Dizi (also known as the Maji) is the name of an ethnic group living in southern

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

. They share a number of somatic similarities with certain culturally (but not always linguistically) related peoples of south-western Ethiopia, which include the Sheko and Nao, the Gimira (

She She or S.H.E. may refer to: Language * She (pronoun), the third person singular, feminine, nominative case pronoun in modern English Places * She County, Anhui ** She Prefecture, 589-1121 * She County, Hebei * She River, or Sheshui, Hubei * ...

, Bench,

Mere Mere may refer to: Places * Mere, Belgium, a village in East Flanders * Mere, Cheshire, England * Mere, Wiltshire, England People * Mere Broughton (1938–2016), New Zealand Māori language activist and unionist * Mere Smith, American television ...

), the Tsara, the Dime, the Aari and certain sub-groups of the

Basketo people The Basketo people are an Omotic-speaking ethnic group whose homeland lies in the northwestern part of the South Ethiopia Regional State (SERS) of Ethiopia. The Basketo Zone is named after this ethnic group. According to the 2007 Ethiopian nationa ...

. A. E. Jensen has gathered these groups under the label of the "ancient peoples of southern Ethiopia". They speak the

Dizin language Dizin (often called “Dizi” or “Maji” in the literature) is an Omotic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by the Dizi people, primarily in the Maji woreda of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, locat ...

(part of the

Omotic languages The Omotic languages are a group of languages spoken in southwestern Ethiopia, in the Omo River region and southeastern Sudan in Blue Nile State. The Geʽez script is used to write some of the Omotic languages, the Latin script for some others ...

). Before their forced incorporation into the Ethiopian Empire in the 1890s, based on their own statements and the evidence of numerous abandoned terraced hillsides, the Dizi are estimated to have numbered between 50,000 and 100,000. However, as Haberland observes, the imposition of an outside authority and its misrule led to a massive depopulation due to the abuses of the '' gebbar'' system, slave-raiding, "famine, disease and a growing sense of hopelessness and resignation, engendered by a total absence of justice. These things not only caused the number of Dizi to shrink (in 1974 there were probably scarcely more than 20,000) but shook their whole culture to its roots."Haberland, "Amharic Manuscript", pp. 241f

Demographics

The 2007 Ethiopian national census reported that 36,380 people (or 0.05% of the population) identified themselves as Dizi, of whom 4,968 were urban inhabitants. The

Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region The Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (often abbreviated as SNNPR; ) was a Regions of Ethiopia, regional state in southwestern Ethiopia. It was formed from the merger of five ''kililoch'', called Regions 7 to 11, following the ...

is home to 98.9% of this people. They are the majority of the inhabitants of the Maji

woreda Districts of Ethiopia, also called woredas (; ''woreda''), are the third level of the administrative divisions of Ethiopia – after ''List of zones of Ethiopia, zones'' and the ''Regions of Ethiopia, regional states''. These districts are f ...

, and have notable minorities in the neighboring Meinit and Surma woredas.

References

Ethnic groups in Ethiopia {{ethiopia-ethno-group-stub