Jeberti.com

By
J. S. TRIMINGHAM
FRANK CASS & COMPANY LONDON 1965
Gainsborough House, Gainsborough Road London E11 1Rs

THE REGION AND ITS FOLKS

DISTRIBUTION: Reference to the map will show that Christianity is practically coextensive with the homeland of the Abyssinians proper, which is the great plateau divided by the canyons of the Blue Nile and Takkaze and their lateral rifts. This includes almost all the Tigrina and Amharic-speaking peoples. Tigrina, for instance, is often called zarava khestan

or (hega khestan in Tigre), ‘the language of the Christians’. It should be remembered that the Eritrean political boundary is not a natural one, and that the central Eritrean plateau known as Mareb Mellash, ‘Beyond the Mareb’ (comprising Hamasien, Akele Guzai, and Serai), and the northern part of Abyssinia known as Tigrai, form a large cultural and ethnic bloc whose people are sedentary agriculturalists, speak Tigrina, are Ethiopian Christians. In eastern Agame a large Saho group, the Irob, is Christian. Amhara, which is Christian in general except for the settlements of JABARTI, GALLA blocks, and JEWISH remnants, comprises some twenty provinces of which the best known are ANGOT, Begameder with Debra Tabor, Walqayit, Dambya, Wagara, Semen.

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In the Abyssinians, highlands of entrenched Christianity there are many villages of Muslims, whilst Muslim colonies are found in all towns. This Islamic Diaspora in the highlands we shall call JABARTI for convenience’ sake though the Abyssinians use the term in a much wider sense for any kind of Muslim. In general, except for Yemanite colonies, these highlands Muslims are of the same racial stock as the Abyssinians and the islamization of some race as the Abyssinians they are psychologically aliens, their difference being that between the son of the house and the child of the ghetto. They are mainly merchants and artisans with some peasants. Apart from the JABARTI a large MUSLIM block exists in the highlands, comprising the Galla groups as the Raya (Azebo), Yajju, and Wollo…

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The earliest account we possess of the new State of the Walashama, which was called Ifat by Abyssinians and Wafat or Awfat by Arabic writers, is that of Ibn Sa’id (A. D. 1214 – 87) preserved by Abu’l Fida. He says that the region is also called JABARA (i.e. JABARTA). Wafat is the capital of an autonomous king. Its population, who are Muslim, are very mixed. The city is situated upon an elevated place and below it is a valley through which flows a little stream…

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By the time Maqrizi is composing al-Ilmam in A.D. 1434 / 5 the Walashama claimed an Arab ancestry, for writes:

The first of them came from the Hijaz and settled in the land of JABARA, now called JABART, which is part of the region of Zaila’. They settled there and dwelt in the town of lufat (Wafat).

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This may be linked with events recorded by Abu’l Mahasin in A.H. (A. D. 1423) when Yeshaq, annoyed by the closing of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, massacred the Muslims of his country, destroyed their mosques, and raided the country of the JABARTA

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Alvarez, Narrative, p. 95 see also pp. 103 – 4. The locality of these Muslim villages was about a day’s journey from Agroo (WOGORO) where was the tomb of Muhammad an – Najash, patron saint of the JABARTI. That the tomb goes back to this period we know from the statement that it was visited by the Imam Ahmad (Futuh, tr. Pp. 419-20).

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Dr. Poncet, who visited Abyssinia 1698 – 1700 to treat Iyasu I, who was afflicted with some form of leprosy, writes: ‘Mahometans are tolerated at Gondar, but’tis in the lower Part of the Town, and in a separate Quarter. They are called GEBERTIS, that is to say SLAVES. The Æthiopians cannot endure to eat with them; they wou’d not even of Meat that is kill’d by Mahometan nor drink in a Cup they have made use of, unless a Religious Man shou’d bless it by reciting over it some Prayers and shou’d breath into it thrice, as it were to drive away the evil Spirit. When an Æthiopian meets a Mahometan in the Streets, he salutes him with his left Hands, which is a Mark of contempt’ (Poncet, A Voyage to Ethiopia, 1709, p. 61).
Poncet also mentions a town called Emfras, a day’s journey from Gondar, which he says’ is the only town of Æthiopia, where the Mahometans have public exercise of their Religion and where their Houses are mix’d with those of the Christians’ (op. cit., pp 81 – 82). This may be the same town, which the ambassadors of Isma’il al-Mutawakkil, Imam of San’a, found in 1648 near Gondar inhabited entirely by Muslims. When Bruce was in Gondar in 1770 there were 3,000 MUSLIM houses. The food prohibition only applied to flesh; Bruce writes: ‘Flour, honey, and such-like food, Mahometans and Christians eat promiscuously, and so far I was well situated by Mahometans, as that communion would have been looked upon as equal to a renunciation of Christianity’ (Travels, iv. 390).


