Chapter 1 Hist 1012 nice.pptx history for fresh man student

UNIT ONE-INTRODUCTION (3 hours)
The Nature and Uses of History
Nature of History
The term history derived from the Greek word Istoria, meaning “inquiry” or
“an account of one’s inquiries.”
The first use of the term is attributed to one of the ancient Greek historians,
Herodotus (c. 484–425 B.C.E.), who is often held to be the “father of history.”
In ordinary usage, history means all the things that have happened in the
human past. The past signifies events, which have taken place and the facts of
the past, which are kept in writing.
More specifically, the distinction is between what actually happened in the
past or that part which exists independently of the historian and still awaits to
be recorded and the accounts of the past provided by historians, that is,
‘history’. Historians apply their expertise to surviving records and write history
in the form of accounts of the past.

Academically, history can be defined as an
organized and systematic study of the past. The
study involves the discovery, collection,
organization, and presentation of information about
past events.
Evidently, what actually happened in the past is almost
infinite. Historians select which topics and
problems they wish to study, as do natural
scientists.
In this regard, the major concern of history is the
study of human society and its interaction with the
natural environment, which is also the subject of
study by many other disciplines.

oWhat differentiates history from other disciplines???
What differentiates history from other disciplines is that
Other disciplines study the interaction between humans and
their environment in the present state,
History studies the interaction between the two in the past
within the framework of the continuous process of change
taking place in time. Then they give a label to each period to
convey the key characteristics and developments of that era.
Accordingly, history is conventionally divided into ancient,
medieval and modern history. This is what we call
periodization in history; one of the key characteristics of the
discipline.

All aspects of human life that is, social, cultural, economic,
and political in the past have been changing from time to
time; and none of them were practiced in exactly the same
way in the lifetime of our ancestors.
Nevertheless, some things stay more or less the same for
long periods, since few things ever change completely. For
example,
 we continue to speak the languages of our ancestors;
 follow their beliefs and religious practices;
 wear the costumes they were wearing;
 continue to practice their agricultural or pastoral ways of life;
 maintain the fundamental components or structures of their
social organization.
In the same vein, the basic fabric of society in Ethiopia and the
Horn remains similar and continues to have special characteristics.

Uses of History
Peoples live in the present and plan for and worry
about the future. History, however, is the study of
the past. Why bother with the past while living in
the present and anticipating what is yet to come?
This section discusses the uses of history in the
context of the relationship between the past and
the present.

Uses of History
History helps better understand the present;
History provides the basic background for other
disciplines;
History teaches critical skills;
History helps develop tolerance and open-
mindedness;
History supplies endless source of fascination

History Helps Better Understand the Present
History is the only significant storehouse of
information available for the examination and
analysis of how people behaved and acted in the past.
People need to produce some sort of account of their
past because it is difficult to understand problems that
face humanity and society today without tracing
their origins in the past.
Put differently, knowledge of relevant historical
background is essential for a balanced and in-depth
understanding of many current world situations.

History Provides the Basic Background for Other
Disciplines.
Historical knowledge is extremely
valuable in the pursuit of other disciplines
such as literature, art, philosophy,
religion, sociology, political science,
anthropology, economics, etc.

History Teaches Critical Skills
Studying history helps students to develop key
research skills. These include :-
how to find and evaluate sources;
how to make coherent arguments based on various
kinds of evidence and present clearly in writing.
 These analytical and communication skills are
highly usable in other academic pursuits.
 Gaining skills in sorting through diverse
interpretations is also essential to make
informed decisions in our day-to-day life.

• History Helps Develop Tolerance and Open-
Mindedness
Most of us have a tendency to regard our own
cultural practices, styles, and values as right and
proper.
Studying different societies in the past is like going
to a foreign country, which contributes to free
ourselves from some of our inherent cultural
provincialism.
By studying the past, learners of history acquire
broad perspectives that give them the range and
flexibility required in many life situations.

