History of Ethiopia

The consolidation of the Ethiopian Multi-National Hatse State in the era of the beginnings of the struggle against imperialism created, the material and social basis and conditions for the subsequent rise of irreconcilable class antagonism between the toiling gabar class and the exploiting gultegna class, that is, the landed and armed ruling class of gubernatorial, ecclesiastical, ministerial, mercantilist leaders and members of the feudal aristocracy and nobility of Ethiopia.

In 1907, the organized and armed ministerial, ecclesiastical, gubernatorial, and mercantilist leaders and members of the gultegna ruling class jointly seized the State Power in the new Council of Ministers and bureaucracy of the Hatse State.

They subsequently created the new systems and institutions of their own court, judiciary, property, inheritance, and private ownership, sale, purchase, exchange, and transfer of land as a commercial commodity for the first time in the long history of the country.

Thus they began to change the Menilik system of maderia, gindebel, and semon possession of land into the new system of inalienable and inheritable private ownership over and against the toiling gabar class.

After the Menlik period the power struggle between the old and young members of the gultegna class, the younger and highly armed faction of ministerial, ecclesiastical, gubernatorial, and mercantilist landlords deposed Queen Taitu, the wife of Menilik II; dismissed Lij Eyasu (1913-1914), the grandson and successor of the late Hatse; crowned Empress Zawditu (1916-1930), and designated Ras Teferi Makonnen (the future Haile Selassie I, 1930-1974) as the heir regent of the Hatse throne. In 1916, they even made a political alliance with the neighbouring British, French, and Italian imperialists to assist in their successional rivalries.

Between 1916 and 1974, the Heir Regent Teferi (Haile Selassie I) became the leader and symbol of the triumphant ruling gultegna class and transformed the Ethiopian Hatse State into an autocratic and absolutist feudal monarchay by a series of policy, legal, constitutional, and political measures.

Among such measures the gradual replacement of the gubernatorial administration of provinces by salaried administrators, and feudal dues and services by monetary taxation of gabars, the Haile Selassie Constitution of 1931 in which the gultegna ruling class made legal attempts to legitimatize and perpetuate its power and privileges. The period also saw growth of new commercial, financial, urban, and educational centres, institutions, organizations, and activities in the country up to the Italian invasion of 1935-1941.

The Italian invasion of 1935-1941, and the subsequent liberation and reunion of Eritrea with the Motherland, in 1952, greatly encouraged the interim rise of the feudo-bourgeois class and mode of production in Ethiopia which lasted until the eruption of the Ethiopian Revolution in 1974.

The destruction of the two archaic systems of slavery and gabar serfdom during the Italian occupation; the enemy’s massive activities in road, bridge, urban, and housing construction;

the Haile Selassie post-war expropriation of peasants’ property and the rise of a massive provincial bureaucracy with a resultant distribution of lands to the privileged leaders and members of the ruling gultegna class; the rise of the national armed forces and industrial workers; the incorporation of the Eritrean national petty-bourgeoisie into the Ethiopian gultegna class at large;

the commercial, educational, and cultural penetration of the western imperialist countries and Japan, and the Haile Selassie Revised Constitution of 1955, all facilitated conditions for the transitional emergence of the feudo-bourgeois system of economy and society in Ethiopia, and intensified the irreconcilable class differences and antagonisms between the ruling gultegna class and the oppressed and exploited masses of the workers and peasants.

These conditions and forces finally led to the popular Ethiopian Revolution of 1974. The Revolution dramatically liberated the long-oppressed and exploited working class, and created the necessary conditions for the subsequent rise of the Ethiopian Workers’ Party (EWP), and the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE), with its own new system of Provincial divisions and administration for the socialist reconstruction of Ethiopia.

(Source: National Atlas of Ethiopia)

Simultaneously during the second half of the nineteenth century, the Ethiopians undertook the double tasks of national defence and reunification against the forces of aggression and imperialism.

This double fronted national policy was visible during the successive reigns of Tewodros II (1855-1868), Yohannis IV (1868-1889), and Menelik II (1889-1913).

The young and energetic frontier governor Dejazmatch Kasa Hailu of Quara in northwestern Ethiopia confronted the Turco-Egyptian incursions against his country during the second half of the 1840s.

In his response to these frontier challenges, between 1845 and 1868, he developed and implemented his two national policies of reunification and frontier defence of Ethiopia.
Between 1845 and 1855, in the implementation of this two-front national policy, Dej. Kasa managed to subjugate the regional chiefs and feudal warlords and, in 1855, he declared himself Haste Tewodros II of Ethiopia.

Before his death in 1868, Tewodros II successfully united the nation’s northwestern and northern regions of Quara, Dembia, Begamidir, Agew-Midir, Damot, Gojam, Lasta, Wag, Semen, Welkait, Metemma, Yeju, Wollo, Tigrai, Akaleguzay, Seraye, and Hamasen with its districts of Keren (Bogs), Asgade (Haba), Galab (Mensa), Samhar, and Halhal with the southern Kingdom of Shewa under his central Hatse government in Gondar.

According to his British friend and adviser Plowden, Tewodros II “is persuaded that he is destined to restore the glories of the Ethiopian Empire” and “his personal and moral daring are boundless…he possesses a perfect self-command. Indefatigable in business, he takes little repose night or day: his ideas and language are clear and precise; hesitation is not known to him, and he has neither counsellors nor go-betweens”.

As first steps in the process of modern state-building, Tewodros II took action to subdue regional feudal chiefs, to introduce land, tax, military, legal, administrative, to promulgate marriage reforms, to suppress the slave-trade, to substitute letters for verbal message, to introduce modern technology and industrial arts from Europe, and to produce military weapons in the country.

Concerning Tewodros II’s foreign policy, Plowden says that the former “wishes, in a short time, to send embassies to the great European powers to treat with them on equal terms”. In his letter of November, 1862, to the British Queen, concerning the Turco-Egyptian presence in the Nile Valley and on the Red Sea frontiers, Tewodros II writes that” I have told them to leave the land of my ancestors. They refuse. I am now going to wrestle with them”.

