Today, Islam is widespread in most of Africa, and more than 99% of the local Muslims are Sunni. In North and West Africa, Chad, Sudan and Eritrea, indigenous people practice the Maliki madhhab, in Egypt and East Africa from Somalia to Mozambique and Malawi, as well as in Central Africa - the Shafi'i madhhab. Sunnis of the Hanafi madhhab in these countries are ethno-confessional groups of foreign origin. In the countries of North Africa from Egypt to Algeria, they are descendants of "Turks", "Circassians" and others, in the countries of East and South Africa and on the Mascarene Islands, they are descendants of Indo-Pakistanis [Islam in West Africa, 1988; Islam in East, Central and South Africa, 1991; Kobishchanov, 1993, p. 5-13]1. And only in Ethiopia, Hanafism is practiced by a multi-million-strong mass of the indigenous population.

Key words: Sunnis, Ethiopia, Hanafis, Shafi'is, Malikis, Muslims of Ethiopia.

The history of Islam in Ethiopia is unique. Since the middle of the fourth century, Christianity has been spreading in this country, and in the region of Oz. Tana is also Judaism. During the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, many Muslims from Mecca came to Aksum, the capital of the Christian empire that occupied half of Ethiopia and Eritrea, fleeing persecution. After Muhammad's return to Mecca, most of them also returned. In the VIII-IX centuries. on the outskirts of the Aksumite kingdom - northern (Wadi Nobt, Kuiha), north-eastern (Dahlak), south-eastern and southern-communities of Muslim merchants were formed. At the end of the IX-XI centuries, a number of Muslim states were formed on these lands - local rulers adopted Islam. In the period from the tenth to the first half of the thirteenth century, the Muslim kingdom of Shoah of the Makhzumi dynasty flourished in the very center of what is now Ethiopia. Its population spoke an Ephi-Semitic language similar to Amharic and Argobba. The Shoah dominated the other Muslim states of Ethiopia. The king of Khadya (south of the Shoah) also converted to Islam. The inhabitants of Khadya spoke the Kushite language of the Sidamo group. These states squeezed the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia of the Zague dynasty. In the middle of the 13th century and

The article was written as a presentation at the international symposium "The Heritage of Abu Hanifa and Its Importance in the Dialogue of Civilizations" (5th-6th October 2009, Dushambe).

1 Bantu-speaking Muslims in Malawi, Congo and the Comoros are Shafi'i. In South Africa, most Shafi'is belong to an ethno-confessional group of Cape Muslims, descendants of Afrikaans Creole-speaking Indonesians, while others belong to Bantu peoples, and Hanafis are descendants of immigrants from British India (although they were also influenced by Bantu Hanafis). Kharijite-Ibadite communities also survive in North Africa (Berbers) and in Kenya (Omani Arabs). There are also small Ismaili communities of recent origin in Eastern and Southern Africa. Meanwhile, in the VIII-XII centuries Kharijism and Ismailism were widespread in the north of Africa, and in the east of Africa in the XVIII century the transoceanic cities submitted to the Ibadites of Oman, in the XIX century the Ibadite Sultanate of Zanzibar flourished here [Kobishchanov et al., 2008, vol. I].

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this kingdom and the Shoah declined, and in the last third of the thirteenth century, both were conquered by Amharic Christians. In the 14th and 16th centuries, all the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim states of the Ethiopian Highlands became part of the Christian Empire.

The Muslims of Eastern Ethiopia - the Kushites and the Ethiopians-fought hard and bravely for their independence from the Empire. During this period, it was dominated by the Yifat kingdom of the Valasma dynasty. The Qadiriyya tariqa spread in Yifat, and its members were in the first ranks of the Mujahideen [Kobishchanov et al., 2008, vol. I, pp. 786-792; vol. II, pp. 561-576]. What kind of madhhab the local Muslims practiced before the 14th century is anyone's guess.

It was only around the middle of the 14th century that the great Arab historian Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Fadlallah al - ' Omari al-Dimashki received information about the Muslim madhhab in Egypt from faqihs who came from the city of Zayla (then in Yifat, now in northern Somalia). According to the Faqihs, the king and most of the inhabitants of Yifat are Sunnis of the Shafi'i madhhab, while the Muslims of the states of Davaro, Arababni, Sharha, and Bali are Sunnis of the Hanafi madhhab (Gaudefroy-Demombynes, 1927) .2 Hence, it is clear that in the then Muslim part of Ethiopia, in addition to its east and the coast of the Gulf of Aden (now northern Somalia), the Hanafi madhhab prevailed, which sharply distinguished it from neighboring countries.

