Introduction

      Ethiopia is an ancient country located in north-east Africa, or, as it is generally known, the Horn of Africa, so called because of the horn-shaped tip of the continent that marks off the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean. It is bounded by Sudan in the west, Eritrea in the north and north-east, Kenya in the south, Somalia in the south-east, and Djibouti in the east. To the outside world, it has long been known by the name of Abyssinia. This appellation apparently derived from ‘Habashat’, one of the tribes that inhabited the Ethiopian region in the pre-Christian era.

      The term Ethiopia is of Greek origin, and in classical times was used as a generic and rather diffuse designation for the African landmass to the south of Egypt. The first known specific application of the term to the Ethiopian region is found in the Greek version of a trilingual inscription of the time of Ezana, the Aksumite king who introduced Christianity into Ethiopia towards the middle of the fourth century AD. This adoption of the term continued with the subsequent translation of the Bible into Ge’ez, the old literary language. The Kebra Nagast (‘Glory of Kings’), written in the early fourteenth century, which gave the ‘received’ account of the story of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, not only linked the Ethiopian kings to the House of Israel, but also sealed the identification of the term Ethiopia with the country: since the thirteenth century, when a dynasty that claimed to represent the restoration of the Solomonic line came to rule the country, its rulers have styled themselves ‘King of Kings of Ethiopia’. While it is not uncommon for Ethiopians to refer to themselves, particularly in informal circumstances, as ‘Habasha’ (Abyssinians), officially they prefer to be called Ethiopians.

      Present-day Ethiopia is located between longitudes 33° and 48°E, and latitudes 3° and 15°N. Although thus lying very near the Equator, the country on the whole is far from ‘tropical’ in the accepted sense of the term. On the contrary, the elevated nature of its highlands, rising to over 1,500 metres, gives it a decidedly cooler climate than its geographical location seems to suggest. The highlands are criss-crossed by numerous river valleys, and, on an even grander scale, divided by the Rift Valley. The valley is part of the great geological fault that cuts across large parts of eastern Africa, including Kenya and Tanzania. It diagonally slashes Ethiopia into two unequal parts. The bigger part contains the mountainous north, where the country’s highest peak, Ras Dashan (c. 4620 metres), is located, and the gentler plateau of the south-western highlands. The smaller part includes the south-eastern highlands of Bale, Harar, Arsi and Sidamo, and tapers down to the lowlands inhabited by the Oromo (formerly known as the Galla) and the Somali. With the exception of the southwestern tip of the country, the highlands are surrounded by an almost uninterrupted ring of lowlands. A steep escarpment abruptly descends from the northern highlands to the Red Sea plains; elsewhere, the descent from highland to lowland is relatively more gentle.

      The northern highlands are dotted with hills and mountains, often flat-topped, known as amba. These amba have had an important place in the historical evolution of the country, serving as sites for churches, prisons (like the royal prison of Amba Geshen in Wallo) and battles (Amba Alage in 1895 and Amba Aradom in 1936). Ethiopians divide their country topographically into three major zones: daga (the rather cool highlands where the annual average temperature is about 16 °C), wayna daga (the intermediate zone where most of the settled population lives) and qolla (the hot valleys and plains attaining their hottest and lowest levels in the desert conditions that prevail in the north-eastern end of the Rift Valley). Although originally climatic designations, these terms have come over time to assume broader meaning, denoting differing modes of life and character.

      The country is watered by four major river systems. The first consists of the Takkaze, the Abbay and the Baro, known respectively as the Atbara, the Blue Nile and the Sobat in Sudan; they all flow westwards into the Nile. Of these, the Abbay (Blue Nile) is certainly the most famous; its source, Lake Tana, for long exercised the imagination of travellers and geographers, until the Scottish traveller James Bruce settled the issue in the second half of the eighteenth century. To the second group belong the Ganale (known as the Juba in Somalia) and the Wabe Shabale; they both flow towards the Indian Ocean. The Gibe (Omo in its lower course) originates and ends in the south-western highlands, with Lake Rudolf (also known as Turkana) on the Ethio-Kenya border as its terminus. The Awash sets off from the highlands west of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, and streams along in a leisurely loop, for the most part across the Rift Valley, until it vanishes in its north-eastern sands.

      It is also in the Rift that the country’s major chain of lakes is located. Three parts are discernible in the chain: the northern cluster (including Lakes Zway, Langano, Abyata, Shala and Awasa), Lakes Abbaya and Chamo in the middle, and Lake Rudolf at the southern tip. There is also a string of volcanic crater lakes around the town of Dabra Zayt, formerly named Beshoftu, some 31 miles (50 km) to the south of Addis Ababa.

       1. Relief map of Ethiopia

      The rains that fill these rivers and lakes come twice a year. The main rainy season in Ethiopia falls between June and September and is known as keramt. The ‘heavy rains’, as they are also known, are caused by moist air from the high pressure area of the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean moving into the low pressure area of the Sahara desert and Arabia. The south-westerly nature of the wind means that south-western Ethiopia gets the heaviest dose of these rains, which progressively decrease as we move northwards and eastwards. The ‘little rains’, also known as the balg (‘autumn’ in the Ethiopian context, but spring in Europe), generally occur between March and May. They are caused by monsoon winds blowing from the Indian Ocean. Rains in Ethiopia, whether ‘heavy’ or ‘little’, are characterized by torrential downpours. The long rainy season has historically been marked by a hiatus in military activity, as flooded rivers and wet ground made campaigning difficult.