Ethiopia, Solomonid Dynasty of

The Somalis' connection with the Prophet Muhammad may be partly explained by the history of commercial and intellectual contact between the inhabitants of the Arabian and Somali coasts.

Early in the Prophet's ministry, a band of persecuted Muslims had fled, with the Prophet's encouragement, across the Red Sea into the Horn of Africa, where the Muslims were afforded protection by the Ethiopian negus, or king.

Thus, Islam may have been introduced into the Horn of Africa well before the faith took root in its Arabian native soil.

The large-scale conversion of the Somalis had to await the arrival in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries of Muslim patriarchs, in particular, the renowned Shaykh Daarood Jabarti and Shaykh Isahaaq, or Isaaq.

Daarood married Doombira Dir, the daughter of a local patriarch.

Their issue gave rise to the confederacy that forms the largest clan-family  in Somalia, the Daarood.

For his part, Shaykh Isaaq founds the numerous Isaaq clan-family in northern Somalia.

Along with the clan system of lineages, the Arabian shaykhs probably introduced into Somalia the patriarchal ethos and patrilineal genealogy typical of Semitic societies, and gradually replaced the indigenous Somali social organization, which, like that of many other African societies, may have been matrilineal.

Islam's penetration of the Somali coast, along with the immigration of Arabian elements, inspired a second great population movement reversing the flow of migration from northward to southward.

This massive movement, which will ultimately takw the Somalis to the banks of the Tana River and to the fertile plains of Harer in Ethiopia, had commenced in the thirteenth century and continues to the nineteenth century.

At this point, European interlopers appear on the East African scene, ending Somali migration onto the East African plateau.

A second factor in Somali history from the fifteenth century onward, in addition to southward migration, is the emergence of centralized state systems.

The most important of these in medieval times is Adal, whose influence at the height of its power and prosperity in the sixteenth century extends from Zeila, the capital, through the fertile valleys of the Jijiga and the Harer plateau to the Ethiopian highlands.

Adal's fame derives not only from the prosperity and cosmopolitanism of its people, its architectural sophistication, graceful mosques, and high learning, but also from its conflicts with the expansionist Ethiopians.

For hundreds of years before the fifteenth century, goodwill had existed between the dominant new civilization of Islam and the Christian neguses of Ethiopia.

One tradition holds that Muhammad blessed Ethiopia and enjoined his disciples from ever conducting jihad (holy war) against the Christian kingdom in gratitude for the protection early Muslims had received from the Ethiopian negus.

Whereas Muslim armies rapidly overran the more powerful Persian empire and much of Byzantium soon after the birth of Islam, there would be no jihad against Christian Ethiopia for centuries.

The forbidding Ethiopian terrain of deep gorges, sharp escarpments, and perpendicular massifs that rise more than fort-five hundred meters also discourages the Muslims from attempting a campaign of conquest against so inaccessible a kingdom.

Muslim-Christian relations sour during the reign of the aggressive Negus Yeshaq (ruled 1414-29).

Forces of his rapidly expanding empire descend from Ethiopia's highlands to despoil Muslim settlements in the valley east of the ancient city of Harar.

Having branded the Muslims "enemies of the Lord," Yeshaq invades the Muslim kingdom of Ifat in 1415.

He crushes the armies of Ifat and puts to flight in the wastes along the Gulf of Tadjoura (in present- day Djibouti) Ifat's king Saa'd ad Din.

Yeshaq follows Sa'ad ad Din to the island off the coast of Zeila (which still bears his name), where the Muslim king is killed.

Yeshaq compels the Muslims to offer tribute, and also orders his singers to compose a gloating hymn of thanksgiving for his victory.

In the hymn's lyrics, the word Somali appears for the first time in written record.

The Muslims have recovered sufficiently by the sixteenth century to break through from the east into Ethiopia's central highlands.

Led by the charismatic Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (1506-43), the Muslims pour into Ethiopia, using scorched-earth tactics that decimated the population of the country.

A Portuguese expedition led by Cristóvão da Gama, a son of Vasco da Gama who is looking for the Prester John of medieval European folklore—a Christian, African monarch of vast dominions—arrives from the sea and saves Ethiopia.

The joint Portuguese-Ethiopian force uses cannon to rout the Muslims, whose imam dies on the battlefield.

Berbera replaces Zeila as the northern hub of Islamic influence in the Horn of Africa.

By the middle of the sixteenth century, Saylac and Berbera have become dependencies of the sharifs of Mecca and in the seventeenth century pass to the Ottoman Turks, who exercise authority over them through locally recruited Somali governors.

The first Portuguese forces respond to a request for aid in 1541, although by this time the Portuguese are concerned primarily with strengthening their hegemony over the Indian Ocean trade routes and with converting the Ethiopians to Roman Catholicism.