The subsequent fate of the Muslim peoples and Islamic civilization in Ethiopia was dramatic. In the 15th and first half of the 16th centuries, the above - mentioned states (except for the eastern part of the Yifat-Harar and Cherchera plateaus, the Issa and Afar countries) were partially inhabited by Christians, who formed a privileged minority here: the feudal aristocracy and the warrior-farmer class. In 1529, a new jihad of Yifat Muslims and Somali tribes began under the leadership of Imam Ahmad Levshi (Gran, Gure). In the course of this thirty years ' war, the Christian Ethiopian Empire was first defeated, a significant part of its population converted to Islam, but then it was revived and defeated the Muslim Yifat. Those who temporarily converted to Islam mostly returned to Christianity, but some new Muslims became martyrs and even saints.

Both Ethiopian states - the Christian Empire and the Muslim Yifat-were extremely weakened, their lands were depopulated, and they began to be settled by nomadic and semi-nomadic Oromo tribes, who eventually made up the majority of the population of the Ethiopian Highlands, as well as northern Kenya. They did not know the state and monotheism, but they had castes.

In the vast expanses conquered by the Oromo, large and small enclaves of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish populations have been preserved. But gradually, most of the Oromo people settled down, adopted the culture of neighboring agricultural peoples, and with it-Islam or Christianity.

In eastern Ethiopia, the main centers of Islam remained the city of Harar and the sultanates of the Afar people, especially in the Ausa oasis at the mouth of the Auash River, where the Walasma dynasty reigned for a long time. In the north-east, the Azebu, Raya, and Wallo Oromo tribes were the earliest converts to Islam by the Muslims of the eastern edge of the Ethiopian Highlands. In southwestern Ethiopia, the Oromo were unable to conquer and assimilate the states of the Kushite (and Omot) peoples, as well as the Ethiopian-Semitic peoples of the Gurage group. Some of them professed Islam (Kushites of Khadya, Alabo, part of Ometo-Valamo, part of Gurage, etc.). In the 19th century, the Oromo-Lamas converted to Islam in western Ethiopia. It is a Muslim state

2 Enrico Cerulli published the Arabic text of this and other reports on medieval Ethiopia, with an Italian translation and commentary, and used other manuscripts besides those studied by M. Godefroy-Demombin. L. E. Kubbel, who gave a Russian translation of Omari's reports on the countries of West Africa and Ethiopia, also used an additional St. Petersburg manuscript. I rely on the publications of M. Godefroy-Demombin, E. Cerulli (who kindly sent me his works) and L. E. Kubbel, as well as on the latter's oral explanations.

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It existed for a hundred years (c. 1830-1932), first as an independent state, then as a vassal of the Ethiopian Empire, and its capital, Jimma, became the main center of Islam in the west and southwest of the Ethiopian Highlands. Even earlier, numerous Oromic tribes were Islamized in the south-east of the Ethiopian Highlands, where the Muslim kingdom of Bali once existed and the granary of Yifata - the Harer and Chercher plateaus-was located (Huntigford, 1955; Lewis, 1965). Here, the city of Harar was the center of Islam and the influence of Somalian Muslims was felt.

The resurgence of Islam in Ethiopia took place against the backdrop of an even greater resurgence of Islam and the Somali people in the Horn of Africa, the Arabization and Islamization of Sudan, and the rise of the Sennar Sultanate. Maliki Sudan and Shafi'i Somalia, with their distinctive forms of popular Islam distinct from those of Ethiopia [Trimingham, 1952; Trimingham, 1965; Lewis, 1955; Lewis, 1966; Shack, 1966; Shack, 1974]3 became Ethiopia's main neighbors. The Maliki madhhab spread from Sudan, and the Shafi'i madhhab spread from Somalia, Arabia, and Egypt. These influences intersected, and one of the neighborhoods of Harar, populated by low-status artisans, became Maliki. In the northwest and west of the Ethiopian Highlands, along the entire border with the Sennar Sultanate, Maliki Sunnism has become the dominant religion. In northern Eritrea, it gradually replaced Christianity. Even in the largest Christian enclave in northern Ethiopia and central Eritrea, Muslim villages and urban neighborhoods have sprung up. Muslims were so closely associated with trade here that the Amharic word negade (and the corresponding Tigrai word negadi) became synonymous with the word Islam (meaning "Muslim"). A similar pattern was observed in the Amharic Christian Shoah. In the semi-Christian enclaves of the southwestern Ethiopian Highlands, among the Omot people of Kafa and Ometo-Gemu, merchants were also Muslims.

