Notas del episodio
In the southern Ethiopian highlands, the Kingdom of Kaffa sat inside a natural fortress: the Gojeb River to the north, the Omo River wrapping the east and south, and steep ravines and dense forest in between. The soil gave three harvests a year, and the Kafecho people spoke an Omotic language unrelated to the Semitic tongues of the northern empire. Around 1390 a ruler named Minjo ousted the Mato dynasty, whose 32 kings survive in oral tradition without a single remembered name, and founded the kingdom with its capital at Banga. Kaffa kept order through a rigid caste system: blacksmiths, leather workers, and Manjo hunters held a submerged status, yet the Manjo had their own sub-king and were trusted to guard the royal compounds and the kingdom's gates.
Kaffa grew rich exporting gold, civet oil for the perfume trade, and slaves, while its coffee exports were modest, perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 kilograms a year in the 1880s. In the 16th century Emperor Sarsa Dengel pressed Kaffa to adopt Christianity and built a church to St. George at Baha, but once northern pressure faded it became a local men's ritual house that kept George's name. Expansion peaked under King Hoti Gaocho, who ruled from 1798 to 1821 and whose army, in legend, stopped beneath a tree at Woliso. Kaffa repelled invasions in 1890 and 1893, but on September 11, 1897, the last king, Gaki Sherocho, was captured by the forces of Emperor Menelik II, who carried European repeating rifles against Kaffa's spears.
- Kaffa's internal currency, the amole, was a block of salt, exchanged at four or five blocks to one Maria Theresa thaler.
- Honey was harvested from wooden barrels hung high in forest trees for wild bees.
- Islam, brought by Ethiopian Muslim traders, was absorbed locally as simply the religion of the traders.
- An 18th century Mecha Oromo invasion took Kaffa's territory north of the Gojeb River.
- After annexation, slave raids led by Abba Jifar II of Jimma nearly emptied the region of its people.