Ethiopia's Armenian Envoy in the East

E.J. van Donzel's Foreign Relations of Ethiopia 1642-1700: Documents Relating to the Journeys of Khodja Murad contains translations of various primary source documents on an interesting figure in Ethiopia's diplomatic history. Said to have been an illiterate Armenian merchant from Aleppo, Khoja Murad served as an envoy for the Solomonic rulers of Ethiopia on a number of missions to Mughal India and the VOC in Batavia (Indonesia). Although, at least with regards to the VOC, trade of any significant scale between the powerful Dutch company and Ethiopia did not materialize, the documents, letters, and reports pertaining to Murad attest to the global presence of Solomonic Ethiopia in the Early Modern World. 

Indeed, despite relying, for the most part, on Ottoman-ruled Massawa for access to Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade, Fasiladas, Yohannes, and Iyasu I maintained or at least endeavored to send friendly missions to the powerful empires of Asia and the Mediterranean. Thus, the Ottomans, Persians, Mughals, and the VOC in Southeast Asia all received envoys from the Ethiopians at various moments in the 17th century. While the letters exchanged between the VOC and Ethiopia were vague and some of the Dutch sources questioned the authenticity of Murad or the likelihood of any profitable trade with the African kingdom, the letters illustrate a keen desire on the part of the Gondar kings to expand and sustain trading partnerships. In fact, despite the expulsion of the Jesuits and Roman Catholics, the rulers were not opposed to Protestant Europeans and were willing to promote trade with Muslim powers and neighbors. As revealed by the account of al-Haymi's mission from Yemen to Fasilides, the negus was hoping to promote Red Sea trade through the port of Baylul. Unfortunately, it did not succeed. This failure to develop trade on a large scale at that port meant that Massawa remained the main port of entry for Ethiopian access to Asian goods. While Zeila was later promoted to the Dutch as another possible port, the danger of Oromo groups on the way to the Ethiopian highlands and the necessity of requiring the permission of the imam of Mokha posed additional problems. Thus, the Solomonic dynasty had to rely on Massawa. Fortunately for the Ethiopians, the Ottoman pasha of Massawa was dependent on Ethiopian goodwill for food and water. In addition, Fasilides, his son, and his grandson also relied on the Ottoman officials in Massawa to help police the movement of Catholic Europeans into the kingdom. Nonetheless, the lack of direct access to the Red Sea at a viable port created complications for large-scale VOC trade in the region.

Despite this "failure" of Khoja Murad's voyages to Batavia, the sources translated in van Donzel's account allude to numerous aspects of Ethiopia's relations with the broader Red Sea and Indian Ocean worlds. With Mughal India, for instance, the sorry state of Murad's party when they finally met with Aurangzeb may have been saved by the depredations of Shivadji. Subsequent to their audience with Aurangzeb, Murad's Abyssinian mission received the equivalent of 20,000 francs of rupees from the Mughal ruler, which was later spent on Indian goods to bring back to Ethiopia at a profit. This episode reveals how Murad combined diplomacy and business while also illustrating how the Mughal ruler basically saw the gift to the Abyssinians as another way of promoting his economy. Since the Ethiopians used the funds to purchase Indian goods, it was another way for the Mughal ruler to boost his economy. As for the question of the Mughal ruler asking for Fasilides to rebuild a mosque in or near Gondar, perhaps this was just another element of the flexibility Abyssinian rulers (and their envoys) adopted in order to maintain profitable relations with Muslim powers. 

Other documents translated from Dutch, Arabic, and, in one case, Armenian, similarly shed light on Ethiopia during the second half of the 17th century. For instance, the Gongo region's population were said to be descendants of Hindustani Rajputs. The attempted coup against Iyasu, which involved his mother, was also reported. The Funj Sultanate, ruled from Sennar, was still reported to be a vassal province of the Christian Solomonic state. Furthermore, the identity of the Armenian bishop who traveled to Ethiopia during the reign of Yohannes is reported. Probably Hovannes Tutundju, who had traveled to Istanbul, Italy and Egypt, his account of Ethiopia, despite its brevity, provides another perspective on Gondar. One also wonders if the Ethiopians had developed a coffee industry in the 18th century, would they have been able to attract greater Dutch (and English) interest in trade? And if Iyasu had succeeded in somehow establishing relations with France or another Catholic European power, in spite of the opposition of the Ethiopian clergy, would the course of 18th century Ethiopian history have been quite different?

Ethiopia and the Red Sea

Mordechai Abir's Ethiopia and the Red Sea probably should have been given an alternative title. Besides one chapter on the role of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean in Ethiopia's trade networks and Ottoman versus Portuguese conflicts for dominance of the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean, this book is mostly a narrative history of the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia from it's expansion in the 1300s to the era right before the Gondarine period. So, Abir's study builds on earlier research by the author and the scholarship of Tamrat and other Ethiopianists to analyze why the Solomonic dynasty failed to establish a more integrated, centralized state in the Horn of Africa. Lacking familiarity with most of the sources utilized by Abir, we cannot determine how accurate or misleading some of his interpretations are, but he did not really utilize Ethiopian sources in Ge'ez so one cannot help but think that skews his interpretation of certain figures, like Susenyos or the conflicts within the church between the two monastic orders over theological debates.

Besides disastrous events like the jihad of Ahmad Gran and the Oromo migrations which continued with very little Ethiopian resistance from the royal court, Abir outlines a plethora of additional factors behind the failure of the Solomonic state to develop an effective, centralized polity capable of integrating or resisting Oromo migration, modernizing, or expanding its influence in the Horn. These include an elite Church dependent on appointed abuns from Egypt, little sustained efforts at evangelizing and integrating conquered peoples, tensions between the Amhara and the northern population of Tigre, regional lords and nobility using succession and factions in the royal court to challenge or revolt the emperor, attempted military and administrative reforms that, in some cases, aided and abetted Oromo expansion into provinces of the empire. The particularly long reign of Sarsa Dengel seems to be a great example of wasted opportunities for reform and centralization, processes that could have helped Ethiopia resist or integrate the Oromo and build a "modern" state beyond the "feudal" military-administrative structure Abir describes. It's hard for this blog to not read Abir's chapter on Sarsa Dengel and not think of the opposite trends in Borno under Idris b. Ali, or Idris Alooma, who appeared to have been far more effective at defending and expanding the borders of Borno while also promoting a monotheistic religion that must have served an integrative function in its vast domains.

Of course, the most interesting and perhaps too brief chapters analyze Susenyos and the Jesuits. Susenyos is depicted as someone who believed in the superiority of Catholic or European civilization and wanted to use it as a way of modernizing the state. Earlier rulers, who had expressed an interest in European military technology and artisans, were supposedly not modernizers, despite some of them attempting various administrative and military reforms with Mamluk or European aid. Susenyos, however, was pressured by the Jesuits into thinking Portuguese-Spanish military aid would flow to Ethiopia if he agreed to impose Catholicism as the official religion. With their aid, presumably Susenyos could have created a state based on different lines, reclaimed territories lost to the Oromo, and "modernized" Ethiopia. Abir presents this as an early attempt by a non-European state to modernize long before the more famous examples of the Middle East and Egypt, but one which Ethiopia was not prepared for due to the very unlikely chances of a Portuguese military presence or expedition and the fierce resistance to the Jesuits from members of the emperor's inner circle, the native religious hierarchy, Jesuit dogmatism attacking local culture and the "feudal" lords opposed to political centralization. Since more recent scholarship has focused on the period of the Jesuit mission, we shall return to this period in Ethiopian history and some of the conclusions reached by Abir of the Gondarine period as one of decline or, perhaps, failure.