History 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,