Shaykh Bakrii Saphalo's writing system
The second source of his popularity among the Oromo in Hararghe derives from his invention of a writing system for Afaan Oromoo. It is not possible to know exactly when Shaykh Bakrii started working on his new writing system. According to Aliyi Khalifa, it was during the time when he established his third center of teaching at Ligibo (1948-1953) that he completed the work on his writing system.
The Ligibo period was remembered by most of his students as the time when Sheikh Bakrii started active interaction with the villagers and the surrounding communities through his poetry. It was also said that Bakrii completed his invention of alphabet here at Ligibo and the new alphabet was given special attention in his Quranic schools.[i][i]
But there are reasons to believe that Shaykh Bakrii started thinking and planning about his writing system shortly after Emperor Haile Selassie was restored to power in 1941. I say this for the following seven reasons. First and foremost, it has been reported that it took him ten to twelve years to complete his Oromo orthography.[ii][ii] This means, that he started working on it either in 1941 or 1942 and completed it by 1952 or 1953. Secondly, what forced him to embark on this decade long journey of invention was Haile Selassie's ban on the public use of Afaan Oromoo. It has been said and rightly that:
... from 1942 onwards, Amharic was promoted as the sole national language of the empire and all other national languages, particularly Afaan Oromoo, were suppressed. The regime prohibited the use of Oromo literature for educational or religious purposes.[iii][iii]
Shaykh Bakrii fought with his pen against the deliberate policy of suppressing Afaan Oromoo, which in his eyes was the richest and the deepest bond that unites the nation. Shaykh Bakrii wanted Oromo children to learn in their mother tongue, just like the Amhara children. Third, Shaykh Bakrii wanted the Oromo to have their own language radio program just as the Amhara, the Afar, Somali, Tigre and Tigrinya had their government financed radio programs. He wrote the following poem urging the Oromo to rise up and fight in order to open the doors of opportunities for themselves in every facet of life.
Afaan orma kanii tolchee kabajaa
Ka isaatin wajji radiyoo naqamaa
Odoo ka'anii tolchanii lolanii
Xalaatni cabe batatee dhabamaa
Hulaan cuccufaa martinuutu banamaa[iv][iv]
He [Haile Selassie] respects the languages of other people
[that is why] he has radio programs for them
along with his language [i.e. Amharic]
If they [Oromo] rise up and fight well
The enemy will be crushed, scattered and disappear
Then all doors of opportunities will open up [for Oromo][v][v]
Fourth, Shaykh Bakrii ". . . is reported to have said that a people such as the Oromo, possessing glorious historical traditions and a uniquely democratic society, was nevertheless condemned to obscurity without a means of writing."[vi][vi] Fifth, for Shaykh Bakrii, lack of a writing system was a mark of shame on Oromo democratic heritage.[vii][vii] Sixth, Shaykh Bakrii appears to have secretly rejected the hegemony of the Amharic language through which Emperor Haile's twin policies of Amharization and Christianisation were implemented in the conquered territories. He expressed his attitude about this in the following poem.
Boruun fi'amee nigangee moo sigaalaa?
Ifii ml'ate maa Dasetaa Zigaalaa
Boruu kai wan sadii dhabuun sigeesse
Isii a'amuun yoo namaati gubaalaa
Afaan Oromo, dachi kan sadeesa diini
Azaabaa kamii bala sitti buutee caalaa.[viii][viii]
Boruu are you a mule or camel, a [beast of burden]?
Why do you forget yourself while pretending to do everything for Dasetaa?
