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Early Rumblings
Muslim Activism in British-Occupied Eritrea, April 1941–November 1946
With the coming of British-Sudanese forces, in April 1941, Eritreans found themselves living within the confines of a new colonial authority. For the next five and a half years, people across Eritrea adapted to the new realities, and opportunities, as a mandated territory under the British Military Administration. For communities across the region, especially in Eritrea’s Western Province, the transition from Italian to British rule, in April 1941, presented an opportunity to rework the traditional social and economic constraints under which most residents had lived for roughly three centuries. Although Eritreans as a whole found themselves under a new colonial authority, those on the lower rungs of Tigre-speaking society—known pejoratively at the time as tigre—adapted to the new realities and opportunities that materialized during the BMA’s “caretaker” rule, between 1941 and 1952.
During this period, three crucial social processes took place within Muslim communities across the Tigre-speaking region of western Eritrea as well as in the colony’s major cities. Each of these transformations among Eritrea’s various social groups had tremendous consequences for the formation of a broad Islamic consciousness across the country. First, tigre discontent toward local landlords (known both as shumagulle and also Tigre-speakers) surfaced with increased intensity. Refusing to comply with the traditional payment of customary dues and taxes to their respective shumagulle, disenfranchised tigre “serfs” pressed their claims for their own economic independence from the traditional system. This broad movement among tigre communities during the early and mid-1940s represented the first major thrust in Eritrea’s movement toward decolonization, as activists simultaneously challenged both the “traditional” landlord-serf dynamic as well as the long-standing colonial acquiescence of the exploitative, quasi-feudal economic system. Ultimately, many of the leaders in the tigre emancipation movement helped articulate new understandings about tigre identity that stressed the righteousness of their cause as a Muslim people and the necessity of breaking away from the supposed primitive feudalism of the shumagulle. Second, the movement for tigre emancipation dovetailed with another critical movement in which increased efforts for religious standardization—meaning the creation of uniformity of Islamic practices and institutions across Eritrea—and the spread of more uniform Islamic education allowed scholars to help influence notions of a singular Muslim community across Eritrea. While these efforts aimed at establishing religious standardization gained momentum, the period also witnessed the emergence of a third significant movement; the rise of an engaged, politically active intelligentsia from among the mainly Asmara- and Keren-based professionals who began advocating for Muslim interests. Because so much of the Eritrean Muslim League’s eventual activism challenged central tenets of Islamic life and social organization throughout the Western Province, the relationship between Islamic practices, institutions, and tigre identity more broadly requires further elaboration.
Islam in Eritrea
Taking stock of the inherent cultural and linguistic pluralism across Eritrea, Jonathan Miran has observed that the country’s heterogeneous Muslim communities historically reflected a truly “kaleidoscopic historical configuration” of peoples from multiple ethnicities, speaking a variety of Semitic, Cushitic, and Nilo-Saharan languages, and living in diverse social and political organizations.1 Traditionally, Eritrea’s Tigre-speaking communities, which accounted for roughly forty percent of Eritrea’s total population by the early 1940s, were divided “into a number of tribes and tribal confederations” and included groups such as the Beni-Amer of the western lowlands, the Marya, Bet Juk, and a large part of the communities in the area around the city of Keren, including groups such as the Habab, ‘Ad Takles, ‘Ad Temaryam, ‘Ad Mu‘allim, and other smaller groups inhabiting the interior region beyond the Red Sea port city of Massawa.2
The region comprising the heart of Tigre-speaking Eritrea also experienced several waves of Islamic diffusion since the first half of the eighth century CE. The majority of residents of the western lowlands and the affiliated coastal communities embraced Islam during the thirteenth century. The growth of regional sea-based trade routes and the accompanying “circulation of holy men” from across the Arabian Peninsula fueled this conversion.3 However, not until the nineteenth century, with the emergence of multiple Islamic “revivalist movements” that spread across the greater Red Sea region, did several traveling Muslim preachers arrive in the area and begin establishing various Sufi orders. Across the region, “the energetic turuq and holy families fostered widespread spatial networks, or webs of connections, straddling the area between the Red Sea coasts and the inland regions in the eastern Sudan.”4
