Pre-publication of chapter XVII of my forthcoming book “Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey – 2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists”; chapters XVII, XVIII, XIX and XX constitute the Part Six (Fallacies about the Early Expansion of Islam: The Fake Arabization of Islam) of the book, which is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters. Until now, 10 chapters have been uploaded as partly pre-publication of the book; the present chapter is therefore the 11th (out of 33).
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As young merchant, Muhammad ibn Abd Allah is recognized as a prophet by the monk Sergius Bahira (Sargis Bḥira). Miniature from Jami’ al-Tawarikh (Universal History), by Rashid al-Din Hamadani (Tabriz-Iran, 1307)
Similarly with what Iranologists have been doing when distorting the Achaemenid period by using the misnomer ‘Persia’ for ‘Iran’, Orientalists extended the same policy for all periods of the Islamic History of Iran and, furthermore, they introduced new, deceitful concepts, fake terms, and interpretational distortions as regards all things Iranian and Turanian. Even worse, they invented a nonexistent religious – theological divide that they also applied to their systems of disfigurement of the historical reality.
A basic diagram of the early Islamic ages involves the following determinant points, which the colonial Orientalist academics tried always hard to either conceal or distort and undermine:
I. Islam as preached by Prophet Muhammad consists in the cultural, intellectual, educational, spiritual and religious Aramaization of the Arabs (i.e. the inhabitants of the Hejaz, which is the mountainous region of the Arabian Peninsula that stretches between Yemen and Transjordan).
II. Early Islam was not viewed as a new religion by the Oriental Christians, i.e. the Aramaean Nestorians and the Aramaean & Coptic Monophysites / Miaphysites; it was rather considered as a new Christological dispute and heresy, let’s say a form of radical Nestorianism. This initial approach was also expressed by outstanding Orthodox Aramaean theologians like John Damascene (or John of Damascus).
III. Already before Prophet Muhammad’s death, great ancient nations had accepted Islam without the Hejaz Arabs fighting a single battle; the most notable example is that of Yemen, namely a non-Arab, pre-Islamic nation which consisted of several kingdoms that wrote down their deeds, exploits, cults and faiths on numerous, now deciphered, inscriptions and epigraphic monuments. The existing Ancient Yemenite textual documentation covers more than 1200 years of Pre-Islamic History; the Ancient Yemenite writing system was later diffused in Africa (Ge’ez writing in Axumite Abyssinia) and India (Brahmi writing). Ancient Yemenites i.e. Sabaeans, Qatabanis, Himyarites, Awsanis and Hadhramis, were the Indian Ocean’s first and foremost seafarers, navigators and merchants; they totally controlled navigation across the Red Sea Bab al Mandeb straits, at least until the famous Roman maritime expedition, undertaken by Aelius Gallus, was launched in 25 BCE. Highly educated, the Ancient Yemenites colonized East Africa from the Horn region down to today’s Tanzania’s coastlands, and due to their perfect knowledge and use of meteorological and oceanographic conditions, they initiated the straight navigation from the Horn of Africa to the Deccan coast in today’s SW India.
Ancient Yemenites were ethnically-linguistically different from and totally unrelated to the Arabs of Hejaz, and in addition, they greatly outnumbered them. Several bilingual pre-Islamic Sabaean–Arabic inscriptions testify to this historical reality. By accepting Islam two years before Prophet Muhammad’s death (630 CE), Yemenites started using Arabic and taking Arabic names. Abyssinia also accepted early Islam without fighting a single battle.
IV. After Prophet Muhammad’s death, two groups of Muslim Arabs were formed; the first group accepted Ali (Muhammad’s son-in law) as the spiritual guide and the administrative ruler, whereas the second group wanted to elect someone else instead of Ali, in striking contrast to Prophet Muhammad’s instructions. This was not merely a personal disagreement, but a deep spiritual, religious, cultural and behavioral discord. It is essential to specify at this point that those, who sided with Ali, wanted to diffuse Islam peacefully and not by means of military invasions, which constituted also the advice given to his followers by the founder and preacher of Islam.
V. Following the prevalence of the sectarian group of people, who were against Ali, military attacks were undertaken at the same time against the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran (as early as 633 CE). The people, who wanted to carry out the military invasions, took this decision because of accurate and detailed data already gathered as regards all the adjacent lands, namely Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine, the Iranian plateau, the Indus River valley, the Caucasus region, and Egypt.
It was normal for those Arab merchants, who used to move ceaselessly across the silk-, spice- and frankincense roads and reach from the mountains of Hejaz as far as the Persian Gulf, the Indus River delta, Fars, Mesopotamia, Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean coast, to know exactly what was happening across those lands and further beyond. They were therefore able to conclude, on the basis of their accurate information, that although militarily insignificant, numerically unimportant, and economically destitute, they had strong chances to prevail – as they finally did.
VI. Around the end of the 3rd decade of the 7th c. CE, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran were in conditions of total collapse, great impotence and final disintegration. The wars between Rome and Iran were about to complete 700 years of almost incessant conflicts and clashes, but the ferocity of the battles and the devastation of the raids during the previous three decades had gone beyond all limits and precedents. Emperor Heraclius’ victory over the Shahinshah (king of kings) Khusraw II (628 CE) had only symbolic value, because the Eastern Roman Empire was in ramshackle too.
VII. Even worse for the two multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious empires, the devastating wars ruined, exasperated, and alienated vast populations that belonged to religiously oppressed nations, which were kept out of the imperial elites. Consequently, these nations truly reviled the respective imperial and religious authorities, which were totally unrelated to them ethnically and religiously. More specifically, the outright majority of the populations of the Eastern Roman Empire’s eastern and southern provinces (Southeastern Anatolia, North Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Libya were Aramaeans (in Asia), Copts/Egyptians and Berbers (in Africa). Aramaeans were either Monophysitic/Miaphysitic (like the Copts) or Nestorians. Both branches of Oriental Christianity rejected the Constantinopolitan Orthodox theology and deeply hated the Constantinopolitan armies that tyrannized and persecuted them, when they were not busy with their wars with Iran, which caused unprecedented destruction mainly to their lands.
Palimpsest-manuscript in Christian Palestinian Aramaic written in Palestine, during the 6th century; it was turned upside down and palimpsested in Syriac Aramaic in the 9th century. It probably belonged to St. Catherine’s Monastery, which was built by Justinian I between 527 and 565.
Similarly, the outright majority of the populations of Sassanid Iran’s western provinces (Atropatene, Eastern Caucasus, Transtigritane, Southeastern Anatolia, Central and Southern Mesopotamia, and the Persian Gulf coastal lands) were Azeri Turanians and Aramaeans. Their regions had suffered enormously because of the wars with the Eastern Roman Empire. Even worse, the Aramaeans of Iran were of Nestorian, Mandaean or Manichaean faith, and they were all severely persecuted for centuries. The Azeri Turanians were the staunchest followers of the official Sassanid version of Zoroastrianism (: Mazdeism) and they were very dissatisfied with both, Khusraw II’s religious tergiversations and the ethnic Persian (from Fars) control of the Sassanid administration.
All these ethno-religious groups that constituted the bulk of the populations between Cappadocia and the central Iranian plateau would surely welcome a foreign army that would preach a monotheistic doctrine, while also liberating them from the most loathsome capitals, namely Constantinople and Istakhr. This was made known to the Arabs by -mainly- the Damascus Aramaean merchants who were their closest trade partners and business associates; they wanted to have both already destabilized and ailing empires attacked by the soldiers of the new ‘heresy’. And this is actually what happened – in total contravention of Prophet Muhammad’s constant admonitions as regards the peaceful diffusion of the true faith, which he viewed as a unique entity and continuity from the days of the first man.
Continuity in Aramaean Art before and after the arrival of the first Islamic armies is noticeable in many cases, like the Hisham’s Palace, an Umayyad residence near Ariha/ Jericho (mosaic dating back to 724–743)
VIII. What Western Orientalists have systematically hidden is that Turanians did not contribute to the spread of Islam only after the 11th c. (Seljuk invasions), but also at the very critical moment, namely the 7th c. Islamic armies’ attack against Iran. How this happened is easy to grasp: they did not defend the empire to which they belonged. And for a very good reason: they reviled its administration.
In only 18 years (633-651), the Eastern Roman Empire lost almost half of its territory, and the Sassanid Empire of Iran disappeared – in spite of the frequent and at times ferocious revolts undertaken by heirs to the Sassanid throne, who kept fighting even 100 years after their empire had fallen and for this purpose several Iranian Sassanid princes and noblemen sought the help of the Sogdian and the Chinese monarchs.
Contrarily to them, Aramaeans, Turanians, Egyptians and Jews were very happy with the developments, and this reality is reconfirmed by the fact that Aramaean, Egyptian and Turanian sites were not destroyed, whereas Fars (Persia) was turned to dust. Sassanid Iran’s most prestigious sites in terms of spirituality, religion sciences, and knowledge, namely Adhur Gushnasp (Takht-e Suleyman) and Gundeshapur (Bet Lapat), were left intact by the invading Islamic armies; but Istakhr was leveled to the ground.
Chinese illustration depicting the Battle of Talas (751 CE), when an early Abbasid army faced Chinese forces; Western European Orientalists deceitfully portray the battle as a milestone that led Turanians to accept Islam. That’s totally false, because many Turanians lived already in the Sassanid Empire of Iran and encountered Islam as early as the 1st half of the 7th c. CE. The fact that they did not fight in the battles of Qadissiyyah (636), Nahavand (642), and Merv (651) brought down the Sassanid rule.
IX. The myth of the ferocious, bloody Islamic conquests is a colonial, Orientalist fake. It helps however demonstrate the nature of the evil alliance that tried repeatedly to drag our world to extreme bloodshed over the past 40 years; the two groups to whom this myth is vitally necessary are
a) the idiotic Islamists, the Taliban, the various Islamic terrorist groups, the radical extremists, and the naïve, uneducated and ignorant Muslims, who believe that the so-called ‘Islamic conquests’ can possibly be a model, an example, an ideal, and a point of reference (whereas they are not), and
b) the hysterically anti-Muslim, uneducated and paranoid, Zionist and pseudo-Christian Evangelical preachers, militant academics, bogus-intellectuals, Western diplomats and scheming politicians, as well as the Anti-Christian Freemasons of the Apostate Lodge, who need the Orientalist fallacy of the so-called ‘ferocious, bloody Islamic conquests’ as a tool for their strategy to denigrate the Islamic Civilization, distort the historical truth, and in the process, prepare a deeply Anti-Christian and superficially Anti-Islamic army of Evangelical-Taliban and LGBT-terrorists, who will clash with the abovementioned group a.
Papyrus PERF 558 with a bilingual Greek-Arabic text: a tax receipt dating back to 643 CE
X. There are two absolute and undeniable truths as regards the History of the Orient during the 7th c. CE:
First, the early Islamic invasions would be cancelled and the Umayyad Caliphate overthrown, if Aramaeans, Turanians and Egyptians did not truly approve of, and massively support, the new state that expanded across their lands. The approval and the support did not concern the religion but the governance, the imperial rule, and the economic measures.
For anyone who has doubts about this fact, it is enough to read the Coptic Chronicle of the Bishop John of Nikiû (7th c.) or the History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church of Severus ibn al-Muqaffa (تاريخ بطاركة الكنيسة المصرية – Ta’rikh Batarikat al-Kanisah al-Misriyah; 10th c.) in order to discover how clearly the Christian Copts preferred the Abbasid Caliphate and rejected the Constantinopolitan theologians, patriarchs, and imperial guards (let alone the perverse, heretic and schismatic papacy of Rome). About:
Second, and with focus on the 7th and the 8th c., without
a) the overwhelming adherence and wholehearted participation of the Aramaeans (be they Christian, Manichaean or already Muslim) in the establishment of the administration, the academic endeavors, the intellectual exploration, the scientific research, the artistic-architectural undertakings, the educational life, the commercial activities (across the Silk Routes), and the economic decision-making of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates,
b) the overwhelming adherence and wholehearted participation of the Turanians (be they Mazdeist, Nestorian Christian, Manichaean or already Muslim) in the training and the improvement of the Caliphate’s military forces, tactics, and ventures, in the establishment of the administration, in the introduction of imperial manners (mainly during the Abbasid times), in the initiation of diplomatic contacts (across Central Asia, and with China), in the maintenance of economic-commercial activities, and in the transfer of esoteric-spiritual traditions within the new, Islamic world that was under formation, and
c) the gradual acceptance expressed toward the new rule and the outstanding role played within the new context by Iranians, Yemenites, Egyptians and Berbers in all the above mentioned fields, tasks, deeds and exploits, …..
…….. there would have never been an Islamic Civilization.
The fights between the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic caliphates have shed a shadow on the fact that the leaders of the Aramaean populations of the empire had invited the early Muslims in order to get rid of the much loathed Constantinopolitan guards and armies. This happened because in reality the Umayyad Caliphate was substituted for the Sassanid Empire of Iran, and the contrast between the Christian and Islamic faiths appeared as a frontal imperial clash, as it became a state affair.
In fact, even few decades after the early Islamic invasions, the Arabs of Hejaz vanished within an ocean of imperial, cultural, spiritual, intellectual, academic, artistic, religious, military, economic, commercial, technological and educational dynamics that they definitely triggered at their unbeknownst. To say it in simple words: the average person’s life in Medina or Mecca during the period 600-670 CE (which is tantamount to a man’s lifetime) and the average person’s life in Baghdad during the period 800-870 CE were as different from one another as an average person’s life in Constantinople contrasted with another average person’s life in Chang’an (China’s capital) in either chronologies.
There were indeed few common points in Mecca in 630 CE and Baghdad in 830 CE; there were some people who prayed five times a day; one could listen to the adhan; during Ramadhan, they were fasting in daytime. But when the few things in common are fully enumerated, we discover that an incommensurable distance separated the two realms. However, the true, historical Islam is not to be found in Mecca in 630 CE, but in Baghdad in 830 CE.
What was Mecca in 630 CE? It was just a small, marginal village where Prophet Muhammad preached the true faith to God.
What was Baghdad in 830 CE? The undisputed center of the world! Therefore you cannot compare. Historically, Mecca was always insignificant. Spiritually, it was an important location.
The same parallel exists within Christianity too.
Speaking historically, what were Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the various locations of the desert where Jesus used to walk, fast and preach? Nothing! Marginal locations within a vast empire! What was Jerusalem in 33 CE? Historically, it was clearly less important than Antioch, Damascus or Alexandria. Spiritually, it was a key location for the early Christians and the Jews.
What were Rome and Constantinople in 333 CE? The two capitals of a vast empire! Both cities were historically more significant than Jerusalem.
Late Mamluk-era training with the lance, c.1500; the Mamluks, the Ghulam and all other categories of Turanian soldiers did not ‘discover’ Islam in Central Asia thanks to the early Islamic armies; they encountered the new faith as early as the first battles in the first half of the 7th c., but they did not fight for their empire, Sassanid Iran, which collapsed because of their stance.
Speaking at the 5th Annual Conference of the Network of Oromo Studies (NOS), which took place on 27th February 2021 on Visual Technology, I exposed one more Western colonial distortion, falsification and machination; the title of my speech was: “Fake Nubia: a Colonial Forgery to deprive Cushitic Nations from National Independence, Historical Identity and Cultural Heritage”.
The text of my contribution was published without the notes here:
I herewith publish the first two notes of my speech; they constitute a brief but direct denunciation of the major Western anti-African forgeries, namely
– the Nubianization of the East African Cushites and of their historical past and heritage,
– the disparagement of the Berbers, and
– the denial of the existence of the Hamites.
Although short, this text provides readers with a comprehensive insight into the evil, racist and systematic efforts of distortion of the African past by the Anglo-French and the American criminal fraudsters and biased pseudo-academics.
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Northern Africa is entire Hamitic, not Hamito-Semitic, not Afro-Asiatic!
The fallacy of the term ‘Afro-Asiatic languages’ is a byproduct of the forgery of Pan-Arabism. There are no Arabs in Africa; there are only Pan-Arabic and Islamist dictatorships that tyrannically imposed Arabic as official language.
The true map of Northern Africa
The educational tyranny of Arabic must be abolished across Africa.Berber, Coptic and Cushitic languages in Eastern Africa must be declared as official languages.
Whatever is said in the BBC is an evil lie; one of them revolves around the Nubianization of the Cushitic-Meroitic heritage of the Modern Oromos and the other Cushitic Eastern African nations.
Extensive politicization, political exploitation of Nubians’ socio-economic problems in either Egypt or Sudan, colonial falsification of the History of Cush, and usurpation of Cushitic monuments and archaeological sites where most Nubians live today are parallel endeavors of Western academics, diplomats, politicians, Human Rights activists, mainstream media, international NGOs, and other groups of pressure: this is called ‘Nubianization’. The existing vast literature has the evident target to push toward the dismemberment of Egypt and Sudan, by cutting off sizeable territories from both countries (namely South Egypt and North Sudan). For this reason, the old Nubian resentment for the construction of the Aswan High Dam is every now and then rekindled, as Nubians in Egypt never liked their relocation to newly built villages north of Aswan, pretty much like Nubians in Sudan did not enjoy at all their enforced relocation to New Wadi Halfa.
The three Christian kingdoms of Sudan, i.e. true, historical Ethiopia: Nobatia was a Nubian kingdom, but Makuria and Alodia were entirely Cushitic.
The problem would be limited in the purely political sphere, if the Western colonial plotters did not involve an enormous deal of confiscation of Cushitic monuments, usurpation of ca. 5000 years of Cushitic History, expropriation of historical past from today’s Cushitic nations, and disastrous division among the descendants of the Ancient Hamitic-Cushitic nations of Kemet (Masr-Egypt) and Cush (Arabic-speaking Sudanese and Oromos, Somalis, Afars, Sidama, Kaffa, etc).
In fact, there is not and there cannot be any divide between
a) Arabic-speaking Cushites-Hamites in today’s Egypt and Sudan, and
b) Cushitic-Hamitic native speakers from the African Atlas and the Sahara to the Nile Delta and thence, across the Eastern African inland and coast, down to Mombasa.
The Pyramids of Napata, at today’s Karima in Northern Sudan, nearby the Mount (Jebel) Barkal; Napata was the capital of the Cushitic Kingdom of Ancient Sudan (the true Ethiopia). These monuments are common heritage to Arabic speaking Sudanese (who are ethnically Cushitic) and to modern Cushitic nations of Eastern Africa, notably the Oromos, the Sidamas and the Kaffas.
{In this case, the postmodern rejection of a) George Reisner’s false identification of the Ancient Cushitic nation of Sudan as Negroid and b) his racist assumption as per which Ancient Sudan’s (i.e. Cush’s) “native negroid race had never developed either its trade or any industry worthy of mention, and owed their cultural position to the Egyptian immigrants and to the imported Egyptian civilization” comes as a new type of even more distortive racism like that of the notorious Stuart Tyson Smith, who has embarked on a more obscure project of overwhelming Nubianization of the Cushitic / Meroitic past of Ancient Sudan (i.e. real, historical Ethiopia)}. Even worse, the new racism is absolutely Zionist of inspiration and benefit.
h ttps://undark.org/2018/02/19/nubia-sudan-amara-west-archaeology/
The pyramids of Meroe (near modern Bagrawiyah) represent a later period of the Cushitic kingdom of Ancient Sudan (i.e. Ethiopia); these pyramids are not ‘Nubian’.
Amongst others, the Khan Academy takes a particular interest in diffusing the Nubianization dogma. The same is valid for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is known for its most mistaken online presentations. This propaganda is coupled with misleading presentations featured in the National Geographic.
{Note: It is interesting to observe the frequent mistakes of the various web pages of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s portal; in the link above, go straight to fig. 8! The legend reads: “The kiosk on Philae Island probably built by the Emperor Augustus (30–14 B.C.) Photo by Adela Oppenheim”! Well, Octavian Augustus reigned from 27 BCE to 14 CE; not just 16 but 41 years!!}
Núria Castellano, Rival to Egypt, the Nubian kingdom of Kush exuded power and gold
The extraordinary confusion of the terms ‘Kushite’ and ‘Nubian’ really exudes from this worthless publication; the two terms are used alternatively and overlapping one another during the whole article, thus fully confusing specialists and non-specialized readers alike. Cushites and Nubians are however ethnically, linguistically and culturally as different from one another as Sumerians were from Elamites or Romans were from Franks.
Indicatively nonsensical excerpt: “Kushite culture blended Egyptian customs into its own, creating a distinctive, visual style. Truncated and with steep sides, the pyramids left by the long line of Nubian kings populate the desert near the site of Meroe”.
How well fallacious colonial historiography and Western political interference propaganda are interconnected one can admire in the site of the Minority Rights Group International (https://minorityrights.org/about-us/). Excerpts:
“The Nubian city of Meroë”: not one Nubian lived in Meroe in the past, and not one Nubian lives there now!
“Coptic Christianity spread to Nubia, where a Christian kingdom existed from the sixth to the fourteenth centuries. At the end of this period Nubia adopted Islam, 700 years later than the north of Egypt”: that’s totally wrong! Three Christian kingdoms (not just one) existed in South Egypt and North Sudan over the said period (“from the sixth to the fourteenth centuries”), but only the northernmost was Nubian. The other two Christian kingdoms were Cushitic, not Nubian. As Nobatia merged with Makuria, it lost its northern territories. Aswan became Muslim in the beginning of the 10th c., i.e. only 300 years “later than the north of Egypt”!
The temple of Maluli (Mandulis) at Tarmes/Talmis (modern Kalabsha) is one of the very few truly Nubian monuments. This is so because during the Antiquity the Nubians were culturally assimilated into the Egyptians and the Cushites /Meroites. To be saved from the rising waters of the lake behind the High Dam of Aswan, the temple was transported 75 km from its original site not far from the western side of the High Dam.