History Supplies Endless Source of
Fascination(attraction)
Exploring the ways people in distant ages constructed their
lives offers a sense of beauty and excitement, and ultimately
another perspective on human life and society.
Generally, history should be studied because it is essential to
the individual and the society.
Only through studying history can we grasp how and
why things change; and only through history are
we able understand what elements of a society
persist despite change.
 Aesthetic and humanistic goals also inspire people
to study the past, far removed from present-day utility.

Care
Nevertheless, just as history can be useful, it can
also be abused. Such abuses come mainly from
deliberate manipulation of the past to fit current
political agenda. In such cases, history is written
backwards. That is, the past is described and
interpreted to justify the present.
 While personal biases are not always avoidable, a
historian is different from a propagandist in that
the former takes care to document his judgment
and assertions so that they can be subjected to
independent and external verification.

Sources and Methods of Historical Study
Historians are not creative writers like
novelists. Therefore, the work of historians
must be supported by evidence arising from
sources.
Sources are instruments that bring to life what
appear to have been dead. It is said that “where
there are no sources, there is no history”.
Sources are, therefore, key to the study and
writing of history.

Classification of Historical sources
Historical sources are broadly classified
into two types: Primary and Secondary.
Primary sources
 are surviving traces of the past available
to us in the present.
 they are original or first hand in their
proximity to the event both in time and in
space.

Examples of primary sources are the past
evidences:-
 manuscripts (handwritten materials),
 diaries,
 letters,
 minutes,
 court records and administrative files,
 travel documents,
 photographs,
 maps,
 video and audiovisual materials, and
 artifacts such as coins, fossils, weapons, utensils,
and buildings.

Secondary sources,
are second-hand published accounts about past events.
 They are written long after the event has occurred, providing
an interpretation of what happened, why it happened, and how
it happened, often based on primary sources.
Examples of secondary sources are articles, books, textbooks,
biographies, and published stories or movies about
historical events.
Secondary materials give us what appear to be finished
accounts of certain historical periods and phenomena.
Nevertheless, no history work can be taken as final, as new
sources keep coming to light.
New sources make possible new historical interpretations or
entirely new historical reconstructions.

Oral Data
Oral data constitute the other category of historical sources.
Oral sources are especially valuable to study and document
the history of non-literate societies.
They can also be used to fill missing gaps and
corroborate(support) written words.
Oral Tradition Vs Oral History
In many societies, people transmit information from one
generation to another, for example, through folk songs and folk
sayings. This type of oral data is called oral tradition.
People can also provide oral testimonies or personal
recollections of lived experience. Such source material is
known as oral history.

Care
For the history of Ethiopia and the Horn, historians
use a combination of the sources described above.
However, whatever the source of information-
primary or secondary, written or oral- the data
should be subjected to critical evaluation
before it is used as evidence. Primary sources
have to be verified for their originality and
authenticity because sometimes primary sources like
letters may be forged.

Secondary sources have to be examined for the
reliability of their reconstructions.
Oral data may lose its originality and authenticity due
to distortion through time. Therefore, it should be
crosschecked with other sources such as written
documents to determine its veracity or authenticity.
In short, historians (unlike novelists) must
find evidence about the past, ask questions of
that evidence, and come up with explanations
that make sense of what the evidence says
about the people, events, places and time
periods they study about.

Historiography of Ethiopia and the Horn
Historiography can be defined as the history of historical
writing, studying how knowledge of the past, either recent or
distant, is obtained and transmitted. People have had some
sense of the past perhaps since the beginning of humanity. Yet
historiography as an intentional attempt to understand and
represent descriptions of past events in writing has rather a
briefer career throughout the world.
The organized study and narration of the past was introduced
by ancient Greek historians notably Herodotus (c. 484–425
B.C.E.) and Thucydides (c.455-400 B.C.E.)
The other major tradition of thinking and writing about the
past is the Chinese. The most important early figure in
Chinese historical thought and writing was the Han dynasty
figure Sima Qian (145–86 B.C.E.).

