Tigray (people)
The Tigrinya are an ethnic group living in Ethiopia and Eritrea in the northern highlands of Abyssinia . In Ethiopia today they are called "Tigray", in Eritrea as "Tigrinya".
There is no uniform self-designation; foreign peoples referred to the members of this people in Ethiopia as in Eritrea with the word Habesha ("Abyssinian"), which also includes other linguistically and culturally related ethnic groups such as the Amhars .
Their language is Tigrinya called and one of the äthio- Semitic languages. Like Tigré and Amharic, it emerged from the forerunner languages of ancient Ethiopian . In addition to the language, Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and the mostly peasant way of life are other common features.
distribution
The Tigrinya live in the northern part of the highlands of Abyssinia , in the Ethiopian region of Tigray and in neighboring areas of Eritrea.
According to the 2007 census, around 4.5 million Tigray live in Ethiopia. These make up 6.1% of the total population and are the fourth largest ethnic group in the country after the Oromo , Amharen and Somali .
In Eritrea, the Tigrinya are the largest ethnic group with a share of up to 50%. With a total population of around 5 million, this is around 2.5 million Tigrinya.
Most of the half to one million Eritreans abroad are Tigrinya. Around 25,000 Tigrinya live in Germany , around 200,000 in the USA and around 60,000 in Italy . One can speak of a Tigrin diaspora in which the main targets were Sudan and Yemen , but also western countries as mentioned above.
history
The ancestors of the Tigray / Tigrinya probably emerged from the connection between southern Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula who immigrated via Eritrea in the centuries before and there were Cushitic-speaking ethnic groups living there, especially the Bedscha and Agau (these still live in southern parts of Tigray). This province was once the center of the Aksum empire (1st – 8th centuries), in which a Hellenistic- South Arabian-Ethiopian culture developed. Around 325 AD, the Aksumite king Ezana converted to Christianity and then made Christianity the state religion . The economic basis of the cosmopolitan Aksum was agriculture and trade (with the Romans and also with India and the Persians ).
In the later Christian Ethiopian Empire, the Tigray and the Amhara were part of the state and provided a few emperors or rulers ( above all the king of kings Yohannes IV , regent Mika'el Sehul ).
At the end of the 19th century, parts of the Tigrinya-speaking area were colonized by Italy as part of Eritrea . During the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1936–41, large parts of the Ethiopian Tigray within Italian East Africa were annexed to Eritrea. After the end of the occupation and the return of Haile Selassie , the Woyane Rebellion broke out in Tigray in 1943 , in which peasants and nobles as well as smaller shepherd peoples such as the Rayya and Azabo turned against the central government.
A common ethnic identity of the Tigrinya-speaking people did not emerge until the second half of the 20th century. Traditionally, Tigrinya speakers refer to themselves as Habesha ("Abyssinians", highland inhabitants) and as residents of the respective geographic region. Only the area around Aksum and Adwa was referred to as “Tigray” ; the language name “Tigrinya” and the name of the entire province of Tigray were initially derived from this geographical name . In Ethiopia, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in particular promoted the idea of ethnic unity for all Tigrinya-speaking people. The creation of an ethnically defined Tigray region after the TPLF / EPRDF came to power in 1991 reinforced these tendencies. In the meantime, younger city dwellers in particular identify themselves as members of the “Tigray” ethnic group, but this notion has not yet fully caught on in rural areas and among older people. In Eritrea , which was annexed to Ethiopia after the Second World War and the end of Italian rule, the Tigrinya were initially considered loyal because of their cultural proximity to other Ethiopian ethnic groups; the Eritrean independence movement was initially more supported by Muslim ethnic groups. Tigrinya, however, dominated the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) founded in the 1970s , which was mostly strategically allied with the TPLF. In 1991 the TPLF or the EPRDF coalition led by it was in charge of the overthrow of the Derg military regime and thus took power. In the same year, the EPLF brought all of Eritrea under its control, and in 1993, with extensive support from both Tigrinya and non-Tigrinya, it was able to proclaim the independence of the state of Eritrea.
economy and politics
Today, as in the past, agriculture and livestock are the livelihoods of the majority of the Tigray and Tigrinya people.
In Ethiopia, the Tigray have played a dominant political role since the TPLF / EPRDF came to power. The Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who ruled from 1991 until his death in 2012, and other important personalities of today are Tigray. The EPRDF initiated a certain democratization of Ethiopia and reformed the administrative structure of Ethiopia towards an "ethnic federalism", which grants the Tigray and other ethnic groups their own regions or states instead of the historical provinces.
Since independence, Eritrea has had a one-party system under the Eritrean People's Liberation Front or the People's Front for Democracy and Justice that emerged from it . Some critics accuse the Popular Front of general repression, dominance of the Tigrinya and marginalization of other ethnic groups.
See also
literature
- Wolbert GC Smidt: The Tigrinnya speakers across the borders. Discourses of Unity & Separation in Ethnohistorical Context. In: Dereje Feyissa, Markus Virgil Hoehne (ed.): Borders and Borderlands as Resources in the Horn of Africa. James Currey, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-1-84701-018-6 ( Eastern Africa series ), pp. 61-84.
- Wolbert GC Smidt: Self-names of Təgrəñña speakers (Ḥabäša, Tägaru, Təgrəñña and others). In: Bogdan Burtea, Josef Tropper, Helen Younansardaroud (eds.): Studia Semitica et Semitohamitica. Festschrift for Rainer Voigt on the occasion of his 60th birthday on January 17, 2004. Ugarit-Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-934628-73-7 , pp. 385–404 ( Old Orient and Old Testament 317).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Central Statistics Agency (Ethiopia) : Summary and Statistical Report of the 2007 Population and Housing Census Results ( Memento of March 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 4.53 MB), p. 16
- ↑ Country information from the Federal Foreign Office on Eritrea , status: March 2010. Accessed on May 7, 2010.
- ^ CIA - The World Factbook - Eritrea . Retrieved May 7, 2010.
- ↑ Abdulkader Saleh, Nicole Hirt, Wolbert GC Smidt, Rainer Tetzlaff (eds.): Peace spaces in Eritrea and Tigray under pressure: Identity construction, social cohesion and political stability , LIT Verlag, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-1858-6 (P. 230)
- ^ Yasin Mohammed Yasin: Political history of the Afar in Ethiopia and Eritrea. GIGA Institute of African Affairs, in: Afrika Spectrum 42, 2008, pp. 39–65 (PDF file; 237 kB)