All this is known about Tewodors II, but, in the final analysis, his programmes of nation-building were aborted due to the strong local opposition of the National Church and regional chiefs, his conflicts with European missionary and diplomatic agents, and the 1868 British invasion of Ethiopia to rescue the latter from the former’s prison in Mekdala.

Yohannes IV followed, and strengthened Tewodros II’s twin policy objectives of national defence and reunification. He fought and repulsed the successive Turco-Egyptian and Sudanese waves of frontier aggression at the Battles of Gondet (1875), Gura (1876), and Metemma (1889).

During his Hatse Reign, the process of national reunification, under the leadership of his powerful regional rulers King Menelik of Shewa, King Tekle Haymanot of Gojam, and Ras Alula of the Northern Maritime Region of Hamasen, greatly advanced and expanded in all directions.

Concerning the country’s natural and historical frontiers, in his letter of February 17, 1881 to the German Emperor, Yohannes IV stated Ethiopia’s ancient frontiers as being “The Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and in the west Swakin, Berber, Nubia, Khartoum, and Sinnar.”

When he crowned Menelik as the Regional King of Shewa in March, 1878, Hatse Yohannes IV gave him mandate to consolidate Ethiopia’s vast, diverse, and dispersed provinces and peoples of the central, eastern, southern and the mid-western regions under the central Hatse Government.

Accordingly, King Menelik left his former northern towns of Wereilu, Liche, Debre Berhan, Ankober, and Angola behind him, and turned his military and territorial campaigns from the north to the south.

Within a distance of forty-five kilometres, he established three new and successive headquarters of Holata, Entoto, and Addis Ababa in 1878, 1882, and 1886, respectively, in the strategic mid-south region to undertake his territorial and commercial campaigns in the west, south and east.

Between 1878 and 1889, after despatching a series of expeditions from his Holata, Entoto, and Addis Ababa headquarters, King Menelik successfully managed to consolidated, under the central Hatse Government, the regions and peoples of Mecha, Gudru, Limmu-Enariya, Gumma, Gomma, Gera, Jimma, Leka, etc. in the west; Tulama, Sodo, Mareka, Gurage, and Kabena in the south, and Arsi and Harer in the southeast.

He also opened up two new lines of commercial contact between mid-southern Ethiopia and the outside world via the Afar-Aseb and Tajura caravan routes, through which the flow of firearms began to enter the region from Europe, in particular, from France and Italy.

While King Menilik was engaged in his campaigns of territorial consolidation in the country’s western, eastern, and southern fronts in the 1880s, the Sudanese Mahdists from the western frontier and the Italians, with British support from the northern frontier, simultaneously launched their 1885-1889 wars of aggression against Ethiopia.

These ended in 1889, in the death of Yohannes IV at the Battle of Metemma, and the colonial occupation of the country’s maritime and historic region of Bahrenegash by the Italians. This they renamed “Eritrea” in 1890. It also marked the seizure of the Hatse throne and crown of Ethiopia by Menilik II.

After he became the Hatse of Ethiopia in 1889, Menilik II intensified his eastern, southern, and western campaigns of territorial consolidation against the British, French, and the Italian imperialist incursions from the neighbouring countries of Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya, and from coastal regions of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian ocean which they had seized in accordance with the Berlin Partition of Africa in 1884-85.

Furthermore, he made attempts to suppress the slave trade and undertook diplomatic and military preparations to face the challenge of the Italian colonial claim over the entire country of Ethiopia at the decisive battle of Adwa on March 2, 1986.

Moreover, five years before the battle of Adwa, in his rightly-famous circular letter of April 10, 1891 to the Heads of State of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, Menilik II said that before the beginning of interference by foreign forces of aggression and imperialism in the subcontinent of North-East Africa, the ancient frontiers of the Hatse State of Ethiopia had no boundary lines of international demarkation since there had existed no other sovereign state in the subcontinent to share these boundary lines.

The people and the regional rulers of Ethiopia united under the policy and leadership of Menilik II. He and the various regional governors of the country managed to import some 110,000 guns of various brands and caliber, including more than 42 large guns, most by from France and Italy, in their national preparation to counteract the challenge of imperialism.

Finally on March 2, 1896 at the battle of Adwa, the Ethiopian Army, variously estimated at between 120,000 and 145,000 men under 13 commanders including Menilik II and his wife Queen Taitu, decisively encountered and routed the 22,000-man Italian Army of imperialist aggression under five generals.

After its defeat at Adwa the Italian Government in the Addis Ababa Peace Treaty of 1896 abandoned the dubious Wuchale Treaty in which it had claimed an Ethiopian protectorate. It also recognized the independence of Ethiopia.

The other great powers of the time including Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Turkey also immediately established diplomatic relations with the victorious Ethiopia.

Before the four frontier regions, with their several ethnic groups all along the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean were separated from the Ethiopian Hatse State, and occupied by the British, French, and Italian imperialists under the new colonial names of “Eritrea”, “French Somaliland”, “British Somaliland”, and “Italian Somaliland” during the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Ethiopian Hatse State neither had, nor recognized, international boundary lines along its natural and historical frontiers.
Before the neighbouring Sudanese State of Funj was conquered and occupied in 1820 by the Turco-Egyptian invaders there was an open frontier between the former and the Ethiopian Hatse State in the Upper Nile Valley.

The Ethiopians never recognized the international legitimacy of such occupational rights and the presence of the Turco-Egyptians on their Red Sea and the Upper Nile Valley frontiers, including those over the former Funk State, until the invaders abandoned the frontiers after they had suffered crushing defeats at the hand of Ethiopians at the battled of Gundet and Gura in 1875 and 1876.

On the other hand, after the British intelligence agent Henry Salt arrived in northern Ethiopia in the 1800s during the Napoleonic Wars of 1793-1815, all European intelligence and consular agents, missionaries, commercial, diplomatic and military visitors, geographical, linguistic, ethnographical and anthropological researchers and students with their attachments to colonialism and imperialism invariably tried to divide the Ethiopians and the Ethiopian Hatse State into tribal, ethnic, linguistic, religious, regional, dynastic, political, and cultural groups as they sought ways to divide and rule. In doing so, they planted the seeds of the present regional and political problems in the Horn of Africa.

