The Oromo of Ethiopia: A history 1570-1860

Starting in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and increasingly during and since the sixteenth century, the Christian literature of Abyssinia, the Muslim literature from Harar, and European travelers' accounts make considerable reference to the Galla. This was a name, applied by outsiders, by which the Oromo were known until recently. the term is loaded with negative connotations. The Oromo do not call themselves Galla and they resist being so called. In this study I employ Oromo, the name which they have always used. The Oromo constitute a good half of the population of Ethiopia. They are also the largest national group in the Horn of Africa and have been so at least since the nineteenth century. However, careful examination of the sources on Ethiopia reveals that much has been written on the Oromo by anthropologists, while Oromo history has been totally neglected. Take, for instance, the important work of Dr. Taddesse Tamrat covering the period from 1270 to 1527, which was published in 1972. Nothing is said about the Oromo in this book. It does provide an excellent background to the Christian and Muslim conflict in the region, and yet Dr. Taddesse failed to see that some elements of the Oromo nation were indeed the victims of the fourteenth-century conflict, while norther Oromo groups participated on both sides in the conflict in the sixteenth century. Detailed research into the history of the peoples of southern Ethiopia has only just begun, and the need to go deeper in time and to undertake field work has become steadily clearer to scholars in the field. however, the identity of the peoples who inhabit the present administrative region of Shawa and the area south of it has not yet been established apart from the general attempts to categorize them under a few headings such as "Sidama" or "Sidama Afar and the Semitic military colonies," or Hadiya, bott Cubistic and Semitic. Scholars have so far not considered seriously the question of whether some Oromo groups could have been within the region either before or during the fourteenth century. Much that has been written about the early history of the peoples of southern Ethiopia seems to be conjecture. until careful and detailed research into it is undertaken, the early history of several Ethiopian peoples will remain obscure. Until then a student in the field will have to pick this way.