On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 5:13 PM, Prof. Getatchew Haile wrote:

There was a famous French poet (he wrote only poem in all his life) called Arthur Rimbaud who tried his luck in all sorts of business residing in Harer. He is accused of cooperating with the family of Abou Bekr, a powerful authority on the coast, in slave trade. The family was a problem for Menelik who needed arms that would be imported only through the coast. One historian, Enid Starklie, states, that the family could have shut Menelik off completely from the sea if he had objected to the slave trade. Then the unsubstantiated allegations follows: “Menelik, for his part, was driven into the position of encouraging the salve-trade secretly, while openly prohibiting it.” The writer quotes Mr. Walsh, Assistant resident in Zeyla, wring to Cairo in May 1889:

“I had a long conversation with Mr. Ilg [Menelik’s advisor in foreign affairs] regarding the sale of slaves in Shoa, and he told me that Menelik could not afford to interfere with the Abou Bekr family, as hitherto he had been dependent on that family for communication with the coast. Mr. Ilg said if once Menelik can do without the Abou Bekr family, no slaves will be allowed to leave Shoa[n] territory, and moreover the Abou Bekr family would lose their possession and influence in Shoa. . .,” Enid Starklie, “Arthur Rimbaud in Abyssinia,” Oxford Studies in Modern Languages and Literature, Oxford 1937, p. 114.

Mrs. Shell might have used such sources and made a mistake unwittingly. We can remind her to scrutinize her sources and make the necessary corrections if she knows that we are interested in the truth.

Our book says, “Get angry but do not let your anger make you err.”

Getatchew