Against these various categories of European colonial and imperialist agents, the Ethiopian people and leaders of the last century, regardless of their regional and ethnic differences, took the same national stand that the regions and the different ethnic groups of the Horn of Africa, under the sovereignty of the historical Ethiopian Hatse State, with its natural and historical frontiers of the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and the Upper Nile Valley, were one and the same multi-national country of Ethiopia. This was repeatedly stated by Tewodros II, Yohannes IV, Menilik II, Ras Alula, and Ras Mekonnen, some of the great leaders of Ethiopia.

(Source: National Atlas of Ethiopia)

During and after the 1789-1799 Anglo-French conflict in Egypt, the Turkish viceroy Mohamed Ali (1769-1849) destroyed the old Mameluk ruling class of Egypt and organized the new Egyptian state under Turkish sovereignty, with Anglo-French financial and technical aid.

In 1820, Mahamad Ali invaded and occupied the Sudanese State of Funj. The Turco-Egyptian conquest and occupation of Funj became the first frontier pressure against Ethiopia in the nineteenth century.

In 1882, the British destroyed the Egyptian nationalist revolt against the Anglo-French Dual Control, and the Turkish ruling class, and directly occupied Egypt and its new international waterway of the Suez Canal.

Furthermore, by the fact of Egyptian occupation, the British imperialists justified the distruction of the Sudanese Nationalist revolt of 1882 against the Anglo-Egyptian forces of occupation.

In their reaction against such British hegemony in Egypt and the Sudan, the other imperialist nations of Europe and America met with Britain at the Berlin Congress of 1884-1885, and agreed to partition the African continent among themselves.

After the Berlin partition of Africa, the British, French, and Italian imperialists seized Ethiopia’s natural and historical frontiers along the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean, and the Upper Nile Valley and encircled her.

(Source: National Atlas of Ethiopia)

The series of concomitant events of the Luso-Turkish interference in the regional affairs of the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Horn of Africa; the Adalite Wars of 1524-1543, and the Great Ethiopian Ethnic Migrations of 1520-1660, jointly interrupted the evolutionary process and progress of the Ethiopian Hatse State until 1855.

On the other hand, these same successive events and forces created the internal and external conditions for emergence of the Era of Regional States and Wrlords in Ethiopia. The designation in the traditional chronicles of Zemene Mesefinit (that is, the Era of Princes) in reference to this period of Ethiopian history hardly explains its socioeconomic aspects as well as its totality of ethnic and regional pluralism, since the chroniclers’ designation refers only to the Gondarian court and a limited area of the country during the period in question.

Indeed, of the said regional entities, the Gondarian State in the general region from the Red Sea to the Sudanese State of Fung/Sennar (1504-1820), which was between the Nile and the Atbara Rivers in the Upper Nile Valley, represented the former Hatse State of Ethiopia in its reduced form until 1855.

As it might be recalled, the Red Sea ports of Suwakin and Massawa came under Turkish permanent occupation in 1516 and 1555, respectively.

However, all Turkish attempts to occupy the hinterlands of Suwakin and Massawa failed. Also, the effective rule of the Sudanese State of Fung was limited within the area of the Third Cataract, the Nile and Atbara Rivers in the Upper Nile Valley.

This geographical limitation of the Turks to the Red Sea ports of Suwakin and Massawa, and of the Fung State to the area within the Third Cataract and the Rivers Nile and Atbara in the Upper Nile Valley created conducive conditions and a power vacuum for territorial and commercial expansion by the Gondarian State of Ethiopia in the region of the Northwest between the Red Sea and the Upper Nile Valley during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Accordingly, before 1620, Hatse Susenyos (1605-1632) greatly expanded the Ethiopian State frontier between the Red Sea and the Fung State, during which the Beja rulers of Arom (Aroma) and Atbara/Teawa (Gedaref) became tributary subjects of Ethiopia.

Thus, the chronicler Tekle Selassie declares the region of the Northwest of the Horn of Africa between the Port of Suwakin and the gold producing area of Fazughli in the Upper Nile Valley as the national frontier limit of Ethiopia.

In fact, until the Sudanese State of Fung was occupied by the Turkish agents of Egypt under the leadership of Muhamad Ali in 1820, the territorial strip from Suwakin to Fazughli was an open frontier between Ethiopia and Fung, the two sovereign states in the area.

Between 1770 and 1855, the Gondarian State itself was divided into the two main autonomous regions of Gondar and Tigrai with Puppet Hatses or Emperors in the city of Gondar under the control of the newly emerged dynasty of the Oromo Rases or regional warlords.

Furthermore, between 1696 and 1855, in the strategic south, the small but highly centralized state of Shewa emerged. During the same period, in the mid-west, Janger, Limmu-Enariya, Bosha, Jimma, Gomma, Guma, Gera, Kefa, Kullo, Konta, Mocha; in the South-West, Wolamo, Gamo, Gofa, and Konso; in the east the City State of Harer and the Sultanate of Awsa; in the far-north, Beni Amir of Tigre-Beja; and in the far-west the Beni Shangul sultanate of Bera-Jabilaw were examples of regional mini-states in Ethiopia in their evolutionary process and progress.

By the mid-nineteenth century, all in all, there were more than sixty small Ethiopian regional states, provinces, and ethnic communities of which the following are examples:

Tigre, Bogos/Bilen, Beja, Beni-Amir, Baria/Nara, Kunama, Saho, Hamasen, Seraye, Shire, Agame, Tigrai, Semen, Welkayt, Wag, Lasta, Dembia, Begamdir, Kowara, Gumuz, Agew-Midir, Damot, Gojam, Yeju, Wollo Afar/Danakil, Shewa, Kereyu, Itu, Harer, Various Somali Tribes, Bale, Arsi, Guji, Borana, Gurage, Sodo, Tulama, Mecha, Jangero, Kafa, Kullo, Konta, Wolamo, Gamo, Gofa, Ari, Hamar, Geleb, Maji, Shako, Bench-She of Gimera, Mocha, Majangir, Anuak, Nuer, Ilubabor, Limmu-Enariya, Jimma, Gomma, Gumma, Gera, Gudru, Leka, Welega, Beni-Shangul, etc.

