alternatehistory.com

The Abridged History of Al-Habashah: From Axum to Abyssinia
By Taym Ansary

The Golden Age Slips to Dark

...and as previously discussed in this chapter, it would be the peripheral location of the Aksumite Empire would be its downfall which for much of its nature brought it protection from the sophisticated empires of Egypt, Rome, and Iran; and wealth as a middleman for goods for the former two lands from the last group. Since the time of the 1st Century the Aksumite Empire had managed to form itself into this periphery between the Mediterranean and Middle Worlds to the North and the East African World to the south. Filling the full extremity of this region it had primarily prospered on exporting wheat and barley and of course taking advantage of wealth that passed through its land on trade routes to the Roman Empire. Spending its wealth on large, gaudy obelisks and keeping the barbarians from within the Highland from coming down to their lands. Their King of Kings, the Negus Nega

As one can imagine, especially a student of history, this could only last for so long.

Records on these events are scarce, but as in other parts of the world the minting of coinage is a tell tale to the prosperity of kingdoms and states. It proclaimed to the world "Look At Us! Our King's Face Is On Our Money! We Can Really Afford To Uphold The Pompousness Of Our King As Well As Anyone Else!" This practice first started around 270 CE during the reign of King Endubis. The last King to mint coinage was in 610 under King Ashama. The same King who would provide shelter to the first Muslims when they were still persecuted by the Meccans. While Islamic sources proclaim the generosity of King Ashama, even the Prophet Muhammad blessing his people, this very pagan King was most likely more interested in angering the Meccan aligned traders who we will get to in just a few moments. Now, despite Ashama being the last King to mint coinage, surviving plaques and foreign accounts still account for Axumite Kings well after this point. For an additional four hundred years.

This tells us that by this point the Axumite Kingdom was not feeling so high and mighty of itself. What could be the cause of this? Their were as a matter of fact several causes. The first two would primarily be what appeared to be an extreme period of drought and starvation that would plague the region for the next few centuries caused by an ecological shift or even exhaustion as well as the fact that the business of trade had been pulled out from the hands of the Axumites. By Arab traders no less who sailed the seas of the Silk Road Ocean Routes as traders and pirates, rather effectivly it seems cutting out the Axumite Traders from their butter as their bread refused to grow. Sources also indicate a deal of unfair hands by the not-so-neighborly superpower, The Sassanid Empire, which in its political war with the Byzantines seems to have extended this to economic as well as it pushed the Axumites out from Yemen and encouraged attacks on Axumite Shipping both by Arabs as well as their Assyrian Merchant class-which some scholars think may have attributed to the local dislike for Christians in particular as records show of the Axumite Kings attacking local Christian communities.

Cut off politically from its erst well ally the Byzantines and from the trade routes which quickly directed into Arab ports the Axumite Kingdom so crammed into the periphery was soon left alone and could do nothing to pull itself up as its horizons and borders were pressured from all sides.

Of course what follows economic shambles is social and political shambles as well! Evidence indicates that for the next three centuries the Axumite dominion was occupied with revolts among st their population as well as civil wars. Ontop of which invasion from the interior. As has been mentioned their is only so long any state can withstand such a state and it seems that sometime in the beginning of the 10th Century it seems to have fallen under the combined weight of the Rabbinic Tribes around Lake Tana which founded the Gondar Kingdom and the Agew Tribes that founded the Zagew Dynasty. Of course they were already being chipped away on the coast as the Barboi city-states along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden coast declared hostility and independence. Split by these tensions the Axumite Empire shattered finally and the Habesha peoples split into feuding clans and polities. Thus beginning the Habesha Dark Age.

The scenes of this time period were increased warring and fracturing as the Zagew, Gondar, Arabs, Barboi, Habesha, and most likely other peoples who were shattered and scattered during this time period but left very little records. This age is commonly referred as "The Age of Princes" as rival warlords and regents set up their own mini-dominions and constantly fought each other as much as the Rabbinic Tribes and the Zagwe. It seems during this time as well that the native language of Early Ge'ez was also destroyed, the last hold outs of the language ironically being the Selasse Christians.

If anything good occurred during this period it seems that from an ethnic period it actually lowered a sense of ethnic segregation amongst many of the peoples and instead political allegiance was the dominant form of association (given that blood lineages were commonly involved this is not surprising) but, over the course of the next three centuries of violence another allegiance soon gripped the people: Religion. The pagan Kings of Axum were for sometime the obstacles to expansion of the Abraham religions, which they practiced whole heartily or half heartily, but, with their destruction it appears that this was not the case. Of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Christianity was the least disposed to find success given that the Byzantines had long been cut off from access to the region and the divided nature of the region's few Christians prevented any sort of insurgence. The Jewish faith was hampered in an quite opposite manner, in that it was too involved in the region-especially as fanatical Jews pushed bloody campaigns at pacification of the pagan populations. Therefore, by process of elimination their was only one Monotheistic religion in position to take advantage of the spiritual crisis faced by the worn town region.

Given you are reading this book I will assume you are smart enough to figure out which one it was and therefore I do not think I have to tell you which that was.