Textual Evidence of Immigration from the Horn into East Africa.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Taken from: The Northern Zanj, Demadim, Yamyam, Yam/Yamjam, Habasha/Ahabish, Zanj-Ahabish, and Zanj ed-Damadam – The Horn of Africa between the Ninth and Fifteenth Centuries by Daniel Ayana 2019
Introduction
The ethnographic data overlooked in the primary sources indicate that the northern Zanj or Zanj-ed-Damadim , Zanj-Ahabish were sections of the Oromo, the largest linguistic group in Ethiopia. Some of them extended as far as into modern Kenya and Somalia, where they were known for their institution of the Gadaa system that elected leaders every eight years. In broad terms, the first section of this article deals with the diversity of the Zanj by recasting the terms Zanj and Ahabish (Habasha) to identify the elusive Zanj ed-Damdam, Zanj-Ahabish or Yamjam as Jamjam , a section of the ancient Oromo who moved into coastal east Africa.
The territorial extent of the term Zanj, its regional population diversity, and its inclusion of populations in what is now central and southern Ethiopia continued to be overlooked. That perspective is indeed evident from statements by major Arab writers about the northern limit of Zanj land. In the second half of the ninth century the geographer al-Fazari included the Zanj as the largest nation in east Africa, indeed of all Africa as it was then known. A century later Ibn Hauqal and al-Masudi provided specific geographic information that the Blue Nile flowed through “the region of the Zendjs ” before reaching Nubia and Egypt. al-Masudi wrote that the Zanj country began on the upper bank of the Nile. Istakhiri’s writings in the mid-tenth century explicitly framed the Zanj settlement as reaching medieval Abyssinia in the north. Ibn Hauqal wrote in about 988 that the Zanj country comes after the land of the medieval Abyssinians. Zakkariyya Kazwini (d. 1283) wrote that Zanj was bounded in the north by the Abyssinia state. al-Yakubi (in 891) and Ibn Said al-Maghribi (1213–1286) wrote that the Zanj sub-groups extended from coastal Manbasa to the southern limit of thirteenth-century Christian Abyssinia.
Diversity of the Zanj population
Implicit in that territorial extent was the diversity of the Zanj population, to include Cushitic, Semitic, and Bantu groups.
From the reports cited above it is clear that “northern Zanj” referred to the entire Zanj land, which was vast. It is plausible to assume that al-Jahiz in the ninth century and al-Masudi who visited coastal Zanj twice in 916 and 945 applied labels such as Zanj-Ahabish, Ahabish, and Damadim in reference to the same group.
al-Jahiz, for example, referred to “Zanj hinterland,” as well as to “Zanj” and “Habash,” while al-Masudi’s ethnonyms for the tenth-century Zanj included Barbara, northern Zanj, Ahabish, Zanj al-Habash , and Dendema.
By the thirteenth century Ibn-Said (1213–1286) had added Damadim , and then in the fourteenth-century Shams al-Din al-Dimashqi (1256–1327) associated the same people with the land and river of the Damadam , or the “Nile of Mogadisho.”
Age-set institution.
Age-set is a key institution related to election and power-transfer, of the Boorana and Guji. Both are Oromo and still practice the Gadaa system to transfer power to a new generation every eight years. Gadaa is now understood to be very old. Second, despite difference in time depth, the tenth- to twelfth-century ritual descriptions match nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarly studies. For instance, a recent study on requirements for candidacy indicated that certain groups are still “excluded from competition” for office due to past offences, confirming al-Masudi’s tenth-century report referring to proscription of the descendants of certain elected officials from themselves standing for elected office. Third, the Boorana and Guji were probably descended from groups that had spread down the Juba valley before the tenth century.
Al-Masudi’s writing.
In his writing on the Zanj , al-Masudi stated “the tribes of ‘Ahabish’ had established themselves as far as Sofala.” al-Masudi, who had twice visited the east African coast, was most probably referring to the Oromo when writing of the Ahabish as a group of Abyssinian tribes. al-Masudi probably based his designation on the pre-sixteenth-century physiognomic definition, although he sometimes equated the Zanj with Ahabish and vice versa. For instance, he stated “like all Abyssinians the [ Zanj ] do not know snow,” and “the Zanj are the only Ahabish to have crossed the branch of the Nile River into the sea of Zanj [and] (…) settled in the area [stretching] as far as Sofala.” He also added that the “Sofala, (…) district of the Zanj ” was “the low country of the Demdemeh .”
Four points can be gathered from al-Masudi's writings cited above. The first is that Ahabish and northern Zanj were interchangeable names for one specific group of northeast Africans. The second is that Zanj was a broad term that suggested linguistic diversity. Third, al-Masudi’s claim that Demdemeh settlement extended to Sofala cannot be taken literally, for he never sailed beyond Pemba/Kanbalu. al-Masudi’s statement cannot therefore have been referring to the regions beyond Kanbalu reportedly inhabited by Damadim – at least not accurately so.