In the nineteenth century the external forces of aggression and imperialism represented by the expansionist rulers of the neighbouring countries of Egypt and Sudan and the European imperialists of Great Britain, France, and Italy, came to view these vast and diverse regional states, provinces, and ethnic groups of Ethiopia as objects of their imperialist conquest and colonization.

The Ethiopians on their part maintained their national and historical rights and their duty to restore the former Hatse State reunification of these smaller states, provinces and communities under one political center safe from external interference.

Thus began the historical struggle of Ethiopia at great human and material cost for national independence, unity, and territorial integrity against the forces of aggression and imperialism.

(Source: National Atlas of Ethiopia)

Between 1540 and 1559, King Galawdewos, with the assistance of the Portuguese soldiers, undertook the first attempts against the Adalites and the Oromo nomads to restore the former state frontiers and the corresponding central authority of the Hatse State of Ethiopia.

When Galawdewos succeeded his tather as the Hatse of Ethiopia in 1540, Imam Ahmed Gragn was the effective ruler of Ethiopia from his Dambia Headquarters in Sahart.

In Tigrai, Galawdewos encountered the Adalites, and suffered defeat and retreated to Semen before he fled to Shewa, Fatagar and Dawaro in the South. It seems that he fled from Shahart-Semen to the south by the way of Wadla-Begamdir-Gojam-Gindeberet crossing the Abay River twice, first from Begamdir into Gojam and second from Gojam into Gindeberet-Shewa.

When some 400 Portuguese soldiers, under the leadership of Dom Cristovao da Gama, landed in Massawa in July 1541, Galawdewos was in the south. The Portuguese marched to the regional capital of Debarwa, in the province of Seraye, where they stayed until December, 1541.

From Debarwa, in company with the king’s mother, the Portuguese marched towards the south via Agame in their attempt to join the king in the south. On the way, in February 1542, they captured Amba Sanayt in Agame from the Adalites. After that Imam encountered the Portuguese again in Antalo, and suffered defeat in two battles.

However, in August, 1542, with the assistance of Turkish soldiers, Imam Ahmed fought and defeated the Portuguese at the Battle of Wafla to the south of Lake Ashange.

The leader of the Portuguese soldiers fled to Massawa from the battlefield, 120 soldiers fled to Massawa from the battlefield, 120 soldiers, with the king’s mother, retreated towards the northwest and managed to join the king in Semen.

From Semen, the king and the Portuguese marched together to Dambia and, on February 22, 1543 they encountered Imam Ahmed Gragn’s soldiers at the Battle of Wayna Daga near Lake Tana. Gragn was killed in the battle. Following the death of their leader the Adalites left the north in flight.

After the death of Imam Ahmed Gragn, Galawdewos was in Dembia from February to September, 1543 consolidating the provinces and peoples of Dembia, Gojam, Begamdir, Lasta, Semen, Tigrai, etc. in the northwest and north. During this transitional time, Vizi Abbas, the cousin and successor of the late Imam Ahmed, fled from his gubernatoral region of Begamdir and seized the provinces of Fatagar, Dawaro, and Bali in the Southeast as his bases to encounter the Gelawdewos counter-offensive.

To face the new Adalite challenge under Vizi Abbas, and to consolidate the provinces and peoples of Shewa, Fatagar, Damot, Gafat, Enariya, Gurage, Waj and Hadiya, in the south, mid-west, and southeast, Galawdewos left the north with his Portuguese soldiers sometime during the closing months of 1543, and established Waj in the Zway area as the permanent seat of his government.

In October 1544, Galawdewos fought and killed Vizi Abbas at the head of his Adalite Army in the Battle of Waj. From his Waj base, Galawdewos also organized and led successful campaigns for the Hatse State restoration against the postwar provinces and peoples of Hadiya, Gurage, Damot, Gafat, and Enariya, and he made his first encounter with the new forces of the Oromo under the Bifole Luba (1546-1554) in the province of Dawaro.

Between the second half of the 1540s and 1550s, Galawdewos and his warlords, Fanuel and Hamalmal, made a series of campaigns against the Adalites for Hatse State Restoration in the region from Barr Saad El Dien to the Barr El Ajan, that is, roughly from the Awash-Zeila in the northeast to the Indian Ocean in the southeast.

Finally in 1559, Emir Nur, the Adalite successor of the late Vizir Abbas, fought and killed King Galawdewos himself at the second battle of Waj. However, when Emir Nur marched in triumph from Waj to Harer, his own country of Adal outside Harer city was already occupied by the Oromo invaders.

During the closing years of the reign of Galawdewos, in 1557, the Turks invaded and occupied the Ethiopian coastal island and port of Massawa. Between 1557 and 1589, the Turks from Suakin and Massawa made a series of more than ten different invasions into the provinces of Bahrenegash and Tigrai marching over the coastal region of Arkiko to the regional capital of Debarwa.

In the period 1557 to 1558, a Turkish invasion force from Suakin invaded the regions of Arkiko, Hamasen, Seraye, Akaleguzay, Bur, Tigrai, and Mazaga, occupied the regional capital of Debarwa, and plundered the famous monastery of Debra Damo before it was defeated and expelled by an Ethiopian army dispatched by Galawdewos in September, 1558.

In 1562, the Turks from Massawa, in collaboration with Bahrenegash Yishak (Bohri), (the governor of the Bahrenegash province,) temporarily occupied the region between Massawa and Debarwa before they were fought, defeated and expelled by King Minas (1559-1563) in April 1562.

Then, in 1572-1578, and again from Massawa the Turks made a series of incursions into Hamasen, Seraye, and Tigrai.

However, in November-December 1578, a massive Ethiopian army gathered from the provinces of Bali, Sharka, Hadiya, Waj, Damot, Shewa, Gojam, and Dembia, including Adal and Oromo warriors under the leadership of Sarsa Dengil, fought and defeated them in the series of Seraye Battles in which both Bahrenegash Yishak and the leader of the Turks were killed.

Finally between 1588 and 1589, the Turks from Dehano (Arkiko) on the coast invaded Hamasen, Seraye, and Tigrai occupying Debarwa until they were expelled by the Ethiopian army of Sarsa Dengil.