Despite such early historiographical traditions, history
emerged as an academic discipline in the second
half of the 19th C.
first in Europe and subsequently in
other parts of the world including the US.
The German historian, Leopold Von Ranke (1795–
1886), and his colleagues established history as an
independent discipline in Berlin with its own set of
methods and concepts by which historians collect
evidence of past events, evaluate that evidence,
and present a meaningful discussion of the subject.
Ranke’s greatest contribution to the scientific study
of the past is such that he is considered as the
“Father of Modern Historiography.”

Historiography of Ethiopia and the Horn
It has changed enormously during the past hundred
years in ways that merit fuller treatment than can be
afforded here.
The earliest known reference that we have on history
of Ethiopia and the Horn is the Periplus of the
Erythrean Sea, written in the first century A.D by an
anonymous(unknown) author.
Another document describing Aksum’s trade and the
then Aksumite king’s campaigns on both sides of the
sea is the Christian Topography composed by Cosmas
Indicopleustes, a Greek sailor, in the 6th
century A.D.

Inscriptions aside, the earliest written Ethiopian
material dates from the seventh century A.D. The
document was found in Abba Gerima monastery in
Yeha. This was followed by a manuscript discovered
in Haiq Istifanos monastery of present day Wollo in
the 13th
century A.D.
The value of manuscripts is essentially religious. Yet,
for historians, they have the benefit of providing
insights into the country’s past. For example, the
manuscript cited above contains the list of medieval
kings and their history in brief.

Sources of Medieval Ethiopian History
The largest groups of sources available for
medieval Ethiopian history are hagiographies
originating from Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
Invariably written in Ge’ez, an important
function of hagiographies is enhancing the
prestige of saints. Yet other related anecdotes
are also introduced, and often discussed in detail
such as the development of the church and the
state including territorial conquests by reigning
monarchs.

A parallel hagiographical tradition existed among
Muslim communities of the country. One such
account offers tremendous insight into the life of a
Muslim saint, Shaykh Ja’far Bukko of Gattira, in
present day Wollo, in the late 19th
century.
Besides the saint’s life, the development of
indigenous Islam and contacts between the region’s
Muslim community and the outside world are some
of the issues discussed in this document.

Ethiopia had also an indigenous tradition of history
writing called chronicles.
Chronicles in the ancient Ethiopian Ge’ez tongue first
appeared in the 14th
century and continue (sometimes in
Amharic) into the early 20th
century. Kings or their
successors entrusted the writing of chronicles to court
scribes or clergymen of recognized clerical training and
calligraphic skills.
The earliest and the last of such surviving documents are
the Glorious Victories of Amde-Tsion and the Chronicle
of Abeto Iyasu and Empress Zewditu respectively.
Chronicles incorporate both legends and facts-past and
contemporary about the monarch’s genealogy,
upbringing, military exploits, piety and statesmanship.

Strong sides of Chronicles
Chronicles are known for their factual detail and strong
chronological framework, even if it would require
considerable labor to convert their relative chronology to an
absolute one.
Furthermore, chronicles explain historical events mainly in
religious terms; they offer little by way of social and
economic developments even in the environs of the palace.
However, in conjunction with other varieties of written
documents, such as hagiographies and travel accounts by
foreign observers, chronicles can provide us with a glimpse
into the character and lives of kings, their preoccupations and
relations with subordinate officials and, though inadequately,
the evolution of the Ethiopian state and society.

Arabic Sources

Written accounts of Arabic-speaking visitors to the coast also provide useful
information on various aspects of the region’s history.

For example, al-Masudi and Ibn Battuta described the culture, language and
import-export trade in the main central region of the east African coast in the 10th
and in the 14tn centuries respectively.

For the 16th
& 17th
centuries we have two documents composed by Yemeni writers
who were eyewitnesses to the events they described.

The first document titled Futuh al Habesha was composed by Shihab
ad-Din, who recorded the conflict between the Christian kingdom and the
Muslim principalities in the 16th
century. Besides the document describes
major towns and their inhabitants in the southeastern part of
Ethiopia, although the discussion abruptly ends in 1535.

The other first-hand account was left to us by Al-Haymi, who led a
Yemeni delegation in 1647 to the court of Fasiledes (r. 1632-67).

