Jimma

Jimma (Oromo: Jimmaa) is the largest city in southwestern Oromia Region, Ethiopia. It is a special zone of the Oromia Region and is surrounded by Jimma Zone. It has a latitude and longitude of 7°40′N 36°50′E / 7.667°N 36.833°E / 7.667; 36.833. Prior to the 2007 census, Jimma was reorganized administratively as a special Zone.

What is now Jimma's northern suburb of Jiren was the capital of the Kingdom of Jimma. Originally named Hirmata, the city owed its importance in the 19th century to being located on the caravan route between Shewa and Kaffa, as well as being only six miles from the palace of Abba Jifar II.

According to Donald Levine, in the early 19th century the market attracted thousands of people from neighboring regions: "Amhara from Gojjam and Shoa, Oromo from all the Gibe Kingdoms and numerous representatives of the Lacustrine and Omotic groups, including Timbaro, Qabena, Kefa, Janjero, Welamo, Konta and several others".

At the very beginning of the 20th century, the German explorer Oscar Neumann visited Jimma on his journey from the Somali coast through Ethiopia to the Sudan. As he observed, “Jimma is almost the richest land of Abyssinia; the inhabitants are pure, well-built Galla; they are nearly all Mohammedans, as is their king, Abba Jifar, a very clever man, who submitted to Menelik at the right time and, therefore, retained his country”

The present town was developed on the Awetu River by the Italian colonial regime in the 1930s. At that time, with the goal of weakening the native Ethiopian Church, the Italians intended to make Jimma an important center of Islamic learning, and founded an academy to teach fiqh. In the East African fighting of World War II after their main force was defeated, the Italian garrison at Jimma was one of the last to surrender, holding out til July 1941.

Following the death of Abba Jifar II of Jimma in 1932, the Kingdom of Jimma was formally absorbed into Ethiopia. During the reorganization of the provinces in 1942, Jimma vanished into Kaffa Province."

Herbert S. Lewis states that in the early 1960s it was "the greatest market in all of south-western Ethiopia. On a good day in the dry season it attracts up to thirty thousand people. Jimma was the scene of a violent encounter which started in April 1975 between radical college students (known as zemacha) sent to organize local peasants, who had benefited from land reform, and local police, who had sided with local landowners. Students and peasant followers had imprisoned local small landowners, rich peasants and members of the local police force; this action led to further unrest, causing the Derg (the ruling junta) to send a special delegation to Jimma, which sided with the local police. In the end, 24 students were killed, more arrested, and the local zemacha camps closed.

Days before the end of the Ethiopian Civil War in May 1991, the city was captured by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front.