Red Sea Studies

DNA and other evidence suggests the early history of the Hebrew Old Testament concerns two entirely separate people united by monotheism and military conquest. The first, taking the name of Israelites from Israel (Jacob), the grandson of the Patriarch Jacob, had a brief stay in the Egyptian Eastern Delta before falling out of favour and eventually fleeing to West Arabia in the chaos of Bronze Age collapse ca.1200 BC. There they were overwhelmed in a lengthy campaign by a black Nubian Cushitic-speaking people called the Hebrew, recently converted to the cult of YHWH. The two peoples intermarried but the Nubian priesthood dominated thereafter and eventually reinvented itself as part of the Semitic Abrahamic tradition. Cut off through Babylonian exile from its gene pool in West Arabia, the Nubian high priesthood identified the present-day area of Israel and Palestine as the Promised Land of Moses and portrayed themselves as a special Middle East people who had escaped slavery in the Delta, not as a black Nubian enslaved gold mining force that had fled to Yemen during a time of ecological disaster characterised by severe earthquake and volcanic activity.

First published in Buzzle on 16th August 2006

Republished on the same day here:
http://sudaneseonline.com/en2/publish/Articles_and_Analysies_12/Sudan_s_Beja_Blemmyes_and_their_Right_to_Freedom_a_929.shtml

Republished on 23rd August 2006 and discussed in the forum below:
http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=62793
At the moment the misinformed international community plans to spend so easily US $ 3 billion for Lebanon's reconstruction, it is essential to highlight that much less money would be enough to bring peace in the strategically crucial area of Eastern Sudan where the Blemmyes / Beja have started their struggle for self-determination and independence. Support to historically indigenous Beja would bring the Khartoum tyrants at the brink of collapse, opening the path of independence for the oppressed peoples of Sudan, and at the same time it would reshape the entire area of the Red Sea where historical nations demand international recognition.

A road runs north-south a short distance form the Red Sea coast from Abu Durrag and Suez in the north east of Egypt to Sawakin in north-east Sudan . Sir John Gardner Wilkinson travelled along the coast rfom al-Qusayr to Berenike in 1826. Other European and Arab travellers have taken this route for a variety of reasons, including Christian and Muslim pilgrims, nomads, traders,  explorers, miners and tourists. They variously provided a vocabulary of shifting places along the Red Sea littoral alongside the 'placelessness' of the Sea. pp75-86. BAR International series 1395. ISBN 1 84171 833 5

Section 3: Whats Suph Doc? A study and return to the original meaning of H5488 suph. Why suph means neither red nor reeds. Addressing the Jewish influence on the misnomer of the "Reed Sea". The original meaning of suph tells us the location of ancient Mount Sinai. Sections 1 and 2 deal with a rebuttal of Mount Sinai in Ethiopia and the Sinai Peninsula which highlights the matters presented in Scripture and sets up a correct understanding of suph in Section 3.

Although the Mediterranean Sea was the center of Greek and Roman life, the Red Sea tells another story of the West trying to catch up with Eastern refinement. The trade of the Red Sea has again and again been called into question where extensive bibliography can conveniently be found. My present study, in a way, continues this interest, but with a crucial shift of emphasis. The trade of the Red Sea is not my particular concern as such, though it remains important. My purpose is to weigh how the luxury trade of the Red Sea appeared in Augustan poetry. (1) It is a subject on which two principal lines of thought can be traced: : First: How did this luxury trade affect the literary perspectives of the Roman poets in connection with women? Second: The Roman poets' reflections on this trade. Time and again, I would assist my argument by references to other sources outside the Augustan poetry to give emphasis to the Augustan poetical view. (2) Many Latin texts address the issue of female adornment. Our knowledge of the Roman women's extravagance of getting the luxury products of the East comes from a variety of literary sources, usually and mainly Pliny the elder, Seneca the younger, and the satirists Juvenal and Martial. I would suggest, in this context, to illuminate the evidence of Roman love elegy. (3)

