Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
July 17, 2010
One point is the Oromo struggle for the liberation of Oromia, and the secession of the great country from the Abyssinian colonial and genocidal state that constituted for more than 150 years Africa´s most abominable scourge.
Another point is Russia, the country represented by the aforementioned explorer, Alexander Bulatovich, who traveled to Abyssinia in order to promote the interests of the tsarist court. Russia had expanded tremendously in Asia, invading Siberia first and then conquering northern provinces of both the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Empire of Iran.
As far as the area that we are nowadays calling ´Middle East´ is concerned, Russia viewed its expansion in simple terms of geographical advance. If the Russian army invaded Van, this would be an advance toward Mosul. If the Russian army invaded Mosul, this would be an advance toward Damascus. If the Russian army invaded Damascus, this would be an advance toward Jerusalem. And Jerusalem was the ultimate target of all Russian Christian Orthodox imperial and eschatological visions. Too simple to possibly oppose the Freemasonic plans of England and France!
However, in Africa, Russia was left behind. St Petersburg failed to benefit from the systematically organized (by the regimes of London and Paris) decomposition of the Ottoman empire which, 100 years before Bulatovich´s trip to Abyssinia, controlled in Africa vast territories stretching from the borders of Morocco to the Horn of Africa. The Ottoman province of Abyssinia controlled the territory of today´s Eritrea and sizeable parts of the province Tigray of today´s Abyssinia (fake Ethiopia). The tiny Abyssinian kingdom controlled an arid territory smaller than one third of the homonymous Ottoman province. But with the disintegration of the Ottoman Africans lands, England, France, Italy and Germany entered in harsh competition to control African territories and coastlands. The late arrival of the Russian ´reconnaissance´ (as we can name Bulatovich´s trip) did not end in any substantive results.
Many analysts may interpret this fact as due to Russia´s permanent difficulty to find a permanent harbor in the southern seas; in the late 19th century, a Russian fleet sailing from Odessa should first cross the Bosporus straits and then the Suez canal, and the attempt would alarm English and French diplomats who would do their best to avert this mission.
This type of approach is superficial and offers minimal understanding. Worse, it can be extremely misleading for today´s Russian diplomats who may easily realize that, today in Africa, Moscow is left far behind France, England, America, Italy, Germany, China, Japan and eventually India. Yet, during the Soviet era, Moscow marked some significant successes from Angola to Somalia, from Egypt to Mozambique, and from Algeria to Abyssinia (fake Ethiopia). But all these momentary successes proved to be inconsequential. Why?
In an earlier article published in January 2008 under title "Why Russia always failed in the Middle East" (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/49566), I examined this point and concluded that the main reasons for Russia´s failure in the region in question are an inherent quantitative approach to colonial expansion (which means significant lack of vision and imaginative approach) and an overall misperception of the past and the present of Asia and Africa, which is due to the Russian academic, intellectual and ideological acceptance of the Anglo-French Orientalism, a bunch of disciplines elaborated by the French and the English academia in order to mainly promote and diffuse an interpretation of data that would suit the interests of the Anglo-French Freemasonry, namely the driving force of the Paris and London regimes.
Anglo-French Orientalism is not only totally false and viciously fallacious but it also rejects the very principles on which the Christian Orthodox Russian world is based. The said article was officially translated to Russian and widely diffused in Russia (indicatively: http://www.inosmi.ru/world/20080203/239339.html).
Amongst others, I stated the following:
"The historically real nations still exist in the Middle East, and are the only with whom an alliance can be made for common benefit. These nations are terribly oppressed and live under threat of linguistic, religious, cultural and therefore national extinction. The real nations (ethno-linguistic and religious groups) of the Middle East are the following:
XXXVI. The Oromos (tyrannically included in Abyssinia).
For too long, Russians projected in the Middle East concepts elaborated for the vast Russian / Soviet territory; this cannot work further, as it only damages Russian interests from Mauritania to Oman, and from Syria to Somalia.
Promoting Freedom, Human Rights, Democracy, Cultural Identity, and Nation-Building, Russia should identify its Middle Eastern policy around the following axes:
4. Alliance with Kushitic Oromo political groups, cooperation with Oromo elites, and contribution to the formation of an Oromo state of Kushitic Ethiopia with capital at Finfinne (fallaciously called Addis Ababa by the Abyssinian invaders)".
