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James,Basic timeline (with what I understand it to be anyways): Part 1 anyways
6000-2500 BCE: Ancestors of Somali, Afar, Sidama and Oromo migrate to Ethiopia, probably from the Sahara which is drying out from a grassland to a desert. One group break off from the main migration and settle instead in Darfur, founding the Fur and Masalit peoples, and the Beja settle instead on the Nile and found the Kush kingdom of Sudan.
2500 BCE - 400 CE: The ancestors of Somali and Afar settle in the hot lowlands, which would be called Berberica or the Berber country. They lived in small clan kingdoms in the inland, and traded and interacted with the rest of the world from their trade ports like Avalites and Malao, trading African Blackwood (Ebony), Ivory, Tortoise Shells and especially Frankincense. The trade ports were not the capitals and centers of these kingdoms, only the commercial centers, the political centers were far inland. None of these locations, either inland centers nor trade ports, have been excavated. There could be dusty small villages or they could have been great capital cities, we don't know. During this era, Shingani in Mogadishu was founded by Ximyar merchants, as were an unidentified early towns in Lower Shabelle and Lower Juba, near Baraawe and Kismaayo respectively. These Ximyar colonies would eventually spawn the Zenj civilization.
400-696 CE: The collapse of Idolatry in Europe and the Middle East causes a collapse in the Frankincense trade which leads to the demise of the great trade ports of Berberica, and a decline in power of the two great mercantile powers that controlled it, Aksum and Ximyar. This is a "Dark Age" of Somalia because it is dark to us, we literally know nothing about the history of Berberica is in this period.
696-1000 CE: Mogadishu is conquered by the Caliph in 696, beginning the Islamic era in Somalia. Aksum's continuing political crisis leads to a collapse of the Aksumite empire. Aksum is abandoned and Adulis becomes a pirate port, as pirates overrun the Eritrean coast and begin preying on commerce in the Red Sea. The Caliph has enough after these pirates attack Jedda in 714 and sends a fleet and crushes the pirates and destroys Adulis. During this time, Beja tribes had begun to invade Eritrea and conquer the region. The Caliph builds a fort at Badi (modern Massawa) and basically installs a viceroy, and leaves the Beja de-facto in charge of Eritrea. They also ended up in control of the Dahlak Islands (which had been overrun with pirates) and the Caliph decides to use Dahlak basically as an island Siberia, exiling people there.
Around this time the Somali ethnic group is created when the first few Berberica tribes become Muslim (even today remaining pre-Islamic societies like Rendille refer to becoming a Muslim as "becoming Somali"). Islam spread up the Shabelle to the Harar area (the origin place of the Somali ethnicity) where according to Harari legend, the first Islamic leader, Haboba ibn Harar, established the first Islamic center in nothern Somalia at Harar in the 8th century. Until the 11th century, all Samaale Somalis accepted a single king and lived together in the north, but when Maxamed Da'uud was killed a successor could not be agreed to, and the Samaale kingdom broke apart and the clans began migrating far and wide to establish their own kingdoms. Absame migrated west and established a kingdom on the Awash river, Hawiye migrated southwest to the upper Shabeele, Sade migrated southeast, Ajuuran migrated from their original home at Berbera far to the south to Mareeg and the middle Shabelle. Gardheere migrated far, far to the southwest all the way to the Jubba valley, Dir migrated west to Abyssinia and Kombe stayed behind in the homeland.
1000-1270 CE: During this period, the migrating Somali clans settled down and established kingdoms, conquered their neighbors and expanded their domains. The Ajuuraan expanded up the Shabelle conquering the Zenj of Qalaafo and established themselves as overlord of Muqdisho. The Absame conquered the Argobba kingdom of Shawa, the city of Zeila, the Awsa oasis and the Awash valley, thus establishing the two major kingdoms that would define the next 300 years, Ifat and Ajuran. The Amhara overthrew the Xamtanga Agaw Zagwe dynasty established a strong state which began to come into conflict with Ifat and other smaller Islamic states in the area, in fact the Amhara and Ifat first clashed before the Zagwe dynasty had been overthrown.
1270-1332 CE: Until 1332, there was a struggle over which power would be master of Abyssinia, Ifat and its Islamic allies or the Amhara kingdom, but the Amhara kingdom would decisively defeat all their allies and found an empire dominating the highlands under Amde Seyon. Amde Seyon inherited a kingdom only slightly bigger than the Zagwe had ruled, and by the time he died he had reconquered virtually the entire Aksumite Empire, from the Red Sea coast at Adulis all the way to the Rift Valley. Ifat formed a grand alliance to defend their kingdoms from his advance, where the combined armies of Ifat, Fetegar, Sharka, Dawaro, Arbabni and Bale were all defeated by Amde Seyon and were subjugated to his empire.