The Nubian God Mandolis in the Kalabsha temple near the High Dam of Aswan
With the exception of a) the Nilo-Saharan nations, b) the Niger-Congo ethnicities, c) the Bantu ethnic groups, d) the Khoisan group of people, and e) the Semitic-Yemenite origin Abyssinians (Amhara-, Tigrinya-, and Tigre-speaking), Africa is home to Hamitic nations.
Contrarily to the Semites, who originate from Asia, the Hamites are indigenous in Africa. As a matter of fact, the Hamitic group of nations is Africa’s largest in terms both of geographical area and number of native speakers. The Hamitic nations are the only to have created high-level civilizations in Africa, contrarily to the Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, Bantu and Khoisan nations, which -due to advanced tribal fragmentation- did not develop major empires and thus remained at a primitive level of social organization until recent historical periods.
The temple of Wadi as Sebua (150 km south of Aswan) was built by Ramses II on the same location of an earlier temple constructed by Amenhotep II. To be saved, the temple was transported 4 km from its original place.
The two temples of Abu Simbel (275 km south of Aswan), close to the modern borderline between Sudan and Egypt, were built by Ramses II to function as mortuary temples for him (the great temple) and for his queen Nefertari (the small temple). To be saved, the two temples were transported to a higher elevation.
In the Antiquity, the Hamitic nations covered already Africa’s largest part, namely the entire northern half from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, Sahara included, and the Eastern part of Africa down to the area of today’s Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. The Ancient Kemetians (Egyptians), the Ancient Cushites (Ethiopians – so, unrelated to Abyssinians), the Ancient Kingdom of Somalia (Punt), and the Ancient Berbers (called ‘Libyans’ by the Ancient Greeks and Romans) of the wider Atlas region, who inhabited the vast space from Modern Egypt’s western confines to the Atlantic Ocean, were the major and the most advanced Hamitic nations fostering civilization throughout Africa and Europe during four millennia of pre-Christian era.
Except the Hamites, the Phoenicians (a North-Western Semitic nation) developed great centers of civilization in Africa; but they were mainly concentrated in the northern coastal areas where they settled and developed several colonies like notably Carthage which was founded in 814 BCE. The Carthaginians (Qart Hadasht means ‘New City’ in Ancient Phoenician) became totally independent of the Phoenician city-kingdom of Tyr from where they originated; they created a formidable African maritime empire, colonizing Sicily, Sardinia, the Baleares, Spain and Portugal, other South European coasts, and the entire North-Western coasts of Africa. However, what we now call ‘Carthaginian’ or ‘Punic’ (from the Latin word for ‘Phoenician’) Civilization is a mixed, Phoenician and Berber (Hamitic African) synergy and interaction. Africa’s circumnavigation undertaken by Phoenician navigators, who were employed by the Berber (‘Libyan’) Pharaoh Nechao II (610–595 BCE), was another major Hamitic-Semitic interaction that took place in the Antiquity.
Significant Hamitic-Semitic cooperation also took place in the Horn of Africa region during the Late Antiquity, when first the Ancient Yemenite kingdoms of Qataban and later Sheba (the Sabaeans) and Himyar colonized the region from the Horn itself (Raas Caseyr or Ras Asir in Af Somali; known as Cape Guardafui in Western languages) down to Dar es Salaam (Rhapta in Ancient Greek) and entered in extensive intermarriages with the local Somalis to consolidate their regionally unmatched commercial supremacy. This, vast, Eastern African colony of the Ancient Yemenites was named ‘Azania’ by an anonymous Alexandrian Egyptian merchant and captain, who authored the Periplus of the Red (‘Erythraean’)) Sea (2nd half of the 1st c. CE); in contrast, the exceptionally informative and accurate writer called the Northern Somali coast (from the Bab el Mandeb straits of the Red Sea to the Horn itself) ‘the Other Berberia’.
‘Azania’ corresponds to the historical Chinese term Zesan (澤散), which was in use already in the 3rd c. CE. Contrarily to Azania, which at those days was ruled by the Marib-based Yemenite King of Sheba, ‘the Other Berberia’ was self-ruled (with the local elders in control after the Yemenite fashion, i.e. similarly with the ‘mukarrib’). The use of the name ‘the Other Berberia’ for the entire region of Northern Somalia clearly suggests close ethnic relationship with the coastal Cushitic inhabitants of the today’s Eastern Sudanese regions, because those lands were called ‘Berberia’ in the aforementioned text that was written by a well-informed entrepreneur and voyager, who had apparently traveled extensively between Egypt and Indonesia, if not China. The term also denotes the close relationship between the North-Western African Hamites of the Atlas region (Berbers) and some of Eastern Africa’s Cushites.
The colonial, academic etymology of the noun ‘Berber’, as supposedly related to the Ancient Greek onomatopoetic term ‘barbaros’ (barbarian), is a racist invention and aberration. There has never been any historical, philological, ethnographic, linguistic or ethno-sociological proof about an eventual association between the ethnonym ‘Barbar’ / ‘Berber’, as used by several ancient authors, and the word ‘barbarian’. To offer an example, in the sixth paragraph of the Periplus of the Red (‘Erythraean’) Sea, the use of the adjective ‘barbarika’ has clearly an ethnic connotation (Berber), being totally unrelated to the common Ancient Greek adjective “barbarian’:
“ιμάτια Βαρβαρικά άγναφα, τα εν Αιγύπτω γενόμενα, Αρσινοϊτικαί στολαί”
(imatia Barbarika agnafa, ta en Aigypto genomena, Arsinoitikai stolai)
The grossly identification of the ethnonym ‘Berber’ with ‘barbarians’ and the deliberate colonial etymology of this ethnonym from the Ancient Greek word ‘barbaros’ (barbarian) demonstrate the enormous hatred harbored by colonial historians against the Berbers and the Hamites. Involving causality between a hypothetical, fictional status of barbarism among the Eastern Hamites-Cushites of the coast of today’s Sudan and North Somalia and the appellation that the Ancient Greeks and Romans used to denote these and other Ancient Hamitic-Cushitic nations is an outrage. However, it helps today’s unbiased academics from China to Africa to Latin America realize how monstrously distortive the colonial Greco-centric model of History is.
It is however necessary at this point to underscore the fact that this provocative colonial bias does not reflect any eventually racist consideration among the ancient authors; on the contrary, all of the ancient authors expressed a great part of esteem and consideration for the Hamitic-Cushitic Berbers. In modern times, the first attempt to establish a causality link between the ethnonym ‘Berber’ and the Ancient Greek word ‘barbaros’ (barbarian) is attested in the case of the so-called ‘Barbary Coast’, a noxious, racist term coined for the coastal region of North Africa from today’s Libya to Morocco.
The extremely derogatory term was extensively used from the 16th to the 19th c. (until these provinces of the Ottoman Empire were colonized by the Western European racist gangsters) and, even worse, served as pretext for colonial wars, projection of Eurocentric falsehood of History, and exportation of European and North American Yankee criminality on those parts of Africa. Still today, the verses “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” (from the disreputable and evil US Marines’ Hymn) remind us of the monstrous association of the ethnonym ‘Berber’ with the Ancient Greek word ‘barbaros’ (barbarian), and of its dangerous impact. More details about this forgery one can get here:
Even worse, over the past decades, colonial historians, linguists, archaeologists, and ethnographers went further adrift and even rejected (without a proper academic refutation) the existence of the Hamitic nations, which had been accepted earlier and for more than 250 years of Western European scholarship. The absurd rejection of the existence of the Hamitic nations is only the result of extreme Jesuit, Freemasonic and Zionist fanaticism and colonial forgery; it first started with the farcical subordination of the Hamites to the Semites and the subsequent construction of the erroneous term ‘Hamito-Semitic linguistic group’. Over the past 6-7 decades, all sorts of nonsensical justifications, pretexts and innuendos have been incessantly used so that the highly politicized authors, known for their heavily ideologized motives, possibly ‘prove’ that the Hamitic languages do not exist as a fully independent linguistic group.
To carry out the unprecedented forgery, as per which there have never been Hamitic languages (sic!), numerous biased explorers and bogus-academics, incredible pseudo-intelligentsia, and mysterious apparatchiks
1) separated Hausa and several other Hamitic languages from the rest, identifying them as ‘Chadic’ (which is tantamount to shameless academic terrorism);
2) pretended that the ‘remaining’ three branches of Hamitic languages (Berber, Egyptian-Coptic, and the Eastern Cushitic group of languages) do not form an exclusive phylogenetic unit of their own (which is a paranoid lie);
3) viciously denigrated many great scholars, historians and linguists, of the 19th c. and the early 20th c. as ‘racists’, because they correctly and extensively underscored the Hamitic-Cushitic cultural superiority over all the other African ethnic-linguistic groups (which is a hysteric form of historical revisionism);
4) generated the pseudo-theory of scientific racism, which is a scheme as per which the criminal Jesuit, Freemasonic and Zionist pseudo-academics disreputably and nonsensically disparage at will numerous great scholars of the 19th c. and 20th c., who had steadfastly rejected such evil theories and inhuman concepts diffused by those villains;
5) deliberately and defamatorily associated many great European scholars and specialists of various Hamitic languages and civilizations with colonialism (which is preposterous and false);
6) attempted to refute the evident relationship between the Hamitic nations and the Caucasoid peoples;
7) fabricated an absolutely meaningless, erroneous, and pathetic term ‘Afro-Asiatic languages’ in order to depict the Hamitic-Cushitic family of nations as totally subordinated to the Semitic nations; and
8) theorized that the modern academic bibliography about the Hamitic nations (that they mistakenly rejected) was mainly due to religious (sic!) reasons pertaining to the fake Biblical and Talmudic story, which is known as the ‘Curse of Ham’. This idiotic approach and bogus-theory bears witness to sheer dementia, because many scholars, who had correctly accepted the reality of the Hamitic nations, languages and civilizations, were known for having totally rejected Judaism and Christianity. Consequently, they could not therefore be influenced by these religions and the related holy books in their research.
The absurd rejection of the existence of Hamitic nations, languages and civilizations by the militant pseudo-scholars and propagandists of today’s collapsing Western World has so many internal contradictions that easily one can identify, refute and irrevocably denounce the inconsistencies of the advanced arguments. However, it is important for all to bear in mind that the pseudo-scientific fabrication ‘Afro-Asiatic languages’ and the associated anti-Hamitic / anti-Cushitic hysteria, are due to two main targets sought after by the colonial academia and regimes:
First, this dogmatic nonsense allowed politically motivated academics and colonial diplomats to incessantly propagate the abhorrent fallacy of Pan-Arabism, as per which the Arabic-speaking populations of North Africa are Arabs (and therefore of Semitic origin), whereas in reality, not even one drop of Arab blood flows in the veins of today’s Egyptians, Libyans, Sudanese, Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans and Mauritanians. Linguistic Arabization has been a marginal phenomenon that was promoted by the colonial powers and their local stooges only during the last 220 years.
There have actually been innumerable Arabization campaigns in the colonially detached provinces of the Ottoman Empire; they were all carried out by the evil local tyrants-puppets of the colonial powers. Whether they have one native language (speaking Arabic, Berber and Coptic) or they are bilinguals, all the populations of Northern Africa are Hamitic of origin and therefore totally unrelated to Arabs or Semites. Assuming that the Egyptians, the Tunisians or the Algerians are ‘Arabs’, just because they speak Arabic, is tantamount to pretending that the African Americans, who are English native speakers, are / can ever be (considered as) …. Anglo-Saxons!!
Second, the paranoid abnegation of the existence of Hamitic nations, languages and civilizations helped politically motivated academics and diplomats to
a) boost an enormous Pan-Bantu propaganda movement, which tries to fallaciously increase the importance of the Bantu contribution to the History of Africa;
b) emphasize erroneously the otherwise nonexistent relation between the Hamitic Ancient Egyptians and the Bantu tribes of Africa’s southern parts;
c) carry out a project of extensive Nubianization of part of the Ancient Kemetian (Egyptian) historical heritage (across Modern Egypt’s territories located south of Aswan); and
d) delete the Ancient Cushitic historical heritage (which belongs to i) today’s Arabic-speaking people of Sudan’s central provinces and ii) today’s Eastern Cushitic nations, namely the Oromos, the Sidamas, the Kaffas, etc.), by fallaciously attributing it entirely to today’s Nubians, who live in North Sudan. Selected bibliography on the topic can be found here:
The aforementioned fallacies may be crucial for the future of all Cushitic and Hamitic nations of Africa, either they enjoy nominal national independence or not, either they retain their historical language or not. As a matter of fact, it probably heralds a well-programmed political subordination to Semitic groups, a systematically prepared projection of evil faiths, cults and practices, as well as of anti-Cushitic/anti-Hamitic immoral norms and behavioral systems among today’s Eastern African Cushites (Rastafarianism), and the racial amalgamation of Eastern Cushites with Bantu tribes of the African South.
III. Unsophisticated, gullible and ignorant sheikhs and theologians
IV. How Turkey’s and Iran’s paranoid Islamists are manipulated by Western colonials
V. Russia, China, and the Utilization of the Muslim World by the Western Colonials
VI. What Russia and China must do
Introduction
Fourteen years ago, on 4th December 2007, I published an article under title ‘Russia, Islam, and the West’, which -within few days- was officially (ИноСМИ / Inosmi) translated into Russian (‘ Россия, ислам и Запад’). I wanted to briefly elaborate on how things would develop and to also identify possible allies for Russia within the so-called ‘Islamic World’.
As the translated version of the article was extensively reproduced, I noticed that it was also well understood. Example: the great portal Centrasia (www.centrasia.org), while republishing the Russian translation, added an over-title for the use of its readers to state the following: “Экспансия западного мира не столько решала проблемы, сколько распространяла их вширь” (The expansion of the Western world did not so much solve problems as spread them in breadth). Indeed, there could not be better summary of my article’s contents. The over-title was indeed an excellent reflection of my original perception and ultimate conviction, namely that the West wanted to use the senseless Islamic World against Russia.
In that article’s last part, I put a title that appeared very odd, even to several Egyptian and other African friends of mine (at the time, I was living in Cairo): “Islam is Turkey and Iran”. In that part, I explained why only these two countries could possibly be Russia’s allies against the Western colonial contamination that threatens the entire world. The reason for this statement is that only these two countries had maintained until that time a correct sense of historical-cultural identity and an imperial-level establishment and diplomacy. As a matter of fact, the rest of the so-called Islamic world is constituted by fake states-puppets of the colonial powers (from Morocco and Nigeria to Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia); unfortunately, the uneducated, ignorant, and idiotic elites of these neo-colonial structures never realized what ‘national integrity’ means.
I. Fake states of fake Arabs and fake Muslims
This is so because, by describing these states as ‘puppets’, I don’t only suggest that the local governments receive and execute orders dictated by the Western colonial capitals (Paris, London, Washington D.C., etc.), often being also blackmailed by them in the most obscene manner, but I also specify that these states were entirely pre-fabricated by the colonial elites and administrations to the slightest detail.
What I imply by mentioning the ‘detail’ is simple: not only the location of the false and troublesome (notably in the Halaib triangle) borderline between Egypt and Sudan was decided by the English colonials long before the two modern states came to exist (in order to offer their successors in the colonial institutions and governments the chance of future manipulation of either local ‘governments’), but also the lack of railway connections between first Cairo and Khartoum and second Suez and Port Sudan had been programmed before the beginning of the 20th c. So, colonialism means also ‘deeds carried out with long-term perspective’; actually, it does not occur in a wide array of sectors of social activities, but across the board.
Neo-colonial governments in Algiers, Riyadh, Baghdad, Dhaka, Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere were totally deprived of any substantive nation-building tools; entire nations were stripped of their historical-cultural identity, and their elites -which used to have idiotically been sending their children to ‘study’ in French, English, US, Canadian and Australian universities- were plunged into a scrupulously elaborated delusion that turned them into pure and permanent servants of their former colonial masters.
Even worse, all Muslim, African and Asiatic nations have been scrupulously disconnected from one another, and thus, to study Egyptology and Coptology a Nigerian has to move to England or America, whereas a Moroccan willing to specialize in Assyriology or Iranology needs to pursue university studies in France. Similarly, Muslims in Senegal and Sierra Leone have no idea about Islamic History, Art History, Architecture, Sciences, Wisdom, Spirituality and Literature in Central Asia, whereas Egyptian and Syrian Muslims know nothing about the great Islamic dynasties that ruled Eastern or Western Africa and the existing Islamic monuments there. In other words, the fake neo-colonial structures have been totally disconnected from one another at the intellectual, academic, cultural, educational and scientific levels, each of them being calamitously tied to its former colonial center.
The aforementioned unprecedented ignorance and reciprocal disconnectedness was complemented by colonially promoted confusion and darkness. When it comes to the confusion that prevails among Muslims worldwide, the first point to mention is the materialistic evaluation of human interests, which is an entirely anti-Islamic trait and an alien element among historical Muslim societies that revolved around axes of spiritual, intellectual and scientific endeavors.
The short-sighted materialistic viewpoint on the human endeavors and interests was projected by the colonial elites onto the local Muslim populations and it permanently destroyed the Islamic moral order, eliminating all cultural values that had prevailed for many long centuries (in several cases for more than a millennium) and turning therefore all Muslims into miserable replicas of corrupt Westerners. The very use of money, the existence of the Banking system, the shameful fallacy of the so-called ‘Islamic Economics’, and the economic structure itself of today’s Muslim countries are an anathema against prophet Muhammad.
The colonially promoted confusion took also the form of a pathetic race for ‘socioeconomic development’, involving the catastrophic deformation of the traditional urban landscape throughout the Islamic world. As -generation after generation- young students were pushed to Engineering and Economis, all the neo-colonial structures and the corrupted or demented pseudo-Muslim societies were even more strongly tied to the Western colonial capitals.
Last, backwardness, obscurantism and darkness were diffused in the form of false theories, disruptive ideologies, and nonsensical theologies; by believing in the Pan-Arabic falsehood, hundreds of millions of non-Arab Aramaeans, Yemenites, Copts (Egyptians), Sudanese Cushites, and NW African Berbers were permanently prevented from achieving proper nation-building. By embracing Nasserism, Baathism and other catastrophic schemes, dozens of millions of people engulfed themselves in wars, conflicts, bloodshed, abject poverty, and irreversible misfortune.
And by accepting the pathetic, anti-Islamic doctrines of today’s totally uneducated and deeply ignorant pseudo-theologians and bogus-imams, African and Asiatic Muslims were diverted from Islamic spirituality, wisdom, moral, sciences, intellect, education, religion, culture, and civilization. Even worse for them, they were diverted to a trivial and pathetic, bogus-Islamic theological indoctrination of which all the foundations, all the elements, all the concepts, all the parts, and all the words had been previously examined, considered, authorized and approved by the Western Orientalist colonial academia, before being projected onto the local masses due to the determinant commitment of the military, administrative, diplomatic and political gangsters who controlled the vast lands of the Mughal Empire, the detached territories of the Ottoman Caliphate, the colonial puppet state of Pahlavi Iran, as well as many other earlier Muslim sultanates, khanates and emirates.
Wherever there was a sound, secular, culturally original, socially strong state, as in the case of Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey and Siyaad Barre’s Somalia, the criminal English, American, Canadian, Australian and French diplomats employed all possible means to diffuse the fake Islamic theologies, the nonsensical political doctrines, the absurd politicization of the Muslim societies, and the villainous ideologization of the deliberately kept-ignorant masses. In total negation of today’s fake Muslim societies, there cannot be politics in a historical Muslim society; and there was no politics in both, Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey and Siyaad Barre’s Somalia.
In other words, all the present dimensions of social-intellectual-educational-political life in today’s fake Muslim countries had been pre-fashioned by the colonial powers in order to permanently function detrimentally against all their users, adherents, admirers, supporters and followers onto whom they were projected systematically, tyrannically and criminally. I expanded on this topic in my article titled ‘Why Former Ottoman Provinces cannot become Proper States’ that I published before 10 years: https://www.academia.edu/26064731/Why_Former_Ottoman_Provinces_cannot_become_Proper_States_By_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis?auto=download
CHINA, INDIA, RUSSIA, IRAN AND TURKEY: THE WORLD’S FIVE MOST IMPORTANT CONTINENTAL EMPIRES FIRST CANNOT BE REVIVED AND SECOND CAN PROSPER ONLY AS SECULAR STATES
Ming dynasty Emperor Zhu Houzhao (朱厚照; 1491-1521)
15th c. painting of the Forbidden City
Forbidden city Beijing
Qing China map 1820
Qing dynasty Emperor Kangxi (康熙帝; 1661-1722)
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Superior to the paranoid lunatic Ottoman Selim I and stronger than the lascivious Ismail Safavi, Zahir ud-Din Muhammad rather known as Babur (1483-1530) was the founder of the Mughal Empire; incomparably the most adventurous, the most impulsive and the most intellectual emperor of his times.
EmperorHumayun (1508-1556) and his son Akbar
Emperor Akbar (1542-1605) receiving the four-year old Abdul Rahim following the assassination (1561) of his father Bairam Khan, who was Akbar’s leading general and mentor: miniature from the Akbarnama (Book of Akbar), which was commissioned by Akbar as the official chronicle of the reign. It was written by Abu’l Fazl between 1590 and 1596, illustrated between c. 1592 and 1594.
Diwan-i-Aam (Hall of Public Audience) in the palace of the Great Mughal Emperor in Agra
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‘Moscow under Ivan the Terrible’ (1902) is a famous painting by Apollinary M. Vasnetsov; the 19th-20th c. impression that the Russians had about the beginning of the tiny Muscovy principality before 350 years was very inaccurate, erroneous, and biased. This is so, because they projected their own ideas on their own past that they viewed through the binoculars of their distorted education and historiography.
