As history indicates Gafat people are an extinct ethnic group that back in the days where found in the present day of western Ethiopia. The book named Gedle Yared explains that Gafat come under zagwe rule in the 12th century. Aleka Tekle-Iyyasu Waq Jira the author of the Gojjam chronicle states that the early inhabitation and direct ancestors of Gojjams were the Gafat prior to the Amhara migration. For many people it seems like the people, culture and language just vanished but many historians argue that there are some basic reasons for the extinction. The human conquest and migration of oromo people to Gafat resulted to the mixing of culture and the people moving out of the land But the main reason lies in the essentially progressive nature on human history, the less developed culture is usually dominated by the more developed ones.
Like the people of Gafat language which was spoken in the southern part of Ethiopia is now an extinct language. The Gafat language was related to the Harari language and eastern Gurage languages. Studies show that Charles Bene collected a word list in the early 1840’s leading him to find very few. He said that “the rising generation seem to be altogether ignorant of it; and those grown-up persons who profess to speak it are anything but familiar with it. A report by Wolf Lwslau in 1947 shows that he was only able to find a total of four people who could still speak the language.
The historical industry village of Gafat is a legendary place that comes in mind when the name of Gafat is raised. In the regime of Emperor Tewdros he used the city build up his military force. The place is the first industrial park in the whole Africa .After the battle with Egypt and got drafted Emperor Tewdros was amazed by the instruments the opposite force used.
This initiated him to build the best instruments for war. Emperor Tewdros held foreigners hostage to built what they dream of Even if they tried a peaceful way to deal and bring the foreigners they couldn’t make it work so he used the other way possible. The greater Mortar ‘Sebastopol’ was the biggest achievement of that time.
Article By: Kalkidan Teshome
