Newest questions tagged ethiopia - History Stack Exchange

Did the Issa ally themselves with the Italians or with Ethiopia in the 1930?

2024-03-25T12:56:29Z

Did the Issa ally themselves with the Italians or with Ethiopia in the 1930? I found conflicting statements about this. Wikipedia claims without an immediate citation that:

In the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935/36, Issa fought on the Italian side, in return benefited from weapons and military training and lucrative marketing opportunities for their cattle.

OTOH, a source cited later on by Wikipedia (for another fact) claim the opposite happened:

The Issa peculiarity for acting independently of the other Somali clans was exhibited in the mid-1930s, when they took the part of Ethiopia against the Italians. All other [Somali] groups collaborated actively with the Italian invader. In 1947 all of the Somali clans in the Ogaden and the Reserved Areas, with the exception of the Issa, petitioned British authorities not to have their lands surrendered to Ethiopia.

So, which side were the Issa on, in the Italian-Ethiopia conflict?

Where does this quote come from?

2021-07-23T10:06:23Z

Emperor Menelik II's wikipedia page quotes him as saying "There was never a time when united that the Ethiopians lost to an enemy in history".

I am unable to find anywhere on the internet where this may have come from. However, all the other quotes appear to be genuine and can be backed up by legitimate sources online.

Is this quote genuine? Is there a source not available on the internet that verifies this?

Did Japanese modernisation have an effect on Ethiopia?

2020-11-18T09:39:20Z

On his wikipedia page, Tekle Hawariat Tekle Mariyam, "the primary author of Ethiopia's July 1931 constitution" the article calls him a

politician and intellectual of the Japanizer school

The wikilink for Japanizer is red and is a dead link. Was this a widespread movement among Ethiopian elites? Were there those who opposed a Japanese model of development? Being that Ethiopia was in the process of modernisation in this period, how inspired were they by the rapid development of Japan?

What happened where in 1541? (Portuguese in the Horn of Africa)

2020-08-01T13:47:00Z

Was trying to check the following description from the introduction to a board game:

In 1541, Portuguese soldiers [...] slipped into the port of Massawa [and] join[ed] the Christian forces. At the walled desert town of Kassala on the river Gash, in what is now Sudan, the forces of Emperor Galawdewos are believed to have made their climactic stand [and] the surviving Moslem forces withdrew to the safety of Khartoum, about two hundred fifty miles to the west.

For two years following the battle, the emperor recruited troops. Then, with a force of eight thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry, he attacked the Moslems at Waina Rega. After sixteen years in Ethiopia, Ahmed Gran fell to a Christian musket ball. Although Emperor Galawdewos died two years later in a minor engagement, he had turned the Moslem tide for good at Kassala.

And also have this note (unknown source, perhaps some encyclopedia):

1541-1543 Eastern Africa: Ethiopia: Portuguese intervention to aid the Ethiopians against the Muslims, A Portuguese force under Cristovao da Gama lands at Massawa to support the Ethiopians against the Muslims. After helping end the Muslim siege of Kassala, da Gama goes on to defeat the Muslim forees led by Ahmed Gran in the Battle of Waim Dega on February 21, 1543. Gran is killed in the battle.

But when googling, I find a rather different chronology:

At Massawa, governor Estevão da Gama responded to an appeal by the Bahr Negus to assist the Christian Ethiopian Empire against invading Adalite forces. [...] On February, 1542, the Portuguese were able to capture an important Adalite stronghold at the Battle of Baçente. The Portuguese were again victorious at the Battle of Jarte [...] However, the Gragn then requested aid from the Ottoman governor of Yemen in Aden [...] In the Battle of Wofla, Somali and Turkish forces defeated the Portuguese, Gama was captured and killed by Gragn himself upon refusing to convert to Islam.

Gelawdewos was eventually able to reorganize his forces and absorb the remaining Portuguese soldiers and defeated Gragn (who was killed) at the Battle of Wayna Daga [...]

