If you by any chance have ever been to Djibouti seen and the huge numbers of Ethiopian cattle and other animals herded on to ships for export, do not be surprised. Over the centuries and further back in time this land of bountiful and richly diverse flora and fauna by way of trade and diplomacy, has amazed far off lands with fabulous creatures from exotic Abysiniya. A few species did mange to enter Ethiopia – including a parrot which apparently was not taught to cry for help in any of the four languages it spoke…..
Contacts between Africa and Asia, and more particularly between Ethiopia and India, led to the spectacular, and well-documented, movement between the two regions of a number of animals, which, on their arrival, were regarded with great fascination.
***
This development may be traced at least to the early 14th century, when a giraffe from Malindi on the East African coast arrived in China. A painting of the animal, known as a ki-lin, was duly produced, and a China-centric poem was composed in 1416. Duvyandak translates it as declaring:
In the corner of the Western Sea
Truly was produced a ki-lin
With the body of a deer and the tail of an ox, and a fleshy boneless horn
With luminous spots like a red cloud or a purple mist….
It walks in a stately fashion, and in its every motion it observes a motion
Gentle is this animal that in all antiquity has been seen but once.
***
Animal contacts between Ethiopia and India seem to have begun a little later – in the early 17th century when an African elephant of uncertain origin was reported to have arrived in Gujarat, the area of north-western India known for its close relations with Ethiopia – and the home, we may add, of lions.
***
The relationship between Ethiopia and India, in respect of elephants, we may note in an aside, has long been a question of some interest – because the animal is known in the ancient Ethiopian Ge’ez language as nagé, possibly connected with the ancient Indian Sanskrit naga – and because ancient Aksum’s principal export to India was ivory.
But to return to our story: A second elephant arrived in Gujarat some years later, apparently during the reign of the Mugul emperor Akbar (1556-1605). Said to have come from Abyssinia, it was presented to the Mugul monarch by the Gujarati ruler Itmat Khan. Having been brought by sea, it was very appropriately known as a “sea elephant”, and was said to have had “exceedingly long ears”, i.e. in comparison with his Indian cousins, as well as “strange motions” Akbar’s son Emperor Jahanger (1605-1627) later recalled that the “young elephant,,, by degree grew up and was very fiery and bad-tempered”.
***
Another animal, which travelled in the early 17th century – but in the opposite direction – from India to Ethiopia – was a parrot, which was presented, possibly by the Jesuits, to the Ethiopian Emperor Susneyos (1607 -1632). His chronicle proudly states that the bird “spoke the language of the people” – presumably Amharic, as well as Hindi, Arabic, and Romayst, or Poruguese, and imitated the sounds of both cats and horses. The bird, being greatly admired for these accomplishments, was taken to entertain many of the nobles, but was unfortunately soon eaten by a cat.
Several other animals were meanwhile being taken from Ethiopia to India. A third elephant is mentioned in the memoirs of Emperor Jahanger, which reveals that the beast arrived at his court in 1616. The text describes it as “a small elephant from Abyssinia” which they had been “brought by sea in a ship”, and adds: “In comparison with the elephants of Hindustan it presents some peculiarities. Its ears are larger… and its trunk and tail are larger”.
The first known zebra to travel internationally was at about the same time presented by Emperor Susneyos to the Basha, or local ruler, of the Red Sea port of Suakin, who subsequently sold it to a Muslim merchant for two thousand Venetian sequins. It was then transported to India, where it was acquired by Emperor Jahanger. He reports with admiration that that this “ass-like” animal was “exceedingly strange in appearance, exactly like a tiger”, and adds:
“From the tip of the nose to the end of the tail and from the point of the ear to the top of the hoof, black markings, large and small, suitable to their position, were seen on it. Round the eyes there was an exceedingly fine line. One might state that the Painter of Fate, with a strange brush had left it on the Page of the World. As it was so strange, some people imagined that it had been coloured. After minute inquiry into the truth, it became known [however] that the Lord of the World was The Creator thereof”.
This wondrous animal was the source of great interest. At least two drawings of it were produced, one by the Mugul court artist Ustad Mansur, who inscribed it with a statement that it had been “brought from Abyssinia in 1030 AH [1620-1 AD] by the Turks with Mir Jafar”;
***
The expulsion of the Jesuits from Ethiopia by Susneyos’son Empror Fasiladas (1632-1667 ) opened a new era in Ethiopian history – an era in which the country’s rulers turned turned their backs on the West – and opened up relations instead with the East. Seeking to establish stronger, and more direct, relations with the Mugul Empire Fasiladas dispatched his Armenian envoy Murad in 1664 with presents for the Mugul Emperor Aurangzeb. The French traveller François Bernier reports that these gifts included:
“fifteen horses, esteemed equal to those of Arabia, and a species of mule… no tiger is so beautifully marked, and no alacha [fine cloth] of the Indies or striped silken stuff, is more finely and variously syreaked…”
The poor zebra, and most of the horses. unfortunately died on the journey – but its skin was preserved – and impressed all who saw it. The Venetian traveler Niccolao Manucci observed that the creature had been “striped naturally in various colours, so beautiful that a tiger could not be striped in a more lovely manner”, and adds: “of a truth it was a wonderful thing. fit to be presented to any great ruler”.
***
Fasiladas’s pro-Mugul policy was continued by his son and heir Emperor Yohannes I (1667-1682) who dispatched Murad on a further, and apparently much larger, embassy to the East in 1671. After visiting the Mugul capital – with what presents we do not precisely know – the Armenian envoy proceeded to the Dutch East Indies with a letter of greetings to its governor Jan Maetzuyker,
Murad also brought the latter many costly gifts. These were reported by the German scholar Hiob Ludolf to have included four well-bred horses, and two “striped asses of the woods”, i.e. zebras – “so beautiful”, he claims, that “no painter could depict them”.
What happened to these highly prized animals has still to b established: the German traveler Emanuel Nawendorff, who saw them, states that two of them were later sent as presents to the Emperor of Japan.
But there the story ends: what the Japanese monarch and his subjects thought of these tiger-coloured mules we have thus far not been able to discover.
***
The continental movement of animals to and from Ethiopia did not however end there. Early in the 19th century, with the development of commercial capitalism, Ethiopian mules were shipped to the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion. Later, on the eve of the British invasion of Ethiopia in 1867-8, elephants and mules were brought into the country by the British to transport their cannon and military supplies to Emperor Tewodros’s mountain fortress of Maqdala. Later again, towards the late of the 19th it began to be fashionable for Ethiopia’s rulers – beginning with Emperors Yohannes IV and Menilek II – to present a champion lion or elephant to a European King or American President they wished to honour.
(Originally published in Capital newspaper)
Richard Pankhurst 
Leave a Reply