Machbuba
Machbuba | |
|---|---|
 Unknown Artist, Portrait of Mahbuba, oil on canvas, ca. 1840, 72.5 × 59 cm, Branitz: Stiftung Fürst-Pückler-Museum Park und Schloss Branitz, inventory no. VII K1/353. | |
| Born | c. 1825 |
| Died | 27 October 1840 |
| Other names | Mahbuba, Ajiamé, Bilillee |
Mahbuba (Arabic: محبوبة / maḥbūba c. 1825 – 27 October 1840) was an Oromo girl taken to Germany as a slave. She helped lay the foundations for Oromo Studies in Europe by reciting over 200 oral poems.
Mahbuba, Ajiamé, Bilillee
The subject of this article is most often called ‘Mahbuba’ or ‘Machbuba’, which is an Arabic name that means ‘beloved’. She appears to have been given this name after being sold as a slave.
Elsewhere she is called 'Ajiamé' or 'Agiamé', which is also derived from the Arabic term ʿaǧamī.
But her birth name was probably 'Bilillee' or 'Birillee'.[1][2]
Life
Some details of Bilillee's early life are unclear, but it appears that she was born in the Kingdom of Gumma, in present-day Ethiopia. She was captured with her sister during local fighting, and, while still a child, taken by slave traders to Cairo. It was there in 1837 that she was purchased by Prince Hermann Ludwig Heinrich von Pückler-Muskau.[3]
In a letter to his wife Lucie, Pückler-Muskau referred to Bilillee as his ‘mistress'.[4] She was taken by him on his travels before returning to Germany with him in the Spring of 1940. She died in October that year, possibly from tuberculosis, at Muskau Castle in Saxony and buried in St. Jacobi Cemetery in the village of Bad Muskau.[3]
Upon her death Pückler-Muskau wrote to a friend that Bilillee was ‘the being I loved most in all the world’.[3] A death mask was taken as well as a posthumous portrait.[5] The portrait depicts her dressed in a 'Mamluk costume and positioned in front of a desert landscape with pyramids [and] is less a realist representation of her than a visual manifestation of Orientalist fantasies.'
Her grave can still be visited today. In September 2017, the writer Asfa-Wossen Asserate visited the grave and unveiled an Ethiopian memorial cross.[citation needed]
Poetry
In 1838 Karl Tutschek was appointed tutor to several slaves who had arrived in Germany. They included an Oromo youth called Akafede Dalle[6] and later Otshu Aga[7] who in turn brought him into contact with Bilillee. Bilillee taught Aga several songs that were unfamiliar to her two compatriots.[8] Bilillee then spent some of her last days before death reciting 208 poems to Tutschek in 1840.[9]
Tutschek used the information collected from the three, and later a fourth Oromo informant called Aman Gonda, to begin work on the first Oromo dictionary, which was published after his death in 1844 as the ‘Dictionary of the Galla Language’ (Munich).[10]
Tutschek had transcribed Bilillee’s poems in Latin script and intended to translate them into German but died before this work could begin. The documents remained in his brother’s possession before being rediscovered by Philipp Paulitschke in the 1890s while researching his Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas. Paulitschke himself died before he could translate them and they appeared without explanation.[9][11][12]
In 1997, over 150 years after her death, Bilillee’s poems were translated into English by Gemetchu Megersa and published with further analysis by Claude Sumner in ‘Oromo Wisdom Literature Volume 2’ (Addis Ababa: Gudina Tumsa Foundation, 2007).[13]
In his introduction to the book, Lensa Gudina wrote: ‘She was a living library of Oromo songs [and through this book] Mahbuba still sings to us, as she did more than a century and a half ago to Karl Tutschek.’
163 of Bilillee’s poems are included, such as this one:
O Halabe Waqo!
O the elegant man below!
The hearts that have loved each other
Ignore each other in pretence
O Halabe Waqo!
One bears a child once a year:
That would serve the purpose of tomorrow.[14]
Sumner explains that Bilillee would have heard this verse from shepherds and that it is about a woman who loved Halabe Waqo more than anyone else, but that this love grew so deep that it turned to fear.
References
- ^ Pankhurst, Richard (1976). "THE BEGINNINGS OF OROMO STUDIES IN EUROPE". Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente. 31 (2): 171–206. ISSN 0001-9747.
