 29 Zion, 22, 75. See also Jerusalem.
Wingate, O., 167, 1 6 8 , 2 1 4 Zionism, Zionists, x, 95, 115, 135, 143,
W o l d e - A b Wolde-Mariam, 131, 141 155, 158, 160-162, 164, 166, 168, 174,
Woyane, 127, 181 185
ABOUT THE BOOK
AND THE AUTHOR
Erlich offers a comprehensive account of the Oriental and Middle

Eastern dimensions in Ethiopias's political history and, especially, its for-
eign relations.
Covering the sweep of Ethiopian history from the seventh century to
the present, he first concentrates on Ethiopia's interaction with the "Land
of I s l a m " — i t s rulers and d y n a s t i e s — f r o m the d a y s of the P r o p h e t
Muhammad to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In Part II, he focuses on
the twentieth century, exploring Ethiopia's relations with the new political
identities of the modern Middle East. All of the m a j o r j u n c t u r e s in
Ethiopia's history, from the emergence of the Aksumite kingdom to the
1974 revolution, are discussed and reinterpreted on the basis of a wealth of
new sources.
A main theme of the book is the influence of mutual images and cultur-
al concepts on the nature of political relations. Thus, such phenomena as
modern Pan-Arabism, Egyptian nationalism, and Ethiopian-Israeli relations
are discussed against the backdrop of the images shaped across centuries of
Middle Eastern-Ethiopian interaction.
HAGGAI ERLICH is professor of Middle Eastern and African history

at Tel Aviv U n i v e r s i t y . His p u b l i c a t i o n s i n c l u d e Ethiopia and the
Challenge of Independence, The Middle East Between the World Wars (in
Hebrew), and Ethiopia and Eritrea During the Scramble for Africa: A
Political Biography of Ras Alula.

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ETHIOPIA AND

THE MIDDLE EAST

Published in the United States of America in 1994 by

and in the United Kingdom by

© 1994 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

British Cataloguing in Publication Data

Printed and bound in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements

1 Muhammad's Message: "Leave the Abyssinians Alone" 3

8 The Arabs, Mussolini, and the Abyssinian Dilemma 95

The Middle East and Ethiopia The Ottomans in their heyday

AKSUMITE ETHIOPIA: AN ORIENTAL ENTITY

Ethiopia came into being as an extension of the Oriental world. Waves of

Egyptian Coptic Church and the f u t u r e church of Ethiopia. 3 He then

THE FIRST FORMATIVE CHAPTER:

E t h i o p i a p l a y e d a role in the life of P r o p h e t M u h a m m a d . I n d e e d ,

nursed Muhammad, Baraka ' U m m Ayman) 1 2 fled secretly to Aksum. 1 3

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. Muhammad, the

According to another source, Muhammad's letter ended with a threat:

MECCA, ETHIOPIANS, AND ETHIOPIA

RACE, SLAVERY, ISLAM, AND THE "HABSH"

unfolded, Muhammad's utterance acquired an additional meaning. It came

formance of good deeds, and not on beautiful forms. I therefore composed

served to maintain throughout the centuries the notion of Ethiopia itself as

"LEAVE THE HABASHA ALONE" AND "DAR AL-HIYAD"

The cultural message of the famous hadith as interpreted in daily life in

Ethiopia as long as Ethiopia committed no aggression against Islam. It was

"ISLAM AL-NAJASHI" AND

"Utruku al-habasha" or "Leave the Ethiopians as long as they do not

EGYPT AND THE NILE-COPTIC CONNECTION

While the Middle Eastern Islamic empires under the 'Umayyads in

THE CHALLENGE OF LOCAL ISLAMIC SULTANATES

of a central imperial authority, combined with the spiritual and political

AHMAD GRAGN, ETHIOPIA, AND THE MIDDLE EAST

The first decades of the sixteenth century were marked by a revival of

Ahmad Gragn's was an Islamic revolution in full. 5 He assumed the

exception of Morocco, which prevented the Ottomans from entering the

THE OTTOMANS AND THE HABESH EYALETI

The Ottomans soon became interested in occupying a part of Ethiopia. In

Ottoman hands since 1517). In 1557 he proceeded to Massawa leading

Islamizing Greeks, Serbians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, and others. In Habesh

1568, ordered his pasha to Egypt to start working on the construction of a

The Ottomans, in decline as an effective all-Middle Eastern govern-

Although the history of Islam in Ethiopia during the periods of Ottoman

fulfillment of the Islamic identity. Instead, they formed an integral part of

There is no more poignant illustration of the intimacy and enmity which

Another element that added to the increasing Ethiopian diversity dur-

on the military power of their Oromo Muslim followers, Oromo chiefs

THE MIDDLE EAST AND RENEWED SPREAD OF ISLAM

died in 1869), established the headquarters of the Mirghaniyya in the town

MUHAMMAD 'ALI AND ETHIOPIA

The Ottoman pasha of the eyalet of Egypt, Muhammad 'Ali (1805-1849),

more successfully, the Egyptians established the town of Kassala as the

TEWODROS II AND THE LEGACY OF MUHAMMAD 'ALI

Emperor Tewodros II (1855-1868) and Muhammad 'Ali are often com-

to neutralize the political power of the Oromos. The Oromos remained

Habesh and into the hinterland. Tewodros responded, as he mentioned in

THE IMPATIENT EUROPEANIZER