Visit Ethiopia

Visit Ethiopia

Ethiopia (/ˌiːθiˈoʊpiə/; Amharic: ኢትዮጵያ?, ʾĪtyōṗṗyā, About this sound listen (help·info)), officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (የኢትዮጵያ ፌዴራላዊ ዲሞክራሲያዊ ሪፐብሊክ, ye-Ītyōṗṗyā Fēdēralāwī Dīmōkrāsīyāwī Rīpeblīk About this sound listen (help·info)), is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Eritrea to the north and northeast, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south. With over 100 million inhabitant in Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world, as well as the second-most populous nation on the African continent after Nigeria. It occupies a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres (420,000 sq mi), and its capital and largest city is Addis Ababa.

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Some of the oldest evidence for anatomically modern humans has been found in Ethiopia, which is widely considered the region from which Homo sapiens first set out for the Middle East and points beyond.

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According to linguists, the first Afroasiatic-speaking populations settled in the Horn region during the ensuing Neolithic era. Tracing its roots to the 2nd millennium BC, Ethiopia was a monarchy for most of its history. During the first centuries AD the Kingdom of Aksum maintained a unified civilization in the region. followed by Abyssinia circa 1137.

Ethiopia derived prestige with its uniquely successful military resistance during the late 19th-century Scramble for Africa, becoming the only African country to defeat a European colonial power and retain its sovereignty. Subsequently, many African nations adopted the colors of Ethiopia's flag following their independence. It was the first independent African member of the 20th-century League of Nations and the United Nations. In 1974, at the end of Haile Selassie's reign, power fell to a communist military junta known as the Derg, backed by the Soviet Union, until it was defeated by the EPRDF, which has ruled since about the time of the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

Ethiopia is a multilingual nation with around 80 ethnolinguistic groups, the three largest of which are the Tigray, Oromo and Amhara. Most people in the country speak Afroasiatic languages of the Cushitic or Semitic branches. Additionally, Omotic languages are spoken by Omotic ethnic minority groups inhabiting the southern regions, and languages from the Nilo-Saharan phylum are also spoken by the nation's Nilotic ethnic minorities. Ethiopia is the origin of the coffee bean. It is a land of natural contrasts, with its vast fertile West, jungles, and numerous rivers, the world's hottest settlement of Dallol in its north, Africa's largest continuous mountain ranges and the largest cave in Africa at Sof Omar.

Ethiopia has the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Africa. Ethiopia's ancient Ge'ez script, also known as Ethiopic, is one of the oldest alphabets still in use in the world. The Ethiopian calendar, which is seven years and around three months behind the Gregorian calendar, co-exists alongside the Oromo calendar. A slight majority of the population adheres to Christianity (mainly the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Pentay), while around a third follows Islam (primarily the Sunni denomination). The country is the site of the Hijrah to Abyssinia and the oldest Muslim settlement in Africa at Negash. A substantial population of Ethiopian Jews, known as Beta Israel, resided in Ethiopia until the 1980s but most of them have since gradually emigrated to Israel.

Ethiopia is one of the founding members of the UN, the Group of 24 (G-24), the Non-Aligned Movement, G-77 and the Organisation of African Unity, with Addis Ababa serving as the headquarters of the African Union, the Pan African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the UNECA, African Aviation Training HQ, the African Standby Force and much of global NGOs focused on Africa. Despite being the main source of the Nile, the longest river on Earth, Ethiopia underwent a series of famines in the 1980s, exacerbated by civil wars and adverse geopolitics. The country has begun to recover recently and now has the largest economy (by GDP) in East Africa and Central Africa. According to Global Fire Power, Ethiopia has the 46th most powerful military in the world.
The Greek name Αἰθιοπία (from Αἰθίοψ, Aithiops, 'an Ethiopian') appears twice in the Iliad and three times in the Odyssey. The Greek historian Herodotus specifically uses it for all the lands south of Egypt, including Sudan and modern Ethiopia. Pliny the Elder says the country's name comes from a son of Hephaestus (also called Vulcan) named 'Aethiops'.

