gurey25 wrote:Grant you are over estimating the influence the Abbysinian royal house had after the great war.
The war destroyed both the muslims and the Christian highlanders,it was a mutually assured destruction, and this left the waaqist oromo that were simultanuosly experiencing a population boom and were starting to expand,with little opposition.
The reason that The highlanders are still christian today is becuase of the terrain and the higher population they had compared to the low land muslim sultanates like haddiya and adal.
The Oromos facing no opposition from the weakend combatants expanded thier territory 4 fold,
and assimmilated entire ethnic groups, possible as high as 3/4 of the barentu oromo are actually assimilated haddiye and gurage.. allot of somali clans dissapeared into the oromo nation, some survived but changed like the garre( which were enslaved by the oromo for 200 years) and other barley survived encirclement by the oromos like the Gurgura and Akiisho.
The Highlanders lost land and people to the oromos but they were able to survive becuase they had a greater population to fall back on, while the muslim sultanates collapased totally when facing the oromo expansion..
The war was from 1529 to 1543 when the imam was killed during the battle of weyne dhaga.
thats 14 years..
and the previous 300 years before that was an almost uninterrupted expansion of the highland christians,
Ahmad gurey role in history was to check that expansion and drive home a vengfull retaliation all the way to the tigre mountains..
I agree with almostly everything you have said, however there a few thing i wish to add. Abyssinia was a rocky, hilly country, the Emperors sent governor to distance region where they often acted independent of the Kingdom, heads of their own dynasties especially in Tigre so Abysinia was never a united, all power state. these governor for personal and pettry grudges often wouldn't even engage the imam in combat. while your right that Adal had smaller population when compared to the christian Abysinian. the province of Hadiya was one of the most prosperous community in the Horn. after all it was the southwest which supply the horn with Slaves and Gold mostly from Innaria, Damot and Keffa. it was described in the mid-Fourteenth century by Chihab Al-Umari as "measuring eight days' journey by nine (which Richard Pankhurst estimates was 160 by 180 kilometers), and although small it was fertile with fruit and cereals, rich with horses and its inhabitants used pieces of iron as money. It could raise an army of 40,000 cavalry and at least twice as many foot soldiers". even with the destruction of the 15th century it surrived the holy wars and even incursion by the oromo with a muslim identity until the rise of the Shawan prince Menelik. in the 21th century much of the Hadiya people have converted to christianity mostly Lutharan and other protestant denomiantions.
and the reason why the oromos were so successful was not only because the war devastrated the land, but also there was massive migration and movement during the holy wars. many people along the Shabelle to Awash fled south into what are today Hadiya, Gurage, Kambata and Sidama etc etc. leaving the land depopulated for the oromo to move into.in the eas the only ones left to be a check to the oromo were the Somali. in the west the Ethiopian emperor made the situation even worst. the emperors couldn't pay their general so the General raided and enslaved the population of Gojjam, Gafat, Damot, Ganz and even the Agew many of these people even begged to be convert to christianity if it would protect them from slavers. thousands were sold in Massawa to finance a state that was bankrupt after the holy wars. again having depopulated the west territory, Macha and Tulama oromo from the Boran invade and settle the western most central platue.
another thing that made the oromo stronger was their ability to absorp new member into their clans. these men would than serve to extend the territory of their new adopted nation. the oromo often attack an area make it a safe haven and used it as base to attackt he next area. this same stretegy was used over and over agian. the oromo never attack an enemy head on they only raid and attack soft weak target so often that it worn down the resistance of the defenders. when the emperors fielded their armies they wouldn't be able to find the oromos since they would disperse taking their civilian with them. the abysinia just couldn't adapt to this style of fighting it was only in 18-19 century when they got their hand on modern weapons that the mobility of the oromo become mute. eventually natural boundaries like the Abay, ruthless lowland neighbour and endless fueds amoung themselves destroyed the social cohesion, a unity that had volted them to conquor so much territory.
Will try to reconstruct it later. For now I ran into these quotes that I believe most Somalis will enjoy:
