Drawing on international and multidisciplinary expertise, this pioneering edited collection analyzing Islam in contemporary Ethiopia challenges the popular notion of a 'Christian Ethiopia' imagined as the century-old, never colonized Abyssinia, isolated in the highlands and dominated by Orthodox Christianity.

While presenting an historical account of the internal dynamics of Islam in Wallo, Ethiopia, with particular emphasis on the modes of its introduction and dissemination, and on its relationship with the Ethiopian state and regional power structure, this book describes the background to, and manifestations of, the revival and consolidation of Islam in the region in the nineteenth century by assessing the role of Muslim scholars, traders and chiefs in that process. It also traces the origin of the tradition of Islamic renewal and reform, and analyzes the response of Wallo Muslim religious intellectuals to the attempt of the Ethiopian Christian monarchs of the period to bring about the political unification of the kingdom by imposing a policy of religious coercion on the Muslims of Wallo. Based largely on hitherto-untapped oral and written indigenous sources, and supplemented by external archival and documentary evidence, the study is aimed at redressing the historiographical and interpretive imbalance embedded in the scholarly, institutional and popular perceptions on Islam in Ethiopia.

Discussing an armed insurgency in Ethiopia (1963-1970), this study offers a new perspective for understanding relations between religion and ethnicity.

The political transition in 1991 and the new regime’s policy towards the ethnic and religious diversity in Ethiopia have contributed to increased activities from various Islamic reform movements. Among these, we find the Salafi movement which expanded rapidly throughout the 1990s, particularly in the Oromo-speaking south-eastern parts of the country. This book sheds light on the emergence and expansion of Salafism in Bale. Focusing on the diversified body of situated actors and their role in the process of religious change, it discusses the early arrival of Salafism in the late 1960s, follows it through the Marxist period (1974-1991) before discussing the rapid expansion of the movement in the 1990s. The movement’s dynamics and the controversies emerging as a result of the reforms are discussed, particularly with reference to different understandings of sources for religious knowledge and the role of Islamic literacy.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume examines the impact of Islam upon the nomadic and settled peoples of North-East Africa, the reactions of the population to that impact and the existing state of Islam professed by those who have been won over to it.

First Published in 1980. An important waterway for international trade, the Red Sea is about 2000 kms. long and generally between 200-300 kms. wide. In its southern part the Arabian peninsula approaches the Horn of Africa to a distance of about 25 kms. This book is partly the outcome of research for the chapter called 'Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa' (from the middle of the sixteenth century until the middle of the eighteenth century), published in the fourth volume of the Cambridge History of Africa. The extensive research conducted for several summers between 1967 and 1971 for a forty-page chapter resulted in substantial material in order to create this volume.