Habesha People - Etymology

Etymology

The modern term derives from the vocalized Ge'ez: ሐበሣ Ḥabaśā, first written with a script that did not mark vowels as ሐበሠ ḤBŚ or in "pseudo-Sabaic as ḤBŠTM". The earliest known use of the term dates to the 2nd or 3rd century AD South Arabian inscription recounting the defeat of the Aksumite Negūs ("king") GDRT of Aksum and ḤBŠT. The term "Habashat" seems to refer to a group of peoples, however, rather than a specific ethnicity, as evidenced by a Sabaean inscription about the alliance between the Himyarite king Shamir Yuhahmid and Aksum under King `DBH in the first quarter of the 3rd century AD. They had lived alongside the Sabaeans who lived across the Red Sea from them for many centuries:

Shamir of dhū Raydān and Himyar had called in the help of the clans of Habashat for war against the kings of Saba; but Ilmuqah granted... the submission of Shamir of dhū Raydān and the clans of Habashat.

The term "Habesha" was formerly thought by some to be of Arabic descent (who used the word Ḥabaš, also the name of an Ottoman province comprising parts of modern-day Eritrea and Ethiopia), because the English name Abyssinia comes from the Arabic form. South Arabian expert Eduard Glaser claimed that the hieroglyphic ḫbstjw, used in reference to "a foreign people from the incense-producing regions" (i.e. Punt, located mainly in the coastal area of Eritrea and Somalia) used by Queen Hatshepsut c. 1460 BC, was the first usage of the term or somehow connected, a claim repeated by others; however, this etymology is not at all certain, given the large time difference in the usage of the terms.