Mikhail Romanov (1596-1645) and his father, the patriarch Philaret, distribute alms, in an illustration of the first Romanov coronation. From the Coronation Album of Mikhail Fedorovich; the manuscript “The Book of the Election to the Highest Throne of the Great Russian Tsardom of the Great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Mikhail Fedorovich of All Great Russia Autocrat” was produced in Moscow few decades after the event (in 1672-1673). From the 1856 reprint edition.
Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, St. Petersburg; when Russia ceased to be Russia and started imitating Western Europe corrupt pseudo-kingdoms, insidious academics, fake intellectuals, and uncivilized politicians, the divisions and the discords started. Peter I and Catherine II are the true reason of the fall of the Romanov.
When you have Western European theater, opera and dance in a theoretically Christian Orthodox Empire, sooner or later your contaminated state will collapse; Nicholas II could not save anything (here in his coronation along with Alexandra Feodorovna, 1896).
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Shah Tahmasp I of Iran & Emperor Humayun of the Mughal Empire Hindustan enjoying Nowrouz festivities, as depicted on the Chehel Sotoun palace in Esfahan
Shah Abbas I the Great (1571-1629)
The imperial Naqsh-e-Jahan (‘The Image of the World’) square in Esfahan, Safavid Iran’s most flamboyant capital
Safavid Iran, 1511
General view of the Naqsh-e Jahan Square, the Shah Mosque (below), and the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque (in the middle), Isfahan
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Stupid Ottomans! They abolished the only valuable military units they had, namely the Janissaries; the absurd development took place at the time of the idiotic Sultan Mahmoud II (1785-1839). Instead of killing all the uneducated, ignorant, dark and pathetic sheikhs, muftis, qadis and imams that contaminated and destroyed the Ottoman Empire with the fallacy of their anti-Islamic “sunnah”, Mahmoud II closed down the illustrious Bektashi Order and the formidable Janissary elite infantry, thus issuing the death warrant of his otherwise wretched state. Today, people confuse two totally different terms: ‘Ottoman Empire’ and ‘Ottoman Civilization’. All factors of the Islamic civilization in the territory of the Caliphate were indeed persecuted by the pathetic, corrupt, cruel and villainous Ottoman dynasty. As it used to be said at the time, to be a member of the Ottoman family you had to have killed your brother! The ominous empire was the World History’s most anti-Turkish state.
Topkapı sarayı at the time of Selim I (1512-1520)
Official ceremonies in the Ottoman palace were a spectacular and costly affair that was impermissible in an absurd state ridiculously governed by pathetic, biased and ignorant theologians who took their stupid theology as tantamount to the religion of Islam.
Topkapı sarayı (طوپقپو سرايى) in Ottoman Constantinople; the historical name ‘Istanbul’, which was attested in sources for more than 100 years before the fall of the Eastern Roman imperial capital (1453), became the official name of the city only thanks to Kemal Ataturk. The absurd measure of turning Ayasofya Museum to a fanciful pseudo-mosque for political circus automatically cancels the popular city name and imposes the re-introduction of the old name that was the official appellation when the monumental edifice was operating as a real mosque (1453-1923).
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II. Turkey and Iran: the two exceptions
The two most notable exceptions from this chaotic and nefarious situation have been Turkey and Iran; the Turkish exception is entirely due to the greatness of the scope and the depth of understanding of Kemal Ataturk, who was one of the very few minds to timely, accurately and plainly identify the colonial goals. The founder of Modern Turkey had understood that Islam as religion was already defunct during his time and that the uneducated, ignorant and worthless Muslims of the early 20th c. were to be re-educated from scratch and on the basis of their own culture in order to later rediscover the true historical Islam in all its width, depth and height.
Kemal Ataturk knew that all that the criminal colonial imperialists of France, England and America wanted to do was to aptly utilize and duly instrumentalize the uneducated and silly Muslims of his time, turning them to fully operable tools of Western hegemony. The basic tools of this instrumentalization were the following:
– the deceitful ideologization (theologization) of the Islamic religion,
– the execrable politicization of the Muslim societies,
– the Orientalist falsification of the History of all Asiatic and African nations, and
– the linguistic, educational, academic and cultural subordination of all, Muslim and non-Muslim, Oriental nations to the Western European and North American barbarism and inhuman model of life, which was produced in Western Europe starting with the Evil Renaissance and diffused worldwide due to the genocidal colonialism
But theology is not religion; today’s fake Muslims do not believe Islam as religion, but pseudo-Islamic theological systems that contain a modern and ahistorical bogus-interpretation (i.e. a misinterpretation) of the values of Islam, thus fully eliminating Spirituality and turning Moral from a profound understanding of virtues to a silly obedience of other humans, which is “shirk” (شرك) according to the dogma of Islam.
It goes without saying that the aforementioned situation (or condition of being) does not only consist in religious deviation for Muslims but also constitutes supreme humiliation and final demise for any nation. Kemal Ataturk was triumphantly confirmed by all the historical developments that followed his death.
The uneducated, ignorant and stupid Muslims of Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, etc. fell exactly into the trap of their utilization and instrumentalization by the West; from 1948 to 1967 to 1973, the fake Muslims of the wider region did indeed function as fully programmed automatons. More they hated the Zionists, stronger the state of Israel became. This does not mean that the Zionist state is rightful and correct; it is not. But this does not matter (or does not play any role) anymore, when the Aramaean Muslims of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine and the Coptic Muslims of Egypt are so wrong as to become dehumanized automatons focused on wrong choices that can bring only grave deterioration and final destruction.
Having no national identity, believing in a pseudo-theology (that they mistook for religion), being truly disconnected from one another, being totally unaware of one another’s historical past and cultural heritage, and acting -at the political level- like conveniently submissive monkeys of the Westerners, these fake Muslims do not have a chance in the billion to ever win. Automatons do not win; humans do. Automatons act as per their pre-fashioned mechanism and then get decomposed to pieces.
The Iranian exception was basically due to the earlier imperial tradition (Safavid, Afshar and Qajar). The English interfered in Iran in the early 20th c. in a multifaceted and multilayered manner. They deposed the true, imperial dynasty and imposed an ignorant soldier as ‘king’, after duly cheating, bribing and corrupting him; this poor and uneducated guy did not even know the historical Iranian name ‘Pahlavi’ and its meaning, but the academic instructor and tutor, whom his colonial masters assigned to him, gave him this name as ‘royal family name’ – which constitutes the most shameful and most disgraceful stigma of Iranian History.
The reason for the English intervention in Iran in the late 19th and early 20th c. is still unknown to most people worldwide. For many long centuries, the evil Anglo-French diplomacy, vicious colonial trickery, and incessant machinations pitched the silly Ottomans and the naïve Iranians in interminable wars that weakened both empires; even worse, when Constantinople and Isfahan/Tehran did not fight against one another, most probably one of the two ailing empires made a war with the Russians. This unprecedentedly disastrous series of developments occurred despite the fact that both, the dynasties and the populations of the two empires, were Turanian in their majority and the local culture in both realms was a millennia long Iranian-Turanian amalgamation.
But with Kemal Ataturk turning the world’s most anti-Turkic empire (namely the wretched Ottoman Empire) into Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, the path was open for the much needed merge of the two great states into one; but this eventuality (that had been fully materialized by Tamerlane in 1402) was the real horror of the Western colonial powers for no less than four centuries (1500-1900).
The reason of the colonial fear was the fact that the Ottoman state and the Iranian Empire were equally Iranian and Turanian at the same time; in either case, the majority of the local population was Turanian, whereas the popular culture and tradition constituted an amalgamated Turanian (nomad / military-martial) and Iranian (settled / academic-intellectual) common heritage. So, by intervening colonially in Iran, the English intended to
– devilishly ‘Persianize’ Iran (an attempt that had no historical precedent),
– reduce the universal-ecumenical Empire of Iran into a ‘national Persian kingdom’, and thus
– transform untouchable Iran into a malleable ‘Persia’.
By so doing, the evil colonials knew beforehand that they would trigger enormous reactions from the part of Azeris, Turkmens and others, who would never accept ‘their’ Iran (so, a Turanian-Iranian entity) to be degraded into a Farsi (‘Persian’) state.
However, not even an interference of this scale was enough for the English and the French to fully control developments in Iran. As the English occupied the formerly Ottoman land of Mesopotamia (Aram-Nahrain or ‘Iraq’), the colonial conspirers mobilized several naïve Shia religious leaders and turned them against the puppet soldier king Reza, whom they had imposed on his fake throne in the first place.
As the colonial ‘explorers’, ‘advisers’ and ‘friends’ pushed the idiotic, credulous and unsuspicious Reza to westernize Iran and to stupidly send his son, the crown prince Muhammad Reza, to Switzerland for ‘studies’ (which would also further westernize him: 1931-1936; at the age of 12-17), they instigated anti-royal hatred among the silly ayatollahs and the other useless religious leaders, whom they urged to react against the ‘atheist’ king Reza, whom they had raised to power for a start. This has always been the criminal nature of the Western colonial evilness: you don’t only raise a silly puppet to prominence and power; you also prepare the puppet’s opponents and eventually the puppet’s murderers.
The situation went out of control, when the soldier’s son, after being educated as crown prince in Switzerland, proved to be a perspicacious successor to the much undeserved throne of Iran. As a matter of fact, and clearly to his credit, Muhammad Reza, by noticing the conflicting agendas of the various colonial powers and by identifying tremendous discrepancies in the ultimate goals of the major lobbies of power (or secret societies) in the Western World (Jesuits, Freemasons and Zionists), understood a large and critical part of the overall scheme, took therefore his role seriously, and following the path of Kemal Ataturk, attempted to modernize Iran in order to make it truly competitive to Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey and the major Western nations. This was exactly what the evil Western colonials did not want to happen, because Kemal Ataturk has always been the man whom they hated most and for a good reason: if there were another 3-4 men like the founder of Modern Turkey, as perspicacious as he was, as determined as he was, and as audacious as he was, then the entire colonial rule would crumble in Asia, Africa and Europe, ultimately and rightfully plunging the Western World into the well-deserved final implosion and irreversible decomposition. That’s why Iran’s position has severely degraded since 1979 and the so-called ‘Islamic revolution’.
III. Unsophisticated, gullible and ignorant sheikhs and theologians
It could not happen otherwise, because the nonsensical theory published by Khomeini and known under the name ‘Velayat-e Faqih’ {‘the Governance of the (Islamic) Jurisprudents’} did not exist (and consequently was not practiced) earlier, throughout the History of Islamic Caliphates; it is a modern concept, although many efforts were made to attach some historical credibility to it. As far as the so-called ‘Shia Muslims’ are concerned, quite unfortunately, this theory was the effective counterpart of the ‘Political Islam’ that the colonial Orientalists, diplomats and politicians diffused among /imposed on the so-called ‘Sunni Muslims’. I use the expression ‘so-called’, because in reality the distinction into Sunni and Shia Muslims is also fake, but this is not a topic on which I can further expand here. About: https://www.academia.edu/55139916/The_Fabrication_of_the_Fake_Divide_Sunni_Islam_vs_Shia_Islam_
The degradation of Iran’s position at the international level was stopped to some extent (not because an improvement was made in the unfortunate realm ruled by a puerile elite that failed to identify the anti-Iranian and anti-Turanian schemes of the Western colonial gangsters but) due to rather external factors. Despite the fact that Turkey followed a different trajectory, also Ankara’s position at the international level started gradually being severely degraded in 2002-2003, when the Western colonial fabrication ‘AKP’ was forcefully imposed on Turkey’s political life by direct and multileveled Western colonial interference.
The Turkish generals were constantly, boldly and gravely threatened by the US, NATO, EU, UK, and other governments and international bodies not to intervene, not to undertake a -much needed- coup, and not to cause the -much demanded- physical death of the disreputable US-UK-Israel puppet Erdogan, Turkey’s silliest, most ignorant, most uneducated, most pathetic, and most ludicrous prime minister and president.
The fact that Turkey’s Islamists came to and stayed in power only due to systematic Western colonial support clearly shows their absolutely non-Muslim, evil nature, and their servile character, which is the epitome of the disbeliever, the unfaithful and the perfidious. It also heralds the forthcoming destruction of Turkey, because this is the ultimate goal of the Western colonials, who brought the stupid Islamists of the AKP to power in order to duly, effectively and irrevocably utilize them for their plans.
Having a decomposed, divided and useless army (due to ceaseless post-2016 purges), a collapsed economy, half a trillion external gross debt, and a current account deficit of $36.7 billion in 2020, Turkey will need more than a decade to recover from the nonsensical and paranoid governmental policies of the idiots, who imagined it possible to govern a 21st c. country with oral utterances of a prophet who lived before 1400 years and with the prescriptions of a holy book manifested to indigenous people in Hejaz 300 years after the Roman Empire became Christian.
What is even worse for the brainless humanoids that support Turkey’s impossible Islamization is the fact that Muslim kingdoms and empires during the Islamic times were not governed (and did not have to be governed) on the basis of the Shariah in the way today’s uneducated and ignorant Muslim theologians understand this very vague and currently misinterpreted term. Quite contrarily, many times caliphs and sultans ruled against the Islamic Law; this is a vast topic that goes out of the scope of the present article, but at this point, I want only to indicate the original mistake and the defective approach to which are due the false interpretations and the erroneous conclusions of almost all modern Muslim theologians.
IV. How Turkey’s and Iran’s paranoid Islamists are manipulated by Western colonials
Instead of duly studying and carefully examining what truly occurred during all the periods of Islamic History and subsequently concluding thereupon, today’s fake Muslim theologians theorize on the basis of various historical texts (Quran, Hadith, Fiqh, Kalam), which by definition they cannot understand in their original, correct and accurate contextualization. When you hear silly people using this style of wooden language «theologian X said: ‘about this topic prophet Muhammad said that’», you can be sure that you have in front of you an idiot duly utilized by the colonial powers in order to harm all interlocutors who would accept such fully unrealistic purposes, positions and pretensions.
This is so, because whatever prophet Muhammad (or any other individual, prophet, high priest, mystic or layman) said does not truly matter; what really matter are the moral principles, the spiritual concepts, and the divine values that are contained in what the prophet (or any other person) said. Actually, words have worth only as expression of principles, concepts and values; otherwise they are absolutely empty, meaningless and useless.
Why the use of wooden language consists in an absurdity possible to be perfectly utilized by one’s own enemies is easy to understand; the safe losers are always the ignorant, the idiotic, and the unrealistic people, as they can be easily entrapped.
First, it is a matter of idiocy to imagine that, by using citations, one can replace 1400 years of History. Citations are tantamount to nothing; only diachronic practices reveal what Islam has been.
Second, only due to lack of proper education can one think that one may be able to understand any text written or words uttered before 1400 years in the exact sense and with the correct connotation that they had at the time; this is so irrespective of language, ethnic origin, religion, literature and culture. Connotations of words always change, and this is nothing ignorant theologians can possibly speak about. Now, the much needed task to identify the specific connotation that a word had when used within a specific text would demand the skills of honest and consummate scholarship, but unfortunately there cannot be acceptable scholarship in cases of indoctrination.
Third, the easiest persons to manipulate are always the imbeciles, who believe in a doctrine, while abstracting its elements and giving to the doctrine’s terms the meaning that they want (which did not exist historically) or can (due to their ignorance and lack of education). Such unsophisticated people usually attribute to their doctrine’s words absolute value, whereas the only absolute value is that of the moral principle and the spiritual concept behind each word’s original meaning.
However, due to their crudeness, these people cannot imagine that, before duly comprehending the meaning of a word, they have to recover first the moral principle and the spiritual concept behind it. So, they end up projecting their own, debased personal beliefs and conclusions onto the texts that they mechanically read (or at times learn by heart) without ever reaching the true meaning of the texts’ contents; but this process is well known to colonial academia.
Consequently, these persons convert their own personal misery into a permanent fight for egoistic self-confirmation and self-justification, and the abstractly taken elements of the doctrine that they believe in have unfortunately -in reality- only a subliminal psychological importance to them.
The hysterical screams of today’s fake preachers, sheikhs and imams during the Friday prayer khutbahs (sermons) are not a matter of Religion to be studied, but of Psychology. The same is valid for the various heretical pseudo-Christian pastors of the West, namely the Evangelicals, the Baptists, the Mormons and their likes.
There is no religion that forces the believers to scream hysterically; only theological-ideological indoctrination can cause this devious and disastrous behavior. However, this form of pseudo-Islamic indoctrination is what the colonial powers want to achieve among today’s fake Muslim preachers, sheikhs and imams, because only under these circumstances they can easily manipulate these miserable people subliminally.
This subliminal passion fully detaches these people from down-to-Earth reality, rendering them pliable enough for all those, who -for one reason or another- want these ignorant and misfortunate persons to fight for their unrealistic purposes, thus causing enormous damages to themselves, to their societies, and to their country’s national interests, institutions, and governments.
And that’s why Turks must drastically and resolutely remove Erdogan and AKP from power at all costs and as soon as possible. Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey is not a fake state like Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia or Saudi Arabia; and -as I already said- it cannot be ‘Islamized’. If a pseudo-Islamic dictatorship is imposed in Ankara, Turkey will simply cease to exist.
As soon as the basic traits of the state will be altered and stop functioning, Turkey will be dangling in the vacuum. This will not turn the entire structure into ‘Islamic’, as the corrupt and besotted Islamist slaves of the US, NATO, EU and UK believe before and after making their cursed and useless prayers. After the alteration of Turkey’s basic traits, the state will soon disappear, as it will have been canceled. The entire country would then suddenly find itself under the status of the Treaty of Sevres. The decomposition, which will ensue, will be far worse than that of the Ottoman Empire or, more recently, of the USSR; it will rather look like the present case of Yemen.
V. Russia, China, and the Utilization of the Muslim World by the Western Colonials
So, more than 15 years have passed after I published the aforementioned article, but I still stick to my conclusion: “Islam is Turkey and Iran”. This is still valid, not because the two countries improved their standards and strengthened their positions, but mainly due to the fact that many other Muslim countries totally collapsed and fell into chaos or fully capitulated to the evil elites of the Western World. Many countries still existed back in 2007, but do not exist as such anymore: Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Sudan. And many other countries, like Turkey and Iran, saw their power waning: Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. However, the situation of Turkey and Iran no longer concerns Ankara and Tehran only, due to the considerable changes that occurred at the international level with respect to the world balance of power.
Internal conflicts accentuated the growing social tension in the US; the refugee crisis plunged EU and UK into an impasse; despite the undeniable mistakes made in the Ukraine crisis (2013-2014 and 2022-2023) and in parallel with the successes marked in Syria (2015-2023), Putin managed to re-establish an impressively rehabilitated Russia at the epicenter of international relations; India and Brazil made themselves felt in the world affairs; Germany remained the sole economic power of EU; and China was transformed into one pole of the bipolar system that seems to prevail for the time being. Despite Beijing’s continuous affirmation of its dedication to a forthcoming multipolar world, we still do not -properly speaking- attest such a situation. It rather seems that many powers would find a China-US bipolar world good for them, at least for some time.
Turkey and Iran, under similar conditions, can cause serious trouble – not only if pitched against one another, but also if transformed into an obstacle on a country’s way to rising to prominence. The same is also valid for the fate of all other Muslim countries; an eventual dismemberment of just one of them or also a potential war between two of them can dramatically affect the interests of a major power. For the time being, Russia, China and Iran have managed to establish an alliance at many levels, involving also Tehran’s recent adhesion to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (as a full member state). About: https://www.academia.edu/53029736/From_the_Great_Game_to_the_Final_Game_Iran_Full_Member_State_of_the_SCO_as_the_Greatest_Event_of_the_21st_Century_text_pictures_and_legends_
Contrarily to Iran, Turkey followed an erratic path for all intents and purposes. After having been a fully accredited, modern Western state and society (thanks to Kemal Ataturk), Turkey got contaminated after 2002 by Islamism, anachronism, extremism, radicalism, obscurantism and self-destructive hysteria to significant extent. But as a Muslim country, Turkey is the sole NATO member state. This hiatus consists in a tragi-comical situation that can no longer exist; it leads to extinction.
In a rather recent article published in Cumhuriyet, Turkey’s foremost newspaper, on 21st September 2021, the distinguished Prof. Dr. Erol Manisali (1940-2022), a leading Kemalist intellectual and academic, made an extraordinary comparison; his article’s title was quite indicative in this regard (Erol Manisalı, AKP’nin ‘Osmanlıcılığı’, İngilizin ‘Brexit’ine mi benziyor! / https://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/erol-manisali/akpnin-osmanliciligi-ingilizin-brexitine-mi-benziyor-1870529): «Does AKP’s ‘Ottomanism’ look like the ‘Brexit’ of the English?»
Prof. Manisali was absolutely right; Brexit was disastrous indeed for England, and Ottomanism (also known as Neo-Ottomanism) is definitely calamitous for Turkey. However, Prof. Manisali still clarified several points in which Brexit is (and is made) less disastrous than the forgery and the paranoia of Ottomanism. On the other hand, it is true that the two options have indeed something in common. Both political concepts constitute a form of retreat or isolation that can end up in seclusion and implosion.
VI. What Russia and China must do
In the present article, I don’t intend to examine the troubles that will be caused by so virulently unrealistic purposes. I will come up with another article to examine the catastrophic perspectives that inconsistent, nonsensical and pathetic doctrines like Neo-Ottomanism, Neo-Safavism, Neo-Mughalism, Neo-Czarism, and Neo-Qingism may eventually cause if given some consideration and trustworthiness. Here, I intend to discuss the dangers ensuing from the subtle and smart utilization of such delusions that the crumbling Western colonial powers may make. For the Russian and Chinese aspirations to establish a multipolar world, these dangers may be lethal. That is why I will also suggest several measures that Moscow and Beijing must take; in addition, I propose the introduction of these methods to several other countries.
