Islamic Renewal Movements, Colonial Occupation, and the Ḫatmiyya in the Red Sea Region

CHAPTER 1 Islamic Renewal Movements, Colonial Occupation, and the Ḫatmiyya in the Red Sea Region Islam and the Idrīsī Tradition in Northeast Africa It is only in recent years that scholars have begun to study Islamic history in the Horn of Africa, and to transcend the old notion that Ethiopia was “an island of Christianity in the sea of Islam”, which had led them to focus on a simplified relationship of rivalry and conflictuality with the Christian religion. As a result of this shift, recent studies have been able to illustrate the long social, political, and intellectual history of Islam in the region, as well as inter-religious encoun- ters, with an emphasis on the co-existence and interactions that have shaped Ethiopian and Eritrean societies.1 The earliest contacts with the Red Sea coast of the African continent had already been established when Islam appeared and spread beyond the revolu- tionizing Hejaz societies of the region as a whole. In 615 AD, the persecutions that the newly-born Muslim community had suffered in Mecca led some, the muhāǧirūn, to seek exile in Axum, the Christian kingdom on the other side of the Red Sea. The Prophet’s biographers, Ibn Isḥāq (706–761 AD) and Ibn Hišām (828–833 AD) recorded this first Muslim hiǧra, or migration, to Abyssinia; Ibn Hišām reported that on this occasion, the Prophet Muhammad ruled that Abyssinia would not be a land of ǧihād.2 Historical records recount the pres- ence of women among these first Muslim migrants from Arabia, such as Umm Ḥabība bint Abī Sufyān and Umm Salama bint Abī Umayya, who are num- bered among the earliest disciples of the Prophet, and who returned to Arabia and married the Prophet after the deaths of their husbands. In Ethiopian Islamic history, another well-known female personality is Batī Del Wämbära, the daughter of the Governor of Zaylaʿ, Imām Maḥfuz, and the wife of Imām Aḥmad ibn Ibrahīm al-Gāzī, also known as Grāñ. Batī Del Wämbära accompanied her husband on the ǧihād against the Christian 1 Hussein Ahmed 1992: 15–46; Hussein Ahmed 2006: 4–22; Hussein Ahmed 2009: 59; Ficquet, forthcoming. 2 On the first contacts with Islam and this Muslim hiǧra to Ethiopia, see: Trimingham 1952: 42–48; Cass 1965; Hussein Ahmad 1992: 15–46; Hussein Ahmad 2009. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi ��.��63/9789004356�60_003 Islamic Renewal Movements, Colonial Occupation 13 empire and became a symbol of the success of the holy war, actively participat- ing in propagating the faith.3 At least until the 16th century, Islam would mostly spread peacefully, thanks to Arab traders and migrant communities along the trading routes from the Red Sea ports into the hinterland.4 One branch of the Ethiopian community, the so-called Jabarti, claims that their conversion originated during this early period. The first Eritrean and Ethiopian groups to adopt Islam were in contact with Muslim traders and trade centres all along the caravan routes between the African hinterland and the Red Sea coast. In addition to the role played by the Muslim traders, artisans, and adventurers who travelled or migrated to the region, living in close touch with the natives and sometimes marrying local women, the expansion of Islam was promoted by the activities of Sufi scholars and Islamic brotherhoods, who played a pivotal role in spreading the new religion, while at the same time mediating with African cultures and be- liefs. It seems that the Qādiriyya was the first Islamic brotherhood (ṭarīqa) to be introduced by immigrants from Yemenite Ḥaḍramawt to Massawa, Zaylaʿ, Mogadishu and other coastal centres. The ṭarīqa was also well established in Maghreb, Andalusia, Anatolia, Arabia, and Iraq, from where its founder, the Persian mystic ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Ǧīlānī (1078–1166), originally came. In the 15th century, Šarīf Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Aydarūs, who died in Aden in 1503 AD, introduced the Qādiriyya to Harar, which was the principal centre of Islamic learning in the Horn of Africa, and the order first became semi-official, and later the most widely spread ṭarīqa in the region.5 In Sudan, Islamization was initially marked by the activities of religious figures who were not affiliated with a particular order. These orders subse- quently became active agents of Islamization, especially in the 16th century with the arrival of Qādiriyya and Šāḏiliyya, which were decentralized Sufi orders, and in the 18th and 19th centuries through the spread of centralized and semi-centralized orders such as the Sammāniyya, the Tiǧāniyya, the Ḫatmiyya, and the Idrīsiyya.6 In Ethiopia and Eritrea, the influence of Sufi traditions and teachings from Sudan and Egypt was especially significant due to the intense activity of regional centres of Islamic learning, which spread and allowed the 3 Pankhurst 2009; Böll 2003; Chernetsov 2003. 4 Cerulli 1971: 115. 5 Trimingham 1952: 234. 6 Trimingham 1971: 1–104; Karrar 1992: 1–4. According to Karrar, the three stages of develop- ment of the Sufi orders (khānaqāh, ṭarīqa and ṭā’ifa) proposed by Trimingham do not apply to Sudan because the spread of Islam in this region was marked by two main stages: pre- ṭarīqa and ṭarīqa..

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