1. A short history of Oromo language and literature

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A short history of Oromo language and literature

The development of a written culture among the Oromo is closely linked to the history of Islam in

the Horn of Africa. The first written documents originating from the Oromo-inhabited area of

Ethiopia date back to the fourteenth century, after the introduction of Islam in the area (Teferi

2006). Oromo scholars initially adopted Arabic as a literary language, later starting to write in

Afaan Oromoo (the Oromo language) with Arabic script. Starting from as early as the fourteenth

century, books and manuscripts written in Arabic-speaking countries started to be imported and

copied in different Muslim religious centers across present-day eastern and southern Ethiopia –

examples of these are Bafadil (an Arabic grammar book first written in Arabic) and Qas.īdat

al-Burda (a famous Egyptian poetry book written by al-Busiri). From the early nineteenth

century onwards, a great number of Arabic-language works started to be produced locally by

indigenous Muslim scholars. Among these Muslim Oromo scholars, Sheikh Mohammed Jamal

Al-Din is the most famous. According to Kamal (2012, 28), he wrote more than 50 books,

among them Kifiyat Al-Talibin (a book about law), Rawdat Al-Asrar (a poem), and Gilma

Al-najmi (a work on astronomy).

Starting from the eighteenth century, writing in Arabic gradually gave way to writing in

Oromo using Arabic letters. These works are defined as Oromo Ajami literature, Ajami is

the term generally used to denote the Arabic alphabets used for writing African languages (for

example Hausa and Swahili). Most early Ajami works in Oromo were written transcriptions of

oral poems in praise of Muslim saints. Songs for Sheikh Hussein are typical examples. In a second stage, prose works started to appear. In the second half of the nineteenth century

and the beginning of the twentieth century, Sheikh Ahmad Siraji of Dawe produced four

volumes of Oromo Ajami works. Even though much of it is characteristic of the conventions

of Islamic religious literature, it also displays some elements of the secular poetic traditions,

including descriptions of the beauty of Oromo land. Hiob Ludolf (1624–1704), a German Orientalist,

seems to have been the first person to write Afaan Oromoo using the Latin alphabet, the

script the Oromo use to write their language nowadays. As part of his linguistic studies in

the Horn, Ludolf wrote some Oromo words with its parallel translation in Geez and Latin

(Tesfaye 2009).

From the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, Afaan Oromoo gained a high degree of recognition

in the Abyssinian imperial court. This is because Susenyos I (r. 1606–1632), who spent

his early childhood among the Oromo, brought some Oromo administrators into his court when he

became emperor. Many of his soldiers and imperial guards were also Oromo and they brought the

Oromo language into the palace. In addition, the emperor himself married an Oromo and could

speak the Oromo language. The reign of Bakkafa (r. 1721–1730) was another significant

period for the use of the Oromo language in the Christian court (Tesfaye 2009, 48). Iyoas I (r.

1755–1769), an Oromo speaker is believed to have helped the development of the Oromo

language even further. His palace guards were Oromo, and Afaan Oromoo became virtually

the official language of the imperial palace.

Among Europeans, those who contributed to the development of Oromo writing are travelers

like James Bruce, who translated 13 lines from the Bible into the Oromo language in the late

the eighteenth century, and Henry Salt, who published in 1814 a first Oromo-English dictionary

which contains 200 words. Next to them is the English geographer and traveler Charles

T. Beke, who compiled a word-list of Macca (western Oromo/Ethiopian) Oromo terms he had

collected in 1841–1843. In the same manner, Rochet d’Héricourt, a French adventurer and traveler,

gathered about 700 Oromo words and published them in the last 33 pages of his Voyage en

Abyssinia in 1841. From 1840 onwards, the German Protestant missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf

(1810–1881), who lived among the Oromo in Shoa, published Oromo-language dictionaries and

grammar books, the most influential of which was An Imperfect Outline of the Elements of the

Galla Language.1 Together with Christian Rufo, an ex-slave, and Alaqa Zanab, a chronicler of

Emperor Tewodros, in 1876 he published an Oromo translation of the New Testament (Teferi

2006, 40).