This volume draws upon the scholarship on the international trade between the Roman Empire and Eastern regions such as Arabia, Ethiopia and India. Such trade has been often described by ancient sources as a flourishing and very expensive one. More in detail, the book focuses on the life and the development of the ports on the Red Sea, controlled by Rome. These ports acted for centuries as international hubs, linking points between West and East, and they were the gates though which the eastern merchandise would reach the Roman markets. Keeping these remote settlements alive required a big effort on the part of the imperial administration, and some degree of planning to choose how and when to invest in the area. So, over the centuries, the geography of such ports changed dramatically. Most works published so far have explained such changes in terms of decline and economic shrinking, due to the “late antique phase” of the Roman Empire. This monograph looks for a different explanation and stretches the analysis into the late antique period, showing hot it was not simply a period of decline and economic recession, but rather of reorganisation. The volume aims finally to reach a new and more full level of understanding of the Roman economic policy in the Red Sea between the first century BC and the sixth AD.

Silvia Bruzzi, Chaire d'Etudes Africaines Comparées (EGE Rabat) In Islam and Gender in Colonial Northeast Africa, Silvia Bruzzi provides an account of Islamic movements and gender dynamics in the context of colonial rule in Northeast Africa. The thread that runs through the book is the life and times of Sittī 'Alawiyya al-Mīrġanī (1892-1940), a representative of a well-established transnational Sufi order in the Red Sea region. Silvia Bruzzi gives us not only a social history of the colonial encounter in the Eritrean colony, but also a wider historical account of supra-regional dynamics across the Red Sea, the Ethiopian hinterland, and the Mediterranean region, using a wide range of fragmentary historical materials to make an important contribution towards filling the gap that currently exists in women's and gender history in Muslim societies. All interested in the social history of colonial Africa, the study of Islamic movements, and the broader subject of gender and religion.

La conquista romana del Mediterráneo oriental y de Egipto amplió los horizontes de los mercaderes ítalo-romanos como nunca antes. A los pocos años de ocupar el territorio, eran cientos las caravanas y barcos que partían anualmente hacia la India y el lejano Oriente desde las ciudades y puertos ubicados en los límites del Imperio romano. Será con Augusto cuando se sienten las bases de un mercado cada vez más globalizado, permitiendo la libre circulación de los productos más deseados por las élites urbanas de la metrópolis romana.
Esta investigación aborda mediante el análisis epigráfico de más de doscientas inscripciones funerarias quienes fueron los personajes ligados al comercio y fabricación de joyas, vestidos, tintes y ungüentos en la ciudad de Roma. Estos productos se comercializaron entre la élite de la capital y entre los consumidores selectivos que emulaban la conducta de la aristocracia romana. El marco cronológico de estudio comprende la etapa que va desde finales del periodo republicano a finales del siglo tercero d.C. Y es precisamente el momento
relacionado con el cambio de era y el primer siglo d.C. cuando se ha podido relacionar cronológicamente un mayor número de inscripciones. A su vez, poder identificar la localización de sus tiendas o talleres nos ha permitido conocer de primera mano los diversos cambios en la topografía urbana de la ciudad.
Asimismo, con el objetivo de conocer los lugares de producción o extracción de estos bienes de carácter suntuarios se han descrito las diferentes rutas intercontinentales de aprovisionamiento de estos productos. En este punto, el análisis de los diferentes agentes
implicados en este comercio permite conocer las diferentes áreas de actuación, cuáles fueron los mercados más visitados y cuál fue el rol que jugó cada una de las potencias implicadas en este intercambio. Para ello se ha estudiado cuál fue el marco común de entendimiento para establecer estas relaciones.
Los resultados obtenidos han permitido ampliar la descripción tenida hasta ahora sobre un comercio tan selecto, así como proponer nuevas hipótesis interpretativas del tema.

