There is a long history of interactions among the Oromo, Christian, and Muslim communities in and south of the region of Shawa. These interactions influenced how the Oromo constructed their uniquely enriched African cosmology. History of interactions among the three communities goes back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, the topic of early Christian and Muslim influences on some Oromo institutions has hardly been imagined, much less covered, in the Ethiopian scholarly discourse. Established historical wisdom asserts that neither Christian nor Muslim ideas influenced Oromo institutions and, if there ever were any such influence, it must have happened after 1522. Why after 1522? In his 1593 manuscript, Zenahu le Galla, Abba Bahrey suggested 1522 as the time when the Oromo attacked the province of Bali for first time during the reign of King Libna Dengel (1508–40). Bali was one of the most-important Muslim states that was conquered by Emperor Amda-Siyon and incorporated into the southward-expanding Christian kingdom between 1330–32 (see Map 3). The state of Bali was located in the northern most part of the current regions of Arsi/Bale. Though 1522 is a misleading date, it has become accepted as marking the arrival of the Oromo as ‘newcomers’ on the border of the Christian Kingdom of Abyssinia. It also marks the popularization of the name of Galla in Ethiopian historiography. The untenability of 1522 as the date of the ‘Oromo arrival’ will be examined in Chapters 2 and 3.

The main argument of this chapter is that the Oromo had long maintained interactions with Christian and Muslim peoples in the region of what is today Shawa and southern Ethiopia and, consequently, were exposed to the Christian and Muslim ideas that influenced aspects of Oromo traditions and institutions. This argument is based partly on previously untapped sources and partly on fresh interpretation of existing data coupled with an examination of some Oromo oral traditions that have been ignored in Ethiopian historiography. Some scholars continue to assert that 1522 marks the beginning of documented Oromo history and that re-examining earlier data is ‘inventing history’. I, however, agree with Jan Vansina that ‘The discipline of history evolves as much through reconsideration of older evidence as through the adduction of new evidence, and oral data should be part of this process.’ Furthermore, Vansina emphasizes the importance of oral tradition in the reconstruction of the past.