Gumuz

The Gumuz, who call themselves Bega, are a Nilo-Saharan people of the Komuz group, scattered through the Blue Nile lowlands of western Ethiopia and adjoining Fazogli district of Sudan, where archaeology links their linguistic ancestors to the turn of the first millennium.

Their traditions place them once in the western Gojjam highlands, before the Amhara and Agaw drove them into the lowlands and raided them for slaves with Oromo and Sudanese traders. Highlanders called them and their neighbours Shanqella, and the emperor Yeshaq I, reigning from 1414 to 1429, campaigned in Shanqella country. James Bruce met bow-hunting Shanqella groups on his Nile travels, describing them in 1790.

Organized in autonomous clans settling blood-feuds through formal mediation, the Gumuz live by shifting sorghum cultivation, hunting and honey-gathering, keep granaries and venerate household and field spirits, though some border clans had converted to Islam.