With respect to the Horn of Africa region, and Abyssinia more particularly, the Russians have fallen victims of the misconception that the Amhara and Tigray Monophysitic (Tewahedo) Abyssinians are Christian, and can therefore be possible partners in an effort to eliminate Islam from a region acknowledged as genuinely Islamic over the past 10 to 14 centuries. The assumption is totally wrong; the Monophysitic Abyssinians are not Christians. If we live aside the Monophysitic dispute itself, which is rather a matter limited among the Eastern churches, namely the Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian and Russian churches, the Abyssinian Monophysitic church presents an appearance of Christianity that hinges on a deeply anti-Christian nature.
Interpreting the use of the Abyssinian church and regimes, made by Western religious and political authorities in their efforts to eliminate Islam from East Africa, as a straightforward recognition of the Christian identity of the Abyssinian church and society is really a farfetched innuendo. One should drop it.
One should not get confused when polarizing between general Biblical narratives and specific anti-Christian practices, rituals, and social life. In two earlier articles of mine, titled "The Heretic Abyssinian Monophysitic Church"
(http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/61471) and "The Heresy of the Monophysitic (Tewahedo) Abyssinian Church" (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/61573), I expanded on the subject, referring to Catholic presentations of the Abyssinian church and doctrine that make clear that the Abyssinian beliefs and practices are in striking opposition to what became historically known as Christianity from Palestine, Syria and Egypt to Rome, Constantinople, Moscow and Western Europe.
In another article ("The Real Face of Neo-Nazi Amhara and Tigray Abyssinian Terrorists" - http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/60703), I specified that with the fallacious pseudo-epic Kebra Negast, "alteration of earlier sources and falsification of the Antiquity" are "used as basis of the "modern" Amhara and Tigray Abyssinian society". I specified that "Kebra Negast is mostly false, an unprecedented fallacy", and went on focusing on manuscript illumination to analyze the totally erroneous perception of the Bible by the Abyssinians, which leads them far from Christianity: "This is the false Solomon of Kebra Negast: looking like a saint of Christianity, wearing clothes of Abyssinian monks, and riding ….. a lion! In his hands, Abyssinian ritual objects that Solomon would have never touched". I characterized the Anti-Christian epic, which is the basis of all Abyssinian political theories, claims and paroxysms, as "the epitome of racial discrimination in today´s Neo-Nazi Abyssinia".
Today´s Russian academia do not need to focus on Kenra Negast to understand the Anti-Christian nature of the Abyssinian society which made them valuable allies of the Freemasons of colonial England and France; they could just check Bulatovich´s contributions and identify numerous cases of misperceptions originally produced by the Western academia in order to fool the rest of the world about the origins, the identity and the historical past of the various African nations that have been subjugated by the Abyssinians as per Anglo-French order.
I will republish herewith another excerpt from Bulatovich´s ´From Entotto to the River Baro´; it shows characteristically to how many mistakes and misperceptions the Russian explorer was driven because he had been theoretically based on Western European Orientalism, a definitely anti-Russian academic – theoretical – intellectual fabrication.
In this excerpt, which is not quite lengthy, Bulatovich attempts to classify Oromos (called Galla), Afars called Adali) and Somalis together, underscoring their difference from the Sidama. This is wrong. He uses the term Sidama as a collective name for the Sidamas and others, notably the Kaffa. This is another mistake. Worse, he ascribes himself to the old theory of Lepsius, according to which there had been a "reverse movement of Kushites from Africa to the Arabian peninsula" – something totally hypothetical for which no proof can ever be found.
Within this mistaken reconstitution of the History of the 3rd and 2nd millennia, the Phoenicians (falsely translated as ´Finikiyane´ in the otherwise good English translation) become associated with the Kushites, because Bulatovich and the Russian Orientalist academia failed to stand critically toward the erroneous classification of nations into main groups made within the Bible. Quite unfortunately, the Biblical mistake suited the Anglo-French Orientalists´ needs, and for this reason it was maintained in their bibliography in order to fool others. Certainly, at the end of the 19th century, Bulatovich had a certain excuse: little advance had been made in the field of North West Semitic languages, and few people had clearly understood that the Ancient Phoenicians were a Semitic nation. The problem is that today´s Russian diplomacy keeps acting as if the aforementioned aberrations have not been rejected and denounced.
The dissociation between the Ancient Egyptians and the ancestors of the Oromos, the Afars, and the Somalis (Punt, Azania) is another grave mistake made by Bulatovich. The fact that he calls all these nations "semi-savages" shows that
a) he failed to properly study their civilizations,
b) he traveled to Africa with many preconceived – and wrong – ideas,
c) he was partially favoring those whom he considered as Christians (although they were not – namely the Abyssinians), and
d) he (although a Russian Orthodox monk) was a victim of Western European Anti-Christian philosophical dogmas (positivism, monism, materialism, phenomenalism, epistemology, atheism), and of the deception of modernism.
