Axum, also spelled Aksum (/ˈɑːksuːm/ ), is a town in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with a population of 66,900 residents (as of 2015). It is the site of the historic capital of the Aksumite Empire.
Axum is located in the Central Zone of the Tigray Region, near the base of the Adwa mountains. It has an elevation of 2,131 metres (6,991 feet) and is surrounded by La'ilay Maychew, a separately administered woreda of the Tigray region.
Stuart Christopher Munro-Hay (21 April 1947 – 14 October 2004) was a British archaeologist, numismatist and Ethiopianist. He studied the culture and history of ancient Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa region and South Arabia, particularly their history of coins.
Born in Northern Ireland, he was initially called Stuart Christopher H. McIlwrath, but took his mother's maiden name after his parents separated. Munro-Hay studied Egyptology at the University of Liverpool from 1970 to 1974. As a student and collaborator of Neville Chittick, he worked on the 1973-74 excavation project of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) in Aksum, the capital of the late-antique Aksumite Empire. The excavations had to be cancelled due to the Derg's coup d'état in 1974, but Munro-Hay continued to dedicate his work to researching the history of Aksum, and in particular compiled a large collection of Aksumite coins. He completed his doctorate in 1978 at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), supervised by the then BIEA chairman Laurence Kirwan, his thesis was titled A Reappraisal of the History and Development of the Aksumite State from Numismatic and Archaeological Evidence.
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression waged by Italy against Ethiopia, which lasted from October 1935 to February 1937. In Ethiopia it is often referred to simply as the Italian Invasion (Amharic: ጣልያን ወረራ, romanized: Ṭalyan warära; Oromo: Weerara Xaaliyaanii), and in Italy as the Ethiopian War (Italian: Guerra d'Etiopia). It is seen as an example of the expansionist policy that characterized the Axis powers and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations before the outbreak of World War II.
On 3 October 1935, two hundred thousand soldiers of the Italian Army commanded by Marshal Emilio De Bono attacked from Eritrea (then an Italian colonial possession) without prior declaration of war. At the same time a minor force under General Rodolfo Graziani attacked from Italian Somalia. On 6 October, Adwa was conquered, a symbolic place for the Italian army because of the defeat at the Battle of Adwa by the Ethiopian army during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. On 15 October, Italian troops seized Aksum, and an obelisk adorning the city was torn from its site and sent to Rome to be placed symbolically in front of the building of the Ministry of Colonies.
The migration to Abyssinia (Arabic: الهجرة إلى الحبشة, romanized: al-hijra ʾilā al-habaša), also known as the First Hijra (الهجرة الأولى, al-hijrat al'uwlaa), was an episode in the early history of Islam, where the first followers of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (they were known as the Sahabah, or the companions) migrated from Arabia due to their persecution by the Quraysh, the ruling Arab tribal confederation of Mecca. They sought and were granted refuge in the Kingdom of Aksum, an ancient Christian state that was situated in modern-day northern Ethiopia and Eritrea (also referred to as Abyssinia), in 9 BH (613 CE) or 7 BH (615 CE). The kingdom's capital was Aksum, which is an ancient city in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. The ruling Aksumite monarch who received them is known in Islamic sources as Najashi (نجاشي, najāšī), the Negus of the kingdom; modern historians have alternatively identified him with the Aksumite king Armah and Ella Tsaham. Some of the Sahabah exiles returned to Mecca and made the migration to Medina with Muhammad, while the others remained in Aksum and arrived in Medina in 628.
The migration to Abyssinia is an Islamic historical event that refers to the migration of some of the early Muslims from Mecca to Abyssinia (the Kingdom of Aksum) because of the harm they were facing from the leaders of Quraysh. A number of Muslims left, and the first migration to Abyssinia was in Rajab of the fifth year after the mission. They were eleven men and four women, and they appointed Uthman ibn Mazun as their leader. Then, while they were in Abyssinia, they heard that the people of Mecca had converted to Islam. Some of them returned to Mecca, but they did not find that to be true. So they returned, and another group went with them to Abyssinia. It was the second migration. They were eighty-three men, their wives, and their children, headed by Ja`far ibn Abi Talib.
The Najashi (Arabic: ٱلنَّجَاشِيّ, romanized: al-Najāshī) is an Arabic term, a loanword from the Ge'ez negus (Ge'ez: ንጉሥ, romanized: sovereign), and refers to the ruler of the Kingdom of Aksum who reigned from 614 to 630. It is agreed by Muslim scholars that Najashi gave shelter to early Muslim refugees from Mecca, around 615–616 at Aksum.