Sheikh Hussein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sheikh Hussein is a village in south eastern Ethiopia, located in the Bale Zone of the Oromia Region. The village is name after what, in Ethiopian Muslim eyes, is the most sacred place in that country: the tomb of the thirteenth century Sheikh Hussein, who introduced Islam to the Sidamo people who had lived in the area at the time, and is said to have performed many miracles. A number of these miracles have been recorded in a hagiography published in Cairo in the 1920s, entitled Rabi` al-Qulub. Although this village is now within the homelands of the Oromo people, it has continued to be the destination of approximately 50,000 pilgrims twice a year during the Muslim months of Hajj and Rabi` al-Awwal.

The extensive religious complex dedicated to the saint includes the village and the nearby valley of Kachamsare. In the 18th century, Emir `Abd al-Shakur ibn Yusuf of Harar constructed a shrine to the Baghdadi saint `Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani near the tomb of Sheikh Hussein, inside the shrine compound. A graveyard has also been consecrated as part of the complex.

[edit] References

• J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia (Oxford: Geoffrey Cumberlege for the University Press, 1952), pp. 253-256.

[edit] External links

• An Addis Tribune article on the Sof Omar Caves
• The Tradition of Pilgrimage in Ethiopia - with pictures of the Sheikh Hussein shrine in Bale