Customer Reviews

Futuh Al-Habasha: The Conquest of Abyssinia (Futuh Al-Habasa)

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Futuh is an illuminating piece of earnestly composed documentation as observed through the eyes of a believer - absolute mandatory reading for students of Medieval Africana - offers priceless insights, otherwise lost, into the mind of a charismatic 16th century imam and his followers.. No AEthiopic library is complete without this document.

The Futuh Al-Habasha is one of those vital primary sources for Ethiopian history: it is an account, based on eye-witness testimony, of the first part of Ahmad Gragn's Jihad and conquest of this montainous Christian kingdom; for this reason alone, I gave this book 4 stars. Having read accounts in countless general histories of this ancient land, I expected this book to tell a story to rival Hannibal's successes against ancient Rome (the role Ahmad Gragn is often cast in), or Alfred the Great's dogged resistence to the Vikings that had all but expelled him from England (the role Ethiopian Emperor Lebna Dengel is given). What I read was far different from either of these.

Shihab Al-Din Ahmad's prose style is best described as pedestrian. He views his topic with a moralistic bias that although unusual to Western readers (Christians are infidels, Muslims can do no wrong) is yet as shallow as any such bias. Honest and painfully accurate about his tale, Shihab Al-Din Ahmad nevertheless offers us no insight into Ahmad Gragn's -- let alone anyone involved in these long years of warfare and misery -- mind. The author is content to tell us little more than how Ahmad Gragn, with a handful of devout followers, defeated the Emperor of Ethiopia with his countless followers at almost every turn. He provides us no explanation -- except for an occasional platitudinous acknowledgement of Allah's favor.

What is worse, the scholarly notes to this book fail to pierce the barriers of the time and place of this book's creation, and leave the non-specialist reader to his own resources to understand this important work. There are countless identical footnotes referring the reader to which part of the Koran the author is quoting when another Christian is killed and sent to hell "an evil place to settle in" (or "a sad place to be"), yet countless more passages with puzzling cultural references are passed over in silence. The index appears to have been compiled by someone with only the vaguest familiarity with the text, and omits several important persons and places. This is even more disappointing because one of the editors involved, Richard Pankhurst, is widely considered the foremost expert on the history and culture of Ethiopia.

I really wanted to enjoy this book and to praise it here, but both the text and the editorial apparatus failed to meet what I looked for: a glimpse inside the world of Ahmad Gragn, and perhaps his Christian opponents. This is clearly a book for the expert in Ethiopian history or Muslim culture, for whom having a complete translation of this work, no matter what the defects are, is critical. If you lack a solid grounding in either topic, there are many other books you'd enjoy reading more than this one.

Geoff