Some East African History from My New Friend

It has been 10 days since I arrived in Djibouti. It is 30+ degrees celsius here and I do not leave the indoors much in the daytime, which gives me time to ruminate and read. The currency here is the Djiboutian Franc and there are usually power-outs every week.

Much has happened though I will focus on one individual. I have met a Somali-Canadian gentleman here whose name is Sahal Ali. He invests in agricultural products in the countryside. While staying at the same hostel, we are lucky enough to hear the azaan every day from the neighboring mosque. The man who conducts the azaan is very good. Coincidentally, I am also reading a book about Africa and the Indian Ocean World, which traces the spread of trade in these two regions as well as the proselytization of Islam. My new friend Sahal Ali also helps with my understanding of the religious-cultural terrain. Upon learning about my research interests, he has shared photos of his travels to a museum in Massawa, Eritrea. The city of Massawa, like Djibouti, is a a historically important port that hosted traders of varied ethnicities, many of whom were Muslim. The Ottomans also had official ties with the Emirs, one of whose name is Emir Abdullah (not to be confused with the Hashemite Abdullah of the Arab revolt). Sahal Ali knows one of the traders of cultural artifacts in this town and has said that the trader owns a copy of a 9th-century Quran. I wonder if it is for sale or just for show and tell. 

1935 photo of Massawa Bazaar. Source: journalist Martin Plaut

Sahal also has a very interesting background. He traveled to Canada to pursue his studies  in 1991 when he was 16 years old. He learned French and settled in Ottawa for work--he translated and processed immigration applications. Perhaps that explains his friendly attitude and organized demeanor. I said I have always wanted to visit Toronto because of its diverse inhabitants. He has some relatives in California as well.

He became bored of the job after 18 years and also faced many Islamophobic harassment due to his name, which was "Ali." He also found that the Canadian government tried to pass citizenship laws that infringed upon the rights of his second-generation children: a certain law (I am not sure if it passed or not) stipulated that if second generation Canadians commit a crime in Canada, they faced deportation.

He decided to move back to where he was born. Many of his colleagues and friends found his decision to be ridiculous, but so far things have gone well until the shutdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic occurred. Sometimes he visits Canada as well and drives for a smart-phone app car service. When white men board his car, he asks them where they are from. First they are usually puzzled, but after his insistence and explanation ("I am always asked where I am from"), they tell him that their grandfathers or fathers came from another country. He felt satisfied in knowing that white Canadians also come from elsewhere, though the laws and social culture may inadvertently benefit them more. 

His father used to live in the Somali area of Ethiopia as well, which gave him a unique perspective about the country. He criticized the old regime for colonizing Somali land and pushing for Ethiopian supremacy, but finds that now the politics is more balanced, since a Somali can become a president of Ethiopia (which I assume was not the case before). He is amazed that Ethiopia did not manage to occupy a place with a port after many years of  dominance in the region. I said I did not know much about these events before, and I only read about the Ottoman participation at the Berlin conference (1884–1885), which was an international conference regulating the Scramble for Africa and her resources. Sahal said that Ethiopia delegates also participated at this conference, though I have yet to find a written source to confirm this statement.

These days the Ethiopian government is finishing a dam on the Nile river, which has been under construction for 7 years, and the Egyptian government has expressed their discontent. Sahal said that it is too late for their intervention; and anyways they constructed the Aswan dam a long time back. Though the rhetoric is heated and sharp, Sahal does not think any serious conflict will happen. He also finds that American politics to be "bizarre," though the cyclical nature of ideologies will inevitably backfire against the extreme posturing of the leader today. I admired his eloquence and calm attitude in discussing these matters. He said that Africans do not get aggressive easily when expressing their opinions. Perhaps it is because of the qat-chewing that keeps everyone in their cool. In any event, it is a nice intellectual detour for me from the otherwise brain-wracking scene of American politics.

Is the concept of the military institution a Eurocentric one?

The modern-liberal paradigm assumes that the people who serve in any military is or should be divorced from politics. One should not have a particular allegiance, charismatic or otherwise, with their bosses or leaders. Within histories that have been written in a similar vein, the military in any non-European country is merely one of the many institutions playing catch-up with Eurocentric models of sovereignty. 

However, if we observe the history of Middle Eastern society without assuming a teleological narrative that culminates in the modern nation state, then we would possibly see that the military institution similarly did not have a smooth path toward the current model. The following sections will shift focus to scholarship of the Middle East. 

Shah Ismail I, Sheikh of the Safavi tariqa, founder of the Safavid dynasty, commander-in-chief of the Kizilbash Armies

Scholars of modernity and Islam have noted how colonialism and other factors have influenced histories of social organizations such as the ulama. There is a common method that looks for knowledge within the ulama, and historians are possibly biased in this respect, since the ulama is the institution that most resembles the current-day university. However, if one does not presume that soldiers are without a culture, then the rich history of Kurdish Alevis, Albanian Betakshis as well as Arab Shi'i tribes would be of great use for writing an alternative history of knowledge. A new method of history must review the bifurcation of "the people who fight" and "the people who study" as interlinked and criss-crossing, rather than atemporally distinct. Studies of Sufism such as the Naqshbandis have made very important contributions in this regard (see a quote on the similarities of ideas in Sufism and Shi'ism in footnote 1).

Worshippers circle the shrine of El-Sayed El-Badawi; this mawlid is considered Egypt's most famous. Tanta, Egypt, Oct 16, 2014. Mosa'ab Elshamy

The transmission of Shi'ism and affective ideas of Shi'ism in regions such as Turkey, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf cannot be told separate of its military aspect. There are serious lack of comparisons in knowledge and ideas in this respect. Current scholarship generally assumes that the ulama has a greater say in matters of Islamic theology and doctrine. The divorce of certain Islamic practices from textual knowledge has been rightly pinned on colonial intervention and the rise of the nation-state. But what role has historians played in this process of privileging the ulama as an institution of knowledge? Paradoxically, the military as a modern phenomenon has also been studied as an important site of reform. Many military personnel from the Ottoman Empire accepted European training and played a decisive role in introducing new ideas that still reverberate in modern politics. Interested readers might look into the episodes of Ottoman History Podcast that devote to this particular subject, such as Military Education and the Last Ottoman Generation and Jafar al-Askari: Modernization, Martial Discipline and Post-Ottoman Iraq. Yet "military" and "education" in some histories have taken on a modernizing narrative trend, in which there could not have been educated military personnel before the advent of European knowledge. This neglects the alternative modes of education prior to European influence and/or colonization. Modernity in some aspects were imported, but cultural memory remained attached to alternative notions of justice and war, such as jihad. In this aspect, one could delve into earlier times, or review the interwar period with an even more skeptical view of modernity.

To recover jihad from a colonial and stereotypical view of jihadis or fanatics, one must recuperate military traditions within the context of Islamic history as well. Shiism is particularly an interesting facet to look at these issues, since they have provided significant alternative concepts of jihad. Recovering different modes of military knowledge can also help us revisit the erroneous assumptions that the Middle East was hegemonically dominated by one form of Islam.  

Footnote:
1. Quote from How to Conceptualize Ottoman Sunnitization by Derin Terzioğlu