1.2. Holy tree festooned with cloth and votive offerings for Oromo worship (source: Guglielmo Massaia IV, 49, in Richard Pankhurst and Leila Ingrams, Ethiopia Engraved: An Illustrated Catalogue of Engravings by Foreign Travellers from 1681 to 1900 [London: Kegan Paul, 1988], 134).
These traditional beliefs, embracing the profound interconnectedness among “human, non-human and the supernatural,” have shaped the Oromo ecological cosmology, which underpins their Weltanschauung—an enduring conservation ethic and culture in their relationship to their land, flora, and fauna.13
Although there were zealous but rarely successful attempts at proselytization by foreign Christian missionaries among the Oromo, particularly during the nineteenth century, there was scant influence exerted on the Oromo belief system by the monophysite Abyssinian Orthodox Church or, till the mid-nineteenth century, by Islam. Carl Isenberg, a German missionary and linguist, hints at reasons for this in his disheartened summary of spiritual interactions between the Oromo and their neighbors:
The relation of the Gallas to their neighbours is hostile. The Abyssinian Christians only visit them for the sake of plunder; and the Mahomedans come among them in order to carry their sons and daughters away, by stealth or force, into slavery. The Gallas are, therefore, a nation hating all, and hated by all. They glory not in the promotion of the glory of their Creator, nor of the happiness of their fellow-creatures, neither in the enjoyment of happiness or the possession of wealth; but they glory in the murder of men that are not of their nation. The Abyssinians, indeed, have attempted, by force and by persuasion, to bring them over to a profession of Christianity; but, except in a few instances, quite in vain.14
Oromo scholar Mekuria Bulcha points to the analyses of Amharic intellectual and historian Asma Giyorgis (or Giyorghis), who converted to Catholicism and pursued a career in the administration of Menelik II. Asma Giyorgis believed that the dearth of conversions to the Abyssinian Orthodox Church, particularly during the Menelik era, could be attributed in the main to a general reluctance on the part of the Orthodox clergy. He suggested that the clergy preferred to leave the Oromo as a “pagan” and subjugated people, making it easier for them to maintain a certain dominance over them, ruling “the Galla like slaves.”15
Asma Giyorgis wrote emphatically of the mutual antipathy simmering between the Oromo and the Amhara during the era of Menelik’s reign: “Even now, the rest of the Galla prefer to be Muslim rather than Christian, because they hate the Amhara; the Amhara priests, the bishop and the clergy do not like the Galla. They believe that Christianity cannot be understood by those whose ancestors were not Christians. Therefore, they do not teach them.”16
Bulcha argues that the Abyssinian Orthodox Church not only lacked a sense of mission but was also elitist and espoused a “chosen people” ideology that informed their reluctance to proselytize among the “Gallas,” whom they regarded as uncultured foreigners, interlopers, and strangers—decidedly “the other.” Bulcha also suggests that because of the indivisibility of Abyssinian church and state, “the clergy made attempts to convert non-Abyssinians only when it served the interest of their patron the king.”17 In respect of the interests of Sahle Mariam (Menelik), the king of Shewa, there was greater political and financial advantage in enslaving the Oromo than in converting them. Conversion to Christianity would have placed them outside the potential slave trade pool that was such a fundamental source for feeding Menelik’s economic and political interests. As Bulcha explains, “While recommending the capture and enslavement of the ‘pagans,’ the Fetha Nagast prohibited the sale of Christians to non-believers. Therefore, it may not be surprising that Abyssinian rulers, whose external trade was dependent on the exportation of slaves, were reluctant to spread their faith to the neighbours they constantly raided for slaves.”18
The Fetha Nagast, the Abyssinian “Law of Kings,” which had its origins in a thirteenth-century Arabic document compiled by a Coptic scholar and jurist named Ibn Al’-Assal, included highly wrought regulations and instructions regarding slavery that were underpinned by numerous religious justifications. Slavery, slave raiding, and the trading of slaves were all clearly condoned—and indeed supported—by ecclesiastical and secular powers alike. Since the inception of the original document, those practices had been codified as legitimate Abyssinian economic dealings. Though the ban on the sale of Christians by Christians to non-Christians was often violated, the embargo would nonetheless have held as a deterrent to the proselytization and conversion of “the neighbours they constantly raided for slaves,” including the Oromo who were located in territories surrounding the kingdom of Shewa on the west, south, and east.
This is not to say there were no conversions to Christianity, whether to Abyssinian Orthodoxy or to Western—Roman Catholic and Protestant—denominations. However, Western missionaries were regarded with suspicion and hostility, with Amharic and Tigrayan adherents proudly defending the independence of their own long-established Abyssinian Orthodox Church that was so intertwined with the state apparatus. As a result, Western missionaries experienced significant difficulties accessing Ethiopia as well as the territories occupied by the Oromo. There were those who were successful in getting approval for their applications to operate within Ethiopian borders and beyond. However, they were invariably expelled within a few years as suspicion and hostility mounted concerning their activities. The Oromo themselves were generally wary of both Abyssinian Orthodoxy and Western Christianity. Asma Giyorgis suggested that the Oromo’s antipathy toward the Amhara and Tigrayan elites in Ethiopia extended to include an antipathy toward their faith and attempts to convert them. Certainly, there is evidence that while the Oromo had been exposed to both major monotheistic faiths over many centuries, Islam would exert the greater influence.
Abbas Haji Gnamo, an Oromo anthropologist, contrasts the “official/establishment” nature of Christianity with the perception of Islam as an “anti-establishment” faith—“the religion of oppressed peoples”—a faith that would have appeared as abhorrent to the ruling elites who regarded Ethiopia as an “Island of Christianity in an Ocean of Muslims and pagans.” Abbas Gnamo believes that Asma Giyorgis was being simplistic and even anachronistic in his explanation that the Oromo would prefer Islam over Christianity because of their hatred of the Amhara elite, on the grounds that Islam’s influence had begun to take hold prior to the imperial conquest of the Oromo. However, it would seem that even divorced from religious influence, the antipathies between the two nations had a long historical reach.19
Certainly, there is a persuasive logic in why the Oromo, a populous but oppressed people, would be drawn to a religion of the masses. Steven Kaplan, a religious and social historian, differentiates between Orthodox Christianity, which he maintains took initial hold among the elite core, filtering outward and downward toward the periphery; and Islam, which traditionally grew from the periphery inward toward the core. Kaplan notes that for most of its history in Ethiopia, Islam existed on the periphery of a strong Christian state. It was the religion of traders, craftsmen, and pastoralists, rather than that of rulers and officials.20 Mohammed Hassen, who limits his study of the Oromo mainly to those in the Gibe states, maintains that while there were pockets of sedentary Oromo who espoused Islam in earlier centuries, the more itinerant pastoral Oromo groups tended to adhere to their traditional animist belief system.21 Explaining that the spread of Islam was gradual and multifaceted, Hassen presents a rather more nuanced view of the spread of Islam than that of either Abbas Gnamo or Kaplan. Hassen observes that as the spread of Islam was largely through the contact and influence of Muslim traders, there was a practical necessity for seller and buyer to be able to communicate with each other. This meant the adoption of the Oromo language as the lingua franca of trade, and it rapidly became the primary medium for the transmission of Islamic tenets and principles.22
Hassen suggests a complex dynamic in the spread of Islam among the Gibe Oromo through a “series of gradations in the conversion of the Oromo to Islam which acted as an insulator absorbing Islamic radiation without violently uprooting their traditional values.”23 First, traders were largely responsible
