Peoples of Ethiopia

Today the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia is broken into nine federal states which representing the nine major nations (ethnic groups) making up the Ethiopian people. These are:

Amhara
Tigray
Oromo
Afar
Somali
Hararge
Gambela
Benishangul Gumuz

Amhara
The Amhara number around 15 million in northern Ethiopia and are of common descent with the Tigrayan people. Their ancestors, the Sabaean (or Sheban), settled in the highlands of what is now Eritrea and Ethiopia, coming across from the Arabian peninsula about 1000 BC. The Sabaeans are also referred to in The Quran, along with Christians and Jews, as "People of the Book."

The Amhara trace their roots to Menelik I, child of the queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel and claim close ties with the Jews, having adopted many cultural values and religious beliefs from them.

Though the basic ancestry of the Amhara is Semitic, they have intermarried with and absorbed the Cushitic peoples who preceded them in this area and there was a strong Oromo strain in the royal family and nobles. The Amhara features are similar to the southern Arabs, olive to brown skin and dark circles around the eyes.  The name comes from the word amari, meaning "pleasing, agreeable, beautiful and gracious."

The Amharic language is Semitic, sharing common origin with Hebrew and Arabic. Amharic is descended from Ge'ez, which developed from the original Sabaean language, changing through the influence of the non-Semitic languages of the earlier peoples.  The Bible is still read in Ge'ez in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.  
 
Amharic is the language of business and education in Ethiopia, spoken by millions of other Ethiopians today as a second language.  The fidel alphabet of Ge'ez, is used to write Amharic and its sister language Tigrinya. Other languages, such as Afaan Oromo, were written in this script but have now switched to Latin script.

Life in the Amhara farming society is hard.  Many live in the harsh and stark mountains, easy to defend, but difficult to farm, travel or trade.  The fields are ploughed with oxen, seeds are sown and harvested by hand, and the harvest is threshed by the feet of animals.  In the home, the primary cooking fuel is the dried dung of the farm animals.  The staple food is injera with wot.  Injera is made from teff.  Wot is a sauce made from pulses or meat.  Preparing these foods is difficult and time-consuming.  Dirty drinking water and deforestation are continuing issues in Amhara life.  These and other factors cause most Amhara to live in yearly risk of famine. (sources)
 

Tigray

The Tigray were associated with the Amhara in the ancient kingdom of Abyssinia. The area where they live in the mountains was the centre of the ancient Empire of Axum. Some time in the late Middle Ages, the Amharic and Tigrinya languages began to differentiate. Amhara warlords often competed for dominance of the realm with Tigrayan warlords. While many branches of the Imperial dynasty were from the Amharic speaking area, a substantial amount were from Tigray. The Amharas seemed to gain the upper hand with the accession of the so-called Gondar line of the Imperial dynasty in the beginning of the 17th century. However, it soon lapsed into the semi-anarchic era of Zemene Mesafint ("Era of the Princes"), in which rivalling warlords fought for power and the Yejju Oromo inderases (or regents) had effective control, while emperors were just as figureheads. The Tigrayans only made a brief return to the throne in the person of Yohannes IV, whose death in 1889 allowed the base to return to the Amharic speaking province of Shewa. (Wikipedia)

Today the majority of the Tigray people are subsistence farmers. They are generally considered very beautiful people. Among Ethiopians, they are some of the most industrious and determined people. During the 1985 famine it was a film about famine-stricken Tigray that raised international consciousness. Tigray received almost no aid. The communist government was trying to break the will of the independent Tigray, so they kept aid workers out of the region. It was the Tigrian Peoples Liberation Front who successfully defeated the communist government of Haili Miriam Mengistu, taking political control of the country in the 1990’s and Tigrians remain the politically dominant ethnic group in the federal government of Ethiopia today.

More information on Tigray: http://www.tigraionline.com/tigraistate.html  



Oromo



The Oromos (sometimes known as Galla peoples) comprise approximately a dozen tribal groups. They are most populous and widely dispersed people in Ethiopia and are also present in Kenya and Somalia. The term "Oromo" encompasses all these peoples all of whom speak mutually intelligible dialects of the language Afaan Oromo. Although they retain similarities in their descent system, they differ considerably in religion, lifestyle, and political organization.

