In German the word “Mohr” [Moor] is associated with people today referred to as sub-Saharan African, the historical usage aims contrast to people from North-West African regions, especially from East Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Aksum, Nubia) and North West Africa (Mauritania, Western Sahara, Mali, Morocco, Algeria, see Bidhan).
In German, the word “Mohr” [Moor] apparently historically has a stronger affinity to the ancient Greek word ethiopos (for “burnt face”). The identification of Moors with Moors comes from the underlying likeness and the Spanish influence where moro for historical reasons, the word for the Arab-Islamic Moors.
If in the Middle Ages, for example in connection with the “Moor of Freising”, Latinized from caput aethiop (i) s or caput ethiopicum is mentioned, this has therefore not directly something to do in that time context with Ethiopia, but is already generally with “marshmallow” translating.
In this sense also translated Martin Luther the country Kush , the south of Egypt joined (to Ez 29,10 www.bibleserver.com“>LUT ) and Greco-Roman language area was given the name Ethiopia (as also in the Septuagint ), consistent with “Ethiopia”.
Here are (Jer 13:23 www.bibleserver.com“>LUT ) may be crucial, which states: “Can such Kuschite [Kushite] change his skin or the leopard his spots?” Here too Luther “the Moor”.
The prophet Isaiah contrast with his description of Kush does not allude to the skin color, but rather on their height ( “tall”) and Unbehaartheit ( “blank”). ( Isa 18 www.bibleserver.com”>EU )
In view of the Ethiopian eunuch Luther also seems the terms “Orient” to identify with each other” and “Ethiopia”.
1670 wrote Jerónimo Lobo about the “true nature of Ethiopia, particularly the abbysinischen Kayserthums“.
On the other hand Giovanni Cavazzi da Montecuccolo understood in 1694 at its historical description of “occidentalischen Mohr country” including, among other areas, the three kingdoms of Congo, Matamba and Angola .
In 1728 first appeared in German the report by Bartolomeo de Rogatis from the loss of the Kingdom of Spain and the re-conquest of those lands of the Moors , which turn the Moors are meant.
In 1894 the book Dr. Adschai Samuel Crowt der , the first Protestant Negro bishop, or Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God released. Here, then, is also Nigeria in Ethiopia. It Appeared even in the early 1930s still titles such as Ethiopia was still Christian … (G. von Massenbach, 1933), the debut of Ethiopia (Biographical Samuel Ali Hussein, 1932) or old and new from Ethiopia (Church and Mission History of Christoph Schomerus, 1934), in which case both “black” and “Negro” interchangeably and increasingly throughout Africa for “Mohren-” or “negro country”.
“As the only people of this region familiar to the Greeks were the Nubians of what is now northern and central Sudan, “Ethiopia” often functioned as a synonym for the Nubian kingdom of Kush (or Meroë). The country now called Ethiopia vaguely fit under the same designation, but knowledge of it was scanty at best. The ancient Greeks also used “Ethiopia” to signal other unknown or quasi-mythical lands located to the south or east of the Mediterranean. As a result, even parts of India came to be regarded as “Ethiopia” in some accounts.”
“In the early modern period, European geographers generally located Ethiopia in the unknown (to them) African interior, as can be seen on the map posted above. In certain circumstances, however, they applied the name to sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. As a result, the eastern South Atlantic was commonly dubbed the “Ethiopian Ocean” (or Sea) through the 1700s. In many maps of the time, the Ethiopian Ocean was depicted as extending from the South Atlantic into the western Indian Ocean. The modern concept of discrete oceanic basins dates only to the 1800s; previously, named oceans and seas were often conceptualized as strips of water wrapping around landmasses.”
“In European usage, “Ethiopia” did not refer to the modern country of that name until the second half of the twentieth century. Previously, the Ethiopian kingdom (or empire) was generally called “Abyssinia,” a term derived from the Arabic ethnic designation “Habesh.” Yet in both Ge’ez, the sacred language of Ethiopian Christianity, and the modern Ethiopian Semitic languages (Amharic and Tigrinya), the country has long been called Ītyōṗṗyā. Ītyōṗṗyā is generally thought to be derived from the Greek “Ethiopia.” Some experts reject the connection, however, arguing that the “Book of Aksum, a Ge’ez chronicle first composed in the 15th century, states that the name is derived from ‘Ityopp’is,’ a son (unmentioned in the Bible) of Cush, son of Ham who according to legend founded the city of Axum.” Regardless of its ultimate origin, “Ītyōṗṗyā” certainly sounds as if it were a cognate of “Ethiopia.” Yet even in Ethiopia itself, the Arabic-derived word “Habesha” still denotes the core Semitic-speaking ethnic groups, and is sometimes applied more broadly to all peoples of the country.”
Source: The Migration of Place Names: Africa, Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan
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