Canon History of Ethiopia

[Kaiser Kirk]

Ethiopian Empire

The Ancient Kingdom of Aksum was an early convert to Christianity, which along with Judaism still runs strong today. The Kingdom fell in 960AD to Queen Yodit of al-Habasha, a southern Kingdom which prevailed in battle. She had a long reign, but afterwards the country splintered. Arab traders from Byzantium Arabia took advantage and crossed the Red Sea to seize parts of the kingdom for themselves, introducing the Muslim religion and forming the Zagwe dynasty.  In 1270, this was overthrown, and the Arabs reduced to a coastal strip called the Ifat (later Adai) Sultanate, while a new Ethiopian Empire was proclaimed. The new empire was lead by the Solomonic dynasty was proclaimed as the King proclaimed himself a descendant of the Aksumites, tracing his lineage all the way back to the Queen of Sheba.

The Empire of Ethiopia has slowly expanded over the years. First to the North, absorbing the Sudanese Christian nation of Alodia about 1330, and then when the Sudanese Christian Kingdom of Makuria fell into Civil War in 1365, that too.  They conquered the Byzantine puppet of the Adai Sultanate on the coast in 1543. The Somali Arjuran Empire, and later Geledi Sultanates to the south long blocked much expansion that direction, but Ethiopia did slowly extend it's reach to the Horn of Africa.  The Highlands to the west have eluded them (historically added in the 1880s), but the King believes it is now time to wrest them from the decaying kingdoms there.

Ethiopia has long had border clashes with it's neighbors, from vanished Sultanates and Kingdoms in the south, to Berber raids, or serious clashes over Egypt and the Red Sea with Byzantine. The Kingdom has long been powerful enough to make conquering it a major expedition, a fact the Iberians and Parthians have long known and sought to keep that way.

[AnchorSteam]

I would like to add that ---

Ethiopia's navel tradition began with the Pirates, and the Corsair methods are still a large part of strategy & tactics.

The surviving pirates were punished twice over; publicly lashed for loosing the the Byzantines in the first place, and privately given the choice of exile or cooperation for not heeding the Emperor's suggestion that they leave the Byzantines alone in the second case!

Seeking to avoid the kind of humiliations their Pirate forefathers had to endure, the Navy is keen to develop its technology and tactics. The have been conducting such aggressive war-games that they were frightening to the merchant traffic in the Red Sea, so the Emperor sent them off to found a colony somewhere.... just to give them something to "work off their steam".