The relevance of that to this research is the association of the Zanj with Zanj-Ahabish or Damadam or Damadim in connection with the reported settlement. The fourth point is related where the Damadim lived and the direction of their movement. al-Masudi described the southward spread of the northern Zanj or Damadim or Zanj-Ahabish as being along the right bank of the Nile. Due to the influence of Ptolemy’s Geography on Arab writers, the “Nile” in the tenth century was what we now know as the Waabe-Shaballe-Juba River. al-Masudi also added that Damadam land extended 700 parasangs into the interior.
Damdam-Yamyam
Arab writers linked the Damdam , the Zanj, and the Nile and located the Damdam on the source or the course of the “Nile” and the Damdam “turn[ed] up wherever there is any Nile.”
Certain Arab writers presented them also as Djentama, Hantama, Yamyam, Damadam (pl. Demadim), or its variant Dendema. A few mentioned the Demadim along with the Zanj and Habasha, in southern Egypt, usually in relation to a “River Nile” and later to “the Nile of Mogadisho.” Damdam, Damadam, Yamjam, or Yamyam was a corruption of Jamjam, which is today a toponym for the Guji Oromo in southern Ethiopia. al-Masudi first identified the Damdam as Cushite descendants listed by the Prophet Jeremia alongside the Nubians and Beja. al-Masudi went on to indicate that the Damdam had spread south on the right bank of what we may presume was the Egyptian Nile.
Yamyam in Egypt.
The Jamjam seem to have spread both on the right bank of the Nile in ancient Egypt and then the Waabe-Juba River on the southern Horn of coastal east Africa. To his credit al-Masudi also stated that the “Nile” [Waab-Shaballe-Juba] rises “from the mountains of the Zanj,” implying the highland regions of today’s central-southern Ethiopia. In Egyptian sources the Damdam were widely known as the Yam or Yamjam , a term close to Yamyam, itself a variant of the term Damdam in Arabic sources. Egyptologists Mark Bush and Julien Cooper provided a rationale for the hieroglyphic transliteration of Yam and Yamjam while Cooper cited other Egyptologists who showed that Horn Cushitic groups were present in the ancient Middle Nile valley. The Yam or Yamjam were the first known Africans to provide a southern “trade node or intermediary” for the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom. A surviving biography of an Egyptian official recorded four trade missions to the land of Yam during the reigns of two Old Kingdom pharaohs from 2355–2261 BCE. The Yamjam ’s probable ancient location in southern Egypt and disappearance from hieroglyphic sources with the onset of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom have attracted scholarly research for over a century. In explaining the Jamjam ’s arrival on the Horn, Ibn Said drew a parallel with the Mongol conquest model and labeled the Demadim “the Mongols of Africa” claiming they had inflicted simultaneous devastation on Nubia and Christian Abyssinia in 1220. That alleged Mongol style invasion date is obviously implausible since three centuries earlier in 916 and 945 al-Masudi had observed the Demdam / Jamjam on coastal east Africa.
Ibn Said’s stated direction of movement confirms a migration of Yamjam or Jamjam southward from the Middle Nile Valley. Among scholars of the Horn.
Timothy Kendall postulated that Egyptian references to the Yamjam ended at some time after the decline of the Old Kingdom and at the rise of the Middle Kingdom. For its part, Kendall’s timeline falls within Julien Cooper’s finding about the desiccation of the region which made the Yamite settlement area uninhabitable by about 2220 BCE. Despite the absence of archeological or literary evidence, it is safe to assume that the Jamjam arrived in the Horn earlier than the first millennium BCE. Egyptologists have identified two ancient migration routes from the Middle Nile valley leading respectively to the western and eastern regions of the northern Horn highland, today’s Eritrea. That migration route from north to south complemented al-Masudi’s literary and Ehret’s linguistic sources for directions of movement in Antiquity. Mirroring those ancient migration paths there was the inclusion of “the northern Horn (…) into Egyptian commercial sphere” during the third millennium BCE. A trade route, it linked “pre- and early-dynastic” Egypt with the “northern Rift Valley of Ethiopia” as a source of “prestige objects.” Additionally, archeological research has uncovered “late Middle Kingdom ceramics” suggesting a pattern of ancient population migration from lower Nubia/Upper Egypt into the Horn.
Jamjam-Oromo
On his thirteenth-century map Ibn Said placed the Yamjam within the vast tracts of both fertile and arid Damdam land of today’s southern Ethiopia as far as the east African coast, while al-Dimashqi referred to the “Nile of Mogadisho” as the Damdam River (see map). Two centuries later Fra Mauro’s map, prepared for Prince Henry the Navigator, placed the Oromo along the same river albeit using the pejorative appellation “Galla,” a name imposed on them that all Oromo disliked and resisted. Even earlier, the second-century Geography of Ptolemy located the Rapsi , Rausi , or Harusi, in the same region. The Harusi or Rausi were probably the ancestors of today’s Arsi and other Oromo groups inhabiting the general area. The Arsi , descendants of the ancient Harusi, and other contemporary Oromo use Jamjam as a name for Guji Oromo, who lack any memory of of such a tradition. The Jamjam were probably the ancestors of some of the Oromo who today inhabit southern and southeastern Ethiopia. For instance, Oromo groups claiming an ancestral link to the Jamjam are found in the Harar administrative region, to the east of Guji land. Probably as a relic of Ptolemy’s ancient map and medieval Arab ones, today Jamjam is a toponym for the uplands of Guji Oromo. All the varied sources just mentioned provide indisputable evidence that the Jamjam were identified as an offshoot of the ancient Oromo and had relocated south to coastal east Africa. Ancient Jamjam and ninth- to fifteenth-century extent of Habasha according to Arab sources.
