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The Habesha people ( ''Ḥabaśā'', Amharic ''(H)ābešā'', (ティグリニャ語:''Ḥābešā''); (アラビア語:الاحباش ) ''al-Aḥbāš''), also known as Abyssinians, are a population group inhabiting the Horn of Africa. They include various related ethnic groups in the Eritrean Highlands and Ethiopian Highlands who speak languages belonging to the South Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. Members' cultural, linguistic, and in certain cases, ancestral origins trace back to the Kingdom of Dʿmt (usually vocalized Diʿamat) and the later Kingdom of Aksum. The peoples referred to as "Habesha" today include the Amhara, the Tigray-Tigrinya, the Tigre, the Gurage and the Harari. Together, the Amhara, Tigray and Gurage peoples make up about 41.5% of Ethiopia's population (c. 33.6 million Amhara, 5.5 million Tigray, 1.8 million Gurage), while the Tigrinya and Tigre combined make up 85% (55% plus 30%, respectively) of Eritrea's population (c. 5 of 5.9 million). In the broadest sense, the word ''Habesha'' may refer to anyone from Ethiopia or Eritrea, although some do not identify with this association. ==Etymology== In Arabic, the elevated plateau on the east of the Nile, from which most of the waters of that river are derived, is called Habesh, and its people Habshi.〔 Published in 〕 The modern term derives from the vocalized ''Ḥabaśā'', first written with a script that did not mark vowels as ''ḤBŚ'' or in "pseudo-Sabaic as ''ḤBŠTM''".〔 The earliest known use of the term dates to the 2nd or 3rd century AD South Arabian inscription recounting the defeat of the Aksumite ''Negūs'' ("king") GDRT of Aksum and ḤBŠT. The term "Habashat" appears to refer to a group of peoples, rather than a specific ethnicity. A Sabaean inscription describes an alliance between the Himyarite king Shamir Yuhahmid and Aksum under King `DBH in the first quarter of the 3rd century AD. They had lived alongside the Sabaeans, who lived across the Red Sea from them for many centuries: "Shamir of dhū Raydān and Himyar had called in the help of the clans of Habashat for war against the kings of Saba; but Ilmuqah granted... the submission of Shamir of dhū Raydān and the clans of Habashat."〔Munro-Hay, ''Aksum'', p. 66.〕 The term "Habesha" was formerly thought by some scholars〔Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'': D-Ha. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. p. 948.〕 to be of Arabic descent because the English name Abyssinia comes from the Arabic form. (Arabs used the word ''Ḥabaš'', also the name of an Ottoman province comprising parts of modern-day Eritrea and Ethiopia).〔Munro-Hay, ''Aksum'', p. 19.〕 South Arabian expert Eduard Glaser claimed that the hieroglyphic ''ḫbstjw'', used in reference to "a foreign people from the incense-producing regions" (i.e. Punt, located in Eritrea and northeast Ethiopia) used by Queen Hatshepsut c. 1460 BC, was the first usage of the term or somehow connected. Based on the inscriptions the Aksumites left behind, they did not regard themselves or their territory as Habesha. For them, Habeshas likely meant people who collected incense in South Arabia. Cosmas Indicopleustes, the Greek-speaking Egyptian traveler who visited the Aksumite kingdom in 525 CE, also made no reference to Habesha.〔("Ethiopia: A Cultural History - Google Books" ): Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, 1955. p. 22.〕〔 According to Dr. Eduard Glaser, an Austrian epigraphist and historian, "Habesha" was originally used to refer to a kingdom in southeastern Yemen located east of the Hadhramaut kingdom in the modern district of Mahra. He believed the etymology of Habesha must have derived from the Mahri language, which means “gatherers” (as in gatherers of incense).〔("The True Origin of Habesha" ), eriswiss.com Retrieved 2015-04-10〕〔("The Academy, Volume 48 - Google Books" ): J. Murray, 1895. p. 415.〕 It was not until long after Aksumite kingdom had ended that Gulf Arab travelers and geographers began to describe the Horn region as Al-Habash. The first among these travelers were Al-Mas`udi and Al-Harrani.〔("An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity" ): Stuart Munro-Hay, 1991. p. 90〕 Al-Mas`udi, a tenth-century Gulf Arab traveler to the region, described Habesha country in his geographical work Muruj al-Dhahab, the ''Meadows of Gold''. He wrote that "the chief town of the Habasha is called Ku`bar, which is a large town and the residence of the Najashi (nagassi; king), whose empire extends to the coasts opposite the Yemen, and possesses such towns as Zayla, Dahlak and Nasi."〔 Al-Harrani, another Gulf Arab traveler, also asserted in 1295 CE that "one of the greatest and best-known towns is Ka`bar, which is the royal town of the najashi . . . Zayla`, a town on the coast of the Red Sea, is a very populous commercial center. . . . Opposite al-Yaman there is also a big town, which is the sea-port from which the Habasha crossed the sea to al-Yaman, and nearby is the island of `Aql."〔 By the end of the 8th century CE, most of the prominent Yemeni kingdoms ended and areas they once controlled were under foreign occupation. Yemen’s turbulence, coupled with its ecological volatility likely shifted the international trade of incense from South Arabia to the Horn region. With Habasha originally used to describe people who gathered incense, this term was also given to the region by early Gulf Arab merchants and travelers as a geographic expression that some of the inhabitants of the Horn adopted over time.〔 When Portuguese missionaries arrived in the interior of what is present-day Ethiopia in the early 16th century CE, they took the altered word Abesha (without the letter “H” beginning) which is used by Amharic speakers and subsequently Latinized it to ‘Abassia’, ‘Abassinos’, ‘Abessina’ and finally into ‘Abyssina’. This Abyssinia term was widely used as a geographic expression for centuries, even though it was a term not used by the local inhabitants.〔〔("The Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Difussion of Useful Knowledge, Volume 1 - Google Books" ): Charles Knight, 1833. page 52.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Habesha people」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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