7 - The Oromo and the Christian Kingdom, 1600−1618

Summary

In Chapters 4 and 5, we followed the progress of the pastoral Oromo population movement from 1522 to 1597. In this chapter, we continue with their settlement in Gojjam, Begameder and other northern provinces and its impact on the political landscape of the Christian kingdom up to the beginning of the eighteenth century. In this, as in the previous chapters on pastoral Oromo population movement, we follow the gada periodization cycle.

The Melbah Gada (1602–10) came to power at the time when power struggle was further weakening the Christian kingdom. After eighty years, during which ten successive gadas had carried out, with varying degrees of success, a population movement into the east, north and western parts of what is today Ethiopia, a new cycle of gada names now began repeating the same series in the same order. So, as we opened our discussion on pastoral Oromo movement with the Melbah Gada (1522–30), now again, in 1602, we start with another Melbah Gada. However, the distance from Bali where we first started observing the activities of the Melbah Gada in 1522, and the place where the cycle begins again is vast. The Melbah of the Borana and Barentu continued with expansion in several directions. The major advance of this gada, and of several subsequent ones, was concentrated on the areas west of the Abbay (the Blue Nile). In the region east of the Abbay River, the Oromo cavalry remained invincible1 up to the first half of the nineteenth century. In the region west of the Abbay, the Christian kingdom was at its weakest at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the Oromo benefited from their enemy’s weakness. As a result a number of pastoral Oromo groups managed to settle both in Gojjam and Begameder.

Tsega Etefa rightly argues that between 1597 and 1607 the ‘Oromo attacks on Amhara, Bagameder, [Begameder], Enarya [Ennarya], Gojjam and Walaqa … were essentially associated with Susenyos’. The Oromo used Susenyos’ firepower to capture ambas (fortified mountain tops) in Shawa and Amhara, while Susenyos used Oromo cavalry and foot soldiers for making himself the emperor of the Christian kingdom. It was the same Susenyos who perfected Emperor Sarsa Dengel's policy of settling friendly Oromo groups, both in Gojjam and Begameder and did so much to make them part of the Christian political establishment.