The Wolane people are an
ethnic group in southern
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
. Wolane people speak a
Semitic language
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...
which is closely related to
Sil'te,
Zay and
Harari languages. One of the Wolane peoples ancestor was
Kabir
Kabir Das (1398–1518) was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint. His writings influenced Hinduism's Bhakti movement, and his verses are found in Sikhism's scripture Guru Granth Sahib, the Satguru Granth Sahib of Saint Garib Das ...
Hamid who arrived from
Harar
Harar ( amh, ሐረር; Harari: ሀረር; om, Adare Biyyo; so, Herer; ar, هرر) known historically by the indigenous as Gey (Harari: ጌይ ''Gēy'', ) is a walled city in eastern Ethiopia. It is also known in Arabic as the City of Saint ...
. Wolane’s territory was annexed into
Gurage
The Gurage (, Gurage: ጉራጌ) are a Semitic-speaking ethnic group inhabiting Ethiopia.G. W. E. Huntingford, "William A. Shack: The Gurage: a people of the ensete culture" They inhabit the Gurage Zone, a fertile, semi-mountainous region in c ...
after
Menelik's forces invaded in the 1800's. Wolane domain today remains under the Gurage zone's eastern most district, however there has been calls by the Wolane to push for a separate Wolane region.
Wolane Community
The Wolane community consists of 160,000 people. A remarkable number of Wolane is living in
Addis Ababa
Addis Ababa (; am, አዲስ አበባ, , new flower ; also known as , lit. "natural spring" in Oromo), is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. It is also served as major administrative center of the Oromia Region. In the 2007 census, t ...
. The Wolane in the countryside live mostly in higher places, called "
Däga". These places are very suitable for the cultivation of
Enset
''Ensete ventricosum'', commonly known as enset or ensete, Ethiopian banana, Abyssinian banana, pseudo-banana, false banana and wild banana,
is an herbaceous species of flowering plant in the banana family Musaceae. The domesticated form of ...
, which is one of Wolane people stample foods.
References
{{Reflist
Bibliography
* Crass, J. & Meyer, R. (2001). The Qabena and the Wolane: Two people of the Gurage Region and their Respective Histories according to their Own Oral Tradition.
Ethnic groups in Ethiopia