Ethiopia finds "lost" towns

Ethiopia finds ‘lost’ towns
AFP, By Emmanuel Goujon	Published:Jun 15, 2007
NORA, Ethiopia - The discovery of three old Muslim towns in Ethiopia has put a question mark on the history of a nation which prides itself on its overwhelmingly Christian heritage dating back to Biblical times. The first known civilisation in Ethiopia was that of the mighty Aksumite kingdom which was established in 1000 BC in the country’s north. Its best known figure was the Queen of Sheba who is said to have borne King Solomon a son named Menelik, who became the first emperor of Ethiopia and the founder of its ancient Christian dynasty which only ended when Emperor Haile Selassie was toppled in 1974. But the discovery last year of three Muslim medieval towns by French experts and archaeologists has finally helped scholars locate a legendary Islamic kingdom which flourished between the 10th and 16th centuries. "It is a surprising discovery because we generally say that Islam came to Ethiopia late and had a marginal role," said Yonas Beyene, head of paleontology at Ethiopia’s culture ministry. Ancient manuscripts have long spoken of the Shoa kingdom - also written Shewa - which straddled key trade routes between the Christian highlands and the Muslim ports on the Red Sea. But its precise location was never made clear. All that changed early this year when experts from the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies (CFEE), led by its director Francois-Xavier Fauvelle, uncovered the ruins of three medieval towns perched on an escarpment in the desolate but stunningly beautiful Rift Valley. The three towns - Nora, Asbari and Masal - have mosques facing Mecca, Arabic inscriptions and a well-laid out grid. Located 1,300 metres above sea level on a rocky outcrop, the ruins have in some cases been overtaken by shrubs. But many are in still in good shape thanks to the arid and dry climate. "These were towns set up between agricultural zones and the desert. At the time of their glory between the 13th and 16th centuries, they served as the commercial crossroad between the nomads of the desert and the farming population of the highlands," said Fauvelle. Despite the outgrowth, one can still make out the terraced and irrigated agricultural fields in Nora, located about 300 kilometres from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. The ruins reveal it was a densely populated town. According to legend, Nora was founded after the marriage of two lovers, whose families decided to consolidate the alliance by building a town. "They say that the town was very rich and prosperous before being ravaged by an epidemic," said Mohamed Ali, an elder from the local ethnic Argoba tribe who lives in Wasiso, the closest village to Nora. The houses here are rectangular and the streets still have remnants of ornamental tiling. The town was ringed by a wall. The walls of the main mosque are still to four to five metres high and a tall burial mound nearby contains hundreds of Muslim tombs. And pottery abounds at a tell, or artificial mound formed by the remains of ruins, which lies between the mosque and the edge of the necropolis. In Asbari, the mosque was remarkably well-preserved and believed to have been one of the biggest in Ethiopia, according to an earlier statement by the French National Centre for Scientific Research which helped finance the mission. The team also found a cemetery there covering several hectares that contained hundreds of graves. And in Masal, they found a necropolis with a tomb emblazoned with stars and Arabic inscriptions that may have been a royal sepulture. "One tends to ignore that there were Muslim towns in this region during that era which had economic and political links with the Christians in the high lands," said Beyene. Nora, he said, was clear proof "that Islam is not a new element in the region. These towns show the early entrenchment of Islam in Ethiopia." Culture and Tourism Minister Mohamoud Dirir said the discovery proved a more important point. "Ethiopia is a multicultural and multireligious country," he said, adding that the discovery of the towns was a "very important landmark, because it is another assumption that within the Christian community, there has been a Muslim society...for a very long time. "Ethiopia was described (by the earlier Marxist regime of former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam) as a single people, single religion, predominantly Christian Orthodox... "It is very important to discover such sites and to protect them," he said. Sunday Times