Kingdom of Limmu-Ennarea | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1801–1891 | |||||||||
 The five Oromo kingdoms of the Gibe region | |||||||||
| Capital | Saqqa | ||||||||
| Religion | Sunni Islam | ||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 1801 | ||||||||
• Annexed by Ethiopian Empire | 1891 | ||||||||
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The Kingdom of Limmu-Ennarea was one of the kingdoms in the Gibe region of Ethiopia that emerged in the 19th century. It shared its eastern border with the Kingdom of Jimma, its southern border with the Kingdom of Gomma and its western border with the Kingdom of Gumma. Beyond its northern border lay tribes of the Macha Oromo. Jimma was considered the most civilized of the Gibe kingdoms, which had a population in the 1880s between 10,000 and 12,000.[1] It was converted to Islam by missionaries from Emirate of Harar in the first half of the 19th century; C.T. Beke, writing in 1841, reported that its "king and most of his subjects are Mohammedan."[2] Limmu-Ennarea's capital was at Saqqa.
The location of this former kingdom has a north to south central elevation between 1,500 and over 2,000 metres (5,000 to over 6,500 feet), and is covered with forests. The population of this kingdom was estimated in 1880 to have been about 40,000, including slaves.[3] However, this was after an epidemic of plague in the late 1840s, and Mordechai Abir estimates the population before that calamity to have been around 100,000.[4]
- ^ Mordechai Abir, The era of the princes: the challenge of Islam and the re-unification of the Christian empire, 1769-1855. (London: Longmans, 1968), p. 81
- ^ Beke, "Respecting the Geography of Southern Abyssinia", Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 12 (1842), p. 86
- ^ C.F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford, Some Records of Ethiopia, 1593-1646 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1954), pp. lxxviiif.
- ^ Abir, Era of the Princes, p. 80