Other materials that appeared in the 16th
century include Abba Bahrey’s Geez script on
the Oromo written in 1593. Notwithstanding its
limitations, the document provides us with first-
hand information about the Oromo population
movement including the Gadaa System.

The contribution of European missionaries and
travelers
The contribution of European missionaries and
travelers to the development of Ethiopian
historiography is also significant. From the early 16th
until the late 19th
centuries, missionaries (Catholics
and Protestants) came to the country with the
intention of staying, and who, nevertheless,
maintained intimate links with Europe. Thus, the
missionaries’ sources provide us with valuable
information covering a considerable period.

Some of the major topics covered by these sources include
religious and political developments within Ethiopia, and
the country’s foreign relations.
An example of such account is The Prester John of the
Indies, composed by a Portuguese priest, Francisco
Alvarez who accompanied the Portuguese mission to the
court of Lebne-Dengel in 1520.
In addition to the missionary sources, travel documents had
important contribution to the development of Ethiopian
historiography. One example of travel documents is James
Bruce’s Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile. Like
other sources, however, both the missionaries and travelers’
materials can only be used with considerable reservations
and with care for they are socially and politically biased.

The Beginning of Ethiopian Studies
Foreign writers also developed interest in Ethiopian studies.
German, Hiob Ludolf (1624-1704).
was the founder of Ethiopian Studies in Europe in the 17th
century.
He wrote Historia Aethiopica (translated into English as A New
History of Ethiopia).
Ludolf never visited Ethiopia;
he wrote the country’s history largely based on information he
collected from an Ethiopian priest named Abba Gorgorios (Abba
Gregory) who was in Europe at that time.
August Dillman
In the 19th century, published two studies on ancient Ethiopian history.
Compared to Ludolf, Dillman demonstrated all markers of objectivity in
his historical research endeavors.

Ethiopian Historiography in the early 20th
century.
Historical writing made some departures from the chronicle tradition
in the early 20th
century.
This period saw the emergence of traditional Ethiopian writers
who made conscious efforts to distance themselves from
chroniclers whom they criticized for adulatory tone when writing
about monarchs.
The earliest group of these writers include_
-Aleqa Taye Gebre-Mariam,
-Aleqa Asme Giorgis and
-Debtera Fisseha-Giorgis Abyezgi.
-Later, Negadrases Afework Gebre-Iyesus and
Gebre-Hiwot Baykedagn joined them.
Unlike chroniclers, these writers dealt with a range of topics from
social justice, administrative reform and economic analysis to history.

Taye and Fisseha-Giorgis wrote books on the history of Ethiopia
while Asme produced a similar work on the Oromo people.
Notwithstanding his other works, Afework wrote the first Amharic
novel, Tobiya, in Ethiopian history while
Gebre-Hiwot has
-Atse Menilekna Ityopia (Emperor Menilek and Ethiopia) and
-Mengistna Yehizb Astedader (Government and Public
Administration) to his name.
The most prolific writer of the early twentieth century Ethiopia was,
however, Blatten Geta Hiruy Wolde-Selassie. Hiruy published four
major works namely
Ethiopiana Metema (Ethiopia and Metema),
Wazema (Eve),
Yehiwot Tarik (A Biographical Dictionary) and
Yeityopia Tarik (A History of Ethiopia).

In contrast to their predecessors, Gebre-Hiwot
and Hiruy exhibited relative objectivity and
methodological sophistication in their works.
Unfortunately, the Italian occupation of
Ethiopia interrupted the early experiment in
modern history writing and publications.

After liberation, Tekle-Tsadik Mekuria formed a
bridge between writers in pre-1935 and Ethiopia
professional historians who came after him.
Tekle-Tsadik has published about eight historical
works. Tekle-Tsadik made better evaluation of his
sources than his predecessors.
Another work of importance in this period is Yilma
Deressa’s Ye Ityopiya Tarik Be’asra Sidistegnaw Kifle
Zemen(A History of Ethiopia in the Sixteenth
Century). The book addresses the Oromo population
movement and the wars between the Christian
kingdom and the Muslim sultanates as its main
subjects.