Bulatovich´s sentence that "from the fifteenth century B.C., a vast movement of Semites into Africa began" consists in another aberration which is relevant to the constant Freemasonic Orientalist effort to turn Hamitic Africa into a Semito-Hamitic or Islamo-Arabic or Afro-Asiatic mixture, a simple dependency of Semitism, safe enough for the Freemasonic plans providing for a fake state "Israel" inhabited (not by Israelites but) by Jews of Indo-European – Uralo-Altaic descent.
Today, Russia needs to
1) instantly reject these fallacies,
2) forget once forever the idea of a Christian Abyssinian ally in East Africa,
3) learn the lesson from its calamitous Ogaden policy,
4) turn to the Oromos, the Afars, and the Somalis,
5) help the former liberate and the latter pacify their country, and
6) set in East Africa the solid foundations of a Christian Orthodox – Islamic rapprochement that will keep Europe, America and Israel far from Africa.
Ethiopia through Russian Eyes
An eye-witness account of the end of an era, 1896-98 consisting of two books by Alexander Bulatovich
From Entotto to the River Baro (1897)
With the Armies of Menelik II (1900)
Translated by Richard Seltzer (seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com)
From Entotto to the River Baro
http://www.samizdat.com/entotto.html
An account of a trip to the southwestern regions of the Ethiopian Empire 1896-97 by Lieutenant of His Majesty's Life-Guard Hussar Regiment Alexander Bulatovich
Originally published in St. Petersburg, 1897, Printed by V. Kirshbaum, 204 pages
Reissued in 1971 as part of the volume With the Armies of Menelik II, edited by I. S. Katsnelson of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R."Science" Publishing House Chief Editorial Staff of Oriental Literature Moscow 1971, entire book 352 pages, Entotto pp. 32-156
Translated by Richard Seltzer (from the 1971 edition)
The Population of the South-western Regions of Ethiopia
The population of southwestern Ethiopia consists of the following main groups: Galla, Sidamo, and Amhara60; and on the western and southern borders -- Negroes.
The Galla dwell to the west of Entotto up to the River Baro.
There are two tribes of them: Tuluma and Mocha. The latter extends from the Awash River to the Baro River in the west and from Abbay to Kaffa in the south. They belong to the Galla -- Oromo.
The inhabitants of Kaffa, Mocha, Gurage, Kulo, Kusho, Sidamo, and Amaro are called "Sidamo." Some authors suggest that these were the first inhabitants of the Ethiopian plateau.
Amhara, or, as we have become accustomed to called them, "Abyssinians," constitute the latest, military, and official population of these regions and are scattered among them rather uniformly.
The origin of these people has still not been accurately established; and, with regard to this question, there are only hypotheses, often contradictory.
Some authors call all three groups "Cushitic." Others, considering the first two Cushitic, count the Abyssinians as of Semitic race. But to call Galla and Sidamo descendants of Cush, the son of Ham, doesn't mean anything at all. Why between the ones and the others is there such a huge difference with regard to culture and customs and language? Where did the ones and the others come from? I am too little acquainted with this question to take upon myself its resolution. But bringing my personal observations together with works I have read about this question, I believe the most probable explanation of the existing ethnographic grouping is as follows. Galla, Somali, Adali (the latter two are steppe nomadic tribes who occupy the coast of the Red Sea from the Ethiopian plateau) are all Cushites and occupied these places, it must be, in the time when the descendants of Mesraim occupied Egypt. They arrived here, probably, by a dry route with their herds, and to the present have remained semi-savage.
In the reverse movement of Cushites from Africa to the Arabian peninsula, (which was mentioned by Lepsius), they encountered Semites, who, so to say, cut them in half. The Finikiyane were driven toward the Mediterranean Sea, and the other part toward the Arabian Sea. This forced the migration of the latter to Africa across the Bab-el-Mandeb Gulf. These immigrants occupied the Ethiopian plateau. They must have been culturally higher than the Galla and drove the Galla to the south. Aren't these the ancestors of those peoples we call Sidamo, Agau, Bylen, the original inhabitants of the country? And don't the inhabitants of Harar likewise belong to them? Much data inclines me to accept this hypothesis. Firstly, the type of the Harar and the Sidamo; secondly, the similarity of sounds in the languages of these groups; and thirdly, the level of culture.
From the fifteenth century B.C., a vast movement of Semites into Africa began. Between Ethiopia and the Arabian peninsula there were very active trade dealings. They spread out on the plateau, but unevenly. In all probability, their port of entry, so to speak, the point for settlement of the plateau was Massawa.
