21 February 1543 – 467 Years After the Death of the Greatest African of the 2nd Millennium
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
February 22, 2010
Standing at the end of a long line involving the Hamitic King Perehu of Punt (who made 2nd millennium BCE Somalia outshine Egypt), the Egyptian Pharaohs Thutmosis III and Ramses II, the Kushitic – Egyptian Pharaoh Taharqa (who ruled a 2500 km long country alongside the Nile), the Ethiopian (Sudanese – not Abyssinian) Qore (King) Nastasen, the Great Qore Arkamani-qo, the Forefather of today´s Oromos, Sidamas and the other persecuted Kushitic peoples, and Qore Shorkaror, the Vanquisher of the Axumite Abyssinians, the Somali King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim rose to power in the early 16th century, and led Islamic Eastern Africa to the climax of its power, wealth, and civilization.
Standing at the origin of millions of African fighters who sacrificed themselves in order to liberate their lands from the scourge of the European racist colonialism and evildoing, the Somali King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim is – more than any other ruler, leader, intellectual, erudite or spiritual leader – the embodiment of the African Struggle for Identity, Integrity, Self-determination, Humanity and Renaissance.
The present article does not reflect an interest for a biographical sketch. Arabic and Portuguese books have been elaborated about him, and his legendary bravery, prowess, and tenacity, already during the period of his unmatched exploits. These books are the basic historical sources for us today to reconstitute the 16th century East African History; one of them is the famous Conquest of Abyssinia, Futuh al Habasha.
In the present article, I want mainly to underscore the fact that the Somali King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim represents the best model, ideal, prototype, and point of reference of every African activist, fighter, leader, liberation front member, intellectual, scholar or spiritual leader today.
With his struggle against the Portuguese colonial army that tried to recollect the remnant of the then defunct Abyssinian kingdom and in the process spread division and discord, King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim demonstrates that there is no European superiority over Africa - in any way. Compared to King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim, his contemporary counterparts and rivals, the Portuguese kings, Manuel I and Joao, can be almost categorized as illiterate; the latter´s lack of culture became a subject of discussion for his own chronicler! Measured up to King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim, Manuel I and Joao seem to be rulers of palatial conspiracy and intrigue rather than frontline military leaders of ardor and virtue.
Precisely because of the fact that today there is no paradigm better than King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim for any African, either Muslim, Christian or follower of traditional religions, the ruling elite of the Western world strives to ensure that little is only said about the Great African King, and more importantly that it is all flawed with numerous inaccuracies, absolutely false contextualization, partly oblivion, distortion of historical truth, and effective adjustment to the aforementioned elite´s needs of falsification.
The deplorable effort of forgery of any historical event pertaining to King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim permeates everything. Subjective approaches, biased comments, evident hatred for the Great Somali King is attested everywhere. From the entries of Wikipedia to the fallacious English edition of the Arabic historical source, the aforementioned book Futuh al Habasha (published by the Tsehai Publishers in September 2003 / http://www.amazon.com/Futuh-Al-Habasha-Conquest-Abyssinia-Al-Habasa/dp/0972317252; acceptably translated from Arabic to English by Paul Lester Stenhouse, but viciously annotated by the fake historian Richard Pankhurst who has been for decades on the payroll of the deep, racist, Abyssinian state, during the royal, communist and pseudo-republican regimes), all deserve to be refuted one by one.
Western racist bogus-scholars, like the professional falsifier Richard Pankhurst, write out of venomous hatred and malignant rancor, shedding an incredible, Anti-African poison in order to spread their premeditated schemes, rants and obscurantism worldwide. Their effort to denigrate King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim results in more than one mistake per each line of their mistaken texts.
It is evident that complete refutation is impractical and unnecessary; it would take an entire encyclopedia to refute a book, and a book to refute an article. I intend however to publish several articles – examples of refutation of the lies shamelessly published by several authors, and more particularly wikipedia.
The Anti-African effort of vilification is overwhelming. In the brief description of the book published in the Amazon website (see above link), King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim is not a king anymore (!) but a mere "imam". This is ludicrous. In the traditional Sunni Islam, the caliph and the imam have to be the same person. Can one professional historian imagine to call Emperor (Caliph) Harun al Rashid an "imam"? This would be a total fallacy, because certainly Harun al Rashid was the spiritual leader of all the Muslims in his vast empire and beyond, but this does not concern Political History.