Nevertheless, joining the forces of the Christian kingdom, the Portuguese succeed eventually in helping to defeat and kill Gragn.

Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries arrived in 1554.

Efforts to induce the Ethiopians to reject their Monophysite beliefs and accept Rome's supremacy continue for nearly a century and engender bitterness as pro- and anti-Catholic parties maneuver for control of the state.

At least two emperors in this period allegedly convert to Roman Catholicism.

The second of these, Susenyos (reigned 1607-32), after a particularly fierce battle between adherents of the two faiths, abdicates in 1632 in favor of his son, Fasilides (reigned 1632-67), to spare the country further bloodshed.

The expulsion of the Jesuits and all Roman Catholic missionaries follows.

This religious controversy leaves a legacy of deep hostility toward foreign Christians and Europeans that will continue into the twentieth century.

It also contributes to the isolation that follow for the next two hundred years.

The Oromo migration results, in a more immediate sense, in a weakening of both Christian and Muslim power and drives a wedge between the two faiths along the eastern edge of the highlands.

In the Christian kingdom, Oromo groups infiltrate large areas in the east and south, with large numbers settling in Shewa and adjacent parts of the central highlands.

Others penetrate as far north as eastern Tigray.

The effect of the Oromo migrations is to leave the Ethiopian state fragmented and much reduced in size, with an alien population in its midst.

Hereafter, the Oromo play a major role in the internal dynamics of Ethiopia, both assimilating and being assimilated as they are slowly incorporated into the Christian kingdom.

In the south, the Sidama fiercely resist the Oromo, but, as in the central and northern highlands, they are compelled to yield at least some territory.

In the east, the Oromo sweep up to and even beyond Harar, dealing a devastating blow to what remains of Adal and contributing in a major way to its decline.

Zeila in the sixteenth century becomes the principal outlet for trade in coffee, gold, ostrich feathers, civet, and enslaved Ethiopians for the Middle East, China, and India.

The city emerges over time as the center of Muslim culture and learning, famed for its schools and mosques.

Eventually it becomes the capital of the medieval state of Adal, which in the sixteenth century fights off Christian Ethiopian domination of the highlands.

Between 1560 and 1660, Ethiopian expeditions repeatedly harried Zeila, which sinks into decay.

Sarsa Dengel had intended to make his nephew as his heir, recognizing that to avert the civil war that will likely follow his death an adult will be needed, and the emperor's own sons are quite young.

These plans are changed primarily through the influence of Empress Sena Maryam, stepmother of Emperor's eldest surviving son Prince Yaqob, who had been made emperor in 1597.

The empress had had Za Dengel seized and confined in a religious retreat on the island of Dek in Lake Tana.

Za Dengel eventually managed to escape, taking refuge in Gojjam.

Za Dengel had in 1603 been made Emperor  by his cousin Ras Za Sellase, who intended Za Dengel to be little more than a figurehead.

He was crowned as Asnaf Segad ('He to whom the horizons bow').

However, Za Dengel summons the Jesuit Pedro Páez to his court at Dankaz, who persuades him to embrace Catholicism.

Cristóvão da Gama (son of the legendary Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama) had some decades earlier, in 1541, led a military expedition to save the Ethiopian emperor Gelawdewos from the onslaught of Ahmed Gragn, a Muslim Imam who almost destroyed the existence of the Ethiopian state.

The Jesuits who had accompanied or followed the expedition into Ethiopia, and fixed their headquarters at Fremona (near Adwa), have been oppressed and neglected over the past six decades, but not actually expelled.

Father Pedro Páez, born in Olmeda de las Cebollas (now Olmeda de las Fuentes, near Madrid), had studied at Coimbra and, sent from Goa to Ethiopia as a missionary in 1589, had been held captive in Yemen for seven years, from 1590 to 1596, where he had used his time to learn Arabic.

During this period he had to travel through the Hadramaut and Rub'al Khali deserts, and tasted coffee in Mocha, being most probably the first European to undergo such experiences.

Finally arriving at Massawa in 1603, he had proceeded to Debarwa where he met the chief of the Portuguese in Ethiopia, John Gabriel, on May 11, and four days later had made his way to Fremona.Unlike his predecessor, Andre de Oviedo, Paul Henze describes Paez as "gentle, learned, considerate of the feelings of others".

When summoned to the court of the young negusä nägäst Za Dengel, his knowledge of Amharic and Ge'ez, as well as his knowledge of Ethiopian customs impresses the sovereign so much that Za Dengel decides to convert from the Coptic Tewahido Church to Catholicism —although Páez, a man of great tact and judgment, warns him not to announce his declaration too quickly.

However, when Za Dengel proclaims changes in the observance of the Sabbath, Páez retires to Fremona, and waits out the ensuing civil war that ends with the emperor's death.