The majority of the Oromos today are Muslim. Traditional religion is still practiced by about 12% of them. Ethnic religionists worship a supreme being named Waqa, organising feasts various occasions, and sacrificing livestock in Waqa's honor. Today, these feasts reflect a Muslim influence. Many believe that objects such as trees, springs, and rocks have spirits. It is also believed that spirits called jinn may take possession of people. Ramadan is observed by most adults but celebration of other Muslim festivals is limited.

The Oromo are traditionally herdsmen and warriors, and today mostly remain rural agro-pastoralists. Their typical dwelling, a tukul, is a circular hut made of acacia, thatched with grass. Villages comprise 10-80 families. Oromo families are headed by an authoritarian father who has the right to expect total obedience. Men usually have only one wife, and children are considered a necessity. The more children and grandchildren a man has, the greater his prestige.

Oromo boys are taught from an early age to become warriors. The killing of a man was a customary initiation into adulthood. A man wanting to marry was expected to present the penis of a man he had killed to his bride, especially in the Gugi tribe. Apparently wild animals are now used instead of humans.
(http://www.joshuaproject.net/peopctry.php?rop3=210580&rog3=ET)

Oromo culture was formerly subject to a traditional “democratic” system of governance called the Gaada system, a traditional social stratification (also practiced by the Gedeo people the SNNPRS). Each class, or luba, comprises all the sons of men in another particular class. The entire class progresses through eleven different age grades, each based on an eight-year cycle, and each with its own set of rights and responsibilities.

As of 1990, gadaa had active adherents only among the Borana and Guji tribes found near the Kenyan border, but the system still remains influential in Oromo society at large, and is seen by Oromos as a better method of governing than other forms in the region. However, in regions where the Oromo immigrated and conquered, including Sidama and Somali, the Gadaa system was oppressive. Minorities like the Hadiyya, were "considered to be of a lower social status than the 'pure' Oromo and did not possess equal rights in the Gadaa system."
(Wikipedia)
 
One basic value of the Oromo is tokuma, identification with the group. The religious, social, political, and economic life of the Oromo revolves around this. Cooperation is central to this system, especially in work arrangements. Oromo have a reputation for being easygoing and sociable. They value hospitality and almsgiving, especially to relatives and friends.
 

Afar


The Afar (or Danakil in Arabic) found in Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea claim to be descendants of Ham. They are a proud people, emphasizing a man's strength and bravery. Prestige comes, as it always has, from killing one's enemies. They inhabit one of the harshest environments on earth, known as the Danakil Desert. One area, called the Dalliol Depression, consists of a vast plain of salt pans and active volcanoes. Much of it lies 200 feet below sea level and has daily temperatures as high as 45ºC. The average yearly rainfall is less than 100mm.

The Afar are Muslims. Most are nomadic pastoralists, herding sheep, goats, cattle, and camels and measure wealth by the size of the herd. Some, however, are miners and traders of salt prying slabs of solid salt from salt pans during the dry season and trading it in the towns. They live in camps surrounded by thorn barricades to protect them from wild animals or enemy tribesmen. Their oval-shaped huts, ari, are made of palm mats and are easily moved.

Meat and milk are the major components of their diet. Milk is also an important social offering. For instance, when a guest is given fresh warm milk to drink, the host is implying that he will provide immediate protection for the guest. If a person is killed while under the protection of an Afar, his death must be avenged as if he were a member of the clan.

In addition to Islam, many pre-Islamic beliefs and customs are also prevalent among the Afar. They believe that certain trees and groves have sacred powers. They also have various religious rites such as anointing their bodies with butter. Spirits of the dead are believed to be very powerful, and a "feast of the dead," called Rabena, is celebrated each year. They also give annual offerings to the sea to ensure safety for their villages. Many people wear protective leather amulets that contain herbs and verses from the Koran. (http://www.joshuaproject.net/countries.php?rog3=ET)

 
Somali



Over 15 million Somalis live scattered across eight countries in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, of which 4.6 million are in the Somali Region (or Ogaden) of Ethiopia. (Wikipedia) They are the most homogenous of African peoples, sharing a single language and adhering to a single faith, Islam. Their cultural heritage is integral to their nomadic lifestyle. The name Somali derives from the words, "so maal," literally means "go and milk an animal for yourself!", actually a rough expression of hospitality. Somalis typically live in portable huts made of wooden branches covered with grass mats. They are easily collapsible so that they can be loaded on pack animals and moved along with the herds. (http://www.joshuaproject.net/countries.php?rog3=ET)

Somali society is based on the nuclear family, which consists of a husband, wife, and children. A typical family owns a herd of sheep or goats and a few burden camels. Some may also own a herd of breeding and milking camels. The more camels a man has, the greater his prestige.

