A river runs through it
By Ruth Almog
Haggai Erlich succeeds in shedding light on the myths surrounding the history of relations between Egypt and Ethiopia - so says a surprisingly favorable Al-Ahram Weekly review.
"The Cross and the River: Ethiopia, Egypt and the
Nile" by Haggai Erlich, Lynne Rienner Publishers,
240 pages, $49.95 (reviewed by Gamal Nkrumah in
Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line, September 18-24, 2003)
The English-language Al-Ahram
Weekly, which is published in
Cairo, is one of the most
important publications in the
Arab world. This is a paper
that expresses the basic ideas
of the Egyptian establishment.
Therefore, it is not trivial
that it has published a review
of Haggai Erlich's book, "The Cross and the
River: Ethiopia, Egypt and the Nile," which was
published in London by Lynne Rienner
Publishers. Erlich is a professor at Tel Aviv
University in the department of Middle Eastern
and African history and has written many books
about Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Middle East.
The critique was written by Gamal Nkrumah, son
of Kwame Nkrumah, former president of Ghana and
a close friend of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who made
a match for him with an Egyptian woman. Today
Gamal Nkrumah is book review editor of the
weekly, which generally ignores Israelis.
Nkrumah's review of Erlich's book is not only
long and comprehensive, but also very positive,
even thought the book deals with the
bone-marrow of Egypt's existence, the Nile, and
the possibility that Ethiopia will dam the
river - Egypt's lifeline, and therefore a
matter that has bothered the Egyptians for
centuries.
Nkrumah writes that Erlich's book reveals many
of the myths concerning the history of
relations between Egypt and Ethiopia. The
Egyptians' fear that the Ethiopians will block
the Nile has weighed on these relations ever
since the Middle Ages. "In more recent times,"
notes Nkrumah, "the former Ethiopian military
ruler Mengistu Haile Maryam is said to have
threatened late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat
with cutting off Egypt's water supply."
According to Nkrumah, Erlich took a huge task
upon himself, one with which no one had ever
grappled before. The book covers over 1,000
years and thanks to Erlich's skill at using
historical minutiae, a refreshing feeling
arises with respect to each of the periods
discussed, from Mameluke times to Nasser's day
and thereafter.
"The author's descriptive powers," says Nkrumah
in praise of Erlich's style, "so resonant in
his recounting of specific incidents, allow the
reader to participate in the sensation of being
party to distant, but momentous events."
Nkrumah also relates that Erlich, upon the
completion of his master's degree at Tel Aviv
University, went to the School of African and
Oriental Studies at London University to write
his doctorate on Ethiopian history, and that
among Erlich's other publications are "Ethiopia
and the Middle East," (1994) and "The Nile:
Histories, Cultures and Myths."
Ups and downs
Both Egypt and Ethiopia are ancient countries,
but after Napoleon's conquest of Egypt, the
latter began to look toward the West and
modernization, while Ethiopia shut itself off
and clung strongly to its traditions. However,
Ethiopia too had to change after it was
occupied by a Western power. Egyptian-Ethiopian
relations have known ups and downs. Apparently
in Ethiopia today there is an interest in
Egyptian literature, and the works of Naguib
Mahfouz have been translated into Amharic.
Erlich notes that "the medieval enterprise of
translating works from Arabic into Ethiopian
languages has now resumed."
Nkrumah writes that Erlich's book is not only
descriptive, but also analytic. Through
sketching the past, the author draws
conclusions about the present. Significant
attention is given in the book to relations
between the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt and
its Ethiopian Orthodox counterpart, and there
is also, of course, a discussion of the large
Muslim communities in the two countries. Erlich
writes at length about they medieval Ethiopian
Muslim leader Ahmed Grang, also known as "Ahmed
the Left- Handed," who between 1529 and 1423,
pursued an Islamic jihad aimed at conquering
Ethiopia and converting it to Islam. From his
stronghold in the city of Harar in the east,
his armies set out to conquer the Christian
cities of northern Ethiopia and to convert
their inhabitants. Grang had help from
neighboring Muslim countries, and especially
from the Ottomans who ruled Egypt at the time.
He was finally defeated by the intervention of
the Portuguese army, which came to the aid of
the Christians.
Relations between the two countries were
re-shaped when Mohammed Ali Pasha tried to
establish an empire stretching all across the
Nile basin. The Egyptian plan was thwarted by
the British, who worked in concert with the
Ethiopians. The British inflicted a humiliating
defeat on the Egyptians in 1876 at the Battle
of Gura. That year marked a turning point in
the history of Egypt and the countries of the
Horn of Africa and the Nile Basin, and paved
the way for the British conquest of Egypt.
Erlich stresses the importance of the Battle of
Gura as one of the two key events in the
history of Ethiopia, the second being the
breaking of the ties between the Egyptian and
the Ethiopians churches in the 20th century.
The Ethiopian victory at Gura in 1876 was also
a crucial event in the history of Egypt, which
fell to the British in 1882.
Throughout the book, Erlich reminds the reader
that for 17 centuries, Egypt was the source of
the Abun, the post of the bishop, who headed
the Ethiopian Church that was the key to the
religious legitimacy of the Ethiopian political
establishment. This dependence on Coptic
Christian legitimization was a constant source
of tension.
Nkrumah believes that the most interesting
chapters of the book are those that deal with
the years 1959-1991. They demonstrate Erlich's
deep familiarity with the writings of Egyptian
intellectuals and the various ideological
trends in the Egyptian press. Overall, Nkrumah
considers Erlich's book a powerful and
enjoyable narrative.
"Finally," says Nkrumah, "books such as
Erlich's, in spite of his biases, are needed
for informed policy debate on the future of
Egyptian-Ethiopian relations, as they are for
Egypt's relations with Africa more generally."
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