All these places (Jarte, Wofla, Wayna Daga/Waim Dega/Wainadega) seem to be far south of Kassala. Based on the descriptions of the battle, Wayna Daga appears to be most similar to the one portrayed in the game (minus the town of Kassala).

Was there never a siege or battle at Kassala in the 16th c.? Which information are the earlier descriptions based on?

Why did Ethiopia not fight with Eritrea over coastal territory when giving them independence?

2020-02-05T18:00:57Z

To me, it is kind of crazy to me that Ethiopia wouldn't just take a slither of Eritrea to connect them to the coast. They were bigger and could easily have done it when giving Eritreans their independence? I ask this because, with Eritrean independence, Ethiopia became the world’s most populous landlocked country.

What kind of car did Lij Samson Beyene crash?

2020-01-10T04:29:35Z

Lij Samson, a grandson of Haile Selassie, died at 28 or 29. According to biographer Haggai Erlich:

In July 1963 one of his grandsons, Lij Samson, was killed. The prince drove recklessly after a night in Addis Ababa's bars and crashed his automobile.

His life is summed up in an online genealogy:

Dejazmatch Samson Beyene. b. at Addis Ababa, 1934, educ. Columbia Univ, Ithaca, New York, USA. Taken to Italy and confined there by the Italians in 1936. Released and returned to Ethiopia 1943. Consul-General New York 1956-1959, Counselor Ethiopian legation Stockholm 1959-1960, Charges d’Affaires Stockholm 1960-1963. m. at Addis Ababa, 1959 Woizero Koremtit Andargatchew (b. at London, 3rd December 1939; m. second, Captain Haile Girmai, and d. at London, 29th December 2012, leaving further issue), daughter of H.E. Ras Andargatchew Masai, sometime Viceroy of Eritrea, by his first wife, Woizero Sergut. He was k. in a car crash, 10th July 1963, having had issue, an only son....

In what model of car did he die?

Where was Haile Selassie's palace in the Ogaden Desert?

2019-10-29T00:39:24Z

According to Kapuściński's informant W.A.-N., in the former's book about Haile Selassie, The Emperor:

It is true that some excesses were committed. For instance, a great Palace was constructed in the heart of the Ogaden Desert and maintained for years, fully staffed with servants and its pantry kept full, and His Indefatigable Majesty spent only one day there. But what if His Distinguished Majesty's itinerary were such that at some point he had to spend a night in the heart of the Desert? Wouldn't the Palace then prove itself indispensable? Unfortunately, our unenlightened people will never understand the Higher Reason that governs the actions of monarchs.

The Ogaden seems an unlikely spot for decadence. I did a little searching without finding another reference to this palace. Where and when was it built, and is any photograph available?

Why didn’t Christianity spread southwards from Ethiopia in the Middle Ages?

2019-07-29T12:39:46Z

Christianity, having begun in 1st Century Roman Palestine, in the next few centuries spread rapidly across the Roman Empire and beyond, including beyond the southern boundary of Roman Egypt, via the Red Sea and the Nile. The Kingdom of Axum in what is now Ethiopia under influence from missionaries from Egypt became Christian as early as in the fourth century AD, earlier than much of Europe, establishing a literate, Christian civilization with monasteries and bishops that survives in Ethiopia to this day.

However, if Christianity could spread that far south that early, at least 2 centuries before it had to contend with Islam as a rival, why did it stop there the next thousand years or more? Why didn’t it spread further into Sub-Saharan Africa until brought there by Europeans from the sixteenth century onwards?

PS Thank you TED and MA Golding for your replies. My gut reaction is that TED is basically right, that there was something to do with the level of development of a society that made it easier for it to adopt a scripture based religion like Christianity.

What is now Ethiopia was already in contact with civilizations in Arabia and the Nile Valley which probably made it different from societies further south in sub-Saharan Africa at that time, although we know little of them due to lack of written records and the limited amount of archaeology that has been done.

