The Cross and The River Ethiopia, Egypt and The Nile Haggai Erlich

265 Pages·2010·5.78 MB·English

T C R
HE ROSS AND THE IVER

T C
HE ROSS
R
AND THE IVER
Ethiopia, Egypt,
and the Nile
Haggai Erlich
boulder
london
Published in the United States of America in 2002 by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301
www.rienner.com
and in the United Kingdom by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU
©2002 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Erlikh, Hagai.
The cross and the river : Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Nile / Haggai Erlich.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55587-970-5 (alk. paper)
1. Ethiopia—Foreign relations—Egypt. 2. Egypt—Foreign relations—Ethiopia.
3. Nile River—International status. 4. Water resources development—Ethiopia.
5. Water resources development—Egypt. 6. Islam—Relations—Christianity.
7. Christianity—Relations—Islam. I. Title.
DT382.5.E3 E74 2001
327.62063—dc21 2001019385
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
ACataloguing in Publication record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements
∞
of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
5 4 3 2 1
To my mother, Yehudit,
1910–1966

Contents
Preface ix
1 Introduction: The Crisis of the Nile 1
2 Christianity and Islam: The Formative Concepts 15
3 Medieval Prime: The Legacies of the Solomonians
and the Mamluks 35
4 Modern Rediscovery and Fatal Collision 59
5 Nationalism and Mutual Perceptions 79
6 Stormy Redefinitions, 1935–1942 103
7 From Compromise to Disconnection, 1945–1959 123
8 Ethiopian Concepts of Egypt, 1959–1991 145
9 Egyptian Concepts of Ethiopia, 1959–1991 183
10 Conclusion: The 1990s and the Legacies of History 213
Bibliography 227
Index 237
About the Book 249
vii

Preface
The idea of writing this book was conceived in the late 1980s. The
memory of the great famine in Ethiopia was still fresh. The images
of the walking skeletons of young children, victims of their country’s
failure to store water and develop a modern irrigation system, refused to
fade away. The absurdity of the land of the Blue Nile dying of thirst was
combined with the fact that Egypt at that time was about to face a simi-
lar catastrophe. Egypt, the “gift of the Nile,” had fully developed its
water system, but its dependence on the river, and on rains in Ethiopia,
remained. In the early summer of 1988, after five years of drought in
Ethiopia had reduced the waters of Lake Nasser to an alarming level, ex-
perts predicted the imminent demise of Egypt’s agriculture. The good
rains of that summer brought some temporary relief, but no rest to my
mind. As a student of both countries’history, I was aware of their his-
toric interdependence, of their mutual strategic, cultural, and religious
relations. I was also aware of their failure, through many centuries of
meaningful relations, to cope together with the challenge of the great
river. The intensive Egyptian-Ethiopian efforts to reach understanding
that resumed in the early 1990s have not been facilitated by old legacies
of mutual suspicion. Acommon, long-term, multifaceted history contin-
ues to send double messages, blurring an aggravating issue.
In 1995, I began to work on the present volume. It is an attempt to
reconstruct cultural-conceptual developments beyond the concrete, an-
cient Ethiopian-Egyptian relations. My research was assisted by two in-
stitutions. The Israel Science Foundation, founded by the Israeli Acad-
emy for Science and Humanities, granted me a three-year scholarship.
The United States Institute of Peace, based in Washington, D.C., gener-
ously financed the fourth year of gathering materials. It is my honor and
pleasure to thank the leaders of these two prestigious bodies. They saw
ix