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Ethiopia The Trials of the Christian Kingdom and the Decline of Imperial
Power
From the mid-fifteenth through the mid-seventeenth century,
Christian Ethiopians were confronted by the aggressiveness
of the Muslim states, the far-reaching migrations of the
Oromo, and the efforts of the Portuguese--who had been
summoned to aid in the fight against the forces of Islam--to
convert them from Monophysite Christianity to Roman
Catholicism. The effects of the Muslim and Oromo activities
and of the civil strife engendered by the Portuguese left
the empire much weakened by the mid-seventeenth century. One
result was the emergence of regional lords essentially
independent of the throne, although in principle subject to
it.
Data as of 1991
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