Habesha peoples

Habesha peoples (Ge'ez: ሐበሠተ; Amharic: ሐበሻ; Tigrinya: ሓበሻ; commonly used exonym: Abyssinians) is an ethnic or pan-ethnic identifier that has historically been applied to Semitic-speaking, predominantly Oriental Orthodox Christian peoples native to the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea between Asmara and Addis Ababa (i.e. the modern-day Amhara, Tigrayan, Tigrinya peoples) and this usage remains common today. The term is also used in varying degrees of inclusion and exclusion of other groups.

The oldest reference to Habesha was in second or third century Sabaean engravings as Ḥbśt or Ḥbštm recounting the South Arabian involvement of the nəgus ("king") GDRT of ḤBŠT. The term appears to refer to a group of peoples, rather than a specific ethnicity. Another Sabaean inscription describes an alliance between Shamir Yuhahmid of the Himyarite Kingdom and King `DBH of ḤBŠT in the first quarter of the third century. However, South Arabian expert Eduard Glaser claimed that the Egyptian hieroglyphic ḫbstjw, used in reference to "a foreign people from the incense-producing regions" (i.e. Land of Punt) by Pharaoh Hatshepsut in 1450 BC, was the first usage of the term or somehow connected. Francis Breyer also believes the Egyptian demonym to be the source of the Semitic term.

The first attestation of late Latin Abissensis is from the fifth century CE. The 6th-century author Stephanus of Byzantium later used the term "Αβασηνοί" (i.e. Abasēnoi) to refer to "an Arabian people living next to the Sabaeans together with the Ḥaḍramites." The region of the Abasēnoi produce[d] myrrh, incense and cotton and they cultivate[d] a plant which yields a purple dye (probably wars, i.e. Fleminga grahamiana). It lay on a route which leads from Zabīd on the coastal plain to the Ḥimyarite capital Ẓafār. Abasēnoi was located by Hermann von Wissman as a region in the Jabal Ḥubaysh mountain in Ibb Governorate, perhaps related in etymology with the ḥbš Semitic root). Other place names in Yemen contain the ḥbš root, such as the Jabal Ḥabaši, whose residents are still called al-Aḥbuš (pl. of Ḥabaš). The location of the Abasēnoi in Yemen may perhaps be explained by remnant Aksumite populations from the 520s conquest by King Kaleb. King Ezana's claims to Sahlen (Saba) and Dhu-Raydan (Himyar) during a time when such control was unlikely may indicate an Aksumite presence or coastal foothold. Traditional scholarship has assumed that the Habashat were a tribe from modern-day Yemen that migrated to Ethiopia and Eritrea. However, the Sabaic inscriptions only use the term ḥbšt to the refer to the Kingdom of Aksum and its inhabitants, especially during the 3rd century, when the ḥbšt (Aksumites) were often at war with the Sabaeans and Himyraites. Modern Western European languages, including English, appear to borrow this term from the post-classical form Abissini in the mid-sixteenth century. (English Abyssin is attested from 1576, and Abissinia and Abyssinia from the 1620s.)

Historically, the term "Habesha" represented northern Ethiopian Highlands Semitic-speaking Orthodox Christians, while the Cushitic-speaking peoples such as Oromo and Agaw, as well as Semitic-speaking Muslims/Ethiopian Jews, were considered the periphery. Another neighboring group called the Shanqella were also considered distinct from the Habesha.

According to Gerard Prunier, one very restrictive use of the term today by some Tigrayans refers exclusively to speakers of Tigrinya; however, Tigrayan oral traditions and linguistic evidence bear witness to ancient and constant relations with Amharas. Some Gurage societies, such as Orthodox Christian communities where Soddo is spoken, identify as Habesha and have a strong sense of Ethiopian national identity, due in part to their ancient ties with the northern Habesha.

Muslim ethnic groups primarily located in the Eritrean Highlands, including the Tigre, as well as those in the Ethiopian Highlands, have historically resisted the designation of Habesha. Instead, Eritrean and Ethiopian Muslims were commonly identified as the Jeberti people. Another term for Muslims from the Horn of Africa was '"Al-Zaylai"', this applied to even the empress Eleni of Ethiopia due to her ties to the state of Hadiya. At the turn of the 20th century, elites of the Solomonic dynasty employed the conversion of various ethnic groups to Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity and the imposition of the Amharic language to spread a common Habesha national identity.

Within Ethiopian and Eritrean diasporic populations, some second generation immigrants have adopted the term "Habesha" in a broader sense as a supra-national ethnic identifier inclusive of all Eritreans and Ethiopians. For those who employ the term, it serves as a useful counter to more exclusionary identities such as "Amhara" or "Tigrayan". However, this usage is not uncontested: On the one hand, those who grew up in Ethiopia or Eritrea may object to the obscuring of national specificity. On the other hand, groups that were subjugated in Ethiopia or Eritrea sometimes find the term offensive.

European scholars postulated that the ancient communities that evolved into the modern Ethiopian state were formed by a migration across the Red Sea of Sabaean-speaking South Arabian tribes, including one called the "Habashat", who intermarried with the local non-Semitic-speaking peoples, in around 1,000 BC. Many held to this view because "epigraphic and monumental evidence point to an indisputable South Arabian influence suggesting migration and colonization from Yemen in the early 1st millennium BC as the main factor of state formation on the highlands. Rock inscriptions in Qohayto (Akkala Guzay, Eritrea) document the presence of individuals or small groups from Arabia on the highlands at this time." It was first suggested by German orientalist Hiob Ludolf and revived by early 20th-century Italian scholar Conti Rossini. According to this theory, Sabaeans brought with them South Arabian letters and language, which gradually evolved into the Ge'ez language and Ge'ez script. Linguists have revealed, however, that although its script developed from Epigraphic South Arabian (whose oldest inscriptions are found in Yemen), Ge'ez is descended from a different branch of Southern Semitic, Ethiosemitic or Ethiopic sub-branch. South Arabian inscriptions does not mention any migration to the west coast of the Red Sea, nor of a tribe called "Habashat." All uses of the term date to the 3rd century AD and later, when they referred to the people of the Kingdom of Aksum. Edward Ullendorff has asserted that the Tigrayans and the Amhara comprise "Abyssinians proper" and a "Semitic outpost," while Donald N. Levine has argued that this view "neglects the crucial role of non-Semitic elements in Ethiopian culture." Edward Ullendorff and Carlo Conti Rossini's theory that Ethiosemitic-language speakers of the northern Ethiopian Highlands were ancient foreigners from South Arabia that displaced the original peoples of the Horn has been disputed by Ethiopian scholars specializing in Ethiopian Studies such as Messay Kebede and Daniel E. Alemu who generally disagree with this theory arguing that the migration was one of reciprocal exchange, if it even occurred at all. In the 21st century, scholars have largely discounted the longstanding presumption that Sabaean migrants had played a direct role in Ethiopian civilization.