Babīlē, Ethiopia

History

The area was originally inhabited by the Somali and Oromo people; it was part of the Harar Emirate, and was later governed by the Egyptians in the late 19th century until the Amharic expansion during Menelik II's conquests covered the Harar area. Cattle from the people of the Babile area were taken to feed Menelik's army. The town was a small farming community but grew to be a trading town under Egyptian rule. Continuous migration of Amhara people from the west (as well as Tigrayans) changed the demographics considerably as well as the character of the town, which became important enough to acquire a church, a school, a telephone post. Shops and coffee bars were typically owned by Harari, Arabs, and Amhara.

The revolutionary government of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia attempted to change the originally feudal system installed in the area but found it difficult, in the Babile area, to impose banking and landownership reforms--nationalization and collectivization. In a 1990 study, Leendert Jan Slikkerveer identified four strata in Babile society, many of them with mixed ethnic groups, but Amhara dominated the administrative class while Oromo and Somali dominate the traditional class of religious and ethnic leaders.

From the History section of Babile (town) on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.