The JABARTI MUSLIMS of the highlands joined the ranks of penalized communities like JEWS, ARMENIANS, and Parses.

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Ruppel says that the Muslim JABARTI were more active and energetic than the Christians. Most of their children learnt at least the elements of reading and writing, whilst Christian children rarely received any education at all unless they were destined for the priesthood or monastery. He also says that if a trustworthy person were needed to fill any post a MUSLIM was usually selected. (E. Rupell, Reise in Abyssinien (Frankfurt 1838), i. 327-8, 366.
The spread of Islam as elsewhere in Africa was facilitated above all by commerce. The Abyssinian is a warrior or a peasant and despises trade, consequently Muslims controlled all trade from the markets of the great towns to the smallest wayside market, (Cf. Ferret and Galinier, op. cit. ii. 411, G. Sapeto, op. cit., p. 140.) whilst all imperial trade connexions were with Muslim countries trough Muslim trading settlements along the coast.
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For long the Islamic educational system was confined to the coastal towns and Harar city, but during the nineteenth century north-east Africa affected by the reactionary revival then taking place in Islam and Qur’anic education spread widely. Teaching sheikhs of all kinds stated schools in Muslim centres, especially in the kingdoms around the Gibe, in the Harar region, throughout Eritrea and Somalia, and in the JABARTI and Yemanite colonies. This of Islamic culture has received a notable stimulus in those regions, which have come under European rule.

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The depth of such cleavage varies. It is naturally not so definitive between the JABARTI and their Christian neighbours, as it is between tribes, which in addition to religious culture also differ in their idea of kinship, social institutions, language, environment.

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Abyssinian Muslims (JABARTI)


than the Muslim tribes, described in the sections which follow, there are families and villages of Muslims who live on the Abyssinian plateau and speak Amharic Agao, or Tigrina as their native tongue. It is as a convenient term for these groups that the word JABARTI is used in this book. This, however, is neither the historical nor the modern usage of the word. It was first used as the name of a region for, as we have seen, the Muslim historians spoke of the territory of Zaila as the land of JABARTA; (See above p. 59. This is confirmed by Ibn Taghribird Iwho, in giving the genealogy of Badly, one of the Adalite rulers, derives him from ‘Umar ibn Walasma’ al JABARTI (Nujum ed. Popper, vii. 4.) The Abyssinian derive the term from gabr (plural. Agbert), ‘servant (of God)’. On the meaning of the word, see E. Cerulli, O. M. v (1925), 614 ff.)
then the term was extended to all Muslims the kingdom of southern Ethiopia, and finally, to all Ethiopian Muslims. (When we read that there is a RIWAQ (logia or portico) for the JABARTI at AZHAR in Cairo (Khitat Jadida, vi. 23; AL-JABARTI, iii. 167) the word is used for Ethiopian Muslim in general and it is so used in this broad sense in Abyssinia today, but they do sometimes use it in the narrow sense adopted in this book. Eslam (eslamay) (plural. Eslamoc) and Naggade are also used in Abyssinia as general terms for Muslims. The plural nickname is ‘back-rinsers’ (Amharic QIT TAT TABI, Galla ISLAM HUDDU DIQATTU Tigrina AKUAR). The Ethiopian Chronicle uses the term MALASAY (cf. Basset, Etudes, pp. 14, 15, 106), whilst the general Ge’ez word was TAMBALAT TANEBALLA lit. ‘to cry NABIYU’LLAH, ‘to pray’, ‘to preach’, &c. (see Dillman, Lexikon, col. 562).It must be clearly understood that in no sense is it the ethnic name of a people.



The JABARTI, in sense of Islamic Diaspora to which we are restricting the term, consist of families or groups scattered amongst or mixed up with the Christian population of the highlands, from whom from ethnical point of view they cannot be distinguished, although the cultural cleavage causes a distinct difference. They are Ethiopian Muslim who speak the language and preserve the general customs of the region in which they live, observing the shari’a only in matters connected with the religious cult, personal status, and family law.

(In many such matter: the JABARTI of ERITREA follow the customs of the Christians.’IL diritto religioso cosi ammesso in Eritrea e diverso a seconda che si rtiferisce alle popolazioni cristiano-copte (abitanti l’altipiano abissino) o alle popolazioni mussulmane del resto della colonia (ad eccezione dei mussulmani della zona abissina della colonia, detti GIABERTI e il cui statuto personale segue il costume e le norme dei copti)’ ( A. Bertola, il regime dei culti nell’ Africa Italiana, 1939, p. 73).

