Introduction

Abstract

Scholars in the discipline of history have come to learn greatly about the periphery of Bela-Shangul of Ethiopia through the extra-ordinary magnumopus of Alessandro Triulzi, Salt, Gold and Legitimacy: Prelude to the History of a No-man’s Land Bela-Shangul, Wallagga, Ethiopia: ca 1800 – 1898. Napoli: 1981. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, a number of Watawit Sheikhdoms dominated Bela-Shangul in the northwestern Ethiopian – Sudanese borderlands. The Watawit families were the descendants of Sudanese-Arabs, who had come to Bela-Shangul as traders and preachers of Islamic religion. These Sudanese-Arabs established their ascendency over the native Berta people. They, then, intermarried with the local ruling elite of the Berta.