Abyssinia አቢሲኒያ (Ge'ez) الحبشة (Arabic)
Historical region
1887 Italian map of Abyssinia
Country	Ethiopia  Eritrea

Abyssinia (also known as Abyssinie, Abissinia, Habessinien or Al-Habash) was an ancient region in the Horn of Africa situated in the northern highlands of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea.^[1] The term was widely used as a synonym for Ethiopia until the mid 20th century and primarily designates the Amhara, Tigrayan and Tigrinya inhabited highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea.^[2][3]

History

The origin of the term might be found in Egyptian hieroglyphic as the designation of a southern region near the Red Sea that produced incense, known as ḫbś.tj.w, "the bearded ones" (i.e Punt). This etymological connection was first pointed out by Wilhelm Max Müller and Eduard Glaser in 1893.^[2][3]

In Epigraphic South Arabian texts the name ḤBS²T in various inscriptions.^[2][3] One of the earliest known local uses of the term dates to the second or third century Sabaean inscription recounting the nəgus ("king") GDRT, another Sabaean inscription mentions mlky hhst dtwns wzqrns (kings of Habashat DTWNS and ZQRNS) Aksum and ḤBŠT. The Ezana Stone also names King Ezana as "king of the Ethiopians", which appears in other Sabaean texts as ḤBS²TM or "Habessinien". The Hellenized name of Habessinien, ABACIIN appears in an Aksumite coin of c.400 AD, shortly after the first attestation of late Latin Abissensis is from the 6th-century author Stephanus of Byzantium later used the term "Αβασηγοί" (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 from Zabīd on the coastal plain to the Ḥimyarite capital Ẓafār.^[2] Abasēnoi was located by Hermann von Wissman as a region in the Jabal Ḥubaysh mountain in Ibb Governorate,^[4] perhaps related in etymology with the ḥbš Semitic root).^[5] 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.)^[6]

Al-Habash was known in Islamic literature as being rulers of a Christian kingdom, guaranteeing its a historical exonym for the Aksumites of antiquity. In the modern day, variations of the term are used in Turkey, Iran, and the Arab World in reference to Ethiopia and as a pan-ethnic word in the west by the Amhara, Tigray, and Biher-Tigrinya of Eritrea and Ethiopia (see: Habesha peoples). The Turks created the province of Habesh when the Ottoman Empire conquered parts of the coastline of present-day Eritrea starting in 1557. During this, Özdemir Pasha took the port city of Massawa and the adjacent city of Arqiqo. Along with the neighboring Barbaroi (Berbers) of Barbara, the Habash are recorded in the 1st century Greek travelogue the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as engaging in extensive commercial trade with Egypt, among other areas. The document also relates a strong connection with the "Frankincense Country" in the Mahra region of modern Yemen and a symbiotic relationship with the ancient Sabaeans, with whom the Habash were allied.^[7]

See also

• Ethiopian Empire
• Ethiopian Highlands
• Habesha people
• Horn of Africa

References