In January, 1589, Sarsa Dengil, in a counter offensive, at the head of the Ethiopian army, went from Debarwa to Dahano (Arkiko) and there he fought and defeated the enemy.

However, the Turks escaped from Arkiko to Massawa by boat. The Ethiopian army and leader possessed no boats or naval force with which they could dislodge the defeated enemy from Massawa Island. Here the Turks stayed until the second decade of the last century when the island was seized by the Egyptians.

The objectives of Sarsa Dengil’s domestic policy between 1563 and 1597 were ceaseless and unsuccessful campaigns for the restoration of the Hatse State and for centralized control of the regions of Gafat, Damot, Bizamo, Enariy, Bosha, Gurage, Hadiya, Adal, Falasha, Agaw, Shinasha, Gumuz, and the Oromo tribes.

In 1563, Sarsa Dengil became the Hatse of Ethiopia in Begamdir against his rivals and, from there, by the way of Gojam, he came to the Gindebert-Mugar area and established temporary centres of state consolidation, first in Gindebert and then in Waj.

He organized and led in person a series of campaigns against the Gafat, Damot, Bizamo, Gurage, Enariya, Bosha, and Hadiya countries. In 1577, he marched from Waj across the countries of Sharka and Hadiya, and fought and killed the last rebellious Adalite Sultan, Mahamed IV, at the Wabe Valley Battle in the Southeast. In the 1570s and 1580s, the other targets of Sarsa Dengil’s wars were various Oromo tribes in the South, and Felasha, the Agew, Shinasha and Gumuz peoples in Begamdir, Wegera, Semen, Dembia and Gojam.

In the final analysis, these wars of Sarsa Dengil, by expelling the Turks from the two northern provinces of Bahrenegash and Tigrai, and by repulsing various Oromo tribes from the provinces of Tigrai, Lasta, Begamdir, Dembia, and Gojam, created historical conditions for the subsequent rise of the Gondarian state of Ethiopia in the northwest in the lands of the Agew, Felasha, and Gumuz peoples.

(Source: National Atlas of Ethiopia)

The advent and expansion of the two great world religions of Christianity and Islam greatly accelerated the process and nature of state formation.

Christianity was introduced into the Aksumite court and Empire in the 330s and became the dominant political and ideological force of the Ethiopian Hatse State for the next 16 centuries until the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 separated the state from religion.

Islam spread from Arabia across the sea along the caravan routes into southeast Ethiopia from ca. 700 A.D. and became the dominant organizational and ideological foundation and means for the subsequent rise of the series of the Ethiopian sultanates and principalities of Shewa, Yifat, Dawaro, Hadiya, Arababini, Sharka, Bali, Dara, Fatagar, Adal, Mora, Hargaya, Hubat, and Jidaya in the general region between the Gulf of Aden and the Gibe River in a period of five centuries between 890 and 1330.

After the emergence of Islam on international scene and the expansion of the Arabs in middle East and North-Africa cut off the commercial and cultural ties of the Aksumites with Egypt and the Mediterranean world via the Red Sea and the Nile valley, the course and direction of territorial and commercial expansion of the Ethiopian Hatse State more and more turned towards the southwest, south, and south of the subcontinent after the closing centuries of the first millennium A.D.

At the end of the millennium, the state power of the Ethiopian Hatse State, as has already been seen, passed from the Aksumite regional ruling class in the north into the hands of the new regional Agew (Zagwe) dynasty in Lasta.

During the 3 centuries of Agew dynasty rule until 1270, the southern frontier of the Ethiopian Hatse State was extended to the northern parts of Shewa.

In 1270, the state power of Ethiopian Hatse State passed from the Agew Dynasty into the hands of the new regional and so-called “Solomonic” dynasty in the Amhara region in the northwest, and in the Bashilo-Abay area.

Between 1270 and 1468, the following strong kings: Yikuno-Amlak (1270-1285), Amda Seyon (1314-1344), Dawit (1382-1413), Yishak (1414-1429), and Zara Yaeqob (1434-1468), of the new dynasty successfully managed to bring the land trade routes and the people of Gojam, Shewa, Damot, Gafat, Gurage, Kembata, Wolamo, Gamo, Waj, Hadiya, Yifat, Argoba, Fatagar, Dawaro, Arababini, Sharka, Bali, Harla, Adla, Somali, etc. in the northwest, south, and southeast, of North-East Africa under the Hatse State and they established Ethiopia’s natural and historical state frontiers at the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean, and the Upper Nile Valley.

Of the foregoing Kings, Amda Seyon established the pattern and composition of the pluralistic state and society of medieval Ethiopia by his military unification of the vast and diverse Christian, Moslem, and Pagan inhabitants of Northeast Africa under one central rule within these state frontiers.

He brought the world’s two great religions of Christianity and Islam together within the control of the Hatse state of Ethiopia.

The aforesaid state frontiers of Ethiopia were internationally known and recognized by the contemporary Arab States and writers. On the question of the neighbouring Arab concepts of Ethiopia during both the Aksumite and Medieval periods, the following accounts of some contemporary Arab writers are available.

For instance, in 827 A.D., the Arab writer Yaqubi tells us that the Island of Dahlak in the Red Sea was part of the Ethiopian state. In 935, another Arab writer, Masudi, says that the Red Sea coastal region of Africa from the Dahlak Island to the port of Zeila on the Gulf of Aden was part of the Ethiopian Hatse State.

Writing in the 970s, Ibn Haukal also says that the port of Zeila belonged to the Ethiopian Hatse State. According to the Arab writer Idris (1100-1166), in the 12th century, the land of the Barbars along the coasts of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean was a part of the Ethiopian Hatse State.

These and other medieval Arab writers made clear the regional and political distinctions between the ancient Bantu State of Azania (Zanj) along the narrow coastal region of the Indian Ocean from the present Cape of Gardafui to the Island of Zanzibar, and the Ethiopian Hatse State on the mainland of the subcontinent.

According to the Arab writer Masudi, in the 10th century A.D., the Wabe River was the line of demarkation between the coastal state of Azania (Zanj) and the Ethiopian Hatse State on the subcontinent.

