Our sharp view of an early period in Sabean history is much more obscure in the succeeding centuries, as her power begins to gradually decline. At some point during this period, perhaps even earlier, we find evidence of South Arabian settlement in Ethiopia’s Tigre province. The resulting co-mingling of Ethiopian and South Arabean cultures produced the soon to be powerful African kingdom of Axum. The earliest Ethiopian alphabet is of a South Arabean type, and the Axumite script is apparently a derivative of Sabean. The name Abyssinian itself is taken from the Habashan, a powerful southwestern Arabian family which ultimately sojourned and settled in Ethiopia. From this period Ethiopia, which itself is a Greek term, is known in Arabic scripts as Habashat and its citizens Habshi. This early Ethiopian-Sabean epoch lasted about a hundred years, beginning around the first part of the fifth century B.C., the remains of actual South Arabian settlements having been found principally at Yeha, Matara, and Haoulti, all in Tigre province.
The existence of shared names on either side of the Red Sea caused the Italian scholar Carlo Conti Rossini to postulate, that the very name of Abyssinia was of Yemeni origin. The word is generally believed to be derived from the name Habashat, used to designate a people which lived in the north of historic Ethiopia, in what are now the highlands of part of Eritrea and Tigray. Conti Rossini assumed that the Habashat actually originated in Yemen, and later established themselves, as colonists, on the Ethiopian side of the Red Sea, where, he believed, they introduced their name. It was his belief, furthermore, that the South Arabian language, and writing, represented the origin and basis of the Ethiopian tongue and script Ge‘ez. The British Arabist Spencer Trimingham for example wrote, in 1952, that the Habashat, or “agriculturalist mountaineers” of Yemen, faced with population pressure, and the failure of their irrigation system, crossed the intervening sea, and, after leaving the “inhospitable coastal zone” of Ethiopia, “found a country [in the Ethiopian interior] which possessed the same climate and vegetation as their own land”. The Habashat, he claims, thereupon “assumed predominance over all the other tribes, and its chief took the title of negus nagasti (chief of chiefs)”. As a result, “the kingdom of Habashat consolidated itself about the third century B.C., when its rule extended over the plateau region of Eritrea and northern Tigrai”.
Galla, Somali, Adali (the latter two are steppe nomadic tribes who occupy the coast of the Red Sea from the Ethiopian plateau) are all Cushites and occupied these places, it must be, in the time when the descendants of Mesraim occupied Egypt. They arrived here, probably, by a dry route with their herds, and to the present have remained semi-savage.
In the reverse movement of Cushites from Africa to the Arabian peninsula, (which was mentioned by Lepsius), they encountered Semites, who, so to say, cut them in half. The Finikiyane were driven toward the Mediterranean Sea, and the other part toward the Arabian Sea. This forced the migration of the latter to Africa across the Bab-el-Mandeb Gulf. These immigrants occupied the Ethiopian plateau. They must have been culturally higher than the Galla and drove the Galla to the south. Aren’t these the ancestors of those peoples we call Sidamo, Agau, Bylen, the original inhabitants of the country? And don’t the inhabitants of Harar likewise belong to them? Much data inclines me to accept this hypothesis. Firstly, the type of the Harar and the Sidamo; secondly, the similarity of sounds in the languages of these groups; and thirdly, the level of culture.
From the fifteenth century B.C., a vast movement of Semites into Africa began. Between Ethiopia and the Arabian peninsula there were very active trade dealings. They spread out on the plateau, but unevenly. In all probability, their port of entry, so to speak, the point for settlement of the plateau was Massawa.
Therefore, we see the greatest concentration of Semites in Northern Ethiopia: Felasha, Abyssinian Jews in the mountains of Semien, and Tigreans in Tigre. Southern Ethiopia was under the least influence of Semitism. From the Arabian peninsula, they brought with them the language that belongs to the Hamitic root — this is the present-day Geez language (literary). The Semites, having mixed with the inhabitants of the country, changed their language and pronunciation and hence came about the present-day Amhara, or Abyssinian, or Amharic language. “Amhara” is the name that the Abyssinians give themselves. The name “Abyssinian,” accepted now in Europe, came about thus: Arabs call them “Habesh,” which means “mixture” (confirmation of what we surmised that the Abyssinians are a mixed race). The Portuguese changed the word “Habesh” to “Habeks,” and German scholars from “Habeks” made “Abessinen.”
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