Mahbuba (Arabic: محبوبة / maḥbūba c. 1825 – 27 October 1840) was an Oromo girl from present-day Ethiopia who was taken to Germany as a slave.

She is known to have helped lay the foundations for the Oromo language studies in Europe by reciting her oral traditions through songs.

[1][2][3] Some details of Bilillee's early life are unclear, but it appears that she was born in the Kingdom of Gumma, in present-day southwestern Ethiopia.

She was captured with her sister during local fighting, and, while still a child, taken by slave traders to north Gondar then to Khartoum and finally to Cairo.

The portrait depicts her dressed in a 'Mamluk costume and positioned in front of a desert landscape with pyramids [and] is less a realist representation of her than a visual manifestation of Orientalist fantasies.

They included an Oromo youth called Akafede Dalle[9] and later Otshu Aga[10] who in turn brought him into contact with Bilillee.

[13] Alongside his dictionary, Tutschek had transcribed 208 songs in Latin script and intended to translate them into German but died before this work could begin.

[12][15][16] In 1997, over 150 years after her death, Bilillee's songs were translated into English by Gemetchu Megersa and published with further analysis by Claude Sumner.

[18] Sumner explains that this would have been sung by a group of men in praise of family leaders, age grades, and bulls.