Therefore, we see the greatest concentration of Semites in Northern Ethiopia: Felasha, Abyssinian Jews in the mountains of Semien, and Tigreans in Tigre. Southern Ethiopia was under the least influence of Semitism. From the Arabian peninsula, they brought with them the language that belongs to the Hamitic root -- this is the present-day Geez language (literary). The Semites, having mixed with the inhabitants of the country, changed their language and pronunciation and hence came about the present-day Amhara, or Abyssinian, or Amharic language. "Amhara" is the name that the Abyssinians give themselves. The name "Abyssinian," accepted now in Europe, came about thus: Arabs call them "Habesh," which means "mixture" (confirmation of what we surmised that the Abyssinians are a mixed race). The Portuguese changed the word "Habesh" to "Habeks," and German scholars from "Habeks" made "Abessinen."
Although the Amharic language differs in grammar from the Geez (literary), many of its roots are borrowed from the Geez; so that the Amhara language is really Geez changed by mixing with other languages. The pronunciation of it likewise differs from the Geez. The Amharic language has no gutturals, which are characteristic sounds for Semitic languages, whereas Geez does have them.61
Let's now consider these nationalities in more detail. Galla -- Oromo The first mention of the Galla in The Abyssinian History of the Kings ("Tarika Negest") is attributed to 1480 A.D. During the reign of Iskander, the Galla made their first invasion into Abyssinian land and destroyed the monastery of Atones Maryam. In 1539 appears Gran.62 He is a native of the Harar region, which at that time already belonged to Galla who had adopted Mohammedanism. On the one hand, using the Galla's desire to occupy Abyssinian lands and on the other hand raising the banner of the prophet among the Moslem population of the coastal zone and declaring holy war, Gran invaded Abyssinia, burning and destroying monasteries and churches. At first, the Galla attacked Shoa and the provinces of Menjar and Ankober. But then, while the Arussi Galla independently waged war against the tribes of South Ethiopia, gradually ejecting them and occupying their places, Gran, inspired by the idea of Islam, made his way to North and Central Abyssinia, to the cultural and religious center of the empire, and destroyed Aksum. In 1545, Gran was killed in Damby, at Lake Tana. With his death, the Galla invasion lost its significance as a religious war. The Galla-Mohammedans who came with him occupied the best land in the province of Wollo. In the south, too, and in the west, Arussi Galla continued to gradually oust the indigenous inhabitants of these lands -- Amhara and Sidamo: the first to the north beyond Abbay, the second to the south to the mountains of Kaffa.
This gradual conquest continued until very recent times. The Galla of Leka, for instance, consider that they occupied this country only 180 years ago. Thus, in Abyssinia we meet Gallas of two kinds. Some, Mohammedans, came from the east, from Chercher -- they are Wollo Galla. Others, pagans, came from the southeast, from Arussi -- these are the Tuluma and Mocha tribes.
The first occupy the territory between the Kassam and Awash Rivers; the second are found to the south of the Abbay River and to the west of the upper Awash. Each of these tribes is divided into small clans. Tuluma is divided into seven clans, and Mocha into five (Liban, Afrenjo, Homo, Tume, Javi). Each of these small clans occupies a separate region, separated from the others by accurately established boundaries. But they all recognize that they belong to the Galla nation. They all call themselves "Oromo." Almost all of them have the same customs, language, type, and character, despite the difference of faith which exists between Galla pagans and Galla Mohammedans.
The Galla physical type is very beautiful. The men are usually very tall, with statuesque physique, lean, with oblong face and a somewhat flattened skull. The features of the face are regular and beautiful. The nose though sometimes fleshy is not a snub-nose. The mouth is moderate. The lips are not thick.
They have excellent even teeth; large and in some cases oblong eyes; and curly hair. Their arm bones are of moderate length, shorter than the bones of Europeans, but longer than among the Amhara tribes. The feet are moderate and not turned in. The women are shorter than the men, and very beautifully built. In general, they are stouter than the men, and not as lean as they.
Among them one sometimes encounters very beautiful women. And their beauty does not fade as quickly as among the Abyssinians.
The skin color of both men and women ranges from dark to light brown. I did not see any completely black Galla.
The separate clans of the Mocha tribe differ somewhat. The far western clans are more thick-set and taller than the eastern and northern. Among them there is a more uniform and consistent type. This, I think, must be explained by the greater purity of their clan, since, being farther from the Abyssinians, they could not mix with them.
Note
Picture: the two royal wives of the Kaffa King, and his sister
From: http://www.samizdat.com/bulatovichphotos/plates/Two%20wives%20and%20sister%20of%20the%20King%20of%20Kaffa.jpg
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