Similarly, in the 15th century Ge'ez Book of Aksum, the name is ascribed to a legendary individual called Ityopp'is, an extrabiblical son of Cush, son of Ham, said to have founded the city of Axum. In addition to this Cushite figure, two of the earliest Semitic kings are also said to have borne the name Ityopp'is according to traditional Ethiopian king lists. At least as early as c. 850, European scholars considered the name to be derived from the Greek words aitho "I burn" + ops "face".

The name Ethiopia also occurs in many translations of the Old Testament, but the Hebrew texts have Kush, which refers principally to Nubia. In the New Testament, however, the Greek term Aithiops, 'an Ethiopian', does occur, referring to a servant of Candace or Kentakes, possibly an inhabitant of Meroe which was later conquered and destroyed by the Kingdom of Axum. The earliest attested use of the name Ityopya in the region itself is as a name for the Kingdom of Aksum in the 4th century, in stone inscriptions of King Ezana, who first Christianized the entire apparatus of the kingdom.

In English, and generally outside of Ethiopia, the country was also once historically known as Abyssinia, derived from Habesh, an early Arabic form of the Ethiosemitic name "Ḥabaśāt" (unvocalized "ḤBŚT"). The modern form Habesha is the native name for the country's inhabitants (while the country has been called "Ityopp'ya"). In a few languages, Ethiopia is still referred to by names cognate with "Abyssinia", e.g., modern Arabic Al-Ḥabashah.

Ethiopia is widely considered the site of the emergence of anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens, in the Middle Paleolithic about 200,000 years ago. The earliest known modern human bones were found in Southwestern Ethiopia and are called the Omo remains. Additionally, skeletal remains of Homo sapiens idaltu were found at a site in the Middle Awash in Ethiopia. Dated to around 160,000 years ago, they may represent an extinct subspecies of Homo sapiens, or the immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans.

According to linguists, the first Afroasiatic-speaking populations arrived in the region during the ensuing Neolithic era from the family's proposed urheimat ("original homeland") in the Nile Valley, or the Near East. Other scholars propose that the Afroasiatic family developed in situ in the Horn, with its speakers subsequently dispersing from there.
Around the 8th century BC, a kingdom known as Dʿmt was established in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. The polity's capital was located near the town of Yeha in northern Ethiopia. Most modern historians consider this civilization to be a native Ethiopian one, although Sabaean-influenced because of the latter's hegemony of the Red Sea.

Other scholars regard Dʿmt as the result of a union of Afroasiatic cultures of the Cushitic and Semitic branches; namely, local Agaw peoples and Sabaeans from Southern Arabia. However, Ge'ez, the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia, is thought to have developed independently from Sabaean (also South Semitic). As early as 2000 BC, other Semitic speakers were living in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where Ge'ez developed. Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century. It may have been a trading or military colony in alliance with the Ethiopian civilization of Dʿmt or some other proto-Aksumite state.

After the fall of Dʿmt in the 4th century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms. In the first century AD the Aksumite Empire emerged in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. According to the medieval Liber Axumae (Book of Aksum), the kingdom's first capital, Mazaber, was built by Itiyopis, son of Cush. Aksum would later at times extend its rule into Yemen on the other side of the Red Sea. The Persian religious figure Mani listed Aksum with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his time in the 3rd century.

Around 316 AD, Frumentius and his brother Edesius from Tyre accompanied their uncle on a voyage to Ethiopia. When the vessel stopped at a Red Sea port, the natives killed all the travellers except the two brothers, who were taken to the court as slaves. They were given positions of trust by the monarch, and converted members of the royal court to Christianity. Frumentius became the first bishop of Aksum. A coin dated to 324 shows that Ethiopia was the second country to officially adopt Christianity (after Armenia), although the religion may have been at first confined to court circles; it was the first major power to do so.
The first interaction that the Islamic Prophet Muhammad had with Ethiopia was during the reign of Aṣḥama ibn Abjar, who was at the time the Emperor of Aksum and gave refuge to several Muslims in the Kingdom of Aksum in 614 AD. According to other authors, Ashama may have been the same person as king Armah, or his father or son. Taddesse Tamrat records that the inhabitants of Wiqro, where the ruler is known as Ashamat al-Negashi, claim that his tomb is located in their village. Visit Ethiopia

