Ethiopia's Relation with the Ottomans: From Hostility to Understanding

This study examines the long-standing hostile and distrustful relations between Ethiopia and the Ottoman Empire. The Ethio-Ottoman antagonistic relation was not coincident; somewhat, the interest of the Ottoman to supervise the political, economic, and religious life of the Red Sea and Northeast Africa regions primarily stemmed the hostility. The presence of the Portuguese in the Red-Sea region and its subsequent alignment with Ethiopia further worsened the Ethio-Ottoman belligerency. The positioning of the Ottomans with the Adal Sultanate had also complicated the Ethio-Ottoman relations and brought with them generations of distrust. This article recounts the dynamics of the Ethio-Ottoman relations, mainly focusing on the changing aspects of hostility and understanding. The paper tries to address the Ethio-Ottoman relations in three major sections. The first section of the study explains the root of the Ethio-Ottomans' hostile and distrustful relations. The second section of the paper is devoted to showing the dynamic of the essence of the Ethio-Ottoman relations in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The last section elucidates the Ethio-Ottoman connections during the era of Sultan Abdülhamit II. The study employs an analytical, interpretive approach to analyze archival documents and secondary works of literature