The Afro-Arab’s natural, cultural, and historical relations are very durable. When the rival sets of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian empires and armies caused the fall of the Ancient Hebrew and other related Semitic peoples and states in the Middle East during the first half of the first millennium B.C., in North East Africa, Upper Nile Valley, and South Arabia and three in-co-ordinate sets of ancient Daamatite-Aksumite, Naparata-Meroe, and Saba-Himyarite states and civilizations independently and simultaneously emerged.
Between 430 and 330 B.C, the two Daamat and Saba states established their first commercial and cultural relations and activities across the Red Sea. Between 525 and 30 B.C, the successive advent and commercial activities of the Persion, Greek, and Roman empires and merchants in Egypt, the Middle East, Nile Valley, Red Sea, and Arabia affected Afro Arab history in two different ways and regions.
First, they caused the protracted decline and fall of the ancient states and civilizations of Meroe and Saba. Second, they created the conducive commercial and cultural conditions and agents for the corresponding rise and expansion of the mercantilist Daamatite-Axoumite empire and civilization of ancient Ethiopia in the four adjacent regions and countries of the Upper Nile Valley, North East Africa, Red Sea, and Arabia between 400 B.0 and 600 A.D.
The Historical nature, scope, and magnitude of such African and Arab relations in the Afro-Asiatic regions and countries under reference came to culminate in two historical occasions and times.
First, when the Axoumite government leaders, soldiers, merchants, slaves, and citizens protected the Southern Arabs of Yemen against the allied Jewish and Persian forces of persecution in 518-525 A.D.
Second, when they granted the diplomatic, political, and theological recognition and protection to Prophet Muhammad’s Muslim religion and followers against the allied pagan Kuraysh forces of reaction in 615-630A.D., in Hijaz, Arabia.
Such close and durable African and Arab relations and activities were facilitated by many geopolitical, commercial, and cultural forces and factors including the Daamat/ Geez, Sabaean, and Arabic languages, the three sets of Semitic languages, scripts, and writings simultaneously and independently developed since the sixth century B.C., after the fall of the ancient Assyrian, Babylonian, Hebrew, and Phoenician Semitic languages and writings which were destroyed during the first millennium B.C.
The foregoing and following historical events and accounts of African and Arab relations in 1050 years between 500 B.0 and 550 A.D. are preserved in some 500 ancient inscriptions discovered and translated by some 30 researchers between 5 2 2 a n d 1981A.D. from some 50 historical sites in Ethiopia, Arabia, Sudan, and Egypt written in the four ancient languages of Daamat, Saba, Greek, and Geez (A.J. Drewes, Inscriptions De L’Ethiopie Antique 1962; E.Bernand, A.J. Drewes, and R.Schneider, Recueil Des Inscriptions De L’Ethiopie, Des Periods Pre-Axoumite Et Axoumite, 1991).
Hence they have left behind the common and durable Afro-Arab legacy and heritage for humanity and history.
The Ethiopian herald June 2,2020
BY PROF. LAPISO G. DILEBO