Such Muslim villages are scattered all over the highlands. They are strong in the northern territories of Hamasien (5,900), Akele-Guzai (3,800), and Serae (9,200). The chief family of these JABARTI claim descent from ‘Uthman ibn Affan, the third Khalifa, and his wife Ruqayya, daughter of the Prophet, who were amongst the refugees to Abyssinia of the first Hijra. They had a son who remained with his mother in Abyssinia. What seems to be genuine is the emigration from the Magrib of certain SHAIKH ADAM AL-KINANI who propagated ISLAM and whose tomb at ‘ABI’ADDI in the Tigrai is a JABARTI shrine. Naturally, with such claims to noble descent, his descendants, who live at ‘ADI ITAI in the Serae, are held great honour by the rest of the JABARTI.

Other Muslim villages are at ‘Adi Tegemes in Tigrai; Awasa in Semen (Berok Waha group) near ‘Adi Arkai, many of whose people are traders whilst others engage in agriculture and cattle breeding; Darita in Begamder; many villages around Lake Ashangi; Ebbenat in the basin of the Red near Dabra Tabor; the Ido district south of Debra Tabor; Marawa near Aammista, and families in the Muggia (Agao) region. In Shoa the district of Totose just south of Dabra Berhan, whose inhabitants are Amharic-speaking, is Muslim; whilst farther to south-east, on the border of Gembi-bet, groups of Muslims are numerous. Then there are groups in the chief towns such as Asmara and other towns in Eritrea; Debarek, Dara , Islamge, Dangela, Dessye, Addis Alem the Muslim suburb of Gondar, at Sokota, once the seat of the ruler of Lasta, and at Addis Ababa, where out of a total native population of 86,468 in 1938 5,324 were MuslimsS. G. I. , ser. vii, vol. v (1940), p. 170).trength of Islam in these towns is shown by the fact that the Italians built mosques in them all.

The conversion of some of these groups may go back to early period of Muslim propaganda when the sultanate of Shoa was flourishing. Some JABARTI derive their conversion from AHMAD an-NAJASH, an Abyssinian disciple of the Prophet of the time of the first Hijra, whose tomb in the Tigrai is still an important place of pilgrimage.
“The tomb of Ahmad an Najash is situated some 38 miles south of Adi Grat. We know that it existed in the sixteenth century because it was visited by THE IMAM AHMAD (futuh, p. 317).” The presence of other groups, especially villages of agriculturalists, certainly goes back to the invasion of the Imam Ahmad which left many Amhara, Agao, and TIGREANS permanently Islamised. Other derive from families of Muslim traders who have settled in market centres and became Abyssinized in language and customs, but not in religion. Some of those in the north (HAMASIEN, AKELE-GUZAI, and SERAE) who all speaks Tigrina, were founded by families of the Balaw.

In general, the JABARTI live on friendly terms with Christian population who surround them, they speak the same language and bonds of mutual interest link them together. Many of the chief families consequently have allied themselves by marriage and the wife has usually adopted the religion of her husband. On the other hand, they have sometimes come into conflict with the central government or local rulers, and, as a result of an outburst of anti-Muslim feeling caused by reaction against highland Galla or in consequence of an external threat from the Egyptians who were helped by the northern JABARTI, they have sometimes been persecuted and subjected to humiliating laws. Imperial decrees have deprived them of resti, which is the hereditary absolute land-right of an individual family within the enda. Resti-owners are known as restenyatat and form a kind of landed aristocracy: the Muslim could hold land only as tenants (sebdi in Akele-Guzai)
“The sebdi pacts are concluded for indefinite period and are difficult to terminate. Dr. S. F. Nadel writes: ‘ The sebdi is said to have originated in the pacts which Muhammedans immigrants on the plateau concluded with the land-owning Coptic groups… One of the most dangerous features of the sebdi disputes is the religious antagonism, which they may easily evoke. The Christian landowners, in demanding the termination of sebdi, are trying to oust the alien Muhammedans from the Christian-owned land. The Christians frankly admit their fear that this interminable lease might obscure the “sacred” rights and privileges of risti- rights and privileges from which all aliens must remain excluded. The Muhammedans, in turn, accuse the Christians of wishing to deprive them of the ancient rights acquired by their forefathers. Claims and counterclaims are both justified, and the disputes over land threaten to turn into religious and racial feuds’ (land Tenure on the Eritrean Plateau’, Africa xvi, 1946, 15-17).