Before all the rest, it is essential for many people worldwide to understand how the colonial powers of Western Europe and North America managed to survive. Both, the EU and the US seem to be collapsing and disintegrating nowadays; NATO has already been described as ‘dead’ by a member state’s head! And after five centuries of English colonialism, two world wars, one cold war, an unnecessary adhesion to the EU, and a final Brexit, England looks like a 15th c. country in a 21st c. world. The 15th century was a terrible period indeed for Western Europe, which was a barbarian periphery that experienced many wars and lost much blood in the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453). At the very end of the 15th c., Western Europe was plagued with so many problems that the local kingdoms would irrevocably implode and disappear, if they did not expand colonially.
This reality must be carefully observed today by Chinese and Russians alike, because similar situations do not exist in their own national past. Consequently, the presently ailing Western states may well manage to survive by repeating exactly the same method, i.e. by exporting their own problems to others; their tactics in Ukraine do clearly confirm my assessment. Certainly, this involves more wars, more conflicts, more bloodshed, and greater risks; but the paranoid Western elites do not try to avoid them! Quite contrarily, they try to trigger them.
The silly but dangerous AUKUS bellicose rhetoric is just one example. It is absurd to take the Western political propaganda about ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ at face value. They did not want to impose ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ in Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. They are criminal enough to want to trigger only the situation that the entire world has clearly attested in the aforementioned misfortunate countries. The same can also happen eventually to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Algeria, Indonesia, and so on.
This means that the ensuing dangers are real and great, because the pulverization of numerous countries will cancel the long propagated dream of a peaceful multipolar world and significantly modify the scope of the historically founded and humanely prepared, multiply beneficial strategy One Belt One Road (OBOR/一带一路). How can Russia and China react to the chaotic plans of the Western World? To this question I will respond in the next part of this series of articles.
I. Ancient, Christian, and Muslim historiographers
II. Oversights and errors attested in the existing bibliography
A. ‘Battle techniques’
B. ‘Two great empires exhausted and weakened’
———- EXCURSE I: HISTORICAL FOCUS —————-
Borders, fronts, rebellions, divisions and fights
1- Post-conquest Iran
2- Eastern Roman Empire
3- Upper Egypt and the Sudan (: historical Ethiopia)
4- Internal conflicts transported from Hejaz to Syria and Mesopotamia
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C. ‘History of states’ and not of peoples and cultures
D. Poor conceptualization of the early Islamic conquests by modern scholars
—— EXCURSE II: ETHNO-LINGUISTIC & RELIGIOUS FOCUS ———
Ethno-linguistic groups
Religious groups
i- the Christian Aramaeans of the Syriac Orthodox Church (Monophysites)
ii- the Christian Aramaeans of the Great Church of the East (Nestorians)
iii- the Gnostic Aramaeans
iv- the Manichaean Aramaeans
v- the Copts (Monophysitic Christian Egyptians)
vi- the (Aramaic-speaking) Jews, followers of Rabbinical Judaism
vii- the Persians and other Iranians followers of various Iranian religions
viii- the Eastern Roman Orthodox Christians, who sided with the Patriarchate of Constantinople
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E. The demographic structure of the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Western Iranian provinces: the Aramaeans
F. The central provinces of the Islamic Caliphates: the lands of the Aramaeans.
G. Lack of historical criticism in Islamic Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies
III. The astounding scarcity of contemporaneous sources
IV. Critical incidents during the Battle of Yarmouk
V. The true dimensions of the Battle of Yarmouk and of its outcome
An early 7th c. drawing on a 5th c. biblical manuscript: the unusual and unnecessary representation of Job and his family is correctly viewed by modern scholars as a cryptographic representation of Heraclius and his family, notably his second wife Martina, his sister Epiphania, and his daughter Eudoxia. There is a clear reason for this allegory; by associating Heraclius with Job, the calligrapher and painter interpolated the concept of the Righteous Suffering and projected it onto Heraclius. The apparently Monotheletist artist wanted to praise the Monotheletist emperor for his patience and tolerance toward the Orthodox extremists among the Constantinopolitan clergy, who incessantly insulted the basileus. He therefore identified him with the Biblical person that embodies the concept of the Righteous Suffering, which is of entirely Assyrian-Babylonian origin as the illustrious epic Ludlul bel nemeqi – https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1189&context=cop-facbooks
The battle that led to the withdrawal of the Eastern Romans (‘Rum’ – therefore not ‘Greeks’) from Syria, Palestine, and North Mesopotamia has been the object of numerous studies, essays, chapters of books, and treatises. Modern Orientalist historiographers distorted and/or concealed the historical realities that determined the fact. They impacted their writings with unnecessary astonishment, unsolicited admiration, bizarre bewilderment, and at times childishly subjective descriptions. It is as if they are either blind or predetermined to disorient readers from the historical truth. It is most unfortunate that this situation prevails, despite numerous military experts delving into historical texts, many philologists scrutinizing posterior sources, and several historians publishing the corpus of the textual evidence as regards the event.
The confusion of the average reader and learner is completed with the modern, definitely unscholarly, Islamist pamphleteering as per which ‘the faith in the only true God’ gave the victory to the less-experienced, numerically inferior, and surely ill-equipped and poorly armed (if compared with the Eastern Romans) Muslim armies. I will not expand on this nonsense, because it would only prove that all victors and conquerors were true believers and all the defeated armies belonged to disbelievers – which is absurd.
I. Ancient, Christian, and Muslim historiographers
At this point, I have to highlight that, when it comes to the attitude toward History and historiography, there is a deep chasm between our modern world (after 1500) and past generations that lived in the Antiquity or during the Christian and Islamic times. The modern theories that History can ‘teach’ and that, by studying History, one can avoid past mistakes did not exist before the modern world; these theories are wrong, insane, inhuman and disastrous.
‘History’ does not ‘teach’, and not one Muslim, Christian, Manichaean, Gnostic, Zoroastrian, Babylonian or Egyptian ever thought or expected that History could possibly ‘teach’ him anything. In their perception of the world, there was clarity whereas modern minds are terribly confused about a critical issue: recording facts (historiography) is not History. History is what happened. No one can reconstitute it in its entirety, except by living in the past and being present in the events.
Historiography, i.e. simple recording of facts, did indeed happen for more than five millennia, but not for the purpose of ‘teaching’ or being ‘taught’. This reality determined all ancient historical records, be they Ancient Egyptian Annals, Babylonian Chronicles, Assyrian Annals, Greek and Roman history writing, Christian and Muslim Chronography or other. And for the purpose of objectivity, in most of the cases, the authors eliminated their personal views and considerations; and this is quite normal, as we all understand that a fact is always a fact per se, irrespective of the author’s (or narrator’s or historian’s) personal favor and/or understanding.
For the above reasons, serious, decent and valuable ancient authors did not include in their narratives what was evident to all: the historical context. Contextualization would be tantamount to self-devaluation for an historian like Tabari or Theophanes or the anonymous, 7th c. CE, Aramaean author of the Syriac Chronicle of Kirkuk, which is mainly known as ‘History of Karka de Beth Selok’. About:
(Throughout the present article links to the Wikipedia are included only for further research and access to historical sources and bibliography – not for the contents of the entries that are often impertinent and biased and the ensuing conclusions misplaced)
Ka’ba-ye Zardosht (Zoroaster’s Kaaba): one of the holiest shrines of the Sassanid Empire of Iran at Naqsh-e Rustam, ancient Achaemenid necropolis; it is to be noted that there were several pre-Islamic times’ holy buildings in rectangular shape. They were located in Iran and in Yemen. The Kaaba of Najran was the Christian cathedral in Yemenite Najran (currently under Saudi occupation).Saint Sophia: the Eastern Roman Empire’s greatest cathedral was not a holy shrine for the Monophysitic and Nestorian Aramaeans and the Copts (Egyptians), because they viewed the Patriarchate of Constantinople as heretic. This played an enormous role and impacted the historical developments back in the 630s.
II. Oversights and errors attested in the existing bibliography
Contrarily to Ancient, Christian and Muslim authors and people, who did not expect ‘History’ (but their holy books) to teach them the correct path in life and who did not repeat past mistakes by delving into moral depths (and not into useless historical manuals), we need extensive contextualization to accurately perceive and correctly understand epochs that totally differed from ours. This is what is terribly missing from the studies of almost all the scholars who were interested in the Battle of Yarmouk.
Yarmouk battlefield in Jordan today
A. ‘Battle techniques’
Many scholars focused on the battle techniques of Khalid ibn al-Walid (592-642 CE). But however successful these techniques may have been, military dexterity does not explain why the bulk of the indigenous populations of the eastern provinces (North Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Cyrenaica) of the Eastern Roman Empire did not rebel against the early Muslim rule. The battle of Yarmouk may have been won by the Muslims, but 10 or 20 years later a violent local rebellion could have eventually terminated the foreign rule. But this did not happen.
Typical samples of worthless bibliography and lectures:
One of the wrong diagrams that one can find in the Internet nowadays; suffice it that you read Tabari and you will understand the mistakes.This type of diagrams can never explain historical processes; it is therefore wrong, confusing and disorienting.
B. ‘Two great empires exhausted and weakened’
Several authors explained the early Islamic victories by referring to the exhaustion of the then known world’s two greatest empires, namely the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran. This is correct and true, but still it does not help us understand why the outright majority of populations of the western provinces of Iran and the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire did not rebel against the foreign invaders in the first 2-3 decades of Islamic rule. However, this fantasy is reproduced even in serious UNESCO documentation on the Silk Road: https://fr.unesco.org/silkroad/sites/default/files/knowledge-bank-article/vol_III%20silk%20road_the%20arab%20conquest.pdf
The Sassanid Empire of Iran and the Eastern Roman Empire at the time prophet Muhammad was bornMain movements of Eastern Roman and Sassanid Iranian armies
———- EXCURSE I: HISTORICAL FOCUS —————-
Borders, fronts, rebellions, divisions and fights
In this regard, it is noteworthy to point out a quadruple phenomenon that took place in the first decades of Islamic rule in the Caliphate’s central provinces:
1- Post-conquest Iran
The first rebellions against the new rule started early in Iran, but they occurred in remote provinces (Gilan, Mazandaran, Azerbaijan) that were inhabited by nations other than those living in the former western provinces of Iran. In any case, both great empires, the Eastern Romans and the Iranians, were multi-ethnic imperial structures.
2- Eastern Roman Empire
The first line of Eastern Roman defense against the Islamic Caliphate was created alongside the Taurus and Anti-Taurus mountains, whereas the upper flow of Euphrates became the border between the two empires. This is the location where the formidable Akritai appeared to fight and stop every advance of the Omayyad or Abbasid armies to the West, apparently coordinating with the Islamic opposition to the pseudo-Islamic rule of the caliphs.
3- Upper Egypt and the Sudan (: historical Ethiopia)
Upper Egypt totally escaped the Islamic rule, as Nobatia was incepted as Christian Coptic kingdom with capital at Faras (almost on the present Egyptian-Sudanese borderline). The Islamic rule in Masr (Egypt) did not exceed beyond the region between Al Minya and Assiut (ca. 350 km south of Cairo), and while Seville, Cordova, Sicily, Crete, Samarqand and the Delta of Indus belonged to the Islamic Caliphate, Coptic monasticism flourished in Thebes of Egypt (today’s Luxor; from Al Uqsur, ‘the military camps’) where all ancient Egyptian temples and antiquities, notably Deir al Bahri and Deir al Madina, had become monastic cells. Two other Christian Sudanese kingdoms rose further in the South: Makuria and Alodia, limiting the Islamic presence in Eastern Africa to the Red Sea coastland.
4- Internal conflicts transported from Hejaz to Syria and Mesopotamia
The only conflicts that took place in the early Islamic Caliphate’s central provinces (i.e. the lands that belong today to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, SE Turkey, Iraq, SW Iran, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar and the northern parts of Saudi Arabia) were those related to the ‘new’ faith, prophet Muhammad’s preaching, and the interpretation of this faith’s prescriptions as regards the governance of the state. This means, in other words, that the Arabs of Hejaz, brought with them to Syria-Mesopotamia the deep divisions that characterized their society (acceptance, rejection and/or distortion of prophet Muhammad’s religious revelation) even before prophet Muhammad’s death (632 CE). These divisions were ferocious and the bloodshed tarnished irrevocably the History of Islam, although it really paled if compared with the bloodshed caused after the official imposition of Constantinopolitan-Roman Christianity as the sole religion throughout the Roman Empire. And the early converts from the newly occupied lands that earlier belonged to the Eastern Romans and to the Sassanid Iranians vividly participated in these divisions, debates, polarizations, conflicts and civil wars.
This quadruple phenomenon was never studied per se until now, and to duly investigate it one needs to delve in the ethnic and religious/theological conflicts that took place in the two great empires (the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran) for about 300-400 years before the Battle of Yarmouk. This clearly demonstrates that not one specialist of the Early Islamic History can be taken seriously without the knowledge of at least two among the following languages and religious/literary traditions: Coptic, Syriac Aramaic, Middle Persian, Medieval ‘Greek’ (‘Roman’: the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire), Manichaean, and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (: the language of Rabbinical Judaism).
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C. ‘History of states’ and not of peoples and cultures
Numerous authors write on the topic, while focusing on State History (Eastern Roman, Sassanid Iranian, Omayyad and Abbasid Islamic); this is one way ticket to misperception, misunderstanding, and distortion. States are not representative of subject nations and peoples, but of ruling elites and their doctrines; in their effort to secure their interests, states destroy all historical, literary, religious or theological documentation that would challenge them. States are to some extent the reason for the scarcity of documentation that characterizes the 7th and the 8th centuries CE (or, to put it otherwise, the first 100-150 years AH/anno Hegirae).
D. Poor conceptualization of the early Islamic conquests by modern scholars
Most researchers failed to contextualize the early Islamic conquests, because they were unable to properly conceptualize the historical developments in the first place. Battles are undertaken by social groups or eventually states, but socio-cultural processes and historical developments are generated by peoples and nations. So, the proper manner to approach the topic is to view it as an affair of various nations and ethno-linguistic and religious groups that lived in the wider region between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, from the Taurus Mountains to the Indus River Delta, and in-between the Nile and Syr-Darya (Iaxartes River) in Central Asia.
——– EXCURSE II: ETHNO-LINGUISTIC & RELIGIOUS FOCUS ————
In this regard, it is essential to conclude from the aforementioned that the only pertinent manner to tackle the topic is via interdisciplinary studies. Until now, no effort was displayed in this direction; and yet, there can be many combinations of interdisciplinary studies applying to this case.
Ethno-linguistic groups
During the 6th–7th c. CE, the main nations which lived in the lands that, after the Islamic conquests, became the central provinces of the Islamic Caliphate were:
i- the Aramaeans,
ii- the Copts,
iii- the Persians and other Iranians, who manned the imperial administration at Tesiphun (Ctesiphon) and controlled the Iranian military outposts,
iv- the (Aramaic-speaking) Jews, and
v- the Eastern Romans, who were organized in small communities living in the major cities of the eastern provinces of the empire, notably around the Chalcedonian patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria.
This means that at those days the outright majority of the populations living in lands belonging to today’s SE Turkey, Syria, Iraq, SW Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and the North of Saudi Arabia were Aramaeans.
And the outright majority of the populations living in the Nile Valley were Copts.
Urhoy-Edessa of Orhoene-Urfa (SE Turkey): a major Aramaean cityNasibina-Nisibis-Nusaybin (SE Turkey): a major Aramaean city Hatra (NW Iraq): a major Aramaean city Dura Europos on Euphrates (Eastern Syria): a major Aramaean cityTadmur-Palmyra (Central Syria): a major Aramaean city Bosra (Southern Syria): a major Aramaean city Rekem (Petra, Jordan): a major Aramaean city of the Nabataean dynastyHegra, the necropolis of the Aramaean Nabataean kingdom, at 350 km distance north of Yathrib (Madina)Charax Spasinu (South Iraq): a major Aramaean city
Religious groups
When it comes to ethno-religious and linguistic groups existing at those days (6th–7th c. CE) in the aforementioned region, we enumerate the following:
i- the Christian Aramaeans of the Syriac Orthodox Church (Monophysites) Although entirely anti-Constantinopolitan, the Christian Aramaeans were divided into Miaphysitic (Monophysitic) anti-Chalcedonian Christians and Nestorian anti-Ephesine Christians (see below no ii).
Christian Aramaeans of the Syriac Orthodox Church (Monophysites) formed the outright majority of the populations living in the Eastern Roman provinces of Syria, North Mesopotamia, and Palestine.
The term Monophysitic (Monophysitism/Monophysites) being quite pejorative, it is currently replaced by Miaphysitic (Miaphysitism/Miaphysites). The most common appellation of the church is Jacobite, after St. Jacob Baradaeus (also known as Jacob bar Addai).
Deir Zafaran (also known as Mor Hananyo) Monastery, near Mardin (SE Turkey): a high place of Syriac Jacobite (Miaphysitic/Monophysitic) Christianity
It is also necessary to underscore that the noun/adjective ‘Syriac’ is totally unrelated to the land of Syria (in such case the adjective is ‘Syrian’), but denotes a late phase of Aramaic that survived down to our days, being one of the main liturgical languages in the History of Christianity. Syriac alphabet derived from Aramaic alphabet (in the 1st c. CE) and, similarly, Arabic alphabet derived (in the 4th c. CE) from Nabataean Aramaic alphabet; Aramaic and Hebrew were the two original languages in which the Old Testament was written.
Syriac Aramaic in Serto writingSyriac Aramaic in Estrangelo writing
Monophysitic Aramaeans were essential for the formation and the diffusion of historical Islam. Their overwhelming rejection of the Constantinopolitan theology and of the anti-Aramaean policies of the Eastern Roman Empire totally alienated the Aramaeans from the authorities that ruled them. For Monophysitic Aramaeans, the Eastern Roman Empire was ruled by heretics. And as the illustrious Aramaean theologian, historian and erudite scholar Tatian (112-185 CE) demonstrated in his magnificent opus Oratio ad Graecos (Address to the Greeks), the enormous cultural gap between Aramaeans and Greeks played a considerable role in the destabilization of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire (and subsequently of the Eastern Roman Empire), because the Constantinopolitan authorities cooperated basically with the Greek-speaking minority.
The determinant role played by the Monophysitic Aramaeans in the formation and the diffusion of historical Islam is highlighted by the case of Sergius Bahira, the Syriac Jacobite (Monophysitic) monk, who encountered prophet Muhammad in young age, when he accompanied his uncle Abi Taleb ibn Abd el Muttalib to Syria and other provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire.
ii- the Christian Aramaeans of the Great Church of the East (Nestorians)
These Aramaeans followed Nestorius in his doctrine that was a radical form of what is called Diophysitism (belief in two natures/hypostases of Jesus); they are called Nestorians, although the term is not regarded as correct (being tantamount to calling the Muslims ‘Muhammedans’). Nestorians rejected the Council of Ephesus (431 CE), pretty much like the Monophysites/Miaphysites rejected the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE).
h ttps://news.assyrianchurch.org/category/education/english-articles/
Dair Mar Eliya (Monastery of St. Elijah) in North Iraq: Nestorian monastery of the 6th c.Nestorian Gospel in SyriacThe Anikova plate: representation of the Siege of Jericho; masterpiece of Sogdian Nestorian Art from Semirechie (southeastern Kazakhstan and northeastern Kyrgyszstan). Probable date: 8th-9th c.Ecclesiastical provinces of the Nestorian Church in the 10th c.Nestorian communities in the 10th-11th c.
Christian Aramaeans of the Great Church of the East (Nestorians) formed the outright majority of the Sassanid Iranian provinces of Central and South Mesopotamia, South Transtigritane, and Arabia, namely Huzistan, Meshan, Asurestan, Nodshiragan (Adiabene), and Arabestan.
Nestorian Aramaeans were essential in the formation and diffusion of historical Islam. Their staggering rejection of both, Constantinopolitan Christianity and Sassanid Mazdeism (the official Iranian imperial religious dogma that consisted only in a later form of the Achaemenid Zoroastrianism), was highly determinant for the early success of the caliphs. At this early point, I only state the well-known (but not deeply understood) fact that, for ca. 180 years before the arrival of the Islamic armies in Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, the Nestorians called Virgin Mary ‘Mother of Christ’ and not ‘Mother of god’, in striking opposition to the Constantinopolitan theologians, monks and courtiers. In this manner, Nestorian Aramaeans proved to be the real precursors of prophet Muhammad and his teachings. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the 7th c. CE, the Nestorians were closer to the early Quranic text, which may have reached them through hearsay (before the early Islamic armies), than to the Nicene Creed.
Constantinopolitan theology and the anti-Aramaean religious and economic policies of the empire totally alienated the Aramaeans from the ruling authorities. Even worse, in Iran, the Nestorian Aramaeans were persecuted in definitely crueler manner than the Monophysitic Aramaeans were in the Eastern Roman Empire. And the ceaseless Eastern Roman – Sassanid Iranian wars devastated -more than any other territories- the lands inhabited by the Aramaeans.
Their surviving remnants are nowadays the Mandaeans. There are about 100000 Mandaean Aramaeans worldwide, but due to the ongoing persecution and oppression, most of them live currently in the Diaspora, and not in their historical land, i.e. Central and South Mesopotamia (Iraq) and South Transtigritane (SW Iran).
Gnostic Aramaeans were essential in the formation and diffusion of historical Islam. Their participation in Muslim spiritual life is at the origin of the formation of groups like the legendary Ikhwan Safa, whose rituals have been later reproduced by numerous Islamic mystics, spiritualists, occultists and scholars from the Qarmatians and the Isma’ilis to all types of Batiniyya (‘esoterism’) wise elders and great spiritual scientists, like Muhammad al Fazari, Al Ghazali, Abu ‘l Qassim ibn al Saffar, Maslam al Majriti, and Muhyieldin ibn Arabi.
Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa, (‘Epistles of the Brethren of Purity’), Book I – on the mathematical sciences; Western Iran, ca. 14th c.
Even the communication manners and literary style of the Ikhwan Safa’s treatises and manuals appear to be Gnostic in their essence. What is nowadays erroneously called ‘Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity’, which is in fact the compendium of their wisdom, consists of letters or ‘messages’ (رسائل), being thus a reminiscence of the typically Gnostic manner of sharing knowledge, wisdom and spiritual practices.
The religion composed, proclaimed and propagated by Mani was displayed in 242 CE in front of the formidable Sassanid shah Shapur I to whom the prophet of Manichaeism dedicated one of his books, titled Shabuhragan. Shapur I did not adhere to the new religion, but he realized its imperial importance for the Sassanid state and supported the young prophet (born in 216 CE) in his mission. It is not wrong to consider Manichaeism technically as a type of Gnosticism, but it was indeed a Gnostic system apart from the rest.
Aramaeans, Persians, Iranians, Sogdians, Turanians, Mongolians, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, Romans, Armenians and many other nations wholeheartedly accepted Manichaeism, which was the first religion in the world to have adepts from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The last Manicheans performed their rites in China’s eastern coastland before 150-100 years. Following the rise of Mazdeism (a later form of Iranian Zoroastrianism) and the prevalence of Kartir among the Sassanid courtiers, Manichaeism was persecuted and Mani was tortured to death, but the diffusion of Manichaeism was not impacted; quite on the contrary! Mani’s faith spread and many Manichaean communities existed at the times of the Islamic conquest in both, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran. Aramaean Manichaean communities in Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine greatly impacted Islam in many dimensions.
Almost 400 years before prophet Muhammad postured to be the last of the prophets, the prophet of Manichaeism claimed to be the ‘seal of the prophets’. Manichaean hierarchy seems to have been diffused among many Muslim esoteric spiritual orders. Some of the greatest historians and chronographers of Islamic times, like Tabari, al Biruni, and al Nadim, expanded on Mani and the Manicheans. The five prayers that a Muslim must perform daily seem to have been a compromise between the four daily prayers of the Manichaean ‘hearers’ (laymen) and the seven daily prayers of the elects (ecclesiastical hierarchy). Prophet Muhammad’s discussions with earlier prophets, during the Isra and Mi’raj nocturnal voyage to the Celestial Jerusalem, seem to exactly reflect similar considerations. Furthermore, the ablutions before the prayer appear to be a repetition of Manichaean practices. In addition, the Ebionite and Elcesaite impact on Manicheans seems therefore to have been passed on to the Muslims.
Was Mani crucified? The question remains unanswered, as several Islamic sources reported a dire end following a terrible persecution unleashed by the Sassanid imperial priesthood against the prophet of Manichaeism.The diffusion of Manichaeism eclipsed that of any other religion before the Modern Times; but Manichaeism was state religion only once: among the Uyghur nation of Central Asia.
The religion of Mani may have by now gone extinct, but its impact on Islam was tremendous. Many scholars tried to retrace fundamental concepts of Islam to the beliefs of several Jewish or Christian groups and notably the Nazarenes, but it would make more sense to closely examine how some of Mani’s innovative concepts found their way into prophet Muhammad’s cardinal tenets and world conceptualization.
Although Christianity accepted the Ancient Hebrew prophets as such, Islam is characterized by a definitely different approach, as it makes of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isma’il, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David and Solomon prophets as well (also extending the status of prophet to John the Baptist and Jesus). Furthermore, it is noticeable that Islam’s position on prophethood is flexible enough to encompass other historical figures or outstanding persons not directly known to the small Meccan community of the times of Muhammad ibn Abdullah. However, this fresh approach to World History, which is a novelty for Christianity and Judaism, was absolutely Manichaean or origin. Mani first introduced the concept by accepting Zoroaster, Buddha and Jesus as earlier prophets and by thus giving to his religious system a universal-imperial dimension that was badly needed for a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious empire.
Manichaean Aramaeans were systematically persecuted in both, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran; it was therefore quite normal for them to support the replacement of the double yoke with an Arab state and administration that they would be able to fully staff and operate (along with other Aramaeans who were followers of other religions, notably Christianity), taking into consideration the fact that the uneducated, uncultured and primitive Arabs of Hejaz, who had never formed any kind of proper state, would be definitely and absolutely unable to face such a challenge.
In the early Islamic times, there have been many notable Manichaean scholars, who prospered in the Islamic Caliphate; as Abbasid Baghdad became a center for either Manicheans or Manichaean converts to Islam, many Manicheans of other origin flocked there to contribute to the illustrious Beit al Hikmah (بيت الحكمة/House of the Wisdom) university, library, archival organization, academic center of translations, research center, botanical garden, and observatory. Abu Hilal al-Dayhuri, a Berber from Maghreb, was one of them. On the other hand, elements of the criticism that Abu Isa al Warraq addressed to Islam and to prophet Muhammad seem to be Manichaean of nature.
However, one must admit that, despite similarities, loans and impact, Islam and Manichaeism soon became rival systems and most of the Islamic erudite scholars portrayed Mani in a rather negative manner. This approach made of Muslims the major opponents of the Manicheans, after the Christians and the Jews; but this situation is attested in rather later periods (9th–10th c.). However, this is not quite strange, if we take into consideration the fact that the Old Testament god Yahweh was portrayed as the Demiurge (i.e. the Satan) by Mani.
v- the Copts (Monophysitic Christian Egyptians)
As close allies of the Monophysitic Aramaeans (see above unit i-), they were ferocious enemies of the oppressive Constantinopolitan administrative hierarchy and Patriarchate. Similarly with the Monophysitic Aramaeans, who belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and rejected the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch (which sided with Constantinople), the Monophysitic Copts followed the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and rejected the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria.
Coptic manuscript with illuminationsCoptic manuscriptCoptic Gospel with illumination representing the four Evangelists.Coptic manuscript with illuminations
Similarly with what happened in North Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine where the followers of the Constantinopolitan doctrine-related patriarchates (in Antioch and Jerusalem) were not numerous, as they constituted the Greek-speaking minority of those regions, in Egypt, the followers of the Constantinopolitan doctrine-related patriarchate (in Alexandria) were few, and they constituted the Greek-speaking minority of Egypt.
This leads to a detrimental conclusion as regards the Eastern Roman Empire and its chances to maintain control across its eastern provinces, namely North Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Cyrenaica; both, the Constantinopolitan authorities and their local stooges were loathed and reviled by the outright majority of the local populations that would certainly do all that it took to get rid of the heretical rulers at Constantinople. All they needed was an opportunity, and prophet Muhammad’s preaching in Hejaz was apparently more important for them (as a tool) than to Arabs (as a faith).
vi- the (Aramaic-speaking) Jews, followers of Rabbinical Judaism
After the destruction of Jerusalem (70 CE) and the failure of the Bar Kokhba (136 CE) rebellion, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots did not have a chance to survive as religious-spiritual-intellectual systems among the Judaic Jews. Ever since, Judaism has revolved around the Pharisees, who thus formed what is now known as ‘Rabbinical Judaism’. As Ancient Hebrew was already a dead language, all Jews were already speaking Aramaic. Expelled from Aelia Capitolina (former Jerusalem), Jews could stay in Palestine or preferably settle in Arsacid (and after 224 CE, Sassanid) Iranian Mesopotamia.
They then (and over several centuries) elaborated a new religious book that marks a clear line of separation between their ancestors’ religion (Ancient Hebrew religion based exclusively on the Old Testament) and their new religion; this book is the Talmud, which is the product of the criminal priests who never repented for having killed the ancient prophets of Israel. Today, most scholars hide the critical fact that Judaism (i.e. Rabbinical Judaism or Talmudic Judaism) is totally different from and diametrically opposed to the Ancient Hebrew religion. As priestly literature and theological exegesis, the two different Talmud collections, namely the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalemite Talmud, were written in Aramaic.
Manuscript of the Babylonian Talmud with text from the tractate KiddushinManuscript of the Babylonian Talmud with text from the tractate Rosh ha-shannah
Contrarily to the Judaic Jews, who were marked by the composition and the diffusion of the Talmud among them, the Aramaean Jews in their totality turned to Early Christianity; this concerns the Samaritans of the time of Jesus and many other Aramaean Jewish communities that prospered in Syria and Mesopotamia, notably in Dura Europos where the Synagogue fully reveals the impetus and the magnificence of Aramaean Art. By the time of prophet Muhammad there was no Aramaean Jew.
Although late 6th c. and early 7th c. CE Jews wholeheartedly supported the Sassanid Iranians in their wars against the Eastern Roman Empire (in striking contrast with the early Muslims of the period 610-628/629, who clearly regretted the early Iranian advance and conquests, and later rejoiced with the final Eastern Roman victories) and in spite of many unfortunate incidents that occurred between the early Muslims and the Hejaz Jews (during prophet Muhammad’s lifetime), the early (634-651 CE) Islamic conquests were enthusiastically accepted by the Jews of the wider region, who found their ally and protector in the ominous figure of Omar ibn al Khattab, as he allowed them to enter Jerusalem, no less than 568 years after they were kicked out of there by the Romans. Jews actively supported the early Islamic Caliphates, notably the Umayyad state of Damascus, the Abbasid Empire of Baghdad, and the Umayyad caliphs of Córdoba (Andalus).
vii- the Persians and other Iranians followers of various Iranian religions
Being only one of the Sassanid Empire’s nations, the Persians lived in the province of Fars, which in Ancient Greek was translated as Persia; there cannot be confusion between ‘Persian’ and ‘Iranian’. Persians were/are only one of the Iranian nations.
The Persians controlled the administrative machine of the Iranian Empire during the Achaemenid times (550-330 BCE) and during the Sassanid times (224-651 CE), whereas the Parthians, another Iranian nation of Turanian origin, controlled the administrative machine of the empire during the Arsacid times (250 BCE-224 CE).
The Iranian Empire had always many imperial capitals, notably Pasargadae, Persepolis, Susa, Babylon, Ecbatana, Nisa (Mithradatkirt/Parthaunisa), Qumis (Hecatompylos), Ray (Ragae), Tesifun (Ctesiphon), and Istakhr; on the other hand, Praaspa (Adur Gushnasp/Takht-e Suleyman), at an elevation of 3000 m, in the northern part of Zagros Mountains, was permanently the Zoroastrian religious capital of the empire.
In the Mesopotamian provinces of the Sassanid Empire of Iran, there were few and rather small Persian communities; in these western provinces of Iran were also settled people originating from other Iranian nations that were indigenous in the central, eastern and northern provinces of the empire. They were dispatched to the imperial administration at Ctesiphon and they served in the army. But they were a minority among the indigenous Aramaeans of Central and Southern Mesopotamia, Transtigritane, and the Persian Gulf’s southern coastlands.
This reality has not been either assessed or revealed by any type of specialists who studied and wrote about the topic of the early Islamic conquests. Yet, it is uniquely determinant and utterly explanatory. It changes drastically our scholarly approach to the topic (see below unit E).
Another critical dimension that impacted greatly the fate of the Sassanid Empire of Iran was its religious multi-division. If we leave the Nestorian Aramaeans, the Gnostic Aramaeans, the Manichaean Aramaeans, other Manichaean Iranians (notably the Sogdians), and the Aramaic-speaking Jews aside, the Persians and the other Iranian nations of the Sassanid Empire were spiritually and religiously divided. Among them, there were adepts of the following religious systems:
1- Mazdeism: the imperial religion and Zoroastrian doctrine established by Kartir;
2- Mithraism: the popular religion that made of Mithra a god of polytheistic features;
3- Zurvanism: Mithra broke away from Zoroastrianism and Zurvan from Mithraism;
4- Mazdakism: the subversive socio-religious system of rebellious mobedh (priest);
5- Gayomardism: an offspring of Mazdeism and Mithraism, with monotheistic traits;
If one adds to the numerous aforementioned religions, several religious systems prevailing among nations of the Iranian periphery and border regions, notably Buddhism, Turanian Tengrism, and other Central Asiatic and Indus River valley religions, one gets a complete picture of the internal divisions that existed in the Sassanid Empire of Iran and finally lef to its destruction.
Sassanid Iranian relief with representation of the high priest, mystic and reformer of Zoroastrianism Kartir, a primary initiate who can be viewed as the founder of Mazdeism, i.e. the late form of Zoroastrianism that was instituted as official dogma in Sassanid Iran. Possibly Turanian (Turkic) of origin, Kartir (or Kerdyr) can be held as main responsible for the execution of Mani and the persecution of Manicheans in Iran until the end of the Sassanid times. Long before the Arabs of Hejaz heard of the Mi’raj story (prophet Muhammad’s nocturnal, transcendental travel to the Temple Mount and thence to the Celestial Jerusalem), the Iranians learned about Kartir’s celestial journey in the Heaven. There is also another (parallel?) Middle Persian story about the celestial journey of the sublime initiate Arda Viraf in the Heaven; however, the Middle Persian manuscripts of Arda Wīraz namag seem to date back to the 9th c., although the entire narrative echoes Sassanid traditions. About: https://iranicaonline.org/articles/kartir / https://www.academia.edu/37850211/The_nature_of_spiritual_journeys_in_Zoroastrianism_based_on_Kartir_and_Arda_Viraf_tripsThe Mithraic temple of Anahita at Bishapur near KazerunThe heroic elements of the Sassanid times’ Mazdeism were preserved in the Iranian epics of Islamic times, thus leading to a very different form of Islam than what Muhammad preached in Mecca; Esfandiyar faces Simurgh. Without Iranian epics composed 300 years after the death of prophet Muhammad, one cannot possibly identify correctly the cultural-spiritual-intellectual-artistic-educational environment of Iranian, Turanian, Central Asiatic, Caucasus and Indian Muslim societies. In fact, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh became the second Quran for Ottoman sultans, Mughal emperors, Iranian shahs and Eurasiatic Muslims.Gayomard (Keyumars) fighting evil spirits; a reminiscence of Gayomardism of the Sassanid times was preserved in the Iranian epics of Islamic times.The execution of Mazdak, the preacher of the world’s first religion which evangelized a communist social structure without property, as represented in Islamic times’ miniatures of manuscriptsRepresentation of Zurvan, the all-consuming ‘god’ of time
viii- the Eastern Roman Orthodox Christians, who sided with the Patriarchate of Constantinople
As I already said, the few Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Orthodox Christian communities, settled in Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria and several other cities in North Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Cyrenaica, supported the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Constantinopolitan imperial administration, but they were largely outnumbered by the local Aramaean (in Asia) and Coptic (in Africa) populations (which rejected the Patriarchate of Constantinople and its local stooges). That is why the few Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Orthodox Christian communities were greatly loathed: they ultimately functioned as tools of the imperial oppression and persecution of all those who disagreed with the Constantinopolitan theologians.
These populations and their ecclesiastical authorities, namely the Patriarchate of Constantinople and its dependencies in the East, i.e. the three minor institutions at Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria that were unrepresentative (as they were accepted as ‘patriarchates’ only by the tiny local minority of the Greek-speaking populations of the respective cities), wanted to monopolize the term ‘Orthodox’, but this was merely their propaganda, against those whom they called ‘Monophysites’. It would be however wrong to imagine that there was concord within the sphere of influence of the Patriarchate of Constantinople; there was discord and division instead.
Caesarea of Cappadocia (Kayseri): the city walls erected by Justinian in the middle of 6th c. The early Islamic conquests were stopped in the Taurus and Anti-Taurus mountains beyond Cappadocia. The bulk of the Eastern Roman population was centered between Caesarea and Smyrna (Izmir) whereas Cappadocia was the holy land of Eastern Roman Christianity.The rupestrian Cappadocian Art: one of Christianity’s most stupendous contributions to ArtTypical sample of rupestrian Cappadocian ArtThe highland of Cappadocia where many hundreds of cells and churches have been built and hewn in the rock.Caesarea: The basis of the Eastern Roman defense against the Islamic Caliphate for more than 400 years
The new theological-Christological dispute revolved around the ‘energy’ and the ‘will’ (thelesis) of Jesus, in the sense of whether they were one or two (human and divine) and, if two, what the relationship of the two energies or two wills was. As a matter of fact, it was the resurgence of the old dispute (about the ‘nature’ (physis) of Jesus), which had given birth to what we now call Miaphysitism/Monophysitism.
This new division concerned mainly vast populations living in the central provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire, namely Anatolia (Turkey), Constantinople, the Balkan Peninsula, southern and eastern Italy, Sicily, and Carthage. The division had already reached the top of the imperial structure, as Emperor Heraclius and Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople were accused of Monoenergism and Monothelitism. And the fact that Heraclius got married with his niece Martina (as second wife) unleashed an abysmal hatred against him from the part of the uncompromising ‘Orthodox’ theologians, monks and priests, as they viewed the marriage as incestuous.
This, briefly presented, was the situation in which the two great empires, the Eastern Romans and the Sassanid Iranians, found themselves in the eve of the battles that ended with the loss of the eastern provinces of the former and the final dissolution of the latter. As I said in the last paragraph of the EXCURSE I: HISTORICAL FOCUS, there has to be an academic focus on interdisciplinary studies and research, which will certainly unveil many points and elements of common faith shared by Muslims and followers of other religions (notably Manicheans) or Christian denominations (notably Miaphysitic/Monophysitic and Nestorian). This will greatly impact our understanding of the Eastern Roman and the Iranian defeats, because it may reveal that these early battles (and the Battle of Yarmouk was only one) had been already won before they were fought; furthermore, it will also explain why the situation, which arose as a consequence of these battles, proved to be irreversible for many long centuries.
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E. The demographic structure of the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Western Iranian provinces: the Aramaeans
No scholar examined in detail the demographic structure of the populations that inhabited the central territories of the early Caliphate outside Hejaz and Yemen. This has much to do with the above EXCURSE II: ETHNO-LINGUISTIC & RELIGIOUS FOCUS. A detailed demographic study covering the period 224-750 CE would reveal that the bulk of the Aramaean populations living in the Western Iranian provinces and in the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire were
1- ethnically different from the nations that ruled both empires (the Greek-speaking Eastern Romans and the Persians);
2- religiously opposed to the official imperial religions of both empires;
3- systematically persecuted and marginalized by both imperial administrations and armies;
4- detrimentally devastated by the incessant wars fought between the two empires, because the ordinary battlefield was precisely located in their own lands, namely the Western Iranian provinces and the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire (and consequently the bulk of the populations of the ruling nations, namely the Greek-speaking Eastern Romans and the Persians, was not significantly affected by these wars); and
5- linguistically very close to the Arabs of Hejaz, because in fact Arabic was a southern Syriac dialect and the Arabic writing derived from Syriac Aramaic.
Ctesiphon: the remaining part of the then world’s most magnificent palace. Taq-i Kisra (or Al Mada’in) was the Sassanid palace in Mesopotamia and the archway is the largest single-span vault of unreinforced brickwork in the world. One of the best samples of pre-Islamic Aramaean-Iranian Art.In fact, Ctesiphon (Tesifun) in today’s central Iraq was an enormous agglomeration involving four cities; one of them, Seleucia, known as Mahoze in Aramaic, was the worldwide center of Nestorian Christianity.The Great Mosque of Damascus is a masterpiece of Aramaean Art.
F. The central provinces of the Islamic Caliphates: the lands of the Aramaeans.
No scholar noticed that, in addition to the aforementioned points, for about five (5) centuries (661-1258), the central regions of the Islamic Caliphates (Umayyad or Abbasid) were exactly the lands of the Aramaeans. The first Islamic capital was at Madinah, but this was soon terminated, as the Umayyad dynasty was based in the Aramaean city par excellence: Damascus. The determinant impact of the Aramaean universities, academies, monasteries and scriptoria (notably those of Urhoy/Edessa, Nisibis/Nusaybin, Tur Abdin, Mahoze/Ctesiphon, and Kerkha/Kirkuk) on the formation of the Islamic educational, academic, intellectual and scientific life changed totally the backward, uncivil and primitive environment in which prophet Muhammad’s preaching was undertaken.
The Sassanid Empire of Iran in its greatest extent at 621 CEHeraclius’ campaigns’ 611-628
This historical process and development made of the early Arab fighters, the so-called Sahaba, a marginal element that played almost no role in the History of Islamic Civilization. In other words, the Islamic Civilization in its early stage was clearly an Aramaean – Iranian civilization with significant Coptic, Yemenite and Jewish contributions; at a later stage, Berber, Turanian, African and Indus River Valley contributions to the Islamic civilizations have also been attested. However, there was never an ‘Arab civilization’ or -as per the French Orientalist forgers- “une civilisation arabo-musulmane”.
This automatically cancels the theoretical importance of the early Islamic conquests that are absurdly amplified and incommensurately over-magnified by both Western scholars and Islamic terrorists; in fact, the real winners were the inhabitants of the central regions of the Islamic Caliphates, i.e. the Aramaeans, who saw others fighting for their cause (to get rid of the double, Eastern Roman and Sassanid Iranian, yoke), for the transfer of the imperial capital into their land, and for the establishment of an imperial elite manned basically by them. In addition to the Aramaeans, the Persians and other Iranians and Turanians managed also to make their way into the new imperial administration. But prophet Muhammad had never spoken about an … ‘Islamic’ empire….
