In the first century CE there arose a great empire in Ethiopia– the Kingdom of Aksum. This wealthy civilization thrived for centuries, controlling a large slice of Africa and access to the vast trade routes that linked the Roman Empire to the Middle East and India. Their trading partners included most of the major states in the known world: Egypt, South Arabia, the Middle East, India, and China. By far their most important commercial partners were the Byzantine Roman
From the first to the sixth centuries CE, the most frequented route from the Roman world to the East was down the Red Sea from the Egyptian ports to Aksum. The kingdom became a trading juggernaut that maintained close ties with Rome and ultimately controlled northern Ethiopia, the Sudan and South Arabia. Its port of Adulis on the Eritrean coast of Ethiopia became a gateway city that moved goods from the Abyssinian Plateau and the Sudanese plains into a maritime exchange network connected to India, China, the Black Sea and even Spain. The level of Roman trade through Aksum ebbed and flowed over the years, but for the greater part of seven centuries remained strong. Aksum rose to its greatest power during the third century CE when Rome went through its great period of political instability.
There are good records of what was traded by Aksum. Pliny mentions the goods brought to its capitol city of Adulis by the ‘Trogodites and Ethiopians’ and a whole chapter of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is devoted to trade from Adulis. Exports from Aksum included ivory, rhinoceros’ horns, elephants, hippopotamus hides, gold and slaves. Ivory was an extremely important luxury item in international trade and Aksum competed only with its neighbours in Meroë (Kush) for control of that trade. Many thousands of elephants were reported to have grazed within its borders. Spices and sugarcane flowed into Adulis from the Far East. Aksum also controlled the frankincense trade from about 400 to 600 CE, after it invaded the country of Himyar in southern Arabia.
Aksum came to hold total sway over the southern Red Sea trade. As Sidebotham (1996) relates: “At the southern end of the Red Sea many, though certainly not all, cargoes would have been transshipped from the vessels of northern Red Sea origin (Romans, Graeco-Roman-Egyptians and, perhaps, Nabataeans) to those of South Arabs, Indians, Axumites/Ethiopians and others for conveyance to more distant ports in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. It was not all competition. Rome and Aksum had an extended period of friendly relations based partly on what became their common religion, Christianity, and on their interests in diverting trade from the Sassanian Persians.” The Red Sea trade had a commerce substantially free of government interference and regulation, whether it be Roman or foreign.
Positioned at the center of southern Red Sea trade, Aksum served as a meeting point of world religions. Its emperors believed their lineage traced back to King Solomon and the Hebrews of the Old Testament. They were sure that the Queen of Sheba came from their boundaries. Aksum became Christian in the fourth century when a Syrian named Frumentius came to be captured and later hosted by the Aksumite court whose king, King Ezana (r. 320–350), he ultimately converted. During the early years of Islam several of Muhammad’s followers fled to Aksum to avoid persecution and were kindly received there.
Aksum fiercely remained Christian, but as the caliphate grew ever more powerful, the Arabs gradually strangled the Aksumite economy by taking over the bulk of its maritime trade routes. The loss of mercantile revenue undermined the capacity of Aksum’s nobility to hold their state together. In the 7th century, the bulk of their trade shifted from the Red Sea to central Africa, and they lost their hold on southern Arabia.
Illustration: 14th century painting by Rashid ad-Din of the king of Aksum declining the request of a Meccan delegation to yield up the Muslims. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: Hancock, J.F. (2021) Spices, Scents and Silk: Catalysts of Trade. CABI
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