Bilet and the wider world: new insights into the archaeology of Islam in Tigray

Abstract

Abstract

The archaeology of complexity and cosmopolitanism in medieval Ethiopia: an introduction

“…According to tradition, the Prophet Muhammad sent small groups of his followers to the court of the Negus-probably the Christian ruler of the Aksumite kingdom-in 615 (all dates are AD, unless otherwise specified), in what is known as the first hijra (migration in Arabic) (Lapidus 1988: 25;O'Fahey 2003: xviii). Whether any of these early Muslims remained in Ethiopia is unknown (see Loiseau et al 2021), but by the tenth century Islam had become better established (Ahmed 1992: 16), and Islamic conversion and Islamisation appear to have been achieved through various agents and mechanisms, including trade, preaching and missionary activity. Muslim polities also developed.…”

“…Subsequently, excavations in Harar have revealed a range of settlement and mosque sites dating between the late fifteenth and nineteenth centuries (Insoll 2017;Insoll & Zekaria 2019). Much work, however, remains to be done, and ongoing excavations in Harlaa and Tigray (Insoll et al 2021;Loiseau et al 2021) attest the potential of archaeology both for reconstructing medieval Islamic life and the complexity and cosmopolitanism that defined it.…”

“…tekke, ribat, dergah and khanqah), are found elsewhere in the Muslim world (Hillenbrand 1994: 44;Abbink 2008: 122), female monasticism, where women lived in poverty and celibacy in nunneries, was a unique development to eastern Ethiopia (Abbink 2008: 124). Diachronic shifts in Islamic identities can be observed, from the disappearance of Shi'ism (apparently present in medieval Bilet; see Loiseau et al 2021), to the contemporaneous decline in Sufism (Østebø 2012), with its supposed connotations of bid'a (unwarranted innovations in Arabic) under the influence of Salafist Islam (Abbink 2008: 121 & 131), and the move towards a less heterogeneous Islamic practice and belief.…”

“…Where investigation is occurring-in neighbouring Somaliland for example ( Figure 1)-evidence is emerging to suggest that the Jewish presence in the Horn of Africa was more extensive in the medieval period, as attested by two gravestones engraved with the Star of David recorded in the Dhubato area (Mire 2020: 28-29). Alternatively, the Star of David might be another instance of the use of the 'Seal of Solomon' found in Islamic funerary iconography (see Loiseau et al 2021). Christian gravestones, however, were also found nearby (Mire 2020), implying that the Horn of Africa was more cosmopolitan than it is today.…”

“…Worku 2018; Woldekiros 2019), medieval/historical archaeology has been neglected by Ethiopian scholars. This is, however, beginning to change, with a growth in interest in Islamic archaeology and active capacity-building initiatives embedded within, for example, two of the projects featured in this section (Insoll et al 2021;Loiseau et al 2021). Should such a collection as this be published a decade from now, it is likely that this imbalance will rightly have disappeared.…”