DO THE AMARA & TIGRE TRIBES OF ETHIOPIA HAVE ARAB HERITAGE???
Feleke
Dear Netters:
After reading the article by Fikru Gebrekidan (Ph.D. Candidate in History at
Michigan State University) I am convinced that the Amara and Tigre tribes
i.e,,
the HABESHA, in Ethiopia are the result of intermarriages among the Beja,
Agew and Arabs be it from the Arabian peninsula or Egypt.
I would like to caution everyone that I am neither a historian nor have I done
any
kind of extensive research on the subject, but my hunch is that the present day
Amara and Tigre have ARAB heritage.
Anyway I want to hear from you and I am open to learn from Ethiopian historians
or others who have done extensive reasearch on the subject.
Feleke
=============================================
ARTICLE THAT APPEARED ON THE RECENT ISSUE OF
ETHIOPAN REGISTER
By Fikru Gebrekidan
Ph.D. Candidate in History at Michigan State University
On the Origin of Ethiopian Civilization: Eurocentric versus
Afrocentric Interpretations
In recent years, it has been said that the Amhara and the Tigre of
Central and Northern Ethiopia are colonial immigrants from the
Middle East. The essay below challenges that view. First, the essay
discusses some Eurocentric works on which the image of the Amhara
and the Tigre as Semitic immigrants have been based. Then,
secondly, the essay explains how unsupported such Eurocentric views
are on historical grounds.
There are two parallel schools of thought on Ethiopian history. The
Eurocentric school argues that Axumite civilization owed its
inspiration to immigrant influences from across the Red Sea, who
brought with them to Ethiopia a high culture, a written language,
the skill of architecture and the plough. The Afrocentric
version, on the other hand, treats Ethiopia both as the cradle of
humanity and as Africa's past civilization par excellence, along
with Egypt and Nubia. The Eurocentric perspective emphasizes
Ethiopians' racial affinity with the Middle East, and portrays
their country as a "Semitic outpost, in but not of Africa." The
Afrocentric school, by contrast, regards Ethiopians as one of
Africa's ancient stocks of people, and thereby places their past
achievements at the center of African history. While Western
scholars often stereotype Ethiopians as xenophobes who looked down
up on whites and blacks alike, Afrocentric writers identify with
Ethiopia as the country exemplar of race pride and liberty.
Proponents of the Eurocentric school are generally European
scholars and a number of their Western-trained Ethiopian proteges.
Despite its impressive title--The Ethiopians: an Introduction to
Country and People--Edward Ullendorff's work is a study of the
"historic Abyssinia and the cultural manifestations of its
Semitized inhabitants." Like Robert Hess's Ethiopia, the
Modernization of an Autocracy, Ullendorff's book argues that
Ethiopian civilization owed its origin to Arabian, Jewish and
Greco-Roman influences and little to sub-Saharan Africa.
Southern Ethiopian population is significantly Muslim. Yet, J. S.
Trimingham's authoritative work, Islam in Ethiopia, is primarily
concerned with the Semitic-speaking Muslim communities of the
north. For Trimingham, the Habashat and the Gazi tribes of Yemen
became the impulse for the rise of Axum as a major maritime power,
for "they brought with them a fully developed civilization of the
Sabaeans." They introduced the know-how of metallurgy and
sculpture, various domestic animals and plants, agricultural and
irrigation techniques, a writing system, religious and political
institutions, and in so doing turned Axum into "the diffusion
center" of a new civilization."
In the History of Ethiopia, Nubia and Abyssinia, The widely-
acclaimed Egyptologist, E. A. Wallis Budge, starts out the section
on classical Ethiopian history with an insightful vignette on oral
tradition. He states that according to an oral history, the
Ethiopians regarded themselves not as Semites but as Kushites or
Hamites, the people native to Northeast Africa. He writes that the
Ethiopians traced their genealogical tree to Noah's son and
grandson: "Ham begot Kush, and Kush begot Ethiops, after whom their
country is named." Budge, nonetheless, hastens to present a
glorious picture of the Southern Arabians in Axum as harbingers of
a new epoch, and thereby dismisses as unreal the Ethiopians' self-
perception as indigenous Africans.