I do not think presence or absence of 'colonialism' is as important. Christianity in around the 4th Century managed to spread not only within the Roman Empire but to Germanic tribes beyond the frontier of the Empire like the Goths and Vandals (even if they initially adopted 'Arian' rather than Catholic Christianity), to Mesopotamia and as I have said to Ethiopia, which was never conquered by the Romans and established its own independent kingdom.

Why didn't Britain or any other European power colonize Abyssinia/Ethiopia before 1936?

2019-07-27T11:15:49Z

It is well mentioned while reading books on Africa or, the colonization or “scramble” for Africa, that two countries, Liberia and Ethiopia/Abyssinia, had retained their sovereignty as independent countries from European powers. Liberia was not colonized because of support and protection by the US. But how did Ethiopia turn out to be independent?

What was the flower of Empress Taytu?

2019-06-16T17:43:51Z

Addis Ababa is the capital of Ethiopia. Its name means "New Flower" in Amharic (አዲስ አበባ), and the tale of how it got its name is told thus:

The location of Addis Ababa was chosen by the Empress Taytu Betul, and the city was founded by the Emperor Menelik II in 1886.

In 1886, while Empress Taytu Betul admired the landscape, she saw a flower of remarkable beauty. She fell in love, and asker her husband Emperor Menelik II, to build her a house in the area. She named it “Addis Ababa”, and the rest is 130-year-old history.

So my question is: what was the flower of Empress Taytu that she saw there and named the city after?

What were the Ethiopians doing in Xerxes' army?

2019-05-20T22:32:03Z

What were the Ethiopians doing at Thermopylae?

From Book III, paragraph XXV:

Having viewed all, the spies departed back again. When they reported all this, Cambyses was angry, and marched forthwith against the Ethiopians, neither giving command for any provision of food nor considering that he was about to lead his army to the ends of the earth; and being not in his right mind but mad, he marched at once on hearing from the Fish-eaters, setting the Greeks who were with him to await him where they were, and taking with him all his land army. When he came in his march to Thebes, he parted about fifty thousand men from his army, and charged them to enslave the Ammonians and burn the oracle of Zeus; and he himself went on towards Ethiopia with the rest of his host. But before his army had accomplished the fifth part of their journey they had come to an end of all there was in the way of provision, and after the food was gone they ate the beasts of burden till there was none of these left also. Now had Cambyses, when he perceived this, changed his mind and led his army back again, he had been a wise man at least after his first fault; but as it was, he went ever forward, nothing recking. While his soldiers could get anything from the earth, they kept themselves alive by eating grass; but when they came to the sandy desert, certain of them did a terrible deed, taking by lot one man out of ten and eating him. Hearing this, Cambyses feared their becoming cannibals, and so gave up his expedition against the Ethiopians and marched back to Thebes, with the loss of many of his army; from Thebes he came down to Memphis, and sent the Greeks to sail away.

And a little later on in

Book VII, paragraph LXIX and LXX:

The Arabians wore mantles girded up, and carried at their right side long bows curving backwards. The Ethiopians were wrapt in skins of leopards and lions, and carried bows made of palm-wood strips, full four cubits long, and short arrows therewith, pointed not with iron but with a sharpened stone, that stone wherewith seals are carved; moreover they had spears pointed with a gazelle's horn sharpened to the likeness of a lance, and studded clubs withal. When they went into battle they painted half their bodies with gypsum and the other half with vermilion. The Arabians, and the Ethiopians who dwell above Egypt, had for commander Arsames son of Darius and Artystone daughter of Cyrus, whom Darius loved best of his wives, and had an image made of her of hammered gold.

The Ethiopians above Egypt and the Arabians had Arsames for commander, and the Ethiopians of the east (for there were two kinds of them in the army) served with the Indians; they differed nothing in appearance from the others, but only in speech and hair; for the Ethiopians from the east are straight-haired, but they of Libya have of all men the woolliest hair. These Ethiopians of Asia were for the most part armed like the Indians; but they wore on their heads the skins of horses' foreheads, stripped from the head with ears and mane; the mane served them for a crest, and they wore the horses' ears stiff and upright; for shields they had bucklers of cranes' skin.