Boruu awaken you are going to loose three things
If loosing these things burn you (hurt your feelings)
They are Afaan Oromo, your land and religion
What hell is worse than the danger hanging over you?[ix][ix]
In the above poem as well as in many others[x][x], Shaykh Bakrii uses the names of Boruu and Dasetaa. The former is an Oromo name, while the latter is an Amhara one. Shaykh Bakrii's extensive use of Boruu and Dasetaa invites a brief discussion of his imaginative metaphor. He coined this celebrated metaphor in order to make his message familiar to the Oromo while making it ambiguous to the Amhara.[xi][xi] "Occasionally a figure of speech is thought to encapsulate so throughly an idea or concept that it passes into the language as a standard _expression of that idea."[xii][xii] Such is the case with Boruu and Dasetaa. The latter is a name that encapsulates so thoroughly the privileged social status of the Amhara landlord class, which dominated Boruu (Oromo serfs) while controlling "the military, judiciary, and political power, institutionalizing the monopoly of [the landlords] advantages."[xiii][xiii] In other words, Boruu and Dasetaa is a metaphor that expressed the unequal relationship between Amhara landlords and their Oromo gabars (serfs). "Metaphor not only "may render the underlying idea more concise or concrete" but also "may make it more striking or memorable by the drama of substitution."[xiv][xiv]
The contrast between the condition of [Amhara landlords] and that of ...Oromo gabars was striking: there were power, glory, pride, wealth, deeply seated feelings of superiority, pomp, arrogance and luxury on the side of [Amhara landlords] while powerlessness, landlessness, rightlessness, suffering, injustice, poverty, all manners of abuses and dehumanization were the lots of the Oromo gabars, who were physically victimized, socially and psychologically humiliated and devalued as human beings.[xv][xv]
At another level, Shaykh Bakrii's "vivid metaphor"[xvi][xvi] encapsulates the Oromo exclusion from political power. Before 1975 in Hararghe, the Amhara:
...excluded the Oromo from participation in the government even at the lowest level. It was [Amhara] themselves who served as soldiers, policemen, judges, governors, government officials, tax collectors, prison officials, lawyers, priests, teachers, secretaries, secret agents and even as guards. In short, at least in Hararghe the entire colonial state machinery was stuffed from top to bottom by[ Amhara].[xvii][xvii]
Shaykh Bakrii's metaphor probably coined during the 1950s anticipated the famous slogan of "Land to the Tiller" hoisted by Addis Ababa University students in 1965, which faded from Oromo memory only later, with the radical land reform program of March 1975, which destroyed the economic foundation and political power of the Amhara landlord class. According to eight of Shaykh Bakrii's poems,[xviii][xviii] Dasetaa is a cruel and crude master, a parasite that feeds on the labor and produce of Boruu. Cruel because Dasetaa fattened himself,[xix][xix] while the children of Boruu died of hunger; crude, because Dasetaa despises and abuses Boruu who lives in fear and terror.
Seventh, it appears that Shaykh Bakrii invented his writing system for the purpose of reducing illiteracy among his people. “It is difficult to find words to express adequately” the extent to which he wanted to educate his people. This '...was not simply a duty he imposed on himself. It was deliberate conscious” decision that grew out of his political awakening”.[xx][xx] Teaching the people and reducing illiteracy seems to have been his major aim in his professional career.[xxi][xxi] It was his search for teaching his people in their own language that for over two decades, Shaykh Bakrii tried using Arabic script for writing in Afaan Oromoo, but did not make much progress because of problems inherent in Arabic orthography. According to Mahdi Haamid Muudde, the author of Oromo Dictionary:
Arabic based orthography is very common among Moslem [Muslim] Oromo clerics in Wallo, Harar, Arsi, Bale and Jimma . . . . the problem with Arabic-based Oromo orthography was its failure to represent the Oromo consonants (dh, g, c, ch, ph, ny).[xxii][xxii]
Muslim Oromo scholars tried to overcome the problems of vowel length adding what is known as "al Muddah" and that of gemination by adding what is known as "ash Shaddah".[xxiii][xxiii] However, they were unable to overcome the problem of consonants, as "Arabic letters gave Oromo words distorted meaning."[xxiv][xxiv]
Shaykh Bakrii tried using Ethiopic script but found out that as Arabic, it has shortcomings. First, the Ethiopic script "has only seven vowels as opposed to ten vowels" of Afaan Oromoo. What is more, vowels of the Ethiopic script "do not have sound representation for"[xxv][xxv] Afaan Oromoo. Second there is a difference in consonants and glottal stop. Thirdly, there is the problem of gemination.[xxvi][xxvi] In short, the Ethiopic script "does not show the gemination of consonants and it is ill-fitted to represent the vowel sound."[xxvii][xxvii] Since "vowel length and gemination are common features of Oromo language" Ethiopic script's "failure to represent them made [it] very inadequate."[xxviii][xxviii]
Shaykh Bakrii knew the Latin alphabet and its advantages including its 26 letters as compared to 182 letters of Ethiopic script. And yet, he did not consider using the Latin alphabet because his ultimate objective was to glorify Afaan Oromo with its own writing system, the objective to which he probably devoted a decade of his life. His orthography was a purposefully designed system "in which all the major issues of Oromo phonology are properly provided for."[xxix][xxix] His invention of a writing system represents his life long efforts to develop Afaan Oromoo, and to expand and enrich its written literature. In the process Shaykh Bakrii became "the uncontested literary figure" a cultural hero, whose achievement "was so profound as to dwarf,"[xxx][xxx] all his contemporary Oromo scholars both Muslims and Christians. The invention of a writing system was his greatest achievement, which expressed his profound concern for the development of Afaan Oromoo.
. . . Shaykh Bakrii was the first Oromo who saw clearly the problems inherent in attempting to write the Oromo language by means of orthographic systems which had been devised primarily for other languages.[xxxi][xxxi]
Shaykh Bakrii demonstrated that Afaan Oromoo needed its own writing system, and also anticipated the adoption of the Latin alphabet in the early 1970s, which became Qubee Afaan Oromoo in 1991.
those who hated the development of Afaan Oromoo started harassing Shaykh Bakrii as soon as they heard about his writing system. This started in 1953 when the Amhara settlers around Ligibo (his third center of teaching) harassed him to stop teaching his writing system.[xxxii][xxxii] Amhara settlers as well as officials were ". . . adamantly opposed to the idea of Oromo being written in any form, let alone in a script other than Ethiopic"[xxxiii][xxxiii] in 1953 just as their children are opposed to the use of Qubee Afaan Oromoo in 2003! Pressure from Amhara settlers forced Shaykh Bakrii to move to Kortu, a semi-arid area further from the reach of those settlers. Shaykh Bakrii wrote the following poem in 1953 about that incident.
Nuu godaana irra kaanee naftagna Libigboo dha
Gariin guddaan isaani hattu dhaa
Kijiboodha. Takka hin agarree, hin dhageenyee
Kan akka isaani dhiboodha
Biyya diiniin xilaataa [Nyaapha] dinnee torba heboodha.[xxxiv][xxxiv]
We were forced to migrate from Ligibo by the
pressure of the naftannyna [i.e. Amhara settlers)
Majorities of them were thieves
We neither saw nor heard such liars
They are trouble some people, who are Narrow minded
It is a country, in which a religion is an enemy.[xxxv][xxxv]
We reject it seven[xxxvi][xxxvi] times as a puzzle.[xxxvii][xxxvii]
After he moved to Kortu in 1953, Shaykh Bakrii secretly continued teaching his new writing system.
Having developed the alphabet, the Shaykh taught it to all his students and to others as well to a limited extent people began to exchange letters in the new alphabet. In addition to letters, Shaykh Bakrii himself employed his alphabet for writing his poems and other works.[xxxviii][xxxviii]
With his teaching and literary work, Shaykh Bakrii became the conscience of his time, and the hope for a better future. By the 1950s he had already devoted more than a quarter of a century to serving his people. His labor of love planted his name in the minds of those who read or heard his poems. What brought him his people's love and admiration and the popularity that accompanied it, was his tireless efforts to improve the social, political, economic and spiritual life of his people.[xxxix][xxxix] He continued to be at the forefront in fighting with his pen for the cause of his people until he was forced into exile in 1978 (see below). In my extensive discussion among the Oromo diaspora in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia and South Africa, I have not met a single Oromo from Hararghe, who does not mention his name with affection, awe and admiration. He ". . . had become the best-known and most popular"[xl][xl] scholar and a shining figure of his time among the Oromo in Hararghe. He was a Quranic teacher by day and a revolutionary nationalist by night.[xli][xli]
As a scholar Shaykh Bakrii had three outstanding qualities. The first was his devotion to teaching and learning. For him, teaching was a duty and service at the same time.[xlii][xlii] The second was the generosity with which he put his knowledge at the service of Oromo political cause and interest. He was an activist teacher and eloquent speaker and a gifted poet, who was infused with fire and fortitude to awaken his slumbering people.