Central to the development of Oromo literary production in the nineteenth century were

Oromo liberated slaves who had been brought to Europe and worked alongside European

patrons to develop Oromo studies. Edme-François Jomard, the French archaeologist and geographer,

worked extensively with two Oromo ex-slaves called Ware and Gabao, and thanks to their

help he published ‘the text, in Roman script and French translation, of the first recorded pieces of

Oromo oral literature which consisted of three prayers as pronounced respectively by men,

women, and girls, and three songs of love and three of war’ (Pankhurst 1976, 174). Another

important collaboration between European scholars and Oromo ex-slaves happened in

Germany, wherein 1938 Karl Tutschek was appointed to tutor four ex-slaves, one of whom,

Akafede Dalle, was described as a Borana Oromo. Tutschek later met two other Oromo exslaves,

Otshu Aga and Aman Gonda, and based on the materials he gathered from them, he

was able to start drafting a grammar and dictionary of the Oromo language. Tutschek found

another important informant in an Oromo girl called Ajiame or Bilile (later known as

Mahbuba, meaning ‘the beloved’). She was an Oromo ex-slave girl that the German prince,

Herman von Pückler-Muskau had met in Egypt in 1837 and had taken with him to Europe in

1840. Tutschek collected 208 oral poems from Bilile on her death bed in 1840. Tutschek’s premature

death in 1842 from tuberculosis brought an abrupt end to his documentation work. Fortunately,

however, Karl’s brother Lorenz organized Karl’s manuscripts and published them in

1844 as Dictionary of the Galla Language and A Grammar of the Galla Language. The poetry of Bilile was published in 1885 by an American Ph.D. student in Germany without any explanation (Sumner 1995, 5).

European missionaries also played a central role in the development of Oromo studies, often

working in collaboration with Oromo ex-slaves at various mission stations across Ethiopia and

various religious centers in Europe. Protestant missionaries were the pioneers in this sense.

The towering figure of Oromo studies of that time was an Oromo ex-slave called Ganamee

Ya’ii. Ganamee (later baptized Pauline Johannes Fathme) was born in Gummay, Jimma region,

in the south-west of Ethiopia. After her arrival in Germany as the housemaid of John Baron

von Müller, she was sent to a Protestant school in Kornthal (Smidt 2005, 5). While she was at

mission school in Germany, she introduced the Oromo and their language to her fellow European

missionaries. Having completed her Christian education she began preparing a plan for missionary

outreach to the Oromo in their own language. However, she died of lung disease in Switzerland

in 1855, leaving behind her unfulfilled wish of reaching the Oromo with the Gospels. Her

fellow missionaries considered the accomplishment of her will as a great service to the

kingdom of God. Karl Friedrich Ledderhose, the director of the missionary school for orphans

in Germany, published her biography in German in 1855 under the title Galla-Büchlein: Aus dem Leben der Galla-Negerin Pauline Johanne Fathme: ein Ruf zur Mission unter den Galla.

Her biography was translated into a number of languages and reprinted several times. It was distributed

all over Europe in the form of brochures. In doing so, it publicized the Oromo language in

Europe.

However, the ground-breaking work came in the late nineteenth century with the work of

Onesimos Nesib (c.1856–1931) and Aster Ganno (c.1874–1964). In April 1886, Onesimos

started the translation of religious as well as secular works like Galata Waaqayoo Gofta

Maccaa (1886, a collection of religious songs), Jalqaba Barsiisaa (1894, an Oromo reader

with 79 short stories, most of them transcribed from the oral tradition), Katekismos (1899, the

Catechism), Garaan Namaa Mana Waaqayo yookiis Iddo Bultii Seetana (1899, a translation of

one of John Bunyan’s works) and Galmee jechootaa Afaan Oromoo-Siwidini (1899, Oromo-

Swedish dictionary). Onesimos was assisted by a team of young Oromo ex-slaves liberated

from slavery and sheltered at the Swedish Evangelical Mission station in Eritrea. Among the