English:
nunc patimur longae pacis mala, saevior armis
luxuria incubuit victumque ulciscitur orbem
(JUVENAL. SAT. II, 6, 292-297)

With these words the Roman author Juvenal evokes the evils associated with unbridled lust which had pushed Rome after the conquest of the so far known world. In this sense, the conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean and the annexation of Egypt under direct control by Rome resulted in the restoration and improvement of trade routes to the East, place of origin of most luxury goods markets as valued in Rome.
As part of our thesis about the luxury trade in the city of Rome during the Early Roman Empire, where we look specifically at luxury products, we wish to introduce how new access to these goods sparked a change in Roman society. In this respect, thanks to the study of lapidary inscriptions related with actors linked to the development and sale of
exotic products can be examined a series of changes that occurred from the new Roman state-run establishment under the principality of Augustus. The classical tradition will oppose a new order marked by the Roman elites demand for expensive products, creating fashions and customs unexplored to date, trying to slow it down with the
enactment of laws against excess and access.
These changes will be accompanied by other observable also in this work, highlighting, the emergence of new commercial characters and their existential increase in Rome: margaritarii, coronarii, vascularii, vestiarii, etc. In this process, indirectly new terms will be minted for defining new jobs and others will vary depending on use. Also, there
is a growing desire to show the life and personal work on the tombstones, making clear a new cultural fashion. Finally, this cultural transformation will extend to an urban modification of the Urbs, lifting exclusive spaces for the purchase and sale of these products

Link: http://www.cdmy.org/cmyhs/cmyhs01.pdf

From Mountain to Mountain: Exchange between Yemen and Ethiopia, Medieval to Modern
Edited by Anne Regourd (University of Copenhagen) & Nancy Um (Binghamton University)

Recently, scholars have been committed to studying exchanges, particularly commercial ones, across and around the rims of the Red Sea. While these connections have involved Yemen and the Horn of Africa centrally, they have rarely penetrated beyond the scope of the coasts. In this special volume, scholars consider the long history of interfaces between Yemen and Ethiopia, thus moving into the landed interior. These papers explore linguistic, diplomatic, commercial, and technological exchanges and provide evidence, albeit sometimes scanty, for movements and associations that extend from mountain to mountain, rather than simply from coast to coast. The authors rely upon an array of diverse sources, including historical chronicles and glossaries, firsthand interviews, newspapers, letters from private archives, and material culture.

This special issue will be published in three installments.

Table of Contents

Installments 1 (2017) and 2 (2018) (format pdf)

Maria Bulakh (Russian State University for the Humanities), “Al-Malik al-Afḍal’s 14th century ‘Arabic-Ethiopic Glossary’ as an attempt at language documentation”

Yasuyuki Kuriyama (Chuo University), “Yemen’s Relations with Ethiopia in the Seventeenth Century and the Situation in the Red Sea”

Dominique Harre (Independent Researcher, CFEE), “Exchanges and mobility in the Western Indian Ocean: Indians between Yemen and Ethiopia, 19th–20th centuries”

Tamon Baba (Kyushu University), “Notes on Migration between Yemen and Northeast Africa during the 13–15th Centuries”

Anne Regourd (Université de Copenhague, ERC « Islam in the Horn of Africa »), “Mission Dakar-Djibouti : la boîte oubliée. I. Un inventaire de la Mosquée de Gondar (ms. BnF Ar. 7337 (7))”

West African participation in the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) grew considerably throughout the first half of the twentieth century. This article examines the causes and consequences of failed British and Saudi efforts to channel, regulate, and control the trans-Sahelian flow of pilgrims and enforce a regime of mobility along the Sahel and across the Red Sea. Focusing specifically on Red Sea 'illicit' passages, the study recovers the rampant and often harrowing crossings of dozens of thousands of West African pilgrims from the Eritrean to the Arabian coasts. It examines multiple factors that drove the circumvention of channeling and control measures and inscribes the experiences of West African historical actors on multiple historiographic fields that are seldom organically tied to West Africa: Northeast African regional history, the colonial history of Italian Eritrea, and the Red Sea as a maritime space connecting Africa with Arabia.

