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This message was updated on 2/13/2003 1:30:05 PM by Nomade

Coffee and Chat (addis tribune)
replied on: 2/13/2003 1:29:17 PM

Let's Look Across the Red Sea: IV

Ports and Slaves;Coffee and Chat

By Richard Pankhurst

Emperor Yekuno Amlak and the Hamdanic Sultan of Yemen

Diplomatic contacts across the Red Sea came to the fore shortly after the establishment of the new Shawa-based Ethiopian “Solomonic” dynasty in 1270. Emperor Yekuno Amlak, the founder of this dynasty, was concerned that his country had been without an Abun, or Metropolitan, since 1250. He accordingly wrote to Al-Malik al-Muzeffar, the Hamdanid sultan of Yemen, requesting the latter’s help in approaching Sultan Rukn ad-Din Baybars of Egypt, with a view to obtaining a new Coptic bishop. The latter, he declared, should be honest, and not merely concerned, like his predecessors, with amassing money.

Al-Malik duly forwarded the Emperor’s letter to Cairo - but, not wishing to make amy mistakes!, detained the envoys, pending the Sultan’s reaction.

Baybars accordingly replied to Yekuno Amlak:

“Regarding the request for a bishop, submitted to us in the letter, no one has come to our court to discuss the matter with us on behalf of the king; so we do not know at all what you expect of us. As for the letter of Sultan Al-Malik al Muzeffar, it has reached us, explaining that the latter has received a letter and an envoy from the king of Ethiopia, whom he has kept with him until he receives a reply [from us} to his letter”.

Relations between Ethiopia and Coptic Egypt thereafter developed on a direct and an entirely bilateral basis, without any further mediation on the part of the rulers of Yemen

Commercial Links

Yemen and the Horn of Africa meanwhile continued to be linked commercially as Arab writers of this period testify. Much of this trade still passed through the port of Zayla‘. Ibn Said (1214-1287) described it as the export centre for slaves and horses from Abyssinia. His near contemporary, Ibn al Wardi, called the port “the emporium of Habash”, while Shams ad-Din Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad (1256-1327) claimed, doubtless with no little exaggeration that gold was so plentiful there that it was no more valuable than iron.

Coffee: an Ethiopian export to Arabia

Ibn Fadl Allah al-‘Umari

The renowned Egyptian courtier Ibn Fadl Allah al-‘Umari states in his Masalik al-Absar fi Mamalik al-Amsar (c. 1342-9) that the tribute paid to the emperors of Ethiopia by their Muslim subjects consisted primarily of “clothes imported from Egypt, the Yemen, and Iraq”. They came, he explains, mainly through Zayla‘, whose exports consisted, he confirms, largely of gold and slaves. This is corroborated by another authority, Abul Fida (d. 1331), who described the port as a prosperous commercial centre serving Habash.

The importance of such commercial contacts in this period is underlined by the modern Ethiopian historian Taddesse Tamrat. He states that Muslim merchants, around the time of Emperor ‘Amda Seyon (1314-1344), did business for the rulers of Ethiopia with the three countries mentioned by al-’Umari, namely Egypt, Yemen and Iraq.

Yemeni Interest in Zayla‘

Yemeni interest in Zayla‘, in the second half of the thirteenth century, was also noticed by the Coptic historian Al-Mufaddal ibn Ab’l-Fada’il. He states that the port was then inhabited by seven different tribes, each of whom recited the hutbah, or prayer of allegiance, in the name of their own separate chief.

The then ruler of Yemen, wishing to profit from this disunity, and to gain paramountcy at the port, despatched stones for the erection of a mosque, so that the town’s inhabitants would recite the hutbah also in his name. The citizens, however, were unhappy about succumbing to such pressure. They accordingly hurled some of the stones into the sea. The Yemeni ruler thereupon detained several Zayla‘ boats for over a year.

The port later fell under Yemeni control a century or so later. The Yemen historian ‘Alu ibn al-Hasan ibn Wahhas al-Hazraji states that Zayla‘ was acquired by the Yemeni governor of Zabid, Amin al-Din Ahyaf, who came to office in 1371.

Yemeni rule of Zayla‘ was, however, short-lived, for power soon passed to a dynasty of local sultans.