Third, as a revolutionary nationalist, Shaykh Bakrii followed political developments in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the world. He listened daily to British Broadcast Service Arabic language program, and the voice of the Arab radio program from Cairo. He read Al-Ahram, the most influential newspaper in the Arab world. He shared with others what he read or heard over the radio. He wrote powerful poems on the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis, the Algerian revolution and the Vietnamese revolution.[xliii][xliii] He got interested in the independence movement in Africa during the 1950s and 1960.[xliv][xliv] The independence of the neighboring state of Somalia in 1960, appears to have radicalized Shaykh Bakrii's activities. By 1963 he was involved in a secret fund raising project for the purpose of sending young men to Somalia[xlv][xlv] for military training. He liked to engage people in conversation about Oromo politics, which was the center of his life.[xlvi][xlvi]
Expressed under the guise of Islamic teaching, even his religious poems were wrapped around a political message. He appealed directly to the Oromo to join hands against the oppressor.[xlvii][xlvii] He even called on the Oromo to join him in his jihad (see below) and be the agents of their own liberation. His call for jihad created the specter of Islamic menace. This coupled with the Oromo armed struggle and the capture of Shaykh Bakrii's writing system from Oromo guerrillas in Bale by Ethiopian government soldiers[xlviii][xlviii] alarmed Ethiopian authorities, and propelled them into action. According to Shantam Shubissa:
Top Amhara officials in the city of Dire Dawa asked him why he did not use the Ethiopian writing system. Is it to oppose our writing system that you invented your own writing system? Shaykh Bakrii told the officials that he does not oppose the Ethiopian writing system, but added that it is not suitable for writing in the Oromo language. Shaykh Bakrii was asked why he was writing in the Oromo language? He answered it by saying that he wanted to educate the Oromo about Islam in their own language. Since the Oromo do not know both Arabic and Amharic languages, he wanted to teach them in the language they understood.[xlix][xlix]
It is reported that Shaykh Bakrii wrote a 19 page letter explaining why he invented his writing system and why he continued to use it for Afaan Oromoo.[l][l] His explanation did not satisfy the Amhara officials who banned the use of the Oromo writing system and subjected its inventor to ten years of house confinement.[li][li] According to Mahdi Hamid Muudde, Shaykh Bakrii's writing system "was used clandestinely in parts of Harar, Bale and Arsi."[lii][lii] Once it was banned, using it became a criminal offense, thus deterring the people from using it. As a result, the Ethiopian authorities damaged the chance of the Oromo alphabet from becoming widely familiar and a workable writing system.[liii][liii] The use of the new Oromo writing system was limited to a narrow circle of Shaykh Bakrii's students and friends, who continued using it for secret correspondence, just as some of his former students are still doing it, nearly four decades after it use was banned.[liv][liv] Ethiopian government authorities accused Shaykh Bakrii of raising Oromo political consciousness thus endangering their empire. However, Emperor Haile Selassie, whose regime, in 1965 was facing a very serious Oromo armed struggle in Bale, the peaceful but massive activities of the Macha and Tulama Association in Addis Ababa and the very effective Oromo radio program from Mogadishu did not want to further alienate the Oromo masses by either imprisoning or executing Shaykh Bakrii.