Somalis are split into many clans and sub-clans, including but not limited to: Darod Dir Hawiye Isaaq Rahanweyn. Genealogical claims are an important part of Somali tradition. Loyalty to one's clan is important and in Somalia itself clans often supersede any central government authority. (Wikipedia)

The Somali are nearly 100% Muslim, many belonging to Sufi Tariqas (Islam in Somalia). Villagers and urban settlers frequently turn to the wadaad, a religious expert, for blessings, charms, and advice in worldly matters. Remnants of the Cushitic religion of Waqa persist (as with the Oromos and the Konso) in the Somali culture intermingled with their Islamic practise. They perform rainmaking rituals, make animal sacrifices and have a ritual bonfire at the solar New Year. Many believe in spirit possession and in spirits that live in trees, water sources, and on hilltops. (http://www.joshuaproject.net/countries.php?rog3=ET)

 
Hararge

The Harari (or Adere) people are one of the nationalities of Ethiopia. Their language known as haderigna is a South Ethio-Semetic language, but most of its speakers are multilingual in Amharic and/or Oromo. Hararis are closely related to the Zay and Silte peoples of southern Ethiopia. Like the Silti they are all muslim. They are a merchant people of great economic importance to the country, mostly living in the walled city of Harar, positioned at a key strategic point to control trade routs into the Ethiopian highlands from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. The city developed from the 9th century into an important commercial centre as well as the most important seat of Islamic authority and scholarship in northeast Africa.

The Harari have daily contact with four other peoples who frequent the markets of Harar - the Somali, the Oromo, the Argobba, and the Amhara, but they limit the use of their language, Adare, to their own people. They strongly discourage marriage outside their ethnic group and refer to themselves as ge usu, or "the people of the city." They call their way of life ge 'ada ("the etiquette of the city") and their language ge sinan ("the city language").

Harari society is characterized by a complex set of obligations and ties, which provides a strong sense of social solidarity and excludes outsiders. The core of Harari society is built around kinship, friendship, and afocha, or community organizations, which provide them with social, ceremonial, and economic support for such occasions as weddings and funerals. Afocha range in size from 50 to 75 members, and usually include aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Women make up a solid force in Harari culture, leading vigorous and visible, though separate, social lives. They contribute to their families’ incomes by selling produce from their husbands’ farms, or raising and selling tobacco. One very important industry among the Harari women is basket weaving. In fact, Harar is famous for its elaborate baskets.

The region surrounding Harar receives up to 40 inches of rain per year, allowing farmers to produce enough grain to satisfy the city's needs. Various citrus fruits, mangoes, papayas, bananas, and other fruits are also raised. The cash crops are coffee and qat (ch’at). The staple dish of the Harari is a spicy stew made with meat, potatoes, and vegetables, and eaten with sourdough bread.

The twin-towered Jami mosque is the focus of the community, although nearly every neighbourhood has its own small mosque. The people attend the mosques regularly. Because Harar has over 150 shrines of Muslim saints, it is referred to as the “city of saints.”
 

Gambela
Gambela is one of the nine Federal States of Ethiopia, positioned in the west of the country, bordering Sudan, with its capital Gambela Town, lying between the Baro and Akobo Rivers. It has an estimated total population of 247,000, of which an estimated 81% are rural inhabitants and 19% urban. Gambela’s area is 25,802.01km2, and population density an estimated 9.57 people per square kilometre, well below most other areas of the country. (Estimates are based on 1994 census, CSA) The Gambella region is hot and tropical with rich, fertile, well-watered soil coming from the rivers originating in the mountains of the highlands where there is a much cooler, dryer climate.

The main ethnicities of Gambela are the Nuer and Anuak.

The Nuer, make up about 40% of the Gambela’s population. They are a confederation of tribes located in South Sudan and Western Ethiopia. They are one of the very few African groups that successfully fended off colonial powers in the early 1900s. Nuer warriors were noted as some of the most skilled in East Africa. The Nuer, being very well organized, were often able to conduct cattle raids against the Dinka, a larger Southern Sudanese tribe. Their traditional political organization, was presented to the outside world through the ethnographic work of E. E. Evans-Pritchard.

