Ethiopia, Islam and Muslims in - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Erlich, Haggai
Leiden
Brill
(2,622 words)
Ancient Ethiopia , with Aksum as its capital, was one of the first political entities to adopt Christianity, in 333-4 C.E. It remained officially a Christian kingdom until Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by a military revolution in 1974. The Ethiopian Church remained institutionally connected to the Egyptian Coptic Church, and its head, the Abuna, was, until 1951, an Egyptian monk appointed as "the bishop of Ethiopia" by the Coptic patriarch, but Ethiopian Christianity developed as a distinct and unique reservoir of local traditions. It became a comprehensive set