In spite of the extreme gravity of this charge the authorities did not resort to execution, or even brutality. In fact the Shaykh was treated with great magnanimity, his punishment being nothing worse than 'honourable confinement' This was put into effect in 1965, when Shaykh Bakrii was confined to the city of Dire Dawa. Here he was actually permitted to continue teaching. In 1968 an even more generous concession was granted, which allowed him to visit [Kortu] two or three times a week. So it was that for the next ten years he was free to shuttle to and fro between these two places.[lv][lv]
Despite the fact that Shaykh Bakrii was confined, he was involved in intense secret activism. No political or cultural issue was too sensitive or too risky for his interest.[lvi][lvi] In 1967 the fate of Macha and Tulama Association dominated his thinking. Though under confinement he twice visited General Taddesse Birru, who was in detention in the town of Galmasso.[lvii][lvii] While in confinement, Shaykh Bakrii wrote several poems and a twenty page pamphlet "entitled 'Shalda' literally meaning 'sharp knife'."[lviii][lviii] Shalda is of interest in that its ultimate goal was sharpening Oromo political consciousness in and beyond Hararghe.
Making use of the new alphabet and purporting to be a work of religious instruction, this composition is from beginning to end a caustically worded indictment of Amhara colonial oppression and an account of the suffering of the Oromo under this regime.[lix][lix]
In one of his letters in his own orthography, Shaykh Bakrii condemned the Ethiopian administration and predicted the eventual victory of the Oromo revolution.
May this reach our children, the excellent, respected key-men of the revolution ... and the brave people who are in league with [you]. God be with you .... What I want to assure you of is that you and I are engaged in a jihad[ic] struggle] I am fighting with prayer, even as you are fighting with weapons of war. Have no doubts that the objects( for which you are fighting) are well known and widely accepted. It is apparent that many people are engaged in (this) jihad day and night. Moreover, God is my witness that I have been in a jihad of prayer every night for twelve years. Indeed for the last twenty-three years I have been earnestly teaching the people about these things. God inspired me to speak about everything you are now engaged in, and He has shown me what will come hereafter ..... We have no doubt that the [enemy] will be defeated.[lx][lx]
From the content of this letter it is clear that Shaykh Bakrii was a revolutionary nationalist, who was influenced by the anti- imperialism and anti-colonialism socialist rhetorics that swept the continent of Africa in the late 1950s and the 1960s. As an Oromo nationalist, he was far ahead of his time. As a militant scholar, he was a thorn in the side of imperial administration, which subjected him to ten years of confinement, though he was not banned from teaching and writing.[lxi][lxi]
When the government of Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in September 1974 by military officers, Shaykh Bakrii was seventy-nine years old. At that advanced age, most of his contemporary activists had long abandoned activism and settled for a peaceful life of prayer at mosque, blessing people including government officials. But not Shaykh Bakrii, for whom political activism was the core of his very being.[lxii][lxii] With the overthrow of Haile Selassie's regime, his confinement ended giving him a good opportunity to meet freely with a lot of people, discussing political issues and encouraging the Oromo to be the masters of their own destiny. In other words, by 1974, Shaykh Bakrii was as an active and sharp thinker as when he invented his writing system in the early 1950s. In fact, the change of regime in Ethiopia in 1974 was a sigh of relief and moment of joy for Shaykh Bakrii, as it was for the overwhelming majority of the peoples of Ethiopia.
