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The Oromo Migration and the Kingdom of Ethiopia in the 16th and 17th Centuries

By Alex Wodzicki


 

This is part four of a multi-part series on the history of Ethiopia. If you haven’t read it already, be sure to check out last week’s post on the conflict between the Kingdom of Ethiopia and the Muslim Sultanates of the Horn of Africa.


As a result of the devastation and depopulation caused by the lengthy wars between the Kingdom of Ethiopia and Adal, the early sixteenth century saw a massive migration of the Oromo people into Ethiopia. The Oromo were a loosely organized Cushitic-speaking group that originated from the region around Lake Turkana (near the modern-day border between Ethiopia and Kenya). They were nomadic pastoralists that tended enormous herds of cattle and were organized into broad family clans, divided between five distinct age groups. Between the years 1530 and 1565 the Oromo expanded rapidly into the southern Ethiopian highlands, and by the early seventeenth century they made up the majority of the population in the southern half of Ethiopia. Many of them converted to Christianity or Islam, depending whether they came into contact with Ethiopia or Adal, and many also adopted settled agriculture. Although there was some conflict between them and Ethiopian Kingdom, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ethiopian Kings mostly focused on consolidating their rule in the northern half of their kingdom, expanding their trade (mostly in slaves) with the Ottoman Empire through their recently conquered port of Massawa and establishing a permanent capital at Gonder. In the early seventeenth century, King Susenyos of Ethiopia recognized the Oromo inhabitants of the southern half of his Kingdom, granting them the right to tax the local inhabitants in return for military service. Despite the efforts of Kings to consolidate their authority during this period, the eighteenth century saw a major decline in royal power and the rise of local elites across the kingdom, a story that we will explore in detail in the next post.


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