Tigrinya

The Tigrinya are the Orthodox Christian highlanders of the northern Ethiopian and Eritrean plateau, farming districts on both sides of the Mareb River. Their homeland was the heartland of the ancient Kingdom of Aksum, which adopted Christianity in the fourth century. After Ge'ez ceased to be a spoken vernacular its place was taken by Tigrinya, whose earliest surviving samples appear in a thirteenth-century monastic land grant.

Under the restored Solomonic dynasty after 1270 the provinces kept strong local lords. The monk Ewostatewos founded a reform movement whose followers spread monasteries across the Eritrean highlands in the later fourteenth century.

The highlanders suffered in the Adal invasion of 1529 to 1543 and lost their Red Sea ports to the Ottomans in 1557. Their ancient church network, centered on Aksum and its rock-hewn monasteries, kept Tigrinya identity and literacy intact through the age of rival princes.