If it's not contained in books IV-VI, which I don't think it is, having read books I - halfway of VII in their entirety, the only possibility being that I somehow missed a quick reference to Ethiopia being subjected a second time, maybe could at least someone comment on the significance of Ethiopians being present in the midst of Xerxes' army?

I realize that Herodotus sometimes (maybe even deliberately?) confuses names of certain tribes… could he actually somehow be slyly referencing another tribe? This seems unlikely being that the mentioned Ethiopians are carrying bows 4 cubits long, the same as earlier mentioned.

On the Ezana Stone, who are the black and red people that the Ethiopian king was referring to?

2019-02-09T17:05:12Z

On the Ezana stone, the Axumite (modern day Ethiopia) king wrote in Ge'ez, Sabaean and Greek to describe his victory over the Kasu (Kushites) and Nuba (Nubians).

He mentions the black and red peoples, he also mentioned the Black and Red Noba

Here are some excerpts:

The Nuba and Kasu

By the might of the Lord of Heaven who in the sky and on earth holds power over all beings, Ezana, son of Ella Amida, Bisi Halen, king of Aksum, Himyar, Raydan, Saba, Salhin, Tsiyamo, Beja and of Kasu, king of kings, son of Ella Amida, never defeated by the enemy.

May the might of the Lord of Heaven, who has made me king, who reigns for all eternity, invincible, cause that no enemy can resist me, that no enemy may follow me!

By the might of the Lord of All I campaigned against the Noba when the Noba peoples revolted and boasted. `They will not dare to cross the Takaze' said the Noba people. When they had oppressed the Mangurto,

Hasa and Barya peoples, and when the blacks fought the red people and they broke their word for the second and third times

and put their neighbours to death without mercy, and pillaged our messengers and the envoys whom I sent to them to admonish them...

I arrived at the Kasu, fought them and took them prisoner at the confluence of the rivers Seda and Takaze (white and blue Nile)

The towns of the Kasu with walls of stone which the Noba had taken were Tabito(?), Fertoti; and the troops penetrated to the territory of the Red Noba and my peoples returned safe after taking prisoners and booty, and killing by the might of the Lord of Heaven. And I erected a throne at the confluence.

Who are the Red Noba, Who are the blacks who are fighting with the Red people?

I ask this question because most hieroglyphs show native Egyptians in reddish-brown skin more often than in black skin.

I want to know if this is a likely answer to the long standing controversy around the original phenotype of those who founded the Nile valley civilization.

What have modern historians said about the Red and Black Noba ethnic groups as described by His Majesty Emperor Ezana?

Are the Sabean people of Cushitic or Ethiopian origin?

2018-10-01T20:17:02Z

The Sabeans are widely acknowledged to be of Semitic or south Arabian origin. Historical sources like Josephus Flavius and sections of the Bible seem to create conflicts about their origin.

There is a city bearing a similar name in modern Sudan.

Soba is the former capital of the medieval Nubian kingdom of Alodia . E. A. Wallis Budge identified it with a group of ruins on the Blue Nile, where there are remains of a Meroitic temple that had been converted into a Christian church. This would place Soba in the modern-day Sudanese state of Al Jazirah. Ibn Selim el-Aswani described the city as large and wealthy Wikipedia

Below are excerpts from Book II and VIII of Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews

ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS by Josephus Flavius (Book II chapter 10:2)

The Ethiopians were in danger of being reduced to slavery, and all sorts of destruction; and at length they retired to Saba, which was a royal city of Ethiopia, which Cambyses afterwards named Mero, after the name of his own sister. The place was to be besieged with very great difficulty, since it was both encompassed by the Nile quite round... for the city was situate in a retired place, and was inhabited after the manner of an island, being encompassed with a strong wall, and having the rivers to guard them from their enemies, and having great ramparts between the wall and the rivers, insomuch, that when the waters come with the greatest violence, it can never be drowned; which ramparts make it next to impossible for even such as are gotten over the rivers to take the city.