From time to time, Ethiopian emperors and the Church staged persecutions, forbidding Muslims to own land, demanding their conversion to Christianity. But in between periods of persecution, relations between Muslims, Christians, Jews (falasha), and members of syncretic sects in Ethiopia's main Christian enclaves were peaceful and tolerant. The number of Muslims grew, partly due to the conversion of Christians to Islam.

How, in the face of the defeat of Muslim states, the destruction of most Muslim cities, the settlement of Muslim lands by pagans, and the Islamization of the latter under the influence of neighboring countries dominated by Malikism and Shafiism - how could the Hanafi madhhab survive in Ethiopia at all?

I must say that Ethiopian Muslims maintained some connections with the Hanafi world in the XVI-XX centuries. The Turkish Musketeers fought for some time in the army of Ahmad Gran, while the Portuguese Musketeers fought in the army of the Christians. In the period from the defeat of Yifat and the Orom invasion to the unification of Ethiopia in the 19th century, Hanafis were not only Ethiopian Muslims, but also some foreigners: Turks and merchants from South and Central Asia. In the 16th century, part of the territory of present-day Eritrea was occupied by the Turkish province of Habesh, centered in Masaua. In the XIX century. It passed to Egypt, where the ruling group practiced the Hanafi madhhab. From 1821 to 1881, the entire Sudan belonged to Egypt. For a time, some of the Egyptian ruler's troops captured the Afar and Somali seaports and even Harar, but at the end of the XIX century they had to leave them. At the end of the XVI-XVIII centuries, the Ethiopian emperors were served by Turkish Musketeers, whose commander bore the title of pasha.

In the 17th century. Ethiopia was visited by travelers from the Ottoman Empire, India, and Central Asia. There were also Tajiks among them. In 1647, an embassy of the Zaidi Imam of Yemen headed by the prominent scholar al-Hasan arrived in the Ethiopian Empire

3 To this should be added many publications of one of the largest Ethiopians-Alula Pankhurst and other scientists.

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ibn Ahmad al-Khaimi al-Qawqabani. It stayed here for more than a year. In the imperial capital of Gondar, al-Haimi found a Muslim quarter. One of the close associates of Emperor Fasiledes (1632-1667) was a native of "the land of Bukhara" (min ard Buhara) named Muhammad ibn Musa al-Bukhari. He served as the Emperor's interpreter from Arabic to Amharic, and spoke Arabic "to the utmost perfection." Having converted to Christianity, Muhammad ibn Musa received a new, Ethiopian Christian name, which al-Khaimi does not report [Peiser, 1894]. Therefore, it is not possible to identify him with one of the Faciledes ' courtiers. He was probably the" Mughal " that Faciledes sent to India in 1650 to visit the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb together with the French traveler Francois Bernier (Bernier, 1936). In India at that time there were many Tajiks among the "Mughals".

Intensive penetration of Hanafi foreigners (Turks and Muslims from British India) into Ethiopia began in the late 19th century. Travelers report that they were engaged not only in urban trade, but also in traveling trade in rural areas. In the first third of the twentieth century, Sunni Hanafi and Ismaili compradors from British India gained considerable economic influence in Ethiopia (Zervos, 1936). But the vast majority of Sunni Hanafi Madhhabs were native Ethiopians here.

What is the situation now?

