Mereja.Forum

[Sadacha Macca]

''Tigre is an extensive province, lying in the north-eastern corner of the Abyssinian plateau. It covers a circle of about 150 miles in diameter bounded by the curve of the river Teccazzee, a confluent of the Atbara river, and by the precipitous rim of the table-land, where it reaches nearest to the sea in the vicinity of Massawa and the Saho tribes.
It has long enjoyed a quasi-independence, and is distinguished from the rest of Abyssinia by its peculiar language, a corruption of the Ancient Ge'ez, the old Ethiopic tongue into which Frumentius translated the New Testament. The Ge'ez is a Semitic dialect, and is totally dissimilar to the Amharic, the vernacular of the central or better known part of the country.
The latter tongue is to a slight extent adulterated with Arabic, but its base is essentially non Semitic, and yet there seems no reason for tracing it to an ARYAN ORIGIN.
The problem of language of course mixes itself inextricably with that of race.
The Abyssinians have been variously supposed to have originated in an Arabian or a Jewish colonization, or to be an aboriginal tribe.

Amhara, the name roughly and incorrectly applied to the whole of Abyssinia, except Tigre, and the now distinct principality of SHoa, is made up of a number of provinces, grouped around the great Lake Tana.
The central districts: Tchelga, Woggera, [deleted], Dembea, Belesa, Begemder, Mietcha, are the best known.
In these, both the line of Ras Gugsa [an oromo], and King Tewodros have reigned.
The seat of government has been usually Gondar to the north of the lake, the ancient capital of the Imperial family, or Debra Tabor in Begemder, where RAS GUGSA, RAS MARIE hsi son, RAS ALI his grandson, and the present Negus, have held the reins of power. A little to the southeast of these central provinces, the district of Amhara, in the narrower and stricter sense lies; it is held chiefly by Oromo tribes, and contains the important fortress and town of Magdala, so conspicuous in the history of the British Captivity.''



[The Westminster Review, Volumes 89-90, pages 80-82
J.M. Mason; 1868]