Below is an excerpt of Josephus' writings about the Queen of Sheba.

The Works of Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Book VIII – CHAPTER 6

” … There was then a woman queen of Egypt and Ethiopia; she was inquisitive into philosophy, and one that on other accounts also was to be admired. When this queen heard of the virtue and prudence of Solomon, she had a great mind to see him...

So when this queen of Ethiopia had obtained what we have already given an account of, and had again communicated to the king what she brought with her, she returned to her own kingdom. …”

For clarity please note that I am the one linking Sheba, Soba and Saba using all of these historical sources.

Genesis 10:6-7 The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtechah; and the sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan.

When all these separate bits of information are put together, it all becomes very intriguing. I need to make sense of all these historical and contemporary connections surrounding Soba, Saba, Sheba and the Sabean people.

I want to know if the Sabean people truly existed (archaeological evidence)
Where are their descendants today?
Why does modern archaeology attribute a Semitic, Arabian and Yemeni origin to these people.
Whether or not there is any evidence for their Ethiopian origin as Josephus Flavius suggests.

Does modern scholarship accept an Ethiopian or Nubian origin for Egyptian hieroglyphs?

2018-09-12T13:00:12Z

Diodorus Siculus made the claim that the Hieroglyphs were actually an Ethiopian script, which was held sacred by the Egyptians and was learned and transmitted only within the priestly families of Egypt. Among the Ethiopians the script was so common that most Ethiopians knew how to read and write in hieroglyphs. Here is the excerpt:

(Vol. II) DIODORUS SICULUS LIBRARY OF HISTORY p95 Book III (beginning)

They say also that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, Osiris having been the leader of the colony.....

And the larger part of the customs of the Egyptians are, they hold, Ethiopian, the colonists still preserving their ancient manners. For instance, the belief that their kings are gods, the very special attention which they pay to their burials, and many other matters of a similar nature are Ethiopian practices, while the shapes of their statues and the forms of their letters are Ethiopian; for of the two kinds of writing which the Egyptians have, that which is known as "popular" (demotic) is learned by everyone, while that which is called "sacred" is understood only by the priests of the Egyptians, who learn it from their fathers as one of the things which are not divulged, but among the Ethiopians everyone uses these forms of letters......

We must now speak about the Ethiopian writing which is called hieroglyphic among the Egyptians, in order that we may omit nothing in our discussion of their antiquities. Now it is found that the forms of their letters take the shape of animals of every kind, and of the members of the human body, and of implements and especially carpenters' tools; for their writing does not express the intended concept by means of syllables joined one to another, but by means of the significance of the objects which have been copied and by its figurative meaning which has been impressed upon the memory by practice.

Please Note: Ethiopia does not necessarily refer to the modern country (Abyssinia) now called by that name. The Ethiopians of antiquity were usually the Beja (Medjay), Bisharin and Nubian peoples of Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt

The word Ethiopian in Greek is derived from the word Aethiops, meaning Of the burnt face. It was a generic term for black skinned people similar to latin words like Niger, Hebrew words like Kush, spanish words like Moreno or Moor.

I am aware that there are some black skinned peoples who are native to Southern Egypt. They still live there even till this day; The Nubians. He may have been referring to them or so it seems.

What is the position of modern scholarship on the claims of this Greco-Roman historian?

Did Africans defeat Europeans in battle between 1850 and 1950?

2017-03-24T18:53:51Z

The battle of Adwa was fought between Italians and Ethiopians in northern Ethiopia in 1896. The Italians were defeated and it was the greatest victory for Africans. Were there any other battles where Africans defeated Europeans between 1850 and 1950?

Is there evidence for the use of the solenarion in late Medieval Ethiopia?

2017-01-06T02:33:51Z

Shihab al-Umari, an Arab historian of the 14th century, wrote much of what's know of Emperor of Ethiopia Amda Seyon I campaigns against the Muslim States, namely Awfat, Dawaru, Arababni, Hadya, Sharkha, Bali and Dara.