Blatten Geta Mahteme-Selassie Wolde-Meskel also
contributed his share. Among others, he wrote Zikre
Neger.
Zikre Neger is a comprehensive account of Ethiopia’s
prewar land tenure systems and taxation. Another
work dealing specifically with aspects of land tenure
is left to us by Gebre-Wold Engidawork. Another
writer of the same category was Dejazmach Kebede
Tesema. Kebede wrote his memoir of the imperial
period, published as Yetarik Mastawesha in 1962
E.C.

The 1960s;the Turining Point in History of Ethiopia
The 1960s was a crucial decade in the development of
Ethiopian historiography for it was in this period that history
emerged as an academic discipline. The pursuit of historical
studies as a full-time occupation began with the opening of the
Department of History in 1963 at the then Haile Selassie I
University (HSIU). The production of BA thesis began towards
the end of the decade. The Department launched its MA and
PhD programs in 1979 and 1990 respectively. Since then
researches by faculty (both Ethiopians and expatriates) and
students have been produced on various topics. Although mainly
a research organization, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES)
is the other institutional home of professional historiography of
Ethiopia. The IES was founded in 1963.

Since then the Institute housed a number of historians
of whom the late Richard Pankhurst, the first
Director and founding member of the Institute is
worthy of note here. Pankhurst’s prolific
publication record remains unmatched. He has
authored or co-authored twenty-two books and
produced several hundred articles on Ethiopia.
Since its foundation, the IES has been publishing
the Journal of Ethiopian Studies for the
dissemination of historical research. The Institute’s
library contains literary works of diverse disciplines
and has its fair share in the evolution of
professional historiography of Ethiopia.

The professionalization of history in other parts of the
Horn is a post-colonial phenomenon. With the
establishment of independent nations, a deeper interest in
exploring their own past quickly emerged among African
populations, perhaps stimulated by reactions to decades
of education in an alien imperial historiography. With
this came an urgent need to recast the historical record
and to recover evidence of many lost pre-colonial
civilizations. The decolonization of African
historiography required new methodological approach
(tools of investigation) to the study of the past that
involved a critical use of oral data and tapping the
percepts of ancillary disciplines like archeology,
anthropology and linguistics.

At the same time, European intellectuals’ own discomfort
with the Euro-centrism of previous scholarship provided
for the intensive academic study of African history, an
innovation that had spread to North America by the 1960s.
Foundational research was done at the School of Oriental
and African Studies (SOAS) in London and the
Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison. Francophone scholars have been as influential as
Anglophones. Yet African historiography has not been the
sole creation of interested Europeans. African universities
have, despite the instabilities of politics and civil war in
many areas, trained their own scholars and sent many
others overseas for training who eventually published
numerous works on different aspects of the region’s history.

The Geographical Context
The term “Ethiopia and the Horn” refers to that part
of Northeast Africa, which now contains the countries
of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. The major
physiographic features of the region are a massive
highland complex of mountains and plateaus divided
by the Great Rift Valley and surrounded by lowlands,
semi-desert, deserts and tropical forests along the
periphery. The diversity of the terrain led to regional
variations in climate, natural vegetation, soil
composition, and settlement patterns.

As with the physical features, people across the region
are remarkably diverse: they speak a vast number of
different languages, profess to many distinct
religions, live in various types of dwellings, and
engage in a wide range of economic activities. At the
same time, however, peoples of the region were
never isolated; they interacted throughout history
from various locations. Thus, as much as there are
many factors that make people of a certain area
unique from the other, there are also many areas in
which peoples of Ethiopia and the Horn share
common past.

The history of Ethiopia and the Horn has been shaped by contacts
with others through commerce, migrations, wars, slavery,
colonialism, and the waxing and waning of state systems. Yet, the
evolution of human history owed much to geographical factors
notably location, landforms, resource endowment, climate and
drainage systems which continue to impact, as incentives and
deterrents, the movement of people and goods in the region.
Spatial location in relationship to other spaces and locations in the
world is one geographical factor that has significant bearing on the
ways in which history unfolds. Ethiopia and the Horn lies between
the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean on the one hand, and
the present-day eastern frontiers of Sudan and Kenya on the other.
Since early times, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden linked
Northeast Africa to the Eastern Mediterranean, the Near and Middle
East, India, and the Far East. Likewise, the Indian Ocean has linked
East Africa to the Near and Middle East, India and the Far East.