According to the Arab geographer Ibn Said (1214-1274), in the 13th century A.D., the coastal people of the Mogadisho town on the shore of the Indian Ocean were Moslems by religion and subjects of both the Ethiopians and the Zanjs.

Besides, both the Arabs and the Ethiopians later on began to make a distinction between the lands of the Ethiopian Moslems in the southeast and the coastal strip of the Zanj country by saying Barr Saad El Dien and Barr el Aijan, that is, the countries/lands of Saad El Dien and Zanj, respectively.

The Arab historian Ibn Fadl a. Omari, writing in the late 1330s, affirms that the natural state frontier of the medieval Hatse State of Ethiopia stretched from the coasts of the Indian Ocean in the southeast to the southeast to the Barka Valley in the northwest in today’s western Eritrean lowland.

Omari adds that in the vast and diverse Hatse State of Ethiopia there were 99 regional kings under the central Hatse, that is, the king of kings.

Of these 99 regional states and provinces, during the first half the fourteenth century, Hamasen, Nara (Baria), Samhar (Saho), Tigrai, Sahart, Amhara, Shewa, Damot, Ganz, Adal, Mora, and the seven southeastern Sultanates of Yifat, Dawaro, Hadiya, Arbabini, Sharka, Bali, and Dara were mentioned as the most important by the Arab historian. The latter also adds that in the multi-national Hatse State of medieval Ethiopia, about 50 different languages were spoken.

For the reconstruction and rational understanding of the medieval history of the Horn of Africa, knowledge of the rise and fall of these southeastern Sultanates between about 800 and 1600 A.D. is essential. The fundamental and extant historical data transmitted to us by the Arab historians Omari and Maqrizi.

By the 14th century, of these sultanates, Yifat had occupied the general area in the east roughly from the coasts of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean all the way to the Middle Awash Valley and the Chercher mountains. Hadiya in the southwest had occupied parts of today’s northwestern Harerge, northern Bale, northern Sidamo, Southern Shewa, and Arsi.

In the southeast, the history of the Sultanates of Shewa, Yifat, Adal Harar, and Awssa is somewhat parallel to that of the states of the Daamatites, Aksumtites and Agews in the north from the standpoint of evolutionary development, expansion, and dynastic succession. In this respect, in 896, in the general area of Chercher-Zway, there emerged the Sultanate of Shewa.

In 1285, the Walasma Dynasty of Yifat destroyed the rulers of the Shewa Sultanate and expanded the Yifat Sultanate in the region between the coasts of the Gulf of Aden and Awash-Chercher.

It became an autonomous regional state within the Ethiopian Hatse State after the time of Hatse Amda Seyon (1314-1344). After the death of Sultan Saad el Dien in 1415, the Walasma Sultans and people of Yifat began to call their country by the name of Adal.

In 1524, the rebellious Adalite regional warlord Imam Ahmed Ben Ibrahim Al Ghazi (1506-1543), nicknamed Ahmed Gragn, launched his victorious wars of revolt against both the Adalite Sultan and the Ethiopian Hatse State from the city of Harer.

After the Ahmed Gragn war of 1524-1543, under the pressure of the neighbouring nomads, the Adalite Sultanate was divided into the two regional entities of the Harer Emirates of Adal and the Awssa Sultanate of Adal.

The Harer Emirate of Adal, despite the pressure of the Oromo and Somali nomads, managed to survive in its walled city of Harar. Nevertheless, the Awssa Sultanate of Adal in the north was overrun by the Afar nomads in the 17th century.

Like their direct descendants, the Adares of today, the people of ancient Shewa, Yifat, Adal, Harer and Awssa were Semitic in their ethnic and linguistic origins and evolution. They were neither Somali nor Afar.

But the Somali and Afar nomads were the local Adalite subjects within the central Hatse State of Ethiopia.

The underlying cause of the 1524-1543 Adalite Wars of revolt under the leadership of Imam Ahmed Gragn against both the local Sultan of Adal and the central Hatse State of Ethiopia is to be sought in the advent and interference of the Portuguese and the Turks in the internal and regional affairs of the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Horn of Africa in general between 1498 and 1520.

Keywords: Hatse state, Ethiopia, Shewa, Yifat, Dawaro, Hadiya, Arababini, Sharka, Bali, Dara, Fatagar, Adal, Mora, Hargaya, Hubat, Jidaya, Agew, Zagwe, Lasta, Yikuno-Amlak, Azania, Walasma Dynasty, Awssa Sultanate,

It has been said that the line of conventional demarcation between prehistory and history is the existence of written and dated records of human events.

In this respect from the time when the pharaonic Egyptians identified the coastal region and inhabitants of North-East Africa as Punt and the Habasha, respective, in the mid 3rd millennium B.C., to the advent of the Greek, Roman, and Arab writers in the subcontinent between 300 B.C. and 1400 A.D., there were no surviving written accounts of the lands and peoples of southern and eastern regions of the subcontinent.

The Greek, Roman, and Arab writers found and recognized the two independent and sovereign states of Ethiopia and Azania (Zanj) in the North-East African subcontinent. The Greek and Roman writers commonly and vaguely identified the stateless tribes of the coastal regions of North-East Africa simply as the – “Troglodytes” and the “Barbares”.

Indeed the Greek and Roman writers described the tribal people of the eastern lowland of the subcontinent not by their ethnic or linguistic names, but only by their ethnic and cultural habits; calling them, according to their cultural practices, simply as the:

• Ichthoyophages (fish eaters)
• Strouthophages (ostrich eaters)
• Acridophages (locust eaters)
• Chelonophages (tortoise eaters)
• Crephages ( flesh eaters)
• Elephantophages (elephant eaters) 

On the other hand, the medieval Arab writers, with the exception of the people and state of Azania (Zanj), did view and recognize the vast and diverse regions and inhabitants of the subcontinent as integral parts of the Ethiopian Hatse state, that is, the lands and peoples of the Ethiopian Hatse (Atse) or the “king of kings” in Geez.

