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 ...

and

Eritrea Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa, with its capital and largest city being Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia in the Eritrea–Ethiopia border, south, Sudan in the west, and Dj ...

, the terms Tukrīr (

Amharic Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...

) and Tukrir ( Tigrinya) are used to designate persons of

West West is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance langu ...

Central Africa Central Africa (French language, French: ''Afrique centrale''; Spanish language, Spanish: ''África central''; Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''África Central'') is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries accordin ...

n origin. The terms derives from the city and kingdom of

Takrūr Takrur, Tekrur or Tekrour ( 500 – c. 1456) was a state based in the Senegal River in modern day Senegal which was at its height in the 11th and 12th centuries, roughly parallel to the Ghana Empire. It lasted in some form into the 18th ce ...

that thrived on the lower

Senegal River The Senegal River ( or "Senegal" - compound of the Serer term "Seen" or "Sene" or "Sen" (from Roog Seen, Supreme Deity in Serer religion) and "O Gal" (meaning "body of water")); , , , ) is a river in West Africa; much of its length mark ...

in the eleventh century. The place was well-known to Arab geographers, and an inhabitant of Takrūr or of West Africa in general was called in

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

a Takrūrī (plural Takārīr or Takārna) from the 14th century onward. The '' nisba'' al-Takrūrī was a common surname for one of West African descent. The Ethiopian terms are derived from the Arabic language.Wolbert Smidt
"Tukrir"
in Siegbert Uhlig and Alessandro Bausi (eds.), ''

Encyclopaedia Aethiopica The ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' (''EAe'') is a basic English-language encyclopaedia for Ethiopian and Eritrean studies. The ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' provides information in all fields of the discipline, i.e. anthropology, archaeology, ethn ...

'', Vol. 4: O-X (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010), pp. 998–1000. The Tukrīr primarily inhabit the western edge of the

Ethiopian Highlands The Ethiopian Highlands (also called the Abyssinian Highlands) is a rugged mass of mountains in Ethiopia in Northeast Africa. It forms the largest continuous area of its elevation in the continent, with little of its surface falling below , whil ...

. They are overwhelmingly

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

. They are mainly

Fulani The Fula, Fulani, or Fulɓe people are an ethnic group in Sahara, Sahel and West Africa, widely dispersed across the region. Inhabiting many countries, they live mainly in West Africa and northern parts of Central Africa, South Sudan, Darfur, ...

and

Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also ...

in origin from the region of the former

Kanem–Bornu Empire The Kanem–Bornu Empire was an empire based around Lake Chad that once ruled areas which are now part of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Libya, Algeria, Sudan, and Chad. The empire was sustained by the prosperous trans-Saharan trade and was one of the ...

. There were two major periods of immigration from West Africa to Ethiopia. The first coincided with the

Fula jihads The Fula (or Fulani) jihads () sometimes called the Fulani revolution were a series of jihads that occurred across West Africa during the 18th and 19th centuries, led largely by the Muslim Fula people, Fulani people. The jihads and the jihad sta ...

that lasted from 1804 until 1842; the second with the

Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa was the invasion, conquest, and colonialism, colonisation of most of Africa by seven Western European powers driven by the Second Industrial Revolution during the late 19th century and early 20th century in the era of ...

, when West Africa was colonized by Europeans between 1885 and 1914. In the 19th century there was a Tukrīr

sheikhdom A sheikhdom or sheikdom () is a geographical area or a society ruled by a tribal leader known as a sheikh (). Sheikhdoms exist almost exclusively within Arab countries, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula (Arab States of the Persian Gulf), wit ...

with its capital at Metemma, sometimes owing tribute to Ethiopia and at other times to

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. It ended up dominated by

Fur A fur is a soft, thick growth of hair that covers the skin of almost all mammals. It consists of a combination of oily guard hair on top and thick underfur beneath. The guard hair keeps moisture from reaching the skin; the underfur acts as an ...

from the nearby

Sultanate of Darfur The Sultanate of Darfur () was a pre-colonial state in present-day Sudan. It existed from the 17th century to 24 October 1874, when it fell to the Sudanese warlord Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, and was reestablished again from 1898 to 1916, until it ...

. It sided with the Mahdists during the

Mahdist War The Mahdist War (; 1881–1899) was fought between the Mahdist Sudanese, led by Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah, who had proclaimed himself the "Mahdi" of Islam (the "Guided One"), and the forces of the Khedivate of Egypt, initially, and later th ...

against Ethiopia (1885–1891) and disappeared with the Mahdists' defeat. The term Fallāta (from

) has largely replaced Takārīr in the

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

as a term for immigrants from West Africa.

Notes

References

{{authority control Ethnic groups in Ethiopia Ethnic groups in Eritrea Senegambian ethnic groups Exonyms History of Islam in Ethiopia