According to various publications and my personal observations (I visited Ethiopia eight times between 1966 and 2000), all four Sunni madhhabs are represented in this country, but each of them is professed by groups of unequal size and different ethnic (or sub-ethnic) appearance. Thus, of the two closely related Kushite peoples - Somalis and Afars - the former are almost all Shafi'i, and the majority of the latter are Hanafi (although there are also Afar-Shafi'i tribes). There are more than two million Somalis in today's Ethiopia, and one million Afars. Among the Oromo, one of the two (along with the Amharic) largest peoples of Ethiopia, more than half profess Christianity (Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism in the form of Lutheranism, Baptism, Adventism, etc.), about 40% - Sunni Islam. Moreover, among the Oromo-Sunnis there are Hanafis, Shafi'is and Malikis. Approximately the same ratio of Christians and Muslims is found among the Ethiosemite group of Gurage ethnic groups and neighboring groups of ethnic groups - the Kushite group of Sidamo and the Omot group of Ometo. The Amharic people are the culturally dominant people of Ethiopia-the overwhelming majority are Christians, but there is also an influential group of Muslim Amharic people in the local Islamic community (the so-called Wollo and others). Closely related to them, but small Harari-the indigenous inhabitants of the city of Harar-are Muslims, and among the southern (Ethiopian) part of the Efiosemite people of Tigray Muslims-approximately the same the same percentage as among the Amharic population (most Tigrayans are Christians). Closely related to the Amharic and Harari peoples, the Argobba mostly live north of Addis Ababa and Ankobar (Christians), but a small part-near Harar (here they are Muslims)4. The eastern (Ethiopian) part of the Nilotic nation of Anyua (Anuak) in the city of Gambela has a relatively large number of Protestant Christians. In the Maliki mosque of Gambela, among the Arabs and other peoples of the Sudanese-Ethiopian border, I found only a few Anyua Muslims.

In Addis Ababa, over the years, I have met with spiritual and intellectual leaders of Muslims, including imams and the President of the University of Addis Ababa (ethnic Harari). Conversations with them have convinced me that the majority of Ethiopian Muslims today belong to two Sunni madhhabs: Maliki and Hanafi; the third place is occupied by the Shafi'i madhhab. There are relatively few Hanbali Wahhabis, but they are backed by wealthy Arabs from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

4 I met Argobba in Ankobara in 1991 and in Harare in 1966, as well as in Addis Ababa in different years.

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There are different estimates of the number of Muslims in Ethiopia. According to the 2007 census, 62.8% of the country's 75.1 million people practice Christianity and 33.9% Islam. If we assume that Hanafis make up about 40% of Ethiopia's Muslims, then this (taking into account population growth) is approximately 11-12 million people. Nowhere in Africa is there such a large and multi-ethnic community of Sunni Hanafi madhhabs as in Ethiopia.

This phenomenon needs to be studied in detail both in historical, socio-cultural and ethnographic terms.

list of literature

Bernier F. History of the last political coups in the state of the Great Mughals. L., 1936.

Islam in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa, Moscow, 1991.
Islam in West Africa, Moscow, 1988.
Yuri M. kobishchanov the Interaction of civilizations and community-an Islamic consciousness in North Africa // the countries of North Africa. Social Shifts, Moscow, 1993.
Kobishchanov Yu. M. and others. Essays on the History of Islamic Civilization, vol. I-II, Moscow, 2008.

l'Egypte Ibn Fadl Allah al-‘Omari. Masalik al-absarfi mamalik al-amsar. L'Afrique moin / Trad, et annote par M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes. Paris, 1927.

Huntigford G.W. The Galla of Ethiopia. The sacred kingdoms of Kafa and Janjero. L., 1955.

Lewis H.S. A Galla Monarchy: Jimma Abba Jifar, Ethiopia, 1830-1932. Madison, Milwaukee, 1965.

Lewis I.M. Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar and Saho. L., 1955.

Lewis I.M. Conformity and contrast in Somali Islam // Islam in Tropical Africa. L., 1966.

Peiser F.E. Der Gesandschaftsbericht des Hasan ben Ahmed el-Haimi. Berlin, 1894.

Shack W.A. Gurage. L. [a. o.], 1966.

Shack W.A. The Central Ethiopians: Amhara, Tigrina and Relating Peoples. L., 1974.

Trimingham J.S. Islam in Ethiopia. L., 1952.

Trimingham J.S. Islam in Sudan. L., 1965.

Zervos A. L'Empire d'Ethiopie. Le miroire d'Ethiopie moderne. Athens, 1936.

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