The Zanj Orators.
al-Jahiz was the first to distinguish between the coastal Zanj and those in the hinterland. He remarked that contemporary Arabs would have changed their “standard of perfection” had they known the hinterland Zanj. al-Masudi finessed the distinction as the “northern Zanj,” a division between the southern or coastal Zanj and those in the interior. He classified the group with orators as the northern Zanj, Zanj al-Habash, and as Zanj ed-Damadim, or “those with a beautiful language.” Thus the combination of al-Masudi, al-Jahiz and other Arab writings specified the northern Zanj, while Zanj al-Habash and Damadam or Jamjam was the term used to refer to sections of the Oromo who had drifted south earlier than scholars had then recognized.
The Arab writers were impressed with the Zanj assemblies with their eloquent speakers – in fact they thought they were rather like Muslim Friday prayers. According to al-Marwazi, with the spread of Islam the Arabs came to value eloquence in preaching. Arabs believed in a revealed monotheist religion as a benchmark of civilization, so that in their view the assembled multitudes listening to speakers proved that the eloquent Zanj people were a cut above the other regional Africans.
Among the Oromo, eloquence is one of the personal qualities required for leadership. The Oromo’s reliance on oratory is qualitatively different. Their style of decision-making and accountability in fact had five features. First, orators acquired eloquence after years of practice to “learn the techniques of oratory and rhetoric.” It might take sixteen years for a man to be able to deliver speeches during assemblies to use his oratory as part of the institutionalized public decision-making process. Second, trainees were separated from their families both to eliminate sectional favoritism and so that all would be represented in eventual service. Separation from family was recognized by one African scholar in colonial Kenya as a critical development for the Kikuyu age-grade there. Third, based on the substance of their speeches orators either succeeded in swaying their audiences in making a public decision or for election to office – or they failed. Fourth, once elected, retention of office depended on obeying laws and observing customs, a kind of accountability absent from many societies that practiced oration. Fifth, participation in oration was not limited to trained speakers but was open to all the assembled participants.
Sulayman the merchant describes how officials serving al-Masudi’s elected Zanj kings were installed and then how they were retired. Deploying the Zanj nomenclature, Abu Zaid described the occasion of “ butha ,” as it was pronounced in the Zanj language, as the gathering of crowds to listen to the Zanj orators, who “were not to be found among other peoples.” Sulayman and Abu Zaid defined “ butha ” as a Friday “homily to the Orthodox caliph,” and the speakers as preachers. Others including al-Masudi testified that the Damadim were not Muslims, had no religious laws and were idolaters governed by their own customs.
al-Dimashqi (1256–1327) described the context of oratory among the northern Zanj ’s as being during “reunion and holidays.” Indeed the Buttaa ceremony did serve as an occasion for reunion between and within generations.
Buttaa and Gadaa among the Oromo
Writing during the nineteenth century d’Abbadie characterized Buttaa among the Oromo as an occasion of “an African oratorical contest” distinguished by “natural dignity [and] decorum”.
Buttaa was a timeline in the Gadaa system and is still a cultural marker for the Oromo. Gadaa is a “system of classes (…) that succeed each other every eight years” to assume political, military, economic, and ritual responsibilities. Each Gadaa class remained in power for eight years so that Buttaa was held at the beginning and end of Gadaa officials’ tenure. It was an interval intended for a “formal power transfer ceremony” within a generation or between succeeding generations, in accordance with the Gadaa law of a “class system based on time.”
- al-Jahiz cited oratory and eloquence in the ninth century to prove to white people the intellectual equality of the blacks within the Arab Islamic empire, where blacks were generally considered feeble-minded.
- al-Idrisi reported on power transfer ritual where men in Barrawa, who resisted Islam, bowed before a stone anointed in fish oil. That was probably a symbolic gesture, huluuqoo, to slip through, implying a promise to avoid misconduct in public performance or to escape the recurrence of past misfortunes. The key meaning here lay in the ancient Oromo belief that an essential link existed between the symbolic act, slipping through, and the actor’s public service unblemished with malfeasance or misfortune. Fish oil and stone were substitutes for butter and a sacred tree and symbolized the expectation of abundance during the tenure of the newly elected officials.
- al-Idrisi reported that orators praised their ancestors during assemblies, a practice still current among the Boorana and Guji and used for self-promotion, invoking collective memory, and history.
Such critical details of Gadaa rites and practices, in sources from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, conclusively establish that the Gadaa system functioned on the east African coast with regular calendars within and between generations.