Nevertheless, the documentary accounts of the pharaonic Egyptians, the ancient Graeco-Romans, and the medieval Arabs on the North-East African subcontinent being limited to its northern and coastal regions, do not help us to understand the peoples and the cultural evolution of the southern regions before they became integral parts of the medieval Hatse State of Ethiopia at the beginning of the fourteenth century A.D.

The undated monolithic stone monuments of the cemetery type in Shewa and Sidamo, the archaeological sites of stone – built necropolii, cisterns, store pits, and houses in the southeastern region of Awash-Chercher, some of which are dated at about 3700 years ago the 3500 years old paintings of animals at the Laga Oda site in Harerge, and the 3000 years old engravings of cattle at the Shabe Site in Sidamo are some of the material evidence that the southern interior of North-East Africa, like its northern and eastern counterparts, have been an area of human and cultural evolution and progress over several millennia.

It seems that the Harla, Shewa, Yifat, Argoba, Warjih, Adal, Hadiya, Sidama, Dawaro, Fatagar, Arababini, Sharka, Bali, Dara, Waj, Gurage, Damot, Ganz, and Omotic peoples and regional states emerged in the region under investigation during the last centuries of the 1st millennium A.D., before they became parts of the Ethiopian Hatse State in the 14th century.

Keywords: Ethiopia, Azania, Zanj, Hatse, Atse, Harla, Shewa, Yifat, Argoba, Warjih, Adal, Hadiya, Sidama, Dawaro, Fatagar, Arababini, Sharka, Bali, Dara, Waj, Gurage, Damot, Ganz

The major documentary sources of our knowledge of the Aksumite civilization of Ethiopia are first the Adulis Inscriptions in Greek sometime during the first two centuries A.D. The exact date and the name of author of the document were lost when the exact copy was made in 525 by the Greek monk Cosmas.

The Periplus of The Erythrean Sea, an undated work by an anonymous Greek author written sometimes in the second century A.D. The royal chronicles of the two great Aksumite Emperors Ezana and Caleb in the fourth and sixth centuries A.D., respectively, and the metallic coins issued by more than twenty Aksumite kings between the second and ninth centuries A.D. are three other sources.

The Aksumite king who wrote the Adulis Inscription boastfully enumerates, as parts of his expanding and multinational state, the following lands and peoples:

• Ganze
• Agame
• Sign
• Aua (Adwa)
• Zingabane
• Angabo
• Tiamo
• Antangau
• Kala
• Semen
• Lasine
• Zaa
• Gabala
• Atalamo
• Beja
• Tanganitae
• Annine
• Metine
• Sesea
• Rhausoi, and
• Solate

These covered approximately the general region of North-East Africa between the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Awash Valley in the east and the southeast, and Egypt, Meroe, and the Lake Tana in the north, the west and the southwest respectively.

Besides, the Aksumite king crossed the Red Sea and conducted campaigns in the three Arabian districts of Leuke Kome, Kinaidokolpites and Arrabites.

During the first half of the fourth century A.D. the royal title of the Aksumite Emperor Ezana included the countries and cities of Aksum, Himyar, Kasu, Saba, Habasha (Habasat), Ethiopia (Athiopien), Raydan, Salhen, Siyamo, and Beja on both sides of the Red Sea, which were listed in his famous Bilingual inscriptions written in the two ancient languages of Greek, and Geez.

The name Ethiopia is used in the Greek version, while the name Habasha is used in the Geez version of the Ezana inscription. Both names are used in reference to the Aksumite state. Aksum was the main city of both.

Kasu, Siyamo, and Beja were located in the region betweent eh Red Sea and the Upper Nile Valley. Kasu was another name for Meroe. Indeed, Emperor Ezana set up an inscriptional monument at the very junction of the Nile and Atbara Rivers in Meroe.

Himyar and Saba were Asiatic kingdoms in Arabia, while Salhen was a Sabaean city. In the Ezana list of the regional and ethnic groups the people of Baria or today’s Nara were included.

During the first quarter of the 6th century A.D., at the height of the geographical expansion and political influence of the Aksumite state in Northern Ethiopia, the Upper Nile Valley and Arabia, the royal title of Emperor Caleb also contains the national and tributary territories and peoples of “Aksum, Kasu, Raydan, Saba, Salhen, Tiamo, Yemenites, Tihamat, Raban, Beja, Noba, and Arabites” in the three regions under reference.

Besides, in 525, when Cosmas visited the Aksumite court, the Agew country in the southwest, in the region between the Rivers Tekeze and Abay, was already under the political and commercial influence of the Aksumite state.

According to the royal chronicles of the Aksumite kings and the testimony of Cosmas, by the time of the 4th to 6th centuries A.D., in the region of North-East Africa the general area approximately between the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Lower Awash Valley in the east and southeast Egypt to the north, Meroe in the west, and the Abay River in the southwest seemed to be under the effective rule of the Aksumite Empire, while Egypt was under Roman control on its northern frontiers.

As Y.M. Kobishchanov was demonstrated in his study, Axsum, the Aksumite Empire emerged as the mercantilist regional power of the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa during the first centuries A.D., when the two ancient and regional Kingdoms of Saba and Meroe were in their final stages of decline.

As the mercantilist power of the Red Sea, the Aksumite state had close commercial and cultural contacts with the countries of Meroe, Egypt, the Graeco-Roman World of the Mediterranean, Arabia, and India.

The list of commercial goods imported into the Aksumite Empire from these countries included the following items:

“brass and copper, copper and bronze cups, scales and weights, lamps, tin, gold and silver vessels, glass and ceramic articles, Iron, axes, poleaxes, knives, fabrics and clothing, wine and oils,…from the Roman Empire; iron, copper, and bronze vessels, amphorae, and ceramic statuettes from Meroe; iron and steel articles, gold coins, ceramics, cotton fabrics, sugar cane, sesame oil,… from India; spears, poleaxes, bronze coins, bronze vessels, silver coins, etc. from Arabia.”

The list of the Aksumite export goods to various countries included natural products of obsidian, hippopotamus hide, tortoise shell, slaves, live animals, aromatic substances, gold, ivory, and rhinoceros horn,.

