Who Started the War on Tigray? In this brilliant in-depth analysis, @franz_kassa (pen-name) discusses the background & build-up to the war including evidence that PM Abiy Ahmed had ordered an offensive before the alleged Northern command incident.
https://t.co/TrzOtckELr
@mkheirom@RedSeaBeaks@MdrWad Right, it's not enough to just quote historical documents. You need to read them in context and cross reference them with other sources.
Please read my tweets, they're too long to reiterate here. But you've made a few errors in your conclusions.
@mkheirom@RedSeaBeaks@MdrWad I meant the footnote annotations (numbers in square brackets). They link to a file on one drive which others can't access.
Anyways I finally noticed the references at the bottom.
I've since read them (and more) and your conclusions are inaccurate.
Check my tl for why.
(4/n) Thoughts:
It's disheartening to observe that @mkheirom conducted such a cursory examination of historical events to support a political argument.
A meticulous review of diverse sources reveals that the conclusions he drew were plainly inaccurate.
(1/n) I've done some reading and managed to figure things out...
This source says that 70 ships were assembled near Adulis for the Axumite invasion of Himyar (Yemen). No mention of borrowing ships from Byzantium.
Source: "The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam"
The Axumite Kingdom was a landlocked Kingdom and had no ships.
PM Abiy in his recorded speech to the #Ethiopian Parliament aired on 13 October, last year claimed, ‘#Ethiopia’ (there was no country or state called Ethiopia. then) had historically had a port on the Red Sea. The #Axumite Kingdom which was one of the strongest kingdoms in Africa at that time lied in current #Tigray and Southern #Eritrea. If Ethiopia has a claim at Axumite Kingdom then Eritrea and Tigray have more rights to claim it. The port of Adulis itself lies in current Eritrea.
The port of #Adulis was established by Ptolemaic Dynasty that controlled Egypt for almost three centuries (305-30 BCE), eventually falling to the Romans. The Axumite Kingdom, as well as current Sudan used the port for commercial purposes, but did not own it. The earliest recorded history about Adulis is found in “The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean” believed to written in 60 CE by a Greek historian and traveller and the book was translated to English and published by Wilfred Harvey Schoff in 1912. Adulis is mentioned 31 times in the book.
Asbaha, pleaded he had no ships and borrowed sixty ships[6] from from Roman Emperor Justin I, to attack #Yemen.
https://t.co/6BKjqd1XZm
(3/n) Conclusion:
The invasion of Himyar (518–525 A.D.) by Axum happened with ships built by Axumites.
By the time the Byzantine Emperor asked for Axum's assistance in the Axumite-Persian wars (570–578 A.D.), Axum apparently needed more ships.
(4/n) This paper analyzes the inscriptions: https://t.co/jSUqoeFQq0
Many scholars "doubt that the Greek stelae was originally placed there; it might have been brought from another place" (source: https://t.co/4oMc6bY702)
(1/n) Mohamed's assertion is based an two inscriptions recorded by the traveler Cosmas Indicopleustes in the 6th century.
The first inscription on a small stela describes conquests by the Greek Pharaoh Ptolemy III in Asia (the inscription: https://t.co/ghYidMkiUV)
The Axumite Kingdom was a landlocked Kingdom and had no ships.
PM Abiy in his recorded speech to the #Ethiopian Parliament aired on 13 October, last year claimed, ‘#Ethiopia’ (there was no country or state called Ethiopia. then) had historically had a port on the Red Sea. The #Axumite Kingdom which was one of the strongest kingdoms in Africa at that time lied in current #Tigray and Southern #Eritrea. If Ethiopia has a claim at Axumite Kingdom then Eritrea and Tigray have more rights to claim it. The port of Adulis itself lies in current Eritrea.
The port of #Adulis was established by Ptolemaic Dynasty that controlled Egypt for almost three centuries (305-30 BCE), eventually falling to the Romans. The Axumite Kingdom, as well as current Sudan used the port for commercial purposes, but did not own it. The earliest recorded history about Adulis is found in “The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean” believed to written in 60 CE by a Greek historian and traveller and the book was translated to English and published by Wilfred Harvey Schoff in 1912. Adulis is mentioned 31 times in the book.
Asbaha, pleaded he had no ships and borrowed sixty ships[6] from from Roman Emperor Justin I, to attack #Yemen.
https://t.co/6BKjqd1XZm
(3/n) The problem? Ptolemy III only reigned for 24 years. Cosmas simply assumed the two inscriptions were related and attributed the founding of Adulis to Greeks/Egyptians.
@UpFromTheCracks I think it literally means "wire" ... Hope I'm not misremembering. As in how telephones (used to be) connected over a pair of copper wires.
You're thinking of constitutional monarchies where the monarchs have been stripped of nearly all of their executive power.
All monarchies which remain are astoundingly corrupt: Saudi Arabia, Brunei, eSwatini, etc.
A question I've been asked repeatedly: "are you a feudalist?"
Answer: NO. Feudalism was a medieval system. But I'm a monarchist. The least corrupt & most advanced nations in our time are monarchies: UK, Japan, Luxembourg, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, etc.
Photo: today's monarchs