Koran Questions for Moorish Americans by Prophet Noble Drew Ali is one of the sacred teaching tools used by Moorish Americans to learn history and esoteric jewels of Moorish Science. Also known as the “101s,” as the text includes 101 questions meant to teach Asiatic principles found in both ancient and modern Moorish culture. Interestingly, one of the questions that have perplexed many Moors is question 89, which states:
“What does Ethiopia mean? Ethiopia means something divided.”
Over the years, Moorish Americans have searched to find a clear meaning to key 89. Is this a literal definition for the term Ethiopia or does it refer to something allegorical? After doing further research, the author proposes that the meaning and answer to Key 89 is completely allegorical but also historical. The idea that Ethiopia means something divided is reference to an earlier dialogue and controversy among Greek scholars on the history of Ethiopia and the expanse inhabited by the children of Cush. This is well illustrated in the classic work The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World (1871) by George Rawlinson. In Chapter III of this text entitled The People, we read on pages 57 to 58 the following:
“Now a large amount of tradition – classical and other- brings Ethiopians into these parts, and connects, more or less distinctly, the early dwellers upon the Persian Gulf with the inhabitants of the Nile valley, especially with those of upon its upper course. Homer, speaking of the Ethiopians, says that they were “divided,” and dwelt at the ends of the earth, at the setting and rising sun. This passage has been variously apprehended. It has been supposed to mean the mere division of the Ethiopians south of Egypt the river Nile, whereby some inhabited its eastern and some its western bank. Again, it has been explained as referring to the east and west coasts of Africa, both found by voyagers to be in possession of Ethiopians, who were “divided” by the vast extent of continent that lay between them. But the most satisfactory explanation is that which Strabo gives from Ephorus, that the Ethiopians were considered as occupying all the south coast both of Asia and Africa, and as “divided” by the Arabian Gulf (which separated the two continents) into eastern and western -Asiatic and African. This was an “old opinion” of the Greeks, we are told; and, though Strabo thinks it indicated their ignorance, we may perhaps be excused for holding that it might not improbably have arisen from real, though imperfect knowledge.”
As this text was written over a decade before Prophet Noble Drew Ali was born, we can see clearly that the term divided appears several times in quotations when describing the dominions of Ethiopia. So, the thought of Ethiopia meaning something divided predates the birth of the Prophet Noble Drew Ali. It appears that although the Ethiopians lived in several parts of Asia, including what is now called Africa, that such a demarcation line as the Arabian Gulf led to a division of the same people. This is expanded upon further by Rawlinson on page 61to 62:
“Many further proofs might be adduced, were they needed, of the Greek belief in an Asiatic Ethiopia, situated somewhere between Arabia and India, on the shores of the Erythraean Sea. Herodotus twice speaks of the Ethiopians of Asia, whom he carefully distinguishes from those of Africa, and who can only be sought in this position. Ephorus, as we have already seen, extended the Ethiopians along the whole of the coast washed by the Southern Ocean. Eusebius has preserved a tradition that, in the reign of Amenophis III., a body of Ethiopians migrated about the Indus, and settled in the valley of the Nile.”
In the context of Noble Drew Ali’s teachings, Ethiopia pertaining to something divided would indicate the first attempt by European forces in successfully dividing a people that considered themselves as one. The author is of the opinion that Strabo’s work is what was most influential to the Prophet’s teaching as we shall see shortly. The Geography of Strabo (1892) provides an extensive discussion on the dividing of Ethiopia. In a translation scribed by H.C. Hamilton and W. Falcolner, we read in a footnote on page 51:
“The Tartessians were the inhabitants of the island of Tartessus, formed by the two arms of the Bætis, (the present Guadalquiver,) near the mouth of this river. One of these arms being now dried up, the island is reunited to the mainland. It forms part of the present district of Andalusia. The tradition, says Gosselin, reported by Ephorus, seems to me to resemble that still preserved at Tingis, a city of Mauritania, so late as the sixth century. Procopius (Vandalicor. ii .10) relates that there were two columns at Tingis bearing the following inscription in the Phoenician language, “We are they who fled before the brigand Joshua, the son of Naue (Nun).” It does not concern us to inquire whether these columns actually existed in the time of Procopius, but merely to remark two in- dependent facts. The first is the tradition generally received for more than twenty centuries, that the coming of the Israelites into Palestine drove one body of Canaanites, its ancient inhabitants, to the extremities of the Mediterranean, while another party went to establish, among the savage tribes of the Peloponnesus and Attica, the earliest kingdoms known in Europe. The second observation has reference to the name of Ethiopians given by Ephorus to this fugitive people, as confirming what we have before stated, that the environs of Jaffa, and possibly the entire of Palestine, anciently bore the name of Ethiopia: and it is here we must seek for the Ethiopians of Homer, and not in the interior of Africa.”
Based on the information we have covered, Ethiopia, a Greek term meaning “of burned face,” is the first time in history that we find an Asiatic people labld and divided by European forces. Thus, the historical accuracy of Prophet Noble Drew Ali’e teaching remains in stride.