Recent scholarship has argued that the more southerly of the ancient ports of Egypt's Red Sea coast, such as Berenike and Myos Hormos, enjoyed inherent navigational advantages over those, such as Clysma, further north. That argument arises from the fact that ancient sailing rigs perform poorly when sailing to windward: by putting in to a more southerly port, the argument goes, vessels arriving at Egypt from the southern Red Sea could avoid a lengthy struggle against the northerly winds prevalent in the sea above 23ºN. Goods could instead be transferred by camel caravan to the Nile. This argument rests in part on the implicit assumption that the Nile represented a ready, easy and speedy alternative to the Red Sea. This paper argues that such an appreciation of the Nile as benign is misplaced. It draws upon meteorological and hydrological data – the latter from before the construction of the Aswan High Dam – together with traveller accounts from diverse periods, to present a more nuanced perspective of Nile navigation. It argues that movement on the river, particularly for cargo vessels, was highly seasonal, and that, moreover, this season did not quite mesh seamlessly with the sailing seasons of the Red Sea. It argues that movement on the river was often laborious and sometimes dangerous, with grounding a frequent occurrence and wrecking not uncommon. It argues that Nile travel was much slower than is apparent from such ancient authors as Herodotus. Using Nile travel times and desert crossing times between the river and the sea provided by past travellers, it provides an alternative perspective on the positioning of these ports, which implies no obvious advantage held by these southern locations. In sum, it argues that the advantage of Nile navigation over Red Sea sailing is not nearly as clear-cut as has been argued. Finally, this discussion has implications for our contextualisation of ancient ship technologies. While ancient and medieval vessels may have struggled to make progress to windward, such limitations clearly did not have a determinant effect on the location of ports. A look at the distribution of Egypt’s Red Sea ports over the longue durée shows no progression towards sites reflecting greater ‘ease’ of navigation. Moreover, their locations show that, whatever the limitations of ancient vessels, their navigators were well able to access all areas of the northern Red Sea.

Recently, scholars have been committed to studying exchanges, particularly commercial ones, across and around the rims of the Red Sea. While these connections have involved Yemen and the Horn of Africa centrally, they have rarely penetrated beyond the scope of the coasts. In this special volume, scholars consider the long history of interfaces between Yemen and Ethiopia, thus moving into the landed interior. These papers explore linguistic, diplomatic, commercial, and technological exchanges and provide evidence, albeit sometimes scanty, for movements and associations that extend from mountain to mountain, rather than simply from coast to coast. The authors rely upon an array of diverse sources, including historical chronicles and glossaries, firsthand interviews, newspapers, letters from private archives, and material culture.
Please visit CmY website, and dedicated page,
http://www.cdmy.org/?page_id=18

In the year 24 BCE, Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus ordered the Prefect of Egypt the beginning of a military campaign to seize control of Arabia Felix rich and important trade routes is controlled. In this article we will discuss the circumstances surrounding this mission and its unexpected outcome, which from Rome conditioned not to think again the dominance of that region.

Eritrea has a remarkable, but understudied, archaeological past. During the first millennium AD, urban centers on the southern Red Sea coast of Africa developed ties to far-flung powers like Rome and hubs of commerce in western India. Located 50 kilometers south of modern Massawa, Adulis was a prominent trade port along a key sea route in the Classical World. The settlement also operated as a conduit for communications between the Nile Valley and the western Indian Ocean. First identified, sketched, and test excavated by archaeologists in the nineteenth-century, Adulis remains poorly known by modern scientific standards. Until a decade ago, even Adulis's mention in the Periplus and a surge in Eritrean archaeology did not attract new researchers to the site. More and better information about Adulis and a closer study of the archaeological remains from the settlement and its wider vicinity are needed to better comprehend the site, its ancient community, and its physical and social context, origins, character, role, and decline.

The author posted independently in his blog the answer that he gave to a viewer of a video-presentation of my article "Yemenis are Not Arab - Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis". The video is uploaded in many portals; indicatively:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpOx9xiHNGc
The author referred to me before replying and so his answer fully represents my opinion on the matter.
https://greeksoftheorient.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/if-yemenis-are-not-arab-why-did-the-romans-call-yemen-arabia-felix/

Did ancient navigators routinely cross the open sea, or did they stay within view of the coast whenever they could? This seemingly straightforward question touches on debates of ancient technology, risk management and economic rationality, and has been debated for decades in Mediterranean historiography. With regard to the Red sea, however, we know two things for sure: sailors from the Hellenistic period, until the twilight of traditional sailing practices in the 20th century, would prefer to stay within sight of the coast and put in at night whenever they could; we also know that the Roman navigators operating in the Red sea in the first centuries CE were an exception. They would set course straight down the middle of the sea for the almost 2000-kilometre passage from the ports of Egypt to the straits of Bab al-Mandab. Why did the Romans do things differently, and how did they go about it? Combining ancient texts and ethnographic accounts with the approach known as common-sense geography, alongside GIS tools and data, straightforward answers are offered below. The case study moreover highlights the methodological possibilities and challenges offered by remote sensing and spatial data for the study of the distant past.

