Habesha peoples (; ; ; commonly used exonym: Abyssinians) is a complex cultural and historical identifier that does not strictly define a single ethnic group. Historically, the term referred primarily to the Amhara, Tigrayan-Tigrinya and Gurage peoples.
Etymology The oldest reference to Habesha was in second or third century Sabaean engravings as or recounting the South Arabian involvement of the nəgus ("king") GDRT of ḤBŠT. The term appears to refer to a group of peoples, rather than a specific ethnicity. Another Sabaean inscription describes an alliance between Shamir Yuhahmid of the Himyarite Kingdom and King `DBH of ḤBŠT in the first quarter of the third century. However, South Arabian expert Eduard Glaser claimed that the Egyptian hieroglyphic ḫbstjw, used in reference to "a foreign people from the incense-producing regions" (i.e. Land of Punt) by Pharaoh Hatshepsut in 1450 BC, was the first usage of the term or somehow connected. Francis Breyer also believes the Egyptian demonym to be the source of the Semitic term.Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: D-Ha. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. p. 948.
The first attestation of late Latin Abissensis is from the fifth century CE. The 6th-century author Stephanus of Byzantium later used the term "Αβασηνοί" (i.e. Abasēnoi) to refer to "an Arabian people living next to the Sabaeans together with the Ḥaḍramites." The region of the Abasēnoi produce[d] myrrh, incense and cotton and they cultivate[d] a plant which yields a purple dye (probably wars, i.e. Fleminga grahamiana). It lay on a route which leads from Zabīd on the coastal plain to the Ḥimyarite capital Ẓafār. Abasēnoi was located by Hermann von Wissman as a region in the Jabal Ḥubaysh mountain in Ibb Governorate, perhaps related in etymology with the ḥbš Semitic root). Other place names in Yemen contain the ḥbš root, such as the Jabal Ḥabaši, whose residents are still called al-Aḥbuš (pl. of Ḥabaš).Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, D–Ha. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. p. 949 The location of the Abasēnoi in Yemen may perhaps be explained by remnant Aksumite populations from the 520s conquest by King Kaleb. King Ezana's claims to Sahlen (Saba) and Dhu-Raydan (Himyar) during a time when such control was unlikely may indicate an Aksumite presence or coastal foothold.Munro-Hay. Aksum, p. 72. Traditional scholarship has assumed that the Habashat were a tribe from modern-day Yemen that migrated to Ethiopia and Eritrea. However, the Sabaic inscriptions only use the term ḥbšt to the refer to the Kingdom of Aksum and its inhabitants, especially during the 3rd century, when the ḥbšt (Aksumites) were often at war with the Sabaeans and Himyraites. Modern Western European languages, including English, appear to borrow this term from the post-classical form Abissini in the mid-sixteenth century. (English Abyssin is attested from 1576, and Abissinia and Abyssinia from the 1620s.)
Usage The term "Habesha" is used to represent northern Ethiopian Highland Semitic-speaking Amhara, Tigrayan, and Tigrinya people.
According to Gerard Prunier, one very restrictive use of the term today by some Tigrayans refers exclusively to speakers of Tigrinya; however, Tigrayan oral traditions and linguistic evidence bear witness to ancient and constant relations with Amharas. Some Gurage societies, such as Orthodox Christian communities where Soddo is spoken, identify as Habesha and have a strong sense of Ethiopian national identity, due in part to their ancient ties with the northern Habesha.
Muslim ethnic groups primarily located in the Eritrean Highlands, including the Tigre, as well as those in the Ethiopian Highlands, have historically resisted the designation of Habesha. Instead, Eritrean and Ethiopian Muslims were commonly identified as the Jeberti people. Another term for Muslims from the Horn of Africa was '"Al-Zaylai"', this applied to even the empress Eleni of Ethiopia due to her ties to the state of Hadiya. At the turn of the 20th century, elites of the Solomonic dynasty employed the conversion of various ethnic groups to Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity and the imposition of the Amharic language to spread a common Habesha national identity.
Within Ethiopian and Eritrean diasporic populations, some second generation immigrants have adopted the term "Habesha" in a broader sense as a supra-national ethnic identifier inclusive of all Eritreans and Ethiopians. For those who employ the term, it serves as a useful counter to more exclusionary identities such as "Amhara" or "Tigrayan". However, this usage is not uncontested: On the one hand, those who grew up in Ethiopia or Eritrea may object to the obscuring of national specificity. On the other hand, groups that were subjugated in Ethiopia or Eritrea sometimes find the term offensive.