G. Lack of historical criticism in Islamic Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies
Taking all the aforementioned determinant parameters into account, reading the historical sources from the viewpoint of historical criticism, and viewing the historical facts in the light of the hitherto unevaluated critical factors, modern scholars can come up with a totally different interpretation/interrelation of sources and a dramatically contrasting reconstitution of the historical past, which would be diametrically opposed to the nonsense of military experts, who focus exclusively on battle techniques, and to the absurd and paranoid, pseudo-religious belief, as per which ‘god’ was involved in the events that took place in the 630s and 640s and shook the world between the Mediterranean, the Indus River valley, and Central Asia. Historical criticism of all sources relating to these events is indispensable and inevitable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_criticism
Hadhrat Ali’s tomb in Najaf; Ali ibn abi Taleb (599-661) was designated as the first caliph, but after meeting fierce opposition, he was accepted as the fourth caliph. The early divisions of the small Muslim community after the death of Prophet Muhammad are an extra reason for historians to apply today extensive historical criticism and to reject the absolutely reconstructed and erroneous version of History.The tomb of the 3rd imam Hussein ibn Ali (626-680) at Kerbala. The sons of Ali had to become caliphs in his stead. But the grandson of prophet Muhammad (Hussein) was slaughtered by the son of prophet Muhammad’s worst enemy (Mu’awiya ibn Abī Sufyan / Muawiyah son of Abu Sufyan). If this situation does not impose extensive historical criticism, this means that today’s fake academics receive orders from the powers that be as regards what to study, what not to explore, and how to investigate the topics of their research. Yet, what happened in Kerbala (680 CE) illuminates very well what occurred after the Hudaybiyah treaty when Abu Sufyan rushed to Palestine to meet Emperor Heraclius and deceive him.
III. The astounding scarcity of contemporaneous sources
The first serious difficulty that every modern historian faces, when dealing with the early Islamic conquests, is the extreme scarcity of contemporaneous historical sources. A recent and highly commendable scholarly publication, titled ‘Seeing Islam as Others saw it: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam’ (by prof. Robert G. Hoyland), enumerates ca. 140 different authors, manuscripts, texts or inscriptions (categorized as a. sources; b. apocalypses and visions; c. martyrologies; d. chronicles and histories; and e. apologies and disputations) that involve various narratives in Syriac Aramaic, Coptic, Greek, Armenian, Middle Persian, Christian Arabic, Jewish Aramaic, Latin and Chinese primary sources, which date back to the period between 620 and 780 CE.
As it can be easily understood, most of the above mentioned texts were not written with the specific purpose to detail the battles and the events that took place in the area under study in the 630s and the 640s; consequently, their mention of facts and their references to episodes were rather brief, because the main scope of the narrative was other. The Eastern Roman chronicler and monk Theophanes the Confessor (758-817) presented the longest description of the events by an Eastern Roman author. His text is to be found in Medieval Greek and Latin translation: J. P. Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, cviii (vol.108, col.55-1009). But when Theophanes wrote his venerated Χρονογραφία (Chronographia), at least 150 years had passed after the Battle of Yarmouk was fought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophanes_the_Confessor
Still this is fine if compared with the Muslim Arabic sources; the scarcity of 7th c. CE Islamic sources is spectacular. The Islamic sources of that period are much scarcer than the non-Islamic sources. Even worse, as the Arabs of Hejaz were not civilized and kept no historical records of their otherwise primitive and therefore dreary societies, a long formative period had to first pass, until -under clear Aramaean, Persian, Coptic and Jewish guidance- some rudiments of historiography be formed.
Most of the first, important historians of Islamic times were of non-Arab origin:
1- Muhammad ibn Ishaq (704-767) was the grandson of an Aramaean young boy held captive in a Christian monastery in Shetata (Ayn al Tamr) in Mesopotamia;
2- Al Waqidi (747-823) was the son of a Persian lady of noble ancestry whose family introduced letters, arts and music to uncivil and primitive Hejaz;
3- Tabari (or rather Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari/ محمد بن جرير الطبري; 839-923) was an Iranian born in the southern coastlands of the Caspian Sea (Tabaristan), a location to which he owes the name by which he became widely known. Tabari’s Chronography was not different from the Eastern Roman historiographical tradition, as he started his narrative from the Creation. Tabari accumulated an enormous, unprecedented documentation, and he mentioned explicitly his sources for each and every part of his colossal text (a recent, unilingual English translation needed 40 volumes of ca. 300 pages each to be published), making it unattractive to the non-specialists. But Tabari wrote no less than 230 years after the Battle of Yarmouk was fought.
The situation is even worse, when it comes to Islamic religious, theological, biographical, and hagiographical literature. The earlier manuscripts that survived down to our days date back to the 8th, 9th and 10th c., while few existing exceptions are in truly fragmentary condition and cannot be taken as ‘proofs’ properly speaking.
The scarcity of the contemporaneous sources makes the interdisciplinary research imperative for the case of the early Islamic conquests and for the study of the first decades of caliphs’ rule. The contrast or the agreement between two different sources and the often divergent perspectives offered can help drastically stimulate the research orientation and push scholars toward hitherto unidentified areas, which may then grant a far better understanding of the historical facts than present-day clichés do.
The Teaching of Jacob (Διδασκαλία Ἰακώβου/Didaskalia Iakobou; Doctrina Jacobi) is an example in this regard; preserved partially in Medieval Greek manuscripts and integrally in Latin, Arabic, Ge’ez and Slavonic translations, the text consists in a debate among Jews as regards their eventual conversion to Christianity. It seems to be dated back to 634 CE, and it provides some of the earlier references to the Islamic conquests. In fact, it contradicts all Islamic sources, because it describes prophet Muhammad (without naming him) as waging wars in Palestine. However, the brief excerpt that concerns these facts makes state of an alliance between Palestinian Jews and the Arab armies. On the other hand, those among the Palestinian Jews, who had converted to Christianity (or rather were forced to), saw in the person of the ‘warrior prophet’ the Antichrist and even expected the imminent return of the Christ, also regretting that it took them long to identify Jesus with the Biblical Messiah.
The Syriac ‘Chronicle of 640’, written by Thomas the Presbyter, consists in a particular Christian Chronography down to the year 640 CE; the scribe, who copied the manuscript ca. 85 years later (724 CE), added an extra text containing the list of the Umayyad caliphs, who had reigned until that year. The Chronicle contains critical references to the early Islamic attacks and conquests, also stating that an enormous bloodshed followed the battle “between the Romans and the Tayyaye of Muhmd (the Arabs of Muhammad)”, which took place on 4th February 634 CE in Palestine, east of Gaza. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Presbyter
Two years later (636 CE), the Syriac ‘Chronicle of 640′ mentions explicitly the Sassanid Iranian debacle (without however naming the Battle of Qadissiyyah) and the subsequent arrival of the Islamic armies in NE Mesopotamia and notably Mardin (today in SE Turkey), which was the religious capital of the Tur Abdin Aramaean Miaphysitic/Monophysitic monasticism; these events also caused great bloodshed there. However, by dating these events in 636 CE {year 947, indiction 9, of the Seleucid Era (starting 312-311 BCE)}, the author makes it impossible for us to date the Battle of Yarmouk in 636, which is nowadays the tendency of several scholars who rather follow Theophanes’ text. On the contrary, Tabari makes it very clear that the Battle of Yarmouk occurred days after the death of Abu Bakr in August 634 CE.
Another brief and fragmentary inscription written on a blank page of a 6th c. Syriac copy of the Gospel of Mark makes state of the failure of the Eastern Roman army to properly defend the eastern regions of the empire; the same expression is used in Syriac (Tayyaye of Muhmd), but the dating is arbitrary. The inscription may well have been written in the 630s, but we cannot specify when exactly. Modern scholars have the tendency to deliberately mistrust the historical authors in order to fabricate the version of historiography that pleases them, and that is why several specialists assumed that the inscription’s author mistook Gabitha for Yarmouk; the inscription mentions a battle between the Eastern Romans and the Muslims in Gabitha (Jabiyah, in Syria) and the modern scholars translate it as ‘Yarmouk’ (in Jordan). It would be however more interesting to focus on similarities and dissimilarities between Syriac and Arabic, because practically speaking the same noun (Gabitha, Jabiyah) ended up having two totally different meanings. If one applies Syriac reading to the Quranic text before vocalization, the surprises may be phenomenal.
IV. Critical incidents during the Battle of Yarmouk
Tabari starts his narration of the events of the year 13 AH (634-635) with the Battle of Yarmouk; it expands on the illness and the subsequent death of Abu Bakr later. This cancels automatically the falsely reconstructed entry of the Wikipedia that dates the event back to 636 CE. Tabari’s two previous units are:
– Those who say Abu Bakr led the pilgrimage
– Those who say Umar led the pilgrimage
It is quite interesting that, in the introductory text for the events of the year 13 AH (before the description of the Battle of Yarmouk), Tabari states clearly that Abu Bakr, after his return from Mecca to Madina (when the hajj was completed), prepared the armies to be sent to Syria. Tabari narrates the developments, based on many different chains of earlier sources. There were many recruits of Yemen, because the Yemenites had recently accepted Islam (630 CE). So, even in these early battles, we cannot speak of ‘Arab armies’, but of Arab and Yemenite armies; the Yemenites are a Semitic nation, but as different from the Arabs as the Jews are from the Aramaeans, and pre-Islamic Yemenite languages and writings were very different from Arabic.
At this point, one has to point out that, before and after the death of prophet Muhammad (632), the early Islamic state in Hejaz, Yemen, Oman and the desert was in a tumultuous situation and incessant rebellions were exploding every now and then here and there, which means that the Islamic army units were in continuous readiness. However, despite this fact, the preparations for the dispatch of the army to the southern confines of Palestine and Syria, as narrated by Tabari, seem to have been rudimentary. In other words, I want to state that, for an event of so cataclysmic importance, the preparations were minimal.
This can only mean one thing: there were ongoing communications and coordination with Aramaeans based in Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia as regards a) attrition activities that they would possibly undertake against the Eastern Roman armies, b) defection of Aramaean soldiers from the Eastern Roman armies, and c) public opinion preparation for the forthcoming arrival of the Islamic armies and for the acceptance of the early Islamic faith (which was not what people think today that Islam is). And these developments (in Syria, and not in Hejaz) are exactly what made the difference, irrespective of the battle outcome. Otherwise, an early Islamic victory and invasion could be met with local population resistance and then the dispatch of another imperial army from Constantinople or Cappadocia would demolish once forever the initial state structure that the Arab and Yemenite armies may have imposed for a year or two in Damascus, Emessa (Homs), Caesarea Maritima, and Jerusalem.
Four separate armies were dispatched from Madina at the same time and each of them took a different road, but when they reached the region of Yarmouk River, they decided to unite, because the Eastern Romans outnumbered them. The same tactic was followed by the Eastern Romans. In some early skirmishes a Muslim force under Khālid ibn Saʿīd was defeated. Tabari states that the two armies encamped at a relatively close distance from one another without fighting for several months.
At that point, Tabari gives the date of Abu Bakr’s death, namely in the middle of the month Jumadah al Akhirah of the Islamic calendar (16 August 634), and specifies that the event took place “ten days before the victory (in the battle of Yarmouk River)”. It is noteworthy that prophet Muhammad’s worst enemy and late convert to Islam Abu Sufyan bin Harb accompanied the army and was appointed as the ‘preacher’ (qass). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%C4%81%E1%B9%A3%E1%B9%A3
During the description of the battle, Tabari mentions the arrival of the messenger from Madinah, namely the rider who announced the death of Abu Bakr only to Khalid bin Walid, the army leader, keeping it secret from all the fighters for obvious reasons. Tabari narrates also discussions that took place in intervals between Khalid bin Walid and George (Jurjah bin Budhiyah; also mentioned as Jarajis), one of the commanders of the Eastern Roman armies, who finally accepted Islam, performed a brief Islamic prayer (only two prostrations; rak’atayn), and then fought with the Muslims against the Eastern Roman army.
At another point, Tabari mentions an incident between Al-Ashtar (Malik bin al Harith al Nakha’iy, also known as Malik Al-Ashtar; a Yemenite origin Muslim) and ‘a man of the Romans’, who suggested a single combat with any Muslim fighter – a challenge that Al-Ashtar accepted. After the two combatants exchanged many blows, Al-Ashtar said to the ‘Roman’ opponent: “Take that, because I am a youngster from the Iyad tribe”! The ‘Roman’ fighter responded: “May God increase the number of people like you among my people; because, by God, if you were not of my people, I would have supported the Romans (meaning the Eastern Romans), but now I will not help them”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malik_al-Ashtar
The hills around the Yarmouk riverYarmouk RiverMaps and diagrams about historical developments are useless, as they only offer information of one dimension; one grasps the reality as regards the Battle of Yarmouk only when understanding that the outright majority of the local Aramaean populations passionately desired and wished for an Eastern Roman defeat, expecting the Muslim warriors as liberators. This occurred not because these populations believed in the faith preached by prophet Muhammad, but due to their need to use the Muslim armies in order to get rid from the tyrannical Eastern Roman rule. This truth has been systematically obscured by Western historians who came up with cheap propaganda and empty rhetoric, in order to repeat the divisive clichés that are necessary to the criminal colonial regimes of the West.
Incidents like the aforementioned totally change the image that modern scholars have created as distortion of the historical reality. The Islamic army did not actually need to be numerous; the battlefront would not be the most critical location as regards the battle outcome. Even more so, because if the first battle had been lost, the second would have been victorious in any case!
V. The true dimensions of the Battle of Yarmouk and of its outcome
The linguistic affinity between Aramaeans and Arabs was such that we can easily infer that most of the Islamic fighters could easily communicate in the language of a sizeable part of the Eastern Roman army (the Aramaean soldiers recruited from the lands of today’s SE Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine). There is no doubt about the knowledge and use of Syriac Aramaic among Arabs, due to their long professional involvement across the frankincense and spice trade routes. Even more importantly, the well-documented diffusion of Christianity among the Arabs bears automatically witness to their great skills of Syriac Aramaic in terms of reading comprehension, listening comprehension, written composition, and usage. How close to prophet Muhammad may this situation have been? Extremely close!
The cousin of his first wife, a learned man named Warraqah (: lit. ‘paper’) ibn Nawfal was a Christian convert. The religiosity of those days was such that we can safely claim that Khadijah’s cousin was reading every day excerpts from the Peshitta (the Syriac Bible). To all those, who discuss issues pertaining to prophet Muhammad’s education, knowledge and familiarity with Christological disputes, although it is certain that Khadijah’s husband -in young age- traveled repeatedly to territories of the Eastern Roman Empire (where he may have had month-long discussions with monks, theologians and learned merchants), the easiest response would be:
– Already in Mecca, there were Peshitta copies of the Bible, in the small houses of prophet Muhammad’s relatives!
Peshitta manuscripts with miniaturesAramaean Art of the Book
Also many Aramaeans involved in the trade between Yemen and the Mediterranean could communicate in the provincial Hejaz dialect that we now call ‘Quranic Arabic’. Language issues are mentioned in the Quran, and not without reason. In fact, Arabic sounded like a rough and uncouth dialect to the Aramaeans of Damascus or Antioch, two great cities each of which had larger population than the totality of the (Hejaz and desert) Arabs. On the other hand, the lexicographical poverty of pre-Islamic Arabic, if compared to the treasure of Syriac Aramaic (which also contained loans from other languages), was viewed by the Hejaz Arabs as ‘linguistic purity’; this situation led them to the aberration that their dialect was more ‘ancient’ or more ‘original’, whereas in fact it was more ‘isolated’ and more arid than Syriac Aramaic. And this situation is reproduced nowadays when people, who are well versed in the Quranic text (which stays close to the pre-Islamic Arabic’s ‘purity’, although it is far more elaborate), try to read Ibn Sina’s Al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat; they fail to grasp anything.
The religious-cultural similarity between the Arabs, who had just accepted prophet Muhammad’s preaching, and the Christian Aramaeans (either Nestorian or Miaphysitic/Monophysitic) was even more stupendous. Of course, when it comes to religion, tiny differentiations are known to have been reasons of terrible strives and wars, but in this case, there was a tremendously different issue. The Arabs had already rejected their idolatry and polytheistic concepts in order to adopt a faith that had a great number of common points with both, Nestorian and Miaphysitic / Monophysitic Christianity. In other words, they had made the first step in the direction of Miaphysitic/Monophysitic and Nestorian Christianity, and this was how the Christian Aramaeans viewed them; of course, to some Aramaean monks, the Arabs were perceived as heretic, but still this is far ‘better’ than just ‘heathens’.
The truly negative view of Islam was particular only to Constantinople and to Rome; but this detrimental judgment of Islam had basically imperial and material motives; in other words, Muhammad ‘was’ for the imperial ruling class the Antichrist, because his religious system was effective in seriously and irreversibly damaging their imperial posture, material benefits, and ecumenical appeal. Suddenly, the major challenges of 300 years of Christian imperial rule (namely Arius, Eutyches and Nestorius) that the Constantinopolitan theologians had managed to overcome appeared to be extremely weak and minor compared with the latest: Muhammad.
The difference was simple; the earlier challenges (namely Arius, Eutyches and Nestorius) emanated from within the Roman Empire, and the Constantinopolitan elite proved to be able to squelch them, oppressing and persecuting leaders and followers of the ‘heresies’. But Muhammad emanated from outside the Roman Empire. He early managed to secure an independent basis for his faith, and thence he attacked the Eastern Roman provinces that were inhabited by populations, which overwhelmingly rejected the Constantinopolitan doctrine; it was only normal for these populations to massively opt for the standard bearers of the new faith.
In fact, they perceived the arrival of the Muslim armies as liberation from the Roman – Constantinopolitan tyranny. The Anti-Muhammadan rhetoric of the Medieval Latin sources is merely an evil propaganda of the losers; the reality is simple: either they accepted Islam or remained Monophysitic, Nestorian, Gnostic or Manichaean, the Aramaeans, who constituted the quasi-totality of the local populations in Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and the southern coastland of the Persian Gulf, did not rebel against the rule of the Caliphate. And the Arab rulers accepted the importance of the lands of the Aramaeans, and that’s why they abandoned their marginal towns and sketchy villages in Hejaz and set up their capitals in the lands of the Aramaeans.
After all, this new doctrine appeared at the time as merely a new Christological dispute and heresy, and its followers were few and originated from lands that had never been historically important and which remained historically unimportant. But the loss for the theological elites of Constantinople and Rome was abysmal; in fact, pretty much like Constantinople was the New Rome, Damascus and Baghdad were meant to be the Final Rome. That is why Arius, Eutyches and Nestorius were never called ‘the Antichrist’, but prophet Muhammad was!
The Umayyad Mosque at Damascus: a masterpiece of Aramaean ArtGrand Mosque of Damascus: the spectacular mosaics in the arcade around the iwan reveal the splendor of the Aramaean Art.
At this point, I terminate the present, first article of the series; in a forthcoming article, I will reveal other critical points explicitly mentioned in the historical sources that modern Western scholars sulphurously disregard, conceal or misinterpret only to advance their historical forgery and intellectual fallacy; in this they are imitated and followed by the disreputable, ignorant and vicious, pseudo-Muslim sheikhs, imams, professors, muftis, qadis and preachers, who have been fabricated and put in place by the English and French colonials in full disruption of the Islamic historical continuity. Yet, these -widely unknown- points help us first achieve a deep and comprehensive understanding of the facts that took place in the 620s-630s and then get the real picture of the entire historical process without the smokescreen of today’s misplaced version of historiography.
In fact, what most people believe today as History of Islamic Conquests and Early Islamic History is entirely false. It is a fairy tale that turns a) most of the Westerners into absurd Muhammad-haters and Islam-deniers and b) most of the Muslims into useful-idiots and naïve believers of a pseudo-Islamic theological doctrine that has nothing in common with the religion preached by prophet Muhammad and ever since advocated by hadhrat Ali and his descendants. It is not a matter of Westerners accepting Islam and Muslims accepting Christianity as faith, but as historical process. Islam was not preached by prophet Muhammad in order to be imposed worldwide. That’s why both groups need to first interpret Emperor Heraclius’ evident reluctance to fight against the Islamic armies. This was the only man in the world who, before meeting with prophet Muhammad’s personal envoy Dahyah al Kalbi, encountered his worst enemy.
The following text is a response sent to an email dispatched to me by the Chairman of the exiled Oromo Parliamentarians who struggle for the Independence and Self-determination of the 5 millennia long Kushitic Ethiopian Nation of the Oromos.
The Hamitic – Kushitic Oromo Nation – due to criminal, inhuman and evil persecution conceived by the colonial powers (France, England and America) and executed by the colonially promoted barbaric and incestuous pseudo-Christian Abyssinians – lost their kingdoms and were engulfed within the Cemetery of Nations Fake Ethiopia, which consists in the world’s most tyrannical realm and the location of the world’s more abhorrent, more enduring, and more multifaceted genocides. There are more than 45 million Oromos in Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia) and Kenya today, despite the notorious and pathetic falsehood propagated by Wikipedia.
The present text enumerates all the major points of historical distortion and falsification carried out and diffused by the colonial academia, mass media, and diplomats, as well as by their local agents and criminal executioners, i.e. the barbaric, incestuous and Anti-Christian tribes of Amhara and Tigray (: the Abyssinians), who usurped the fair name of Ethiopia, which historically denotes the land of North Sudan and the Kushitic Nation that prospered there either in the Antiquity or in the Christian Era. Both, the Oromos and the Arabic-speaking (but not Arab) populations of Northern-Central Sudan are the descendants of Ancient Sudan’s (i.e. Ancient Ethiopia’s) Kushitic populations.
Representative photographic documentation was herewith added to the text in order to better illustrate the topic.
Refutation of historical forgeries propagated by European colonials and incestuous Abyssinians
Dear Chairman,
Thank you for your email and news!
I never watch or hear anything produced by the BBC because I know quite well that they have systematically distorted History either they present programs about Asia or they feature Africa, Europe or America.
Thanks to your email, I noticed that this video is not the actual documentary but an announcement for mere publicity.
But it is true that Axum was an Abyssinian capital, and it had nothing to do with Kush/Ethiopia, which was located at the time in the area of today’s North Sudan.
