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Chapter 11: Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa
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CHAPTER II -Ethiopia al1~ the Horn ofAfrica f rom its cmCYScttcc in the seventh century, Islam has formed an integral part ofthe history ofwhat are today Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. The old notion of Ethiopia as "an island of Christianity in the sea ofIslam"l has been abandoned, for recent scholarship has shown that the history of Islam and Muslims within the Ethiopian state is inextricably interwoven with that outside of its (changing) borders, and that it is equally as old, as complex, and as significant. This chapter tells that story. Political Hi5t0Tl1-tMC SCVCl1tM CCl1tltTl1 tMrouSM Colol1ial Rulc Mlts)i»1s. Tra~e. aH~ State FormatioH before 1S~~ The nature of the available sources (local chronicles and religious writings, accounts by Arab geographers and travelers, and some oral traditions) allows insight into only a limited set of historical themes. Prevalent among these is Islam's articulation with processes of state formation, foreign interventions and alliances, and shifting patterns oflong-distance trade. The sources show two kinds ofearly communities of Muslims: first, groups of protected Muslim traders inside the Christian state ofAksum (and then Ethiopia); and second, a string oftrade-based Muslim principalities along trade routes leading inland from Zeila. From the fourteenth century on, a power struggle developed between the latter (individually and in coalition) and the Christian state of Ethiopia. The fighting culminated in the conquest oflarge parts of the Ethiopian state by the Muslim coalition under Imam Ahmad b. Ibrahim (1529-43). Although the Muslim victories were short-lived, the consequences of the war, which included laying the land open to the large-scale migrations ofthe Oromo people ofthe southwest, were long-lasting. The Oromo migrations drove a wedge between the two warring par- UowiC-n Kapteijn5 228 ties. Not until the eighteenth century, the sources indicate, did they themselves become major actors in the history of Islam in Ethiopia. ({ ({ ({ The emergence of Islam coincided with the decline of the kingdom ofAksum. Although early Muslim refugees from persecution in Mecca found asylum at the Aksum court in 615 C.E., the first communities to adopt Islam were associated with trading centers frequented by Muslim merchants. The latter conducted their trade under royal protection, but did not enjoy full freedom of worship or the right to proselytize.2 The Dahlak Islands, a significant outlet for Ethiopian trade in this early period, embraced Islam in the eighth century and was in regular contact with the center of the Islamic state in Baghdad. With the rise of the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt and the revival of the Red Sea trade in the late tenth century, the process of Islamization in the Horn intensified, with the Fatimids posing as protectors of Muslims inside the Christian state. After 1270, when the new Solomonic dynasty moved the heart of the Ethiopian state southward, Zeila eclipsed the Dahlak archipel and became both the major outlet for trade from its Ethiopian hinterland and a central point ofdiffusion ofIslam into the interior. By then, there were many Muslim communities in the Christian highlands, and a series of Islamic principalities had risen along the long-distance trade routes from the coast to southern Amhara and Shewa in the north and to the Rift Valley lakes in the south. Fourteenth-century Arab geographers knew these principalities as "the country of Zeila."3 The oldest documented Muslim polity inland was the sultanate of Shewa, whose dynastic family, the Makhzumis, claimed to have originated in 896 C.E. They ruled until 1295, when they were deposed by the Walashma dynasty ofYifat, or Ifat (1285-1415), once Shewa's easternmost district. On the coast further south, Mogadishu , founded perhaps as early as the eighth or tenth century, blossomed into a sultanate in the twelfth century, as did Brava and Merca; the latter, presented by the twelfth-century geographer al-Idrisi as a center of the Hawiya Somalis, was the first city-state unambiguously associated with the Somali people. A later, long-lived example of state formation among the Somali was the Islamic Ajuraan confederacy (1500-1700) in the hinterland of the Benadir coast. There is little doubt that, in addition, by the thirteenth century many ofthe nomadic peoples of the region, which did not form part of any state, and included the Afar (first mentioned by the thirteenth-century geographer Ibn Said as "Dankal"), the Somali (first mentioned by the twelfth-century geographer al-Idrisi as "Hawiya"), as well as groups no longer extant (such as the Gabal and Warjih...