Another element of geographical factor that had
profound impact on human history is drainage system.
Ethiopia and the Horn has five principal drainage systems.
These are the Nile River, Gibe/Omo–Gojeb,
Genale/Jubba-Shebele, the Awash River, and the
Ethiopian Rift Valley Lake systems. Flowing from Uganda
in the south to the Sudan in the north, the White Nile
meets the Blue Nile (Abay in Ethiopia that starts from the
environs of Tana Lake) in Khartoum and eventually,
drains into the Mediterranean Sea through Egypt. The
Awash River System is entirely confined to Ethiopia and
links the cool rich highlands of Central Ethiopia with the
hot, dry lowlands of the Danakil Depression.

The Ethiopian Rift Valley Lakes System is a self-
contained drainage basin, and includes a string of
lakes stretching from Lake Ziway in the north to
Lake Turkana (formerly known as Rudolf) on the
Ethio-Kenyan border. The Gibe /Omo–Gojeb River
System links southern Ethiopia to the semi- desert
lowlands of northern Kenya. The Shebele and
Genale rivers originate in the Eastern highlands and
flow southeast toward Somalia and the Indian
Ocean. Only the Genale (known as the Jubba in
Somalia) makes it to the Indian Ocean; the Shebele
disappears in sand just inside the coastline.


The above watersheds are very important in the life and history of the
peoples inhabiting the region. Besides providing people with the
source of their livelihood, the drainage systems facilitated the
movement of peoples and goods across diverse environments, resulting
in the exchange of ideas, technology, knowledge, cultural expressions,
and beliefs. Thus, studying the drainage systems of Ethiopia and the
Horn is crucial for proper understanding of the relationships of the
peoples living within the river basins mentioned previously.

Ethiopia and the Horn can be divided into three major distinct
environmental zones. The vast Eastern lowland covers the narrow
coastal strip of northeastern Eritrea, widens gradually and descends
southwards to include much of lowland Eritrea, the Sahel, the Danakil
Depression, the lower Awash valley, and the arid terrain in northeast of
the Republic of Djibouti. It then extends to the Ogaden, the lower parts
of Hararghe, Bale, Borana, Sidama and the whole territory of the
Republic of Somalia.

There is no much seasonal variation in climatic condition
in this zone. Hot and dry conditions prevail year-round
along with periodic monsoon winds and irregular
(little) rainfall except in limited areas along the rivers
Awash, Wabe-Shebele and Genale/Jubba that traverse
the region and a few offshore islands in the Red Sea,
Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean that are inhabited by
people closely related to those of immediate mainland
districts. Much of the lowland territories are covered
by shrub and bush as its major vegetation.

Immediately to the west of and opposite to the eastern
lowland region forms the highland massif that starts from
northern Eritrea and continues all the way to southern
Ethiopia. The eastern extension of the highland massif
consists the Arsi, Bale and Hararghe plateau. The major
divide between the western and eastern parts of this zone is
the Rift Valley. The major physiographic features of the
zone are complex of mountains, deep valleys, and extensive
plateaus. Further to the west, along the western foothills or
on the periphery of the plateau and on borderlands of the
Sudan stretching from north to south are hot lowlands that
were characterized in earlier times by thick forests chiefly
on the banks of the Nile and its tributaries.

Despite the varied physical environments discussed
above, the countries of the Horn of Africa are, for
the most part, linguistically and ethnically linked
together as far back as recorded history goes.
Population movements had caused a continuous
process of interaction, creating a very complex
picture of settlement patterns. The high degree of
interaction and the long common history of much of
the population had weakened ethnic dividing lines in
large parts of the region. Linguistic and cultural
affinities are therefore as important as ethnic origin
in the grouping of the population.

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