Aiming both to deepen Islamic practices among Muslims and to gain new converts, two regional Islamic entities powered much of the revivalist momentum: the ‘Ad Shaykh holy family and the Khatmiyya.5 Originally of Meccan origin, the members of the ‘Ad Shaykh family established operations in Eritrea during the early nineteenth century and successfully won over large segments of the Tigre-speaking population within a few years. With their Na’ib allies along the Red Sea coast, they helped bring locals into their ranks as members of the Qadiriyya Sufi order.6 While the ‘Ad Shaykh’s success continued throughout much of the coastal region, western Eritrea experienced an equally significant degree of revivalism based on the growing influence of the Khatmiyya order under the leadership of the al-Mirghani family. Founded by Muhammad ‘Uthman al-Mirghani (1793–1852), the Khatmiyya’s success in expanding their membership and allegiance within local communities developed largely out of the order’s ability to incorporate the “preexisting religious formations (notables and holy lineages) into a supra-community network” that had far reaching social consequences.7 Ultimately, these developments solidified Islam among the majority of the population to the point where virtually all Tigre-speaking groups had adopted Islam by the nineteenth century.8 The intensification of proselytization activity among the Sufi groups and holy families within the various segments of Tigre-speaking society effectively created an “Islamic space” throughout much of western, northern, and eastern Eritrea, one that became increasingly political over time.9 These developments later had a profound influence on the course of Eritrean nationalism, as shifting ideas about Islam, social organization, and authority all contributed to the wider political changes during the 1940s and 1950s. The concretization of this Islamic space and its later political ramifications echo Richard J. Reid’s argument about the wider historical trends unique to borderlands and “frontier societies” across the Horn of Africa. Reid observes that periods of economic and environmental upheaval often “rendered these frontiers highly volatile and competitive zones, where human suffering but also economic opportunity and political creativity coexisted.”10 Indeed, the later rise of political activism among Tigre-speaking Islamic communities and those affiliated with the Khatmiyya in particular demonstrate the extent to which the very creation and expansion of the Eritrean Muslim League owed to these broader regional trends within the frontier of western and northern Eritrea.
Social and Political Unrest among the Tigre
The serfs, or tigre, as they were commonly known, were as much the property of their masters, the shumagulle, as their camels or goats. Each tigre was bound to an individual shumagulle; he and his sons passed in inheritance to the descendants of his shumagulle; and at the will of his shumagulle the tigre could be sold, given away, punished by flogging, or put to death.11
The subservient relationship between the tigre and their shumagulle “masters” stood at the heart of economic life in Tigre-speaking society.12 Although the relationship between tigre and shumagulle depended on the latter’s position as the proprietor of the land and its resources, relations between the two groups also varied according to clan, community size, and the particular nature of the local subsistence economy. Nevertheless, a basic continuity throughout the Tigre-speaking region had solidified well before the advent of European colonialism. Although the major clans (qebelaat) identified both the shumagulle and tigre as belonging to the same group, tigre residents generally viewed themselves as belonging to a series of smaller subclans or “races” that lived in proximity to one another and under larger clan markers such as the Bet Asghede, ‘Ad Takles, and Bet Jut.13
Local variables notwithstanding, certain aspects of the relationship between tigre and shumagulle were universal. The tigre who worked the land paid customary dues in the form of locally harvested foodstuffs to the shumagulle landholder, yet he could not engage in debate or argue with his shumagulle, negotiate the terms of the traditional land “contract,” or terminate the relationship of his own accord. Shumagulle could also expect their tigre vassals to provide unpaid supplemental labor when needed. Usually this included supplemental agricultural work like the milking of animals and the fetching of firewood and other supplies. Shumagulle also reserved the right to use tigre livestock for cultivation as well as other animals, such as camels and mules, for their own transportation needs.14 Early in the BMA’s rule, Keren’s senior civil affairs officer (SCAO), Kennedy Trevaskis, took note of the peculiarities of the relationship, remarking during his tenure in the region that “even where the relationship between tigre and shumagulle was reasonably cordial, the two classes remained castes immutably divided from each other.”15 The divide between tigre and shumagulle also involved a complex system of political authority within the communities. While historically many of the tigre groups lived under the authority of a council of elders, or mahaber, that tied many of the kinship groups together, the shumagulle-led positions of shum (chief) and the subordinate ranks of subchiefs also developed into markers of respect, although the real legislative and judicial authority “lay with the ‘mahaber’ and not with the Shum personally, although he would act as its spokesman and leader.”16 Nevertheless, shumagulle economic power intertwined with political influence as the landlords solidified their authority as the main authorities within the clans over time.
