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The Abridged History of Al-Habashah: From Axum to Abyssinia
By Taym Ansary (Author of Such Books as "Destiny Delivered" and "Kabul East and West"

"I remember my trip to Gandar quite well, stopping in the area to meet with an old friend of mine who had persued his life in the path of being an Imam. He showed me quite a few sites that dated back to the 5th and 6th centuries of the Christian Era and even ones built much more recently such as the Kassa Monument which I was not surprised to have been the only one who agreed that the construction was a bit of an local eye sore. Still, we had quite the time. I remember in one instance where I was personally almost crushed to death by a piece of falling masonry.

You see, my friend and I were invited to the local village on the outskirts of Gandar because one of the members of the village had heard of my writings and really wished to show me the history his people had, had in Al-Habashah. They were Christians. Well, Orthodox Christians to be precise. To be even more precise, they were members of the Selasse (Trinity) Orthodox Church. Selasse Orthodox Christians are a distinct minority in Al-Habashah, their lineage largely tracing back fairly cohesively to the missionaries that sailed down the Nile in the 4th Century. Unfortunately, while being recieved well initially fragmented accounts (and not the quite made up "Official History" written several centuries later) have recorded instances of at least one of the Negus or King of the Axumite Kingdom of having been ill disposed to the Christians, laying claims that they planned to overthrow his or his dynasty's rule. Which would fairly cripple the sporadic and ill recorded growth of Selasse Christians in the region, eventually at some point the few Christian communities would construct Cross Shaped Monasteries that doubled as fortresses lending protection to local communities for ages. The one I had visited though had been declared off limits by the government some decades prior in attempts to assimilate the Christisn population (according to the local Islamic policy of Tewahado or Unity) and whoever had been sent to dismantle the structure had done a fairly sloppy job.

Poking around the structure had caused a section of it to collapse and nearly ended my promising writing career then and there, but lucky for the reader that was not so. Unfortunately this incident quickly saw my friend and I to seek our own homes as many of the residents were unhappy with the destruction we had inadvertently caused. Which was in the long run saddening as I was unable to really learn of the history of the local Christians for many years and by no means from the people of that village. Only a handful of years ago the entire population had been picked up and dispersed to the winds and amongst the ocean of the Faithful to Allah that Al-Habashah is a bastion of..."