In March 2012, Philipps-Universität Marburg conducted a 12-day survey along a section of the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia reaching from Rabigh in the north to al-Shoaiba in the south. As the beginning of a five-year archaeological project, this preliminary venture sought to define the logistical situation and to discover any sites of archaeological importance that may exist within the zone. The survey included the search for and the examination of harbor sites, as well as shipwrecks. Sites of antiquity and the Early Islamic period were of particular interest. The results of the survey included the discovery of a harbor and a shipwreck of the late third or the fourth century that contained Roman amphoras, among other objects.

East Africa´s most loathsome tyrannies, Sudan (Real Ethiopia) and Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia), are characterized by many similarities that in and by themselves bear witness to the fact that the same evil plan has been implemented in both realms to plunge the local populations into underdevelopment, abject poverty, monstrous oppression and deliberate genocide.
First published in:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/143394

Republished in:
http://www.oromoparliamentarians.org/English/Facts%20about%20Oromo/Ethiopia%20and%20Sudan%20fake%20history.htm
and
http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=002624

This work focuses on the study of the canal that in the past linked the Nile with the Red Sea. Control over the Nile through an artificial canal allowed the Egyptians to use water as means to increase mobility, which permitted a higher transit of goods and people between the river delta and the Gulf of Suez. In addition to being used to irrigate the territory crossing Wadi Tumilat, and as a defense against the enemies from the East, the Egyptian canal that started at the Pelusiac arm was used mainly to import sumptuary goods from the East and to export grain and other products to the East. Also, fluvial transit through the canal reduced travel time and increased the amount of goods being transported.
Key words: Canal of the Pharaohs, Wadi Tumilat, mega structure, sumptuary trade, East

The long-standing historical relationship between the southern Arabian Peninsula (Yemen) and Northeast Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia) is well known. The movement of people, goods, ideas, practices, and symbols in both directions has contributed to shape these regions and their populations in numerous cultural, social, and religious ways. This paper proposes to explore the role of the town of Zabid in the Yemeni Tihama as the fulcrum of a set of translocal connections between southern Arabia and Northeast Africa in a longue durée historical perspective. It draws inspiration from the concept of 'translocality' which is defined by some as the process by which a multitude of mobilities, connections, and circulations may shape space and place in a way that transgresses geographic or political spatial boundedness. The paper makes an effort to go beyond mere connections or relations between two seemingly self-contained and clearly bounded entities ("Ethiopia" and "Yemen") and challenges the epistemic regime imposed by the Area Studies paradigm and national historiographies that separate these regions. Self-consciously conceptual and somewhat a heuristic exercise, the paper proposes to imagine spatial continuities and interconnectedness across the Red Sea in novel ways.

Inspired by Fernand Braudel's seminal study of the Mediterranean, the study of maritime spaces as meaningful frameworks of historical analysis has been subject to a revival of interest in recent years. 1 The "new thalassology," as it has been coined by two scholars, is driven by efforts to develop new approaches to the study of global history by exploring the webs of connections, interactions, and networks operating both within and between different aquatic arenas of the world and their terrestrial surroundings. 2 This, the new sea historians contend, would aid in critiquing current meta-geographical constructs which divide continents and world regions in ways that have been governed more by different historical geo-political interests, positioning, and cultural constructions and orientations, than by the existing historical dynamics operating within and between world regions. 3 Focusing the study on maritime arenas of interaction allows us to transgress rigid land-based territorial divisions and offers new ways of viewing the history of different world areas, their inter-relationships, and their relationship to global history, also bringing into sharper focus certain large scale historical processes.