Although uprisings against the landowners occurred throughout Italian colonial rule and surfaced with particular intensity during the 1920s and 1930s, the situation for most tigre had worsened by 1941. This deterioration owed partially to the increased economic burden placed on rural Eritreans during Italy’s military involvement in Ethiopia and then by the wider instability brought about by fighting between Italian and allied forces in nearby Sudan in 1940, which only exacerbated the challenges of the landlord-serf arrangement that the majority of Tigre-speaking communities had lived under since the seventeenth century.17 Set against the stresses of the wartime economy and the power vacuum brought on by the end of formal Italian rule in early 1941, many tigre again began refusing to pay customary dues to their respective shumagulle across the Western Province.
BMA Responses to Tigre Resistance
Initially, tigre mainly from the Bet Asghede clan in the Keren Division petitioned BMA authorities in the spring of 1941 for their support in the enforcement of “their rights” and protection against both the physical and financial abuse of the landowners, whom they viewed as attempting to extract unreasonable amounts of tribute and customary dues.18 For their part, shumagulle representatives also approached the BMA, claiming that the refusals to pay tribute had prevented them from executing their own traditional duties as clan chiefs. Many shumagulle also claimed that their very livelihood depended on receiving the customary tribute.19 At first, officials attempted to maneuver carefully between both groups so as to not risk any major social disruption. By December 1941, however, the situation worsened as tigre representatives from across the Western Province announced they would refuse to give the traditional payment (magasa) of one-fourth of the coming harvest to the shumagulle.20 In February 1942, BMA officials met with shumagulle and tigre representatives and informed the interested parties that because British administrators believed that the land “was vested in the Government,” the administration would not legally recognize or enforce the collection of traditional dues by the shumagulle. In response, shumagulle from the Bet Asghede threatened to evict all tigre from their land if they refused to make their payments.21
Refusals to pay the customary dues presented administrators with a serious dilemma. While British officials recognized their own reliance on the shumagulle as instruments of revenue collection and authority, the prospect of mass civil disobedience by tigre groups encouraged BMA authorities to seek a compromise. Rejecting tigre activists’ suggestions that the traditional land dues be declared illegal and that all “tribal land” instead be considered government land, Kennedy Trevaskis developed a more moderate policy by mid-1942 of allowing the customary payments of one-fourth of their harvest and that additional payments continue if “rendered voluntarily by a tigre to his Shamagulle.” Trevaskis also argued that the BMA should “sanction no change of individual ownership” of traditional shumagulle lands and added that no tigre could be evicted from the residence unless approved by the presiding civil affairs officer.22 In trying to contain tigre discontent by promising greater oversight for the payment of customary dues, Trevaskis’s plan won the support of the colony’s then chief administrator, Brigadier Stephen Longrigg. Having considered the range of possible actions on the tigre land issue, Longrigg summarized the need for a cautious policy: “The abolition by a ‘stroke of the pen’ of all feudal dues, much as we may recommend it on general grounds, cannot be upheld. Such a change, which would have far reaching repercussions, must go hand in hand with a general re-organization of tribal society—its tributary system, political representation etc. The present time is hardly suitable for such far-reaching schemes.”23
Although by June 1943 the BMA had fully articulated a policy that recognized shumagulle authority while promising to increase oversight to guarantee the tigre’s “protection and security of tenure” against possible abuse, British attempts to sever the traditional subservience proved inadequate. Rather than petitioning to simply redress the terms of the traditional payments, tigre activists sought nothing short of guaranteeing their complete independence from conditions many tigre viewed as nothing short of slavery.24
Despite the BMA’s apparent success in holding a joint public assembly for shumagulle and tigre representatives in Keren in late June 1943 to address the situation, the possibility that some activists would ultimately be unwilling to compromise only stoked administrators’ fears. In particular, BMA officers worried about the actions of Keren resident Mohamed Hamid Tahgé and his group of tigre supporters from the ‘Ad Takles clan. While British reports alleged that Tahgé himself did not cultivate land because he worked as a merchant, he gained a loyal following among the ‘Ad Takles for his bold public declarations that he would “r...
