Ifat Sultanate - Language

Language

According to the 14th century historian Al-Umari, the people of Ifat spoke "Abyssinian and Arabic". J.D. Fage suggests that the 'Abyssinian' in this assertion denotes an Ethio-Semitic language.

However, the 19th century Ethiopian historian Asma Giyorgis suggests that the Walashma themselves spoke Arabic, which is similar to Ge'ez.

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