Ancient Sudan, as the true Ethiopia (or Kush), and its great past
Kush/Ethiopia was a millennia-long civilization; its three main periods of rise cover the three main stages:
1) Kerma Civilization (2300-1500 BCE),
(Kerma Deffufa, North Sudan)
2) Napata/Karima Civilization (which is mainly called Kushitic Civilization: 800 – 400 BCE) and
Napata (Karima & Jebel Barkal, North Sudan)
3) Meroe/Bagrawiyah Civilization (which is mainly called Meroitic Civilization and corresponds to what Ancient Greeks & Romans called ‘Ethiopia’: 400 BCE – 350 CE).
Meroe, Capital of Ethiopia (Kush: North Sudan)
Mussawarat as Sufrah, a major city of the Meroitic Kingdom of Ethiopia in North Sudan
Wad ben Naga, a major city of the Meroitic Kingdom of Ethiopia in North Sudan
Naqa, a major city of the Meroitic Kingdom of Ethiopia in North Sudan
Kush/Ethiopia has ethnic, linguistic and cultural affinities with Kemet/Egypt, because both nations are Hamitic, like the Berbers (who are all the people living from Libya to Morocco), the Tuareg, the Haussa, and others. In fact, ancient Egyptian and Sudanese (:Ethiopian) civilizations were deeply intertwined and for the Ancient Egyptians the holiest place in the world was Napata (today’s Karima in North Sudan) as the original location of god Amon of Thebes (Luxor)!
((Beware! All Wikipedia articles contain truth and lies mixed in a sophisticated manner as per the French-English-American needs. Plus: there was never such thing as a “Nubian Civilization”; there were Nubians in both Kemet/Egypt and Kush/Ethiopia, but they never developed an independent civilization, nor did they form a separate state. Only in Christian times, there was a separate state called Nobatia, which existed for several centuries. When people speak of “Nubian pyramids” in today’s Sudan, either they are ignorant and uneducated or they forge History deliberately usurping the History that belongs to present day Sudanese and Oromos and which is Kushitic/Ethiopian of nature, and not Nubian))
Axumite Abyssinia: a late, tiny state of Yemenite settlers in Africa
Axum, Capital of the Kingdom of Abyssinia (covering Pre-Christian and Christian times)
Ancient blocks with Yemenite Sabaean inscriptions from Yeha
Totally unrelated to the above was the formation of a small state around Yeha and Axum (Abyssinia) from Semtic, Yemenite settlers, who crossed the Red Sea in later ages. Yeha must have been built around the 3rd-2nd c. BCE and Axum around the 2nd-1st c. BCE, so they belong to the third (3) stage of Ancient Kushitic Civilization as per above. Earlier dates given for these settlements are academic dishonesty due to extensive bribery of scholars, which is – as you already know – a regular practice among the various dictatorial governments, Amhara- or Tigray-led, of Addis Ababa. Example: this article contains numerous deliberate errors and falsehood – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%CA%BFmt
In fact, Axum was a Yemenite kingdom on African soil; they were not Africans and for their entire pre-Islamic History, they were more concerned with Yemen than with Africa. However, despite all the lies that the Abyssinian governments and agents diffuse, the ancient Axumites had nothing in common with the Queen of Sheba (who lived around the 10th c. BCE in Yemen, when no Yemenite was on African soil). Sheba (Sabaa / Sabaeans) was actually the name of one of the most important Yemenite states; other important states were Qataban, Himyar, Awsan and Hadhramaut.
Marib, Capital of the Yemenite Kingdom of Sheba / Sabaa (Sabaeans)
Awam Temple – Yemenite Kingdom of Sheba / Sabaa (Sabaeans)
Zafar, Capital of the Yemenite Kingdom of Himyar (Himyarites)
Antiquities from Timna, Capital of the Yemenite Kingdom of Qataban
Shabwah, Capital of the Yemenite Kingdom of Hadhramaut
Antiquities from Shabwah, Capital of the Yemenite Kingdom of Hadhramaut
The Abyssinians (Habasha), who crossed the Red Sea and settled in Africa, were already mentioned in the Ancient Yemenite (Sabaean) texts as a renegade tribe (Abasat), and we have every reason to understand that they were expelled from their country of origin due to their heresy and evilness.
The Axumite Abyssinians formed indeed a small state (limited between Axum and Adulis/near Massawa) and they never reached ever up to the area of Avalites (Assab) near the Red Sea straits. On the contrary, the two Yemenite states Sheba & Himyar merged and they controlled the entire Somali coast from the Horn of Africa down to today’s Daresalaam. This vast coast was a Yemenite colony for several centuries (perhaps up to a millennium at the times of early Islam), and it was named Azania (according to the Ancient Greek text Periplus of the Red Sea, which is also known as Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and was written in the middle of the 1st c. CE: around the years 70-75 CE).
Adulis (near Massawa, the only harbor of Axumite Abyssinia), Foundations of Christian Church
The same text gives details about Meroe, which was a big continental state with links across Sahara and with Roman Egypt, but did not control today’s Sudanese coast where – according to the same text – lived the ‘Berbers’ (Kushites who were rather independent from Meroe); for this reason that coast was called Berberia.
Same origin population lived in the coast from Avalites (Assab) to the Horn itself (so the area that today corresponds to Eritrea’s southernmost part, Djibouti, Somaliland, and a small part of Puntland); that’s why in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, the area from Assab to the Horn is named as “The Other Berberia” – something that also highlights the Kushite presence in that area. Beyond the Horn, the populations were Kushitic as well: the ancestors of today’s Somalis. Simply, the term ‘Azania’ (used within the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea) seems to have rather been a ‘political’ term to designate the Yemenite (Sheba/Himyar) colony across the East African coast.
Christian Ethiopian states on Sudan’s territory & Axumite Abyssinia
Axum accepted Christianity in the early 4th c. CE. According to vicious Amhara/Tigray propaganda, Axum was ‘the first Christian state in the world’; this is a lie. The first Christian state in the world was Osroene (an Aramaean state located on part of the territory of today’s Northern Syria and Southeastern Turkey): King Abgar the 9th of Osroene (179 – 214 CE) accepted Christianity as the official religion of his country – more than 150 years before King Ezana of Axum accepted Christianity after the Aramaean Syrian Frumentius (slave, missionary, bishop) preached Christianity there. The state of Osroene was indisputably the first Christian state in the world, and in addition to the above, there are discussions about King Abgar the 8th of Osroene being eventually the King to have Christianized Osroene earlier and about King Abgar the 5th of Osroene being eventually the King to have exchanged letters with Jesus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abgar_V).
After Ezana made Axumite Abyssinia a Christian country, in coordination with the Christian Roman authorities in Alexandria and Constantinople, he attacked Meroe/Ethiopia (around 360 CE) and destroyed its capital at today’s Bagrawiyah. He then retreated after annexing the occupied territory. He then claimed that he was king of Axum and king of Ethiopia, like every other king who after invading a new land was considered to be king of that land.
However, Meroe/Ethiopia was a vast state covering most of today’s Northern Sudan’s territory. Ezana attacked Meroe’s capital from the south (probably advancing alongside Atbarah river) but the territory of Ethiopia that was occupied by Abyssinia’s Ezana was less than 20% of Ethiopia’s total area.
The claim was ridiculous and it would be tantamount to Hitler claiming to be the ruler of Soviet Union in 1942, because he only invaded part of its western territory.
However, the Abyssinian annexation of 20% of Ethiopia’s (Kush’s) territory did not last for long, and as early as the beginning of the 5th c. CE (so around the period 400-450 CE) Christian Nobatia rose in the Kushitic / Sudanese / Ethiopian North. Slightly later, a second Christian state, Makuria was formed in the Kushitic / Sudanese / Ethiopian mainland of the old Meroitic kingdom. Not much later, Christian Alodia, the third Christian Kingdom of Kush / Ethiopia / Sudan, appeared in the area around today’s Khartoum.
((There are many correct and many wrong points here:
Archaeological evidence makes it clear that all Meroitic sites were vastly depopulated after Ezana’s invasion of the small southern portion of Meroe / Ethiopia. For the rest of the 4th c. and the 5th c. CE Kush’s (Ethiopia’s) mainland in today’s North Sudan was depopulated. I interpreted this phenomenon as the massive Exodus of the ancestors of Oromos, who wanted to avoid the forced Christianization of their land and therefore left that land to find safe shelter further in the South, until they finally reached – after several steps – the highlands of today’s Oromia:
However, when the Amhara / Tigray Abyssinians use the name ‘Ethiopia’ for the country that they formed after their colonial expansion and the genocides that they perpetrated in the period 1850-1950, they forget that Ezana’s claim was politically empty (since he did not invade but only a small portion of Ethiopia) and historically void, because ‘Christian Ethiopia’ as historical term defines the three Christian Kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia, and not the small kingdom of Axum, which collapsed after the arrival of Islam during the 7th c., whereas Christian Makuria survived until ca. 1400 CE and Christian Alodia existed until 1510-1520. This means that there was Christian continuity in Sudan / Ethiopia / Kush, but not in Abyssinia.
Fresco from the Cathedral of Faras, Capital of the Christian Kingdom of Nobatia
Fresco from the Cathedral of Faras, Capital of the Christian Kingdom of Nobatia
Fresco from the Cathedral of Faras, Capital of the Christian Kingdom of Nobatia
Old Dongola (Dunqulah), Capital of the Christian Ethiopian Kingdom of Makuria, North Sudan
Old Dongola (Dunqulah), Capital of the Christian Ethiopian Kingdom of Makuria, North Sudan – Fresco of the Adoration of the Magi
Christian Ethiopian Art & Inscription from the Ethiopian Kingdom of Makuria, North Sudan
Major expansion of Alodia, the third (and southernmost) Kingdom of Christian Ethiopia (: Sudan)
Soba (Khartoum), Capital of the Christian Ethiopian Kingdom of Alodia – foundations of one of the main churches
Tombstone of the Christian Ethiopian King David, Soba (Khartoum) – Capital of Alodia
Axum Abyssinia, Agaw Kushite Kingdom, and Yekuno Amlak’s Satanic state
Almost 300 years after the disappearance of Axum, around 950 CE, in the northern part of today’s Abyssinia, the tiny Christian Agaw state was formed with Lalibela as capital and it lasted until 1270; however this was also a Kushite kingdom because the Agaw Nation is of Kushitic ethnic background. A lot of posterior traditions due to evil colonial motives have obscured the historical reality around the Agaw kingdom, but you can be sure for the following:
Lalibela, Capital of the Christian Kushitic Kingdom of Agaw in the southern extremities of the Old Abyssinian Kingdom of Axum
a. The Agaw Kingdom had no royal or ethnic connection with / continuity from Axum; all opposite claims and mentions of intermarriage are fake. The Semitic descendants of the Axum kingdom were surely among the Agaw kingdom’s subjects, but they did not belong to the ruling royal elite; they were one of the nations that lived under the Agaw scepter and we have reason to believe that they hated it too much.
Agaw kingship is totally unrelated to the posterior barbaric state launched by Yekuno Amlak. Pictorial documentation demonstrates the Kushitic identity of the Christian Kingdom of Agaw. The blood of the brave last King of the Agaw Kingdom is a curse for the Amhara & Tigray Abyssinians, heralding their total extinction.
b. The Agaw state was a small Kushitic Christian kingdom that never claimed royal or ethnic descent from the Semitic, Yemenite kingdom of Axum and never claimed to be ‘Ethiopia’ – because at those days the Ethiopian kingdoms were Nobatia, Makuria (which merged soon afterwards into one state), and also Alodia.
c. There was indeed a religious continuity between Axum and Agaw kingdoms.
d. There was never an Axumite Abyssinian text to support an eventual claim of royal Axumite descent from the Queen of Sheba & Solomon. Not one Axumite Abyssinian king ever made such a claim.
e. The Semitic Abyssinian Amhara state that was launched by Yekuno Amlak in 1270 has no royal connection with either the Axum or the Agaw kingdoms.
f. The Semitic Abyssinian Amhara state has indeed an ethnic connection with the Semitic descendants of the Axum kingdom; one part of them represents a rather direct descent from the Axumite population (Tigray), whereas the other part is characterized with a certain amalgamation with other populations (Amhara).
This state consisted in a racist entity and an oppressive mechanism against all the non-Amhara and non-Tigray subjects of its territory.
g. In striking contradiction with the Axum and the Agaw kingdoms, the barbaric state launched by Yekuno Amlak at 1270 was never a real kingdom (and much less, an empire, as the Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians have fallaciously pretended), because
i) there was not a dynastic continuity to properly ensure a real royal descent (if the so-called ‘king’ is not the son, grandson, brother, uncle, cousin or nephew of a king, if he does not even belong to the noble class, i.e. the peerage, but has a common or low descent, he can never be a king) and
ii) – more importantly – there is no notion of ‘family’ in the incestuous Amhara society, which means that there cannot be proper ‘royal’ family to offer heads of states possibly able be called ‘kings’ or ’emperors’. The sons of different lowly prostitutes who were ‘married’ to several men can never become ‘kings’ by any standards anytime anywhere in the world. That’s why the Oromo, the Hadiya, the Somali, the Kaffa and other real African kings never accepted those trashy, vulgar, incestuous Amhara or Tigray barbarians as ‘kings’ and never conceded to several demands for a ‘royal’ meeting (: a king never encounters a filthy trash like the Amhara – Tigray bogus-kings).
h. What is more unknown to most people worldwide is that there is not even religious continuity between the Axum and the Agaw kingdoms on one side and the state of Yekuno Amlak on the other side. Post-1270 ‘Christianity’ among the Amhara – Tigray incestuous tribes has nothing in common with either the Lalibela-centered Agaw Christianity or the Axum-based Old Abyssinian Christianity.
The reason is simple; with the proclamation of Yekuno Amlak’s villainous and atrocious state, a new text of fake royal propaganda appeared, ‘Kebra Negast’, which was accepted by the Abyssinians down to Haile Selassie as the epitome of the state’s nature, claims and aspirations. The book accepts Christianity in an heretic manner whereas it distorts all the basic principles of Christian morality. Furthermore, Kebra Negast propagates a great number of Anti-Christian concepts, Satanic theories, counterfeit ideas, historical fallacies, dynastic forgeries, and factual distortions that make it totally impossible for anyone accepting this text to properly be a Christian.
This is the reason the Amhara and the Tigray Abyssinian rulers never accepted Christian Catholic missionaries in their marginal, arid, tiny and ill-fated bogus-kingdom, and they always slaughtered them mercilessly. During the period 1300-1850, more Catholic priests were killed in the then tiny territory of Abyssinia than in any other part of the world, the Islamic Caliphate and other Islamic Empires included.
Two different Abyssinian claims to the Name of Ethiopia: Ezana’s and Haile Selassie’s
Finally, one must clearly make a distinction between Ezana’s claim to the title of ‘king of Ethiopia’ and the recent Abyssinian policies (that date back only to 1950s) and false pretensions that Abyssinia can be possibly called ‘Ethiopia’, which consist in sheer usurpation of a name that is totally unrelated to the Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians and their past.
King Ezana’s inscription – the Greek text
King Ezana’s claim was something normal as practice at those days. Example: Publius Cornelius Scipio was a Roman general and later consul who is often regarded as one of the greatest generals and military strategists of all time. His main achievements were during the Second Punic War (218 – 201 BCE) where he is best known for defeating Hannibal at the final battle at Zama, one of the feats that earned him the agnomen Africanus. Because he won over the African state of Carthage, he was called Scipio the ‘African’.
However, when the Abyssinian control of the small part of Ethiopian (Sudanese) territory ended few decades later and Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia rose to prominence as the three Christian states on the Ethiopian (e. g. North Sudanese) territory, any Axumite Abyssinian claim to the name of Ethiopia was purely void, fully insignificant, and practically meaningless.
As a matter of fact, the modern claim is rather relevant to Anti-Christian eschatological and messianic beliefs introduced among the Abyssinians only with the aforementioned forgery of Kebra Negast, a text that can be considered as Christian as the devious Jewish forgery of ‘Talmud’ can be described as Biblical Hebrew!
“Ethiopia shall hasten [to stretch out] her hand readily to God“
The eschatological and messianic beliefs introduced among the Abyssinians are based on a Biblical text of the Old Testament (Psalms, 67:32) in which the Septuagint Greek text reads “ἥξουσι πρέσβεις ἐξ Αἰγύπτου, Αἰθιοπία προφθάσει χεῖρα αὐτῆς τῷ Θεῷ”, which is translated in Modern English “Ambassadors shall arrive out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall hasten [to stretch out] her hand readily to God”. (http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/septuagint/chapter.asp?book=24&page=67)
{{Here I must add that you must never use the false English translation prepared by the evil, bastard and Freemason king of England James I (reign: 1603 – 1625), the so-called King James Version – KJV – because it is part of the same Satanic conspiracy that brought the Amhara and the Tigray Abyssinian invaders to your lands and provided for the 150-year long Oromo Genocide and many other genocides of subjugated African nations across Abyssinia and elsewhere. This extremely distorted translation (King James Version / KJV) serves only to diffuse confusion and falsehood and to promote the enslavement of all the nations of the world to Satan and all the filthy and evil spirits. King James I was an evil person and an accomplished Satanist, who took even the pain of writing a book titled “Daemonologie”, which is “a philosophical dissertation on contemporary necromancy and the historical relationships between the various methods of divination used from ancient Black magic. This included a study on demonology and the methods demons used to trouble men while touching on topics such as werewolves and vampires”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemonologie) You understand, of course, that whoever diffuses the words of filthy spirits and evil demons cannot possibly be involved in the holy texts of any religion, except for the purpose of falsifying them as per the guidance given to him by the evil spirits which he serves. With reference to modern English translations of the Christian Bible, beware also of many other fake English translations that repeat the same mistakes of KJV which is not a correct and direct translation from the Ancient Greek text but from a late Jewish forgery, the so-called masoretic text of which the earlier manuscript dates back only to 9-10th c., namely more than 1000 years after the Greek text of the Hebrew Bible! More: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10035a.htm / But this is all mistaken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text}}
Now, why was the verse “Ambassadors shall arrive out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall hasten [to stretch out] her hand readily to God” thought to be of eschatological and messianic meaning?
A Kushitic Ethiopian Prince from Meroe & Ancestor of the Oromos speaks with Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples
This is due to the fact that there is a reference in the New Testament (Acts, 8:26-40) according to which there was an ‘Ethiopian’ prince, who while traveling in Palestine met and spoke with Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_the_Apostle), and then accepted Jesus’ preaching and became Christian.
Here you have the entire narration: “26 And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. 27 And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, 28 Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. 29 Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. 30 And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? 31 And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. 32 The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: 33 In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth. 34 And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man? 35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. 36 And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? 37 And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. 38 And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him. 39 And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea”. (http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/new-testament/acts/8.asp)
An ancestor of the Oromos accepted Jesus centuries before the ancestors of the Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians
Miniature painting depicting Jesus’ disciple Philip and the Meroitic Ethiopian prince who accepted Jesus’ preaching and was baptized. From the Menologion of the Eastern Roman Emperor Basil II, which was compiled around the year 1000 – currently in the Vatican Library. (More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menologion_of_Basil_II)
So, the historical forgers interpret the earlier verse (Psalms, 67:32) as being a prophecy that was materialized in the person of the Ethiopian prince. As you can understand, this concerns Kush / Sudan, i.e. the Kingdom of Ethiopia with Meroe as capital which was located in today’s North Sudan. Even more so because the New Testament excerpt includes a typically Meroitic / Ethiopian word, namely Kandake (Candace), which is not a personal name, but the title itself (lit. ‘queen’) in Meroitic / Ethiopian language. This article is correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandake
Meroitic/Kushitic/Sudanese/Ethiopian Candace: Unrelated to Abyssinians
The use of the term ‘Candace’ makes the proof even stronger that the earlier Biblical text (Psalms) prophesied indeed the Christianization of Sudan / Kush / Ethiopia, first in the form of the traveling prince, and second, few centuries after the travel of the Ethiopian Meroitic prince in Palestine, when Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia became the three Christian states of Sudan/Ethiopia.
Abyssinia in any form (Axum or posterior) is totally unrelated to this story, and tiny Axum at the time was a non Christian country and remained as such for another 300 years! No Axumite Abyssinian prince traveled to Palestine at the times of the Apostles (Jesus’ disciples) and of course, there was no Candace/Kandake in Axum at those days or any time later!
The Abyssinian claim may look absurd. But this is always the nature of forgery! When evil people and barbaric nations like the Amhara / Tigray Abyssinians try to usurp the Past and the History of civilized nations, they raise false claims and come up with incredible misinterpretations that only criminals or paranoids dare express.
Last but not the least, the whole affair of the recent claim (which started with Haile Selassie in the 1950s) involves Westerners (colonial French academia), who then convinced the fake king Haile Selassie about using the name of Ethiopia instead of Abyssinia. This has a lot to do with Freemasonic and Zionist plans and conspiracies regarding Eastern Africa; however this is rather politics and not History.
A Sudanese-Oromo alliance to overthrow the genocidal Abyssinian tyranny
The best chance for the Oromos to counterbalance and overthrow the colonial conspiracy against their nation is to
1. reach out to today’s Arabic-speaking people and rulers of Sudan,
2. help them realize that
a. they are not Arabs, but linguistically Arabized Kushites of Sudan
b. they are straight descendants of the Ancient Sudanese / Kushites / Ethiopians
c. as such they are the truly fraternal nation to the Oromos
d. the real offspring of the Ancient Sudanese / Kushites / Ethiopians are both, the Oromos (who left their land but preserved and saved their language) and the Arabic-speaking Sudanese (who preserved their land but lost their own language)
e. the real name of their land (Sudan) and of Oromia is Ethiopia / Kush and that you and they must take it back from the Abyssinians
f. the Arabization project across Africa and Asia was conceived by the three colonial powers (France, England and America) that are controlled by Freemasonry and Zionism in order to destroy the nations to which it was projected and on which it was imposed (from Morocco to Iraq), and this is the reason for all the problems and disasters that fell on each of those nations, and
g. the only means of survival of today’s Sudan is the detachment from the fallacy of Pan-Arabism and the return to the true historical identity (Kushitic – Ethiopian) that their land had for millennia, and
3. establish an Oromo – Sudanese alliance to overthrow the tribal tyranny of the Abyssinians who consist in a minority within the colonial state of Fake Ethiopia.
