The sources on Islam in Ethiopia include those specifically concerned with Islam and general studies which contains passing references to Islam. What are the major trends in, and principal features of this extensive and apparently unwieldy corpus of source material?

Firstly, in both the specialized and general secondary sources, there is a consistent and clearly discernible over-emphasis on the purely political and military aspects of the relations between the "culturally homogeneous" Christian kingdom and the various Muslim sultanates during the mediaeval period. These relations, we are led to believe, more often than not manifested themselves in violent confrontations, and were largely an outcome of the intransigence of the Muslims protagonists. Moreover, according to the same sources, these conflicts were essentially destructive of the Christian material and cultural heritage, and thus contributed in no small measure to the disintegration of the Christian state and society. This kind of interpretation is misleading for two reasons:

a) It is based on the questionable premise that the society of north and central Ethiopian was at that time (13th to 16th century) exclusively Christian in religious affiliation and ethnically and linguistically homogenous, sharing a common socio-political tradition: in short, a fully-integrated and solidly-unified polity. This is, of course, far from the truth. On the contrary, the so-called Christian highland core was also the homeland of many Muslim communities with an equally ancient cultural heritage (1), and of other non/pre-Christian and Muslim ethnic groups who were at varying levels of internal political development and assimilation into the culture of the dominant groups. It is not therefore difficult to realize that this must have been even truer of the period and situation prior to the sixteenth century.

b) It has consistently overlooked the debilitating effects of the wars upon settled life in the Muslim areas. It should be noted that both the Muslim and Christian sources confirm the existence of a number of trading centres and urban settlements which flourished in the Muslim regions and which were often the targets of plundering Christian troops, and were consequently completely destroyed (2). That the traditional armies has always been the scourge of cultivators and trader - both Christians and Muslims - has been noted by many commentators on the mediaeval and post-mediaeval scene (3). Hence, both sides were equally destructive and responsible for the depletion of each other's human and material resources.

Secondly, the emphasis on wars and the notion that Islam represented only an external political force (4), rather than being one of the essential elements of the Ethiopian culture, resulted in the neglect of other more crucial aspects of the history of Islam, such as the mechanisms and modes of its introduction and expansion, the social and economic history of Muslim communities, their literary and oral traditions, and the role of Islam in the process of regional and national integration (5).

Thirdly, with few exceptions, most studies are based on external Arabic sources, European travellers' account and Ethiopic Christian chronicles. These need to be supplemented by indigenous sources composed by Ethiopian Muslims themselves in order to broaden the existing historiographical perspectives and redress the imbalance.

Fourthly, the studies so far undertaken deal almost exclusively with Islam outside the north-central plateau. Communities in the core regions have not attracted scholarly attention at all; in many cases, even their very existence has not been recognised.

Fifthly, a dominant theme in the existing literature is the view that internal development within the Muslim areas, such as the expansion of Islam and the mediaeval conflicts with the Christian Kingdom, are attributable to external factors. For example, it is to the non-indigenous 'Ulema' that the credit for the propagation of Islam and the establishment of a Muslim culture is usually given. The role of Egyptians, Ottoman and Arab interests in the mediaeval conflicts is depicted as being a more decisive factor than the internal socioeconomic pressure within the Muslim and Christian communities.

[Fieldworks (6) on which some recent studies are based have] strengthened the general optimism about the existence of a great amount and range of untapped source materials relevant to Islam in Ethiopia. However, a casual comparison between the literatures on, for instance Islam in West Africa and in Ethiopia clearly reveals the vast gulf separating the two regions in terms of research output, the sheer volume and diversity of published and unpublished material, and the depth of analysis of the studies so far completed on the subject. Ethiopian Islam as a field of study and research has not been well represented at international academic fora and in specialist journals in a manner which meets the need of both the general reading public and those of the prospective researcher.

What have been the salient factors for the neglect of research into Islam in Ethiopia and for the imbalance and lack of interest in its history? Foremost among these has been the prevailing focus of students of Ethiopian history and culture exclusively on the Christian paradigm with which the country as a whole is conventionally identified. This is partly, but not exclusively, dictated by the nature of the most readily available sources. However, even after this allowance has been made, some leading scholars of Ethiopian history still show a firm and persistent reluctance to conceive of, let alone recognize, a history of Islam in Ethiopia as a distinct and legitimate field of study which could complement that of the Christian communities in the country. Another crucial factor is the negative impact which the armed conflicts between the mediaeval Christian kingdom and the Muslim principalities has had on popular attitudes towards, and on the scholarly interpretation of, the role of Islam in the course of those events. Subsequently, indigenous Islam has been closely associated with external forces of aggression. This has long remained the standard view of most scholars writing about the history of Islam in Ethiopia.