Relations among the Southern Sudanese tribes were greatly affected in the nineteenth century by the intrusion of the Arabs, the Ottomans, and eventually the British. Some ethnic groups made their accommodation with the intruders and others did not, thus pitting one against another in the context of foreign rule. For example, some Dinka were more accommodating to British rule than were the Nuer. The Dinka treated the resisting Nuer as hostile, antagonising hostility between them.

Cattle have historically been of the highest symbolic, religious and economic value among the Nuer. Cattle are particularly important in their role as bride-wealth, where they are given by a husband's lineage to his wife's lineage. It is this exchange of cattle which ensures that the children will be considered to belong to the husband's lineage and to his line of descent. The classical Nuer institution of ghost marriage, in which a man can "father" children after his death, is based on this ability of cattle exchanges to define relations of kinship and descent.

The Anuak are a river people whose villages are scattered along the banks and rivers of south-eastern Sudan and western Ethiopia.

They have lived in the area of the Upper Nile for hundreds of years and consider their land to be their tribal land. They are ethnically, culturally, linguistically, historically and religiously different from most other Ethiopians. Unlike other Nilotic people in the region who are pastoralists the Anuak are fishermen and farmers. They are believed to have a common origin with their neighbors, the Luo. However, the Anuak, like the Nuer, distinguished from Habesha (highlanders) by the color of their skin, which is completely black, as opposed to most other Ethiopians who are of lighter colour. Anuak have suffered overt racial discrimination based on their skin colour, which has affected their access to education, health care and other basic services, as well as limiting opportunities for the development of the area.

The Anuak of Sudan live in a grassy region that is flat and virtually treeless. During the rainy season, this area floods, so that much of it becomes swampland with various channels of deep water running through it.

 
Benishangul-Gumuz
Benishangul-Gumuz has an estimated total population of 625,000, of which 90.1% are rural, and population  density of 12.68 people per square kilometre. The region's ethnic groups and indigenous peoples include the Berta (27%), Gumuz (23%), and Shinasha (7%) with Amhara (22%), Oromo (13%) also present. The Berta, Gumuz and Shinasha tend to have more in common with the people of neighbouring Sudan than with Ethiopian peoples.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Benishangul-Gumaz_Region

The Berta live along the Sudanese border and speak a Nilo-Saharan language. Their total population is around 200,000. They originate from eastern Sudan, in the area of the former Funj Sultanate of Sinnar (1521-1804). During the 16th or 17th century, they migrated eastward into the area of modern Benishangul-Gumuz. "Benishangul" is an arabicized form of “Bela Shangul”, meaning "Rock of Shangul" referring to a sacred rock in the Menge woreda, where the Berta originally settled upon arrival in Ethiopia. To protect themselves from slave raids coming from Sudan, the Berta established their villages amidst rocky outcrops in the mountains, where houses and granaries were raised over stone pillars. German traveller Ernst Marno described Bertha architecture and villages in his Reisen im Gebiete des Blauen und Weissen Nil (Vienna, 1874). After raids receded during the 20th century, the Berta moved into the valleys, where their villages are locate today. 
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Berta_people

After several centuries of Arab Sudanese influence, the Berta are mostly Muslim and speak fluent Arabic. Due to their intermarriage with Arab traders, some Berta were called Watawit - "bat" - by neighbouring tribes, meaning a mix of two very different animals. But they retain customs similar to their Nilo-Saharan neighbours, including ritual specialists called neri, with healing, exorcist and divination powers as well as rain-making rituals. At weddings men play large calabash trumpets (was'a). The groom arrives on a donkey and carrying a bang (throwing stick). After marriage the husband must build a hut and live in his wife's village for a year or more, tilling his father-in-law's land.

The Berta scarify their faces with three vertical lines, considered as symbols of God (each line representing Alif the initial letter of Allah). Berta are slash-and-burn agriculturalists. Their main staple is Sorghum, made into porridge and sorghum beer; “marisa”. Marisa is prepared in large ceramic containers called awar and is'u. Working parties play an important role in Berta society. When somebody wants to build a house or cultivate a field, he calls his neighbors for help and provides beer and food. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Berta_people


The Southern Nations