In his book titled Axum, the Russian author Yuri Kobishchanov
endorse's Francis Enfray's categorization of classical Ethiopian
civilization into three epochs: the Southern Arabian, the
intermediate, and the Axumite periods. The South Arabian or the
"Ethiopo-Sabaean" epoch referred to the fifth and fourth centuries
B.C., the period during which a large scale overseas migration to
Ethiopia took place, bringing with it a supposedly superior
material and political culture. The intermediate phase, third-
century B.C. through the beginning of the Christian era, was marked
by the rise of Adulis as a major Red Sea port and by the relative
decline in the overseas population influx. The period between the
first and the ninth centuries comprised the third and last stage in
the history of classical Ethiopia as it marked the rise and fall of
Axum as a major regional power. A feature associated with this era
was the transformation of the Sabaean cultural carryovers into a
distinctly Axumite innovation, as in the modification of the
plough-like or boustrophedon-type Sabaean writing system into
standard Ge'Ez scripts.
A slightly differing view from Kobishchanov's study is presented
in Stuart Munro-Hay's Aksum: an African Civilization. Munro-Hay
does not refute the presence of Sabaean settlements on the African
side of the Red Sea littoral. He in fact dates the Sabaeans'
arrival to Northeast Africa to about eight hundred B.C. He
contends, nonetheless, that because both Northeast Africans and
Southern Arabians were more or less at the same level of
civilization, the latter did not superimpose themselves as
colonialists, and lived instead in "some sort of symbiosis" with
the former. He therefore attributes Axum's rise to regional
predominance as much to its overseas stimulus as to its continental
trade links with Nubia and Egypt, as well as to its own internal
inertia.
Taking his cues from Kobishchanov's and Munro-Hay's works, John
Reader in Africa: a Biography of a Continent tries to present Axum
as a distinct African civilization. Early Sabaean contributions to
pre-Axumite Northeast Africa went through phases of modification
and transformation such that they eventually gave birth to
"Africa's first indigenous literate civilization." "Since
Eurocentric predispositions have fostered a belief that any
evidence of civilization found in the continent must have been
introduced," Reader claims, "it is important to note that Axum is
a defining example of indigenous civilization and state." But
ironically, this very same advocate of Afrocentrism treats Egypt as
part of the Mediterranean world,, hence not African, while he
condescendingly regards Nubian civilization as of secondary
significance. In his portrait of Axum as "Africa's first only
indigenous state," Reader thus reinforces the Eurocentric image of
Ethiopia as unique and anomalous.
Among those Ethiopians who have bought into the European point of
view on Axumite historiography are Tadesse Tamrat, a renowned
Ethiopian medievalist, and, to a great extent, the classicist
Sergew Hable-Selassie. Tamrat starts his seminal work, Church and
State in Ethiopia, with a fifteen-page-long discussion on the
"Sabeanization of Northern Ethiopia," in which he writes:
"The ultimate origins of the Ethiopian state lie in the
remote past, when Sabean settlements were established in
Northern Ethiopia... South Arabian immigrants began to
settle in the hinterland of Adulis as far inland as the
surroundings of Axum before the fifth century B.C. From
that on, their settlements became the spearhead of a long
process of Semitization in the Ethiopian region."
According to the same author, in the pre-Axumite period three
indigenous groups of people inhabited the area that eventually
constituted Ethiopia: the Beja and the Kunama in the north, the
Agaw at the center, the Seadama in the south. "It was on these
Kushitic population of the Ethiopian plateau," Tamrat argues,
"that the South Arabian settlers began to exert their pressure and
to usher in an extensive cultural and political development, of
which the Christian kingdom in 1270 was only part of the result."
In Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History, Hable-Selassie also
attributes the rise of the Axumite civilization to the Semitic
impetus. But unlike Tamrat, Hable-Selassie at least acknowledges
the presence of significant contacts between pre-Axumite Northeast
Africa and Pharaonic Egypt. Hable-Selassie in fact discusses in
five pages the commercial connections between the early inhabitants
of these two areas whom he describes as "a race of Hamitic stock
whose homeland was Asia." He writes that Egyptian Pharaohs sent
regular expeditions to Northeast Africa in search of gold, ivory,
Frankincense, myrrh, rhinoceros horns, slaves and dwarfs who served
as temple entertainers. In return for its export, Northeast Africa
received Egyptian necklaces, daggers, axes, trinkets and bracelets.
In another section of the same work Hable-Selassie deals with the
Semitic influence on Axum. But even then he hastens to add that the
Asians settlers did not find Northeast Africa a blank tabula rasa
on which they wilfully imprinted their history. "Before the coming
of the Southern Arabian immigrants to Ethiopia," he argues, "the
inhabitants of this country did not lack a civilization. To what
extent this civilization was developed, at this stage we are not in
a position to say."
What is important for this particular classicist is, therefore, the
creation of a more advanced civilization in Northern Ethiopia
through the infusion of South Arabian cultural practices. According
to Hable-Selassie, Southern Arabians began to settle in the
Ethiopian plateau as early as one thousand B.C., and along with
their influx came highly centralized political and religious
institutions, as well as a new language, the Sabaean tongue, and
the writing system associated with it. They also introduced various
domestic animals, including sheep, goats, the horse and the camel;
the art of metallurgy and an improved use of the plough; the
technique of dam building and the practice of irrigation.
The Eurocentric premise that ancient Ethiopian civilization was a
Semitic civilization is based on linguistic and material evidences.
The linguistic evidence pertains to the presence of several Semitic
languages in Ethiopia, supposedly legacies of the early Southern
Arabian immigrants. Such interpretation in turn emanated from the
traditional assumption of the "fertile Crescent" as the original
homeland of the Semitic languages, a view that is now losing
ground. In his best-selling book, The Africans, the renowned
Kenyan-born scholar, Ali Mazrui, makes a provocative remark on the
original whereabouts of the Afro-Asiatic languages. "What is a
Semitic language if not a branch of the Afro-Asiatic family of
languages?" he muses. "Was the Semitic parental language born in
Africa and then exported across the Sea? Or was it from the Arabian
Peninsula originally, and then descended upon such people as the
Amhara?"
To further understand the flaw in the Eurocentric interpretation of
Ethiopian history on linguistic basis, one may consider recent
studies in which Northeast Africa is said to be the original point
of dispersal for the Afro-Asiatic or the so-called Semitic
languages. Linguists believe that a language is at its most
dialectal variation in its base area, where the particular language
had been spoken longest. According to Grover Hudson, the largest
concentration of the Afro-Asiatic dialects is found in central
Ethiopia, where a half dozen variations of a Semitic tongue are
spoken in an area of eight-thousand square miles. Assuming the
presence of more dialectal variations at the base area, Hudson
hypothesizes the Gurage land of central Ethiopia to be the cradle
of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. In other words, contrary
to the long-held assumption of Asian immigrants as purveyors of a
new tongue to Ethiopia, it is more likely that the original point
of dispersal for the Semitic languages lay in Northeast Africa.
As in the linguistic argument, a critical investigation of the
material culture from the classical period has shown that Axum was
an indigenous African civilization. Until a few decades ago, the
stelae of Northern Ethiopia had been associated with Sabaean
architectural ingenuity, but this viewpoint is increasingly
becoming less popular. First, the obelisks at Axum are more
elaborate and original in design, as well as more impressive in
size, than the type of structures found on the other side of the
Sea. Secondly, on two of the obelisks that James Bruce found in
Axum was engraved the dog-star, a representation of the Egyptian
god Sirius. Considering the fact that one of the structures in Axum
had been found to contain hieroglyphic writings, it is altogether
likely that the Ethiopian stelae were Egyptian by inspiration.
Bruce recorded this particular paleographic inscription, which
turned out to be a short dedication to an Egyptian king.
Like their architectural genius, the Semites had been credited with
the introduction of the plough and the farming of various crops to
Ethiopia. Recent researches have revealed, however, that the
adoption of Teff, wheat and barley in Northeast Africa and the
agricultural skills associated with them preceded the alledged
arrival of the immigrants by thousands of years.
If recent linguistic and material discoveries weaken the
Eurocentric thesis, certain other examples further reinforce the
level of intimacy Axum maintained with the adjacent states on the
Nile. According to Hable-Selassie, there is an oral tradition in
Northern Ethiopia in which the Noba and Soba are said to have once
ruled over the entire region. There is no confusion about the term
Noba or Nuba as it refers to the Nubian state of Meroe located
above the confluence of the Nile and the Atbara rivers. It is not
clear who the Soba were, even though Sobat is the name of a major
river in Southwestern Ethiopia which flows into Sudan where it
embraces the Nile. Munro-Hay also insists that ancient Ethio-
Sudanese ties could be attested by the type of potteries excavated
in Axum, whose design patterns were the same as similar artifacts
found in Nubia. According to Hable-Selassie, the traditional
technique of boat making using riverside reeds in the area around
Lake Tana is reminiscent of ancient Egyptian technology. The words
for dwarf and incense in the Ethiopic language are also the same as
the words used by the early Egyptians.
Although no comparative research has been undertaken by an ethno-
musicologist, the most striking similarities between the cultures
of Ethiopia and the Sudan is in their music. Unlike the diatonic
scale of the Middle East, the musical structure in Ethiopia, Sudan
and Somalia consists of a pentatonic scale made of five tones. Even
despite language differences, a well-known artist from any of these
countries often enjoys a large regional audience beyond his or her
national boundary. Although to Somalia and Northern Sudan certain
Middle Eastern musical instruments have been introduced as part of
the Islamic cultural influence, strikingly enough that has not
affected the traditional structure of the pentatonic scale. In
fact, outsiders to the region still have difficulty identifying the
nuances, say, between Ethiopian and Sudanese music. A comparative
study of Northeast African musical structures by an ethno-
musicologist might therefore reveal that the cultural baseline of
Northern Ethiopia lay in its remote African antiquity that
antedated the coming of immigrants from across the sea.
Finally, given the geographic proximity of both regions, it cannot
be doubted that South Arabian migration to Northeast Africa took
place, albeit at a smaller scale than originlly assumed. However,
this process of migration should be seen as a two-way
communication, for such proximity meant that Northeast African
peoples and cultures might have also crossed to Asia. One should,
moreover, question the sheer practicality of a large scale
colonial migration to Ethiopia such that it affected the cultural
and racial makeups of the region. As Ayele Bekerie has indicated in
a recent book, it had been claimed that the Asian influx took place
across the isthmus of the Bab-el Mendeb, the gate of tears, the
narrowest point between the two continents south of the Suez. The
trek from Djibouti to the Northern Ethiopian plateau consists of
hundreds of miles over one of the world's hottest and driest parts.
This in mind, one cannot but help pose the following questions as
did Dr. Bekerie. What did Axum have that similar highland areas in
Ethiopia or even in Arabia itself did not have? Why did the
Southern Arabians, known for their sedentary agricultural
lifestyle, decide to venture into a life-and-death struggle through
a terrain so inhospitable that only a small number of them could
have survived the ordeal? To these so simple yet naturally puzzling
questions, the Eurocentric Ethiopian historiography has given no
answer.
Fikru Gebrekidan
Ph.D. Candidate in History at Michigan State University
bze...@my-dejanews.com
fel...@aol.com (Feleke) wrote:
>
> Dear Netters:
>
> After reading the article by Fikru Gebrekidan (Ph.D. Candidate in History at
> Michigan State University) I am convinced that the Amara and Tigre tribes
> i.e,,
> the HABESHA, in Ethiopia are the result of intermarriages among the Beja,
> Agew and Arabs be it from the Arabian peninsula or Egypt.
The Egyptians are not racially/ethnically Arabs, though they have mixed with
Arabs in the urban areas and speak Arabic. The ancient Egyptian language is in
the same category as Cushitic languages of the Horn. So if the mixture occured
with Egyptians, it does not constitute 'Arab blood'. The manipulation of
Egyptian history is similar to that of Ethiopia.
> I would like to caution everyone that I am neither a historian nor have I done
> any
> kind of extensive research on the subject, but my hunch is that the present
day
>
> Amara and Tigre have ARAB heritage.
>
> Anyway I want to hear from you and I am open to learn from Ethiopian
historians
>
> or others who have done extensive reasearch on the subject.
>
> Feleke
> =============================================
> ARTICLE THAT APPEARED ON THE RECENT ISSUE OF
> ETHIOPAN REGISTER
> By Fikru Gebrekidan
> Ph.D. Candidate in History at Michigan State University
>
> On the Origin of Ethiopian Civilization: Eurocentric versus
> Afrocentric Interpretations
-----cut------
Let us forget 'scientific' mumbo jumbo and make our own irrefutable visual
judgments. What else can one trust more than his/her own eyes? If you put an
Amhara, Tigre, Oromo, Afar, Sidama, Hadiyya, all in western business suit,
give them the same hair cut and line them up, can anyone tell who is of what
group? Very unlikely.
I would further add that if you did this to all the people from Southern
Egypt/Nubia to Northern Kenya, you will get the same effect. Yet the
'scientists' do all kinds of acrobatics simply to "prove" what they already
are predesposed to believe.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Teka AbaMacha
Dear bzemede & Feleke:
Pardon me if I am 'cutting in' to the discussion at hand and would appreciate
if either of you could enlighten me as to the definition of "'Arab blood'", the
term/phrase
both of you employed in your postings. 'Scientific' or 'traditional' explanation
of the term/phrase
would be appreciated from this corner.
Regards,
~Teka
bze...@my-dejanews.com
Good question, and from the way you phrased it, I sense that you know the
answer. In the traditional sense 'Arab blood' means blood not native to the
region and specifically coming from 'across the seas'. Of course in the
GENERAL technical sense, it is all Arabic speakers and in the PURELY technical
sense it is Arabs from the Arabian Penninsula to the exclusion of the ones in
North Africa who are basically of the Hamitic group (Berbers, Egyptians,
Sudanese "Arabs" etc).
YESHI22
>
>
> Dear bzemede & Feleke:
>
> Pardon me if I am 'cutting in' to the discussion at hand and would appreciate
> if either of you could enlighten me as to the definition of "'Arab blood'",
the
> term/phrase
> both of you employed in your postings. 'Scientific' or 'traditional'
explanation
> of the term/phrase
> would be appreciated from this corner.
>
> Regards,
> ~Teka
Good question, and from the way you phrased it, I sense that you know the
answer. In the traditional sense 'Arab blood' means blood not native to the
region and specifically coming from 'across the seas'. Of course in the
GENERAL technical sense, it is all Arabic speakers and in the PURELY technical
sense it is Arabs from the Arabian Penninsula to the exclusion of the ones in
North Africa who are basically of the Hamitic group (Berbers, Egyptians,
Sudanese "Arabs" etc).
========================================================
The following is a further elaboration by the authorFikru Gebrekidan
on the subject.
I am sure you're aware this subject is connected to the "burned faces" thread
we discussed here recently.
____________________________________________________________
Selam xxxxxx,
The disagreement between the African-centered and the European-
oriented views is not so much in sources as in interpretations.
Unfortunately, the traditional or Eurocentric interpretation of
Ethiopian history has been based on untested or apriori
assumptions, much of it self-serving, and that is what I have tried
to explain in my essay. For example, Eurocentrists may draw
connection between the stelae of Axum and those of Yemen and then
tie the histories of the two regions together. An Afrocentrist may
look at the same stelae in Axum, and then tries to understand its
significance, if any, vis-a-viz similar other structures in Africa,
such as those at Nubia (Giza) and Egypt. Btw, the African-centered
view of Ethiopian history has been around for more than a century,
even though it is not as well organized and well articulated as the
Eurocentric school. Blyden, Du Bois, Woodson, and several other
black writers, have continuously placed Ethiopia at the center of
African history.
Unfortunately, the traditional European-dominated Ethiopian
historiography has been, in your words, a "narrative of
Amhara/Tigre domination." It has done more to divide than to unite.
The assumption that the Tigre and the Amhara are Semitic immigrants
has, for example, given secessionist groups like the OLF certain
political amunitions. By treating the non-literate and "non'Semitic
speakers" as less Ethiopians, the Eurocentric approach has further
alienated a large number of Ethiopians.
An Afrocentric approach, by contrast, treats the Amhara and the
Tigre and all other "Semitic-speaking" groups in the country as
indigenously African. While emphasizing Ethiopia's continental
identity, Afrocentrism celebrates the common denominator that make
Ethiopians Ethiopian. Afrocentrism is a concept that focuses more
on our internal cross-cultural links and less on our external ties;
and in so being, it promotes mutual self understanding and mutual
self interest. .
Fikru