For the next few months, a limited freedom of the press, which Ethiopia had never known before, created a lively atmosphere in which a barrage of criticism about the inequalities of Ethiopian peoples was written and openly discussed. The twists and turns of events which the future held were still unclear and, for the time being, the prevailing mood was one of euphoria it appeared that the dawn of a new era was about to begin. Those were days of undreamt of hopefulness for the equality of all Ethiopians.[lxiii][lxiii]
It was because of that hopefulness that Shaykh Bakrii wrote a " . . . twenty-one page letter to the Dergue urging them to create a country based on equality of the people, their culture, languages and religions, rather than Amharic and Christianity."[lxiv][lxiv] In effect what Shaykh Bakrii demanded from the officers, who replaced the emperor in 1974 was to: " . . . right the old wrong, redress the old injustice, heal old wounds, more importantly, ensure the genuine equality of all Ethiopians in every facts of life - political, economic, social, cultural, and religious."[lxv][lxv]
It was this hopefulness which probably inspired the outpouring of his numerous poems, thus making him "the father of revolutionary Oromo poems."[lxvi][lxvi] With the beginning of the first Oromo weekly newspaper, Barrissa in 1975, Shaykh Bakrii had at last, "a public stage" from where to reach the Oromo elite everywhere in Oromia. At the age of eighty, Shaykh Bakrii lived with the knowledge that his poems now reached every town in Oromia, where Barrissa was sold and read. He used the pages of BARIISAA to widen the influence of his revolutionary poems, which became the model for other writers, who flooded the newspaper with exhilarating revolutionary poems along with aspirations for freedom, equality and democracy. Rarely had aspiration for freedom, equality and democracy and terror against the Oromo been such close neighbors as they were in 1977-78 in Hararghe.
Following the quick Ethiopian victory over the invading Somali army in early 1978 in Ogaden (eastern Hararghe), "narrow nationalism " was declared as the main enemy of the "revolution". Narrow nationalism then was a code name of Oromo nationalism as it still is today. Under the pretext of liquidating "narrow nationalists" and "reactionary" religious leaders, the Ethiopian military regime wanted to execute Shaykh Bakrii as it executed so many prominent Muslim scholars in Hararghe in 1978. At the very moment when Ethiopian soldiers were trying to execute him, "Shaykh Bakrii saved fifty - six Amhara nationals from execution by Somali guerrillas on the railway line to Djibouti.[lxvii][lxvii] When asked why he saved them, Shaykh Bakrii is reported to have said” while we struggle for our own rights, we should not violate the rights of others, including that of the Amharas."[lxviii][lxviii] By so doing, he showed kindness of heart, generosity of spirit, and soul of humanity. His final act of humanity, in the face of Ethiopian government terror, was to enable the Oromo to distinguish a system from the people. Those who hate the Oromo even denied him the right of dying peaceful and being buried in the land of his birth, among his people, for whose cause he struggled for almost six decades.
. . . Shaykh Bakrii and his wife succeeded in escaping to Somalia where they were admitted to the refugee camp in Hiran. He was now in his eighty-third year. He had hoped to be taken to Mogadishu and be free to work there, if possible, bringing to publication some of his many writings; but permission to proceed beyond Hiran was never forthcoming. The rigorous and deprivation of the camp proved too much for the old [scholar], and his health soon broke down. At the end of a prolonged bout of illness, Shaykh Bakrii died on 5 April 1980, aged eighty-five.[lxix][lxix]
One of the literary giants of the Oromo nation and the great scholar was buried in an unmarked grave at a refugee camp in northern Somalia! This reflects the sad reality of the Oromo situation in Ethiopia. Notwithstanding the sad end of his life, Shaykh Bakrii still lives in the great heart of the Oromo nation.[lxx][lxx] Perhaps it is not out of place to end this section with an extract from the closing lines of Shaykh Mohammed Rashad's obituary poem:
Sha’abii biyya teenya lubbuun saanii Bakrii
Dalagaa isaani qalbiin laalii barii
Qadriin Sheykh Bakrii qalbii tee haataatu
Akka zalaalamiif sii wajiin jiraatuu
Diina [ amantii]keetiif du’ee kan akkaan qabattu
Biyya teetiif du’e kan akkaan jaalattu
Namni biyyaaf du’e baraa hin duunee
Qalbii saba saatii abadu waan bannee
Yaa rabbi teessisi jannata kee keessaa
Nuufissabrri[obsa] kenni waan nu qabbaneessa
Bakrii is the very life of our countrymen
Consider his work and learn!
Let his spiritual greatness be in your heart
To be with you forever!
He died for the faith you embrace
He died for the country you love
One who dies for his country does not ever die
He is never lost from the heart of his people.[lxxi][lxxi]