Muhammad's second interaction with Ethiopia was during the Expedition of Zaid ibn Haritha, when he sent Amr bin Umayyah al-Damri to the King of Ethiopia (then Abyssinia). In a letter from Muhammad to the King (Negus) of Axum, Muhammad invites the ruler and his men to follow his message and believe in Allah. When this letter was presented to the King, he took the parchment and allegedly placed it on his eye, descended to the floor and confessed his faith in Islam. Visit Ethiopia
The Zagwe dynasty ruled many parts of present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea from approximately 1137 to 1270 AD. The name of the dynasty is derived from the Cushitic-speaking Agaw of northern Ethiopia. From 1270 AD until the Zemene Mesafint (Age of Princes), the Solomonic dynasty governed the Ethiopian Empire. Visit Ethiopia

In the early 15th century, Ethiopia sought to make diplomatic contact with European kingdoms for the first time since the Aksumite era. 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. They failed to complete the return trip. The first continuous relations with a European country began in 1508 with Portugal under Emperor Dawit II (Lebna Dengel), who had just inherited the throne from his father. Visit Ethiopia

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. This Abyssinian–Adal War was also one of the first proxy wars in the region, as the Ottoman Empire and Portugal took sides in the conflict. Visit Ethiopia

When Emperor Susenyos I converted to Roman Catholicism in 1624, years of revolt and civil unrest followed, resulting in thousands of deaths. The Jesuit missionaries had offended the Orthodox faith of the local Ethiopians. On 25 June 1632 Emperor Fasilides, Susenyos's son, declared the state religion again to be Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity. He expelled the Jesuit missionaries and other Europeans.
The Sultanate of Aussa (Afar Sultanate) succeeded the earlier Imamate of Aussa (Imamate of Awsa). The latter polity had come into existence in 1577, when Muhammed Jasa moved his capital from Harar to Aussa (Asaita), with the split of the Adal Sultanate into the Sultanate of Aussa and the Sultanate of Harar. At some point after 1672, the Sultanate of Aussa declined and temporarily came to an end in conjunction with Imam Umar Din bin Adam's recorded ascension to the throne. Visit Ethiopia

The Sultanate was subsequently re-established by Kedafu around the year 1734. It was thereafter ruled by his Mudaito Dynasty. The primary symbol of the Sultan was a silver baton, which was considered to have magical properties. Visit Ethiopia
Between 1755 to 1855, Ethiopia experienced a period of isolation referred to as the Zemene Mesafint or "Age of Princes". The Emperors became figureheads, controlled by warlords like Ras Mikael Sehul of Tigray, Ras Wolde Selassie of Tigray, and by the Oromo Yejju dynasty, such as Ras Gugsa of Begemder, which later led to 17th-century Oromo rule of Gondar, changing the language of the court from Amharic to Afaan Oromo. Visit Ethiopia
Ethiopian isolationism ended following a British mission that concluded an alliance between the two nations; but, it was not until 1855 that Ethiopia was completely united and the power in the Emperor restored, beginning with the reign of Emperor Tewodros II. Upon his ascent, he began modernizing Ethiopia and recentralizing power in the Emperor. Ethiopia began to take part in world affairs once again. Visit Ethiopia

But Tewodros suffered several rebellions inside his empire. Northern Oromo militias, Tigrayan rebellion, and the constant incursion of Ottoman Empire and Egyptian forces near the Red Sea brought the weakening and the final downfall of Emperor Tewodros II. He committed suicide in 1868 after his last battle with a British expeditionary force. Visit Ethiopia
After Tewodros' death, Tekle Giyorgis II was proclaimed Emperor. He was defeated in the Battles of Zulawu (21 June 1871) and Adua (11 July 1871). Kassai was subsequently declared Emperor Yohannes IV on 21 January 1872. In 1875 and 1876, Turkish/Egyptian forces, accompanied by many European and American 'advisors', twice invaded Abyssinia but were initially defeated at the Battle of Gundet losing 800 men, and then following the second invasion, decisively defeated by Emperor Yohannes IV at the Battle of Gura on 7 March 1875, losing at least 3000 killed or captured. From 1885 to 1889, Ethiopia joined the Mahdist War allied to Britain, Turkey and Egypt against the Sudanese Mahdist State. On 10 March 1889, Yonannes IV was killed by the Sudanese Khalifah Abdullah's army whilst leading his army in the Battle of Gallabat (also called Battle of Metemma). Visit Ethiopia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia