A Cushitic Custom

Note on A Cushitic Custom.

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Taken from: PREMODERN ETHNOGRAPHY; A CUSHITIC CUSTOM DESCRIBED AND EXPLAINED BY MEDIAEVAL ARAB OBSERVERS by Zoltán Szombathy 2013

Victim of emasculation in the Horn of Africa in a war in the late19th century. (Picture not from this article)

1. Some Mediaeval Arabic Accounts of a Cushitic Custom

1.1 Buzurg b. Sahriyar ar-Ramhurmuzi (955)

Sailors are in agreement on the Sea of Berbera [...] being one of the most dangerous seas. The Bantu (Zang) have many islands in one extremity of this sea. It is said that there are very strong currents of water there, and ships can traverse it in six or seven days. Now, if a ship [by bad luck] lands in [the coast of] Berbera, [the inhabitants] capture the ship’s crew and emasculate them. However, if traders go to Berbera [on purpose], each one of them, in accordance with his position and wealth, has a whole group of [natives] with him to escort him, lest some of the local people should capture and castrate him. Everyone among them [i.e. the natives] collects the testicles of those whom he has emasculated and preserves them, and when they want to boast among themselves, they make a show of [the trophies] they possess so that others would envy them. That is because [the ultimate sign of] courage [in their eyes] is for a man of their people to emasculate a foreign/unrelated man (ar-ragul min al-guraba’)

1.2 Ṭahir al-Marwazi (1120)

On the shores of the sea of al-Ḥabasa lives a group of southern Cushites (firqa min al-barbar) whom traders visit and with whom they do business from afar and under the surveillance of watchmen and [armed] guards, fearing them greatly. The reason is their custom of cutting off the genitalia (an yagubbu) of those strangers they manage to capture. They do to them nothing beside that. That done, they hang the penises along with the testicles on their huts in order to boast and vie among themselves as to the number of [such trophies]...

1.3 Yaqut al-Ḥamawi (1229)

I was told by the sheikh Walid al-Basri, who is one of those who have travelled widely over the countries, that the Barbar are an ethnic group (ta’ifa) of blacks [living] between the land of the Bantu (az-Zang) and the Ethiopians (al-Ḥabas). They have a curious custom [...]. They are [scattered] groups living over the arid plains (al-barriyya) in huts they construct out of [dry] grass. Now, if one of them falls in love with a woman and wants to marry her, but he is not equal to her in status (wa-lam yakun kufu’an laha), he takes a cow from among the cattle of her father – one which must be a pregnant cow – and then he cuts off some of the hairs of its tail and lets it loose again to graze. That done, he flees in search of someone whose male organ he will cut off. Now, when the herdsman returns to the father of the girl or her [legal] guardian from among her kinsmen (man yakun waliyyan laha min ahliha), they go out in search of him [viz. of the suitor]. If they can capture him, they will kill him and thus settle the affair. If they do not, he goes where he will, trying to find someone to cut the penis of and bring it to them [the woman’s kin]. If the cow gives birth to its calves before he brings them a mutilated penis, his quest has been all in vain and he can never return to his kin again, leaving instead for some place where no-one knows anything about him, since should he return to them they will kill him. However, if he cut off the penis of a man and brings it to them [in time], the girl is his [to marry] and no-one will be able to deny her to him, regardless of who she is [viz. her family’s status].

[Walid al-Baṣri] also said: Most of those you see around who are from these lands, from among the ethnic group called the Blacks of Zaylac (aṭ-ta’ifa alma crufa bi-z-Zaylac al-sudan), are people who once tried to cut off a penis but failed. Then, when they reached the western lands [of the Arab world] they turned to the [study of the] Quran and asceticism, as you can observe.

1.4 Abu l-Fida’ (1331)

[...] the Hasa [are] an abhorrent type of Abyssinians (madmumun min agnas al-Ḥabasa). They have become infamous for castrating whoever falls into their hands. They give away the penises of humans by way of dowry (yadfacun dukur al-adamiyyin fī sadaqatihim), and they boast of such things among themselves. To the east of their land towards the (Red) sea is [the region of] Samhar.

Except of these four that the author of this article found; I did find some more on my own web-side.

-Ibn Nasir aldin Aldimashqi: Kitab tawdih almushtabah (1438)

Berber;

The first is a nation in the Maghrib…..

Another Berber nation in the last land between Yemen and the land of Abyssinia.

They are black and Zinj who make their wives' dowry by cutting the penis of man.

- Chou Chih-Chung : I-Yu-chih (1366)

Dashi Bi-pa-luo guo

Has four states, does not have a king, only a headman to run affairs. As to marriage, they cut the tail of a cow who is with calf, the family of the groom has to bring a human penis (of a slain enemy) to prove his masculinity as a betrothal gift to bride's family, the bride's family being overjoyed, welcomes it by the music.

- Al Firuzabadi: Qamus al Muhit (d1414)

Barbar: Barbar: a people, plural. Baraabirah, and they are: in the Maghreb (to the west). And another people between the Hubush and the Zanj. They cut off the penises of men and give them to their women as dowries. Each of them is from a son of Qais Al-Bailaan or they (the barbar) are two groups from Himyar, the Sinhaajah and the Kutaamah who became berbers (were berberized) during the time when the king Africanus conquered Africa/Ifriqiyyah.

- Ch'en Yuan-Ching: Shih-Lin Kuang-Chi (late12 century)

Da-shi-bi-pa-luo 大食 弼琶囉囯

…… When a marriage is to be arranged the bride's family announces the agreement by cutting off the tail of a cow in calf as gesture of good faith. The period of betrothal starts from the day when the tail is cut, and the marriage can be consummated only after the cow has calved. The grooms family must respond to the cutting of the cow's tail as a pledge of the date of betrothal by bringing a severed human tail to the house of the bride. The human tail which serves as a betrothal gift is the male organ (1). When it arrives, the bride's family, rejoicing, welcomes it with music and parades through the street for seven days after which the groom enters the bride's house and is married to her and they become one family. Each marriage deprives a man of his live. Such is the custom of mutual rivalry among families wishing to display the fortitude and courage of their sons in law, without which no girls family would ever consent to her marriage.

- Zare'a Ya'kob ruler of Ethiopia (1445)

The sexual parts of those who had died (1) against the king were displayed in the camp of the king and were 40,000 in number. And the ones of which no sexual parts were found, who in the river, or when fleeing or on the roads died, and the ones who during flight were hid by spears, they were 110,000. Then Badlay had assembled many troops from Beta-Ma'ala up to Modadischo (Mogadishu), all Adel-allies. They calculated in their lands the numbers of those who had fallen and those who had been captured..........

- Ning Xian Wang (1430)

Da shi bi pa luo country, there are four main countries with no kings but with local rulers As to marriage, they cut the tail of a cow who is with calf, the family of the groom has to bring a human penis (of a slain enemy) to prove his masculinity as a betrothal gift to bride's family, the bride's family being overjoyed, welcomes it by the music.

2. The Testimony of Western Sources

These tribes inherit from their ancestors the horrible practice of mutilation. They seek the honour of murder, to use their own phrase, “as though it were gain”, [...] Then bearing with him his trophy, the hero returns home and places it before his wife, who stands at the entrance of her hut uttering shrill cries of joy and tauntingly vaunting the prowess of her man. The latter sticks in his tufty poll an ostrich feather, the medal of these regions, and is ever afterwards looked upon with admiration by his fellows (Burton 1855:139).

The great ambition of every Dankali [i.e. Afar] is to collect more trophies than his neighbour, and they invariably castrate the dead and dying and most usually their prisoners. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance attached by them to this custom, and many raids are undertaken solely with the object of collecting trophies. For a man’s standing in the tribe depends on the number of his trophies, and ten will give him the right to wear a coveted iron bracelet. An elaborate system of decorations displays his prowess to his contemporaries, and a line of stones upright before his memorial hands down his fame to posterity. The most general method of denoting kills is to attach a brass-bound leather thong to knife or rifle, one for each trophy taken. But no man may wear a coloured loin cloth, a comb or feather in his hair, nor decorate his knife with brass or silver until he has killed at least once, and two kills will entitle him to split his ears. I never saw them wearing the testicles of their victims round their necks, as Nesbitt states is their custom; they actually deny this, and I find it difficult to believe that their denial is based on feelings of delicacy [...]. I have however seen them wearing around their wrists those of animals which they have killed, and they will mark themselves on the forehead with the blood of an animal, and probably do the same with human blood. On returning from a raid those warriors who have not yet killed must provide the animals for the feasting, and they are ragged unmercifully by their more successful companions, their clothes being soiled and cow dung rubbed in their hair. [...]

There is a widespread but incorrect belief that a Dankali may not marry until he has killed, but no woman other than his wife would submit to his embraces. “You are a woman and I am a woman, so why do you come to me?” she is reputed to exclaim (Thesiger 1935:4-5).

3. The Impact of Islamic Conversion

The Cushitic peoples of the Horn of Africa began to convert to Islam in significant numbers around the 5th/11th century, a process that gained momentum in the subsequent centuries. Parallel with this development, an instantly perceptible change occurred in the tone of Arabic accounts of the culture and society of the peoples of the region. The reason is as simple as the resulting changes are striking: with the conversion of many Cushite groups to Islam the more barbaric (to Muslim Arab eyes) aspects of their cultures began to be downplayed or altogether glossed over in the sources. Growing familiarity with the African coast of the Red Sea and growing awareness of the professed (if largely nominal) Islamic faith of the Cushitic inhabitants of that region led to less emphasis in Arabic sources on the savage customs of those people and more emphasis on their piety (at least the piety of some of them).

The ‘land of Berbera’ gradually loses its status as a region of menacing black savages and is increasingly presented as a land of coreligionists, fellow human beings despite their strangeness and their ebony complexion.

The Egyptian Ibn Fadlallah al-Umari (d. 749/1349) is one of those Muslim authors who relied on native informants for their data on the Cushitic peoples of the Horn of Africa. He mentions a certain “Sheikh Abdallah al-Zayla’i and a group of the jurisprudents of those lands [i.e. southeast Ethiopia and northern Somalia] as the main source of his information. Other persons with first-hand acquaintance of the Ethiopian lands were also among the informants of al-Umari. Despite the remarkably good supply of data on this region that al-Umari could draw on, he does not mention the infamous custom of emasculating enemies. One must be led to this conclusion by observing that in a totally different social context he does mention the practice of castration and associates it firmly with the non-Muslim population: the widespread and well-known Cushitic custom of emasculating slaves intended for service as eunuchs.

The Egyptian author Taqi ad-Din Aḥmad b. Ali al-Maqrizi (d.1442) shares a significant part of his data with al-Umari like the latter drawing heavily on information available in Ibn Said al-Andalusi’s works. al-Maqrizi’s treatise titled al-Ilmam bi-ahbar man bi-arḍ al-Ḥabasa min muluk al-islam discusses the Muslim rulers of the Horn of Africa, the population under their dominion and their struggles against Christian highland Ethiopia. Needless to say where al-Maqrizi’s sympathies lay; one is not surprised to find a sympathetic portrayal of the Muslim side in these protracted wars. However, even the briefish ethnographical and geographical passages on various Cushitic and other black African ethnicities omit any mention of the savage customs of Cushitic-speaking Muslims. As noted above, here too one encounters the same account as in al-Umari on the non-Muslims castrating slaves to produce eunuchs.

Let it be understood that the Afar and other Islamised Cushites did not cease to practice the gory custom of emasculation and the display of severed male genitalia as war trophies. In fact, the custom is reported to have been alive quite into the twentieth century.

4. Conclusions

First and most importantly, they try to find the social function or meaning of the custom rather than simply attributing it to the inherent savagery of the natives. Secondly, they do not limit their efforts to accepting the earlier authors’ claims but offer their own independent interpretation (although this may be at least partly due to unfamiliarity with previous scholarship on the subject). Thirdly, the accounts rely on information obtained from eyewitness sources, typically traders having visited the Horn of Africa, and with the passage of time and the gradual Islamisation of the region one increasingly sees native informants cited as sources of data.

When it comes to images of savagery, Arabic sources show a tendency to connect these with those Cushitic groups that remained non-Muslim, such as many Oromo groups. Thus al Umari mentions castration as practiced only by the non-Muslim western neighbours of the Islamic Hadiya state, although he relied on an informant who was surely aware of the emasculatory customs of the people around Zayla town.