This study examines the long-standing hostile and distrustful relations between Ethiopia and the Ottoman Empire. The Ethio-Ottoman antagonistic relation was not coincident; somewhat, the interest of the Ottoman to supervise the political, economic, and religious life of the Red Sea and Northeast Africa regions primarily stemmed the hostility. The presence of the Portuguese in the Red-Sea region and its subsequent alignment with Ethiopia further worsened the Ethio-Ottoman belligerency. The positioning of the Ottomans with the Adal Sultanate had also complicated the Ethio-Ottoman relations and brought with them generations of distrust. This article recounts the dynamics of the Ethio-Ottoman relations, mainly focusing on the changing aspects of hostility and understanding. The paper tries to address the Ethio-Ottoman relations in three major sections. The first section of the study explains the root of the Ethio-Ottomans' hostile and distrustful relations. The second section of the paper is devoted to showing the dynamic of the essence of the Ethio-Ottoman relations in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The last section elucidates the Ethio-Ottoman connections during the era of Sultan Abdülhamit II. The study employs an analytical, interpretive approach to analyze archival documents and secondary works of literature.

We will analyze the Soqotran model of multicultural society of the Antiquity, based on the Periplus of the Red Sea.

Completing his earlier narratives about Yemen, at the end of the description of the Hadhrami state of the ‘Frankincense bearing Country’, the Alexandrian Egyptian author of the Periplus of the Red Sea, writing around 75 CE, refers to the island of Socotra, the Island of Dioskourides as he names it (in Greek: Dioscouridou Nesos / Διοσκουρίδου Νήσος). Quite interestingly, the text does not mention at all the other islands of the Socotran Archipelago, Abd el Kuri, Samha, and Darsa.
First published in Buzzle: 22/3/2008

Archaeological research of UNO at Adulis has had as a goal, during the 2014 field season, to continue the setting of the chronological sequence started in 2011 (Zazzaro, Cocca and Manzo 2014), to better understand the connection among the town, the river and the sea, to investigate the local economy and trade networks through archaeological finds. At this aim, excavations started in 2011 in sectors 1 and 3 have been pursued. A new trench, sector 5, was opened to the South of the town, on the river edge, and a short - few hours survey - was conducted towards the coast for recording new archaeological evidence uncovered by the flood in November 2013.

The Sahel is a region located to the south of the Sahara Desert stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in Mauritania to the shores of the Red Sea in Sudan and Eritrea. It covers Mauritania, Burkina-Faso, Mali, Niger and Chad, an area of three million square kilometres. It is a transitional biome between the arid Sahara and greener savannahs further south. Due to its harsh weather and desertification since the second half of the twentieth century, the region has become increasingly uninhabitable and has been characterised by famines, droughts, and social conflict.

A Rebuttal of "Hidden Biblical History: The REAL Exodus Route". Yam Suph examined and explained. This article comes at the request of the author of the YouTube Channel – Revisionists - official channel to rewatch their first video entitled “Hidden Biblical Exodus: Ancient Egypt to ETHIOPIA”1. Hereafter in this article I shall refer to said channel as ROC.

First published in the American Chronicle, Buzzle and AfroArticles on 26th April 2007
Republished:
http://www.somalitalk.com/oil/freedom.html (on the same date)
http://qilxuujaarsoo.blogspot.com.eg/2007/05/freedom-for-ogaden-wests-last-choince.html (3rd May 2007)
Ogaden was for millennia a passageway between Africa’s East coast and the Abyssinian plateau; through the Periplus of the Red Sea, a text written approximately before 1930 years by an Alexandrian Egyptian captain and merchant, we know details about the navigation alongside the African Red Sea coast, through the Bab al Mandeb straits, and further on until the Cap of Spices (Akroterion Aromaton – present day Cap Guardafui) and down to Rhapta, in the area of today’s Dar es Salam in Tanzania. Since the sailors had to arrange everything in a way to sail according to the direction of monsoons, sometimes they had to wait many long months in these faraway places; this was the main reason for the development of the trans-African caravan routes through the region of Ogaden.