A joint research team from the English University of Exeter and the Heritage Preservation Commission in Ethiopia was able to find traces of halal slaughtering that took place in three Ethiopian regions in the eighth to ninth century AD, which indicates the presence of the first Muslims in Ethiopia during that period.
Halal slaughter
According to the new study, which was published on May 26 in the Journal of African Archeology, these three regions (Harla, Harar, Soldiers Harla) also contained other diverse meals from nearly all cultures.
The reason for this diversity - according to the study - is that these regions were a world trade center, as it indicates that the first Muslims of Ethiopia combined their cultures with the culture of Islam that came to them recently, so this was evident in their food.
Scientists reached these results by examining more than 50 thousand bones found in these three places, and those bones showed different uses for animals in that period, as the effect of slaughtering on the neck appeared in some of them, while the vast majority of them were left for milling, pregnancy, traction or milk production .
The researchers also found, according to the study, the effects of pigs that lived in those places that also contained halal slaughtering.
They concluded that this might be due to foreign visitors in a region that was the center of convergence of most of the world's cultures, or for use in traction and pregnancy, especially since they did not find traces of pigs in "Harar" that many Muslim scholars lived at the time, and the seasons of Hajj started.
History of Islam
This is the first study that indicates the existence of an archaeological imprint for the first Muslims of Ethiopia, and previous studies have found their traces after 400 years from this date (in the second and 13th centuries) in large mosques and cemeteries, and researchers suggest that the Muslims of that first period may have built small mosques that were not discovered distance.
Islamic history indicates that the first arrival of Islam to the region of Ethiopia (then called Abyssinia) was represented in a small number of the companions of the Messenger of God Muhammad (peace be upon him) the fifth year of the mission and that they (may God be pleased with them) left a good impact.
But the first actual arrival of Islam there was through trade in the Red Sea after Islam was settled in the Arabian Peninsula, and by land routes after the Islamic religion entered Egypt.
The researchers of the new study hope that the attention of archaeologists will pay more attention to the remains of the meals that were eaten hundreds and thousands of years ago, as it can provide very important information about the prevailing economic and social system, something that was neglected by many archaeologists.