Oromo-speaking young men and women at the Swedish Mission, Aster Ganno (a native of

Limmu, near Jimma) was the most important. The greatest collaborative achievement of Onesimos

and Aster was the publication of the Oromo-language translation of the Old Testament in

1893 and New Testament in 1899 (Bahru 2002, 48). Together they also published Jalqaba barsiisaa

(1899, a spelling book) and Si’a Lama Oduu Shantami-Lama (1899, a collection of Bible

stories). Aster also compiled an Oromo dictionary, and in 1894 published a collection of 500 traditional

Oromo riddles, fables, proverbs, and songs (Mekuria 1995).

Like the Protestant missionaries, the European Catholic missionaries also played a significant

role in the development of written Oromo literature. They collected Afaan Oromoo words, wrote

grammars, and compiled dictionaries in Oromo-Italian, Oromo-French, Oromo-German and

Oromo-English. Particularly active in this regard was the Apostolic Vicariate of Galla, where

Guglielmo Massaja (1809–1889) and Giustino de Jacobis (1800–1860) started an intensive

study of the Oromo language and started to ransom Oromo slaves for the mission school they

established in Asandabo (in present-day east Wallagga). To help the missionary school, Giustino

de Jacobis published an Oromo translation of the catechism in 1853 in Paris under the title Kataakisimoo:

Barsiisa Nama Kirstana bia Galla (‘A Teaching for Christians of the Galla Country’).

The book was intended to be used in Oromo Catholic Schools for the teaching of Catholicism in

the Oromo language.

In May 1863, Massaja left for Europe with the threefold objective to find more missionaries

and other necessary materials for his mission, to publish his Amharic–Oromo grammar and to establish an Oromo College (Tesfaye, 2009, 25). In 1867, 501 pages of his grammar were published in Paris at the imperial printing press (Smidt 2005, 47). As he had

dreamed, Massaja received the land and founded his Oromo boys’ college in Marseille,

France in 1866. By 1869 the college was reported to have enrolled about 29 Oromo students,

most of them liberated slaves (Smidt 2005, 47). For the first three years, the

Oromo college taught theology and linguistics with the focus on the development of

Oromo language and literature. However, it was unfortunate that the Oromo students of the

college could not acclimatize well to the weather and many of them even died (Teferi, 2015, Tesfaye

2009, 45).

This forced Massaja to try to establish another college in Ethiopia. In 1868 the Catholic missionaries

began constructing the Church of St Mary at Birbisa, in present-day Piassa in Addis

Ababa(Finfinne. In 1869 the Oromo college built near to the church was officially inaugurated. In this

college, Taurin Cahagne prepared religious texts in Oromo language for church and academic services.

Attempts were made to produce both religious and academic literature in Oromo language

(Smidt 2005, 48). At the time, Addis Ababa had not yet been established as the capital city of

Ethiopia; the location was frequented by the Oromo for its springs and was an Oromo cultural

and spiritual center. By establishing school and churches for Oromo Abba Massaja and Yoseph Galan paved way for the establishment of Addis Ababa.

Nonetheless, the progress of the expansion of Catholic missionaries and its roles in the development

of written Oromo literature were impeded when Emperor Yohannes IV ordered Menelik II

(king of Shoa at the time) to stop the activities of European missionaries. The Catholics had to

interrupt their activity in Addis Ababa. Despite these challenges and obstacles, the Catholic missionaries

did not give up. Taurin Cahagne (1826–1899), who led the Apostolic Vicariate of Galla

from 1880, established a new mission in Harar. In the Harar mission, Oromo and Arabic

languages were intensively taught, and religious books were translated into Afaan Oromoo to

be used in the mission’s educational activities. Another teacher at the mission was the Italian

scholar Ettore Viterbo (1852–1932), who in 1887 published an Oromo grammar in Italian

under the title Grammatica della Lingua Oromonica. He also published an Oromo–Italian,

Italian–Oromo dictionary.