Prof. Taddesse Tamrat cites al-Umari [1] (emphasis mine):

"their weapons of war are the bow with arrows resembling the nussab; swords, spears and lances. Some warriors fight with swords and with narrow and long shields. But their principal weapon is the spear which resembles a long lance. There are some [warriors] who fling darts which are [similar to] short arrows, with a long bow resembling a cross-bow."

Now, the way the phrase is worded makes it resembles the description of a solenarion, that is, an arrow-guide used in conjunction with a bow that allows one to shoot really short arrows, seemingly to really long range. This device, used while attached in some places and detached in others, is known under many names among Byzantines ("solenarion", σωληνάριον), Turks ("majra" or "nawak"), Chinese ("tongjian", 筒箭) and Korean ("tong-ah", 통아) sources. I've read similar accounts on ancient Christian Nubia as well, sometimes mentioning poisoned darts.

Is there solid evidence of the use of it among Nubian and or Ethiopian medieval militaries? Perhaps al-Umari or other historian under the Mamluks could have mentioned it in other works.

Alternatively, is the presence of the cross-bow attested in Ethiopia during Amda Seyon I times?

_{[1] Tamrat, T. (1968). Church and state in Ethiopia, 1270-1527 (Doctoral dissertation, SOAS, University of London).}

What motivated the Eritrean separatist movement?

2016-08-11T13:21:35Z

The Eritrean War for Independence was a bloody 30-year war fought between Eritrean separatists and Ethiopia (under various administrations) from 1961 to 1991. I understand that the conflict was triggered by Ethiopia annexing Eritrea (they had been joined in federation per UN decree since 1952), but I still don't understand the root of Eritrean discontent with Ethiopian rule. What Ethiopian policies or actions motivated the Eritrean separatists to begin their armed struggle?

How were Aksumite ships constructed?

2016-07-26T23:17:50Z

The Kingdom of Aksum is known for its trading prowess, with trade partners as far away as India. Do we know what kinds of ships they built and used? Ethiopian freshwater tankwas are made of papyrus, but this sounds too flimsy for the ~~open~~ ocean, and I've never seen one big enough to use as a cargo vessel.

Edit: I removed "open" and added a note about size, as I was really trying to compare tankwa use today, on Lake Tana, to the size and stability of a ship that could travel from Adulis to India.

Personally, I'd prefer if they used technology similar to the a baghlah dhow, but can't tell if they (or a sufficiently large precursor ship) were available that far back. Copying Roman designs would fit the classic Eurocentric model of history, and I kind of hope it isn't true. I'm also uncertain whether Aksum would have had access to enough trees near the coast to support any substantial number of wooden vessels.

Edit 2: This discussion is bringing up a lot of useful ideas for me, and I'd like to upvote comments (especially the note about lateen sails), but apparently I still lack the reputation to make it happen.

How did the Falasha make contact with Jews outside Ethiopia?

2013-08-30T08:54:22Z

I just read a book about an expedition to Ethiopia, The Last of Free Africa, published 1928. The author Gordon MacCreagh writes:

An astounding fact which should be of absorbing interest to Jews the world over is that there exists today in Abyssinia a lost tribe of Jews known as the Falasha, who have been isolated for so many centuries that , while retaining the Jewish faith in practically all its ancient purity, they had actually no knowledge that any other Jews existed.

It was not until almost yesterday, 1906 in fact, that definite knowledge of brothers in the faith came to these Falasha through a letter written by a congregation of European rabbis. In reply to which they wrote: "... News of your existence was to us hitherto only fable. Now have we [through your letter] received knowledge and certainty. Therefore, do we rejoice..."

Is this true? Where can I read more? Reading the original letters would be cool, but I don't even know what language they were written in.

Did any Ethiopian leaders help the Italians?

2012-06-12T21:24:42Z

Around the two Italo-Ethiopian wars, did any Ethiopian leaders side with the Italians?

By "around", I mean anywhere from about 1890 to 1936.

By "leaders", I mean noblemen, military officers, popular leaders, government officials, etc.