Origins
European scholars postulated that the ancient communities that evolved into the modern Ethiopian state were formed by a migration across the Red Sea of Sabaean-speaking South Arabian tribes, including one called the "Habashat", who intermarried with the local non-Semitic-speaking peoples, in around 1,000 BC. Many held to this view because "epigraphic and monumental evidence point to an indisputable South Arabian influence suggesting migration and colonization from Yemen in the early 1st millennium BC as the main factor of state formation on the highlands. Rock inscriptions in Qohayto (Akkala Guzay, Eritrea) document the presence of individuals or small groups from Arabia on the highlands at this time." It was first suggested by German orientalist Hiob Ludolf and revived by early 20th-century Italian scholar Conti Rossini. According to this theory, Sabaeans brought with them South Arabian letters and language, which gradually evolved into the Ge'ez language and Ge'ez script. Linguists have revealed, however, that although its script developed from Epigraphic South Arabian (whose oldest inscriptions are found in Yemen), Ge'ez is descended from a different branch of Southern Semitic, Ethiosemitic or Ethiopic sub-branch. South Arabian inscriptions does not mention any migration to the west coast of the Red Sea, nor of a tribe called "Habashat." All uses of the term date to the 3rd century AD and later, when they referred to the people of the Kingdom of Aksum. Edward Ullendorff has asserted that the Tigrayans and the Amhara comprise "Abyssinians proper" and a "Semitic outpost," while Donald N. Levine has argued that this view "neglects the crucial role of non-Semitic elements in Ethiopian culture." Edward Ullendorff and Carlo Conti Rossini's theory that Ethiosemitic-language speakers of the northern Ethiopian Highlands were ancient foreigners from South Arabia that displaced the original peoples of the Horn has been disputed by Ethiopian scholars specializing in Ethiopian Studies such as Messay Kebede and Daniel E. Alemu who generally disagree with this theory arguing that the migration was one of reciprocal exchange, if it even occurred at all. In the 21st century, scholars have largely discounted the longstanding presumption that Sabaean migrants had played a direct role in Ethiopian civilization.Alemu, Daniel E. (2007). "Re-imagining the Horn". African Renaissance. 4 (1): 56–64 – via Ingenta."This is not to say that events associated with conquest, conflict and resistance did not occur. No doubt, they must have been frequent. But the crucial difference lies in the propensity to present them, not as the process by which an alien majority imposed its rule but as part of an ongoing struggle of native forces competing for supremacy in the region. The elimination of the alien ruler indigenize Ethiopian history in terms of local actors."Kebede, Messay (2003). "Eurocentrism and Ethiopian Historiography: Deconstructing Semitization". University of Dayton-Department of Philosophy. International Journal of Ethiopian Studies. Tsehai Publishers. 1: 1–19.Alemu, Daniel E. (2007). "Re-imagining the Horn". African Renaissance. 4.1: 56–64 – via Ingenta.Stefan Weninger. "Ḥäbäshat", Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: D-Ha.
Scholars have determined that the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia was not derived from the Sabaean language. Recent linguistic studies as to the origin of the Ethiosemitic languages seem to support the DNA findings of immigration from the Arabian Peninsula, with a recent study using Bayesian computational phylogenetic techniques finding that contemporary Ethiosemitic languages of Africa reflect a single introduction of early Ethiosemitic from southern Arabia approximately 2,800 years ago, and that this single introduction of Ethiosemitic subsequently underwent quick diversification within Ethiopia and Eritrea. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East.Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, "Ge'ez" (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005), p. 732. There is also evidence of ancient Southern Arabian communities in modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea in certain localities, attested by some archaeological artifacts and ancient Sabaean inscriptions in the old South Arabian alphabet. Joseph W. Michels noted based on his archeological surveying Aksumite sites that "there is abundant evidence of specific Sabean traits such as inscription style, religious ideology and symbolism, art style and architectural techniques." However, Stuart Munro-Hay points to the existence of an older D'MT kingdom, prior to any Sabaean migration c. 4th or 5th century BC, as well as evidence that Sabaean immigrants had resided in Ethiopia for little more than a few decades at the time of the inscriptions.Munro-Hay, Aksum, p. 57. Both the indigenous languages of Southern Arabia and the Amharic and Tigrinya languages of Ethiopia belong to the large branch of South Semitic languages which in turn is part of the Afro-Asiatic Language Family. Even though the Ethiosemitic languages are classified under the South Semitic languages branch with a Cushitic language substratum.
Munro-May and related scholars believe that Sabaean influence was minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century. It may have represented a trading colony (trading post) or military installations in a symbiotic or military alliance between the Sabaeans and D`MT.
In the reign of King Ezana, c. early 4th century AD, the term "Ethiopia" is listed as one of the nine regions under his domain, translated in the Greek version of his inscription as Aithiopía. This is the first known use of this term to describe specifically the region known today as Ethiopia (and not Kush or the entire African and Indian region outside of Egypt).
There are many theories regarding the beginning of the Abyssinian civilization. One theory, which is more widely accepted today, locates its origins in the Horn region.Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press, 1991, pp. 57ff. At a later period, this culture was exposed to Judaic influence, of which the best-known examples are the Qemant and Ethiopian Jews (or Beta Israel) ethnic groups, but Judaic customs, terminology, and beliefs can be found amongst the dominant culture of the Amhara and Tigrinya.For an overview of this influence see Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible, pp. 73ff. Some scholars have claimed that the Indian alphabets had been used to create the vowel system of the Ge'ez abugida, this claim has not yet been effectively proven.
History