Another pillar in the development of Oromo literature is Sheikh Bakri Sapalo (1895–1980),

who was active in the Oromo literary scene in the mid-twentieth century. The contribution of

Sheikh Bakri to the development of Oromo literature could be divided into three categories.

The first category includes his writings in Arabic on general knowledge topics, from science

and geography to historiography and religion. The second category of the contribution of Sheikh

Bakri Sapalo was his invention of a new writing system for Afaan Oromoo. It is very difficult

to know when Sheikh Bakri embarked on his invention but Mohammad Hassan conjectures

that he started it in the years after the 1941 liberation and completed it in the mid-1950s. The

main motivation behind this invention was to reduce illiteracy among his people (Mohammed

2003, 138). Sheikh Bakri’s Afaan Oromoo script consists of 29 consonants and 10 vowels

which completely represent all the phonemes of the Oromo language. The third category of the contribution

of Sheikh Bakri Sapalo and for which he is most well-known is his poetry, which he

wrote in the script he had invented. Mohammad Hassan describes him as follows: ‘he was the

storehouse of knowledge, the fountain of poetry, the living encyclopedia of Oromo wisdom’

(Mohammed 2003, 139).

Oromo literature and language showed remarkable progress during the period of the Italian

occupation (1936–1941). In the five years of Italian occupation, about 35 publications were produced

in Afaan Oromoo. Among them, more than 19 were dictionaries; eight were grammars,

three were anthologies of proverbs, and five were other forms of publications. All of them

were published either in Dire Dawa, Harar, Jimma, Addis Ababa, or in some cases in Italy.

Among the authors, Martino Mario Moreno published numerous extensive studies on Afaan Oromoo throughout the 1930s. His Oromo grammar of 1939 is considered among the best Oromo publications of the period.

In the post-occupation period, the Macha Tulama Self-Help Association played a key role in

the development of Oromo literature. The first Oromo drama written by Mamo Mazamir was

staged for the public in 1957 in Bishoftu with the help of Macha Tulama (Teferi 2006, 36).

The contribution of Oromo university students is also worth mentioning. Many Oromo poems

were published from the late 1960s on the clandestine Oromo-language magazine Kana Bekta?

(‘Do you know this?’) (Mekuria 1994, 94). The Oromo students in Europe and North America

were engaged in similar activities to the Oromo students of Addis Ababa University. The

Oromo student union in Europe launched the newspaper entitled The Oromo: Voice against

Tyranny in 1971. Under the close inspection of Haile Fida, the famous Oromo politician of the

time, two volumes titled Hirmata Dubbi (a grammar book) and Bara Biran Bari’e (‘When

Autumn Comes’) were published in 1973. Dafa Jamo’s folkloristic novel called Hursa was

also published in 1973, strongly influenced by oral traditions in both structure and content.

During the Dergue regime, a remarkable literary development took place. Since its founding in

1975, the Oromo-language newspaper Bariisa (‘Dawn’) became a forum for Oromo poetry.

More than 10 books related to socialism were also published. The first Afaan Oromoo anthology

of poems entitled Billiqa was published in Khartoum in 1981. Gaaddisaa Birruu’s first Oromo

novel was written in 1984 but could not pass the grim censorship of Dergue. Two volumes of

poems by Tamana Bitima are also examples of the polemic works of Oromo literature in the

Derg period. Afaan Oromoo became an instructional language in refugee camps in Sudan,

Kenya, Somalia, and Djibouti. Qube, the Latin alphabet adapted to Oromo language, was in

use in these schools (Mekuria 1994, 96).

However, the development of authentic Oromo literature really occurred after the end of the

Dergue regime in 1991. Within two years (1991–1993) more than 10 novels and six books of

poetry were published and five plays were performed. After a decade of slow development,

Oromo literary production was particularly re-energized starting from 2005. In 2010 alone

more than 10 books were published; in 2012 about eight books were published and in 2013

the number of books published shot up to 70. In general, there are now about 507 novels, 80

anthologies of short stories, and more than 286 books of poetry in Afaan Oromoo up to 2018.Teferi Tafa (talk) 20:18, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

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A short history of Oromo language and literature

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