Or by rights of purchase (worki). They have until recently been excluded from positions of authority and rank, and for a short time, under Emperor John IV, were not allowed to witness in court, as though they were SLAVES. But in general, although they were regarded as inferior in status, they were not badly treated and the land laws did not weigh on them much more heavily than they did upon many of their Christian neighbours.

The JABARTI are on a much higher level than most MUSLIMS of north east Africa. They are mainly artisans and merchants, for the Abyssinians, with their pride of birth and contempt of labour, left such occupations to them, but there are also a great many groups of cultivators. The JABARTI do not display the fanatical zeal often shown by nomads, because their prosperity is dependent upon stable rule and peaceful condition. They are not very rigid in prayers and fasting few, if any, go on pilgrimage. The headman of the villages have someone they call the Qadi who is usually the teacher at the Qur’an school and Imam of the mosque (masjid) which is a simple hut like their houses but kept in somewhat better repair. The Qadi is maintained by gifts in money or more generally in kind given at the chief festivals or when a child reaches certain stages in memorization of the Qur’an. In Mad’hhab they are divided between the Malikiyya, Hannafiyya, and Shafi’iyya. The attitude of the JABARTI to women has been influenced by their environment. They generally have only one wife, their women are unveiled, held in great honour, and enjoy considerable liberty.

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The Somali have a tradition (see G. Revoil, LaValle du Darror, 1882, pp. 315 – 16) that one JABARTI b. Isma’il was shipwrecked in A.H. 75 on the coast and lived in the grotto of God-baroro near Cape Guardafui. Acquiring renown through his powers of discovering hidden treasures he was able to marry DUBARRA, a relation of the King of Dur. He had a son named HARTI (DAROD) who was the ancestor of the Dulbahanta, Dechichi, Majerteni, and Warsanghali tribes. Tradition also relates that in the fifteenth century a Sharif Ishaq b. Ahmad left the Hadramawt with forty-four saints and landed at Makhan on the windward coast. He settled down at the town of Met near Burnt Island, where his tomb still exists, and became the father of noble families claiming Arab ancestry through the children of Magdale, producing the Bahr Magdale tribes, and through an Abyssinian woman whose sons founded the Ba Habr Habushed tribes; L. Robecchi Brichetti, Nel Paese degli Aromi (Milan, 1903), pp. 114 – 17

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The effect of Islam upon the position of women varies according to the depth of the islamization. In general, the greater the hold of orthodox institutions the lower becomes the status of women. There are, however, notable exceptions. The position of women amongst many of the JABARTI and HARARIAN society is much higher than amongst most Muslims.

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The distribution of the madhahib is as follows:

Shafi’ite

The Afar (Danakil) of Assab, Rahaita, Edd, and Beilul.
Immigrants from Yaman; Somali immigrants in Eritrea.
Section of Hadarem (i.e. those Hadramawtis who are not Ibadites), Ad Sawra, Ad Mu’allim, and certain JABARTIS.
Northern Galla (Wallo, Yajju, and Raya).
Hara city and surrounding Galla tribes…

Hanafite


Massawa’, Arkiko, Monkullo, Otumlo, Zula, Ailat, Asus, Gumhot, Asab, and other coastal towns; Island of Dahlak; Arab immigrants from Hijaz; Indian Muslims.
Saho Tribes (Tero’a, Assaorta, Mini-Fere, and Haso).
Ad Tamaryam, section of the Habab, Ad Mu’allim, Ad Sawra, and Ad Takles.
Mansa and Bait Juk
The Afar of Buri.
JABARTI of Begamder. Certain Galla of Jimma.
A quarter of Harar city

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The Sammaniyya was introduced amongst the JABARTI on the Eritrean plateau by Magrabi Shaikh ADAM al-KINANI, who is buried in the Serae near ‘ABI ‘ADDI. A Shaikh from the Egyptian Sudan also propagated it amongst the Galla of Jimma Abba Jifar and Limmu Enarya, but it has not acquired much influence in southwestern Abyssinia.

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(h) Sammaniyya


This order, which is an offshoot of the Khawatiyya, was founded by Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al Karim as- Sammani (1718-75). It was introduced into Egyptian Sudan by Shaikh Ahmad at-Tayyib ibn al-Bashir (d.1823) and from there it was brought to the JABARTI on the Eritrean plateau by Shaikh ADAM al-KINANI who is buried in the Serae near ‘Abi’ADDI. It has also some followers in the southwestern Ethiopia.

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A famous shrine honoured by the JABARTI and SAHO is that of AHMAD an-NAJASH in Agame. This tomb is visited by the women of the ASSAORTA who wish to obtain children.

Another shrine much revered by the Eritrean JABARTI is of ADAM al-KINANI at ‘ABI’ADDI.

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