Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

2 4 8Islam i n World Cult u r e sarmed with firearms provided to them by the Europeans, encircled theMuslim forces. And on that day there were martyred 30,000 from Harar’ssons and the Kottu tribes who fought with them. Among those individualswere 300 hafiz al-Qur’an and 700 newly married youth from Harar’ss o n s .And the remembrance of these 700 wedded martyrs became part ofthe Harari wedding customs until today, when every Harari groom isgiven fabric that is called “satti baqla” in Harari, which means “seven hundred.”It is a rectangular cloth from white woven cotton, suitable for covering[that is, clothing] or for a turban, ornamented with a red stripealong the edges symbolizing the martyrs’ murders. When he presents it,the gift giver, who usually is the paternal uncle of the woman’s father,whispers in the ear of the groom: “So that you do not forget.”The Afar and Somali to the south of their brothers, the people ofH a r a r, participated in the wars that Imam al-Ghazi Ahmad bin Ibrahimled, and in the battles that preceded and followed them. The Afar are distinguishedby their violence and harshness and pride, and after the fall ofHarar after the battle of C’alanqo, they certainly continued to enjoy theirindependence and their haughtiness and a great Islamic zeal, owing towhich no unbeliever dared to set foot on Afar soil. The Afar continuedunder the government of their sultans who persisted in carrying out s h a r i ’ apunishments. The last of these sultans is the Sultan Ali Murah, who currentlyresides in Jeddah in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, after having ledtenacious struggles in the defense of his people’s independence and theIslamic religion.In spite of all this Islamic zeal that the Afar enjoyed, illiteracy spreadwidely among them, until ignorance of the Islamic s h a r i ’ a among therank and file became a reason for the persistence of traditional customs,which Islam rejects, among them. And this is one of the results of ignoranceand lack of religious education.The spread of Islam and the Arabic language acquired an additionalmomentum at the beginning of the current century as the result of thelarge immigration of Yemenis and some of the sons of the Hijaz and Najdto Ethiopia. This immigration led to the biggest spread of the Arabic languageamong many of the inhabitants of that country. It did not takelong before the Arab immigrants were joined by Arabs arriving fromLibya with the Italian forces who invaded Abyssinia in the thirties of thisChristian century.The relations between these Arabs and the inhabitants of the countrydeveloped through marriage and through their trading activities, whichthey extended to all corners of Ethiopia, along with their retention oftheir customs, their culture, and their profound devotion to the perf o r m-