THE HISTORY OF OROMO AND OROMIYA
THE HISTORY OF OROMO.
Pre-19th century
Historically, Afaan Oromo-speaking people used their own Gadaa system of governance. Oromos also had a number of independent kingdoms, which they shared with the Sidama people. Among these were the Gibe regionkingdoms of Gera, Gomma, Garo, Gumma, Jimma, Leeqa-Nekemte and Limmu-Ennarea.
The earliest known documented and detailed history of the Oromo people was by the Ethiopian monk Abba Bahrey who wrote Zenahu le Galla in 1593, though the synonymous term Gallas was mentioned in maps[14] or elsewhere much earlier.[21][51]After the 16th century, they are mentioned more often, such as in the records left by Abba Pawlos, Joao Bermudes, Jerorimo Lobo, Galawdewos, Sarsa Dengel and others. These records suggest that the Oromo were pastoral people in their history, who stayed together. Their animal herds began to expand rapidly and they needed more grazing lands. They began migrating, not together, but after separating. They lacked kings, and had elected leaders called luba based on a gadasystem of government instead. By the late 16th century, two major Oromo confederations emerged: Afre and Sadaqa, which respectively refer to four and three in their language, with Afre emerging from four older clans, and Sadaqa out of three.[21] These Oromo confederations were originally based on southern parts of Ethiopia, but started moving north in the 16th century in what is termed as the "Great Oromo Migration".[21][52][53]
According to Richard Pankhurst, an Ethiopia historian, this migration is linked to the first incursions into inland Horn of Africa by Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrahim.[54] According to historian Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, the migration was one of the consequences of fierce wars of attrition between Christian and Muslim armies in the Horn of Africa region in the 15th and 16th century which killed a lot of people and depopulated the regions near the Galla lands, but also probably a result of droughts in their traditional homelands. Further, they acquired horses and their gada system helped coordinate well equipped Oromo warriors who enabled fellow Oromos to advance and settle into newer regions starting in the 1520s. This expansion continued through the 17th century.[55][52]
Both peaceful integration and violent competition between Oromos and other neighboring ethnicities such as the Amhara, Sidama, Afar and the Somali affected politics within the Oromo community.[54][53] Between 1500 and 1800, there were waves of wars and struggle between highland Christians, coastal Muslim and polytheist population in the Horn of Africa. This caused major redistribution of populations. The northern, eastern and western movement of the Oromos from the south around 1535 mirrored the large-scale expansion by Somalis inland. The 1500–1800 period also saw relocation of the Amhara people, and helped influence contemporary ethnic politics in Ethiopia.[56]
According to oral and literary evidence, Borana Oromo clan and Garre Somali clan mutually victimized each other in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly near their eastern borders. There were also periods of relative peace.[57][58] According to Günther Schlee, the Garre Somali clan replaced the Borana Oromo clan as the dominant ethnic group in this region. The Borana violence against their neighbors, states Schlee, was unusual and unlike their behavior inside their community where violence was considered deviant.[59]
Slavery
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, conquests by the Abyssinian Empire in southern and southwestern Ethiopia had left a territorial vacuum, allowing the pastoral Oromo to settle in the vacated territories and incorporate socially dislocated peoples into their gada system. As they moved into earlier Islamic hubs, the Oromos increasingly adopted Islam, and in the process markedly grew their Muslim adherent base to become one of the larger such populations in the Horn region. Pastoralist Oromos also took slaves from their own community's urban areas, as well as from other communities.[60] According to the historian Paul E. Lovejoy, slavery was at this time an important aspect of the social, political and economic structure of parts of Ethiopia.[61]
The slaves were classified into two groups: "red" slaves who spoke Afroasiatic languages, and "black" ("Negroid") slaves called Shanqalla who spoke Nilo-Saharan languages.[62][63] The "red" slaves were primarily courtesans and were more expensive; they were given light duties so as to preserve their looks.[62] The "black" slaves were much less expensive, and toiled in the fields and in Christian Abyssinian households.[62][64][65] The "red" slaves, among which were Galla individuals, formed the bulk of captives who were exported from Abyssinian territory to the Arabian peninsula and Persian Gulf regions,[62][66][19] to Ottoman Empire markets,[67] to Egypt and elsewhere.[64]Young female Oromo slaves served as concubines and household workers,[68] while males were in demand for private armies and servile labor.[69]
Oromos too enslaved other ethnic groups. According to a report by Bermudes, in the 16th century, Oromos during their wars were fierce and cruel, mutilating and enslaving the people in the regions they conquered. Emperor Galawdewos battled with Oromos without much success and sought Portuguese help.[70][71] In the era of Imam Ahmad, according to Bahrey's records, Oromo Luba 'tribes' made war in Dawaro against Adal Mabraq, devastating the region and occupying it. They also took over Fatagar and Faj, forcing its previous inhabitants into slavery.[72][71]
The pagan Galla and animist Sidama or Agew slaves made up the slave caravans coming out of Ethiopia, as slavers avoided Christian or Muslim slaves.[19][20] The central Amhara provinces were a part of major Afar slave caravan trade routes from the southern and southwestern Galla, Sidama and Gurage regions to the northern and eastern Ethiopia.[73] Thousands of slaves were exported every year by Jabarti, Jalaba, Afar, Somali and Arab merchants as the income from this trade was lucrative.[19][20] According to Ira M. Lapidus, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic History, the Ethiopian slave trade benefited the Muslims, and increased the Islamization of the Oromo people.[20]
19th century
Photograph taken by 10th Field Company Royal Engineers during the Magdala Campaign of 1867–8. Queen of the "Gallas" and Son
