Gurage

The Gurage are a cluster of Ethiopian Semitic-speaking peoples who farm the semi-mountainous country southwest of the Shewan highlands around Lake Zway. They are commonly seen as the descendants of ancient South Arabian settlers who merged with local Cushitic populations.

The Gurage first appear in the royal chronicle of Emperor Amda Seyon I, whose campaigns against the sultanate of Ifat drew their chiefs into the Ethiopian imperial orbit; by the fifteenth century clans such as the Ennemor paid tribute in horses to the crown. During the Adal invasion their lands were overrun by Imam Ahmad al-Ghazi until his defeat and death in 1543.

Divided into clans speaking related languages written in the Ge'ez script and split between Orthodox Christianity and Islam, the Gurage built life around the cultivation of ensete, the false banana whose fermented bread, kocho, was their staple food.