The Slave Trade

Commercial contacts between Yemen and "Habash", i.e. Abyssinia are reported to have led to a considerable sale, and transportation, of Habashi slaves, which was mentioned, as we have seen, by several Arab authors. This commerce resulted in the arrival in Yemen, and other parts of Arabia, of a significant number of Ethiopians, Nubians, and other peoples of Africa.

The Ethiopian slave presence in Arabia can be traced back to at least the year 575 AD, when Sayf ibn Dhi Yazin, the last king of pre-Islamic Yemen, was murdered by his Abyssinian slaves. This prompted the modern historian Huseyn ibn ‘Abdullah al-Amri to comment that the “majority of slaves” in Yemen had “always been Abyssinians”, thus “reflecting the ancient countries between the two countries”.

The importance of the Abyssinian slave presence is likewise evident from the life of the Prophet Muhammad. In a famous phrase the he described his first muezzin Bilal, the son of an Abyssinian slave girl, who called the faithful to prayer, as “the first fruit of Abyssinia”.

"A Thousand"

Details on Ethiopian slaves in Yemen become more plentiful a few centuries later. Ibn Hawqal reported in 978-9 that Abu’l Jaish Ibn Ziyad, the king of Yemen, received tribute in slaves, as well as amber and leopard skins, from the ruler of the Dahlak islands. Abu Muhammad ‘Umara states that these slaves numbered a thousand, half of whom were Abyssinian and Nubian women. Al-Maqdisi, in 985, listed slaves from Habash among the principal merchandise of Aden.

"Twenty Thousand"

Later again, in 1021, an Abyssinian slave called Najah, who had been purchased in Africa by a ruler of Yemen, seized power at Zabid, and established a dynasty, the Banu Najah, which ruled until 1159. Report has it that there were in his time no less than a thousand Abyssinian lancers at Zabid, and that one of his dynasty, Said Ibn Najah, sent across the Red Sea to purchase a further twenty thousand. Trimingham, discussing the role of the Banu Najah, and another dynasty, the Banu Ziyad, goes so far as to claim that they carried on the slave trade so “assiduously” that they made “many regions of Arabia ethnically similar to the Hamites of the opposite coast”.

The advent of Habash lancers may well have been of no small cultural importance in Yemen, as it could well have resulted in the introduction of spears, which seem to have come into use in Arabia at around this time.

Na’akuto La’ab

There would appear, on the other hand, to be no evidence to support the suggestion of the veteran British scholar Wallis Budge that King Na’kuto La’ab (died c. 1270), one of the more prominent members of the Ethiopian Zagwe dynasty, was ever sent to Yemen. The story that he “fell under the influence of the Arabs, and learnt their habits and ways”, is not supported by his Gadl, or Acts, and must therefore be regarded with the utmost reserve.

Chat and Coffee

Historic links across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden were, however, apparently responsible for the introduction, from Ethiopia into Yemen, of perhaps the latter’s two most important cultivated plants: the mild narcotic chat, (Catha or Celastrus edulis), and the beverage coffee.

Chat was taken to Yemen from Abyssinia, according to al-‘Umari, during the reign of the Yemeni ruler Malik Muayyad (1206-1321). The plant, called chat in Ethiopia, and qat in Yemen, is known to have been widely consumed by Muslims in Ethiopia, at least by the time of Emperor ‘Amda Seyon, as noted in his chronicle.

Coffee, which is believed to have also originated in Ethiopia, was first mentioned there in the early sixteenth century chronicle of the Adal conqueror Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, better known as Ahmad Gragn, i.e. in Amharic the left-handed. According to Yemeni tradition, the bean was brought to Yemen by Shaykh Shams ad-Din Abu al-Hasan ibn ‘Omar al Shad’eli al-Yamani, apparently in the early fifteenth century.

Its Ethiopian origin, and subsequent transportation across the Red Sea, was accepted by several later observers, among them the eighteenth century Czech Franciscan missionary Remedius Prutky, the subsequent French traveller Charles Poncet, and the nineteenth century British Orientalist Sir Richard Burton, translator of the "Arabian Nights".

Nex Week: The Story Continues.

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