For their commercial activities the Aksumites minted and used coins of copper, bronze, silver, and gold. The four coastal centres of international trade of the Aksumite Empire were the ports of:

• Adulis
• Deire (Ras Siyan)
• Avalit (Zeila)
• Berbera

Between the coastal towns and the mainland, the trade was conducted in caravan routes going as far as Meroe in the Upper Nile Valley via Kemalke, and the Sasu gold mines to the southwest beyond the Abay River.

The presence of various inscriptions in the two ancient languages of Greek, and Geez, the monolithic steles, and the advent and expansion of Christianity in the Aksumite Empire with the systems of Geez script and writing indicates the high stage of cultural development of ancient Ethiopia.

One of the greatest cultural inventions of the Aksumites was the creation of the vowel system of the Geez language and then by extension the modern Ethiopian languages.

Keywords: Aksumite, Adulis Inscriptions, The Periplus of The Erythrean Sea, Habasha Habasat, Beja, Kasu, Adulis, Deire, Avalit, Berbera,

After the land and the Habasha people of Punt the earliest historically known land and people of North-East Africa were the people and state of Daamat during the last five centuries B.C. This state was located in the present Southern Eritrea and Northern Tigrai.

Documentary evidence on the ancient Ethiopian land, people, and state of Daamat have come to us mainly from the archaeological inscriptions discovered at the historical sites of Kaskase, Matara, Yeha, Adi Gelemo, Enda Cherkos, Melazo and Hawlti, in these two northern regions.

From these historical sites have come some 13 royal inscriptions containing the names of four different kings, one queen, and six state deities.

These rulers of ancient Ethiopia identified their country and state by the name of Daamat. The national symbol of the Daamatites was the ibex, that is, the Ethiopian Walia. Among many other things, the Daamatites had their own script and language.

Whereas their Puntites ancestors had relationships mainly with the Egyptians, the Daamatites also appeared to have had close commercial and cultural acquaintances with the neighbouring people of Asia and particularly with the state of Saba in Arabia.

During the first centuries A.D., the Aksumite state and civilization of Ethiopia emerged as the historical and cultural extension and geographical expansion of the Daamat people, society, and state.

According to Schneider, the leading living authority on the Daamatite period of Ethiopian history, it seems that the Daamtite system of evolutionary script and language developed into the system of Geez script and language of Ethiopia during the Aksumite period.

Keywords: Habasha, daamatite state, Punt, Daamat, Kaskase, Matara, Yeha, Adi Gelemo, Enda Cherkos, Melazo and Hawlti,

The first recorded historical description of the region and the inhabitants of North-East Africa goes back about 4,800 years to the time of the ancient pharaonic Egyptians.

The coastal region of North-East Africa, approximately between today’s the Red Sea port of Suwakin in the north, and the Cape of Guardafui in the southeast, was dimly known to the pharaonic Egyptians as the Land of Punt, the land of spices and deities.

They also called the people of Punt by the name of Habasha. In the opinion of one leading Egyptologist, the historical origin of the name “Habasha” in reference to both the Aksumites and the present Ethiopians in the subcontinent seems to be from Punt.

According to the hieroglyphical records and the study of the pharaonic Egyptians, between the 5th and 18th dynasties of that ancient country, that is, between ca. 2800 and 1300 B.C., the great Egyptian rulers like Suhare (2743-2731 B.C) and Hatshepsut (1504-1482 B.C) every so often used to dispatch commercial expeditions to the Puntite land, both by the sea and land routes of the Red Sea and the Nile Valley.

The direction of the Egyptian Nile Valley route to Punt seems to be via the Nubia-Atbara-Barka caravan line.

In the long list of Puntite natural products of minerals, animals, and woods imported by the Egyptians, antimony, electrum, gold, gold dust, malachite, silver, eye cosmetic, apes, asses, bulls, calves, cynocephali, feathers, giraffes, greyhounds, ivory, monkeys, ostrich eggs, ostrich feathers, oxen, panthers, panther skins, rhinoceros horn, balsam, boomerangs, cinnamon wood, ebony fragrant gums, frankincense, incense, myrrh,..were included.

The Egyptian artist who painted the picture of the Hatshepsut commercial fleet of five ships to the Puntite land under the leadership of a certain captain Nehasi, 3500 years ago, left behind for humanity the only known documentary evidence of Punt’s natural and human scenery with its people, houses, plants, and animals including the king and queen of the country named Perehu and Ati, respectively.

This famous painting of Punt has been preserved in the Hatshepsut Temple of Deir el Bahari in Egypt as the first and extant historical document of the land and people of ancient Ethiopia.

Keywords: Ethiopia, Punt, habasha, North-East Africa, Egyptians, land of spices and deities, Habasha,

During the first half of first millennium A.D., the Roman, Persian, and Aksumite Empires were in a struggle for power in the regions of the Nile valley, the Red Sea, and the Middle East. And in the end the rise of Islam among the Arabs in the Middle East in the 7th century A.D. adversely affected the three Empire states.

Certainly, before the end of the century, the former territories of the Persian and the Roman Empires in the Middle East, and Egypt came under the Arabs.

The emergence of the Arabs as the new international power in the Middle East and Egypt interrupted the commercial and cultural ties of the Aksumite with the Middle east and the former Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean Sea.

As a direct and indirect outcome of these new international conditions and events, the Aksumite state turned the course and directions of its territorial and cultural expansion from the Red Sea and the Nile Valley towards the western, southern, and eastern regions of the Horn of Africa. During this period, sometime before the end of the 1st millennium A.D., the new dynasty of the Agews emerged in the northern highlands of Lasta.

It became the successor of the former Aksumite state and ruled Ethiopia for the next 3 centuries until 1270 in the general region approximately between the Red Sea and the Abay River in which the lands and peoples of Kunama, Felasha, Amhara, Gojam, and Angot were included.

The Agew dynasty, as rulers of Ethiopia, contributed to the continuation and the southern expansion of the former Aksumite state and to the introduction of Christianity in the subcontinent of North-East Africa.

One cultural and historical evidence remains today in the famous rock hewn churches in Lasta constructed by the Agew rulers at the beginning of the second millennium A.D.

Keywords: Agew state, Aksumite state, Islam, Lasta, rock hewn churches, Christianity, Abay River,