“Dar al-Islam (the Muslim World) in the 13th century” / From: “The Travels of Ibn Battuta. A Virtual Tour with the 14th Century Traveler” uploaded in the portal of Berkeley University (http://ibnbattuta.berkeley.edu/)
The Sultanate of Delhi during the 13th c., prior to the rise of Khilji dynasty (under the Mamluk dynasty), controlled a much smaller territory leaving not only the entire Gujarat but also large parts of Rajastan out of its control.
13th c. Islamic territory in the Iberian Peninsula (above) & 14th c. Islamic Emirate of Granada in their real historical dimensions
The correct borders of the Mamluk state of Egypt in the Red Sea
Involving many universities, publishing houses, mass media, encyclopedias (and notably the Wikipedia), diplomatic services, and international NGOs, a vast project of systematic map forgery of global dimensions can be attested in an almost infinite number of cases either on hard copies or online. The existing trends that can be assessed after a meticulous observation of many thousands of maps lead us to the conclusion that the undertaken forgery only reflects and strengthens the historical falsification that we can notice in the texts of articles, scholarly articles, encyclopedia entries, and books. In other words, the historical falsification that has been systematically carried out at global scale by the Freemasonic / Zionist academics and their assistants covers also an incredibly high number of maps that are available for general and specialized readership.
To analyze the character, the nature and the targets of the entire falsification process it would take volumes; however, one can briefly identify the targets as fully reflecting the essence of the historical, philosophical, religious, ideological and political falsehood that the Freemasonic / Zionist academics want to diffuse. In this case, we have to primarily deal with a vicious discrimination that takes first the unsuspicious form of a mere differentiation; some nations, peoples, countries, states, persons, concepts, and issues are favored, whereas others are disfavored.
As per the needs of the above differentiation, the historical truth is magnified, embellished, and better highlighted for those favored, whereas it is undermined, tarnished and concealed for those disfavored. The methods involved are numerous and much diversified. The size of an article is merely an example. When you publish a 3000 words entry in an encyclopedia to present the history of a less important nation, and you allot only 1500 words for the entry which is dedicated to the history of another, definitely more important nation, certainly your intentions are evil, your publications are biased, and your falsification targets are to elevate what you favor and to lower what you disfavor – particularly if the history of the more important nation happens in addition to be better documented with more historical sources, larger textual and epigraphic evidence, and a longer record of diverse archaeological findings.
Except the size of an entry, many other parameters matter as well, when it comes to a systematic falsification effort. The overall presentation, the presence or the absence of maps, pictures and diagrams, etc., everything in fact adds points to the said effort. The contents of the text, and of the maps, are certainly the most essential parts of the falsification effort, but undoubtedly not the only.
When it comes to the contents of the maps, a country can be shown bigger or smaller, the borderlines can be shifted to one or the other side, the details included can be many or few; furthermore, the background color (which defines the territoriality) can be extended beyond the level of historical reality or withdrawn to some lesser (and false) degree.
If the map contents concern a moment of the past, for the cartographic forgers the distortion needed to achieve the falsification target is certainly an easier job than in the case the map contents relate to a current situation. No one will accept in 2014 the veracity and the trustworthiness of a European political map that depicts Crimea with the same color as that of Ukraine, because it is known to all that Crimea does not belong anymore to Ukraine, having effectively seceded earlier this year.
But what happens in the case of a historical map dating back to the Islamic Ages, the Christian times or the periods of the Oriental Antiquity? In these cases, the map forgery process becomes easier. Similarly with common lies, map forgery combines elements of historical truth along with points of distortion; there cannot be a ‘full lie’, because no one will believe it. And there cannot be a total map forgery, because people will immediately identify the map as purely fictional, fake, and therefore worthless.
The extensive map forgery project reveals the existence of a detailed plan shared by many, and this takes us to the level of an advanced conspiracy. Those who deny the existence of conspiracies are contradicted and rejected by History itself, because in the last 5000 years of History we have come across thousands of cases of conspiracy undertaken by two or more people, countries or organizations against their specific targets.
Actually, if we accept for a moment the incredible falsehood that there has never been any conspiracy in the World History, we will have to interpret all the cases of map forgery and historical falsification as the result of mere human errors. This is not however possible, because there is plenty of evidence that many authors and researchers did not share the false view or idea (that takes the form of a specific map forgery or historical falsification) and that they presented a different viewpoint.
If, contrarily, these points that we consider as forgery were generally accepted as truthful and correct by all authors and researchers, and one specialist demonstrated that these points were actually wrong and mistaken, we could accept that, before the refutation and the rectification of the mistaken points, all scholars had committed an error.
We could even accept, in the case of some authors presenting the historical truth and others developing a different version, that the latter committed merely a mistake; but in this case, there should not be a specific trend (in favor of one land, country, state, nation, national history or person) that is repeated across many different maps, articles and books.
In this regard, a mere comparison helps us reveal the truth, i.e. identify whether a case of map forgery really took place. If the mistake is generally repeated by all, we can conclude that it is a real error. If the mistake occurs here and there, but there are more specialized publications that present a different, historically correct, view and do not accept the mistake, we have certainly to do with a case of deliberate forgery and not with a mistake; particularly if the specific target is the same as in many other cases of forgery, which means that the specific target was the common denominator in all these cases of forgery.
It is essential to point out at this moment that map forgery does not only occur in a specialized per subject map, but can be noticed in subject-unrelated maps and articles, which means that we are indeed in front of a vastly implemented project of forgery of disproportionate size.
One of the modern countries that has been methodically supported by the vast map forgery project and the overall historical falsification program is Abyssinia (which only recently was also fallaciously re-baptized as ‘Ethiopia’ despite the fact that, as per the Ancient Greek and Roman sources whereby this name was first used, ‘Ethiopia’ is the state, the land and the Kushitic nation immediately south of Egypt, so today’s North Sudan).
As per the needs of the historical falsification, Ethiopia is presented confusingly and mistakenly as identical with Abyssinia (whereas it is not) and also as larger of dimension. Many different maps in diverse websites and books portray Abyssinia falsely and in size greater than its real as per the historical period concerned in order to boost its image.
Example of map forgery in the portal of Berkeley University, US
In the present article, I will focus only one map and demonstrate its forged nature. It is very shameful that the map was published in the portal of an American university, but given the biased position of the US government in so many issues, taken into account the existence of various lobbies and their corrupt practices, and bearing in mind the utilization of the US universities by the US establishment and the powers that be, one can understand why this forgery was attempted at the detriment of all readers.
The forgery example is therefore taken from a presentation which, under the title “The Travels of Ibn Battuta. A Virtual Tour with the 14th Century Traveler”, is featured in the portal of Berkeley University (http://ibnbattuta.berkeley.edu/). In the section Introduction (see link) there is a map that supposedly helps the student grasp the size of the Islamic world within the limits of the then known world and the most important empires and kingdoms of the 1st half of the 14th c. Under the map, at the bottom of the page, the legend reads: “Dar al-Islam (the Muslim World) in the 13th century”. This must be a typographical error (because Ibn Battuta traveled in the 14th c.) or then the map is misplaced.
However, as the Sultanate of Delhi is depicted as having the dimensions it had under the Sultan Ala al din Khilji (1296 – 1316), I rather believe that the wrong legend is due to a typo. Actually, the Sultanate of Delhi during the 13th c., prior to the rise of Khilji dynasty (under the Mamluk dynasty), controlled a much smaller territory leaving not only the entire Gujarat but also large parts of Rajastan out of its control.
Another indication about the correct period for this map is given by the borderlines of the Islamic Emirate of Granada (Nasrid Kingdom) in Andalusia. In the map, the Nasrid state is portrayed within the borders it had during the 14th c., whereas in the 13th c. the Almohad territory was quite larger.
Last, since the map mentions the Mamluk Kingdom of Egypt, which was incepted only in 1250, so in the very middle of the 13th c., we cannot afford to take it as reflecting the historical realities of the 13th c. (it does not cover its first half) but rather the very end of the 13th c. and the 14th c. Islamic world; so this also confirms that the wrong legend is the result of a typo.
However, these are not the mistakes I wanted to discuss; nor do I want to mention the numerous general mistakes of this fabrication that is however included in the portal of Berkeley University. In fact, there are no borderlines for either the Islamic states or the other realms; this leaves the students with a very poor understanding of the era concerned.
Map forgery to portray part of 14th c. East African coast as out of Islamic control
The grave mistake, which was deliberately made in order to give a disproportionate size of, and impression about, Ethiopia, concerns the Eastern African coast. The historical truth is that the entire African coast of the Red Sea and, beyond Bab al Mandeb straits, the Eastern African coast down to today’s Mozambique was part of the Islamic world.
However, in the map, the southern borders of the Mamluk state in Egypt are wrongly placed far more in the north than their actual, historical extent. Part of the Red Sea coast of Africa that corresponds to part of the coast of Modern Egypt, the entire coast of Sudan, the northern part of Eritrea’s coast is shown as out of the Islamic World, which is totally wrong. Beyond that point, from Eritrea’s southern coastal confines to Mozambique the African coast is included within the borders of the Islamic world, which is correct.
As per the wrong borderlines of the map, the southernmost area that the Mamluk state controlled in Egypt’s Red Sea coast was Berenice and the cap Ras Banas; this is a tremendous historical mistake, because the Mamluk control extended farther in the South.
The Red Sea coast of Africa that is shown as out of the Islamic world has a size that comprises the following three major cities-harbors, namely Aydhab, Suakin and Massawa. These cities are mistakenly depicted as lying out of the Islamic control.
Aydhab is today a desolate place in the so-called triangle of Halaib; this means that it is located within today’s Egyptian territory and in its south-easternmost extremity, which is considered by Sudan as de jure Sudanese territory.
Suakin is today a thriving harbor in Sudan’s Red Sea coast southwestwards of Jeddah, which – on the opposite seaside – was the traditional Arabian coast harbor where all Muslims disembarked when traveling to perform Hajj in Mecca and Medina.
Massawa is the main harbor or Eritrea, located in its northern coast, around 110 km from Asmara, the Eritrean capital in the inland.
What happened to Aydhab, Suakin, and Massawa in the late 13th and during the 1st half of the 14th century, when Ibn Battuta lived, traveled, and even crossed these territories? To what state did these cities belong? This is what we will examine now.
Aydhab
Aydhab belonged to a small Christian Kingdom of the indigenous nation of the Blemmyes (today’s Beja) after the Eastern Roman control of Egypt was terminated in 642 CE with the arrival of the Islamic armies, and until this southern extremity of Egypt was recaptured by the Fatimid authorities that ruled from Cairo in the end of the 10th c. CE. The local Beja royal family managed to survive as vassal for several hundreds of years, but it did not have a substantive power beyond the administration of the local affairs. They were able only to create some problems to the Islamic authorities in Cairo from time to time.
Following the Islamic occupation of Alexandria and the Northern African coast (642 – 651), the south of Egypt escaped the early Islamic Caliphate’s control and belonged to a Christian Nubian kingdom named Nobatia, which was closely linked with the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria. Nobatia’s capital was at Faras, not far Abu Simbel, which is today Egypt’s southernmost city on the Nile. However, some time in the 8th – 9th c., in order to face the mounting Islamic pressure from the North, Nobatia was forced to merge (despite Christological differences) with its southern neighbor Makuria, the main Christian Kushitic state in the land that was called Ethiopia by the Greeks and the Romans and Sudan by Arabic speaking people. It goes without saying that this land and this Kushitic nation have nothing to do with the Semitic, non-African, Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians who only recently usurped the name of Ethiopia which does not belong to their Semitic past, as it is diametrically opposed to their Yemenite ethnic origin. Aswan became part of the Islamic world in the early 10th c.
As the Fatimid rulers ensured full control over today’s Egypt’s territory and secured the transportation in the southernmost confines of their territory, it was very common for caravans to cross diagonally the Eastern Desert from Edfu or Aswan to Aydhab (the pattern existed in pre-Islamic times when caravans used to cross from Qena or Qift to Berenice) and then sail to Arabia, Yemen, and other destinations.
During the Crusades, Aydhab was attacked and destroyed (1182) but there was no Crusaders’ settlement in the area. King Dawud of Makuria attacked Aydhab in 1270, but this was only one of the last spasms of the Christian Ethiopian state of Makuria; the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt counterattacked and Makuria became a vassal state thus starting its downgrading spiral that led to its extinction within a century.
Aydhab was crossed by Ibn Battuta himself; this is what he wrote about it:
“Thence my way lay through a number of towns and villages to Munyat Ibn Khasib [Minia], a large town which is built on the bank of the Nile, and most emphatically excels all the other towns of Upper Egypt. I went on through Manfalut, Asyut, Ikhmim, where there is a berba with sculptures and inscriptions which no one can now read-another of these berbas there was pulled down and its stones used to build a madrasa–Qina, Qus, where the governor of Upper Egypt resides, Luxor, a pretty little town containing the tomb of the pious ascetic Abu’l-Hajjaj, Esna, and thence a day and a night’s journey through desert country to Edfu.
Camels, Hyenas, and Bejas
Here we crossed the Nile and, hiring camels, journeyed with a party of Arabs through a desert, totally devoid of settlements but quite safe for travelling. One of our halts was at Humaythira, a place infested with hyenas. All night long we kept driving them away, and indeed one got at my baggage, tore open one of the sacks, pulled out a bag of dates, and made off with it. We found the bag next morning, torn to pieces and with most of the contents eaten. After fifteen days’ travelling we reached the town of Aydhab, a large town, well supplied with milk and fish; dates and grain are imported from Upper Egypt. Its inhabitants are Bejas. These people are black-skinned; they wrap themselves in yellow blankets and tie headbands about a fingerbreadth wide round their heads. They do not give their daughters any share in their inheritance. They live on camels milk and they ride on Meharis [dromedaries].
One-third of the city belongs to the Sultan of Egypt and two-thirds to the King of the Bejas, who is called al-Hudrubi. On reaching Aydhab we found that al-Hudrubi was engaged in warfare with the Turks [i.e. the troops of the Sultan of Egypt], that he had sunk the ships and that the Turks had fled before him. It was impossible for us to attempt the sea-crossing [across the Red Sea], so we sold the provisions that we had made ready for it, and returned to Qus with the Arabs from whom we had hired the camels”.
At a later date, Ibn Battuta sailed from Jeddah to Aydhab; this is what he mentions about it:
“After the [AD 1332] pilgrimage I went to Judda [Jedda], intending to take ship to Yemen and India, but that plan fell through and I could get no one to join me. I stayed at Judda about forty days. There was a ship there going to Qusayr [Kosair], and I went on board to see what state it was in, but I was not satisfied. This was an act of providence, for the ship sailed and foundered in the open sea, and very few escaped.
Afterwards I took ship for Aydhab, but we were driven to a roadsted called Ra’s Dawa’ir [on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea], from which we made our way [overland] with some Bejas through the desert to Aydhab. Thence we travelled to Edfu [on the Nile] and down the Nile to Cairo, where I stayed for a few days, then set out for Syria and passed for the second time through Gaza, Hebron, Jerusalem, Ramlah Acre, Tripoli, and Jabala to Ladhiqiya”.
Suakin
In the Antiquity, Suakin was known as Ptolemais Theron (Ptolemais of the Hunters), and it was a Ptolemaic and Roman colony that remained out of the control of the great inland state of Ethiopia (which is Sudan) that had its capital at Meroe (today’s Bagrawiyah), not far from the point where Atbarah river (Astavaras in Ancient Greek texts) joins the United Nile river.
Meroe was far greater, wealthier, and more important than Axum, the capital of Abyssinia that stretched further on the south in the mountainous area of today’s Northern Eritrea and the confines of Northern Abyssinia (today’s Fake Ethiopia). Whereas Axum, capital of Abyssinia, controlled the harbor city of Adulis (nearby today’s Massawa) and the surrounding coastland, Meroe did not control any portion the Red Sea coast of today’s Sudan. Meroe was far larger and stronger a state, but its trade with Egypt (and later the Roman Empire) and across Sahara turned it to a formidable continental power.
After the Abyssinian Axumite attack and destruction of Meroe (370 CE), and following a 50-year period of migrations and confusion, most of Meroitic Ethiopia’s territory became the center of the Christian Ethiopian state of Makuria with capital at Dunqula Agouza, around 580 km south of today’s Egyptian/Sudanese borderline. After Nobatia (further in the North) and Makuria, a third Christian state was incepted in the area of today’s Khartoum. Makuria was stronger than the other two states and controlled today’s Sudanese coastline, but in Sudan (i.e. the true Ethiopia) Christianity was spread from the North, not from the Southeast (Axumite Abyssinia). In reality, there were never good relations between the three Kushitic Christian kingdoms of Ethiopia and the Semitic kingdom of Abyssinia.
With the early expansion of Islam, the Red Sea coast escaped from the control of both, Makuria (Ethiopia) and Abyssinia, becoming part of Islamic Caliphate’s territory. As Makuria was a Sahara-centered kingdom (like Meroitic Ethiopia), the kings of Dunqulah managed to survive, prosper and expand across Sahara for many long centuries; quite contrarily, as Axumite Abyssinia was a Red Sea / Yemen-centered kingdom, it disintegrated immediately and disappeared quickly, leaving no posterior traces other ruins.
The indigenous nation of Blemmyes (Beja), who live west of the Nile in the times of the Egyptian Antiquity and whose pre-Islamic past is known for several millennia thanks to Egyptian Hieroglyphic, Greek, Latin and Coptic texts, may have enjoyed a limited independence around Suakin as a vassal state for several centuries after the early expansion of Islam. There was however no chance for a united Beja kingdom; this nation appears to have been divided across tribal lines until they were progressively Islamized.
In Islamic historiography, Suakin is first mentioned by al Hamdani. The Mamluk pressure started being felt as early as 1264, when Islamic armies from Upper Egypt took control of Suakin, although Makuria still existed in the inland. The rise of Mamluk influence in the Makurian affairs, the Islamization of part of the Makurian nobility, and the internal Beja royal rivalry between Aydhab and Suakin are the three reasons of the consolidation of Islamic control over Suakin.
After 1317, Suakin was permanently under Islamic control and, few decades later, Makuria totally collapsed in the inland, leaving Alodia as the only Christian Ethiopian (Sudanese) state which survived until as late as 1600. The loyalty of the Suakin Beja ruler to the Mamluk ruler at Cairo was expressed after 1317 with the dispatch of no less than 80 slaves, 300 camels, and 30 tusks of ivory annually! Progressively the Beja became Muslims.
Al Dimashqi, who slightly antedates Ibn Battuta, mentioned the existence of a local king. Ibn Battuta referred to Suakin where he however never set foot, specifying that the local Sultan was the son of the Sharif of Mecca, and that he had inherited this position from his maternal uncles, who were Beja, which in itself testifies to an advanced level of Beja Islamization.
Massawa
The Eritrean Red Sea coast came under the Islamic Caliphate’s control as early as the middle of the 7th c. The first Islamic naval attack against the Abyssinian harbor of Adulis took place already in 640 – even before the siege of Alexandria – under the admiral of the Red Sea fleet Alkama ibn Mujazziz. After several battles and counterattacks, Adulis was finally occupied and destroyed never to recover again. Subsequently, Axum, the Abyssinian capital, was cut off from the Red Sea trade routes and deprived from its main resources; it was therefore only normal that its end came soon afterwards because the small country did not control any part of the African hinterland, having always been a Red Sea / Yemen-centered state.
The fact that the three Christian Kingdoms of Ethiopia, notably Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia in today’s Sudanese territory, had always isolated and quarantined Axumite Abyssinia played a determinant role in the final elimination of Axum.
As Beja progressively expanded, several small local kingdoms were formed across the former Abyssinian coastland (i.e. the northern coast of today’s Eritrea), and mixed marriages with Muslims (mainly Yemenite merchants and navigators) consolidated their limited basis as vassals of the Caliph.
Massawa rose gradually to prominence in the Dahlak archipelago region (around 50 km north of the ancient Abyssinian harbor of Adulis), but was always subordinated to the Islamic Caliphate as regards governmental issues, and heavily dependent on northern Beja tribes and royal lines. This tribal royal tradition continued down to the Ottoman times, when Massawa was a Turkish stronghold in the South. Then, the ‘viceroy’ of Massawa had to report to the Ottoman governor of Suakin. All the small sultanates that were formed on northern Eritrean territory were peacefully kept as vassal dependencies of the Caliphate for many centuries until they were annexed to the Ottoman Caliphate.
Conclusion
Following the above points, we can safely claim that
– the map included in the presentation “The Travels of Ibn Battuta. A Virtual Tour with the 14th Century Traveler” featured in the portal of Berkeley University is historically wrong and greatly misplaced.
– it should have included all the African Red Sea coast into the Dar al Islam territory that is the only demarcated in this map.
– the name ‘Ethiopia’ is wrongly placed nearby the Red Sea coast and should therefore be removed to the left (further in the Sudanese inland) and there replaced by ‘Makuria’ and ‘Alodia’ with the extra definition ‘Christian kingdoms of Ethiopia’. There is enough space for this information to be properly added on the map.
– to the south of Alodia, ‘Abyssinia’ should also be noted because the small and barbaric Amhara state had already been formed in 1270 (under the fake ‘Solomonic’ dynasty with the exorbitant claims and the historical falsification as foundation of its misplaced, pseudo-Christian pretensions).
– finally, alongside the Somali coast, the precision ‘Somali Sultanates’ should be added.
megalommatiscomments 