This chapter is written by Hussein Ahmed, R.S. O’Fahey and Ewald Wagner.

The study of the history and cultures of the Muslim peoples of Ethiopia has been the preserve of a small number of European scholars, among them Paulitschke, Cerulli, and Wagner, to name a few. We still do not have a clear overview of the history of the Ethiopian Muslims despite such surveys as Trimingham (1952) and Cuoq (1981). Such surveys tend to emphasise the confrontation of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia with the Muslim states of Ethiopia and to pay relatively little attention to th…