- ^ Schwachenwald, Freya (2019). "Art, Nature, Ghosts, and Ice Cream: Transcultural Assemblages of Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (1785–1871) and Machbuba/Ajiamé/Billilee". The Journal of Transcultural Studies. 10 (2): 78–120. doi:10.17885/heiup.jts.2019.2.24044. ISSN 2191-6411.
- ^ a b c Pankhurst, Richard (1976). "THE BEGINNINGS OF OROMO STUDIES IN EUROPE". Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente. 31 (2): 183. ISSN 0001-9747.
- ^ Assing, Ludmilla (2004). Fürst Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (in German). Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe. p. 118.
- ^ Schwachenwald, Freya (2019). "Art, Nature, Ghosts, and Ice Cream: Transcultural Assemblages of Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (1785–1871) and Machbuba/Ajiamé/Billilee". The Journal of Transcultural Studies. 10 (2): 115. doi:10.17885/heiup.jts.2019.2.24044. ISSN 2191-6411.
- ^ Pankhurst, Richard (1976). "THE BEGINNINGS OF OROMO STUDIES IN EUROPE". Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente. 31 (2): 175. ISSN 0001-9747.
- ^ Pankhurst, Richard (1976). "THE BEGINNINGS OF OROMO STUDIES IN EUROPE". Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente. 31 (2): 179. ISSN 0001-9747.
- ^ Tutschek, Charles (1845). Dictionary of the Galla Language. Munich: F. Wild. pp. xiii.
- ^ a b Sumner, Claude (1997). Oromo Wisdom Literature: Volume II Songs: Collection and Analysis. Addis Ababa: Gudina Tumsa Foundation. p. 3.
- ^ Pankhurst, Richard (1976). "THE BEGINNINGS OF OROMO STUDIES IN EUROPE". Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente. 31 (2): 193. ISSN 0001-9747.
- ^ Tafa, Teferi Nigussie (2015). "The representation of 'Ethiopianness' and 'Oromoness' in two Oromo-language novels: "Yoomi Laataa" by Isaayas Hordofaa and "Kuusaa Gadoo" by Gaaddisaa Birruu". Journal of African Cultural Studies. 27 (1): 86–87. ISSN 1369-6815.
- ^ Azeze, Fekade (2001). "The State of Oral Literature Research in Ethiopia: Retrospect and Prospect". Journal of Ethiopian Studies. 34 (1): 49. ISSN 0304-2243.
- ^ Azeze, Fekade (2001). "The State of Oral Literature Research in Ethiopia: Retrospect and Prospect". Journal of Ethiopian Studies. 34 (1): 49. ISSN 0304-2243.
- ^ Sumner, Claude (1997). Oromo Wisdom Literature: Volume II Songs: Collection and Analysis. Addis Ababa: Gudina Tumsa Foundation. pp. 226–227.
Further reading
- Pankhurst, Richard (1979). “Mahbuba, the ‘Beloved’: The life and romance of an Ethiopian slave-girl in early nineteenth century Europe”. Journal of African Studies 6 (1): 47–56.
- Pankhurst, Richard (1980). “Puekler and Mahbuba: The correspondence between a German prince and the Ethiopian slave-girl”. QSE 1: 30–41.
- Pankhurst, Richard (1981) “The tragic romance of Mahbuba the beloved”, Root (February): 56–8.
- Pankhurst, Richard (1976) “Ethiopian Slave Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Century” Transafrican Journal of History 5(1): 98–110
- Richter, Daniela (2013). "Inside the Oriental Spectacle: Hermann von Pückler-Muskau's Egyptian Travelogue" Colloquia Germanica 46(3): 229–244
- Schmitt, Kathrin (1994) "Machbuba - An Oromo slave-girl who won the heart of a German prince". The Oromo Commentary 4(2): 32–34
- Volker-Saad, Kerstin (2006). "Machbuba: ‘Die treueste Copie einer Venus von Tizian, nur in Schwarzer Manier’’, in: Kerstin Volker-Saad – Anna Greve (eds.): Äthiopien und Deutschland. Sehnsucht nach der Ferne Ausstellung Grassi-Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, 28. April bis 16. Juli 2006, München - Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag.