And the military events, as well as the political developments, involve no imams at all. If the participants happen to be religious leaders (either at a limited local level or nationwide), they don´t take part in the events under this specific qualification; and this means that the mention is irrelevant because the only that matters is under what qualification they took active part in the event described and commented.
And of course, with his capital at Awdal, King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim was the imam of all the East believers, ruling an area of almost the size of today´s Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Abyssinia (fake Ethiopia) combined. Certainly, he was not the Caliph, because a few years earlier the Ottoman Sultan had taken the insignia of the Islamic Caliphate from Cairo to Istanbul (1517). But Ahmed ibn Ibrahim was certainly a Muslim king who referred to the Sultan as his supreme authority, like many other kings. And King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim was well recognized as such.
For the historical forgers of the level of Pankhurst, there is a simple, and impossible to answer, question – as regards the real rank of Ahmed ibn Ibrahim:
How would he be able to obtain official support from the Sublime Porte, if he were not an important Muslim king already recognized the Sultan´s authority?
There is no doubt that to take all the reinforcements mentioned in wikipedia {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish-Portuguese_War_(1538-1557)}, one had to be of a significantly high rank, not a mere imam or local military ruler.
As a matter of fact, never ever an Abyssinian ruler managed to control such a vast territory, and this historical reality greatly displeases the Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians who know that, when it comes to great historical achievements, they are inferior to the Somalis. This deep knowledge generates a compact, psychological complex of inferiority that permeates the minds of all the Monophysitic (Tewahedo) Abyssinians, and this complex is the reason of the atrocities the soldiers of Meles Zenawi perpetrated at Mogadishu.
Having correctly assessed this reality, the evil Freemasonic Orientalists of England and France try to please their Abyssinian slaves (they view them like that – never as homologues or partners), writing the version of pseudo-History that supposedly heals (but unfortunately, it allegedly worsens) the immense Abyssinian complex of historical inferiority and well hidden humiliation.
To do so, the Freemasonic Orientalists of the West employ a huge arsenal of fake terms. Indicatively, in the aforementioned text – description, King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim is called Gurey (which is a Somali name used about the great king in an informal way) or even Gran, which is an Abyssinian derogatory term. The famous Yemenite author Shahab al-Din Ahmed b. Abdul Qadir, who wrote the historical text, becomes a "Yamani author" (!) so that nobody identifies him correctly.
In an effort to defame the great conquest of King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim, the Freemasonic Orientalists turned his superb – and unique during the entire 2nd millennium in Africa – military exploits to a "Jihad or holy war" – term good enough to discredit the historical event and the perpetrators.
And as every African can guess, in this text, there is no mention of the Portuguese army, so that the ignorant Western reader fails to properly contextualize the event and accurate perceive the significance of the great African hero; thus Western readership ends up considering the event as part of an Islamic Jihad and not as an Anti-colonial war.
In several forthcoming articles, I will expand on the subject. At this point, I want to terminate this contribution to a Pan-African Commemoration, by making known that for Arabic speaking readers the original Arabic text of the Conquest of Abyssinia is available online here: http://community.webshots.com/user/SomaliConquestofAbyssinia
I herewith copy the introductory text that accompanies the pages of the book that have been uploaded in jpeg documents (as per above):
Somali Conquest of Abyssinia (Futuh al-Habasha) by Shahab al-Din Ahmed b. Abdul Qadir
The famous 16th century Yemenite erudite Shahab al-Din Ahmed b. Abdul Qadir is the primary source for the Somali conquest of the tiny Abyssinian kingdom that comprised the Monophysitic (Tewahedo) Amhara and Tigray tribes. Led by the Great Somali King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim, the Somali army marked several victories over the Abyssinians and their Portuguese allies, heralding therefore the Era of National Liberation struggles of all the African peoples.
That is why the anniversary of the death of the Great Somali King (21 February 1543) must become an All African Day and a Liberation Jubilee in recognition of the tremendous contribution of King Ahmed ibn Ibrahim to the Most Glorious Page of 2nd Millennium African History.
Note
Picture: Painting (preserved at the Horniman Museum, London) that reflects the Abyssinian version of events: "Burning of Churches by Muslims and the Death of Cristobal de Gama and the Fall and Death of Ahmed ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (1506-43) Shot by a Portuguese Musketeer, c.1900 (oil on canvas). Artist: Kegneketa Jemlieri Hailu of Gondar (fl.1900). From:
http://fotobank.ru/image/BR00-9989.html
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