Shaykh Bakrii Saphalo

Abstract

Shaykh Bakrii Saphalo was a perceptive Oromo Muslim scholar who used traditional Oromo wisdom to make Islam intelligible to his people and part of their cultural heritage. A gifted poet who wrote in Arabic, Oromo, and Somali, he was persecuted by two successive Ethiopian regimes during the 1960s and 1970s. As an activist scholar, he sought to spread knowledge among the Oromo, who constitute about 40 percent of Ethiopia’s population. Due to the government’s tight control and distance, as well as the lack of modern communication and technology, his effort was limited mainly to the Oromo in Hararghe, eastern Ethiopia. For over six decades Shaykh Bakrii sought to uplift his people and secure respect for their language, culture, human dignity, and national identity. 1 Motivated by his desire to develop the Oromo language, which at that time was banned, he struggled to develop written literature in it. But despite all of these accomplishments, he has been largely forgotten.