1332-1429 CE: Ifat eventually rebelled against Amhara rule, culminating in a massive invasion of Ifat in 1403, where the Sultan was killed and his family fled into exile in Yemen, returning a decade later to reclaim their homeland. This would be the beginning of the Abyssinia/Adal wars. The Amhara occupied Somali territory all the way to Berbera and the Jigjiga area, with fortresses occupying strategic areas. The exiled Walashma declared a new sultanate, Adal. They recaptured Zeila in 1423 and decisively defeated the Amhara armies in 1429, recapturing Jigjiga, Harar and Awsa.
1429-1529 CE: For a century Amhara and Somali armies would battle indecisively, both sides struggling over the Awash valley. This would continue decade after decade until the rise of Axmed Gurey, who united all the Somali clans of the north in a massive invasion of the Amhara kingdom.
1529-1540 CE: Axmed Gurey along with a small force of Turkish musketeers defeated the Amhara decisively and occupied most of Abyssinia, the Amhara being reduced to Gojjam, Begmeder, Dembiya and the Simien mountains. The Portuguese intervened in 1540, bombarding Zeila and destroying the city, and fighting alongside the Amhara, a Portuguese musketeer shot and killed Axmed Gurey and his army fell apart.
Long ago, the ancestors of Oromos, Afars and Somalis lived in a large kingdom known as Boonta. Boonta was a rich kingdom that was a major exporter of African Blackwood, Myrrh and Frankincense. Their chief cities were Aftal and several others today known only by their greek transliterations of Malao, Mosyllon, Aromata and Opone. Egypt referred to this land as Pwenet (as close as you can get to Boontu in ancient Egyptian pronounciation), and it is from the Egyptian name that we know this land today, as Punt. Romans knew Boontu after the market town of Aftal, and called the people the Avalitae. Greeks referred to them as the Other Berbers.
The Boontu kingdom in the 4th century united with the kingdom of Kasu (which has gone down in history as Meroe or Kush) dynastically, and the Kasu-Boontu kingdom conquered the Agaw (descendants of Agaw, who had been Viceroy of Kush under the Egyptians) and the Gaze kingdom of Dam't (the descendants of the Qahtani Arab immigrants who had begun to immigrate in 2,500 BCE). The conquerer, Gadaaraa (GDRT, Gadaaraa means "From the Law" in Oromo) erected an enormous victory stelae in Adulis boasting of his conquests.
Greek and Roman writers referred to Kasu as Aethiopia, after the Greek name for the founder of the Kasu nation. After Gadaaraa, Aethiopia included Axum as well as Meroe, and no mention of Punt, the Avalitae or the Other Berbers can be found.
Historians have often been confused as to how Dam't could conquer itself and establish Axum, and this has led to many silly theories.
His descendant Caadhaana (Ezana in Ge'ez) converted to Christianity and conquered most of Yemen, and defended Kasu against the invading Nuba (nowadays confused with him invading Kasu). Kasu would be abandoned and the Kasu would move south. The great Kasu cities would dissapear beneath the sands of Sudan until they were discovered centuries later.
Adulis was close to Egypt and Yemen, and merchants could just move their goods overland to there, so the red sea ports of Boontu all died out. As Islam spread in Africa however, the old site of Aftal found a new life as way station and port for Hajjis on their way to Makkah, as the town of Zeila.
In the 9th century, the Axum empire fell apart due to religious and ethnic differences, as the royal family converted to Islam. The Christian Agaw, Amhara and Tigray split away from the empire, and Emperor (Dil) Nacood moved to Shoa. The Coptic Church decided to crown the strongest Christian secessionists, the Zagwe, as Emperor. The Zagwe declined however and the Tigray grew to be the strongest state and conquered the Zagwe. The Coptic Church made up some rubbish about the Tigray conquerers being secret descendants of Dil Nacood and that they are Solomonids. This also involved doing away with the legitimate Solomonids.
The newly-minted Habesh empire allied with the Sultan of Zeila (a descendant of Yusuf aw-Barkadle) and destroyed Shoa, with most of the conquests going to Zeila, who moved his capital into the highlands and renamed his sultanate to Ifat.
The Shewans were forced out of the highlands and moved south and east into the lowlands. Today their descendants are the Somali and Oromo.
From my research, I have discovered that the ancestry of the Beja and Agaw are derived from two different people than the Somali and Oromo.
The Beja are descended from Pinedjem I, the Libu Viceroy of Kush for the 21st Dynasty of Egypt who took control after the civil war in 1088 BCE. When the Libu 21st Dynasty of Egypt were deposed by the Meshwesh (another Libyan tribe) 22nd Dynasty, Pinedjem's descendents remained in control of the red sea coast and became the Beja. The reason why Beja is a "Cushite" languages are similar that both Kush and Libu are ancient Libyan tribes.
