At the dawn of Ethiopian history, the plateau was inhabited by Cushitic peoples. The Blue Nile and its watershed with the Hawash roughly marked the dividing line between the (Cushitic) people of the Agau who held the northern part of the plateau and the Cushitic people of the Sidama who occupied the southern zone. In the western sector, on the slopes of the Ethiopian plateau towards Sudan, nuclei of Sudanese negroes remained independent or subjected to Agau and Sidama; while in the south, in the valleys declining towards Lake Rodolfo, the Sidama had superimposed themselves on pre-existing populations of the Nilotic stock, some of which had even managed to preserve their individuality.
Down in the coastal lowland, which surrounds and isolates Ethiopia with its deserts from Ras Kasar to the mouth of Juba, other similar Cushitic populations were dedicated to nomadic pastoralism: from north to south: first the Begia, then the Saho, the Danachili, the tribe then called Somale, and finally the Galla who along the Juba were in contact with the Bantu Negroes from whom they had to borrow a large part of their political and social institutions. It seems that these Cushitic peoples have had some contact with the Egyptian navigators along the coast of the Red Sea; and in the interior with the Meroitic kingdom, even if – according to a recent hypothesis by Carl Meinhof – Meroitic should not be considered as a Cushitic language (which would expand the ethnic and linguistic history of the Ethiopian peoples up to the great island of the two Niles). However in the north of plateau among the Agau and in the lowlands among all the populations from the Saho and Danachili to the Somali and the Galla, no state was formed in Ethiopia and the political organization was the gentry one with elective or inherited tribal chiefs. Only in the southern area of the plateau, near the Sidama, were small states ruled by a hereditary monarchy in a typical aristocratic system and with a partition no longer noble but territorial: a system that is explained by the ethnic composition of those people, mixed, as has been said, to Nilotic lineages. For the pagan religion of the Cushites see what is said about non-Abyssinian peoples in the ethnology paragraph. political organization was that of nobility with elective or inherited tribal leaders. Only in the southern area of the plateau, near the Sidama, were small states ruled by a hereditary monarchy in a typical aristocratic system and with a partition no longer noble but territorial: a system that is explained by the ethnic composition of those people, mixed, as has been said, to Nilotic lineages. For the pagan religion of the Cushites see what is said about non-Abyssinian peoples in the ethnology paragraph. political organization was that of nobility with elective or inherited tribal leaders. Only in the southern area of the plateau, near the Sidama, were small states ruled by a hereditary monarchy in a typical aristocratic system and with a partition no longer noble but territorial: a system that is explained by the ethnic composition of those people, mixed, as has been said, to Nilotic lineages. For the pagan religion of the Cushites see what is said about non-Abyssinian peoples in the ethnology paragraph. a system that is explained by the ethnic composition of those people, mixed, as we have said, with Nilotic lineages. For the pagan religion of the Cushites see what is said about non-Abyssinian peoples in the ethnology paragraph. a system that is explained by the ethnic composition of those people, mixed, as we have said, with Nilotic lineages. For the pagan religion of the Cushites see what is said about non-Abyssinian peoples in the ethnology paragraph. For Ethiopia 1996, please check pharmacylib.com.
The riches, so soon celebrated, of Ethiopia and the political and cultural status of its peoples with respect to the evolution of the neighboring peoples, should have encouraged a work of colonization. And then along the coast, commercial emporiums populated by people of southern Arabia were founded. Soon these empires were centers of populations that expanded into the neighboring areas and new groups of colonizers flowed from the Arabian side to the Eritrean side. Following events unknown to us, this movement of immigration from Arabia led to the formation of an independent monarchical state in the north, the kingdom of Aksum, which united under its sovereignty all the regions of northern Ethiopia where southern colonization flourished. Arabica: i.e. the Eritrean lowland and the edge of the Ethiopian plateau. The same African country took the name of one of the immigrant South Arabian bloodlines, that of the Ḥabashāt originating in Yemen.
The reggio of Aksum, in the first centuries of its existence, had as its traditional directions of political expansion: Arabia and Sudan. The Arab politics of the reign of Aksum that in the sec. III d. C. maintained an anti-Roman attitude, led to ally himself with Palmyra, and therefore the emperor Aureliano in 278 d. C could also triumph of the Aksumiti, allies of Queen Zenobia. Towards Sudan, however, the action of the kingdom of Aksum, hostile to the Meroitic kingdom, extended to Meroe itself, which was taken in a successful expedition probably at the beginning of the century. IV d. C.
Meanwhile, while the contacts that this policy of the kings and the foreign commercial activity had caused with the Mediterranean peoples favored the spread of Christianity in some center of Aksumite trade, the same dynasty later under the reign of King Ezana (‛Ezānā) placed himself at the head of the new religious movement by converting to Christianity. The Christian religion, which had meanwhile also become the official one of the Roman Empire, thus created a link between Aksum and Constantinople, while also politically the Aksumites approached the directives of Constantinople, going so far as to pose as auxiliary of the Empire against the Persia.
The greatest feat of the kingdom of Aksum was the conquest of Yemen in 525 AD. C. under the reign of King Kālēb of Aksum reaffirming the claims of the Aksumite dynasty towards Arabia on the occasion of the persecutions against the Christians of Naǵrān. The conquest, which had already become less solid due to the policy of semi-independence of the leaders of the Aksumite army of Yemen towards the king of Aksum, ended in 572 when the Persians managed to drive out the Aksumite troops from Yemen.
The formation of the Muslim state in the following century. VII definitively closed Arabia and the sea routes to the kingdom of Aksum. This, thus cutting out from what for centuries had been the objectives of its action, remained more and more a local African state and was, inevitably, forced to try to expand towards the interior of the Ethiopian plateau of which until then he had limited himself to keeping the margins. Thus begins a long period that occupies seven centuries during which, following fierce struggles, the Aksumite kingdom extends up to the Scioa, moving its political center first from Aksum to central Ethiopia (region of Lāstā) under the dynasty of the Zaguè.
