Ethiopia is formerly known as Abyssinia. It was named Ethiopia around the 4th century by king Ezana as a new "christian" name for a kingdom he was converting.
What is the real name of Abyssinia?
Ethiopia was also historically called Abyssinia, derived from the Arabic form of the Ethiosemitic name "ḤBŚT," modern Habesha. In some countries, Ethiopia is still called by names cognate with "Abyssinia," e.g. Turkish Habesistan and Arabic Al Habesh, meaning land of the Habesha people.
Ethiopian Highlands
The Ethiopian Highlands (also called the Abyssinian Highlands) is a rugged mass of mountains in Ethiopia in Northeast Africa. It forms the largest continuous area of its elevation in the continent, with little of its surface falling below 1,500 m (4,900 ft), while the summits reach heights of up to 4,550 m (14,930 ft).
It is sometimes called the Roof of Africa due to its height and large area. Most of the Ethiopian Highlands are part of central and northern Ethiopia, and its northernmost portion reaches into Eritrea.
History
In the southern parts of the Ethiopian Highlands once was located the Kingdom of Kaffa, a medieval and early modern state, whence the coffee plant was exported to the Arabian Peninsula. The land of the former kingdom is mountainous with stretches of forest. The land is very fertile, capable of three harvests a year. The term coffee derives from the Arabic: قهوة (qahwah) and is traced to Kaffa.
Physical geography
The Highlands are divided into northwestern and southeastern portions by the Main Ethiopian Rift, which contains a number of salt lakes. The northwestern portion, known as the Abyssinian Massif, covers the Tigray and Amhara Regions, and includes the Semien Mountains, part of which has been designated the Simien Mountains National Park. Its summit, Ras Dashen (4,550 m), is the highest peak in Ethiopia. Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, also lies in the northwestern portion of the Ethiopian Highlands.
The southeastern portion is known as the Harar Massif. Its highest peaks are located in the Bale Zone of Ethiopia's Oromia Region. The Bale Mountains, also designated a national park, are nearly as high as those of Semien. The range includes peaks of over 4,000 m. Among the former are Mount Tullu Demtu (4,337 m), which is the second-highest major independent mountain in Ethiopia, and Mount Batu (4,307 m).
Most of the country's major cities are located at elevations of around 2,000–2,500 m (6,600–8,200 ft) above sea level, including Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital and largest city, and historic capitals such as Gondar and Axum.
Geology
The Ethiopian Highlands began to rise 75 million years ago, as magma from the Earth's mantle uplifted a broad dome of the ancient rocks of the Arabian-Nubian Shield.
The opening of the Great Rift Valley split the dome of the Ethiopian Highlands into three parts; the mountains of the southern Arabian Peninsula are geologically part of the ancient Ethiopian Highlands, separated by the rifting which created the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and separated Africa from Arabia.
Around 30 million years ago, a flood basalt plateau began to form, piling layers upon layers of voluminous fissure-fed basaltic lava flows. Most of the flows were tholeiitic, save for a thin layer of alkali basalts and minor amounts of felsic (high silica) volcanic rocks, such as rhyolite. In the waning stages of the flood basalt episode, large explosive caldera-forming eruptions also occurred.
The Ethiopian Highlands were eventually bisected by the Great Rift Valley as the African continental crust pulled apart. This rifting gave rise to large alkaline basalt shield volcanoes beginning about 30–31 million years ago.
The northern Ethiopian Highlands contain four discernible planation surfaces, the oldest one being formed not later than in the Ordovician Period. The youngest surface formed in the Cenozoic, being partly covered by the Ethiopia-Yemen Continental Flood Basalts. Contrary to what has been suggested for much of Africa, planation surfaces in northern Ethiopia do not appear to be Pedi plains nor etch Plains.
Climate
The predominant climate of the Ethiopian Highlands is the Alpine climate. Because the highlands elevate Ethiopia, located close to the equator, this has resulted in giving this country an unexpectedly temperate climate.
Further, these mountains catch the precipitation of the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean, resulting in a rainy season that lasts from June until mid-September. These heavy rains cause the Nile to flood in the summer, a phenomenon that puzzled the ancient Greeks, as the summer is the driest season in the Mediterranean climate that they knew.
Ecology
The Ethiopian Highlands share a similar flora and fauna of other mountainous regions of Africa; this distinctive flora and fauna is known as Afromontane but from the time of the last ice age has been populated with some Eurasian (palearctic) flora. The habitats are somewhat different on either side of the Great Rift Valley that splits the highlands.
At lower elevations, the highlands are surrounded by tropical savannas and grasslands, including the Sahelian Acacia savanna to the northwest and the East Sudanian savanna to the west.