The Agaw are descended from Moses because, during Moses' tenure as Viceroy of Kush, he founded a viceroyal dynasty when he deposed the king of Kush and married his daughter Helena. Moses and Helena had a son named Amenhotep (Awawa or Agaua in ancient Libyan). His son Paser I and grandson Amenemopet ruled as viceroys of Kush for the Egyptian Pharaohs, but Amenemopet rebelled against Seti I and was defeated.
The Lowland Cushites (Sidamo, Oromo, Somali etc) are, believe it or not, the actual monarchy of Ethiopia. Kandake Makeda Nicaule, a royal Kushite princess is the Queen of Sheba, or rather Soba, a ruined city near Khartoum, was the one who visited Solomon and gave birth to Menelik I. Menelik's descendant, Alara, conquered the Agaw and Beja and made them subjects of Kush, thus reunifying Sudan. Alara's grandson Kashta and great-grandson Piye managed through clever politics to conquer a divided Egypt around 750 BCE.
Kashta's descendents then ruled Egypt until the Assyrians invaded in 671 BCE, driving Pharaoh Tantamani south out of Egypt and a pro-Assyrian Egyptian dynasty put in their place, though the Kushites continued to rule Thebes until 653 BCE.
After this the Kushites began to suffer under two different incursions. Initially the Kushites moved south to their former capital at Napata but the Egyptians attacked and sacked Napata, thus spurring a move to Meroe in 591 BCE by Emperor Aspelta.
The Beja broke away from Kush in 100 CE and conquered the first to the fifth cataracts and the Agaw broke away from Kush to establish kingdoms in the Ethiopian highlands, parts of which were part of Kush, thus reaching the nadir of the Kushite Empire's power for over a century until Emperor Gadarat in 221 CE. The Beja allied with the Roman Empire and began to expand at the expense of Kush, as well as expansion of the Nuba people (a Nilote tribe from Darfur and Kordofan) who took all of Kush's land up to the Nile.
Gadarat conquered the Ge'ez (the descendants of the Qahtani immigrants who settled in Ethiopia in 2500 BCE) and the Agaw, and then sailed across the sea and conquered parts of Yemen, resuscitating the Kushite Empire. Gadarat moved his capital to the rich Ge'ez lands, to Axum.
In 297 CE the Roman Emperor Diocletian switched allies to the Nuba against the Beja, and the Nuba crossed the Nile and captured the land from the fifth to third cataracts, making the Nuba the aggressive neighbors of Kush. A few years later the Nuba invaded Kush and captured Soba. Mass exodus of Kushites from Sudan into Ethiopia occurs.
Around 330 CE the greatest Kushite emperor, Ezana, stopped the advance of the Nuba at Meroe and soundly defeated them (though Meroe was by this time almost uninhabited). Ezana pragmatically reduced the Nilote tribes including the Nuba to vassalage. Ezana then sailed across to Yemen to further the conquests of his ancestor Gadarat.
in 615 CE Muhammed took refuge in Axum with the help of Emperor Ashama, recorded in the Qu'ran as al-Negashi. Oromo is descended from al-Negashi, who is recorded in some genealogies as Ram Nag.
I believe that in the following century, the royal family of Axum converted to Islam.
In 867 CE Yodit, a Jewish queen of the Agaw, attacked Axum and sacked it. I believe that at this time religious and ethnic chaos erupted in the Axumite Empire. The Christian Ge'ez, Kushites and Agaw attacked the Muslim Ge'ez and Kushites and Jewish Agaw and Falashas and all those who adhered to the old religion.
The traditionalist Kushites who adhered to Kandake Makeda's religion became the Oromo. The Christian Kushites who rebelled against their king became the Amhara and increasingly Ge'ezized, while the "original" Ge'ez became the Tigray. The only legitimate bloodline with "Royal" blood that could be crowned were the royal Agaw lineage, the Zagwe, descended from Moses, as the Cushite royalty had moved to Shoa.
The Islamic Cushites however, the royal family, became the Somali. The last Emperor of Axum founds the Makhzumi sultanate of Shoa in the southern highlands.
The Church however considered this a dire threat. The legitimate, Islamic dynasty could find support amongst many peoples and overthrow the new Christian kingdom, which under the Zagwe was weak. And so was concocted the Great Lie.
A secret descendant of Menelik was "discovered" in the king of Tigray, who was given the crown of Axum by the church. The fake Solomonid dynasty then destroyed the Sultanate of Shoa with many Arabian mercenaries. The Arabian-led Sultanate of Ifat was then put in Shoa's place, which was supposed to be an obedient vassal of the Solomonids.
The Somali migrated east into their current lands.
Darood actually arrived in East Africa while it was still the Islamic Axumite Empire, thus his nickname "Jabarti". Darood became a Somali clan while the Somali still lived in the Ethiopian Highlands.