In the first decades of the 19th century, three Oromo monarchies, Enarya, Goma and Guma, rose to prominence.[53] The collective area was known as Galla-land and comprised most of central and southern Ethiopia, including lands now held by other ethnic regions.[74] In the general view of Oromo people's role in Ethiopia, one of the Oromo leaders named Ras Gobana Dacche led the development of modern Ethiopia and the political and military incorporation of more territories into Ethiopian borders. Gobana, under the authority of Amhara ruler Emperor Menelik II, incorporated several and brought large sections of the Horn of Africa into a centralized Ethiopian state.[75][76]
The inter-clan relationships within the Oromo people, as well as their relationship with the Amhara people who are the second largest ethnic group, have been historically complicated. There was inter-clan fighting within Oromo.[77] Over 450 years, through the 19th century, states Donald N. Levine, the warfare between Amhara and Oromo had been "more or less continuous". In the southern and western regions, the Oromo-Amhara wars have been as terribly destructive as those between Amhara and Muslim Sultanates in the east.[78] In certain regions, some Oromo groups formed an alliance and cooperated with Amhara-Tirgrean authorities.[79]
The inter-relationship between Oromo and Amhara peoples has been a subject of dispute, some suggesting evidence of integration while others suggesting on-going abuse that continued through the 20th century. From one perspective, ethnically mixed Ethiopians with Oromo background made up a small percentage of Ethiopian generals and leaders.[80] The Wollo Oromo (particularly the Raya Oromo and Yejju Oromo) were early Oromo holders of power among the increasingly mixed Ethiopian state. The later north-to-south movement of central power in Ethiopia led to Oromos in Shewa holding power in Ethiopia together with the Shewan Amhara.[81]
Formation of modern Ethiopia
The accounts of integration of Oromo people into a united Ethiopian nation vary widely.[82]By one account it was violent and forced. A school of scholars state that during the conquest of the southern territories that created the modern Ethiopia, the neftenya-gabbar system brutally subordinated the Oromos,[82] Menelik's Army carried out mass atrocities during the conquest against civilians and combatants including torture, mass killings and large-scale slavery.[22][83]Large-scale atrocities were also committed against the Dizi people and the people of the Kaficho kingdom.[84][85] Some estimates for the number of Southern people (Oromos, Dizi people, Kaffa, Shanqella) killed as a result of the conquest from war, famine and atrocities go into the millions.[22][86][87]
Menelik's Russian military aide, Aleksandr Bulatovich, for example, stated that in territories incorporated peacefully like Jima, Leka and Wolega, the former order had been preserved without interference in Oromo self-government. He said that in areas incorporated after war, the assigned rulers treated the people lawfully and justly, and did not violate their religious beliefs .[88][89]Bulatovich]] also wrote that Menelik's armies "dreadfully annihilated more than half" of the Oromo (Galla) population down to 5 million people, which "took away from the Galla all possibility of thinking about any sort of uprising."[90] He explained some of these deaths as a consequence of many factors such as famine and diseases that ravaged this period of Ethiopian history.[91][92][93]
In some accounts, the relationship between the two largest ethnic groups of Ethiopia, Oromo and Amhara, has been described as "Abyssinian feudal colonialism". According to Mekuria Bulcha, for example, Oromo were colonized by Amhara just like European colonialists in the pre-20th century period. The Abyssinian general Ras Darge, according to these accounts, ordered "Arsi mutilation". Oromo populations who resisted Amhara occupation were subject to amputations and disfigurement. Villages were decimated. By 1901, parts of the Oromo territory were reduced to a third or half of their original population.[94] According to Akbar Ahmad, Amharic sayings such as "Saw naw Galla? (is it human or Galla?)" highlighted Amhara's contempt towards the Oromo.[95] In the 1960s, political disputes emerged with reports of discrimination in educational opportunities for Oromo by Amhara leaders.[96]
Others, on the other hand, disagree with colonial thesis. According to Paulos Milkias and Getachew Metaferia, Amhara and Oromo have shared same geographical and historical space; both are intertwined culturally, economically and politically; millions of people trace their origin from both groups; elite Oromos were the regional kingmakers such as in Gondar and Shewa; and intermarriage between Amhara and Oromo ruling elites was and is extensive. Thousands of Amharas from nobles to peasants and from educate to illiterate served loyally under Oromo ministers and generals, which, Milkias and Metaferia state, "would be like having thousands of Englishmen, nobles and commoners loyally serving African ministers and generals in England". All this is inconsistent with the "Amhara colonized Oromo" thesis, something that neither happened nor can happen under a colonial system.[97]
According to some scholars, Oromo became part of the Ethiopian nobility without losing their identity.[98][99][100] Others state that the marginalization of the Oromos during Amhara rule led many to change their names to blend in with the Amhara population.[101]
According to Atsuko Karin Matsuoka and John Sorenson, there was large-scale cruel exploitation of Oromo peasants in the 19th and 20th centuries, but the situation has been more complex because some Oromos crossed ethnic lines and collaborated with the Abyssinian forces. This period also marked individual Oromos reaching high ranks in Ethiopian military, and several royal family members of this era were partially of Oromo descent.[102][103][104] For example, Iyasu V was the designated but uncrowned Emperor of Ethiopia (1913–1916), while Haile Selassie Iwas the crowned and generally acknowledged Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974.[105]Other Oromo people reached high positions in the emerging Ethiopia.[106][107]
The Oromo traditionalists state that those who rose to powerful positions did so by rejecting their "Oromo-ness", by rejecting their culture and adopting the other culture.[108]Some in Ethiopia see Oromo as integral architects and a part of one nation, others see a long history of denigration, treatment as "primitive barbarians" by Amhara and other ethnic groups, and a need to "resurrect Oromo culture and history".[109][110
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