The Amhara people have historically inhabited the central and western parts of Ethiopia, and have been the politically dominant ethnic group of this region. Their origins are unclear. The settlement of Afro-Asiatic-speaking populations in Greater Ethiopia may have occurred between the 5th and 3rd millennium BCE. At this time, dark-skinned Caucasoid or Afro-Mediterranean peoples, consisting of Cushitic and Omotic speakers from the eastern Sahara and Semitic speakers from South Arabia, settled the area.The ancient Semitic-speaking Himyarites, who moved from Yemen into northern Ethiopia sometime before 500 BCE, are believed to have been ancestral to the Amhara. They intermarried with the earlier Cushitic-speaking settlers, and gradually spread into the region the Amhara presently inhabit.The Amhara are currently one of the two largest ethnic groups in Ethiopia, along with the Oromo. They are sometimes referred to as "Abyssinians", a broader term that also includes the Tigray people.
The region now known as "Amhara" in the feudal era was composed of several provinces with greater or less autonomy, which included Gondar, Gojjam, Wollo (Bete Amhara) and Shewa. The traditional homeland of the Amhara people is the central highland plateau of Ethiopia. For over two thousand years they have inhabited this region. Walled by high mountains and cleaved by great gorges, the ancient realm of Abyssinia has been relatively isolated from the influences of the rest of the world. The region is situated at altitudes ranging from roughly 7,000 to 14,000 feet (2,100 to 4,300 meters), and at a 9 o to 14 o latitude north of the equator.The rich volcanic soil combines with a generous rainfall and cool, brisk climate to offer the Amhara a stable agricultural and pastoral existence. However, because the Amhara were an expansionist, militaristic people who ruled their country through a line of emperors, the Amhara people can now be found all over Ethiopia.
Following the end of the ruling Agaw Zagwe dynasty, the Solomonic dynasty governed the Ethiopian Empire for many centuries from the 1270 AD onwards. In the early 15th century, Abyssinia sought to make diplomatic contact with European kingdoms for the first time since Aksumite times. A letter from King Henry IV of England to the Emperor of Abyssinia survives. In 1428, the Emperor Yeshaq sent two emissaries to Alfonso V of Aragon, who sent return emissaries who failed to complete the return trip.The first continuous relations with a European country began in 1508 with Portugal under Emperor Lebna Dengel, who had just inherited the throne from his father.
This proved to be an important development, for when the Empire was subjected to the attacks of the Adal Sultanate General and Imam, Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (called "Grañ", or "the Left-handed"), Portugal assisted the Ethiopian emperor by sending weapons and four hundred men, who helped his son Gelawdewos defeat Ahmad and re-establish his rule.[30]This Ethiopian–Adal War was also one of the first proxy wars in the region as the Ottoman Empire and Portugal took sides in the conflict.
The Amhara have contributed many rulers over the centuries, including Haile Selassie. Haile Selassie's mother was paternally of Oromo descent and maternally of Gurage heritage, while his father was paternally Oromo and maternally Amhara. He consequently would have been considered Oromo in a patrilineal society, and would have been viewed as Gurage in a matrilineal one. However, in the main, Haile Selassie was regarded as Amhara, his paternal grandmother's royal lineage, through which he was able to ascend to the Imperial throne.
Slavery
According to Donald Levine, slavery was widespread in Greater Ethiopia until the 1930s. More powerful groups could consign to slavery weaker members of other communities or even individuals from their own tribe. Since the Amhara and Tigreans were prohibited from enslaving other Christians, they held slaves from many non-Christian groups. The medieval Adal Sultanate seized slaves during jihad expeditions in Christian outposts in the old provinces of Amhara, Shäwa, Fatagar, and Dawaro. Many of the slaves seized by Adal were assimilated, others exported or gifted to rulers of Arabia in exchange for military support.
The Amhara, as the ruling people, enslaved other ethnic groups such as the Oromo people (historically referred to as Galla). The Amhara were also occasionally enslaved by the Afar, and sometimes Amhara boys and girls were kidnapped by slave raiders from northern Ethiopia and then sold. The central Amhara provinces were a part of major Afar slave caravan trade routes from the southern and southwestern regions to the northern and eastern Ethiopia. According to Terence Walz and Kenneth M. Cuno, it is not uncommon to find references to Abyssinian slaves in Ottoman-era court records, but such mentions become rare by the 19th-century. They indicate that it is improbable that Amhara were enslaved during the rule of Ali Mubarak because they governed the Abyssinian highlands and also frequently raided for slaves in other areas.
According to Gustav Arén, Ethiopian law did not prohibit slave-holding, but did forbid the enslavement of Christians. As such, George Arthur Lipsky indicates that the Amhara resisted converting the non-Christian ethnic groups to Christianity, because they could not thereafter be kept or sold as slaves. John Ralph Willis states that, with few exceptions, slave merchants typically avoided purchasing Christian Amhara, Tigrean or Muslim slaves.
Social stratification
Within traditional Amharic society and that of other local Afro-Asiatic-speaking populations, there were four basic strata. According to the Ethiopianist Donald Levine, these consisted of high-ranking clans, low-ranking clans, caste groups (artisans), and slaves. Slaves were at the bottom of the hierarchy, and were primarily drawn from the pagan Nilotic Shanqella groups. Also known as the barya (meaning "slave" in Amharic), they were captured during slave raids in Ethiopia's southern hinterland. War captives were another source of slaves, but the perception, treatment and duties of these prisoners was markedly different. According to Donald Levine, the widespread slavery in Greater Ethiopia formally ended in the 1930s, but former slaves, their offspring, and de facto slaves continued to hold similar positions in the social hierarchy.
The separate, Amhara caste system, ranked higher than slaves, consisted of: (1) endogamy, (2) hierarchical status, (3) restraints on commensality, (4) pollution concepts, (5) each caste has had a traditional occupation, and (6) inherited caste membership. Scholars accept that there has been a rigid, endogamous and occupationally closed social stratification among Amhara and other Afro-Asiatic-speaking Ethiopian ethnic groups. However, some label it as an economically closed, endogamous class system or as occupational minorities, whereas others such as the historian David Todd assert that this system can be unequivocally labelled as caste-based.
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