Readings

Recommended books to learn more about Habesha History.

A seated figure beside water holds an open manuscript beneath trees — an Ethiopian painting from the Revelation of St John, about 1700-1730. — British Library, Or 533, f. 1v

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3 books

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Ancient

Current reading

Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity

by Stuart C. Munro-Hay

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 1991
ISBN: 9780748601066

Munro-Hay brings the city, kingdom, inscriptions and coinage of Aksum into one compact study, while following its connections across northeast Africa and the Red Sea.

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Ancient

Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270

by Sergew Hable Selassie

Publisher: United Printers
Published: Addis Ababa · 1972
Length: 370 pages
ISBN: No confirmed ISBN

A broad survey from prehistory and the earliest written sources through Aksum and the Zagwe period, ending with the Solomonic restoration in 1270.

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Medieval

The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History from Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century

by Richard Pankhurst

Publisher: Red Sea Press
Published: 1997
ISBN: 9780932415196

Pankhurst moves beyond the political centre to the regions around it, following places such as Bahr Nagash, Ifat, Adal, Damot and Gurage across a long chronology.

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